 I feel like we're in a different like, you're like, oh, we're going to get started. Like this will be like, we'll be grow to be 80. Like, let's see when they say. Not used to speaking without a microphone. And so, I know I mean a microphone that actually sounds like the microphone. So that I know that I'm not shouting at Michael. Thank you all so much for coming. We're here so that the voters of the South district can hear from their candidates for city council. Primarily on the eighth and final ballot question, I'm going to go back to the first question. I'm not sure why proposition zero is proposition zero. It was not the first proposition, but the proposition before the first proposition and thus the name proposition zero. By way of background for those who aren't aware. This question is on our town meeting day ballot from a citizen lead petition effort and Vermont statue. We're going to begin this evening with an overview of what the actual ballot language. Is and not a. A petition. By receiving 5% of registered voters signing a petition. And in Burlington's case, we have two. It's rather unusual, but this year we actually have two items on the ballot that came by a petition drive on proposition zero being one of them. We're going to begin this evening. We're going to begin this evening with an overview of what proposition zero is and not a, not an editorialized version, but just simply explaining what proposition zero in the eighth ballot item is. And I'll turn that over to my colleague from ward five city councilor Ben Travers. Thanks Karen and thanks to the candidates for being here. Thanks to the Greek Orthodox church for hosting us. And thanks of course to all of you for joining us this evening. I'm going to go ahead and turn the volume down a little bit. But I'm going to likely know more about it than I do, but I'm going to give it my best to give you a high level overview of what if voters were to pass question eight. It would mean. First of all, because question eight is a charter change and we'll talk about this as the evening goes forward. If voters vote in favor of it. It will then go to our legislature. And ultimately our legislature and the governor, to enact the measure in order to change our charter. Our charter every provision in there is ultimately something that's signed off on by our legislature. If that were to happen and it were put into effect as the language is on the ballot for voters to consider here, it would open three different paths for voters to put questions on the ballot. And either those paths would require the signatures of 5% of Burlington voters. Just as this charter change required 5% of Burlington voters, each of these three paths would require 5% of Burlington voters. One of those paths would require that if there's a sufficient number of signatures, folks could put advisory non-binding questions on either local, national, international issues on the ballot for voters to consider. A second is referred to under the initiative as under the ballot question as a binding initiative. This would be not for charter changes because we already have that in statute. This would be for ordinances. So an ordinance could come forward and with the support of 5% of voters, the City Council would first have an opportunity to decide whether or not they wanted to enact it. As written, the City Council could not make any substantive changes to the question. They would have 60 days within which to decide whether to enact the ordinance. And if the City Council failed to take action within those 60 days, that ordinance question would be put to voters just as question 8 is being put to voters now. And then finally, what's referred to in the question is a referendum. And what's being discussed here is basically asking that the City Council reconsider an ordinance or resolution that they've taken action on. So within 45 days of the City Council taking action on a measure by referendum, the City Council could be asked to reconsider that matter. And if within 30 days of being asked to reconsider the matter, the City Council does not act to repeal it, then that question as well would be put to voters just as it's being put to voters in question 8 for voters to decide whether or not that matter should be repealed. So we would still have the Charter Change Avenue and these three other avenues of an advisory question, a binding ordinance initiative or a referendum to reconsider an ordinance would be put into effect. I think that's a pretty high-level overview there, Karen, and happy to turn it back to you now. Okay. All right. So thanks, Ben, for that. Before we, you know, just a little bit of, you know, thoughts on this forum, the intention of this is to, for it to be an interactive forum. And we've allotted about an hour, we have the Greek Church until till about 8.30 or so. Ben and I were asked to moderate this and we're happy to be here. We're thrilled that there are so many people here to engage with the candidates for the South District and for all of you who don't live in the South District, welcome. This is where Ward 6 has its NPA meeting. The point of this event is to give the voters another opportunity to hear from our South End City Council candidates, but also to learn about Proposition Zero and the candidate's position on this ballot item. Before we start, Ben had already alluded to a few of the organizations that we owe a lot of thanks to. The Ward 5 and Ward 6 NPAs are sponsoring this event. We are grateful for their support. For those who aren't familiar with the NPAs, they are grassroots neighborhood organizations and they're here to inform the residents about important public community issues as well as neighborhood advocacy. And we will try very hard this evening and our intent, of course, is to honor their mission and conduct this forum so that we can all learn and become more informed voters. Also wanted to thank Channel 17 who helped us put this together in amazing speed. We actually, a week ago, we're in the process of planning this and they responded within 24 hours to get this all set up for us. So thank you to Charlie. Thank you, Sam, and all of the people at Channel 17. As well, Father Andreas of the Greek Church was willing to host this and it's a great place to have a nice gathering and have a little bit of food and thank you so much to the Greek Church and to Father Andreas for hosting. And last but certainly not least, it's hard to have a, as Fareed will tell you, you can't have a gathering without food. And thanks so much, Fareed, and to the People's Kitchen for organizing the food that we have this evening. And of course, thanks to the candidates for agreeing to be here. So before we get to some questions to spur discussion on to each of the candidates, we would like, and I actually didn't ask you who wanted to go first. We didn't do any drawing straws. It's a little bit informal on if each of you could take no more than three minutes to state your position on this ballot item. And then if you can inform the voters about why you're taking this position. And one of the members of the Awards Exterior Committee, Dale Azaria has offered to be our formal timer. And she has pieces of paper there so that when you're down to two minutes and then 30 seconds and then when your time is up, your time is up. So I didn't ask. I don't know which one of you would prefer to go first, but don't all shout at once. But if you want to, however you'd like to do this. And again, it's just to, if you could just state your position on the ballot item and explain your position. I'll volunteer if that's all right. Thank you so much, Will. Am I speaking clearly enough? I'm not sure. I just want to, I'm the first to line up. Okay, great. So I'm in favor of this ballot initiative. And I'm going to keep my answer probably below three minutes because I know that as in a lot of cases throughout tonight, I might defer to Fareed, who has been really one of the lead activists behind this initiative. But I'm in favor of this because I see it as an avenue to expand democracy in Burlington. And I think that we need to do that. We need to get on par with other Vermont communities that have a town meeting day with other Vermont cities that have the ability to put things on the ballot with greater ease. And I think that's important because citizens should be able to make forays into the way that their lives are governed. It's not easy to run for city council. I'm learning that now. It's not always easy to get something across to a legislative body that has a lot to consider and a lot to weigh. But I think that making it easier to mount a campaign, to go out and talk to your neighbors and convince them to sign on to an initiative is a great way to balance out our needs for a democratic society. So I've heard the arguments from people that I've been talking to foreign against this petition, but by and large, the idea that this will make it easier for people to change how their lives are governed. And more importantly, that it encourages conversation amongst neighbors, that it encourages people to go out and mount their own campaign for something they believe in. I think that's very valuable. And I'm happy to discuss the different arguments for and against this because I think that those four are much more convincing to me. So I would like to just leave it at that and to look forward to the rest of the conversation, reiterate all the thanks that Councillor Paul has put forward to everyone help put this together. Again, my name is Will Anderson. I'm the progressive nominee for city council in the South District, had a chance to meet many of you already. Look forward to continue to expand that. Thanks Will. We may go next. I'm Joan Shannon. I'm the South District City Councilor and the Democratic candidate for city council. And I would like to especially thank President Paul, Councillor Travers, the NPAs who are hosting this channel 17 degree church. But really especially for read because for read, we would not be here without for read has been working on putting this measure on the ballot. I don't know how many years for read three years. I thought it was pre COVID but but yeah, it's been a lot of effort but also for getting this particular event together. It was for reads initiative to to bring us all to the table and I think that's great because this this is a really important question. It hasn't been getting a lot of attention. I am not supportive of it. And I want to just point out some important differences between what we have now and what what this changes. Yes, we can by citizen initiative put charter changes on the ballot as questions seven and eight reflect. But when we do that it goes to the legislature, the legislature reviews it, they can modify it, they can reject it, it has to be signed by the governor. There's still a lot of process around that when a citizen puts that on. And in fact, with question seven with the many many issues I've raised, the defense has mostly been the legislature will fix it. If this becomes law, there is no backstop and the legislature will not fix it and the city council will not fix it because we are not allowed to fix it. And you will have things come forward that aren't really quite right. When they come forward, there isn't an opportunity for compromise and compromise is very important for protecting the rights of the minority. And the minority may be a racial minority, or it may be a geographic minority. It may be a cultural minority or just an interest minority. But all of that is part of the legislative process. When we sit down and craft legislation, we don't just vote yes or no, we work out public engagement means bringing people to the table and not just having conversations about a binary choice, but it means working through the problems and considering the interests of everybody in the community. So I know I'm going to get a flash card. Oh 30 seconds, okay. I think that there are examples. An example that I've used is, you know, a dog park. If you want to take one park to have off-leash dogs, that might be great for, you know, I'm a big dog lover, rescuer, works for me. I'll vote for that. That's not necessarily so good for maybe some of the users in that park that have young children, some of the users in that park who are afraid of dogs or the neighbors who live around that park. But it could be very popular. Thank you. Thanks, John. Thank you, everybody. My name is Farid. I actually, I'm not the initial organizer of this initiative. This came out of the campaign of Infinite for Mayor. So thanks, Infinite, for actually letting me see how that actually election can matter and that we could make a difference. And the name Proposition Zero was just a code name. It was never meant to be the name of this initiative. We were hoping that it would be called Powers of the People, which is the actual subsection of the city charter that would be added should the voters pass. And this is really about powers of the people. I am involved in this campaign and I've been involved for the last few years because I feel very concerned about the influence of money in our election and especially in the ballot process. Currently, Barlington has only advisory measures that are allowed and even that is subject to city council approval. We have seen the city council denied even when the threshold has been reached for a number of signatures. And other than that, we are basically left to choosing between people who will represent us for the next two years and between a set of questions that is pre-approved by the council. Whereas in other municipalities in Vermont, there is more of balance there where the people have the ability to check their elected officials and as well as to put forward proposals that they have developed with their neighbors. I believe that democracy requires the direct involvement and it should not be just limited to regular voters choosing a representative. I think the representative system is great, but I do think that it needs to be balanced with voters initiatives and voters referendum. This is something that has been a long-time tradition in Vermont and most municipalities in Vermont has what's called the purpose of referendum, which is basically if you don't like what your legislative body in your municipalities, council or other men, you can put their decision to a town-wide vote. So for example, we had established Burlington Telecom through a ballot approval, but we could have put the city council decision to sell it onto a referendum had we known about this. But since we don't and most of us are not educated, we didn't do that. So hopefully this will be at least educational for all of us that there is more that we can do in order to be involved in our government. Great, thanks Farid. So Ben and I have sort of divvied up some questions and then we do know that there are some people that are online and of course all of you are happy to then go to some questions if others have questions. And what we'd like to try to do is limit the answers to about a minute. If one of the other candidates mentions you by name in a response and you wish to respond to that, you're welcome to do so. So Ben, go ahead. Yeah, thanks Karen. So Karen and I came up with some of these questions on our own. Some folks had submitted them in advance and as Karen mentioned, if anyone here has any questions, please feel free to raise your hand or for the folks online on Zoom. We do see you on the screen, so feel free to go ahead and do that as well. We've been discussing some, the fact that if voters were to vote in favor of this, it would have to go to the legislature and be considered by the governor ultimately. With some charter changes here in Burlington over the last few years, we've seen the results of that. Some of those charter changes have been enacted, rank choice voting in city council elections, the legislature made some tweaks to it at that level, just cause eviction. Burlington voters voted in favor of that, but ultimately it was vetoed by the governor and the legislature did not override that veto. So with this question in particular, question eight, curious to hear from you all as to how you see it unfolding and playing out at the legislature. And if Burlington voters vote in favor of it, whether you're elected to the city council or not, do you see yourselves playing any role in that process as it's being considered immocular? And Fried, since you went last in the intro, can we start with you here? So the question is, which should this pass? Yeah. So I actually have been working with a couple of our representatives, Burlington representative, and consulting with them about what could happen. Now, the legislature they have approved many charters with similar language. We actually copied part of our language from Winooski as well as Brattle boroughs. And there are different ways it's implemented. There are definitely ways to do this that could address many of the concerns that are raised. And by the at the legislature, so we will be working very closely with our representatives. And I don't see the legislature actually saying no to this. Maybe they will modify it slightly to address the concerns. But everybody else has similar language in their charter. If you go to everyone but Burlington dot com, you can see the side by side comparison between our proposed changes and the different municipalities in Vermont. Thanks, Reid. Joan, if Burlington voters vote in favor of question eight, how do you see it unfolding in Montpelier and what role, if any, do you see yourself playing in that process? I would not want to predict what Montpelier would do. I don't have that expertise. I don't have reason to think that they would deny. I think that there's kind of a mostly a leniency that if Burlington wants it, even if they don't agree with it, they'll largely give it to you that they would probably modify it. I would think our own city attorney identified that, you know, I've heard of many forums that this was copied from Winooski's. But in fact, Winooski is significantly different. And our own city attorney said about this, Winooski's charter is more thorough and internally coherent. It includes clear guidelines and procedures regarding a petition sufficiency, including the clerk's issuance of a certificate of sufficiency, suspension of a referred ordinance upon the filing of a petition, clear timing. There's a number of things. There's also exemptions in Winooski's ordinance that are not in this. I don't know if they would really marry this to something that is more coherent or we would get it as it is. I think that's a bit of a gamble. Thanks, John. Sure. Will. Yeah, I'm going to be echoing a little bit of what the other candidates have said. Will I be elected to the city council? I've definitely promote the passage of this bill in the legislature. And I think regardless of that, this would be a bill that does pass the legislature in one form or another. I do agree with Councillor Shannon that I definitely think the legislature would be looking at some of the provisions for safeguards, such as for fiscal implications, for feasibility. But in contrast to Councillor Shannon, I don't really see that as a gamble. I think the initiative is strong enough as it is. Because, and this is also going to another point that Councillor Shannon raised in the introduction, let's say hypothetically an ordinance has passed that is lackluster for whatever reason. Let's say that it turns out to have fiscal implications that were unexpected at first. We can go back again. The city council can pass another ordinance or can pass another referendum to try to set this right. Public policy is not something that you get right. Everything at the first try. You go down the pike and you find out what's working and what isn't. So I think that that can factor in as well when we're looking at that concern. Since I was mentioning that, are you about that? Sure. Do we get two minutes or what's the rule? Can I respond? Can each of you just take 30 seconds? I mean, we have one minute for the answers. I think for a rebuttal, maybe 30 seconds for each of you. And we have a number of questions, so I'm sure it's going to touch on whatever. So I just wanted to say that as far as, oh, we can fix that down the road, that's really not clear how we fix that. We're told we have to implement it as written no changes done. We don't get to amend it when it comes to the council. So at what point do we get to amend it? Because we're told we can't amend it. Once it's passed by the voters, it becomes a law as is. So I'm not sure in what point in the process we can change that law and we may not be able to change it in a time frame that allows for budgetary considerations. Our budget is adopted June 30th and so between the March election going through, we'll probably find out in April if the charter change passes. Thanks, John. Great. We are not unaware of Winooski's exemptions and limitation. We fully are aware of that and we would be willing to live with that. Our job was to demand maximum power for the voters. We're hoping as our leaders the council could take a look at Winooski, look at Brattleboro's and work with us to add the guardrails that they feel is most appropriate. We wanted to make sure everybody can understand within one page. It's plain, straightforward, pretty straightforward English and so the consideration of space and also our job is to demand maximum power for the people and we will work with our leaders to make this acceptable to them as well. Okay. Well, that brings up a good point that you've all sort of alluded to and that is that one of the concerns that I know I've heard about this, you know, about Proposition Zero is what you've sort of already mentioned and that is the implications of a binding question being put on the ballot that is about say, for example, a possible something would have tax implications. So in other words, for example, a citizen petition could come forward that would require a 10% tax increase that would go into the budget and perhaps be earmarked for a specific, you know, number of projects. I didn't go that far in my hypothetical. But in fact, as some have pointed out, the city of Winooski, they prohibit petition items that are financially related or contractually related. As we all know, taxes are property based and therefore they affect property owners and they affect people who rent. They, you know, increase rents through increased property taxes. And so I'm just wondering if the valid item passes and particularly for those who favor and then we have another question for those who oppose. But if you favor the valid item, how do you reconcile that given that you are supporting a fairly broad ballot question? So I don't know, for reader will either want to do if you want to respond to that. Well, you know, like I mentioned, I think that the fiscal concern is an important one. I think it's definitely something the legislature should be looking at. But I think that this is something that it's an important power for citizens to have. I think that people should be able to think about projects, fiscal implications and make their arguments and be able to get signatures for that and be able to put that on the ballot for people to consider. I understand that, you know, this is a that there's risks involved with that. But I have trust in the people of this city and, you know, have been tremendously impressed by the level of education and civic engagement that I've witnessed here. I think it's important that we at least to, you know, have a shot at getting that kind of power to the people. Okay, great. Thanks, Will. Fareed, how do you reconcile when you reconcile that issue? So the language that is being proposed gave the city council authority to review and the city attorney to review for legalities, consistencies, clarity. Also, I guess that there is kind of gray area there of what substantive change means. I think it's important to see what the voters like intent is and then put whatever is necessary to make it work. I mean, this is very much intended to be a collaborative process. So that the nice thing about ordinance is like we can resolve it within our city. We don't have to go to the legislature to have it to settle the differences. So that's so the whole is we will be working with the city council to make to both to like have our we be able to express our will and also make it practical and workable. Great. Thanks so much. Can I respond as well? Well, we sure. Thanks. I think the task there's there's two issues with the tax implications. One is you don't if it's just like, do you want to 10% tax increase? That's one kind of thing, but more likely it will be like question seven, where there are things built into this ordinance that have taxing implications, you're not necessarily aware of like creating a new department with an investigative office, a director ability to hire consultant staff and a legal advisor that has tax implications, but it's not called out. The other issue is to say that it's collaborative. It is not collaborative because what gets voted if you work with the council, only things that the council rejects will go to the ballot. That's a binary choice. And you can't work with the council because whatever is on the ballot becomes the law when it's voted upon. So there isn't that collaborative process. Collaborative process happens if the council adopts it by the council. Great. Thank you all. Thanks Karen and thanks to the candidates. So again, if anyone here has questions, please feel free to go ahead and raise should we take a moment here? Yeah. Andy, I think you had your hand up first just before Brian back there. So go ahead. I'm interested in. Andy, could you speak in the mic? Sorry, just so I can hear you. My name is Andy Simon. I wanted to try a case in point. The F 35 resolution that was passed by voters in Burlington calling for the city of Burlington to call on the Air Force, the Air National Guard to change their mission in Burlington away from the F 35 to another plane or to another mission. This was passed, I believe it was 55 to 45, 55 percent of the voters said, yes, we should change the mission. This was an advisory question. It went before the city council and basically it called on the mayor to write to the secretary of the Air Force and the mayor wrote a letter that essentially nullified the will of the voters. So how would this be different under proposition zero under ballot question eight? What would be the options for voters in a situation like that? Example, is that a question you'd like to ask to a particular candidate first or? Okay. Anybody that wants to give an answer? I was here. I don't know that this would be different under proposition zero because what was requested in that F 35 ballot item was that we requested a new mission and I actually passed the resolution following that asking the mayor to write that letter to ask the secretary for another mission. The mayor did write the letter and I believe did quote the language from the ballot to the secretary asking for another mission and it did not dictate exactly any further than that what the letter had to say. So I don't think that this would be different under proposition zero. I think you would have that advisory question on the ballot. It would probably play out pretty similar to what happened. Clarify my question. If this question were proposed as not as an advisory question but as a binding ordinance or a binding question, how would that have played out differently? I think that we did, even if it were a binding question, I think in that case we did meet the letter of that request. I don't know that that would ever fall into this because that was an advisory question. It wasn't an ordinance and this applies to ordinances. So again, I think that would remain an advisory question. Even if it were a binding question as opposed to advisory, I think that we met the criteria that was asked on the ballot. That was my understanding as well because it was directed at the city council. If it was directed at the airport commission to do something then that would compel them to do it. But otherwise as far as I remember that F-35 language is just basically requesting the mayor to request the Air Force to do certain things. He did that, so he did it. But he didn't ask the airport commissioner to then figure out something else. They probably have powers that they could leverage but that wasn't on the language of the ballot question as far as I can remember. Yeah, largely an agreement there. I think it's more of a question of the language section on the ballot and the mandate that's actually given to the mayor in this case than the format by which we issued advisory question. So I think that this initiative probably would not change that outcome too much, no matter if really tailoring what we're putting on the ballot. Brian, do you still have a question? Sorry, Andy, does that answer your question? Okay. So I'm represented by Gina. I do support this and I've been doing a lot of research into charters in the last few weeks and learning a lot more. And I just want to validate a lot of the concerns I'm hearing because as I'm learning more, I'm seeing a lot of the guardrails that people are talking about. I'm seeing that there's a wide range of thresholds, 5%. In some, I think goes up to 25% sometimes based on their charters. The vast majority of Vermont's are covered under municipal law and it's 5% for permissive referenda. That's like almost a universal right in Vermont that we have in Burlington and that Newport doesn't have. But I just want to put that out there because I hear your concerns. And so I'm thinking like, well, what do we do if this passes in the next year? Number one, you can come to the legislature and share these concerns and I would certainly be open to the legislature changing it accordingly. The legislature changes charter changes all the time. So if there was enough concern, they might add in the guardrails that the city council asked for, especially if advocates were coming in with you and you were agreeing. But if that didn't happen, then I'm like, hmm, how would the city council address an initiative? And so here's a question for the candidates. So if you get elected to city council and you find out that on the Wednesday after town meeting day, there's people already organizing a petition around an initiative, how might the city council engage with those people in advance around their initiative? Potentially to either make sure that anything that passes is compliant or to pass an ordinance to satisfy the citizens to nullify the petition. So what are your thoughts about how the city council might, as a city council, how might you handle that if you were elected? What might be your strategy? That must make you the next stop. Yeah, no, thanks, Representative Cheney. It actually aligns with the question that I was going to ask. So if you don't mind my sort of piggybacking on that a little bit, which is, I mean, you are here because you're running for city council in addition to talk about the question. And in addition to what Representative Cheney was asking, a question I had is if you are elected to the city council, you will have sort of the power in your own right to introduce some of these matters as a resolution in your role as a city councilor. So whether a process has already been started by petition or not, I suppose the question is would you, on these matters, if you support them, first try to work in a more deliberative way with your colleagues on the city council before resorting to a petition process? Or do you envision yourself instead, if this was a matter you supported, going the route of the petition and sort of putting a question before the council in a way that wouldn't really allow substantive changes? I agree, substantive perhaps is up for debate for read, but wouldn't allow substantive changes as it's written. Will, could we start with you? Yeah, I was going to volunteer to go first. Thanks for the question. So my strategy with this would be as a city councilor, try to make sure that petitions are only coming up as a last resort, as something that can't make it to the city council. So I would be actively looking for petition drives as they happen and try to ask the question, what is the issue at hand here? Why are people concerned? And what can we do to fix it? Because I agree with Councillor Shannon that the more collaborative we can make the process of solving policy problems, the better. And I'll make that my top priority as a city councilor. So I would say the strategy is, find out where these petition drives are happening, find out who's organizing them, and find out what the concern is, and then work as a city council to try to resolve this problem before it ever has to get to the ballot. This should be a last resort. And we have another last resort that's on the ballot right now. Question seven. This is a great example. Whereas a city councilor, I would have taken aggressive action to try to implement a policy that works for everyone so that we don't have to have a ballot initiative coming onto the ballot. This can be confusing. We have to have MPA meetings to talk about them so that people can understand what's going on. So as a city councilor, I would try to be proactive and solve these problems before they get to the ballot. I think that that scenario just is not actually how things happen. The petitions come up when people are aggrieved with the city council. What happens is that people have an idea, and people don't start with the petition. I have certainly tried to foster the good ideas in the community, as well as work with the people who are aggrieved as we're trying to move forward with good ideas. One of the first, in my experience, was actually a smoking ban that came from the MPA. They don't start with a petition. They work with the council. It becomes a petition when a group of people don't agree with the action the council took. And some examples that I can think of. One example where I did work with people, and I encouraged the city to put the zoning to increase the height for the pet source subject, I know. But I did vote to put that on the ballot. And so we often work with people to either put questions on the ballot or to pass legislation to please a community initiative and move that forward. I think that that's got to be everybody's first choice. I don't think anybody starts out wanting to go get 2,000 signatures. Thanks, John. I think the petition started out as petition. I know Prop 0 started out as petition. I was committing to this process that it was going to be that big a deal considering other municipalities in Vermont have something similar to what we're trying to get here. I don't know how that would have started if it wasn't with petition. I've been to the city council meeting, and I've never seen anybody actually change. Maybe a couple of times change their mind because of the public input that somebody said at public input. And I don't know if the council will that willing to share power. So something should be started as petition. We want to show that this is the democratic process. We want to show the strength of our idea. Thanks, Reed. Looks like we have a question from Infinite. Yeah. I wonder if we could take a trip down memory lane and talk a little bit about the city hall park petition. If anyone remembers how that started, how it ended, and anything in between. The question is with respect to the city hall park petition and what happened with that? Did any of the candidates feel, Joan, I know you were on the city council. There were 2,000 signatures. 3,800 I thought that they collected. That's right. And the city council rejected it. Yes. Right. So it was called Keep the Park Green, though I was the title of the petition. People were feeling very strongly that there should be more trees and there should be more public participation, like meaningful public participation in the redesign of the city hall park. I know some of the organizers, they were going to the DRB meeting. They were doing all the public engagement opportunities that was given, yet in the end, they didn't feel like they were being heard. And so they collected twice the number of signatures required, and then the city council decided not to put it on the ballot. So that was true. They did get the required number of signatures well in excess. And the city council was pretty close to putting that on the ballot, I would say. I actually reached out to constituents in the south end and I asked the question, do you want me to put this on the ballot? And I don't want to make it sound like that. That is a referendum of sorts because it's not. What's important to me when I put a question like that out is what's the reasoning behind the information I get back from the public? The public clearly told me they did not want that question put on the ballot. And one of the reasons was we were so far down the road and we had made so many compromises in the process. And people were being told we were clear-cutting the park. So that is, I think, a really good example of why referenda is not always in the best interest of the public. The public has been surprised how many trees are left in the park. And as far as the interests of money, there's a lot more moneyed interest in ballot items than there are in the reasoned process of legislation. We don't have lobbyists at the city council. Zero. Will, do you have anything you want to add on that? I would just add that I think it's a good example of why we should pass this dis-questionate. I think that this sort of thing should continue to go on the ballot and that everyone in Burlington should have a chance to look it over and say yes or say no. I think that we shouldn't dilute the democratic process any more than we have to with reasonable safeguards. I think this is a good example of why we should pass this. Thanks, Will. So one of the other questions that we had received from folks in advance is I always refer to Burlington as a lean-in community. More than any other place I've ever lived, folks are coming to meetings like this and want to be invested in their community. And I think it's clear that for many of the folks who signed on to the Question 8 petition and will be voting in favor of it, it's because they want to more directly participate in their democracy and see Question 8 as an opportunity to do that. And so my question is actually not as much about Question 8 as it's more general to outside of Question 8, whether it passes or doesn't, do you see other opportunities that the City Council can take, that the American take, that the city can take as an institution to provide folks more opportunities to more directly participate in their democracy and to lean in more here in Burlington? And Joan, perhaps could we start with you on that question? How outside of Question 8 do you see chances for folks to more directly participate in democracy? Well, I want to acknowledge that Fareed was really right when he says, I've gone to a public forum at City Council and I rarely see people's minds change. It does happen, but it is rare. I will give you that. And the reason it's rare is because that is the very last stop in usually a very long public engagement process, certainly about the more complex issues in the city. And I think we are always working at, how can we do public process better? And I have, and everybody else in the city has criticism of our public process. And that is actually how we make our public process better. So we're going through a process right now with the South End Innovation District. And that's going to be complex. One of the things is, the community doesn't speak with one voice. The opinions are nuanced and they're not binary. And I think that we're going to have to do a lot of work there to try and find something cohesive for the community to rally around. Well, we go to you next. Sure. My priority for expanding the reach of democracy would be to try to reach out to populations that have been abandoned by it throughout our history. I mean, this is not as true in Burlington as it is in other parts of the country. I won't deny that. But people who are not whites, who are not wealthy have been left out of the political process for far too long. And obviously, that's changing. But we need to continue that trend. We need to be reaching out to new Americans in the language that they can best understand. Because there's a lot of people that simply don't understand the level of participation that they can have already in Burlington with or without question 8. So I think that expanding the outreach to people who have not traditionally been part of our political process should be our top priority. Because that's what justice is. When everyone has an equal vote and everyone can, you know, get what they think is the best policy for them across, I think that's really valuable. And for too long, it's been in the hands of far too few people. Thanks, well, for it. Just to talk back on the keep the party green issue, that was I thought that was also a reflection of how skewed and how biased our public processes are. There's definitely a class bias and who gets to actually participate and who gets to make the decision. I believe, you know, that in order to run for city council and then to actually afford to be on the council that takes certain privilege. And then it's so that's a very small group of people. And I do think full participation is important. But that's a lot much larger topic. And we need to be able to make sure everybody has food, everybody has housing, everybody has care, everybody has what they need to be able to participate. And so that's the job for our leaders, I guess, for our government. Great. Thank you. So one of the, one of the other things that has come up in reaching out to people and asking them what their questions might be about this are some of the specifics about the proposal and actually, Representative China made mention of one of them. And that is that the 5% threshold is not, there are other communities that do not have the 5% threshold. Now, most people will tell you that getting 5% of the signatures is a pretty, is not easy. In fact, I think most people would say it's pretty hard. But if you oppose the ballot item, is there a threshold that you would support on this going forward? And then if this does pass and for those who do support it, it goes to the legislature and they want to make changes to it because there are other, there are other cities that don't have the 5% threshold. Is there a threshold that you would accept and be able to then feel that that was a reasonable compromise? So for Joan, if, you know, is there a, is there a threshold that you would support? And then for Will and Fareed, the same question really, is there a threshold, if it wasn't 5, that you would support? I don't know, I don't know, Fareed, if you, if you could tell them as well as, Rajat's requirement is 12 signatures. So 12 people could actually put a question on the ballot. I think 5% is about right. It's, it's, it's not easy. I mean, I don't, I don't, like, we can get 2,000 people to agree on like a down part as an issue, as councilor Shannon mentioned, but I think 5% is just right. It's hard enough and it shows enough strength. So I think 5 is the right number. Okay. Joan, what about you? If you, if you, as a, in opposing it, is there a number at which you would be supportive? And what would that, what, what would that be? I agree with Fareed that there's nothing wrong with the 5% number. I don't have any objection to that. I think the compromise would be more in looking at advisory questions. And I, there was, there's a lot of legitimate concern and frustration about what happened with city hall park from the council perspective. I think we had reached the point of no return on that project and it was going to be so disruptive and so costly to stop that project at that point. So there needs to be more guardrails about that. But other than that, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to allowing advisory questions, which is much more common around the state of Vermont without council approval, as long as they met certain guidelines, putting an advisory question on the, on the ballot like that and stopping a project, which would increase the cost of the project, that is problematic. But outside of that, I do think that there should be some public access to the ballot that everybody can agree on the framework of, but not for binding questions. There needs to still be that legislative process to consider the interests of minorities. All right, well, thank you, Joan. Thank you, Councilor Shannon Paul. I think that the 5% threshold is good. As it gets bigger, considering the size of Burlington, I would have some concerns about, you know, whether it's practical at all. I mean, once you get to 10%, that's, that's over 4,000 people. So that's just very, just impractical. So I would be kind of concerned about anything above 5%, although definitely willing to listen to, to the reasoning why the legislature might want to change that. But I think that we need to appreciate, in contrast to Councilor, what Councilor Shannon was just saying that it's important that we have the ability to put binding ordinances on this ballot. The reason we're doing this is because we want there to be a check and balance that the people can use with the City Council and an avenue for people who are agreed with the City Council or disagree with the City Council to put that question to the entire city. I think that that binding aspect is important. And while I am open to seeing what other safeguards the legislature puts on, especially with regard to the fiscal aspect, I think that it's important that it is binding and that we have that power. Great. John, I don't know you. Your name came up. I don't know if you want to respond or thank you. All right. So before we have one other question, but before we do, just checking online, there aren't any, there aren't any hands raised. I don't know if there is anyone else here who has a question and would like to be recognized. Yes. Hi. I do have a question. Okay. So I hear the keep the park screen issue coming up again and again, and this argument that at certain times it's too far gone for the people to intervene, or that perhaps the people don't know enough about the specific peculiarities of the issues actually happen. So with or without Proposition Zero, how do you plan to keep people meaningfully engaged in the public process? And what should we do to prevent this kind of say like uprising of support? And I guess I'll give one specific example. Since it come up here as well, the community control of these proposal. And I attended a lot of those meetings in the fall of 2020. And I really listened to the commentary being given. I read the minutes and I saw all of the communications that were coming into council. I didn't see a whole lot of opposition against the proposal. And if looking like looking at the reports of the police department, which, you know, get monthly council and various things, that's really only one one aspect. So I guess, how do we keep people meaningfully aware of what's going on to allow citizens to make decisions or to, you know, give meaningful input to the elected officials making decisions? Okay, so how do we, so your answer at your question is how do we what is another way that we give people meaningful input? Input and also awareness and education. If you make the argument that no, there shouldn't even be the option for people to weigh in. They don't know enough. How do you correct that? How do you make people aware of where decisions are being made? Right, well, for sure. I keep hearing citizens, let's, can we just like say voters or residents because like, that's, I think it's better like we start thinking that way, especially if we're going to let people vote who are not citizens. So I do think that's a great question. And without promises in zero, there are many ways we could strengthen participation and meaningful participation. The NPA is actually one of the best things that we could revive. We could strengthen the NPA by formalizing its role in the charter and giving some teeth to the resolutions that the NPA passes. It's a great participatory democracy, kind of decision making process, one person, one vote, you can directly influence what the resolution is when I say. I do, I have heard, unfortunately, I have heard from our representative that, you know, they not as concerned that people don't show up at the NPA anymore. It just means that people are happy with the way things are going. I don't think so. I think people are very alienated, people are feeling powerless in influencing the decisions that are being made. I cannot imagine that I ever said that people don't go to the NPA because they think everything is fine. I think that people don't go to the NPA because they're living their lives, they're working two jobs, they're struggling to raise their families. They don't have time to go to the NPA. And I think that that is exactly the problem with both the NPA and I mean no disrespect because I think there's a lot of value in the NPA bringing people together. But the shortcoming of it and the shortcoming of town, old fashioned town meeting is lack of participation, making it not very democratic. So we have lots of different ways that we engage people and people were very engaged with the City Hall Park issue, which is why you got so many signatures so quickly. People were engaged. But there's also accountability and representative democracy, which is you can vote for somebody else and that is fair. And I ask for your support because I ask for your trust and it's a lot and if I breach that you should vote for somebody else. Well, thanks for a great question. I mean my initial thought is that the best way we can expand access to democracy is by making it easier and by freeing up via this question the ability to directly put things on the ballot and answer yes or no on the ballot for yourself. However, I do have ideas for other ways that we can engage direct democracy further. The NPA is one, but just part of what I think constitutes you know more direct outreach. You know as a city councilor I would be working aggressively to find all the different groups, all the different individuals in the south end and what their different policy interests are and you know what's affecting their lives. And especially with the focus on you know like I mentioned before populations that have been historically kind of left behind by our government. But what I'm really excited about is the prospect of expanding digital democracy from our city council to people in Burlington. I mean there's so much technology at our disposal. I don't know how to work it. I don't know how to program but I'd be really looking forward to ways that we can get innovative solutions where people you know and expanding access to these apps these websites get people to use technology to help inform our decisions as a city council you know in real time. Obviously there's some equity work involved in that but as a city councilor I'd be really looking forward to exploring that. Great that's wonderful. Thank you so much Andy. I was just looking on Zoom. We do have actually I think you're able to enable your microphone Karen or it's registered as Karen Longwood. Maybe it's Michael. Is it Michael? It is. Yes Michael please go ahead with your question. My basic question for the candidates is is there any reason to believe that the wisdom of the council is intrinsically superior to the wisdom of people as might be expressed in a referendum for contact the city hall issue. People got all the signatures so that that could go to the people and see what they had to say and the council chose not to put that on the ballot. It was only advisory anyway. It wouldn't have stopped the project but it seems to me that the council simply didn't want to hear what the people had to say on that issue. One other example for context is the decision to change our zoning ordinance to facilitate the 14 story towers. There was a lot of citizen engagement in that and there was an effort that had been initiated to put that question on the ballot and the council and the mayor decided to preemptively put it on the ballot which would stop the discussion and the signature gathering which I believe would have educated people more fully about the issue and perhaps stop that change from happening. What happened instead is that a lot of money came in $62,000 were spent to change that zoning regulation and the people working to against that were raised a very small $9,000 in contrast so that change went through and what it resulted in was the pit that we're still struggling to crawl out of now. So again, the question is the wisdom of the people not equal to the wisdom of the council. Thanks for the question. I don't know who hasn't gone first. Will, sure you'd like to. Sure. I'll go first. Short answer, no. I don't think that the wisdom of the people is less than that of the council. I do think that it's important that there be a structure to this and I think that ballot question 8 does provide a good or builds on an existing framework we have for people to participate in direct democracy. I think that for the will of the people to be on the ballot, there should be a reasonable expression of common thought and that's what the signatures are there for. That's what the legal constitutional review is there for. So a short answer, no. I think that this is representative of the fact that the wisdom of the people is equal, if not perhaps greater in some cases than the wisdom of the council and decision making ability of the council. I think it's an overall a very important check and balance on the legislative ability of the council that the people can step in to say this is what we want. I think that Michael raises a good point, which is that $62,000 was spent on the ballot question to pass it in 90000 to oppose it. There's a lot of money influence and ballot questions and as I said, we don't have lobbyists at the city council. So that's an issue. Is there more wisdom on the council than wisdom in the public? No, there is not. But the council has the ability to do things the public does not when they are given a binary question and the council can look for the interests of the minorities, which the public cannot. The public will likely vote in their own own interest and the council, I have to consider not just what I personally want. I have to consider the varied interests of my constituents when I vote on something and try to find those compromises, which are not an option for a binary question on the ballot. Thanks, John. I don't know how somebody could go from saying like the interests of minorities need to be considered right after leading the effort to stop the public from saying what we want, that we want to protect minorities. Like we just saw with question seven, we are seeing in real time how much money is being put into our ballot process. I think $20,000 so far, the opposition to question seven. It's the same people, the same set of people who are also putting in money in other ballots, well, the people have no way to fight back. I mean, those mailings cost $5,000, $10,000 each. We have to use copy machine on three office or my home printer overheated because we are trying to print 100 wires. This is like the way we have to balance this is through our numbers. We don't have the money, but we have the numbers. Numbers have to mean something in a democracy. That's our strength. I hope people will vote for question eight. The people is always more wise than our leaders. Thanks so much. We do have another person who has their hand up, Gray Johnson. Do you see him on that screen? Do you see them on the screen? Well, there's a picture of a raccoon. Hi, please go ahead. Yeah, I just have a quick question for Fareed. It sounds like maybe he expects and maybe even prefers that the legislature change their proposal a little bit if it passes. Do I have that correct? And if it did pass and the legislature didn't add guardrails, would you be concerned? If I was on the council, I would probably make the petition process more streamlined model after Winooski and Brattleboro's. If they don't change it, then they don't change it. I mean, there is language in Proposition Zero right now that actually allows competing proposal and to the extent that the two competing proposal differs, whoever has the the more votes will take, will take precedence. So if it's like whether 10% tax or 5% tax, if more people vote for 10% tax, that's what I will win. So sorry. Did you want, did either of you want to answer that question? Are we going to have like closing? Yeah, sure. And we do have, we do have one other question, which I think is really is important and we'll get, we'll, don't worry, we'll have time. Okay, can I respond to that though? Oh, sure, of course. I've heard, I've heard many times that the, that the council can fix these things, but the whole thing with Proposition Zero is that the council cannot fix anything. Once this, once this goes to the legislature and the legislature approves this, whatever comes onto the ballot becomes law as it is on the ballot. And the only corrections that can, we cannot meaningfully make meaningful changes. It is reviewed for, that's what it says. We can't make changes. You can, it's those competing proposals with what you prefer to be, I mean, like that, and if that wins, that then that wins. I mean, you can definitely copy the good part and then put on like the, the, the, the fixed part. No, we're not allowed to change the language. And that has been very clear to us. We didn't have an opportunity to change the language that went on the ballot. That was made very clear to us. And when this gets through the legislature and these things come through again, it's the same language and the council does not have the ability to make changes to it. You get into those competing proposals at the same election. So, so, so, yeah, so I mean, I think it's, that's the language that's in there for aid. I think if that is the language that we're put into our charter, then it would be interesting to see that in action. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't say the council can't come up with their own like ordinance proposed ordinance, right, to be voted on at the same election, right? If you like the, some of the ideas about have concerns and have something better to put let the voters decide. Right, right. And likewise, if an ordinance raised problems and the council or other members of the community could put forward another ordinance to be considered at the next election, in order to, you know, resolve or attempt to resolve with voters decision that was made prior. That's not how it works. Well, why don't we, I think, I think it's been a really good discussion, really appreciate the questions that we've gotten from folks. We do want to provide the candidates an opportunity to, to wrap and certainly if folks wanted to continue the points that were just made here, feel free to include that in your closing remarks. So perhaps we could give each candidate a minute to wrap up here. I think that would be helpful. And again, thank you very much to the Greek Orthodox Church and Father Andreas. Thank you very much to the Ward 56 NPAs. Thank you, Councillor Paul for hosting this and of course our candidates as well. So I forget who started who kicked us off. Will did. I think Will did. So Will, you get the last word because you got the first word. Thank you. Marie, can we start with you in wrapping? Thank you. Thank you everybody for tuning in and for, thank you, Will and Joan for joining us. We've heard about what could go wrong with this, but I also want to remind people about what could go right. And the example that the Secretary of State has for typical initiative actually varies from appropriating enough money to buy the equipment to giving money to initiatives in the neighborhood. We could actually start thinking about what we could do. We could leverage Burlington's creativity, Burlington's people and our talent to solve the most intractable problems in our community right now, including public safety, housing, all of those. So please vote for Prop Zero for question eight and let's start dreaming. Thank you. I think that I also think it would be wonderful if we solved all of the problems, but I don't think that it's likely we're going to solve the problems with binary question, nor can we believe that the only questions coming forward are those that are good and protecting minorities. And a good example is in 2018, there was much controversy over the school board decision in South Burlington to retire the rebel mascot. And there was a successful petition drive to put that question on the ballot. That decision may be more popular today than it was in 2018. It was very controversial, very painful for the community. And the court decided that South Burlington was not obligated to put that question on the ballot, which is why it didn't go on the ballot. But something like this, we're not going to be able to keep things off of the ballot. And if very well, maybe there will be some good things and we do have to guard against the unintended consequences. And it's hard to limit this to just the good things. Well, thank you again to Greek Orthodox Church, the NPAs, counselors to Chivers and Paul, and especially to Farida for all his work in organizing this. I think that in all cases, democracy does present risks. And I understand what Councillor Shannon has said and what many people that I've talked to in words five and six have said regarding the idea that concerning initiatives could be placed in this ballot. But I say that it is absolutely worth it for the amount of engagement that we will gain in this city by being able to put binding initiatives on the ballot is absolutely worth it in terms of the work that we can do to counteract the systematic injustice and the lack of democratic participation that's been afforded to many people in this city and in this country throughout our history. I think this is a tremendously important initiative and it will be a great victory for democracy in Burlington. Are there concerns? Yes, there will always be concerns when things are going on the ballot. That's never going to change regardless of what we have. But I think we should vote yes on this. It would be a great step forward for our city. Thanks again. Thanks for being here. This is a wonderful crowd for this forum. So thank you for taking the time and to those who joined us online and wish the candidates all the best over the next six days. Yes, only six days and town meeting day. Be sure to vote. Thank you for coming. Hey, thanks. Thanks again.