 I'm going to get started. I will be meeting to order at 535 p.m. The meeting of the board of finance on December 7th. And the first item on the agenda is a motion to adopt the agenda. Is anyone ready to move on that? Could you give us just a moment? Sure. No worries. I was too busy chatting. I'm happy to make a motion, but I'd like to, and I'm a little bit ill prepared here. So I'd like to add an item. At the bottom of our agenda. And that is, I'm not really sure exactly how to do this. There was an email that the five of us received and I forwarded it to CAO Shad. So she has it. This was still sent to us on Sunday. Yesterday. At 9. 36 in the morning from Megan Humphrey. And this is concerning the 17th annual. Holiday dinner. For seniors. And was hoping that we might be able to add. The email to our, perhaps even just last on our agenda. I'm actually looking at it right now. I can forward it if that would be helpful. And that would be as item. I'm sorry. That would be. As item. I guess it could be 5.03. Very good. If I forget that one, get there. Please remind me. Also, maybe I'm confused. Catherine, can you speak to me? I see. Wait. Is where is the. So under 4.06 is. Where we are going to do everything with Elger, including hazard pay. I understand that right? Yes, that is correct. I spoke with city attorney Blackwood and that is what she recommended. So we added it there today. Got it. Okay. Great. Excellent. So with that, with that motion from councilor Paul, we have a second seconded by councilor Pine, I believe. Any further discussion of the agenda. Doesn't look like it. All those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously and we have an agenda. That brings us to the public forum. Is there anyone who would like to speak to the board of finance? Public forum. However, if you're a member of the public. Who wants to speak on public forum, you can use the raise hand function. I don't see anyone wishing to speak on public forum. Okay. I'm looking at. The attendees as well. I'm not seeing anyone raising their hands. So we will close the public forum. And. Councilor Pine. I was just going to do consent agenda. Okay. Great. I would welcome a motion on the consent agenda. Go for it. Just move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Great. Second. Seconded by councilor Paul discussion. All those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. The motion carries unanimously. That brings us through the consent agenda to. 4.01 welcome. Councilor Jang. We are on 4.01 authorization to amend. Champlain. Associate's contract for operations and maintenance of airports underground injection control system, which is. Why we've got. Larry and Jean here. How would the board like to proceed? Ready for a motion or would you like some discussion first? Councilor Pine. I would move to approve and recommend. The. Action as indicated in the recommended action. Excellent. Seconded by councilor Paul, I believe. Further discussion. If there's a, anything the staff would like to share with us. This pair. This would be a good time for that. Yeah. Great. This is a system that has been of considerable interest over the years. Maybe just a quick summary of this. Where it stands in general in this item. Sure. It's a, it's a. I'll let Larry talk about it, but it's basically state of the art system for glycol. And where it gets injected into the. Sandy system. It's a biodegradable material and we've had some troubles with the way the system works. And Larry, you want to talk a little bit about this and what that, you know, what's going on with it. It's something we invested in. It was good. You've had some. Kickbacks on it. And Larry, why don't you go ahead. Sure. The. Memo is for operations and maintenance and monitoring for a 24 seven operation. Everybody's aware we. The ice planes with glycol and also have stormwater. So these systems provide a dual purpose of a glycol injection and stormwater injection or treatment to minimize offsite impacts to surface waters. We have three injection systems. Three of them are very large pump stations with large scale. Storage tanks that. That are monitored and maintained and operated 24. Hours a day. This proposal is to. Have champion associates assist us because they also provided the controls that monitor this system. The issues of which Jean was talking about are on the main glycol system, of which we are currently addressing and working, working through and we'll continue to monitor and maintain that system. That's your pie. Larry or Jean, could you just explain to us how. You ensure both monitor and, and ensure that the material doesn't migrate to down gradient, you know, waterways and whatnot. Right. There's, there's several. Well, one thing is we have not only this, we have permits and permit compliance requirements for surface monitoring and analytical analysts and. Groundwater analytical. So once this is injected into the ground, there's multiple down gradient. Modern groundwater monitoring wells that are monitored three times a year. And in fact, just got the latest report this past month and we are in compliance. Thank you. Counselor Pine. It doesn't mean that in those tests that there will never be any glycol. There's a lot of surface glycol, but the reason for the testing is to ensure that we're staying within certain parameters that the state, state has set for us. And that was the whole idea of the system is to make sure that we're being as environmentally sound as possible. And that this system is probably the greenest system when it's working at a hundred percent. And, um, and that's what Larry's been working really hard is to get it to work as intended with the Vermont soils and the freezing and everything that we have. Um, it's had, we've had some challenges, but nothing that, uh, we don't think we can overcome. We're certainly looking at every, uh, uh, every way that we can to make the system work the way it was intended. Also, this is kind of not in line with our maintenance guys or operations guys with respect to the airport is more related to environmental and operations that way. And they can't be snow, you know, plowing snow and operating the system. We're responding to an issue with this at the same time. So we need all the help we can get. I need all the help we can get with a, you know, we're all basically 24 seven at the airport. And part of having these people, uh, counselor pine is to have people who are experts in what they do. And that's why we're having these folks do that. Sorry, Maro. Okay. Um, How, um, Okay. Are we ready? Uh, any further counselor questions or comments? Okay. Let's go to, let's go to a vote. Um, all those in favor of the meeting, I think we're going to, we're going to, I think we're going to, I think we're going to, we're going to, I think we're going to, I think we're going to, I think we're going to, I think we're going to, we're going to move a little bit earlier. We're sort of going to, I think we're about at number two. Let's go to a vote. Um, all those in favor of the motion, please say, I, I. Any opposed. Motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to 4.02, um, authorization, a sign contract for window washing services with home window and maintenance service. Another airport item. Be ready for a motion here. Council or Paul, that the council authorized the director of aviation to enter into a contract for window washing services with home window and maintenance service for an amount up to 108,157.50, subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office. Okay, thank you, Councillor Palazar. Seconded by Councillor Pine. Discussion. Thank you for joining us, Shelby. Nick, we will go to a vote. If there's no further discussion, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, airport team. Good to see you all. And now we will go to a DPW item, 4.03, fee trans finance and maintenance agreement for the US 789 concrete pavement repair. Welcome, Laura and Corey. How would the board like to proceed? Are we ready for a motion, Councillor Pine? Sure. I move to approve and recommend the city council authorize the director of public works to execute the finance and maintenance agreement state of Vermont, City of Burlington, for Burlington, NHPC 21, friends, contract number FM 0404, subject to city attorney review and approval. You're on mute, Mr. Mayor. Sorry, apologies. Is that a second from President Tracy? Okay, thank you. I was just wondering if, folks, if Director Spencer, you could clarify where this is happening. And I guess it was like US 7 and 189 intersection, which I wasn't sure was in Burlington, and which is why I wanted to just understand why we're weighing in on this. Sure. I'll have a senior engineer, Laura Wheelock and engineer, Corey Menz, respond. Yes. Thank you. The city of Burlington's town boundary actually does include the right away of Shelburne Tree all the way down through there and actually some of the asphalt, even on the southern side of that. This project will include all of the concrete this coming season within the city of Burlington, as well as there's actually a portion in South Burlington at that area. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for that, Laura. And are we ready for a vote? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And this brings us to a budget amendment for carry forward of capital from fiscal year 2020 to 2021 with DPW. Another DPW item. Welcome, Martha. Why don't you give an overview of this just to make sure we're all clear as we move into this. Sure. So most all capital or a lot of capital covers fiscal years. And so at the end of the fiscal year, we will reconcile what is completed and then what projects have dollars that need to be carried forward into the next fiscal year. This year was a little bit more special because we've been working with CLA, a consultant to reconcile and make sure it's all correct. And so this is a little later in coming to you because we worked with them to make sure that all of these numbers are correct. And so it is moving these dollars forward, some of which you approved in September for the City Hall improvements, others for the bike path and other small projects. So it will all be utilized in fiscal year 21. Okay, great. Thank you, Martha. Floor is open for questions or a motion? Councillor Pine. I move to approve and recommend the City Council approve and authorize a budget amendment in the amount of $3,983,880.13 to be transferred to and from the accounts described in the accompanying memo to carry forward remaining capital budget funds from FY 20 to FY 21. Great. Thank you. Seconded by Councillor Paul. Discussion? None? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and the amendment is approved. Thank you, Martha. Thank you. Appreciate it. 4.05, reclassification of Housing Program Specialist 1 to a Housing Program Specialist 2. Luke, welcome. And Tony, why don't you just kick this off, Luke, just make sure we're all clear since we have been deferring a lot of employee actions recently while this one is going forward. Thank you, Mayor. And so we have Tony from HR. I also have Katie Kinstep, the Assistant Director for Administration and Finance within CEDO who will be managing this position. I believe she's on this call if there are questions. Simply put, this is a reclassification that we're doing to meet all of the additional programs that have come online through CEDO, helping to manage a number of federal programs. We are doing this in a completely general fund budget neutral way because as we've onboarded these new programs, we are able to take additional administrative costs. So we're essentially funding it through the many program streams that we're bringing in through CEDO. And we've kind of taken two roles and put them into one, which was this vacant role. And lastly, I'll say this is kind of, we know this is important to recognize the additional responsibilities in the role and recruit and fill the role as quickly as possible. That's the background. Okay, thank you, Luke. I see Councillor Paul and then Councillor Pine. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So my only question is just simply, and I'm just trying to get this from when I read the information, it sounds like this position, this employee who's in this position was doing this work for some time. Is that, am I missing something or is that true? Yeah, I'm sorry, Councillor Paul, this position was actually vacant, has been vacant. I'm not sure the actual timeline, maybe Tony, you have that, but it's been vacant since I've been at CEDO. Another role that was vacated in the last six months, we are not filling and we're taking some of those responsibilities and combining it with this one. So there's no employee in this role today. Okay, all right, I did not gather that. All right, so in other words, it's not as if there's been somebody's doing, been doing this work for six months since in response to COVID, that is not at all the case. So the $3,800, that's just the amount that would cover the rest of this year. I believe that's right and I see lots of nodding heads from my colleagues. Okay, all right, great, thank you. Councillor Pynes. I will move it, but then I have a question after a second, if I could. Go ahead. To approve and recommend City Council approve the reclassification of the Housing Program Specialist 1, CEDO regular full-time exempt non-union grade 16 position to Housing Program Specialist 2, CEDO regular full-time exempt non-union grade 17 position. Thank you, Councillor Pynes. Is that a second from President Tracy, I believe? Just then you had a question, Councillor Pynes? Real quick, is this primarily non-General Fund? I think I saw that it was, it looked like it was 95% non-General Fund and maybe 5% General Fund. That's correct. I got that, okay, thank you. President Tracy. So the memo mentions how there's additional responsibilities for CEDO that they've taken on in the RRC. Is the idea that this person, will this person have additional responsibilities related to the RRC because I didn't see that in the job description or is this really just continuing existing functions that are necessary as part of CEDO's work? Thanks, President Tracy. Actually, let Katie, if you want to speak to this, just sort of how the admin finance team is functioning and where this role fits in exactly. So the RRC responsibilities aren't explicitly included in the job description just because we're recruiting for somebody who hopefully have a long tenure in this position and we're hoping this pandemic and the additional responsibilities will only be another six to nine months. So we're handling those through kind of adjustments through what we call work plans for this individual and it fits broadly into the larger bullet points, but we tried to make this position applicable beyond the pandemic. Okay, and do you have any ideas to like the work that this person will do that's specific to pandemic support with regards to housing? Sure. So we have a large amount of like federal funding that are coming in through our home program through our CDBG funds and home has to be used explicitly for housing and there's some flexibility there in terms of how the funds can be used and CDBG about 50 percent of our funds were planning to use for housing. So we're envisioning our rental assistance program to launch in early 2021 in coordination with the state since their current rental assistance for stabilization program is concluding. So they will be involved in supporting that kind of as a part of their portfolio of supporting home and housing programs more generally. Okay thank you very much. Further discussion? Seeing none we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to I think a really positive and positive item in a number of ways. First of all as I believe the board knows the city has been successful in securing the full commitment for the full two and a half million dollar reimbursement of COVID related expenses and we are working hard I say we I really mean Catherine and her team are working very hard to submit all the required documentation to we sort of as I understand it we have this opportunity and commitment for the two and a half million dollars but we need to submit qualifying expenses and finalize what those qualifying expenses are and that is what your approvals will do tonight and included in that is I'm pleased to be bringing forward and really thankful for Catherine's leadership on this and really working through the weekend and in addition to being in touch with union leaders throughout the weekend for to put a specific proposal in front of you for recommendation and then approval by the council tonight in advance of the deadline that will allow hundreds of city employees who have been on the front line of this emergency and really regularly exposing themselves to elevated risks of contracting the virus this will allow us consistent with the program that the legislature recently approved and distributed to make one time hazard pay payment to hundreds of city employees and this is something that we have had requests for understandably throughout this emergency and it's been very challenging for us to be responsive to those requests given the other impact of the COVID emergency which is to have put severe limitations and really damage to our overall finances really pleased to have this opportunity with this federal emergency dollars to do right by our employees that have been working so hard and at real risk to themselves as we as our understanding the virus has been evolving while doing their jobs so Catherine do you want to add anything to that to see things off here thank you for that mayor and I really want to thank Katie Kinstead from CEDO the assistant director for administration and finance who really has been leading the reimbursement process and I can't say enough about how painful that is and how grateful I am to her for her leadership in that and I'm very pleased to bring the hazard pay program before you and that's something that we're very pleased to offer employees but there's a lot of unsung work by Katie and also I'd like to thank Lisa Roach from the clerk treasurer's office who's also been involved and I know there's others from the CEDO office I don't know all of their names but I want to thank the whole CEDO team and if there are any questions on hazard pay I'm happy to answer them we'll just add to just to kind of add to the record to make sure that the the the action here is clear and the this grant will allow the city to receive significant reimbursement for many of the innovative I think impactful public health initiatives that have been rolled out by the city over the course of of this pandemic you can see in the documentation that this will allow reimbursement of the BTV community mask initiative resource recovery center costs analytics team costs some of the wastewater surveillance work that we've been doing in recent work weeks and that allowed us to put out a call to action last week some of those costs the support of quarantine program which has helped hundreds of Brauentonians stay safely in quarantine and follow quarantine the trusted community voices program the plant for the people program which resulted in thousands over 6 000 pounds of fresh produce being contributed to local food organizations and the broader food relief program which has allowed the city to work with food various food providers to deliver over 11 000 meals and 40 000 dollars in groceries all of these all of these expenses we are getting reimbursed through this grant I do think it's important to say and I hope the council feels good about the fact that by acting early the way the council did in March we we didn't have to wait for this program to come along to to take these actions we we are getting reimbursement now but it was the local funds initially that allowed us to go out and take that robust action throughout this emergency and getting reimbursement now will allow considerable additional good to be done which will be a discussion of further conversations in addition to the very good step of being able to properly recognize the work of of hundreds of our employees so thanks for the chance to share that the floor's open for a motion or question councillor pine I move to approve and recommend the city council approve the acceptance of the local government expense reimbursement grant number and that is about 18 digits but the last four digits are 0132 and authorizes cito assistant director administration and finance to take all necessary steps to effectuate the acceptance of this grant thank you councillor pine seconded by president tracy I believe I saw a CEO shad and then councillor paul um I'm sorry but I'm putting on my city attorney hat because I mean as train me well and I'm sorry councillor pine but there's a slightly amended motion could you just include and approve the hazard pay program somewhere in there I did we did post an amended motion I don't care if you use that exact language but if you could just include hazard pay that'd be really great thank you sure I would just amend my original motion to add the disbursement of hazard pay as indicated thank you uh re re seconded by president tracy um councillor paul would you still like to be recognized no okay um sorry you're on mute there councillor paul if you were I didn't hear what you just said but sorry about that I was just going to uh second what CAO shed just said got it all right no problem there okay um any discussion of item 4.06 president uh sorry councillor jane um thank you Mr. Mayor um you know I mean I think we we we have to just appreciate also what you just said in terms of um the employees the hard work that they have done yeah thank you but now I would I wanted to understand if employees of the buddington school district who also participated meaningfully in these efforts uh you know could have access to this or does it include employees of the buddington school district that's okay thank you councillor jane um these are as I understand this we are seeking reimbursement from municipal expenses here there are you know the the this is the finances between the schools and the city are are separate and these are funds that could be used I don't believe for education expenses they have there are separate COVID related funding streams that have been going through the school the department of education the school system but I can't speak in detail to how they have grappled with this um yeah yes yeah yeah so I mean I understand the the the finance dynamic between the school and also the city but since this was only a grant could the city share it extend like the the the the grants funds to include the school district that's what I was but yeah thank you thank you councillor jane uh see or shad do you have anything to add to what I shared no I don't think so with limited funds um we really were just looking at municipal employees at this time um so we did not look at school employees is there further discussion okay I believe we have a motion and a second on the floor and if there's no further discussion I'm going to go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye all right are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and we appreciate the support um 4.07 is an EMS an ambulance servicer provider stabilization grant award the amount of 182 578 dollars chief lock is here to speak to this if we need his assistance how would the board like to proceed are we ready for a motion councillor paul thank you I'd make a motion to approve and recommend that the city council approve the acceptance of the EMS an ambulance service provider stabilization grant award in the amount of 182 578 dollars as outlined in chief locks memo dated November 20th 2020 thank you councillor paul is there a second councillor pine um so we have a second and a motion are there any further discussion okay uh we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye any opposed the motion carries unanimously thank you chief lock um okay 4.808 uh burlington bike path rehab phase 3b design amendment she's so fee so vase here to speak to this um how would the board like to proceed we're ready for a motion welcome director right councillor pine I would move to approve and recommend the city council approve and authorize the execution of a contract amendment with vhb for a price not to exceed 63 710 dollars for the burlington bike path rehabilitation phase 3b design project plus a project contingency of 9 557 dollars for a total of 73 267 dollars and to authorize Cindy white director of parks and recreation waterfront to execute the contract amendment for a total of 183 207 dollars and any related documents needed carry out the project subject to city attorneys final review and approval thanks councillor pine is there a second second by councillor paul discussion okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you Cindy and Sophie thank you and congratulations to both on if you haven't seen it yet um the bike path as I'm going to get to see it tomorrow uh is fully open as I understand it from uh Perkins pier to the lakeside uh neighborhood not not farther south than that that yet right they're still doing work there no it's also open up till clutch so all the way open yeah awesome whoo hallelujah it's great we hope we hope you all get a chance to go out there it's phenomenal this uh this is the stretch of course that we've confronted those real challenges as a result of the halloween storm last year which basically costs us a season but we have persevered and I think people are going to really be excited by this stretch when they see it it's it's the most dramatic change of arguably of any stretch on the whole a mile rehab so check it out um it's uh it was a lot of work by a lot of people congrats guys on uh getting the fun great thank you thank you to the council and the mayor for your support along the way too thank you absolutely um I think that is something we all agree on is the greatness of the bike path okay um I am shifting now to the two items or three items that require border finance approval only um contract with parenting instruction company for plumbing remodel at fire station one are we ready for a motion here or questions councilman I will move this item but then request the floor back after a second so move to authorize the director of DPW to execute a contract for an amount of 62,538 dollars with a 10 contingency of $6,253 for a total amount of $68,791 comparing to the instruction company with a plumbing remodel of fire station one subject to final review and approval by the city attorney thank you council pine is there a second I believe we need a second here folks council jane thank you um further discussion uh go ahead council pine sorry I sent it back to you yeah sure the um my only question is the staff could explain we only got one bid which I was a little surprised but maybe that's what's happening now in this type of climate um is there is there just not enough folks responding to city bids because I'm surprised to see that so I'll let Kim speak to that she managed the RFP process go ahead Kim you mute so sorry um good evening yes we did a formal RFP process we put the RFP out uh towards the end of October and um in addition to putting it on the city website and to works in progress to Vermont business registry um I also personally sent invitations to about seven different plumbing contractors to get them to come to the two different walkthroughs that we did at fire station one and with all of those we did receive just the one responsive bid thank you hmm um that's another discussion okay we will go to about all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously and that brings us to 5.02 um CEDO community justice center creation of limited service position youth and family restorative liaison um welcome Luke Tony and Rachel um uh would you like to to share a brief uh summary um of the um this position uh Rachel sure unless I want to defer to Tony too it's from the members from HR but the brief uh overview of this position is that it would be um funded through a grant from department of children and families that is going to the Burlington school district and we'd be a subcontractor along with up for learning as another non-profit um or a dip we're not a non-profit but as the second um partner in the grant with the main objective of the grant to be um decreasing racial disparities and suspensions and expulsions and so this would be we would love it to be a full time but the grant allows for a halftime position um or a part-time position um with it's the grant is one year with three one-year extensions so we're looking at a limited service um part-time 25 hours a week uh youth and family restorative liaison that would be based primarily in the middle schools probably hunt to start with um to work as the SROs potentially are coming out of the schools as well to be a bit of a liaison for issues around conflict and discipline but um trying to keep them out of the criminal legal system great thank you racial um are we ready for our motion councillor jen yep i move to approve the creation of the youth and family restorative liaison and limited services part-time no exempt non-union grade 14 position in CROs community justice center great thank you seconded by councillor paul uh anyone like to speak to the center councillor pine pine and then jen i would just like to hear a discussion of how this position will dovetail with um the staff at the middle schools and the high school in terms of ensuring that we have um sort of a unified restorative approach to behavior issues that happen in the middle schools and the high school yeah great question so our staff have been working with this uh partnering with the burlington school district for five or six years since the restorative practices initiative has started district-wide so we've worked closely with the rp teams in each school and especially hunt who has been um really working on building up their own internal capacity and working with our youth program restorative manager kelly erins so they're very much in support they don't have what they call tier two which is tier one is the community building proactive um you know resort use of restorative practices to just build a sense of community tier two is when discipline is needed when conflict does happen and they don't have as many supports in that area yet as they'd like so this position ideally will be training high school and middle school youth to be um more restorative practitioners in turn not just the tier one but the tier two level so we can embed more internal knowledge and um work in alignment with the rp teamwork that's already gone you know it's already happening just one more follow up mr mayor go ahead can you just explain that when you say um working with the students does that mean that there will actually be sort of a peer to peer element in this model is that what there is yeah exactly the high school even though the idea is will be responding to conflict within the middle school we'll use high school up for learning's primary mission in this grant is to get more youth and family engagement so the idea is to train high school and um middle school youth to be the restorative practitioners that would help lead the processes the restorative processes in response to the discipline issues that's really a great model i'm really excited to hear that thank you very much for doing it i'd love to get some follow-up data and analysis of the effect of it over time that'd be great excellent um thank you rachel uh council jane did you have a question yes i mean uh first and foremost i think this is one concrete way of how grants can strengthen the collaboration between the city and the and the burlington school district this is very concrete and tangible way and it's important it should be a priority that we maybe look into more grants that could uh continue to strengthen the collaboration but i wanted to also understand how does this mean when you talk about families the youth explanation was clear but on the family side can you explain a little bit how does it look like yeah i mean up for learning is the one who has done this in other parts of the state to try and there's in terms of the communicate like the restorative practice initiative that has been rolling out for five or six years i would say has been weakest in two fronts one is the communication and two is the youth and family engagement and obviously those are interlinked so speaking as a parent in the burlington school district i rely on my child primarily as the one who's telling me what's going on in the schools for restorative practices i'm not hearing in the newsletters i'm not hearing from in the communications realm so um families are interested in hearing about what's this circle that i hear here is going on in the schools and hearing a little bit more about how they can be part because right now it's more i'm in a reactive way like for instance we hear from um for parents of um non-american born folks folks who who's where english is not their first language about the confusion about how their schools have are their students or their youth have already been involved in the discipline system but they're really confused about how or why and so communication clearly is a a missing ingredient and to involve students well sometimes you have to involve the the whole family unit well and so um again this is not our part of the grant up for learning we'll be doing that but it involves some retreats that um are or going to be communicated about like with the family and the youth um for their engagement and their ideas so that it truly will be more youth led and family led so that their ideas can be part of the conversation it will be not just tokenism um but i can't give you many more details about how up for learning plans to go about that but yes i mean it's beautiful it's just it's just beautiful it's it's important but i mean let's try to also extend the the reach maybe this should be a full-time position definitely should it was it it's a small brand i will i just for your own benefit of knowledge too when you the grant from dcf was idea like the the original proposal was just that one there would be one grantee well spectrum youth and family services also applied for the winewski school district and dcf instead of choosing one ended up awarding the grant to both of us so each each school district got a grant or a spectrum and berlin or you know spectrum and winewski and berlington school district for berlington so that's you know double the money coming out from dcf but hopefully an opportunity for some coordination and collaboration given some similarities between our two school districts as well thank you no further discussion all right let's go to vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously okay i believe that leaves just the item councillor paul um added to the agenda at the beginning um councillor paul could you re re-state that um yeah the uh so yes of course um i was hoping to add to the agenda item 5.03 which is the email that the five of us and cio shad also because i copied her um received from megan humphrey humphrey concerning the 17th annual holiday dinner for seniors um i don't know uh if there is either either if she has or others have the technology to simply put that that email on to board docs and it looks like perhaps that is being worked on um i have the technology but not the knowledge and i've put it on the wrong place uh lori olberg i apologize to you in advance um but councillors who would like to view it if you just go on it is now number one it's 1.01 17th annual holiday dinner for seniors i will obviously work to fix this later to make it right or you can see it all right just a minute i think i probably have to i think we yes if you refresh i believe that you will see it just let me know if you have problems okay uh one just a moment okay well it's there it doesn't matter when what order we can we can be we can be flexible people um okay so uh this email came to us and um uh any event i for some reason i can't see it it was converted into a message and so i'm having trouble myself actually getting it up um but that's okay um i have the um i have the email so um the the motion that i was hoping to make uh mr mayor was just that um megan in this email had thanked us for our past support of the holiday dinner for seniors um and you know i think to uh due to the due to covid instead of having a sit-down dinner at the elk's club they're actually delivering um uh they're actually delivering 850 meals and gift bags um to uh to uh to recipients to seniors many of whom i would imagine are homebound at this time um and we had provided $500 for this effort i assume that that's in the regional programs budget um i was wondering if and would like to make a motion that given the rather exceptional circumstances that were under that out of the emerging needs budget that we would be able to um uh offer uh hands uh an additional $500 for a total of $1,000 for this year um to cover some of their um uh some of their uh additional expenses thank you councillor paul um president tracy thank you second i i'd fully support that councillor paul i really appreciate you getting this on the agenda um having spoken to to megan um the need i guess is um has only grown this year um according to megan and so i think it makes sense for us as a city to to help with that um and provide an additional sum of money so i'd fully support the motion excellent um i'm supportive as well i i do just want to clarify the um the request is for 500 total as i read it um and so i just that are we suggesting we go beyond the request or just meet the request i was i was hoping if i may that you know we and again i i don't know this for sure i'm i know that hands is i believe they are in the regional programs budget um and off the top of my head i don't know exactly how much it is um i'm assuming that if it well ca osha i can can certainly clarify that go ahead yes we have already budgeted five the five hundred dollars that was requested that is in the regional programs budget so normally this would not need to be an agenda item we would just pay it i believe councillor paul is bringing it as an agenda item so that we could add additional money got it okay that's correct great so it's a motion in a second um ready for for a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye all right any opposed the motion carries unanimously and i believe that brings us to the end of i think that's it right i think that brings us to lost the agenda for a moment but yes i think we're done so if there's no objection we will adjourn as a board of finance at six twenty eight p.m great the councillors on and on board if i could please be given hosting responsibilities as well there's a couple folks who are going to be presenting and that i'd like to promote to panelists this first little bit um just for members of the public we're going to have a short presentation um which is a report back requested from the police commission specifically from commissioner gommash um before heading into public forum and then um and then we'll get into public forum closer to seven thirty so upgraded just to make sure i found everyone sorry to be late no worries i think i see a bunch of councillors on at this point one two three four okay so only seeing five councillors on thus far still waiting okay i see councillor shannon welcome i'm still waiting for a bunch of councillors it's texan folks president tracy just wanted to check my mic to make sure that you hear me you're good thank you okay no you're councilor stromberg i think we still need another councillor okay there we go i think now with the addition of councillor hanson that we now have seven councillors yep i see oh and i see councillor paulina on as well okay great all right wonderful so let's call to order the the city council meeting for december seventh before we get going with the agenda our first item is the pledge so we'll do the pledge right now okay so now that brings us to item number one which is our agenda councillor stromberg are you able to please make a motion on our agenda i move to amend adopt the agenda as follows note revised version for consent agenda item 5.20 per ceo shad note written materials and motion for consent agenda item 5.21 communication john adams collitz parks parks project coordinator sophie suave parks comprehensive planner cindy white director department of parks recreation and waterfront um b pr w regarding brelinton bike path rehabilitation phase 3b design amendment note revised version of the excel spreadsheet as part of the consent agenda item 5.23 city of brelinton retained perpetual lease interest list to be voted on the december 7th 2020 regular city council meeting prayer assistant city attorney servant add to the consent agenda item 5.24 communication lucy serb uh regarding uh the documents from lucy serb regarding agenda 6.02 constitutionality constitutionality of proposed new ordinance with the motion to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file add to the consent agenda item 5.25 communication emma quarry south prospect street regarding city council meeting tonight community controls of the police with the motion to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file note proposed amendment for agenda item 6.02 resolution march 2nd 2021 annual city meeting just cause evictions charter change charter change committee per city council carpenter no additional written materials for agenda item 6.03 resolution march 2nd 2021 annual city count annual city meeting independent community control board to oversee investigation and discipline of police misconduct charter change charter change committee note revised version title change and sponsor for agenda item 6.04 revised resolution relating to march 2nd 2021 annual city meeting charter change regarding additions to airport commission councilor paul per assistant i'm sorry per city attorney's office no written material revised title and sponsor for the agenda item 6.05 resolution charter change uh regarding regarding regulation of thermal energy systems in residential and commercial buildings per city attorney's office no proposed amendment to remove this agenda item and place it on the December 14th 2020 special city council deliberative agenda per councillor mason great thank you for that long motion councillor stromberg very much appreciated that was certainly a mouthful um is there a second to the motion on the agenda seconded by councillor pine any discussion of the agenda councillor freeman i just wanted to offer um an amendment okay i know i know we decided to have the public forum be at time certain but i know there's been a considerable amount of folks who want to weigh in on our charter change items probably and possibly other items that we're deliberating on so i would move to um have not in the public forum at time certain so um uh just allow for everyone to speak and then um also suspend the rule on ending since i think we want to be able to take up some items tonight on our agenda and i um want to make sure we get to those okay so we have a motion to complete the public forum signups um and then also to suspend the 1030 rule um so is there a second to that motion that a motion to amend our agenda seconded by councillor stromberg any discussion of this amendment did you want the floor back councillor freeman yeah i just yeah i just wanted to make sure yeah i just i think that it's around like a hundred people who are signed up i i just want to make sure that we hear everyone um you know i think we can certainly not we there might be some items on our agenda that we can put like hold off i think there are some that we should get to tonight and i just i hope that we can at least hear from everyone who's come to speak tonight okay councillor shannon go ahead i think that um commission chair gommash was invited to to speak and i would suggest going to him first i don't mind starting public forum early because people are signed up no reason not to do that um but if we are going to extend public forum and not get to agenda items i think it's only fair to um determine now what we are not going to get to and i don't think we should be extending our meeting past 1030 um because we don't function well as a deliberative body when we are um trying to deliberate at that late hour um we do it sometimes because we have to but we certainly should not be planning to deliberate difficult agenda items that late at night thank you councillor shannon any further discussion of the amendment to the motion on the agenda you can vote on this i'll go ahead thank you i just want to make sure i understand so this is this is not two motions this is just one the motion is to extend the public forum until all people have spoken and then to extend and then to wave the rules at 1030 and go until we finish the entire agenda okay well i i'd like to know i see councillor freeman shaking her head i'd like to know exactly what we are voting on sir freeman are you able to please clarify it's just to have the forum have everyone speak who signed up for forum and just to suspend the 1030 rule that's it obviously other motions can be made once we get to items you know we can we can move to postpone our table items once we get to them i this is just to suspend the rule i imagine a hundred people that's about four hours it's already going to go to 1130 if we start our forum so i just i assumed we would be suspending our rules essentially point of information yep go ahead councillor tower yes sorry i got on a little bit late just do we know how many people are signed up for public forum did you say um let me check real quick it's changing by the moment um i see 137 people signed up at this point sorry tower go ahead um yeah then other than that i would just if we're doing that concur with councillor shannon i think that we've got a lot of really contentious items on our agenda and i think doing them really late tends to not make us a very good deliberative body so i want to add that as a concern to okay any further discussion on the amendment councillor paul thank you um so i'm wondering whether or not in addition uh perhaps since if we're already we already are actually waiving our rules in advance that um perhaps uh councillor freeman would be amenable to adding to that motion that we simply do our public forum this evening um and considering the fact that it may go until well after 11 p.m i'm happy to hear from the public i'm wondering if perhaps the meeting on the 14th could simply be a continuation of our meeting this evening meaning it would be an adjourned meeting it would not be adjourned um and we could at least have that evening to start on you know at seven o'clock dealing with the items that are on today's tonight's agenda if others are amenable to that it's just a suggestion okay i have councillor hanson in the queue to be followed by councillor freeman and paulino go ahead councillor hanson yeah um i would be concerned with pushing all these charter change debates off until our backs are against the wall i found with the budget it was really problematic that we waited all the way until the deadline day to try to deal with an intense budget and try to make changes to that i don't want to get stuck in the same position with several charter changes where our backs are against the wall of a deadline and we're trying to figure it out on the last night so i would be concerned with with pushing everything back i don't know if we could um limit comments to one minute or something that way we could get through everyone and still have some time tonight but i'm just concerned with not doing any work tonight okay i have a councillor freeman to be followed by councillor paulino yeah i agree with councillor hanson's concerns i do think we should be taking up um as many of the items as we can tonight i just also have concerns with um how how to move forward if we're looking for community engagement to not have the ability for people to speak is a little bit concerning for me i don't think i think resourcing the meeting may it possibly gets into the same issue i mean people are coming out several times to speak and make sure their voices are heard in this debate so i just i'm not sure that's the best um the best route either um you know i could see us being in public forum until like i said around 11 30 or so and then um and then getting into some of the the main sort of deliberative item so um i don't know how late that would end up going maybe 12 31 but i i do think on some of these larger issues we just we are just going to have longer meetings they're they're people want to weigh in and they're contested issues so okay i have councillor paulino to be followed by councillor carpenter i have a question um but first um uh i think uh ceo shad wanted to be recognized i'm sorry yeah ceo shad were you looking to be recognized if i'm sorry if i missed you uh i was thank you so much uh councillor paulino and also president tracy um i just wanted to um put in a little bit of a plug for the city employees into this discussion um the first ask is really concrete if uh as you are thinking about this there are time sensitive items in the consent agenda so just making sure we get through that and um just that it seems that there have been a lot of late meetings and i see that there are a lot of staff on this calls and i know a lot of them are working parents such as myself who are going to be up really early no matter what so um if there's any way that we could make a decision so that we could let people go if possible um that would be great i'm just a little bit worried about employee health and morale so i'm kind of wearing my hr hat but thank you very much okay so councillor paulino are you all set well my question is for eileen i guess uh just about the format of this motion seems very unusual given that we've limited public forum um and as i understand that's always done before the meeting um certain amount of notice being provided are we essentially like overruling that decision previously made and can we do that yep you can you can do that would you like me to respond councillor tracy sure go ahead councillor black or attorney blackwood um and the what the law requires is that you provide a reasonable time for public input on matters that are coming before the before the council beyond that it is somewhat up to you how you do that you can do it as each item comes up allow people to speak you can do it via public forum you can limit the amount of time that you have to hear from public comment there's nothing that says you have to have hear from every single person in person or to hear from people multiple times who've given input in the past so it's it's that you have to have some kind of reasonable public input that's what the that's illegal boundaries on this my other question was is isn't the motion to extend beyond 1030 untimely right now i mean we're we haven't even started the meeting um and we're moving to extend it without even knowing sort of how far along we're going to get um for example i'd like to hear from people you know our our 85 of the people going to have the same comments i think that would make uh obviously affect my decision as to how i'm gonna decide on how we conduct tonight's motion which is essentially i think my problem with the motion is that we are now voting on how to run the meeting and i understand it to be the council president's role you have a city council rule that is the 1030 rule and the motion here is to waive that rule and i think you can do that thank you i'm all set for the treason okay uh council carpenter um i was gonna potentially support sort of councilor paul's suggestion which is if we've got um four plus hours worth of testimony on effectively all the charter changes because they're pretty much all on the agenda now that we hear that now and then adjourn um and have one or two maybe special meetings we've already agreed i believe to have one on the 14th if we need one beyond that then maybe we need to do that we you know you can't sort of fit it all in and if the preference uh is to hear from constituents then we need to do that but i think going much past midnight does not make any sense and i um respect uh ceo sheds point of view that we still need to leave in a half an hour or 45 minutes for stuff that's time sensitive okay so i'm hearing some feedback is there a motion to amend the amendment or i'm not hearing that councilor shannon um i think a basic tenant of running a good meeting um is predictability which is why we have the 1030 rule if we're doing something other than ending at 1030 i think we need to be very specific about what it is we're doing what it is we're not doing it as uh ceo shad said let staff go who's not going to have their item deliberated tonight so um i am open to suggestions within those parameters but otherwise i will be voting no on this thank you okay uh councilor freeman go ahead and really would like to get us towards a vote on this because we're coming up on 10 on 730 and we still have a presentation um from commissioner gemash go ahead councilor freeman i was just going to say it sounds like there's not um majority support for this um motion so if we are going to have the time certain and that there are you know 137 people can we at least give people an idea of who is going to be able to speak i just i don't want people to stay on the line if they think they're going to be able to speak and then i don't know and that's that's i don't know if you want to try to read as many names as possible um present tracy but that would just be my recommendation because i think it is really hard when people come um and expect to be able to speak and then um they're just not able to get into the queue it's yeah if or if there's a way we can publicly post the queue so people know um i think that would just make these meetings more accessible yeah i i can certainly do my best to read as many names as possible the challenge comes in when people aren't on or we're not able to identify folks and so we have to blow through people pretty we can blow through quite a few folks um pretty quickly and so um that comes the challenge i saw counselor high tower to be followed by a counselor stromberg um yeah sorry i think i'm gonna try to make an amendment to try to get at some of the things that we said which is um i guess i'd like to uh actually i don't know how to do this uh i'm supportive of i'm supportive of having public forum today and then adjourning the meeting um so that we are getting to items the next time which i think addresses some of counselor Hansen's questions and is a good compromise between hearing from folks um but what i assume we would also want to hear the consent agenda today so i think my amendment is to to hear public forum to have that close um no later by 11 p.m and then to hear the consent agenda okay so in your motions and then would you are you moving to to continue the the other items on the agenda to a time certain yeah time certain of monday december 14th okay all right so the motion is to hear public forum until 11 and then to take up the consent agenda but no other items this evening and to have a continued meeting um uh to take the items that are on our deliberative agenda and put them on as a continuation um for the 14th is that clear point of order yep counselor shannon i think what counselor hightower may be trying to do is to rather than adjourn this meeting um recess this meeting and continue it in a week so that the public forum for these items is tonight and then the deliberation is in a week because if we adjourn the meeting as stated then we would have the public forum again in a week so just wanted that clarification as to intent okay is that your intent council hightower so and your intent is your intent also to to go um to 11 with public forum take up the consent agenda and then adjourn yes but i really like that's kind of a big motion so i don't know if yes that is my intent okay council shannon is that clear yes so the motion is to to recess this meeting after the consent agenda yes okay council carpenter i'm just trying to clarify the second i'm sorry one second is there a second to that motion seconded by councilor pollino go ahead council carpenter um just because it's consent um i'm assuming that we would not ask staff associated with it to stay here to 11 um i believe yes that would be correct so that i would take care of the staff concerned uh ceo shad raised okay further discussion on this councilor hanson um yeah i just i maybe councilor hightower had misinterpreted this is sort of my exact concern is that we don't take up these items until our backs are against the wall which is next week um so i you know as i said before my preference would be to just do one minute per speaker that way we could get through everyone who wants to speak and we could still have time tonight to start digging into these issues um but i think pushing everything back a week is gonna make it really hard to get some of these items passed frankly just to speak openly about the politics of it i think having your back against the wall makes it harder to get policy through and to get consensus to be able to pass policy okay council carpenter um i guess i understand that but if we need another meeting uh two meetings next week then i think we should just do that i mean um i i personally support more meetings than two long meetings okay uh councilor pine were you looking to be get in thank you yeah i was just gonna point out the same thing that we could very well re recess on the 14th and and hold another meeting uh later that week uh and still meet our deadlines i just wanted to note that and that would allow for full public um input into this process tonight and further an action dumb dumb you know next week okay any further discussion on councilor hightower's amendment councilor freeman i think maybe councilor mason was ahead of me i'm sorry councilor mason then yeah yes president tracy um i understand why we're trying to do i have to admit i'm a little bit concerned that it may forestall the the administration has put forth a proposal in response to councilor you know what's before us tonight not knowing where the conversation was going it's not beyond possibility if there were not consensus for the charter change on police oversight potentially convening another group to try and look at the two proposals and come back and if we go forward with no discussion on the charter change i don't know that the clock will run out on that possibility so that has me concerned okay councilor freeman go ahead um i i agree um essentially that yeah we should at least discuss one at least one of the charter change items tonight there were several um so i just um yeah i think we need to get to or at least have some conversation on them um so we can start to deliver it so i i just i don't i don't think this is the correct motion i think it's close but maybe not the correct one so i want to put it okay so we have an amendment to an amendment so we can't amend again we need to take a vote on this um before we're back to the original amendment so is there further discussion on councilor high tower's amendment to the amendment on our agenda okay seeing none um we'll go to a vote will the city clerk please call the roll councillor carpenter hi councillor jang yes councillor freeman no councillor hanson no councillor high tower yes councillor mason no councillor paul yes councillor paulino yes councillor pine yes councillor shannon yes councillor strongberg no city council president tracy no seven eyes five days okay so the motion carries we are back to the uh original amendment um on the agenda um or we're back to the amendment as amended so it's essentially what we had just stated um so um is there further discussion on the amendment as amended councillor hanson i have a question for the city attorney which is would we would be um charter change related to building decarbonization would that be on the agenda of the recessed meeting at this point because otherwise that item would essentially die if we were to pass this i apologize um when that i don't know when the original uh i just have to go back and check um it would not be the decarbonization would not be on the agenda of the recess meeting if you adopt this motion as it currently stands okay um i do think you could probably correct that now because you only have one amendment pending so you can make another amendment now to remove that to restore that i guess to to basically to remove the proposed amendment to remove the agenda item and place it on the december 14th meeting right okay i would make that motion i'll second that we have a motion in from councillor hanson to keep the decarbonization um item on on the agenda so this is an alteration to the the motion seconded by councillor mason can you further discussion on this and can i ask a follow up question yep um an attorney backward just so i'm clear and everyone's clear this item not being referred to charter change does does that present a challenge not referring it tonight to charter change and you don't have any specific requirements that charter changes be referred to the charter change committee i think you can consider them directly at the council level so i don't think it's proposed it creates any problem in that way okay all right thanks that's our time mr president if i could ask for clarification from the city attorney um in one communication about deadlines and harsh hard deadlines uh the 21st is a regular council meeting it looked as though although it's not ideal from a number of vantage points that we could in fact make a final decision on a charter change on the 21st of december could you just um ask the city attorney to address that sure turning back one you could if you change your meetings in january and doing so will um make will make the public hearing the two public hearings be right on top of each other will make it very difficult to make any changes on anything after hearing at public hearing because of the short time frames and will increase the likelihood that we have errors on the ballot because we'll be racing around at the last minute to get things together so i want to be very clear that that is why staff strongly recommends against trying to push everything up against the very last minute on this but yes you can thank you if i may mr president that's helpful because it may not be necessary to push everything we may be able to get my point is that we may be able to get a good chunk of work done on the 14th and leave a couple of items for the 21st if that's necessary that would i realize you want to schedule your public hearings all at once but there's no requirement that all your public hearings be held simultaneously for all changes or that's at least my understanding perhaps that needs to be answered as well if we could yep turning back when are you able to answer that as well i haven't thought about having separate public hearings i don't know the answer off the top of my head okay thank you that would just give us a little more breathing room but thank you very much okay so we are on the motion to add just make sure that the decarbonization resolution is part of the the recess meeting on the 14th is there further commentary okay so none we'll go to a vote on that all those in favor of councilor hansons motion please say aye any opposed do you restate the motion it was to add the the decarbonization resolution to the agenda for the for the recess meeting so what the original motion on the agenda had been had removed that and so we didn't want that to be removed and so gotcha i got the rest of it thank you okay so all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed okay hearing none that passes unanimously now we're back to the original motion on the agenda any further discussion okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that passes unanimously okay i was muted uh i am no you're a no okay any further just okay so then we need to go uh roll call vote the city clerk please call the roll councilor carpenter hi councilor jane councilor freeman hi councilor hanson no councilor hightower hi councilor mason yes councilor paul yes councilor paulino yes councilor pine yes councilor shannon no councilor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes ten ayes two nades okay so the motion carries and we now have an agenda um we are however past 7 30 um for public forum and we still have not heard from police commission so um why don't we hmm we did not address that um why don't we hear briefly from chair gommash um because i know that um chair the he that uh chair commissioner gommash had made it an effort to come here and let's try and keep things brief i'd already asked for that to be brief but i do want to address that um that item um because it was on because i had asked them to be here and that was what we were supposed to get to right at seven so apologies for for having you wait chair gommash as well as members of the public but um i would like to to address that item and that was one of the items on the agenda so um chair gommash are you with us yep i'm here can you hear me yep go ahead awesome uh thank you for having us here council president tracy y'all got a line i had to use so i will jump right into it all i asked is that um any questions you may have or that arise saving for the end please uh so back on september sorry back on september 8 2020 y'all unanimously passed resolution 4.02 uh which tasked the police commission to begin a review and analysis of impediments to stronger disciplinary measures and police encounters involving brutal or excessive force and recommendations for modifications um only uh officers can only be held accountable for conduct that is in violation of department policies orders or trainings the bpa contract states that discipline must be met with just cause just cause here uh in the contract is the notion that officers have noticed as to what conduct warrants disciplinary actions just cause here also includes that consideration of past practices in the department currently as interpreted by the bpa contract past discipline for misconduct informs what discipline is administered in similar cases of future misconduct so to prevent just cause from placing limitations that impose discipline uh the bpa contract uh and applicable policies must be revised to state explicitly that past that the past handling this one will be treated differently moving forward um the bpa contract also identifies these factors when considering discipline the employee's motivation intent for infraction of error the degree of harm caused the employee's level of experience and the employee's past of past record of performance and conduct the bpa contract also governs the retention of records um currently letters of reprimand in any other discipline short of suspension are maintained in personnel files for a maximum of one year from the date of the event that occurred disciplinary actions resulting in a suspension are maintained in the personnel file for a maximum of three years from the date the event occurred records relating to a significant discipline not resulting in termination but triggering a suspension of two weeks or more may be maintained for a longer period of time specified at the time discipline was imposed so based with that um bpa contract rules could allow you to have a pattern of conduct that has been met with suspension and uh and it would not it would no longer appear in the personnel file so this has to be revised in the next degree of contract we do mention briefly here that uh the chief of police is an impediment but this is being currently um undertaken by the uh the charter committee and we're why it's not it's not addressed in this report next um is uh culture resistance this is a potential impediment uh to the extent that bbt god bpd leadership is grounded in a culture of policing it's judgments about appropriate discipline might diverge from judgments held by members of the community an additional impediment is relates to staffing pressures um we do want to note that that no members of the commission has observed staffing to factor into any disciplinary action any disciplinary decisions but we do anticipate that it could play a role moving forward um and uh that while staffing needs are a very valid department concern it should never play a role in uh administering discipline also uh the previous use of force policy known as ddo 5 relied on the old use of force standard established by sorry it relied on the use of force standard established by the u.s spring court and grand pecanor uh the spring court held that officers that an officer's use of force is not excessive if it is objectively reasonable uh under the circumstances the outcome of the case create a reasonability test which uh when looking at an officer's actions simply put given the facts known as given the facts known as the time but it's similarly trained and experienced officer respond in similar fashion um basically critics of the gram uh of the gram standard uh site that this framework creates an unjust base sorry create created uh created unjust an unjust law sorry my apologies uh the gram the gram standard created an unjust large number of acquittals because of it and it does not allow hindsight knowledge to be considered in these cases and also allows for racial biases to weigh in the police commission reviewed and updated ddo 5 based on the recommendations of the special committee to review community policing practices which exceeds the gram standard uh uh this was listed on page five and six of the court our new policy allows for the discipline of officers who would not otherwise be subjected to discipline under the gram standard also on october 7th of 2020 the state legislator passed act 165 which pertains to the statewide which pertains to a statewide use of force policy several of these positions will take effect on july 1st 2021 the police commission shall determine whether act 165 requires further revisions to ddo 5 in order to render it consistent with act 165 to the extent that it's not already done and lastly uh there is de escalation while policies directives while policy or directives may require de escalation that requirement will not have any practical effect unless uh officers know that a use of force which was not preceded by de escalation will not be supported by the department the old use of force policy mentioned de escalation but uh but but not but not robustly so the current policy is more robust but the enforcement of ddo 5 is vital in that in summary uh the impediments to stronger discipline is the current bpr contract past disciplinary practices and yeah these things provide significant hurdles to start with discipline measures and police encounters involving brutal or excessive force the revisions to ddo 5 have strengthened the ability to to address these things but it's our opinion that until the bpr contract is revised in the next term to sufficiently provide clear rules and notice regarding officer conduct um that yeah um those are the impediments and i guess i will open it up now to any questions the comments you may have okay thank you for that summary and for the commission's work on that is there additional commentary or additional questions from counselors counselor paul thank you um so my question actually is um uh thanks so much and thanks very much for being here in the the report that you're giving us um i my question is more for the city attorney i'm just trying to understand um the mechanics here um the the last paragraph um you know says the you know talks about the current bpoa contract um practices etc etc and then it says um the revisions to department directive db um zero five have strengthened the ability but that it would have to be um it must be revised in the well that the it is our opinion that the bpoa contract must be revised in its next term to provide sufficiently clear notice etc and so i'm just trying to understand um if there are changes to disciplinary practice that we would say want to do now can we do we do we have to wait i'm just trying to understand do we have to um when they say it's our opinion that's the opinion of the police commission is that a legal opinion trigger match oh i was the person that was for well the attorney my policies um i actually don't know okay so i was wondering if perhaps maybe the city attorney could um this is on the last page page seven of the report uh um uh commissioner gommash just uh just spoke to i mean i guess what i can say to you is that um an employer is required to bargain the terms and conditions of employment of employees and so if you want to change how you're doing discipline to folks that is bargainable okay uh commissioner heart i just want to add that it wasn't the intention for this document to be a legal opinion um we were tasked with as a commission putting together this report so just to be clear i wouldn't want to call it a legal opinion from the commission i i don't know that attorney black would that it was run by her but um so yeah i we wouldn't consider it that just to clarify no and and that's and thank you thank you commissioner heart and that's why you know i didn't really i wasn't my my question wasn't really directed at the police commission it's their opinion in general as as as a commission who deals with and interacts with the police officers and the police chief my question was just simply a more legal one and i think i got the answer so thank you very much okay is there further questions from counselors okay um seeing none how councillor jane did you have something go ahead yes i just have a quick question about the retention of records mr gammage thank you again for being here for doing this i was just wondering why disciplinary entry is only kept for one year it returned for only one year and why not three years or four or five i i do not know why uh those limits were were imposed there i would say the person i would answer that would be whoever bargained um or whoever yeah um yeah bargained this contract because i i do not know that answer yeah i mean i think it is the only way that we can follow if there are trends about one officer's conduct um maybe the city attorney or the mayor who can answer or chief employees uh i can't yeah i can't entirely answer why that was agreed to in the contract but it is not unusual in collective bargaining agreements for unions to push very hard to have a limit on how long things are held against an employee and when they get to clear their records so that they um things aren't held against them unfairly in the past that's that's generally the um it's so it's not unusual that uh their limits are put on how long something is kept the specific limits in this in this contract i can't speak to okay but maybe city attorney you can speak around as to why also um or how long for example if a civilian was caught you know how long and uh if that civilian was only disciplined how long do we hold that record against that civilian you mean like other city employees other than um uh generally well it depends again the other unions have provisions in their contracts about how long they keep records i'd actually have to look whether we have something in our personnel policies that say how long we keep records i don't have that information at the top of my head but we do also have record retention policies that say how long the eoc requires you to keep records about um certain records about employees for one year after their employment so um you know in general those are the kinds of things you look at thank you so you're saying that everything can be negotiated with the union um i'm not sure what you mean by everything i mean i mean all the all the like these changes basically this is the report and i ask a question you didn't know many people don't know but can we bargain more on things that we think is makes more sense in terms of how disciplined or recorded we can certainly um bargain most of if not all of the issues i see in this in this memo whether we have to bargain all of them i have not done that analysis in other words we have certain management rights and since i have not looked through this list in detail for all the points they make i have not looked at whether there are any that could be implemented without bargain thank you city attorney gamosh thank you again for the presentation thank you very much okay were there other questions or comments from counselors okay seeing none want to thank commissioners gamosh and hart for being with us and sharing this report with us um we'll go ahead and close that item and move into our public forum awesome we thank you for having me take care yeah no very much appreciated have a great night both of you um the public forum um just so folks know um like we had as we had just decided with the motions on the agenda we'll go the public forum will go until 11 this evening um so we're going to have two minutes for folks um and i'm going to try to read off as many names as possible we do have um quite a few people signed up um on this public forum i have well over 100 people now so um what i would ask is that um and that folks are just um trying to keep to that time as much as possible um i'll let you finish your thought but please just don't take advantage too much advantage of that that um flexibility because i just want to get to as many folks as possible and get as many people's comments out this evening um as we has been our practice this this year i have prioritized um BIPOC individuals um who have um indicated or who've let me know in other ways um and i have also um i will also be prioritizing Burlington residents which has been also a practice of ours um and i'll read off folks as has um a bunch of names um in advance so you can kind of know um that you're coming up and another request was made to um potentially screen share the list so um once we get through maybe a couple some of this um get things started i'll um ask the the city um clerk to potentially share just the the screen so we can kind of see where the where we are on the list um but i do just want to jump right into the the public forum um and i'll read off the first um several speakers so um we have um Ashley LaPorte to be followed by Jada Bearden, Jessica LaPorte, Marsha Johnson, Zenavia Wilcox, Mark Hughes, Christine Hughes, Jabari Jones, Alyssa Chen, Zuley Palacios, Sarah Birch, Rory Malone, Leaf Taranta, Phoebe Perrin, Mary Collette, Grace Field, Alexander Kovacs, and William Dunkley so those are um the first um 20 or so speakers so I'm going to go ahead and go to Ashley LaPorte um Ashley I've found you and I'm enabling your microphone actually you should be enabled looks like um you need to perfect I'm sorry about that can everybody hear me okay you sound good hi so i'm calling in tonight to voice my support for um community control of police as it relates to the charter change focus on police discipline um you know I I hope at this point um this uh proposed policy that was put on the table by counselor Freeman and voted out of uh the Charter Change Committee has as familiar to all of you on the phone so I'm not going to walk through any of it with any specificity but I want to explain why I think um all of you should support it and why it's so important the first piece is that there has been significant community input in this and particularly input from BIPOC and other historically marginalized folks um there's been input from the ACLU and others um including research done around other model policies and what's really important is that this proposal um ensures that there is disciplinary and investigatory power from an independent community led body there are a lot of other things that are important that are outlined in this including ensuring representative and diverse membership um from people in our community particularly historically marginalized and I think we've created a brand new framework for that it's also calls for this board to be well resourced um and all of these provisions may make it meaningfully different than the current advisory body that we have with the police commission and that's really important we want something that is truly independent from the police because we believe the police don't hold themselves accountable and we have a right as the community to hold police accountable I also just want to state that um you know we have in a way that is time consuming that is emotionally exhausting um many BIPOC and historically marginalized and our allies in the community have spent hours pouring our energy into this proposal we have called up our city counselors we've called up our elected officials we've told you um what we want and we have asked you for your input and basically until this week we have heard nothing from the majority of you and now I've just heard that the mayor has posted his own proposal at the start of this meeting which makes it nearly impossible for those in our community to respond to it um in a timely fashion just posted that that I'm so exhausted exhausted by the lengths and mechanisms at which this body will go to silence us I honestly don't know what to do anymore I mean that I don't know what to do I don't know how to organize more people to call in because then we cut form short I don't know how to ask BIPOC to call into committee meetings to get their eyes to get their to get their eyes rolled or to watch the eye rolling of Joan Shannon and others on the things that we say I don't know how to get PIPOC to keep calling in when we're gaslit on like things that are said at the joint committee meeting that have then been proven to be untrue afterwards such as the fact that the ACLU is in some way proposing that this needs this change needs to happen at the joint committee we are tired or exhausted we continue to turn out in massive numbers to show you we just want to be treated differently and we are owed a new system of public safety when you look at the votes that the racial justice resolution had from this council when you look at the votes that the resolution on public safety and protesting had it is a no-brainer that the majority of this council should be voting for what the community is asking for again and turning out for in massive numbers again I realize I've gone over my time but I am sick of being silenced particularly when we have put hours of work into this I sincerely hope you do not kick the can down the road you owe it to all in our community and in particular BIPOC and historically marginalized to get this on the ballot in March and let us in the community vote on what we want for our future thank you thank you our next speaker will be jada Bearden jada I'm enabling your microphone hello folks um first of all I have chills go off actually take up all the space you need anytime um I'm also on I'm in the airport so sorry if my quality is trash um first I want to say that the fact that we have over a hundred people signed up to speak tonight you should be excited and you should that should be an indication of how important this is um the fact that there was any conversation about possibly not hearing the people when this is a people centered people oriented council is absolutely trash do better I'm talking to you Eileen I'm talking to you for the others who had something to say um your time we have dedicated so much time and energy and for BIPOC specifically emotional labor to charter change I'm sure we've had fever dreams about charter change because it's been literally ingrained in our brain and the fact that um we can probably uh we can uh totally recite the resolution of a charter change in our sleep is it it reflects how deeply we need this um there should not be a conversation there shouldn't be at a date about it I'm going to listen closely to what all my community members have to say it's time the time it's now for community centered mutual aid community care because quite frankly simply put the police department has way too much power and they're trashed they've been trashed for a long time and let's just recycle it compost it remove it and you know um it just is really telling where your priority is because of how much time you dedicate to the people people power over politicians these politicians won't save you and you need to do better thank you are you on my time Black Lives Matter thank you next speaker will be Jess Laporte Jess I found you and have enabled your microphone hi um I'm calling in this evening um I actually chose to be with my sister and her partner tonight because of how incredibly incredibly exhausting this process is I just want to um express my disappointment in the facilitation of the public process and the engagement that we've had from city counselors um and echoing some of what my sister said you know we try to show you community support by by bringing out a lot of turnout many people who we actually had told like hold off wait let's engage some people engage in this forum some people engage in this forum some people email some people make phone calls we've actually really tried to diversify how we reach out to this body as a way to demonstrate different ways of engaging in a conversation two minutes isn't enough so I know that many people who support um community control of police have given phone calls to us city counselors what is baffling to me is that what I've heard back from people in this movement is that many of our city counselors minds are already made up about a community control of police and unfortunately I feel like that has been reflected since the beginning of the charter change process and and Councillor Freeman bringing this to the charter change committee and working on his proposal it feels like we've been talking to a wall for months it also feels like I've been putting in countless hours to be informed to research to know the models in other cities to look at what we might want to pull together as a patchwork that is berlington specific taking time to host public events to inform people on how charter changes even work or how to engage with the city and instead I am met with the members of the charter change committee members of the joint committee and now members of the city council saying that they need more time to understand what's going on how am I giving up hours that I need to work to help make ends meet at my contract job because my current job doesn't pay me enough to pay the bills I'm giving up time to rest to sleep and somehow even though I have been on these calls well until midnight or 1 a.m. or with organizers trying to figure out what it is that we are fighting for it articulate it and bring it forward but this city council can't possibly go past 11 p.m. I'm really dissident I really really hope that you see the irony in saying that there is not enough public input into this process and then limiting public forum and to Mayor Weinberger's memo to posting information that is critical to understand your perspective as the mayor of this city on this issue at the last minute I'm fucking prepared I have Wi-Fi at home even though it's cutting out I've put in count I can read your memo quickly to understand what's going on that is not fair to people who have a difficult time navigating how to receive these documents and even navigating public forum I know I'm over time but I am so so so sick of the games I'm sick of you changing the rules of the games I'm sick of you all kicking the can down the line and not being willing to put in the effort to meet our effort as the people of this city around this motion thank you thank you our next speaker will be Marsha Johnson to be followed by Xenavia Wilcox mark Hughes Christine Hughes Jabari Jones I'm just to give you a little bit of an idea Marsha I've enabled I'm gonna enable your microphone you should be able to speak hi can you hear me yep go ahead hi my name is Marsha and I use she her pronouns I'm a white resident of ward three um I've lived in Burlington for about eight years I'm here tonight to express my support for the charter change related to community control of police I fully support counselor Freeman's draft the key piece of that is the requirements for diversity on the new board it is essential that the board include BIPOC and trans members of the community and folks who are at who are most at risk from police violence it's also essential to have restrictions against current former police officers being members of the board police cannot police themselves any members of the new community control board must be completely independent from any police department the other piece I want to speak to is a new board having the power to remove an officer from their position if that is necessary I continue to find it so disturbing that as citizens we currently have no power to remove officer Campbell who violently assaulted someone after screaming for families and showing no concern for the life for any injuries he caused for officer Corot whose video shows him walking up to a person from some distance and immediately without warning throwing him to the concrete with enough force to render him unconscious and why did it cost three hundred thousand dollars to remove officer Belvance who without warning threw someone into a brick wall again hard enough to render him unconscious we have to fix this we as citizens will not be helpless anymore police officers work for us and we will not be victims of their brutality officers will know that they can and will be removed if they do not serve us well please act with urgency make sure this charter change is on the ballot for people to vote on in March the well-being of our community depends on it especially our BIPOC community thank you for your time thank you our next speaker will be Zenavia Wilcox to be followed by Mark Hughes Zenavia I have enabled your microphone Zenavia it looks like you're muted on your end okay hello hello I can hear you perfect my name's Zenavia I use she they pronouns I'm 19 I'm a resident organizer and activist of 4 3 I grew up here on North Ave and I'm calling today to speak to you council members personally for those who don't know me I write poetry to often better articulate myself tonight I wrote a piece called a letter to our city's leaders we've done our part disrupt organize and mobilize regardless of being the most marginalized thank you battery park we could sum it up all to people power yet we started to tell those two apart this conversation will always remain relevant as long as oppressive systems are made more prevalent in other words violent officers continue to police our streets like campbell and karo the conversation of police abuse in brollington has been made clear very very clear every week if you've been listening we have no reason to tiptoe furthermore dance around the statements being made in our community we use the word control intentionally police have been known to cheat and lie products of a cricket system it happens inevitably who police is the police leaders and revolutionaries for decades have asked this question we're asking that historically oppressive power be ceased but it's up to your discretion community disciplinary power independent and separate from the police's democratic force we defunded the police to invest in this community invest in this community with full transparency no hypocrisy we're continuously doing our part even offering our skills and experiences to police oversight regardless of being the most marginalized and attack continuously gaslet from our leaders this board is your opportunity to disrupt organize and mobilize against supremacy our common enemy advocate and demonstrate as leaders in our city i voice my full and absolute support for the new community oversight board being presented and you should as well if you're for the people and for the power to the people i yield by time thank you um so i was not able to locate our next couple of speakers um if they come back on i can go back to them um i was not able to locate mark hughes christine hughes or jabari jones but i was able to find um elissa chen and elissa will be followed by zuli palacios uh brian chena sarah birch rory malone leaf toronto phoebe perron um mary collette and grace feel um it's just a couple just so that you know and um elissa i've enabled your microphone can you hear me yep go ahead cool um my name's elissa chen and i live in ward two in brianton and i'm calling to throw my support behind the community control of policing um i yeah i just want to give credit and honor all the amazing organizing that's gone in all the amazing bipop leadership and all the time that different city counselors have put into this um and i think one residents in our city don't feel safe from policing which the function of policing is supposed to be to keep people safe we really need a follow through with our commitments we made earlier this year it's one thing to make a statement which is symbolic and past resolution but it's another thing to actually take action and actually shift power and so i think what what's exciting to me about the community control of policing is that it's not symbolic it's like a real way that the city of brianton can shift power and help protect our most marginalized communities um and i'm excited about some of the changes around actually having um independence from the brianton police department having a diverse and representative board um and having resources these things all make this um community control of policing something that i feel really excited about and i think can really make a change and i just want to name we're at a decisive point where we can decide if we want to protect the police or if we want to protect the most marginalized members of our community um and so i really want to ask the city counselors tonight to think about um you know who they're who they're who they're who they're here to represent really um and i think we also have amazing opportunity to like support democracy in action all the amazing organizing that's been happening this summer and throughout the fall and now taking us into the winter and all the new leaders that have come and done this amazing work um this is kind of what democracy looks like and and really thinking about do we want to um move with that or move against it um so yep fully in support of this and hope that it gets passed and we're it's able to be on the the ballot in march thanks thank you all right our next speaker is sully palacios and i believe sully has an interpreter with them so um in that case um what our practice has been has been to allow um for essentially the person's two minutes but for that person to also have that comment fully spoken out um are translated so i'm going to enable both the microphones of sully as well as their interpreter um and we'll give um four minutes just in case there's in terms of the timing i don't want to cut someone off for interpretation reasons so um sully welcome and um you should be enabled commit testimonial quiero decir que apoyamos a que exista y que es necesario tener un comité independiente que pueda monitorear el trabajo que está haciendo la policía para tener una mejor rendición de cuenta y y puedan cumplir mejor la política de no más polimigra también y así que la comunidad pueda tener este más confianza de venir a burlington um so to translate can you hear me okay um so um su li palacio said hello my name is su li palacios i'm part of the migrant justice community and i live here in burlington migrant justice is an organization that represents the um the migrant farm workers immigrant dairy workers here in burman and i'm here representing my community um as i give my testimony um we have had the experience of seeing the police take advantage of their power um and doing things like discriminating against our community and making calls to um immigration um and for this reason my community doesn't feel safe doesn't doesn't feel supported and for this reason we we support the creation of of this independent committee and we we support that it would exist to monitor the work of the police and to have better accountability um and part of that we also um want to see um accountability and that the police would would better um follow the fair and impartial policing policy um and this would help my community feel more safe and have more trust um and and feel more able to come to the city of burlington thank you yeah muchisima gracias su li ill the next speaker will be brian china brian i'm gonna enable your microphone thank you i think it's working um hello yep go ahead calm down all right better keep going so i'm here tonight to express support for putting the proposed charter change regarding community control of the police on the march ballot let the voters of burlington decide if they want this approach to increasing accountability of the existing law enforcement agency in our city when the foundation of our democracy was created the federal government was set up to have a separation of powers between the executive legislative and judiciary branches of government because it's important to have a balance of power between different people and groups if we're going to have a healthy democracy the current police commission is an advisory board that reviews and monitors policy with the police department and it has the power to hear officers appeals of the chief's disciplinary decisions these are very important functions because the community should have a voice into the policy of our police department and police officers like all other workers should also have a way to appeal unfair disciplinary decisions but what happens when the chief does not properly hold officers accountable um for their actions or provide proper supervision and discipline what power does the community really have to hold police accountable under the current configuration the chief of the police and the mayor appear to have both executive and quasi-judicial powers which concentrates too much power in these executive roles it ultimately allows the mayor to have too much control over the police which could lead to major problems um theoretically um so um you know this could this not only makes our community unsafe but it could also be expensive to the taxpayers um by chance if we were getting sued um so you know and we are actually being sued currently but because of the behavior of some police officers so might this be different if we were if there was might we be in a different position if there was a quasi-judicial body that had investigatory power disciplinary authority a diverse membership representing affected groups transparency to the community and independence from the police department this proposed charter change would create that an independent community control board equipped with an investigative investigative office empowered to hold our police accountable to the people that they protect and serve so please let the voters decide whether the community should have more control over the police and please vote yes to put this charter change on the ballot for march thank you thank you representative china um our next um speaker will be sarah birch and sarah will be followed by um rory malone leaf torrenta and phoebe perin just to name a few um sarah i'm going to come to you i've enabled your microphones you should be able to speak hi can you hear me yep go ahead hi my name is sarah birch um i use she her pronouns and i'm a resident of ward six in burlington and i'm calling in tonight in support of councillor freeman's charter change proposal for community control police um i recently moved to burlington and it was immediately made clear to me through so many conversations with community members that there was widespread frustration with bpd fear of bpd and especially frustration around the lack of accountability for abusive officers given the summer and fall of protests for black lives against police brutality in burlington and across the country it honestly astounds me that there's not unanimous support from the city council for this charter change proposal the proposal adheres to aclu recommendations that has input and support from multiple multi-racist community leaders and organizers and it's the culmination of a massive massive amount of research work and organizing from bpd leaders and people in this community um my representative in ward six karen paul said something this summer that i thought was very important um she said that painting black lives matter on main street was not not performative but quote the beginning of the journey to dismantle systemic racism um and i think that phrase gets thrown around a lot but i think we really have to talk about what that means that if racism is systemic then only changing the entire system only creating something new as this proposal um proposes is what will address it right that's what systemic racism means and this proposal is the most serious attempt the most um i think honest attempt to do so that i've seen be put before the city council since moving here um it is undeniable especially in light of the horrific videos that have surfaced that community control over the police is necessary um and i only asked my city councilor and the entire city council to genuinely listen with openness and honesty um to the many voices of their constituents calling in here tonight and i call on the city council entirely to keep their promises to the berlington community support this proposal it's honestly the least that you all can do for the safety of this community thank you thank you um i have our next speaker is rory malone to be followed by leaf toronto rory i've enabled your microphone hello hey rory can you hear me yep i can hear you hi okay um great um so my name is rory malone i live in more two i've been in the berlington area for like about five years lived in one new city for a bit and mostly lived in franklin county of myriad spirit falls and um several cities around the us and i'm here to express support for the charter change onto the town union day ballot um i firmly believe that people need to be able to decide who is policing them and how those police are disciplined for themselves and i believe it should be a product of direct democracy and not through an advisory council of very little power um i personally have been discussed with the actions of police in many cities like not just throughout the u.s but like specifically remont including enusford falls st alvin's retland and especially berlington as a berlington resident and seeing like these horrible behaviors of excessive force and lack of accountability especially in berlington st alvin's i i i think that people need to have honorable because the police's best interest is to protect themselves not the public and police have more rights and legal laws protecting the average citizen when honestly it should be the other way around and on the note of the officers that used excessive force in berlington the three of them for so long no action was taken and then after months and months of protests and months of organizing by like operation phoenix and so many other groups and anti-racist organizers of color then only one was fired and seeing those go on for months and months and very little happened i just really hope that you all understand that like these leaders don't do this for fun and it's not fun and um this really needs to be on the ballot um i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker will be i was not able to locate leaf toronto um but i was able to find phoebe perron who will be followed by mary collette um phoebe i've enabled your microphone um my name's phoebe i'm a cis white woman living in ward two i've lived in berlington for five years now i would like to thank um first i'd like to thank those who have spoken before me um and i would like to recognize that this process of coming up with the current draft of the community oversight of the police board has been going on for months now there's been a lot of work that's gone into it and there's been community members on this call who have been involved throughout the whole process i've been involved for about a month now i've listened and engaged at charter change committee meetings um educated myself on the topic and discussed the matter with members of my community i'm in support of the community oversight of the police board as outline counselor freeman's current charter change draft i think the most important components of this proposal is that the community oversight board is completely independent from bpd has investigatory and disciplinary power its members are people who have been historically targeted by police um like folks who are bipoc have experienced houselessness um our lgbtq um just to name a few and um so community members especially those most affected should get to decide what that makes them feel safe in their communities not police officers officers in this city have already committed crimes against their citizens and have not been held accountable for their actions in fact two of them remain on the force we need a more sustainable way to remove violent officers from bpd um than expensive buyouts after weeks of daily protests and i believe that this community oversight of the police board independent of bpd um as proposed um is the beginning of the solution to making burlington a safe city for all of us i want to urge all of you to vote on this so that it can be put on the march ballot finally i'd like to say to the white city counselors please look outside of your own perspective and not only listen but center the voices of people who are historically marginalized by the police because their right to safety in their own city is more important than our um comfortability with the matter thank you for listening thank you our next speaker will be mary collette um to be followed by grace phil mary i've enabled your microphone yes thank you um i'm curious what happened to the prioritization of voices from the bipod community but i will um get through my bit as quickly as i can so yes my name is mary collette i am white and i'm currently a resident of sx junction but i have lived in burlington for about eight years and right now i live in sx oh i already said that part most of my work as a licensed clinical social worker has been in burlington vermont over the past four to five years and i'm here to voice my support of the community control of police and the proposed policy introduced by counselor freeman in addition to the folks who have spoken so far i want to share my input on this proposed charter change i want to highlight that this proposal has received significant input from many across the burlington community including the bipok community and others from historically marginalized groups and i want to highlight that this change is informed by models and other cities and the aclu principles for civilian oversight so in other words the expertise has been right here in front of you and i ask you to collaborate with collaborate with your local experts and lastly i want to support the creation of a new board and i encourage you to refamiliarize yourself with the aclu principles thank you i yield the rest of my time okay i was able to locate leaf toronto so i'm going to go back to them um leaf i've enabled your microphone hello can you hear me yep go ahead oh thank you um hello my name is leaf toronto i'm a white trans resident of the old north end ward three i use the other pronouns and i've lived here for the past few years i want to echo the other incredible speakers and what they have said about how the people of burlington are not safe in the presence of police especially those of us from marginalized communities and especially by poc folks in the past months alone i've witnessed police walk into my neighbor's houses with guns drawn arrest friends and threaten love ones for legally exerting their rights and every time i or others i care about have been threatened with or experience violence in our community the police have not helped they've only escalated the situation and made it more dangerous for everyone involved in my life in burlington i've also had i've often have to get had to get involved in terrifying situations to nonviolently diffuse things before the cops were called because i knew that if police responded someone could be killed no one should have to choose between risking death or injury and watching the police murder a community member but that is the position the city is putting residents in asking us to protect each other from its own employees without any recourse or voice in the matter i want to express my support for councillor freeman's draft charter especially the crucial element of the community control board's investigatory power ability to discipline and fire officers and complete independence from the police department i especially agree that the community control board must have a diverse membership with representatives from the community's most frequently targeted with police conduct the community control board especially needs black indigenous and other poc representatives as well as members with lived experiences of houselessness incarceration domestic violence addiction undocumented immigration status disability and mental illness and trans identity beyond establishing the board the city must ensure that it actually has the support to carry out its responsibilities and take funding from the police department if needed it's also necessary that it maintain complete independence the people of burlington will continue to for our community i hope you will too thanks for your time thank you our next speaker will be grace feel grace i found you and i'm enabling your microphone hi thanks max my name is grace file i've lived and worked in burlington for the past six years and i first started calling to these meetings six months ago back in june when you all passed the racial justice resolution and you all agreed that among other things quote the role of the city of burlington's public safety employees should be to serve the public build community trust and ensure the safety of all community members what has happened in the past six months since you passed that resolution is that the city has protected three officers who have shown patterns of violence against marginalized members of our community also in the past six months our community has come together to actually figure out a solution to the issues of police brutality that we've paced in our city which is something that no other counselors have initiated except for counselor freeman and now we are presenting you with a burlington specific model for community control of police a model that is similar to the over 200 different civilian oversight model models in cities of all sizes across the month across the country this is a model that centers by pock and lgbtq folks and members of our community like those who have faced mental health issues addiction and at rest and incarceration who have been historically impacted by police violence i am strongly in support of the creation of a fully independent community control board that has disciplinary and investigatory power over the police including the police chief which we have had four of in the past year this board must have diverse representation as outlined and receive the funding necessary to serve this community it is absolutely imperative that we do not have competing plans and that we do not seek to neuter or water down the language that you have before you this charter change must be on the ballot in march we have received so so much support and so much community input for this over the past couple months and so much work has gone into this and in my personal opinion i think it is disgusting that the members of this committee have left that work up to the by pock members of our community like jess and ashley and others who have spent so much time and labor and love that has gone into this proposal and i really really hope that you all just think about that and you think about how many community members who spent how many hours working on this and that you just hold that in yourselves and that you think about that and that you vote to put this on the ballot in march thank you so much okay uh next speaker will be gretchen uh suki uh potikom um gretchen i have found you or suki i believe i found you and i'm enabling your microphone knock knock do you hear me yes all right this is suki i am smashing you snooze alarm i don't smoke or do drugs but i am so high on the general right now after what i just witnessed on tonight's pre-form meeting i go by she her pronouns i am brown i'm gay i'm so mad that previous debate just now before this should not have shaved off 10 minutes of our time to speak during the public forum someone made a strong suggestion to uh to split these zoom meetings into a few days just so that we could fit everyone's speeches in tonight and i was astonished that it took a whole half an hour to debate such a simple and appealing concept we took the time as you've asked to turn up with 136 people to speak up for tonight and you stole that from us after jess ashley and jada and z's commentary on that you have strongly proven to me that they could do your job better than you if you've witnessed firsthand the heart they put into all this organizing emailing petitioning conference calls phone calls zooming researching like i have seen maybe you'd be able to take notes from them okay so now back to me um i was adopted by white parents i grew up in a loving home with a big backyard called vermont's plan but i also grew up realizing that my fellow bypox didn't enjoy that same privilege my point is racism still exists in vermont you could have a degree and a nice house but that wouldn't protect you on the streets or in the workplace it may not be obvious in your face like it was in the past but it has taken different forms throughout all aspects of life healthcare housing incarceration much more but most importantly with law enforcement we are speaking with you not just because of police brutality but also the police's response to it i've been skeptical over jennifer morson's blatant opposition against the recent racial justice resolution additionally jason bellavance's removal which was not a victory it was not firing him it was paying for his violence it goes to show that any violence lesser than his can still go on and punish as evidenced by the presence of the remaining two officers which is why i support an additional transparent community control board that oversees local police with investigative and disciplinary power with our own resources and legal counsel its members should have had actual interaction with the marginalized even more so experience oppression in some form this board should not have anyone affiliated with law personnel for us fighting systematic racism is like working overtime at a shitty job exhausting hours over the phone with privileged customers not being compensated over time no reparations employers validating our white co-workers over us or ignoring our suggestion boxes but unlike you we cannot go home and enjoy our lives because our endless job of fighting racism haunts us in our homes even in our sleep and we fear it will even kill us in our sleep so as long as we struggle so should you you will struggle with us for us because we are part of your community i owe my time thank you our next speaker will be alexander covax alexander alexander i found you enabling your microphone hello can you hear me yep go ahead uh hello um my name is alex uh i've been living working in orlington for the last two and a half years um i mean i've called into a couple of these meetings now and pretty much just saying the same thing over and over again that i think that there should be an independent police accountability board um some like the one that's been outlined by or sorry the the one that's been outlined by casta freeman and follows the guidelines by the aclu um and i just like to say that it's while while you know the fact that we have to to fight it so hard for something that seems like such a a like basic request um it's been very inspiring hearing everyone speak so passionately and um uh informed tonight so just gonna you know shout out all those people uh i yield the rest of my time thank you life doesn't matter thank you her next her next speaker will um was supposed to be marianne ward but marianne did write to me and asked to be removed um from the list um so i have william dunkley to be followed by peggy owens sands randa holbrook nel carpenter ali sarhanis sarah noel and sophie castle as well as dana keys gibbons so that's the next couple of speakers um and i'm gonna go to william dunkley right now william i've enabled your microphone yep go ahead okay hey everybody i'm uh willingley white man ward three i use him pronouns i'm 24 i grew up locally in westford and i run a small forestry business in addition to making maple syrup with my dad in the winter and spring um thank you elect officials for what you do and all the time in interview put into this city but right now more importantly thank you to jess and ashley and our other vipok leaders who've put in a tremendous amount of work on this issue i wanted to first uh voice my support for getting the just cause eviction charter change on the ballot in this this march um but more importantly to me right now i'd like to strongly urge you to approve the city charter change for the creation of a community control board of the police i'd really like to see this draft on the ballot for march i like that this board would be diverse would be transparent would be independent from burlington police department would have disciplinary and investigatory power i would feel safer in our city if i knew there would be justice when the police inevitably cause harm to myself or the community the reality is that the institution of policing in america was designed and still functions to protect the interests of those with capital and enforce control over certain groups of people that is what happens to this day in vermont and burlington if we want to end racism we need to end publicly funded oppression of certain groups of people in our community we need a mechanism of harm reduction and that is what's on the table with this charter change other reforms or ideas that i've heard of our two-week or counter or two-week to counter the great unjust power that police hold it's ridiculous that we're having this conversation we should have a say over the people who are licensed to kill us right to our white city counters i'd like to point out if you grew up in united states you were barred with racism from the time you were born it takes years of dedicated anti-racist practice to shed the bias that is trapped in the mind and body when delivering the charter change please please check in with yourself about what may be making you uncomfortable if anything about this charter change and ask yourself why i invite you to lean into the discomfort and invite for justice i invite you to get real about fighting racism in the city thank you thank you our next speaker will be peggy oan sands peggy i'm enabling your microphone hi everybody my name is peggy oan sands i'm speaking on behalf of the racial justice team of the first unitarian universalist society of burlington i also live in ward five and have lived here for 30 years i'm a white woman and prefer she her pronouns our 36 team members support the proposed community control of police charter change introduced by councillor freeman we urge the city council to honor the racial justice resolution past in june of this year this resolution states that there be a methodological transition to a public safety apparatus that is developed with full community participation and input that delivers services aligned with the values and vision of the community the charter change put forward by councillor freeman was drafted in collaboration with the aclu of vermont the vermont racial justice alliance's operation phoenix rise and the battery park movement which meets the criteria put forward by this resolution the proposed charter change was created by community members including by pock and others from historically marginalized marginalized groups who shared their values and vision for transparency the proposal expresses the community's call for a police force overseen by the community and not by the police themselves because this proposed charter change is aligned with the vision and values of our city and its citizens it is the right step toward helping burlington become a safe livable community for all people who live in burlington we ask that the city council and all its committees and the police commission honor their racial justice resolution and the importance of anti-racism by voting to support the charter change thank you thank you our next speaker will be maranda holbrook maranda i've enabled your microphone my name is maranda holbrook and i am a resident of burlington in ward three i have lived and worked in burlington for several years and plan to be here for many more i'm speaking to voice my support of community control of police and of the proposed policy introduced by councillor freeman this policy and its current iteration has received the appropriate and necessary input for many in our community including by pop community members and others from historically affected and marginalized groups it is also in line with the demands of the battery park movement and the vermont racial justice alliance this board must have investigatory and disciplinary power with complete independence from the burlington police department as we have told you so many times it is not possible for the police to police themselves on top of its complete independence from the bpd it is vital that this board create provisions to ensure that its membership is diverse and representative and that the selection process for membership ensures that the historically marginalized have a seat at the table this board must also have proper resourcing including transferring resourcing from the burlington police department if necessary i urge the council members that are still hesitating to back this policy change to question their own thinking and ask themselves exactly why that is is it not true that this proposed charter change will only ensure that the safety of our citizens in burlington is protected and upheld is it not your job to listen to and respond to the will of the people our community has spoken and in this time of long overdue change i'm asking you to do what's right and vote to ensure that this draft is on the ballot in march thank you thank you our next speaker will be nell carpenter now i've enabled your microphone and nell's going to be followed by ali sarhanis sarah noel sophie casel danie keys gibbons dear to graham and arima manard go ahead now can you hear me yep go ahead all right my name is nell carpenter i'm a white resident of ward four and i've been heavily involved in this for the past month um i had a whole comment planned but i'm going to take my time to respond to the mayor's counter proposal which was posted right at the beginning of this meeting which probably many of you might not even know happened um i apologize for the lack of structure and hope you take it as an example for how unrealistic it is that the public would be able to give cochlear comments to his proposal so let's not waste any time it's disgusting and awful that the mayor did this in the first place when perry's draft has been on the table for over a month and he literally gave zero time for anyone to comment on this um especially because this will be the only night of comment if i understand the exhaustive deliberation at the beginning of this meeting correctly this is a stall task tactic this is lazy this is undemocratic um so into the meat of it there's a difference between the police commission and the proposed board one of those differences is that the board selection and standards for representation there's no guarantee that the police commission will continue to be so racially diverse as it is now or include other forms of representation so including that body is inadequate and we have a vision for how the police commission fits in with the proposed community control board also from reading this correctly most of the power still remains with two of the highest ranked folks in the city the mayor and the police chief the position is thirdly it's tacky and power hungry to be making this move while you're in office with no input from anyone else also all you're doing is giving input to the mayor and the commission other than the chief this doesn't mean anything when the chief still ultimately holds power the police commission can only override the chief's decision with six votes out of seven commissioners and since one is this a realistic quorum at all um take the money that you're offering for the commission to hire an independent investigator in the case that they need to and invest it in this proposal um the proposed community control board accounts for the amount of work and emotional labor that it takes to be involved in this work through training stipends etc you're just throwing more into the police commission without sensitivity for how much work this might be um this proposal allows complaint to come directly to the chief and only if the chief determines that it is a matter alleging that a police officer has been negligent or derelict in their duty or whatever does the commission need to be involved there's so much room for things to get dropped as they have in the in the past and justice and accountability to continue to not exist there's also a clause in here allowing accused officers to cross-examine and prevent present witnesses when will you get it through your head that violence from police is just violence i don't understand how you can think that your proposal that you literally put out the moment public comment started will garner broad consensus how do you hear all this comment tonight and think that there is no consensus or that input hasn't been received i came up with all this in about 10 minutes councilor freeman strap saw hours and hours of comments revisions research etc i think the community is giving you a pretty clear path forward and i ask you other counselors to please not fall for the actions of the mayor tonight thank you and i yield my time thank you um ali sarhanis is next to be followed by sarah noel um ali i've enabled your microphone hi my name is ali so harness and i live in berlington ward three i've lived in berlington for a little over six years and i'm calling in tonight to support the charter change proposal for community oversight of the police i support this proposal because i've witnessed the disheartening patterns of the berlington police department officers using excessive use of force and abusing their power against people in our community with inadequate inadequate repercussions and disciplinary actions the current structure that allows only the police chief to fire officers accused of misconduct definitely results in a lack of accountability and it's a conflict of interest i strongly support the creation of a diverse community board to oversee the investigation and discipline of police misconduct that is fully independent of the bpd and is endowed with disciplinary power investigative power independence representation and transparency i fully believe that this well researched and strongly supported charter change is a step that the city desperately needs to take to make berlington a safer and more equitable city for all of its residents especially those who are most vulnerable and marginalized so i urge you to please hear our voices tonight and put this charter change on the ballot in march thank you thank you next speaker will be sarah noel to be followed by sophie castle and i'm appreciating the help that folks are giving me just identifying themselves or others as by pock that's very helpful um sarah i'm enabling your microphone another weird thing is that sometimes this software um is uh that people have for zoom they have an older version of zoom and then when i click on them they get to get up to upload or do a panelist so it's a little strange sometimes um that's why that happens sometimes i usually just allow enable the microphone so that explains that if you see someone pop up on the screen um is just they have an older version of zoom so um i believe we have sarah with us hi max can you hear me yeah i can go ahead sarah hi my name is sarah noel i use she her pronouns and i am a white queer resident of fort eight uh sorry that was my cat if you could hear that i'm calling in tonight to voice my support for the proposed charter change put forth by councilor freeman time and time again law enforcement has proven that they are incapable of policing themselves and that's why i believe in the creation of a community oversight board that is entirely independent of the pd it is imperative that the board possess full investigatory and disciplinary powers access to the resources it needs to operate effectively and that its members represent those who have been historically impacted by police violence i think that this is a really exciting opportunity to enact real transformative change that is so desperately needed in our community and i hope that you all can work to get this on the ballot in march so that the public can vote on it thank you i'll rest my time okay so our next speaker will be sophie caswell to be followed by dana keys gibbons dirger graham arima minard orhe rio scarcia daniel mutianu hannah bristlin tessam again and lilo and lila fortune off um so that's just a couple of speakers coming up emily bremer is well after lila maggie chadwell and loson andy sub subberneck becky laird um eva fusco fernaguda brown trisha trish or patricia okane i'm a redden gallendriel richmond tyler pastorock um someone who was just grace um so that should give you just a little bit of an idea of who's coming up but i'm going to go to sophie caswell now and again to be followed by dana keys gibbons so sophie i've enabled your microphone all right can you hear me yep go ahead all right my name is sophie and i'm a white educator and ag worker living in ward two where i've lived for the past 12 years um i'm calling in support of both the just cause eviction ballot item as well as the formation of the board for community control of police uh the community drill board is a critical opportunity for burlington to be not just on the right side of history but at the forefront this is exciting we should all be excited about me yep go ahead okay here we go anyway um in order to create change in our community safety we have to have community control including the investigatory and disciplinary power over the police not just advisory boards and definitely not toothless recommendations from the bureaucracy that leave actual decision-making in the hands of the chief and the police union we need this new board in addition to the current police commission so that community power can extend past the scope of either board on its own this is the future of community safety and we are so close to making it reality i urge all the counselors to vote yes on the creation of the community control board and putting this item on the ballot in march because it signals not the end but the very very beginning of real accountability and care in burlington let the community vote on it thank you and i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is dana keys gibbons to be followed by um dear dragram um dana i believe i've located you so i'm going to enable your microphone hi thank you my name is dana i use she her pronouns and i'm a white resident of ward eight i moved to burlington after graduating from college in 2019 and i've been a health care worker at a local clinic ever since i'm calling in today to voice my support for the creation of an independent community control board to oversee the burlington police department with the power to conduct investigations and take disciplinary action it's really important to me that this is an entirely new board and not an adaptation of the current police commission because it serves a different purpose the police commission focuses on policy and does not have the final say in disciplinary decisions they're also appointed by the city council while the independent community oversight board would be appointed by community groups connected to those who are currently and historically most targeted by policing like pipa and documented folks and lgbtq people another difference is that the police chief can ultimately override any recommendations made by the police commission which basically renders that useless i've been to countless zoom meetings this year where i've heard you all call racism a public health crisis and commit to dismantling systemic racism while these reforms will not end the broken and racist criminal injustice system in this country it is the first step to police accountability and it is urgent because it could literally save lives you all have the opportunity to take action and i hope you're not using the word crisis lightly we've all seen the footage of violent cops in the city and the harm the bpd has caused especially towards our bi-pop community members there have been many opportunities to engage with and deliberate on this topic and huge amounts of participation and work put in by community as well please approve councilor freeman's charter change draft and let the people of burlington vote on it on march second thanks i yield the rest of my time so uh dear dra gram will be fall will be next to be followed by arima minard or hey rio scarcia daniel mutianu uh mun tianu and uh hannah brislin um just to name a few um dear dra i believe i've located you and i'm enabling your microphone hi can you hear me yes i can go ahead hi my name is dear dra gram i'm award three resident i've lived in burlington for the past year and a half i've lived in vermont for the past eight years as an essential health care worker and bi-pop community member i'm calling to voice my full support of items 6.03 the independent community control board of the police um just a quick huge thank you to everyone who's worked tirelessly for months to move this proposal forward particularly councillor freeman and bi-pop family leaders in our community um this proposal as many have said before me has had ongoing support and input from burlington community members specifically bi-pop and other historically marginalized groups um and it's been informed by research and recommendations by the aclu and aligns with the demands of the battery park movement and the vermont racial justice alliance operation enix rise um to recap again as many have said before me it's imperative that we have a completely independent diverse and representative board that holds investigatory and disciplinary power over the police as it stands right now we the community have no control over the police specifically when it comes to disciplinary actions and let's never forget that police brutality and violence is very real and it's taken place in burlington um while there's some work surrounding disciplinary actions the police it's still all in the hands of the police and it's um you know the police unit it's protected by the police commission as i've claimed um to be community oversight board of the bpb holds no power whatsoever the current chair of the commission has said himself the board doesn't do much of anything they have no real power not only do they not hold power but it's so shrouded in cryptic information that the general public has little to no idea what they even do which again isn't much of anything and how can we begin to build public trust with such little transparency um and how can we begin to build public trust with a police department entrenched with outdated racist policies and a union which fiercely protects these systems um just quickly i have to say it was pretty disturbed by the last joint committee meeting the rampant confusion during the conversation made it evident that many of the joint committees specifically the commissioners were very very much behind on the general understanding of this proposal which demonstrates further that uh the the sheer ineffectiveness of the police commission of just one of a plethora of examples of how the current system is not good enough for us counselors if you truly aim to serve the community if you really do believe black lives matter if you really will commit to supporting and protecting the most marginalized among us i hope you recognize the answer is to not wait on moving this proposal forward the answer is not the police commission the answer is not pile dogs and if you claim to be searching for or uh perhaps more aptly waiting for a perfect model you're not going to find it um we know that it's going to take lifetimes of hard continuous work to dismantle white supremacy and the interlocking systems that perpetuate it in our society but what we need to do now specifically is act we need to pass this proposal and bring it to the ballot in march it simply cannot be stressed enough how much time is of the essence the independent community control board of the police is a step forward we need right now i yield the rest of my time black lives matter okay i'm going to go to arima minard next to be followed by uh Jorge Rios Garcia um arima i've located you and have enabled your microphone hi are you able to hear me yes i am go ahead great um hi my name is arima minard i use she her pronouns while i reside in waterbury i work at the peace and justice center of vermont and burlington which is in ward three i am speaking in emphatic support of the resolution for community control of police not only because i am the community engagement manager at the pjc but because as a bipoc vermoner of six years and citizen i and my partner like many others who live in neighboring towns also visit shop and enjoy professional leisure and cultural activities in burlington we are all therefore very much vested in safeguarding the safety and enjoyment of the city for all community members i commend councillor freeman and those on the charter change committee that worked with heart on moving this resolution forward and strongly support the fact that this resolution demands community control of police admirably the proposed charter change was created by receiving and hearing significant input from many across our community including bipoc and others from historically marginalized groups its likelihood of success is supported by the fact that it is informed by models in other cities and guided by the aclu principles for civilian oversight the resolution importantly aligns with the demands of the battery park movement and the vermont racial justice alliance's operation phoenix rise initiative the members of which have uh have acted as inspirational leaders in this effort to urge burlington to lead with impactful legislation that addresses racial injustices and inequities that you must trust bipoc community members and citizens of this nation suffer greatly from it is simply common sense that an entity that wields the power to use violent force cannot be left to also be the only organ that determines if such force was justly applied checks and balances must exist in order to hold entities accountable to the communities they aim to protect and serve and an independent community board composed of a diverse and representative membership achieves just that i want to thank ashley and jessleport mark hughes counselor freeman and all those who have given so much of their life energy time and effort to do the work of getting this resolution that is long overdue to where it is today now is the time for you to stop delaying and show your appreciation for this pivotal opportunity they have brought to you please help these courageous community leaders to achieve what will benefit all of us by creating a safe and peaceful city for all free from the terror of police brutality black lives matter thank you thank you and appreciate corrections on names so please um keep those coming it helps me to be better and more respectful at this so please correct me if i get your name wrong of course i want to get them right um so next i see uh jorge rios garcia so jorge enabled your microphone should be able to speak hello everyone my name is jorge rios i use from for now i live in burlington in world number six i consider myself as a latin ex-none wife i got a lot of things to say about this and this is a good time for burlington bring this for a debate make me feel that we are in the way of the promised land we as a as a latin ex-community we want to be included in the democracy we gotta be included no and other feeling is like no one can to stop this movement because those feelings are the feeling of the people and if those feelings are gonna be here and we are gonna be here stand up for our rights and that's that's a fact let me tell you uh you counselors that let's let's let's the people vote yeah i don't think you need more time to understand this document let's just the people vote and and i don't i don't some don't be scared that someone of color with this power are going to create chaos we want justice and equity that's all no and let me say something about this no one can do a worse job than people who are ready with this power it's it's impossible to think like oh someone of color are gonna do this no we just want we just want justice and we need we need to give some balance to the power if we want to prevent in the future police brutality so let's give this committee committee the jurisdiction of disciplinary authority transparency and investigation forward and this committee exists in other countries exists in other cities is not something new and we are going to keep asking to for legislation legislation in pro of immigrants and people of color thank you for listening thank you our next speaker will be daniel muntianu to be followed by to be followed by hannah bristlin tessa mcgan lilla fortune off emily bremer maggie chadwell and lawson andy uh sabranek becky laird eva fusco fern aguda brown trish uh ok so daniel i'm gonna come to you excuse me yes i can go ahead i'll try to be super quick my name is daniel muntianu i lived in ward one i've only lived in burlington for five months but before that i lived in vermont for about a year i was born in canada kid but both of my parents were born abroad some of the children of immigrants and i think for his testimony was exceptionally powerful because that definitely relates to why my parents decided to come here uh when there was strife in their country um and they didn't experience democracy in this way and this isn't something that my parent this sort of like city bureaucracy um is not not what america is known known for so i'm here to uh voice my support for the charter change uh to give community control of the police the uh legislative process and the deliberative process has spoken there's been immense community input uh it aligns with the principles of many uh civil civil liberties organizations here in vermont and abroad and it will definitely be the start of the solution uh in giving power to the people with regards to the people that police them and reverse some of the most oppressive institutions that have been continuous in this country that people still come to and there's a reason to that but it's an imperfect system and the time to act uh at least with that mr god is now thank you thank you i'm our next speaker is hannah brislin to be followed by tesam again um hannah i believe i found you so i'm going to enable your microphone can you hear me yes i can go ahead great hi everyone um my name is hannah i am a resident of war two um i am calling in support on the charter change um for community oversight of policing um the city took a vow like seemingly uh to dismantle um systemic racism we can't just say that we're going to do it we do need to to actually take necessary steps to do so and this charter change is a necessary step um another charter change that is a necessary step to dismantling systemic racism is um the just cause of fiction um both of these charter changes this body has had plenty of time uh to mull over it to provide your input and what you have um the next steps is for you to do your job and pass it along to the people to decide um this is their city and they have they have a right and it is necessary for them to decide on this and it is at that point where both of these are to be passed along to them to make that decision so um yeah i'll yield the rest of my time thank you have a great night thank you our next speaker is tessa mcgan to be followed by uh lilla fortune off um tessa here you go um i've enabled your microphone great can you hear me yep go ahead all right my name is tessa mcgan i use she her pronouns and i live in ward three i'm calling tonight in support of the charter change proposed by councillor freeman for the community control of police i want to say to the city councillors tonight if you care about the most basic safety of barlington's residents if you care about making barlington a truly livable city and if you care about addressing the public health emergency of systemic racism in barlington and in vermont as ashley said earlier tonight adopting this charter change should be a no-brainer it has been carefully constructed based on sound models from other cities and on the aclu principles of community oversight and it is tailored to fit our city specifically by incorporating significant direct input from bypoc and other historically marginalized community members it aligns with the demands of the battery park movement and vermont racial justice alliance's operation phoenix rise my point here is that these are the experts nationally and locally these are the folks who have direct experience have done the work and spent the time thinking about these issues and whose leadership you should follow as proposed by these leaders and in the charter change i believe it is crucial that police are overseen by a board that is independent from the police that is in fact representative of the group's most affected by police misconduct and that has true investigatory and disciplinary power i urge you not to rely only on the police commission which lacks these features and to not wait for god knows what you are being given the opportunity to act justly and act now on what is an urgent matter please take it thank you all you hold the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is lila fortune off to be followed by emily bremer lila i'm coming to you hi can you hear me yes i can go ahead thanks so yeah my name is lila fortune off my pronouns are she her hers i'm a white suss woman i live in ward three i was a student at uvm and i chose to continue to live in burlington after graduation because i love the city the best part about the city is the sense of community that i feel here communities take care of one another and communities listen to each other i believe true communities do not tolerate violence against community members nor do they tolerate conditions that make community members feel unsafe members of this community who are bipop unhoused and poor members of this community trans non-binary and gender non-conforming members of this community are saying loudly repeatedly that they feel unsafe because of the way the police in the city operate this mode of operation is not a coincidence it is a sign that policing as we have historically known and presently know it is working properly in the city the police were created on purpose by white men to uphold white supremacy the fact that community members feel unsafe is not a sign that something isn't working as efficiently as it could or that police officers are overworked or spread too thinly or that we need a new data management system to keep better tabs on the department violence against marginalized groups of people is a core tenet of police departments across the country including in burlington because that is what the police that is what policing as a concept was founded upon police should not be the entity that investigates or disciplines themselves because if they are this violence will certainly continue that is why i fully support this resolution to the charter change or of the charter change committee proposed by councillor freeman to create a new board that is completely independent of the burlington police department and will have full control to investigate and discipline police officers just because this resolution is unprecedented is not a reason that this council should slow down or question it we need to break from precedent to break the patterns of violence i also support the resolutions regarding just cause evictions regarding the additions to the airport commission and regarding the thermal energy systems because climate and environmental justice housing justice and racial justice should all be prioritized by the city you all work for us you need to listen to us stop grasping to keep your power and keep the status quo our lives are at stake thank you our next speaker will be emily bremer to be followed by maggie chatwell and lawson andy sebranek becky laird eva fusco fern gouda brown trish o'cane emma redden glandriel richmond eiler pastorock grace emily wanzer julie mesuga m bower kaley o donnell trav fryer meg tragolo gabriel ellie william keaton maxwell quinn just to give folks an idea of who we have coming up we're going to go to emily bremer and again emily is to be followed by maggie chatwell so emily i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me as i can go ahead all right hello my name is emily bremer i'm a white woman and i use she her pronouns i'm a resident of berlington in ward six i'm here today to express my strong support of the proposed charter change related to community control of police i moved to vermont in april of 2019 from madison wisconsin up until that time i'd lived in madison my entire life one of the reasons i was drawn to berlington was because of its similarities to madison after moving here though an unfortunate similarity between madison and berlington became clear to me that police misconduct and injustices have splintered the trust of the community and diminished the safety and well-being of the bipoc and other historically marginalized communities back in september a resolution similar to what's proposed here was successfully voted on and passed in madison even in the short three months since then it has been meaningful in the process of rebuilding trust and slowly restoring justice among the city's marginalized communities i believe it will continue to be successful for madison for the same core reasons i believe the charter chain proposed here will be for berlington it will give both investigatory and disciplinary authority to an independent community control board it will hold police officers accountable to the communities they serve it allows for formal structured civilian oversight that has true and meaningful authority and it calls for a diverse representation on the board with a selection process that ensures the historically marginalized spokes have a seat at the table voting this charter change to voters in march is a meaningful step towards dismantling systemic racism in this community and it is imperative that it happens now we must hold our police accountable now to the community they serve there really is no time to waste thank you black lives matter thank you her next speaker will be maggie chadwell to be followed by ann lawson maggie i've enabled your microphone oh i'm do that panelist thing okay there we go hi can you hear me yes i can there you go hi everyone my name is maggie and i'm a white resident of war two and i'm speaking today in support of councillor greenham's charter change proposal for community control police i believe that this charter change is a vital step that berlington needs to take in beginning to reform the public safety safety system that under the current city charter is not designed to protect and serve our community but rather the police as it is now the chief of police and mayor have sole power in firing police officers we've seen this design fail our community time and again the fact that violent officers quarry campbell and joseph perot are still employed at the vpd are glaring in samples the fact that it took a three hundred thousand dollar buyout to remove jason bell advance from his from the department after his assault of derby melly and john braysha is another bottom line this system doesn't hold officers accountable this is why it's critical that the power to investigate and discipline officers be put in the hands of the community through creating a community control board that operates independently from the police department as the proposal outlines it is crucial that this board be made up of members of our community who are most impacted by police violence centering by pock lgbtq lgbtq folks those who have experienced houselessness substance abuse disorder and other historically marginalized groups brollington needs to start following the lead of the battery park movement in the and the vermont racial justice alliance and fight for meaningful tangible change for marginalized folks in our community that should only start with this charter change i urge you all to support this proposal and its entirety and fight for it to be on the march ballot thank you and you at the rest of my time thank you our next speaker will be ann lawson to be followed by andy uh sebranic um ann i've enabled your microphone great thank you and thanks for taking the time to hear from us tonight my name is annie lawson i'm a cis white woman and i live in ward four i've lived in brollington for eight years i'm a licensed clinical social worker and my professional background is in public mental health i want to urge the city council as well as the mayor to adopt the charter change as it's proposed by councilor freeman which will increase community control and oversight of the police i specifically want to express my disappointment but not my surprise at hearing a community leader share that mayor weinberger put forth his own counterproposal at short notice this is not the first time the mayor has used this strategy to undermine efforts by community organizers and it makes clear his lack of interest in engaging honestly with the public it is nothing short of a slap in the face to the community leaders who have invested countless hours in trying to engage with counselors and the mayor ahead of time so i'll use a moment of my time to recognize his continued pattern of disingenuous behavior to my city counselors it's one thing to support a blm mural on a street that receives lots of visibility but does nothing to actually support those communities most targeted by police it's another thing to enact actual policy to increase those protections in this case through increasing police accountability councilor freeman's proposal has received much community support from the public as evidenced by the turnout to this meeting tonight but in particular it has received support from bi-poch folks and from organized groups like the racial justice alliance and the bi-poch led battery park movement the significance of that cannot be overstated leading racial justice advocates in our community leading organizers of color have built and endorsed this charter change they're effectively saying here's one meaningful way to help undo systemic racism in our community these organizers already did the work for the city they are not asking the city to think up ways to address systemic racism they're saying hey we built a well researched solution to a widely acknowledged problem in our community now let's allow the public to vote on it to my white city counselors you have the power to decide whether or not you will listen to their voices please think hard about what message you send vermonters of color if you vote against this proposal and what message you send them if you support it thank you thank you i'm gonna go to andy sabranic right now i was able to locate jabari jones so jabari i'll come to you after andy andy i've enabled your microphone hey how's it going i'm andy i uh i'm a resident here in war two i've lived at converse court for about four years now i'm a white uh essential healthcare worker been living paycheck to paycheck struggling to make ends meet each month here but i still love this community a lot and i would like to see and make sure that all of our our population here in the community especially the most vulnerable are feeling safe i have a hard time imagining this is a hard decision to make but of course i do understand that we do live in a very colonial and oppressive structure here so i do understand that um that we do need to at least go through these these these motions um so i am in support of um you know making sure that there is a independent community oversight of the police department here in burlington um one that is fully independent and it's fully funded by all means um and has power for disciplinary action um i'll leave it there and and uh pass my time along thank you all right i'm going to go back to jabari jones who we had called earlier located them right now and so jabari go right ahead uh yeah thank you thanks uh for seeing my email um thank you city councillors and i'm just calling in to support this proposal for community control board we put on the ballots um and i just want to say that this is this is about raising the bar of justice um the police policing themselves as as where the bar is is insufficient and um it's perpetuating harm not safety and so i think that it's it's up to the people to decide if they want to raise the bar um and like people have said all night a lot of work has already gone into this proposal and um so i'm asking you to trust the wisdom of the people who have put in the work um or the course of months under difficult conditions and um and to to raise the bar when you know there is such a thing as self accountability for people to hold themselves accountable for the harm that they cause and i think over and over again the police have demonstrated that they're not good at that so we need a new tool we need a new means to hold uh these city employees accountable uh and so that really requires like an independent body with authority with real teeth when you have a police commission or somewhere there's a civilian police review board or something like that that doesn't have any teeth it's just performance and that's a waste of time it's a waste of money it's a slap in the face of people who are trying to put in the work and who actually just want justice non-retribution not the guillotine basic justice so i hope that you'll respect that and um approve putting this on the ballot thank you thank you debari our next speaker will be becky laird to be followed by eva fusco so becky i'm going to come to you i've enabled um let's do an here we go okay you should be enabled now can you hear me yep go ahead okay hi i'm my name is becky laird and i'm eva munter white burlington resident of board three i'm 32 years old and i use she-her pronouns i've lived here for just under 10 years doing mostly community outreach and caregiving work i've been paying attention to bpd during my time here and noting what keeps adding up to a lack of transparent accountability i've been craving a change in the disciplinary channels for officers it becomes clearer and clearer that if the police hold a position of power in our community the community must have a larger and weightier say and what happens to an officer when they use excessive force there needs to be a system of greater accountability and transparency in order to garner trust which sorely lacks police cannot police themselves i'm writing in support of the charter change put forth by consular freeman related to community control police it's important this new board be an independent body that will collaborate with the police commission this new board should be an independent of bpd with full investigatory and disciplinary powers as well as have all the resources to carry out these investigations there should be full transparency along the disciplinary route the ability to hold public hearings and testimony to provide complaint related to information to the public and the production and publication of public reports it's important this new board be diverse enough to reflect burlington's diversity and the whole community particularly those historically marginalized and the public should be able to easily access the means to file the complaint through many channels at business non-business hours and on weekends those are the points that i especially wanted to highlight and please put this charter change on question on the ballot in march 2020 2021 this is urgent and police reform can save lives if this feels overwhelming it's because this change is long overdue but not impossible some people have lives so haunted within our system that they can't ever take a break from an overwhelming reality that they don't fully feel safe your community is vocal about its commitment to building a system that more easily allows being heard protected and holds accountable those who would do harm this board is one big step in that direction black lives matter thank you thank you very next next speaker is ava fusco ava i've enabled your microphone hey can you hear me yes i can go ahead all right sick um hi i'm ava i'm white i use the she pronouns and i've lived in burlington for a few months i'm currently in massachusetts on winter break but i view burlington as my home i'm here to voice my support for community control of the police specifically counselor femons draft i think that when tons of time is spent deliberating about whether or not to even deliberate as seen in the meeting before public forum it's easy for the city counselors not affected by police oppression to become separated from the reality of the situation which is that black lives are on the line marginalized lives are on the line the lives and livelihoods of burlington community members are on the line which is why it's so vital that we establish burlington specific community control it is so clear that police cannot police themselves as shown by the miniscule or non-existing consequences given to officers bellavans campbell and coro despite the horrifying acts of violence they committed this is an urgent matter and it needs to be on the march ballot nothing but love for my comrades who spent literal days working on this draft resolution thank you i yield the rest of my time thank you i'm going to go to karen sita next to be followed by fern aguda brown karen i'm enabling your microphone mayor there i don't know why he went off especially when a black man started speaking he decided to go off so i would like to speak oh the mayor is back okay sorry i was eating because i was wondering if he was leaving for good um so my time has now started i would like to say black life has always mattered uh black disabled lives matter no matter what you're going through so sorry i was eating in the middle of this conversation um so i'm a student at shampoong college a black woman a kongalese woman a proud african uh proud african american and a student at shampoong college and a struggling student at shampoong college based off racism based off slavery based off how black women are disliked this with disrespected and not embraced and not loved at all which is a shame based off mayor Weinberger's budget and the way he tends to view america um or at least raised america so i would like to say that we deserve the whatever we're asking for we deserve the freedom we've suffered we have took the chains we have flew off the ships we have done the best we could and we continue to suffer we continue to vote for him if you don't have to do anymore he's we understand now that um our master does not have to be mar wineberger and his weird obsession with um dal pozo and cheap polices if you want an ivy league friend uh brian chana is an ivy league and he does not is disgruntled and he does not believe in um police department is just being so disheveled like your friend uh dal pozo so i'm a south brolinton resident i sleep in heavenly peace knowing that i don't have mario weinberger as my mayor we can also sleep in heavenly peace chinning county knowing that too so march is our time to tell him we don't need your budget we don't need your viewpoint we don't need your fake uh bothering because this is just a shame and i feel like you know all those kids have suffered with white parents that feel like they don't understand them he's gonna soon be in that same position i always take it personal because we all know black people are personally suffering so we he can be hurt too um it's about his time so we can take him off and we can find whoever we like and we can be proud of that person and we don't have to sit here and you know now we know who is our masters and we can say we don't want that we don't need this covid we don't need our masters and we can actually go back to a life that we're proud of um if we were ever really proud of brolinton because he's been here for how long and he's done nothing for it so again police officers don't need to sit by brattory park and watch black kids be black kids playing games you know especially since they're trying to get free food since their parents are struggling under minimum wage which is a new form of plantations so we don't have to live under that we can understand america's free um and we've always been free vermont is a free place we can be a free care as long as you're free so remember your freedom that's the whole point and remember that we can free ourselves from mario and his oppression and his budget especially in housing and health care um and that's not even talk about what he doesn't do for people and job and growth so to all my immigrants south americans africans refugees the african association who needs grants to support our people because you know how many people do you know that are really dedicated to that kind of passion so we need to i know i'm taking a full time but i'm going to just say one more thing um don't forget voting is where we decide who wins and he can leave when he wants to but we can ask him to leave legally on march so you know he can play these games through the phone calls but we can finish the game in march so just remember that always and just let him know that and you know he's going to have to find his new ways just like del pozo had to find his new ways after we'd exposed him for the lack of ethics that he had and i i'm a student at shamp plane who's taught by the chief law enforcement officer of the state who is uh tom is thonovan and i would some would say that he would disagree with your behavior and he would not understand where you're coming from and some would also say that he would be ashamed just like the rest of us so i would say uh people of burlington this is your time to fight and remove him and he knows he wants to leave and there's no point of him being there anyways so we all have our time and my time is done but our time in vermont is clearly growing so this is our time that's it and this is our vote especially that you can unmute me thank you the next speaker will be fern aguda brown um to be followed by um trish o'cane so fern i've enabled your microphone can you hear me as i can go ahead okay great my name is fern aguda brown and i use she her pronouns i'm a white resident of ward seven i'm calling in tonight to support the proposed community control board i want to honor the voices and work of the by poc folks who spoke before me on this call in the incredible amount of work that went into this charter change their mobilizing has made it so easy for me to learn about this charter change and call in to support it tonight i'm deeply grateful for their work which can make burlington a safer city for everyone but most importantly those impacted by police brutality and violence right now the police have too much power and protection and too little transparency and accountability the proposed charter change establishes an independent body and importantly holds investigatory and disciplinary aspects the diverse composition of the board is critical to its functioning and and accountability the police department should be serving listening and answering to the members of our community which is proposed in this charter change what does painting black lives matter on main street mean when we don't listen to our by poc community members who are asking for the proposed community control board counselors you have the opportunity to support substantive substantive actual change tonight that goes much farther than painting or flying black lives matter flags and the work has been done for you you have a proposal ready to go in front of you that aligns with the acl use principles for civilian oversight and with the battery park movement and the racial justice alliance please vote to ensure that this draft is on the march ballot so that the people of burlington can decide thank you thank you next speaker is trish okane to be followed by emma redden so trish i'm enabling your microphone thank you can you hear me yes i can go ahead thank you trish okane i live in the new north end i've been here five years in uh board seven i support the freeman resolution to put community control police on the ballot thank you to everyone who worked so hard on this issue i teach environmental studies at uvm and i direct an after school nature program pairing college students with children many of our kids are children of color i ask you to support this resolution so that all our children not just some of them can walk down our streets or explore burlington's beautiful woods without fearing the police i care deeply about these issues because of an incident i witnessed in wisconsin just before moving here to vermont i was in graduate school in madison walking to class when two black students a young man and woman rode by on a moped suddenly a police officer stepped into the road and began yelling the officer pushed the young man down onto the sidewalk and handcuffed him yelling at him the whole time i pulled out a notebook and started recording the exact time and what was said and done i didn't have a smartphone the officer saw me taking notes called for reinforcements and suddenly there were two police cars and several officers interrogating the three of us 30 minutes later the officer strove off without even issuing a citation the girl shaking and in tears a 19 year old nursing student said the officer told her and her boyfriend that they shouldn't ride double on a moped i insisted we file a complaint these students were too afraid the young man said to me thank you ma'am but i'm from Detroit this happens to me all the time this was not george floyd nobody was killed or injured physically but this may have been a life-changing event for those students as a privileged white woman it certainly was for me commissioner gemash explained tonight that burlington is also a city where the police can operate with impunity erasing disciplinary records after just a year after the ridiculous twitter gate scandal in 2019 involving former chief del pozo and his deputy brutality cases against three officers and the release of a horrific video it's obvious that our current system of oversight has failed the people we need a new one no one should have to fear our security forces please support the movement to change the city charter thank you thank you um i i've been able to locate mark hughes um and i believe also christine hughes um so i'm going to go to to them right now they were up earlier on the list and so i'm going to bring them back in i believe i found you under the rga name so i've enabled that microphone click you're muted on your end good evening folks mark hughes racial justice alliance what's up hey i wanted to uh just give a shout out to the council and also to all the folks who've been doing this uh work especially i'm lifting up ashley uh just many of the others folks i've been um in and out of this policy myself multiple times got a strong relationship and also i've been collaborating with jds for years on this and stuff like this so if there's any doubt in your military mind whether or not the racial justice alliance is behind us for supporting this let's just clear that up we're all over this so yes we support this in every way now i don't have enough time right now this is kind of ridiculous chasing the clock anyway so i'm not going to do it so here's what i'm going to do i'm going to tell you this consulates got any questions give me a call morrow here's the deal you know as well as anybody else that it's time to change this thing and and everybody please stop holding folks out just because they black and brown on the commission talking about oh well it's good to go we're not monolithic people i just want to remind you of one thing i resigned from the commission and i got a woman sitting right next to me who would never do it again and she did it for three years come on so what i started with you'll stop at the shenanigans you know this is all political nonsense really at the back end of this thing really what was really on the table right here is whether the political and economic power that you hold is more important than people's lives we see the same thing playing out at the national level right now right well you got folks who know they need to make a decision but they choose not to because they want to hold out because they're afraid they're going to lose political or economic power so people suffer does it sound familiar does that sound familiar so no i'm not going to chase the clock tonight but i will tell you that yes just like i told you you know back in 15 when i said please don't hire del pozo and no i didn't live in burlington at the time it's like i told you last january please take a closer look at that contract the please contract before you sign it i'm telling you right now here i am again you know folks come on you know if if you are a consular right now and you're on this car and another thing is enough with the shenanigans with all of this you know oh we're going to send it over to this this uh joint committee you got commissioners looking at this thing before the consular's come on what is what are you guys doing so consular's if you're on this call right now and you haven't made up whether or not your mind up whether you're going to go for this it's because you don't want to make your mind up because you don't you you have no intention on doing it and if that's the case just say it but at the end of the day if you really want to talk about what's in this thing i'll tell you what's in this thing if you really want somebody to explain it to you like kindergarten give me a call there's not one of you who do not know how to reach me thank you miss hughes can you pick up the timer as well please hi everyone thanks max um i am actually really encouraged to hear all of the people that spoke before me and really encouraged as somebody who has been doing racial justice work you know some directly with the police and just in the community since i was about 17 and i'm kind of old now so it's been a really long time and i am really encouraged and i wanted to pick up on something that one of the speakers said oh and also thank you councillor freeman for having the courage to put this forward um somebody was was making the point about if you're going to be committed to dismantling systemic racism this is the meat of the system right these you know we have different rules and laws and all these different ways that people escape accountability or get to you know police themselves and if you think about like other professions like you know doctors and a whole bunch of people even the work that i do with people with disabilities helping them find employment there's like a couple of different oversight measures for me the work that i do does have an impact on people's lives but we're talking about police who obviously can get away with killing people or hurting people i mean how is there any question about whether or not we need oversight and oversight from the community talk a lot about community policing but we stop short when it comes to putting any power in the community's hands that are the ones that are being policed um i did serve on the commission i did finish a three-year term it was really significant for me to watch mark walk away from that because he doesn't walk away from much all of you know him and you know how hard he works and um i honestly you know when i was on my way to the police commission meetings i used to say to my kids i'm off to the rubber stamp crew meeting seriously like that's what i called it because after being there i realized that we had no power and i was kind of wasting my time so yeah get this done thanks for your time and for your work so racial justice reliance is going to stay behind this we're going to continue to support it and of course we're going to lift it up we're going to amplify it but you know this shouldn't be a heavy lift folks it's really shouldn't be a heavy lift we should really just move on let's let's get back to work thank you thank you all right our next speaker will be um emma redden so i'm going to come to you emma i've enabled your microphone i live in a rental property in ward two and i grew up in vermont i moved to berlington about four and a half years ago i'm a teacher of young children and i'm a white person who believes whiteness is the most dangerous part of our city um for one to the mayor um you put out your counter protest the moment the meeting started that's slippery it's sneaky it's disrespectful and we see you until the council and all the folks calling in tonight we're asking you like simply to allow democracy to happen we're asking you to to allow democracy to happen as it has happened so beautifully and with so much grief and so much grace this past year in the city we're simply asking you to allow our community to make a long overdue collective decision these charter changes are about creating barriers for abuse barriers for abuse of police abuse of power by the police barriers for abuse of power by property owners i'm here to stand in full support of the community control police charter change thank you councilor freeman and black folks in leadership for your work on this last summer after 21 hours of public testimony the longest testimony the city's ever seen the majority of the council passed the racial justice resolution that resolution was an attempt at limiting the harm the police can do to black folks to indigenous people to people without homes to people with mental illness and that was a step and it's your job again to take another step to allow the public to consider and then pass a charter change that centers the safety of black folks over the paycheck of police it's a shame it took 21 hours for you to do what's right i hope it won't take nearly that long this time i'm here to also stand in full support of the just cause charter thank you councilor high tower and the cdnr for all your work 62 percent of brillantonians rent their homes as racism is the blood of the police so is it the blood of the housing market it's in it by design that our city and all around the country that black people disproportionately have vulnerable under resource and unsafe housing it's unfair it's wrong and not our responsibility to try to redress this i hope that when next week comes and it's been a week since you heard the outpouring of love from all of us tonight that you remember that we're still here and we're still watching and we're still expecting you to show us that you believe in the dignity and the sanctity of black lives by voting with us i stand in solidarity with the battery park movement with the racial justice alliance black lives have always matter show us that you know that past the charter changes thank you thank you our next speaker will be glandriel richmond to be followed by tyler pastor rock and actually before i go to the next speaker one thing i wanted to ask is if i clerk bobby if you are city clerk bobby if you're able to um share the your screen with the list on it and if that's if you need a second to do that i can go to the next speaker and come back it's just i wanted to to give folks given given that we're getting up closer to 10 o'clock just kind of scroll through and just so that folks can see where they are on the list so that i can then so that they have an idea about where they might be on that list just so that we can give them that idea can continue to read off lots of names but that might be helpful okay maybe folks can see this hopefully you can um and again i'll try and read off a bunch of names at at at the moment and it's hard to predict again folks just because we're sometimes folks aren't on but everybody's doing a really great job and i just so appreciate everyone being right there um oh perfect thank you for doing that that's perfect awesome okay so this gives folks a little bit of an idea of just like where it is um in the queue um and we can just scan through that so hopefully we'll get through as many people as possible but just wanted to to give um that and again i'm trying to prioritize uh burlington residents in this um so that's um if you see someone in in blue that's just because i've they're a non-burlington resident and that has been our practice to highlight to prioritize burlington folks so um that should give you a little bit of an idea of where folks stand and some folks did write to me and ask to just have their names taken off so that's why i've highlighted them and registered i know about that but see we have quite a few folks signed up i don't know that we're going to be able to get to everybody this evening but just wanted to give everybody an idea of where there are on this on this list so um thank you so much um see clerk boby for doing that i'm very much appreciate that and again i'll keep trying to call folks on the list um just so that we can try and get to you um or give you an idea as to where you stand and if you're coming up so um let's keep going um with the forum keep trying to get to as many people as possible so um next speaker is glandriel richmond and um they're going to be followed by tyler pastorock so glandriel i'm going to come to you please correct me if i pronounced your name wrong that was perfect thanks max um my name is glandriel richmond i use she her pronouns i live in the south end of burlington and ward five i've lived in burlington for 30 years and i've been at my current residence in ward five for the last 23 years i'm a middle-aged white woman and i haven't had occasion to interact with the burlington police department in all of that time i'm embarrassed to say that for a long time i assumed that that meant everything was going fine and that my experience or lack thereof was evidence that all was well it seems so obvious now that i was wrong to assume i knew there were problems other places but not here i thought not only was i surprised to learn how wrong i was but i was shocked when i found out that our policing uses almost a quarter of our city budget burlington police officers have a challenging and complicated job and i'm happy to have my tax dollars pay them a generous salary however i think it's time for us to take a look at how city resources can be used more effectively when it comes to policing and supporting a community oversight and control board can be one of those ways we need transparency and accountability we need to do everything we can to ensure that all of our residents and visitors are receiving equitable treatment we need a community control board that is completely independent of the burlington police department it's not reasonable to expect the police to police themselves so i support the charter change proposed by counselor freeman and i urge the council to support it let's get it on the ballot and let burlington voters weigh in on this issue thank you thank you so our next speaker will be tyler pastorock to be followed by grace um i hope should be able to find you um but tyler i'm going to come to you and enable your microphone right now hello and i can hear you go ahead tyler uh good evening counselors my name is tyler i use he him pronouns i'm a white resident of ward three i've only lived in burlington a few months but vermont for a few years i currently work as a solar installer in the region i first quickly wanted to speak in support of the charter change to allow the city to regulate thermal energy systems and buildings we choose the rules of our economy no matter how you look at it and right now the rules favor energy systems that exploit people and ecosystems all over the world uh yes burlington is small and our direct impact may seem minimal but we can set an example for cities around the country and that impact can be significant and also benefit local businesses who specialize in these technologies but i'm mainly calling in tonight to speak in support of the charter change to establish an independent community control board of police with full disciplinary and investigatory powers one that is representative of people who are marginalized by police and one that is well resourced for its role there are plenty of folks in the community here tonight emphasizing the details they care about so i wanted to share my concerns about counselors i've seen saying this proposal hasn't had enough time and is lacking the necessary input to move forward if you're sitting here tonight thinking something along those lines my question for you is where have you been many of you voted months ago to initiate this process agree that racism is a public health crisis but haven't engaged with this proposal at all until just this past week meanwhile countless members of the public along with local experts and relevant organizations have given thorough input and endorsements for this proposal so to sit here now and say you have issues with it and want to gather more input or go in a completely different direction when you have had months months to speak up and work with the community on this is irresponsible it's abusing your power and it tells me that you don't care enough about community members that suffer at the hands of police to be proactive and engage with this issue as an ally this is epitomized by mayor uh by the mayor waiting to post this proposal until this meeting already began as now mentioned earlier morose proposal completely throws out the community control board and even the police commission can only override a decision by the chief with one short of a unanimous vote vote this isn't even remotely close to what the community is asking for he's blatantly playing games to obstruct this proposal um i'll skip to the end here this proposal is a creation of dedicated counselors law experts and most importantly importantly the public do not throw this out do not jump to a last minute proposal coming from the man at the top maintain the integrity of the current proposals for values and get it on the march ballot thank you thank you all right our next speaker i believe i've located you grace um so i'm going to enable your microphone and grace is going to be followed by um emily wanzer so grace should be all set it's grace warlock you see your pronouns and i'm a resident before long i've lived and worked in berlington for five years calling in support of passing the charter language set forth by councillor freeman for the creation of the community control ward i want to start by saying the idea of this draft proposed being rushed and cannot be cannot be an excuse here as city counselors i feel that it is your position and roles we keeping up these charter change community committee meetings and charter draft language proposed by councillor freeman have been occurring and available for over a month the pertinence of this to your constituents and the safety of bipoc constituents has been loud and clear and should warrant your close attention concerned public members and bipoc organizers have tuned in and done so much painstaking work reading through and suggesting upon language and policy holding police officers accountable is a very pressing issue and to truly investigate and discipline them independently from the berlington police department is essential these issues must be handled with great care and adding them to the responsibilities of the police commission is broadening their scope past their capacity two officers remain in uniforms with blood on their hands and one of them has been paid out 300 000 in a comforting retirement package it doesn't sit right the harm that was done will alter the victims of this violence without proper repair the physical harm caused by officers bellivance cambell and coro is held in a feeling of vulnerability and fear by berlington citizens to properly address these issues the board must have the power to investigate and discipline officers there must be a place for public complaint that is entirely autonomous from the institution of police that has harmed them the police commission's advisory stance has proven null and void to the action that must be taken this board will not give a seat at the table the board will not only give a seat at the table to bipoc in the most marginalized who should be centered in relationship to police but it will allow for folks to be able to take real action we are so lucky to have bipoc community members who are willing to do this work what we have here has been thought thoughtfully deliberated in the countless hours and unequivocal attention of peri freeman and community members it is your job to listen and get it on the march ballot and let the public vote on it it's their decision please do this thank you all right our next speaker will be emily wanzer to be followed by julie mesuga emily i've found you and have enabled your microphone hi my name is emily wanzer i'm a student in berlington resident of ward two um i had some words prepared about why i support the community controls police and the proposed policy introduced by councilor freeman but as i've listened to my peers in my community speak i've realized that the only thing that i have to say tonight is that if you do not support this charter change you are failing us all this is about keeping us safe keeping those most marginalized by our oppressive systems safe listen to what our black leaders our black women and black people of marginalized gender identities are telling us vote yes put this on the ballot in march i also want to lift up our immigrant neighbors and community members and say nomos poli migra finally i would also like to add that i support the charter change for just cause evictions i'm a renter here and i didn't even know until a few weeks ago that i could be kicked out of my own home without any reason for why we know that berlington has a housing crisis and if my four housemates and i were kicked out it is very likely that we would not be able to find affordable places to live i also support the charter change for decarbonization now is the time to act to save our planet and ourselves and this action must happen at every level these measures must go on the ballot in march black lives matter thank you thank you next speaker will be julie mesuga i think i think i know where you're under okay um my name is julie mesuga i use she her pronouns and i live in ward two i'm here to support the model that counselor freeman has put forward as well as the thermal regulation item i'm here as a queer white woman and also as a fossil fuel resistance organizer i recently had an experience well where fully armed police officers came to my apartment completely unannounced i had to tell the officers i did not want them to come inside because the last time someone came into our house under similar circumstances someone was completely traumatized i know the berlington police department why would i want to invite that violence into my home right now it seems that berlington is okay with police brutality especially against by pock we've seen that the bpd will fire someone immediately for perjury but wait eight months to even mention an officer cracking a man's skull for no reason the police commission is not separate enough from the police it's meant to oversee and discipline this is similar to letting a grade schooler grade their best friend's test it doesn't work and it doesn't foster trust meanwhile the mayor is trying to consolidate more power for himself we need an independent oversight board that represents our community and especially those with marginalized identities i also want to speak to this thermal regulation item fracked gas infrastructure can be a 50-year commitment and one that disproportionately impacts by pock and low-income communities paying fees for electrification now will save us in decades to come and we won't be stuck with stranded assets city control of thermal regulation can help make this a reality the newest fracked gas pipeline that cut through our state had a projected cost of 87 million dollars which nearly doubled to 165 most of which had to be paid by vermont gas ratepayers for only 900 new customers which comes to 183 thousand dollars per new customer which federal regulators would not have allowed on top of all of that the gas we get is coming from indigenous territory in so-called alberta it's not even energy being produced in the united states let alone vermont so please help give our community power to reduce the harm caused by violent officers and from fossil fuels thank you thank you our next speaker will be m bower to be followed by traf fryer and let me do a couple names after that as well just so folks know where they're where they stand on the list um i have um i couldn't find kelly o'donnell and i believe has let known that kelly was not planning on speaking so then traf fryer meg tragollo gabriel ellie or elie um william keaton um rosalyn or rosalyn um kimberley chatwell daniel scha grace amed um jake van vol vol vol vol vol vol lear um maria castine alana redden ian lund jazelle glassby christine fleming alexandra karambolas lydia kern amy malinowski and emma galvin so those are just another couple of folks who are coming up i'm going to go to m bower now to enable your microphone hi my name is em bower i use they he pronouns i'm a white trans ward two resident i'm also lifelong vermonter i've lived in berlington for over two years now and i have family who also lives with berlington i'm here in support of community controlled police and the proposed policy introduced by councillor freeman in particular i'm supportive of this policy as it grants the board an investigatory and disciplinary power and calls for complete independence from the berlington police department i know that this policy has received significant input from our community and that it will continue to center by pock in those from historically marginalized communities including but not limited to my fellow members of the lgbt community and those who have experienced houselessness mental illness and addiction by mandating diverse and representative board membership it's essential that we create effective oversight of the police that is completely independent from the berlington police department it is evident by the fact that joseph coro and kori cambell are still officers of the berlington police department that our current systems cannot be relied upon to hold the police accountable community organizers have put hours of mental and emotional labor into addressing this wrong as others have said before me if the city can acknowledge that racism is systemic our leaders have the responsibility to take action to work to end it and let our city vote on this policy i'll add that i am also in favor of the just cause evictions charter change thank you for your time and i yield the rest of my time thank you all right our next speaker will be trav fryer to be followed by meg tragolo trav i'm coming to you and have enabled your microphone hi thanks for having me i'm trav fryer assist white man landlord and ward two i've lived in berlington most of the past 15 years i'm calling to support councillor freeman's community control of police resolution i think the police must be accountable to the people and to do that we need a completely independent body from the brun the police department to oversee the police department seems like common sense to allow it to be voted on in march it shouldn't be a huge decision just to allow it to be on the ballot so thank you all for your work on this and i yield my time thank you so our next person will be meg travolo meg i found your microphone um before i do that let me just say who's next um we got gabriel elie or ellie um so go ahead meg it looks like you're muted on your end there you go okay hey my name is meg travolo i'm a resident of resident of ward three currently i've been covering city news for various local outlets since i moved here in 2017 my opinions don't represent any publication i've written for those three and a half years have proven to me that berlington desperately needs community oversight over the police department so many incidents of violence and profiling getting ignored or forgotten about even cori cambell the officer who killed douglas killberg may he rest in peace got two weeks paid vacation afterwards the police also disproportionately target black berlington residents the population of this city is only 4 black but black people make up between 15 and 20 of those that bpd officers stop suspect and arrest that's a direct statistic from bpd's website they admit that's straight up it is clear by now but not only is policing as it exists across this country a harmful presence berlington police go out of their way to avoid policing themselves nobody's watching the watchman so i am in full support of the proposal for an oversight committee made up of the community members who are impacted by bpd violence the most last lives matter i yield my time new i was not able to locate um gabriel elie so i'm going to go to william keaton next actually i believe already okay william keaton yes there we go i found you and enabled your microphone all right awesome uh my name is will i use he and pronouns i've uh been in brilliant in for 20 years as a local um if american exceptionalism is the idea that america is invincible invincible uh i say like i think like vermont exceptionalism is the idea that vermont is like a paradise for white people where politicians build pits in the city as you know people like swim with the beach and ski in the winter or whatever and i think we can all say that that's a lie that conceals the blood and violence endemic to our state and the country in general uh we have to realize we as white people and uh active agitators is that this is not a radical change we're asking for this is this is one step towards eradicating the police institution uh fundamentally built in slavery and slave patrols and the terrorizing of black people and vicious people and many other types of people so um yeah we're not really in here you know begging for you to do this uh we're in here you know demanding that you do your jobs and then you know we the people will do our jobs by holding you accountable uh that's all i have to say i see my time thank you um our next speaker will be um i was unable to locate rosalind so i was i've got kimberley chadwell um to be followed by danielle scha so kimberley i've enabled your microphone can you hear me yes i can go ahead okay my name is kim chadwell i use she her pronouns i am a white resident of ward three here in burlington i have lived here for two years and plan to make burlington my long-term residents as i pursue an education and software engineering two of my three younger sisters also live in burlington and we are collectively invested in getting this charter changed for community control of police introduced by councilor freeman onto the march ballot i had further points um regarding different aspects of um the policy but um at people who have gone before me have really driven that home so i want to speak to those who hesitate to back um to back the community control of police if you are hesitating because of quote unquote snappy slogans like defund the police if you see this policy policy shift as unorganized call for lawlessness i urge you please look at the contents of this charter and ask who really does this harm is there any language that actively harms law-abiding officers does it not just ensure that all are abiding by the laws and people they swear to protect and dole out appropriate consequences should they violate those oaths as police officers it seems only logical that they be held to certain standards and that we as a city ensure they face appropriate action should they fail to uphold those tenets when interacting with our populace police officers who do their job without bias and malice will not be harmed by this long overdue call for accountability thank you thank you am i was not able to locate danielle scha so i'm going to come to grace amid grace i'm going to enable your microphone i'm grace amid i'm a south district resident um i support a vote to put the resolution relating to an independent community control board to oversee investigation and discipline of police misconduct on the march ballot um i find it morally unacceptable that thousands of people were out in the street in burlington this year protesting dangerous officers on our streets and we were told that there was no legal procedure that the community could use to remove officers that we do not feel safe having policing us um the charter change is the beginning of a process of obtaining community consent in how we want to be policed and we need more direct democracy in burlington and i would like to see this on the ballot and take it to the voters and i see my time thank you thank you all right so jake van wolverier i'm to be followed by maria castine jake i'm enabling your microphone hello um my name is jake van wolverier i'm a white resident of ward two i'm calling in in support of both the community control over police as well as the just cause evictions at the core of both of these resolutions is the right for community members to feel safe in the city that we live in as it currently stands landlords have the right to evict tenants with no justification um yeah housing is a human right and allowing landlords to use eviction as a threat to tenants is indefensible no one should ever be kicked out of their house because some wealthy landlord just wants to make even more money off the backs of exploited renters just cause evictions gives tenants the much needed security um to put down routes and become permanent members of this community just cause evictions is a long-term investment that will we will benefit from for decades to come additionally burlington is also experiencing a housing crisis um and we desperately need tenant protections in place if we want to protect the soul of the city um and that soul being of course the working class tenants who make the city function uh working class renters are already being gentrified out of the city and we need immediate action in the form of just cause evictions to prevent our city from becoming a place where only the wealthy can afford to live i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker will be maria castine maria i've enabled your microphone and maria will be followed by alana redden hello can you hear me yes i can go ahead hi my name is maria i am a resident of ward six i grew up in milton vermont spending a lot of my weekends in burlington and i have been a resident for about three years total um i'm also an educator in the burlington school district i'd like to express my support for both the just cause um resolution and the charter change for the um community control of police um i see a lot of similarities to this um situation as last year when we were working on the nomos poly migra resolution when mayor weinberger um brought up his new um memo the day we were going to deliberate it as well as people being afraid to join in to something that created substantial change you all signed the resolution or a lot of you signed the resolution over the summer and now it's time to make a change i know that i hear you know across the board not just in city council but in school districts in businesses people want to hire consultants people want more data people want more investigation to make sure that they're not doing anything wrong they want more information they want it to be burlington specific and we can't waste any more time that doesn't help anybody um as someone said before if you're waiting to feel comfortable that's not going to happen you need to support the people um who have been spending countless hours and days creating this and it's time to put it on the ballot and have people vote thank you okay our next speaker will be elana redden to be followed by ian lond elana i've enabled your microphone yes i can go ahead um my name is elana redden and i'm a resident of word six i'm calling in support of the proposed charter change um to establish a hundred percent community led board that has both investigatory and disciplinary powers to oversee the bpd this feels like and has been proven to be the next step in advancing the priorities of the racial justice alliance the battery perk movement and protecting our community um i had my whole spiel written out and then i was just listening to the call and and the bpd speakers before me and reading through the charter change and i just have been so struck by the arrogance of you mayor and many members of the city council um that you have continued to show over the course of the summer in the fall and now leading into the winter i think that your whiteness and your fear of losing power have stood in your way of the incredible opportunity that organizers of this city have offered you month after month issue after issue community members specifically by pock leaders are spending time that they don't have doing the research the planning the visioning that you all should be brave enough to do i feel like i just keep watching you let these amazing policies and strategies and ideas just like slip through your fingers because you're so burdened or stuck in your fear around what changing this might mean and to make matters worse mayor you continually try to bypass the a plus plus plus work being created around you to then propose like a d minus alternative it's insulting it's degrading and the by pock leaders deserve so much more respect than this so i just want to remind you that you're elected to be listeners and representatives not experts we can't be experts on anything your job is to listen and and to listen to this plan that was informed by actual experts in our community at the aclu from cities around the country you are being offered an opportunity to say thank you i accept this and i want to put this forward to the community so that we can hear what the community thinks about it because that's your job and that's democracy so thank you to the organizers to the reporters or to the by pock leaders thank you counselor freeman for all your amazing work um and mayor and city counselors i just really hope you recognize the opportunity yet again being offered to you and and really um take it and run with it and let it bring it to the community thank you and okay let me i had ian lunds our next speaker folks can just direct comments to me as chair i appreciate that next person is um jazelle glassby ian lund to be followed by jazelle glassby ian i've enabled your microphone hi chair um thank you so much for this opportunity um i strongly support counselor freeman's proposed charter change and i think like alana just said it was extremely well thought out um a lot of work has been put into this and all we're literally asking you to do is just you know put it to a vote of the people in you know this city and this democracy that we live in um and that's really not too much to ask it's honestly not a lot of like sweat on your back because it's like you know we're actually going to be making a decision the people so just let us make our decision let democracy do its work um and pass this um charter change thank you thank you next speaker is jazelle glassby jazelle i've located you and in enabling you to speak your next person um will be or the next person on the list is christine fleming so jazelle go right ahead hi i'm calling in to both support the community control of police and just cause evictions just cause eviction is yet another way to help the community here in burlington landlords are yet another example of people in power who are used to impose fear and control the community landlords should not have the right to use the threat of eviction to renters and lead renters to feel unsafe in their own spaces and feel unable to report misconducting code violations people want to live in burlington and want to be able to stay here but don't want to continue having people in power controlling and forcing fear into their community members i yield the rest of my time okay our next speaker is christine fleming to be followed by alexandra carambolas um christine i've enabled your microphone hello can you hear me again go ahead hi my name is christine i use she her pronouns and i'm a resident of board eight i'm calling in in support of the charter change proposal about regulation of thermal energy systems and residential and commercial buildings the ability of the city council to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings is an important and necessary step in terms of climate action in burlington as i'm sure you already know climate change is one of the most important crises facing humanity today without urgent action in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors of the community climate change will only get worse burlington has the opportunity to be a leader in addressing this crisis that is threatening literally the entire world and i strongly encourage you to support this charter change and any future climate action thank you i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is alex uh carambolas to be followed by lydia kern alex i've enabled your microphone hi there my name is alex i'm a resident of ward four and i currently work as a crisis counselor i'm calling in support of councillor freeman's charter change proposal for an independent community control board this is about saving people's lives and we need your courage ongoing and relentless courage to stand up to the systems that needlessly kill and harm our people the disciplinary processes currently in place are shielded from public knowledge and recourse and were created to protect the police from accountability it is more dangerous to continue this system than it is to change it further the continued employment of violent officers has shown us that no one individual should be in charge of discipline the unilateral authority of the chief of police poses a serious conflict of interest and has proved to be a failure you all as our leaders have committed specifically to reforming our policing systems this year when you signed the racial justice as well as a protesting and public safety resolutions and that commitment included a timeline we waited years decades and centuries where these issues have been present and nothing has been done and no changes have been brought to the table year after year when community members are engaging in these processes more than our elected officials we have problems when elected officials do what they can to silence public opinion and circumvent public process we have problems maro i'm looking at you to be clear these were public discussions that have been happening for months about this proposal which has received tireless community review editing and feedback and has been backed by organizations leading efforts for reform such as the aclu the vermont racial justice alliance the peace and justice center the battery park movement and the black perspective just to name a few if you feel that this is moving too quickly you need to ask yourself why you did not make the time to show up while this has been discussed the public cannot be denied the fulfillment of this critical promise for structural change because of a lack of commitment and honestly competency for the work that must be done to deliver we need you to proceed with urgency as if this is a matter of life or death for you or your family because it is for somebody else this is what we mean by dismantling systemic racism if you can't do that job move out of the way please let us vote on this issue and stop safeguarding the system thank you thank you our next speaker is lydia kern to be followed by amy malinowski again just please direct comments to the chair um lydia i'm going to enable you hi everyone um my name is lydia kern and i'm an artist and a care worker living in burlington for the last nine years um i currently live in ward one uh i'm just really blown away tonight by words by so many spoken um the report sisters mark and christine hughes and jabari um just thank you for everyone who's been at the forefront of this um we need this charter change like christine said i don't we don't need a rubber stamp meeting uh the police commission has not sufficient community control of police with investigatory and disciplinary power is necessary um for those in our community to feel safe um this moment we're living in requires diligence as we move forward and disentangle white supremacy i think on a personal level disentangling whiteness is a task and it's a task systemically too with policy and this is such a simple clear thing we can say yes to um you've heard from us the people in your community that we want to vote on this it's really exciting to think about raising the bar in this way um you know i'm 28 and i'm young i want to be voting on these things i want to say that burlington gave me the chance to do that and so yeah an independent community board is needed um we can do this and we just got to listen and put this on the ballot thank you i yield the rest of my time thank you her next speaker will be amy malinowski amy i've enabled your microphone and you'll be followed by emma galvin awesome can you hear me yep awesome so i'm amy i'm a white woman i use she her pronouns um i grew up in jericho and then i left for a while and then i moved back this summer so now i'm a resident of board three in burlington so i'm calling in to just be like one more voice among all of these voices sharing my support for community controlled police and the proposed policy from counselor freeman um i've never listened to or called into city council meetings um until the summer and as i've been following along i'm really excited to see this proposal come to life um i want to lift up all the time and energy and expertise and emotional labor that's been put in by uh by pot community members and um i think it's critical that the proposal grants the board the investigatory and disciplinary power and and also the resources to be effective in its pursuits i'm also really excited to see that it's intentionally structured for diverse and representative board membership so i really urge you to please make sure that this is on the ballot in march uh not just because this deserves our urgent attention but also because it's really thoughtfully constructed and it's received rigorous feedback from many people across their community um so that's all i'll just say thank you thank you am i galvin next to be followed by alexandra zane i'm galvin i've enabled your microphone good can you hear me okay max yep go ahead thank you so much hi everyone my name is emma galvin i use she her pronouns i live in ward five um and i'm here like many others to voice my support for counselor freeman's charter change regarding community control of the policing as well as the just cause of fiction charter change um i grew up in berlington i moved away for several years and i came back because in this town is important to me um i have a lot of people i love here and i have a lot of people i want to be able to take care of here um but it's been really disheartening in this last year they're not particularly surprising to see organizers energy and labor and brilliance be met with such typical bureaucratic evasion and half measures um we're really speaking clearly right now we're saying that we want a city we feel safe in and we want transparency and we want community control of the policing this is a necessary first step for taking care of one another and taking care of the most vulnerable among us BIPOC folks in particular um so i just hope that everyone is listening to our voices and i appreciate all of the organizers who come before and who spoke in so beautifully this evening and have put in just hours and hours and hours of labor into this so i yield the rest of my time thank you thank you um i was not able to locate alexandra zane alexandra um you can use a raise hand function for me to to find you um if you are on i'm going to go to steven margolan um next um steven i've enabled your microphone steven i can't hear any hear you if you're speaking we can't hear you steven hello there we go okay hi um i just want to um discuss some points that were made earlier and i think remain salient most notably when this meeting started uh commissioner gamesh indicated that of the problems that the police commission currently faces the two biggest are that the chief of police is a hindrance to the process and and policy regarding disciplinary actions in such ways that may have total and ultimate authority that stops the police commission from doing anything similarly the limit of only holding police disciplines records for young for one year uh grossly diminishes the ability to track and identify patterns of errant behavior um it's these two elements that really indicate and show us that police cannot police themselves at every possible opportunity police union will defend itself and its right to abuse citizens above actually protecting them so we need to move beyond the police commission and its ineffectiveness into a community control of police and support a system that is independently run community minded with divorce voices that enables uh independent investigation and disciplinary action um which also leaves me my second point the fact that the mayor thinks he has a better plan or the fact that councillor shannon was on these policy change commissions but has openly said that she does not support it um is kind of really misleading and ultimately disruptive it's these kinds of actions that are intended to slow down the process so that we get pushed up against the wall and miss the date to have this on the march election that shows just how vain and inept it are jone listen up if you don't support this resolution vote for it in march and say no because that's your personal opinion otherwise you are failing to do your job as a city councillor put this up to the vote and let us all choose what we want thank you black lives matter hey thank you again please direct comments through the chair um our next speaker i will be wiley redding to be followed by and i'll read off a bunch of names here just so that folks know if they're coming up um we have ali martel lily lily triviato dan kirk sofia hodson jesse gustafson charlie messing jill brooks tia hunt alex ferden lienne schulman andrew gigler abigail hodson alayna feinberg andy crawford lily and vincent rachel smith sarah ciratino thea zealowski christie delphia joe meggy zoe kenninger and maggie mccoy so i'm going to go to wiley now and again wiley is going to be followed by ali martel wiley your mic should be enabled hi everyone my name is wiley redding um i live in ward two 32 years old and um i do care work and i work with kids in an after school program um i want to express my support for counselor perry's proposal um this police can't police themselves i mean it's been said over and over tonight and i don't have anything particularly interesting to add but it's just so obvious that this is what we want we keep calling we keep writing to you we keep protesting this is what we want and if you're not listening to us then why do we have a city council so i urge you to consider you know even if you don't think it's a good idea even if you personally don't think it's a good idea i urge you to consider the fact that a lot of people are telling you that it's a good idea and that it's what they want and your job is to listen to the people um that's all i got i yield my time thank you wiley i'm having trouble finding some folks now um i wasn't able to locate ali martel lili and traviato or dan kirk so i'm going to keep going i'm going to try and find sophia hodson who will be followed by jesse gustafson hey sophia i'm enabling your microphone you should be able to go now can you hear me yes i can go ahead thanks hi my name is sophia hodson and i'm a white resident of ward six i believe that it is each community member's very basic right to feel safe in their city as it stands now that it's not the case in burlington and the burlington police department has more than justified their own need for accountability i fully support the charter change related to community control of the police specifically creating a system of accountability with investigatory power that is completely independent from burlington police department i'm a trained data scientist and believe that action should be driven by looking at raw data with an unbiased perspective records and data tell their own story and it is not ethical to have that story be told by someone who stands to gain from selective reporting i believe this charter change is a necessary and long overdue step to preventing violence and building compassion in our community thank you for taking the time to listen to me and everyone else who has spoken tonight i yield my time thank you our next speaker will be jesse gustafson to be followed by charlie messing so jesse i'm going to enable your microphone hi can you hear me yes go ahead um hi my name is jesse and i live in ward seven i've lived in burlington for most of my life um i've worked in the mental health and education field with youth in the burlington area and various settings including the howard center and burlington high school i fully support community control of the police and the proposed policy introduced by councilor freeman granting investigatory and disciplinary power to a board comprised of those in our community most historically marginalized and impacted by police violence is critical i also support this board being completely independent of the police department allowing the police to police themselves as a threat to our community it took a movement and a buyout for bellivance to be removed from the force and abusive officers coro and campbell are still on the force today despite public outcry it's clear that the current system is unable unwilling and uninterested in actually holding police officers accountable we live in a city that has declared racism a public health emergency but claims it's unable to fire violent police officers if you all truly believe racism is a public health emergency act like it and listen to and honor the black organizers who have put in hours of work on this charter change and support community control of the police thank you for your time thank you our next speaker will be i was not able to locate charlie messing or jill brooks but i did find tia hunt who will be followed by alex ferdan so tia i'm going to come up to you and i've enabled your microphone can you hear me yes i can go ahead hello my name is tia hunt i'm a white woman i use she her pronouns and i've been a resident of ward two for four years now i'm a nurse in the uvm mc emergency department and i'm calling in today to express my full support for the charter change related to community control of police proposed by counselor freeman i started my career as an emergency department nurse in september of 2019 and within six months i was working on the front lines of a pandemic saying firsthand how the cove 19 virus was affecting our community and specifically disproportionately affecting our bipop community in july of this year around five or so months into the pandemic you mayor Weinberg and the city council announced racism as a public health emergency in accordance with the demands and work of the vermont racial justice alliance with this declaration of an emergency there should come an element of urgency the need to take action quickly in order to protect our bipop community members from continued harm this independent community control board is one of those sustainable actions that is absolutely necessary not only to create proper oversight of the police department but also to protect the health and safety of bipop and historically marginalized community members our community and specifically the bipop leadership in our city have made it abundantly and repetitive repetitively clear to this council that the way our police department is currently being run is absolutely unacceptable and unsafe i hope that the city council takes action to support your own repeated statement that racism is a public health emergency and puts this charter change on the ballot for the immediate safety of our community this charter change has the ability to save lives thank you and i yield my time thank you so i was not able to locate alex furden so i'm going to go to lianne shulman to be followed by andrew gigler lianne i've enabled your microphone hello my name is lianne shulman um hopefully you all can hear me now and i am a white cis woman i use she her pronouns and i am a resident of ward seven where i've lived for six years now i am calling in to support the charter change uh proposal by councilor freeman as well as the just cause eviction and the proposal relating to climate change and housing weatherization regarding community control of the police this is something that is long overdue and has been demonstrated through the actions of our police leadership in this city to be eminently necessary i really hope that this council can trust that the citizens of berlington should be able to vote on how our community is our community police officers are overseen and who gets to control who controls the police it should be the community and we should at the very least get the opportunity to vote on that i strongly urge all of the council members to vote to get this on the march ballot there's been lots of discussion about this i have been able to participate in just a few of those meetings and i greatly appreciate all of the people who have worked so hard to make this possible um i yield the rest of my time thank you all so much thank you our next speaker will be andrew gigler to be followed by abigail hodson so andrew i'm going to come to you and enable your microphone you should be able to go hello can you hear me it's like any go ahead hello my name is andrew gigler i am a white cis man you see him pronouns in a resident of ward one in berlington i'm a student at uvm and live in berlington for over three years and at uvm i work i've worked as a resident advisor and i'm currently a peer mentor i support the charter changed introduced introduced by councillor freeman and i thank councillor freeman and all of the community members especially bypaw community members who have had a role in developing this charter change i agree with pretty much all of the reason said by everyone who has spoken before me the current police commission does important work but it does have limited disciplinary powers to fire police officers it has no true investigatory power and it is not completely independent from the bpd berlington is in clear need of an independent body with real power and to all of the city council members who still are considering if they are going to approve this proposed charter change or not i simply ask you to listen to all of the bypaw leaders and put their concerns first when considering what public safety in berlington should look like these bypaw leaders have been marching the streets speaking at public meetings and getting in touch with local lawmakers nearly every single day since august when the battery park movement began but their demands and efforts go back much further than that and many of them have dedicated their lives to this please do not put your concerns first just simply listen to me and the nearly 136 other people i believe that have called in this meeting all echoing the same demands listen to people to berlington that are willing to step up and make this fight part of their life especially the bypaw people that do this every single day thank you black lives matter okay so our next speaker will be abbey hodson to be followed by alayna feinberg so abbey you should be able to speak hey can you hear me all right um yes i can go ahead great thank you um so my name is abbey hodson i'm a white resident of ward six and like so many before me i'm calling in to support the formation of an independent community control board to oversee police in berlington um a lot of this is just going to be echoing what other people have said um but i'd like to reinforce that a lot of research and energy and time went into this proposal and i strongly encourage everyone here to put this on the ballot in the spring so that your community can vote on it um this is exciting but also it's not that radical we've seen it in a lot of different cities like chicago madison many more um and i think it's about time that berlington follows suit the couple things it's really important that this board has disciplinary and investigative power complete independence from dpd diverse representation and enough resources to uphold the principles of the aclu for community control of the police um like i mentioned before um i'm a white person who loves her community and is trying to be um a better ally and to unlearn racism and i'd just like to ask that all the other white council people tonight consider why um for you just to consider why you say the things you say and why you do the things you do um because in my experience as a white person i found that sometimes i'm saying the things i say because i care more about being perceived as anti-racist than actually being anti-racist um so i think it's really important um that everyone kind of you know questions why they're saying the things they're saying and doing the things that they're doing to make sure that we do the things we do because we actually care about keeping other people safe um because you talked a big talk this summer about caring about this mantling systemic racism and if you want to prove to your community that you actually care about this and you don't just care about being perceived as anti-racist then you'll put this on the ballot um thank you so much for your time and attention tonight and i saved the rest of my time i think i found alexandra zane and enabled them to speak alex okay so this is an alex this is actually a bipod can you hear me okay so maro this is actually for you so as a bipod i feel disrespected that you're using your daughter as protection i don't fuck with that all right so if you're really fucking with black life matter how about you stand up and actually do something actually matters all right thank you that's all i want to say black life matter and fuck you and wait one more that's my foot being put down please don't do that we could just please direct comments to the chair our next speaker will be alayna feinberg to be followed by andy crawford so alayna i'm gonna come to you alayna you should be able to speak can you hear me yes um hi my name is alayna feinberg i use any pronouns i'm a white non-binary person and a resident of uh ward three i've lived in burlington for nine years i'm speaking to voice my support for just cause eviction as well as my support for community control of policing and the proposed policy introduced by councillor creaman um as you heard uh this proposal includes input from uh bipok and historically marginalized groups in our community while also aligning with the acl use principles as well as those of operation phoenix rise and the battery uh park movements demands as well um i support the creation of a new independent uh community oversight board comprised of diverse representatives um and that that board will have uh investigatory and disciplinary power over the police um police cannot police themselves community control over police is necessary um this proposal is really well researched um and it is what democracy looks like um please support putting this charter change on the ballot in march thank you okay thank you go to andy crawford next um i was not able to find andy so i'm going to go to lillian vincent lillian i have found you and have enabled your mic hi can you hear me yep okay um hi my name is lillian um i'm a white resident of burlington i live in ward eight um i've lived here for in burlington for six or seven years now and i've lived in vermont for the past 13 years um i was calling in to support um the just cost charter um change and also the community control of police um charter change um and yeah i mainly want to talk about the community control of police one um just that the police were created to uphold white supremacy and enact racial violence and seeing resistance to the community control it's really clear where people's priorities are um on one side you have literal white supremacists who created this and on the other side you have experts like the aclu the racial justice alliance the battery park movement the black perspective um and i believe also the majority of people in burlington but we won't be able to test that unless you put it to a vote um bipoc activists have given so much time and energy to create this um and to educate all of us in the public about um how this would work and answer all of our questions and if you haven't been taken advantage of that i think you're not doing your jobs and you're being lazy as community members and as neighbors and also as public servants um and yeah i really hope that you put it on the ballot for march um and black lives matter i yield the rest of the time thank you our next speaker is rachel smith to be followed by um sarah sirtino so rachel i'm going to come to you now i've enabled your mic thank you very much my name is rachel smith and i live in ward one i wholeheartedly support the proposed charter change this past year has underscored just how important it is to have community control over policing given the power that police have over the lives of those in our community the community should have the power to vote on this thank you so much to vermont racial justice alliance operation phoenix rise counselor freeman and everyone else who has worked on this and i ask all of you to support placing this on the ballot and while i have a moment i would also like to express my wholehearted support for just cause eviction thank you so much i yield my time thank you our next speaker will be sarah sirtino to be followed by fea zealowski sarah your name your mic is now enabled hi there um my name's sarah i'm a white ward one resident and i use she her pronouns i'm a student activist at evm and i'm calling in to support the charter change to be placed on the march ballot that would allow the city of berlington to regulate healing systems um to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and i'm also calling in to support changing the police charter and in support of community control of police and councillor freeman's proposed policy um allowing berlington to regulate heating systems would be a step in the right direction towards getting berlington off of fossil fuels myself and my peers worry about climate change every day and as a city that prides itself on being green um it's pretty absurd that we rely on biomass which is a much more carbon intensive renewable energy source than some fossil fuels massive steps need to be made for berlington's reality um in terms of energy use to align with our outwardly projected values and this is a good first step given the time constraints associated with addressing climate change as a whole failing to pass this charter change or to do anything less than this as a first step is unacceptable in the name of my future and the future of everyone facing the front of the climate crisis near and far in particular um by pock and lgbtq folks and women um i urge the city council to adopt the charter change um and i also you know i'm sorry i had a comment prepared for the community policing but it seemingly disappeared but i will just say that the um you know i think that as people who as a city that claims to be um accepting and inclusive and one of the most diverse cities in the state we really do have to do whatever we can to make by pock feel accepted and just to you know make sure that this is the safe community and city for everyone and um having you know met so many people who have been affected by the way that policing is done in berlington it's really just really ridiculous that there are people who still think that there isn't a massive problem that needs to be changed drastically in the ways that we police the city um so yeah i yield my time thanks oh okay so our next speaker is theas luski to be followed by christie delphia fea i've enabled your mic hey you should be enabled now if it looks like you just need to unmute on your end okay can you go to christie delphia christie i've enabled your microphone one knows exactly what i'm here for i've been the driving force behind just cause evictions since the city and our meetings started in february started back up again in end of june beginning of july as i sit here this evening i watch our city crumble under the weight of systemic racism in housing reforms that are not being performed as we have repeatedly asked i sit here in an apartment with my 75 year old mother during a breathing pandemic and have had to endure drugs being cooked in a building that we are living in causing us to have fans in our windows at 15 below zero sitting here with blankets on our legs and our winter coats on because the landlord refuses to turn the heat up we are being evicted from this apartment because we have complained to code enforcement we are allowed to be evicted by this system for no cause and that's exactly what the eviction is about we are being forced to prove that this is a retaliation eviction this is absolutely unacceptable behavior from certain people using their powers to use city officials to let landlords know about things happening in this city and not notifying tenants to deals that have been made that i've now been broken which is one of my biggest pet peeves and i had to deal with all of my life we are screaming for these reforms countless hours countless protests and countless voices are telling you you are the government of the people by the people and for the people we are the people you need to listen to what we are telling you i am seriously scared that my three grandchildren are going to grow up in a world where systemic racism and political power takes over the voices of those who are marginalized beaten unhoused and disrespected now is the time for you to stand up and do your jobs and listen to the people that are telling you what they want this is our world this is about our protections please do your jobs hold up to your agreements stop using your personal political powers and personal political views to control our lives please stop arguing over the may or shall and pass this resolution for just cause evictions that will stop people from being kicked out of their homes for no reasons better our community and stop making tenants live in fear i strongly urge you to pass these resolutions as they are written and give the people the choice to vote on their own protections thank you thank you so it is now 11 o'clock per our motion um so um we that will be our final speaker for the evening um we had had a motion on the consent agenda as well um someone councilor stromberg are you able to make a motion on the consent agenda yeah so i moved to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated okay is there a second to the consent agenda seconded by councillor paul any discussion of the consent agenda councillor hanson uh is there an opportunity after we vote on the consent agenda to complete the public forum if we if we choose to as a body um i mean if i i guess the councillor could make a motion um though yeah i mean so any other discussion on the consent agenda um hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi i opposed hearing none that passes unanimously councillor hanson yeah i would i would like to move that we finish the public forum especially since we we've already cleared the dock of other items i think we should hear from folks who've been waiting for hours to speak um and let everyone speak so i would like to make that motion okay second seconded by councillor high tower councillor hanson just so i understand you mean burlington residents and non-burlington residents yeah okay okay so there's a motion and a second is there any discussion of the motion councillor hanson um how many people left do you think um we're at 104 and i have a total of 147 signed up and then there's other burlington residents non-burlington residents who gone over um in part of the prioritization and there's probably maybe a dozen or so of those as well so we're talking maybe 50 more people or more but again i don't know how many folks are still on the line so that's another aspect of it so it can sometimes like as it gets later it can go more quickly so because not that many people are on with the 80 folks on so i don't know of those folks who still has yet to speak okay thank you and this is i believe requires a two-thirds because it's an amendment to our agenda so point of order yeah councillor shannon aren't we voting on the same thing twice because we already voted on how we're doing this and we already voted on ending the um public forum at 11 taking up our consent agenda and now we had 40 minutes of debate about our agenda and so now we're going to do that again i don't think that that's um i don't think that we can actually vote on the same thing twice attorney blackwood are you able to please weigh in yeah i was weighing that myself the the motion that i wrote down that you voted on before said that you were going to um do hear public forum until 11 p.m then take up the consent agenda then recess and continue to next monday so i think you've already voted to recess once you um done the consent agenda you you can't amend your agenda now you can't change your agenda and i think you've already um uh voted to recess after the consent agenda okay councillor hinson can we reconsider that motion attorney blackwood um my concern is that the opening law now requires your agenda to be the first item that you work on and once you've set your agenda um i'm not sure that you can think it again okay i mean i mine my interpretation from the maker of the motion was that we weren't meant that was that we weren't meant to continue the am i still do i still have the floor but i'll give you i'll get to come to you next councillor polina um yeah my interpretation from the motion was that the whole idea was that we would complete the public forum tonight so that next monday we could dive into our work the way that we're doing it right now we would just reopen the public forum next monday and continue so i don't i don't feel that this is consistent with and also i feel that as a body you know we should be able to make this decision at this point councillor polina i i appreciate uh eileen's a clarification of the previous motion so i wanted to ask a follow we so it's a point of information point of order i'm not sure but it really is we can't really entertain motions if we voted already and it was to recess immediately after can we i guess one question yeah i mean i i think you did vote that okay thank you one more point of information and apologies yeah sorry this is for me because i don't think i totally did i guess did in terms of reconsider i thought that councillor hanson had voted no and please sorry just correct me but on so why wouldn't he be allowed to reconsider if he voted no on the original proposal turning back what are you able to answer that um i'm i'm i'm thinking about it it's late at night and i'm thinking about it councillor mason just a further point of information i i want to make sure because i think councillor hanson said something incorrect the motion that passed was to have public forum till 11 recess the meeting there is no public forum starting on may 14th that is not consistent with what councillor hanson said okay turning back would any further thoughts on this i am um i just want to look i'm looking quickly at the open meeting law and what it says about setting your agenda so if you could give me just a moment to do that president tracy may i weigh in yes go ahead councillor shannon i thought that councillor i may have misunderstood the question but i thought that councillor high tower's question was about the fact that um councillor hanson had voted no so why can he not make the motion was that correct was that the question yes often yes so he can't only those voting in the majority can make a motion to reconsider right i really bet after i asked it but okay i answered my question about the agenda you can you can't add or delete anything to the agenda but i'm not sure this would be either in addition or deletion this would be continuing something that you were just already hearing that was on it so i think you could move to reconsider the proper motion for reconsideration was made councillor freeman i'll move to reconsider okay is there a second to that motion seconded by councillor stromberg any discussion hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour of the motion to reconsider the question please say i actually know will the city clerk please call the roll councillor carpenter councillor jeng councillor freeman yes councillor hanson yes councillor high tower councillor high tower yes councillor mason no councillor paul yes councillor paulino no councillor pine yes councillor shannon no councillor stromberg yes city council president tracy yes eight eyes four days okay so the motion to reconsider carries and we are now back to the original to the the original motion correct attorney blackwood yes uh point of order yep go ahead councillor shane it's possible to reconsider an agenda that we just went through we've already like doing the thing that we've reconsidered so how is it possible to reconsider the agenda the motion that that i think that you were reconsidering is hearing public forum until 11 p.m and then taking up the senate and then resourcing and continuing until monday that's that portion of the that your that you approve the agenda with that part in it so now you have to decide even though you started your agenda can you reconsider what i'm looking at in the in the open meeting law as it says an addition to or deletion from the agenda has to be made as a first act of business but any other adjustment to the agenda can be made at any time so i'm looking at this as you you adopted the agenda with that additional language in it and that you can that now it says you can make an adjustment to the agenda and you're doing that by reconsidering the agenda you can't undo what you've done of the agenda so far but what you haven't yet done it seems to me you can adjust i don't believe that's a reconsideration point of information councillor freeman go ahead so is the motion attorney blackwood now then if we did want to extend the public forum um would i be amending councillor high tower's motion or would i just move to extend the forum well what you just voted to to to reconsider is your motion to um to adopt the agenda and it has written on in on board docs plus amended as amended with the public forum ending at 11 and recessing after you did the consent agenda point of information on that go ahead councillor polina so i thought earlier i mean you clarified we you had to be in the majority of that vote of the amended of councillor high tower's amendment to the agenda in order to reconsider i thought we clarified that i don't know what you're asking it was councillor hansons motion and he voted against it councillor freeman made this motion that you're looked to reconsider that you voted just voted on but she also voted no that's not the case councillor polina so i have councillor paul then councillor hanson go ahead councillor paul thank you president tracy um i just have a quick question for attorney blackwood so i've always been um under the impression that we cannot vote on the consent agenda until the public forum is finished so should we have voted on the consent agenda on the off chance that there was someone in the queue who wanted to speak to a consent agenda item you have to allow public comment before you vote on the consent agenda you announced that you were limiting public forum until 11 p.m and then you were going to vote on the consent agenda you have done that you're now talking it seems to me about reconsidering your what you had put in the agenda as your next action which is to recess until the next meeting okay all right that's all in the interest of time thank you i you've answered my question okay councillor pine i'd like to move to call a question okay so we're calling the question on the original motion which was to reconsider the original question which was to end at end at 11 and recess to our next meeting and attorney blackwood this would just require a simple majority right point of order i don't know that there's an item on the floor we pass the motion to reconsider that pass right but then you have to actually vote on the question itself you have to decide whether you want to reopen the question and then the question itself is on the floor and now councillor pine has called the question no motion has been made though no but the motion was on the floor already it had been made we're reconsidering it so now councillor pine has called the question on on this and councillor and motions to call the question are non-debatable is there a second to the motion to call the question seconded by councillor hightower these motions require to the motion to call the question requires two thirds will the city clerk please call the roll councillor carpenter please remind me what i am going on here calling the question oh yes councillor jang yes councillor freeman no councillor hanson no councillor hightower yeah councillor hightower no thank you councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor paulino yes councillor pine yes councillor shannon yes councillor strongberg no city council president tracy no seven eyes five days okay i'm looking at paul's the question fails we're back to the the question itself councillor freeman so i can move to amend that we the motion the underlying motion to extend to continue the public forum right right yes so i'll move to extend the agenda for tonight to include the rest of the public forum okay so i will complete the public forum i'm sorry so the motion is to complete the public forum of the people who are currently signed up for the public forum okay is there a second to that motion seconded by councillor hightower any discussion okay hearing none will the city clerk please call the roll councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor freeman yes councillor hanson yes councillor hightower yes councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor paulino councillor pine yes councillor shannon no councillor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes eleven eyes one day so that amendment passes we're back to that original motion that we were reconsidering we're ready to vote on that as amended so as i understand it we're saying we're going to complete the public forum the people who signed up giving them a chance to speak and then we'll recess the meeting at the end of that and then go into the rest of the agenda and that we that we have not dealt with this evening and are not planning to deal with this evening any further discussion okay let's go to a vote all those um will the city clerk please call the roll councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor freeman yes councillor hanson yes councillor hightower yes councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor paulino yes councillor pine yes councillor shannon no councillor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes eleven eyes one day okay so that passes we're going to complete our public forum tonight then we'll recess and we'll deal with the rest of the agenda we'll go right into our agenda on the 14th so which is that the deliberative items that we have not dealt with this evening so let's get back into that public forum um all right so our next speaker is Joe McGee um I don't see Joe um so zoe caninger don't see zoe okay I'm sorry this is gonna take a little bit of finagling um Maggie McCoy Maggie McCoy I couldn't find you um Hannah Saydeck um and just so folks know um on deck we have uh Hannah Saydeck um Emma Chaffee Sophie Aronson Erica Victoria sienna McGraw Joey Corcoran Liz Kessler Mary Oscar Flemmer Skyler Pierce Matt Kimball Grant Taylor Whitney Joseph LaRiviere okay so I'm going to look for Hannah Saydeck now okay Hannah I found you thank you for using the raised hand that helps enabled your mic um you should be able to go awesome can you hear me yep go ahead wonderful so my name is pronounced Hannah and I Hannah Saydeck and I am a lifelong born and raised resident of Vermont not curling in currently in Burlington I'm here in Cavendish I use they them or z here pronouns and I'm using my voice to add to the support for this Burlington charter change regarding the community control of police as a lifelong Vermont true of color as a working class non-binary queer person and as one who has been here experienced violence of the police in Vermont and in Burlington and has been grateful for my friends and for BIPOC Vermonters for standing up for this for having a new independent community control board to oversee the local police one that includes both investigatory and disciplinary authority one that holds the police accountable to our community that they serve and that's very important to me and to have the community control board being composed of individuals most directly impacted by policing it must be transparent and it must be independent of the Burlington police department so again I'm here to add my voice to the community in support of approving the proposed charter change recommendation and having these proposed changes on the annual city election ballot in March 2021 I'm doing this also for my little cousin who is a woman of color who went to UVM and who's currently in Burlington and so that one day when I go back to Burlington to visit friends that I feel safe and supported so thank you all for your work I yield my time thank you I'm a chaffee I'm going to come to you or chaffee um to be followed by Sophie Aronson I've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yep go ahead all right um hi my name is Emma Chaffee my pronouns are she they and I'm white I'm 21 and have lived in Burlington all my life until I moved to a new ski this past summer I'm calling in to re-emphasize that community control of police is a necessity which is way past due I wholeheartedly support Councillor Freeman's proposed policy and I stand with the Battery Park movement and in support of the Racial Justice Alliance's Phoenix Rise Initiative the charter change must be included on the March ballot to get it there is not a burden it's a moral imperative and you do not need more time it is way past time to the white council members you must realize that it is a gift to get input as you have from BIPOC members of our community and especially from black women and femmes who have put in countless hours of work towards this charter change and towards your job to tell them that you need more time is honestly laughable I'm especially looking at you Joan stop putting a time limit on and rolling your eyes at black lives you all need to stop acting like black liberation is a burden on our comfortable white lives when it is anything but white council members the police cannot police themselves and if we continue to let them we are not only complicit in but personally responsible for the perpetuation of harm against black people in our community white counselors in Mammarro I hope you know that most of you were elected not because you were the best option but because you were the privileged option now that you are here to not do everything in your power to fight for black lives is disgusting black liberation should be the foundation of every choice that you make on this council and for this city you have to decide whether you really believe black lives matter or if you'd rather just paint it on Main Street and then get to bed on time thank you okay thank you for that I was not able to locate Sophia Aronson or Erica Victoria I'm looking for Sienna McGraw cannot find Sienna um or Joey Corcoran wait do I see Joey maybe Joey Corcoran wasn't going to speak but here we are um good evening my name is Joey Corcoran I'm a white cis woman these are pronouns I've been a resident of board six for the past 14 years I recently retired as a licensed mental health counselor and I wasn't going to speak because many people before me have have said very eloquently what I had already written down and I very much appreciate all their comments and the work that I now understand has gone into this proposal I'll only say that as a counselor who could harm people emotionally and the dynamic of power between counselor and client I was overseeing by the office of professional regulation and I could lose my license if a client claimed I did harm I see this control community control board really as very similar to the office of professional regulation for the police and I urge you as so many people have to put it on the ballot and allow Burlington's residents to vote I think that it is what we need right now to reinstall a trust in law enforcement and to ensure the necessary level of safety for all our residents so thank you for your time I know it's late so I'll see the rest of my time thank you um so Kenninger I was able to locate them so go ahead enabled your mic hi um my name is Zoe Kenninger and I live in Ward 4 I'm white and I use they them pronouns um I've lived in Burlington since summer of 2015 and I graduated from Burlington High School in 2019 I'm on a gap year from Smith College due to the pandemic and I'm currently working as a barista in south Burlington um so firstly I want to second basically everything that everyone said so far I've heard so many great and inspiring comments and I agree with everyone um I want to focus on some of the main questions I've seen when I've interacted with some of the counselors over the issue of the charter change these questions involve why creating a new board is necessary and how it will be different from the current police commission uh firstly the community control board would have a much different job than the police commission as detail in the jurisdiction section of councillor Freeman's proposal the community control board is tasked with investigating complaints and disciplining officers as they see fit based on these investigations the board would have full investigatory and disciplinary power to do this and as it stands now the police commission is not able to do most of these things it's severely limited in his disciplinary and investigative abilities and that is the problem based on this it's clear that these are two very different bodies however the police commission still has an important role to play it's job and oversight advice and review policy are also essential and therefore we call for the existence of both boards to work together supplementing each other in order to hold bpd accountable and keep the community safe um it's not enough to just give more power to the police commission though as it currently exists the police commission is too closely entwined with the police department and the chief of police to be able to investigate and discipline officers in unbiased uninfluenced ways therefore the creation of a whole new more independent board is essential in order to effectively discipline officers and hold the burlington police department accountable finally i want to recall that at the beginning of the battery park movement protest when we called for the firing of violent officers jason bellivance quarry cambell and joseph coro in response to our demands many counselors said something along the lines of if i could do something i would but i can't our hands are tied i am delighted to tell you that here finally is something you can do something that will make a real difference voting to put the charter change on the ballot will help you more effectively keep the public safe from violent officers and you won't feel as your though your hands are tied like that again so i call for you this evening to vote to have councillor freeman's proposed charter change on the ballot to give the people a say and to allow for community control of police thank you thank you all right i'm going to go to liz kessler liz you're next i've enabled your mic good evening i'm a burlington resident and a teacher at sx high school i work daily with young people from so many different backgrounds who are hungry to live in a just community and a culturally affirming space this resolution resonates deeply with me as an individual as well as an advocate for young people in this state the proposed charter change would dedicate space and power to people from historically marginalized communities within the systems that govern burlington this proposed change reflects the concerns and demands of the same people who endure the daily injustices inflicted by systems designed by and designed to serve the wealthy and white residents of burlington vermont's cultural and economic future depends on the implementation of concrete policies that give voice and power to people of color and that dedication of resources to systems that integrate their expertise and wisdom into governing bodies this charter change would result in a well-crafted systemic improvement to current justice practices perhaps you council members harbor some reluctance to move forward with this proposal because you fear that police power would be compromised with the passage of this resolution i encourage you to imagine an outcome in which the dialogue and action among community leaders evolve to better ensure the safety of all especially people of color new americans differently abled folks people experiencing homelessness and queer folks this reform represents a tangible step toward creating space for marginalized voices in our governing bodies it has been thoroughly researched and vetted by community members of color who have had enough of unchecked and deeply biased policing practices here in vermont please listen to those community members who have spoken out and support a vote on the creation of an entirely new and independent board for the community control of police thank you thank you our next speaker is mary lacy to be followed by oscar flemer mary i'm going to come to you hi i'm award three resident i have lived in burlington since 2014 and i just want to say that i support the community control of police board as many have said before me we need accountability from an independent and resourced body i'm grateful to all the work that so many have put into this proposal and i think it's something the city deserves to be able to vote on at the very least i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker will be oscar flemer oscar i'm actually i'm going to change over we're going to switch speakers and let the amy bogey from the city clerk's office leave us thank you so much amy for managing the timer for so long very much appreciate it councilor paul is going to take over the timer now um so councilor paul i don't know if you're able to share your screen i don't know if you need there we go perfect wonderful thank you for your help with this councilor paul give me just a second okay go ahead good okay great thank you i'm going to go to oscar flemer now oscar is to be followed by skylar pierce oscar i'm enabling your microphone hello hi my name is oscar i use he him pronouns and i've lived in brovington my entire life i'm showing up tonight in support of freeman's proposed charter change they'll put control of the bpd into the hands of the community where it belongs i'm white but i grew up on norsham plain street with my half sister who is poc she doesn't live here anymore and then this discussion with her recently we revisited why in the city council meeting frustrates me because it reflects many of the reasons she would never in a million years return to brovington for a lot a lot of it lies in representation how this community silences her and people like her it silences them in very direct ways that many of you carry out by suggesting we don't return to the by poc fem voices that have quote unquote already spoken when what this actually means is these community members have been following and critiquing this process from the beginning with a vested interest in their community and their own safety and have followed it more closely than the mayor and many within this council and it silences them in less direct ways where after these community members exhaust themselves to be heard you let this valuable commentary go in one ear and out the other or are so bold as to act as at the extent of this public commentary is somehow a burden upon you literally thousands of people have been calling in since june and a concentrated effort to dismantle systemic racism in our community and the fact that the mayor submitted his own proposal at the beginning of this meeting and that his proposal will likely be considered with similar weight is mind blowing to me when you hold it up to a process of community collaboration that has span months morrow knows he can get away with dismissing countless hours of public input through his bullshit process and balancing the appeasement of white property owners and maintaining our harmful status quo which at any moment can cost us yet another life and that this and this is such a problem and i wish someone on this council would stand up to that and say it's not okay what he is doing because political slickness is nothing new and has actively roadblock change every step of the way it's as simple as this the charter change proposed by council of freeman is what we need in this moment in this moment is fleeting the community with an emphasis on voices of bipoc another historically marginalized group has come out in droves and committed their time within and outside these meetings to critique this proposal and make it adequate for the march ballot which it needs to be on for so long we've needed a truly independent civilian control board for police misconduct with investigatory and disciplinary powers that ensures and historically marginalized identities asleep at the table and here it is please do not let the mayor who knows his days of political side stepping public opinion or numbered at this point manipulate your deliberation process to compromise the timeline of this essential work by pock in this community have once again done the hard work in the community has spoken and the pseudo progressive Burlington political apparatus is once again trying to disempower that if this proposal doesn't get on the ballot in March the redundant time added to this process will literally cost life and quality of life lastly for those of you who have become so callous that the majority of your input in this meeting has been to do your best to wrap up public comment as quickly as possible silencing your constict constituency to have an easier job please consider quitting that job and leaving it open for people who actually want to represent their community councillor shannon at this point it seems like you get a weird power trip over minimizing public input thanks for the time of Black Lives Matter thank you folks can please keep their comments focused on me as the chair i'd really appreciate it i really just really helps the the whole just the discourse in us to focus on the issue at hand if i just if i made the request several times can people i just would ask that people please respect that skyler pierce is next skyler i'm going to enable your microphone hi can you hear me can you go ahead thank you for allowing me to speak i'm skyler pierce i'm assist white woman i live in burlington in ward two and i am in full support of community control of police um we need a board that is independent from bpb to avoid any kind of bias the board needs to have disciplinary authority so we don't have to sleep night after night in battery park to get our city to hold police officers accountable for their actions and to ultimately prevent these actions from occurring in the first place this board needs investigatory power to make sure the public is obtaining accurate police data this board needs to be transparent to the community most importantly this board needs to have representation from the affected groups and need to listen to the affected groups in order to accurately represent the needs of the community freeman and other contributors have provided us with the community control police that meets all these needs that the current police commission cannot cover the current police commission board is just not transparent enough and has limited disciplinary authority the question i have um for you is why not put it on the ballot ballot like why is this something or questioning why fight something that protects the citizens you are all supposed to be represented let the people decide what will make them feel safe we all just want to see some of the authoritarian power that bpd holds disperse the groups that can make actual positive influential changes in our community um i just want to say thank you for voting to not silence the people um you should be listening to thank you okay next speaker will be matt kimball to be followed by grant taylor so matt i found you and i'm enabling your mic hi uh my name is matt i live in ward seven uh i've been at resident brunton for 12 years um i want to voice my support for the charter change proposed by councillor freeman to create an independent community control board to oversee the police um it's pretty evident that the current city charter granting the police chief sole power and firing officers is a conflict of interest anti community and allows impunity for abusive officers approve the charter change so that it can be voted on by the public in march if you truly believe that you work for the people you will make this happen if not you will be voted out it's perplexing to me that this even needs to be a conversation honestly um and it feels pretty offensive to hear that the mayor put forth his own proposal at the start of this meeting um in direct opposition of the goals of the racial justice alliance um it's apparent that this is political fodder with the goal of forwarding progress um i did want to share just a quick story um a co-worker of mine who is a person of color recently disclosed to me that they had stopped working for our organization for the first half of this year um and the reason why is because every time they left their home to make the commute to work um they were repeatedly profiled by an officer at an intersection where they were given false travel citations and this repeated incident forced them to resign from their position at our organization as they could no longer afford to keep receiving these citations um and the complaints they submitted to the department were subsequently ignored um i find this beyond acceptable that this is happening in our community so please stand on the right side of history and don't allow your fear to disrupt the lives of others thanks thank you sorry i had trouble finding some folks um for the next round the next speaker so look for grant taylor um person who just signed up as whitney joseph la revere ella causer causer and rachel seagull amanda schian found you so i'm going to go to you next and amanda is to be followed by um clark so i'm going to go to amanda first and then we'll go to clark and it looks like you need to unmute on your end amanda okay go try and find clark i am not locating clark amanda okay i'm seeing you again um and it looks like you're you have talking permitted so you should be able to go okay i'm not able to hear you amanda looks like you're muted on your end hi i'm so sorry to leave you waiting can you hear me yep go ahead first of all just thank you all for staying later i really appreciate that and i also appreciate i don't agree with everything that's being proposed but i appreciate the care that's got into what you're all working on um tonight i'm going to focus on just cause eviction i've sent separate comments on the police oversight charter change at i think some of that language is problematic and is leaving us up for litigation but i sent that email separately um with regards to the proposed charter change for just cause eviction i want to thank you for the care that was put into that it was initially exciting for me i've rented all my life and this proposal felt like a victory for tenants but as i've listened more and read more about how this charter change may affect the community at large i have some reservations about the language as it's proposed it doesn't allow enough flexibility for landlords to evict tenants who create hostile or threatening environments for other tenants or for the landlord the threshold for proving criminal behavior is high as it should be um but this means that people may feel unsafe yet have little measure for relief if this charter change passes for example sexual harassment it's not really something that you're going to prove criminally another point of issue is that landlords may find themselves in challenging financial situations and need to live in one of their rental units i've seen this happen among families experiencing divorce perhaps more importantly this proposal is onerous for landlords and creates less incentive for them to take risks on leasing to tenants with little rental history or a troubling past because they'll fear that they're going to be permanently saddled with problematic tenants as a younger woman with poor credit and no rental history or cosigners i face challenges in finding people to take a chance on me and i worry that we have so many people in this community who may have criminal records poor references or bad credit and this is going to create a more challenging environment for people to take risks on them and get them into long-term housing i would ask you to look to what Portland Oregon has done which allows landlords to evict tenants without just cause but they have to pay a month of rent to tenants this would encourage landlords to think carefully about evictions will also allowing them to remedy for extenuating circumstances the proposal as it stands now may reduce eviction i think it will but it'll increase discrimination and make it harder to get people into apartments thank you so much for all the care that you put into this you our next speaker will be Phoebe Perrin to be followed by Sophie Howitt um Phoebe i located you and have enabled your mic um hi i already spoke earlier tonight so i'll yield my poem okay thank you for thank you for that i apologize i sometimes folks the the form will sign up to white well okay so Sophie Howitt is next not locating Sophie James Martucci not finding James Lee Pratt not seeing Annalee okay Debra Kraft i have located you and Debra is to be followed by uh Betsy Pennebaker Debra i've enabled your mic hi can you hear me yes go ahead hi my name is Debra Kraft i'm a resident of ward one in Burlington i've lived in Burlington for four and a half years and i'm involved in many different parts of Burlington life including the food service industry the music scene cycling community and mutual aid efforts i'm calling to voice my support of community control of police and of the policy that Councillor Freeman has proposed i support this proposed policy because i believe the police department needs a completely independent body made up of community members to provide input when police officers need to be disciplined this way we don't end up with police officers policing themselves this proposed policy has received input from many BIPOC and other marginalized groups in Burlington giving voice to people that are often underrepresented in society and disproportionately targeted by police these are the voices we should be listening to if Burlington wants to take the work of dismantling systemic racism seriously there are police officers in Burlington who have resorted to violence instead of de-escalation who are still serving as officers today as a community member member this does not make me feel safe i feel that civilians should have more power in deciding what conduct is deemed acceptable and in deciding how officers should be disciplined after incidents of brutality or wrongdoing have come to light thank you for your consideration consideration and your time and i appreciate you all staying on late to listen to your community members um i see the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is tom proctor to be followed by and i'll read off a bunch of names elin mcgill um elissa bretta erhard manka uh hazel civilier eric mayer maggie stanley and forest richard Richard and jonathan silverman and so i'm going to go to you tom have enabled your mic so go ahead good evening my name is tom proctor i'm a white resident of ward one i use he him pronouns and i'm the regional organizer for rights of democracy in jithin county i'm calling it a day in full support of just cause eviction but and this does come with a but i am not in favor of tying the city's hands by creating legal loopholes of big landlords uh sorry that big landlords will use to continue using no cause evictions it is imperative that we pass language on the ballot that tells bilintonians that we will consider and create reasonable exemptions to just cause in certain circumstances we must not bind ourselves to language that shall allow landlords to continue to turf out good tenants by using our own language against us landlord figgins more of a huge amount of power over their tenants and tenants made up 62 percent of our city residents this creates a massive power imbalance and with a handful of folks holding power over well over 20 000 bilintonians they've also far more resources money influence and time than the tenants they house by banding our hands for a restricted language we allow the bad landlords landlords this charge to change seeks to target to use their considerable resources to continue to evict tenants for no good reason the issue to spend this next week before the next meeting on one day to come back to the table so we can thread the needle on language and find a way to create just cause language the majority of the council can get behind but most importantly the majority of tenants and the majority of bilinton can get behind i support just cause eviction i support the charge to change and the police oversight reform backed by the black perspective uh the perry has created i also support weatherization this is and has been exhausting work on all of these charge to change measures respect and love all of you that make this your current life's work all the activists that have done so much to advocate and push week after week just to get the right to put language on a ballot in the hope that you can make the city best for marginalized and ignored people councillors please spend this week wisely thank you thank you or i was not able to locate elema gal um so i'm going to go to elissa brita to be followed by airheart manca elissa i'm enabling your mic hello can you hear me yep awesome okay um my name is elissa brita i live in the south end of burlington in word six um we moved to burlington in pro um and have tried to work with the community and really tried to continue to listen to our BIPOC leadership in this community and other marginalized groups um thank you uh to all of our BIPOC um and marginalized people who have spoken and uh really just like used so much so much time and energy to take um into this that they really shouldn't have to use after um you know effortless effortless times of continually talking about their experiences and and um i feel like this council and the city just not listening and not taking action so um i very much support community control of police and their proposed policy by councillor freeman it is clear that this proposal is the preferred form of action for many in the community especially BIPOC and other marginalized peoples which should speak volumes to this council um as the police and the city are supposed to be serving all of its community members and not harming us we are the people we are speaking and we are standing up for what we believe and want and feel comfortable with which is holding police accountable and having community voices input this makes sense as a system to have the community speak if the police are supposed to be serving the community um which with community control hopefully we will be able to strive to represent all in our community especially the most marginalized and most affected by police brutality who are undervalued also in community including BIPOC immigrants unhoused disabled queer and more um i do not feel safe and i feel that police continue to abuse their power and do so continuously and have little or no repercussions um we need a justice system and i think this is the start and we will continue to speak up until there's action change in justice thank you thank you right next speaker is airhard manca to be followed by hazel civilier airhard i'm enabling your microphone can you hear me uh chair tracy yes go ahead great thanks for staying up folks it's kind of hard to be articulate this late hour but i'll try first of all i just wanted to say that i wholeheartedly support and hope that you pass a just cause charter change um i know from talking to counselors on each of the sides of the of the divide around language i think you're close i urge you to stay at it over the next week and resolve your differences for the sake of protecting burlington tenants that really need this reform we've needed this reform for over 30 years i worked on it with counselor pine 30 years ago unfortunately it didn't make it then i truly hope that we can get this on the ballot and pass it and then we got lawmakers to send it back to burlington to craft a good ordinance at the local level i also want to talk about the police charter change having listened tonight you know i have long felt that independent oversight of the police is needed i used to think that we could reform the police commission but i i've been convinced by the work that's been done by so many on counselor freeman's resolution that an independent separate body is is really what's needed and i speak as the father proud father of a young african-american man social worker lives in baltimore is never coming back to the state for many of the reasons never coming back to live in burlington for many of the reasons that others i have cited i've seen him get in trouble i've seen him uh you know harassed by the police not just in burlington but south burlington pollchester really all all all over the region i've lived with the fear of him being harmed or killed by police for most of my uh my adult life he's now 30 years old he grew up with the meli brothers and i just have been was horrified by that particular police action we one of his best friends was tased by burlington police in front of his own mother i hope that you all can put this on on the ballot i would like my son and all of the other african-american folks in town and in vermont who come to burlington and people of color to feel safe in our town thank you thank you our next speaker will be hazel civil year to be followed by eric mayor um hazel i'm enabling your mic hazel i can't hear you yet a hazel i'm not seeing you i have to do that panelist thing um because of the because of the software um not seeing you on here so i'm gonna go um to eric eric mayor i've enabled your mic hey can you hear me yep go ahead thank you counselor tracy president tracy i'm sorry our next mayor um i had written something so nice to say oh which is unusual for me um specifically thinking about counselors paul carpenter and polina um who i really do appreciate in these conversations not because they're necessarily leading the way but just because i wasn't expecting them to have an open mind and they've shown that so i wrote such a nice thing asking them to continue um but i just can't i can't get to that right now um i'm feeling the same feeling that i've felt i don't know hundreds of times before of coming up against just the cynicism and and patronizing behavior um of of certain elected officials who are really supposed to be listening and are not supposed to be um off the cuff just out of out of their own minds last minute coming up with random suggestions that subjectively might be more palatable to imagined future humans this is put this in front of the people like this is what democracy is about um so you know and this in terms of speaking to my fellow citizens this can feel so discouraging and i understand why some people stick to direct action and don't even worry about the electoral but counselor freeman who's spent so much time on this it is someone i met a few years back at a city council meeting um and just watching them come to their position now you know and being part of that process it's just shown me that we can affect change on this level um you know boy the mayor's race is coming up there's four council races coming up in march grace on med is is running in the south counselor freeman and hansen are running again um uh etc so i just want to say that you know that there is something we can do and it's it's probably not trying to convince people that have already proven to us over and over again that they're not listening thanks thank you our so i wasn't able to locate maggie stanley so i'm going to go to forest rich richard um forest i found you and have enabled your mic hi can you hear me yep go ahead my name is forest i use they them pronouns i'm a white queer resident of ward five so i'm especially speaking to my representative chip mason tonight as well as the entire council and mostly most importantly mayor murrow i've lived in vermont for most of the last decade and have lived in burlington for a little more than a year i work in developmental services in the city of burlington and have worked multiple agencies in vermont for over four years including the howard center because of that i deal with mental health and developmental services on a daily basis and i'm very passionate about ensuring the city and its systems work 100 of the time for 100 of the people in vermont we claim to be very proud of a history of institutionalizing mental health my opinion we haven't come close to that ideal i think for instance the case of disgraced chief of police brandon del pozo serving on the board of the howard center i have called in tonight to voice my support for community control of police and for the proposed policy introduced by counselor freeman this proposal has received significant input from many across our community including by pock and others from historically marginalized groups and is informed by models in other cities and the aclu principles for civilian oversight and aligns with the demands of the battery park movement and vermont racial justice alliance's operation phoenix rise initiative this is your city speaking to you and begging to be heard me and my community support the creation of a new board because we're advocating for a completely independent body from the burlington police department we believe that adding these powers to the police commission will increase the scope of that commission past its capacity we believe the current police commission will still be relevant in reviewing and advising on policy related to police the people of the city are passionately working to make ours an example for every city in the country we want real change and we have complete faith in the ability if not the willingness of the council and the mayor to make these important systemic changes and let me just say i think it's insane that in a so-called democracy we have to put this much pressure on our representation to allow us to vote on a matter that directly affects the people let the people's voices be heard lastly i want to state my utter respect and love towards the BIPOC leadership that have worked day in and day out with no pay and very little credit for their undying dedication to change despite the constant burnout that all activists have been dealing with as well as the endless dismissal and road blocking of the city government i love you all black lives matter thank you our next speaker is jonathan silverman jonathan i'm enabled to your mic hi there i just wanted to speak in favor of the proposal for university place um i think more bike lanes and having a one-way street right there would make it a lot safer um and i think it would also set a precedent for a lot more roads in berlington to follow that as well thanks okay so thank you for that um i'm gonna be coming to alex sturgis next alex i'm enabling your mic um and then alex will be followed by why at loose so alex go ahead hi can you hear me yes go ahead my name is alex sturgis i'm a white cis woman i use she-her pronouns on the lifelong resident of this area i'm a paralegal at a law firm in downtown brillington i'd like to use my time to express support for councillor freeman's proposed policy for completely independent community control war with full investigatory and disciplinary power to function alongside the current police commission and for the board's makeup to consist of folks who have been historically marginalized by the police including BIPOC folks lgbtq ia plus folks especially trans individuals of color those who have lived experience with houselessness mental health struggles substance abuse issues domestic violence and incarceration and free of people with former experience or close ties to law enforcement but you know all of this all of you know everything i've just said you know exactly how much come on a community support that this dress has and if you don't you haven't been listening or you don't care either way you have a chance now to open your ears minds and hearts to real transformative change that will impact communities you serve in a progressive and positive way i'd also like to echo what my friend and fellow organizer mel carpenter said about the mayor's decision to post his own proposal just as this meeting began it's conniving and calculated and disgusting the mayor's proposal is cosmetic change not structural it continues to reinforce that mayor morrow is not truly interested in dismantling systemic racism he is interested only in the cosmetic and performative change painting a mural is great and i'm sure it made you feel good mr mayor but anti-racism work is not a self-improvement exercise for white people it does not end when you feel better about yourself it ends when BIPOC folks stop dying this month marks the end of a very difficult year in the midst of a pandemic that is killing black americans at a rate 2.4 times higher than white americans february of this year we saw 25-year-old amadea re go out for a jog only to be hunted and killed by white men who would not be arrested for another 74 days on march 13 26-year-old briana taylor went to bed in her home after a long shift as an emt probably longer than you've had to listen to public comment tonight and was killed in her own bed by police serving a no-knock war on the wrong house on may 25th 46-year-old george floyd went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and died slowly and painfully while a white police officer ignored his repeated cries for help the events of this year has caused many white americans to open their eyes for the very first time to the reality that BIPOC and other historically marginalized folks have known and had to live with for the entirety of this country's history the knee of white supremacy and systemic racism has been dug into the neck of BIPOC americans for hundreds of years while they gasp for air and beg for help you have a unique chance counselors tracy paulino high tower and pine right now counselors carpenter mason hanson and paul in this moment counselors dang stromburg freeman and shannon to relieve some of the pressure of that knee on their neck those of you have chosen to stall hinder and delay we will not forget black lives matter okay her next speaker will be um i was not able to locate white loose or shane keruth so i'm going to go to emily tardy emily i'm enabling your mic hi um can y'all hear me yep go ahead okay thank you um my name is emily tardy i'm 19 years old um i use they them or she her pronouns uh i'm a student at uvm currently living in new haven vermont due to covid but um i've lived in vermont my whole life and i hope to continue to live and work in burlington for a very long time i'm calling in this i'm calling in this evening with current um i'm so sorry i can't read calling in this evening with urgent and insurmountable support of the proposed changes to the city charter involving in burlington's specific model for community control of the place uh seeing the evolution of this legislation from its infancy has been wonderful in that i've seen how public input should be used and applied in city decision-making i mean there's no reason that this adamant public support cannot be translated into action and they urge you to do so uh this process is how the city should operate um please just listen to the public i mean this is democracy right uh this policy drafted by councilor freeman with the help of tens if not hundreds of community members includes and must continue to include full disciplinary and investigatory power complete transparency and zero ties to the burlington police department i mean valvance's initial discipline was poor and it cost the city three hundred thousand dollars and then some to ensure the safety of community members after the police department's initial failure uh this independent body will ensure that this one comes in a timely and adequate manner without bias i highly recommend and ask this change be passed as soon as humanly possible to ensure that this can be on the ballot in march to be voted on and then to be put in action in the state legislatures early as april or may um the racial justice alliance's operation phoenix rise initiative outlined that there needs to be restructuring of public safety i mean this is an actual and lasting first step that needs to happen and it needs to happen now it's essential for the safety of our marginalized friends and neighbors i mean this is how you start to actually dismantle system of racism please remember this is only the start treat this with urgency that the community members have also treated it with thank you hey our next speaker will be sonia buglion gluck um to be followed by linea wiley hean pfeiffer carol pfeiffer and heather bedell sonia i'm going to come to you hello can you hear me yes go ahead hi thank you president tracy and thank you counselors i really appreciate you staying up late um you've heard the calls um many times so i won't repeat um but i wanted to say i am a resident of s junction and i've been involved in the hearings around our own police department and um and we're trying to put together some kind of a community control board in essence as well and so i know that our select board looks to burlington and to the policies that you create i've heard them say this um in their town meetings around you know the declaration of racism as a public health emergency wanting to do something similar to what you're doing and so um you know what you do really does have a ripple effect around the state and um so just wanted to bring that perspective to to remind you that um you know as the i don't know the queen city of vermont you really um your decisions on this really have um effects that go beyond the the city limits and again like i urge you to um ensure this gets on the ballot for the people to actually vote because it should be their decision so thank you and um again appreciate you taking the time to see me i yield thank you our next speaker i was able to locate uh james martucci so james i'm going to enable your mic hi max thank you i can hear me yes go ahead um so uh tonight has been in pretty amazing uh explore exploration of uh a number of different perspectives on this issue a lot of people have brought extremely personal testimony to the table um this is not the first time this has happened this won't be the last time that this happens uh hopefully this will be the last time this happens on this issue with the charter change um but uh yeah with all that in mind uh i'm james martucci i am a resident of ward 8 i use he and pronouns and uh i am a handyman in the area um and i'm here just to voice my uh also my agreement and demand to pass this resolution i mean this uh charter change document put forth by councilor freeman and um just collaborated upon by so many amazing leaders in this community that have been working on this for so long uh and really just uh there's a requisite for this to pass for there to be any real effort uh towards combating police brutality in burlington and this is just so long coming and i'm going to yield the rest of my time thank you thank you our next speaker will be uh linea willie have enabled your microphone hi can you hear me my name is linea willie i'm a cis white resident of wanouski i was born and raised in the greater burlington area and my family has lived here for generations i've contributed to this community as a massage therapist caregiver high school coach musician homeowner and taxpayer first morrell shame on you for your strategically last-minute proposal and for showing exactly where you stand on this that was so shady because this system is bent crooked to benefit me and not in those holding identities with privilege like mine and yours i want to first make clear that the only voices that truly matter when discussing issues of policing in the prison industrial complex are the voices of the black community the most affected and historically marginalized considering the vile context surrounding the origins of policing it has always been necessary to check the fuck out of the powers and intent of this militarized and dangerously protected body in our society and today you have in front of you an opportunity to do so in a state with the worst criminal justice system racial disparities in the country and therefore world don't blow it and don't you dare let our BIPOC leaders countless hours in a measurable labor on this policy be in vain i fully support this charter change which burlington could help pioneer an absolute absolutely necessary restructure of public safety by opening up channels of actual accountability our city officials have handled past investigations of violent officers disgracefully exactly the way the system is meant to function all you have to say is your hands are tied it is absolutely unacceptable that the police chief is the only person in the city with the legal authority to fire an officer accused of misconduct when they hold the most obviously biased position the impunity enjoyed by the officers here is disgusting it is essential that the city creates a completely independent and transparent body with that power and direct oversight over our police made up of our most affected neighbors community control board will provide even more value to the city than anything before with real power to ensure real justice please do your part by passing this change in time for march thank you for your time black wise matter thank you um i was not able to locate um Ian Pfeiffer carol Pfeiffer or heather bedell but i was able to find thea zalewski yeah i've enabled your microphone it looks like you're muted on your end Tracy yeah i think it's possible that that person may have spoken previously i had tried them prior and wasn't able to do it and i see that always in your hand um still see you being as muted on your end okay i don't still can't hear you okay i've gotten through all of the burlington and non-burlington residents and we would signed up um so i think we are concluded for tonight thank you everyone really appreciate it thanks to councilor paul for taking over for the timer um thank you to um everyone for bearing with us with this and i'll be certainly bearing with me with all the tech and everything um always appreciate that and all your understanding um from the members of the public with this so for folks what what we'll do is we're going to pick up where we left off in this meeting meeting we'll pick up with our agenda so not the public forum but the agenda the deliberative agenda we do also have actually a a meeting with the mayor presiding um haven't forgotten about that um which has some appointments about for board so we'll deal with all that stuff um next monday um we're going to start at five thirty um just so we're crisp and ready to go with that um so we'll have that that going um so and we'll get that agenda and meeting warned and all that stuff up so folks are interested which i'm sure lots of people who um spend all the time staying up until 12 20 are wanting to follow along with this please join us next monday starting at 5 30 and we'll um be debating a number of charter changes and we'll go right into um that agenda so thanks folks really appreciate it have a great night