 I want to welcome you to the September meeting of the Ward 1 NPA and we're just getting started. We've had a little bit of problem with the Zoom, but I think that's going to get straightened out. We've got a handful of people who are joining us now. If anybody's watching this in a few days and they couldn't get in, we apologize. We had a wrong Zoom address, wrong Zoom coordinates. That will not happen next month. We'll be right spot on and it'll be fine. Thank you everybody for coming. We're in our new location, which is the friends meeting space, which is a pretty exciting place to be. It's a little bit more welcoming as somebody just said than the hospital. Why don't we start with introductions and then I actually have a fairly lengthy page of announcements that I want to go through before we get to speak out and then we'll do speak out. Let's start with the room. When people can just introduce themselves, just start here and go around if we can do that. Just take a microphone and say who you are if you want. Hi. I am Jake Schuman. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I've been here for a year. I don't know if there's any other information you'd like to provide. So I'll just pass it and we'll make this. Alright. Infinite Colt Pleasure. I live on Roastery. Cheryl Erickson. I live on Roastery. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Hilldrift Drive. I live on Roastery. Cheryl Erickson. I live upstairs. Part of the Quaker community. Thanks for coming. Karen Long. I live on Henry Street. Sharon Busher. I live on East Avenue. I'm Angie Chappasopo. I live on North Prospect Street. At the Agilwell. Also on North Prospect. I'm Margaret Newgeeser. I live on Colchester Ave. I'm Brian Cina from Isham Street. Hi. I'm Carol Livingston. I'm on the Steering Committee. I live on Isham Street. Hi. I'm Karen Long. I live on Henry Street. Sharon Busher. I live on East Avenue. I'm Angie Chappasopo. I live on North Prospect Street. Hi. I'm Carol Livingston. I'm on the Steering Committee. I live on Colorado Court. I'm Jonathan Chappalsoka. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Christopher McAndless from also from the Berlin Conference meeting like Cheryl. And I live across the street on North Prospect. Thank you, Christopher. I'm Jonathan Chappalsoka. I'm on the Steering Committee as well. And I live on North Prospect Street as well. Folks who are on Zoom, if you can, how do we do this? Let's start with Jim. I'm just going to go around. Could you just try again? I think we're muted here. We're working on the audio. We're in a new place. It's a new year. And so there's a little bit of confusion. We'll get those. We'll get those. Okay, I'm trying again. Martin, we can hear Martin. We can hear Jim. Okay. I think we might be there. Let's try again. Jim? Can you hear me now? Yeah. Yes. I'm Jonathan. I live on North Prospect Street. Thank you. Martin? Hi, I am Martin Garofila. I live in the New North Bend. And I'm here to just give a quick intro in the speak out part of the meeting. Thank you. Sarah? Hi. I live off of East Avenue. And I got your meeting late. I'm not sure you already know about the meeting idea being incorrect on the front porch of the firm. Probably do. Anyway, I was happy to get from the city. Thanks. Thanks, Sarah. We just discovered it. And we're working our way through people who are trying to log in. I'm going to actually just check my mail to make sure there's nobody else in there. There are. Oh, no. That's good. Okay. So why don't we get started? I want to go through some announcements and then we'll do speak out. As I say, there's a few, so I apologize for taking up a ton of time in the meeting. Welcome to the new meeting venue. And please let us know how this works. And the Zoom will be much more straightforward next time. We'll make sure we have everything straight. Our thanks go to Christopher McCandless and the friends for the space. Domino's Pizza for the sustenance. And please at any time go out and help yourself to the pizza which is out there. And Ohavezetic for the parking spaces. They are graciously allowing us to use the parking just north of the building on the other side of the street. First piece. First item is that earlier this summer, the Ward 8 steering committee announced their decision to stop meeting with Ward 1 and to manage their own meetings. If you have any questions about this decision, feel free to contact the Ward 8 steering committee. As you may have already heard, Jack Hansen is resigning from the city council effective today. So he is not here tonight. The city councilor has a lot to balance. Constituent issues, city issues, global issues. And I want to thank Jack for his efforts in fact to find that balance. A very important part of this is that a special election will be held in the east district later this fall. And this is the most important thing. We need a city councilor. They could be you. People who come to NPA meetings and are interested in their community are just the kind of people who might want to be city councilors and might make great city councilors. So if you care enough about the city to participate in NPA, you may just have what it takes to represent the district. Please think about it. Even if you're on screen and not in the room. As we are not just three folks working on delivering NPA meetings. This is the steering committee. We want to stress how much we'd appreciate more folks joining the committee. It's an opportunity for you to make this meeting what you want it to be. And if you don't want to commit to the steering committee, but you want to help with something. One of the things we definitely need help with is we need some youngster who understand social media and could help us better communicate to the community. What we're doing and why we're doing it and when we're doing it. So please consider joining the steering committee or just helping out, volunteering to help out. Thank you all for participating in the summer community activities we have. Ward one night at the lake monsters and the barbecue at Shaman's Park. We look forward to organizing more non-meeting community activities in the future. And it's really again, it's up to the community what works and what we want to keep doing. This is an announcement from the ad hoc reappraisal committee. The ad hoc reappraisal committee is holding a public forum on Thursday, September 22nd at 6pm in the Sharon busher room at City Hall. And over zoom if you don't want to attend in person. If you want to share your thoughts or opinions on last year's reappraisal process and certainly over the past year, many people have. But this is a this is the formal place where the committee is going to meet to try to make some really solid recommendations on what to do going forward. Please come to the meeting or zoom in. And there is a committee webpage which you can find on the assessor's webpage. So if you go to search directories, go to assessor, go to the blue bar on the left side at the very bottom is the ad hoc reappraisal committee's webpage. And you go there and all the meetings are worn there and you can see when they are and where they are and what the zoom coordinates for it is. If you want to just provide written comments and this is important because a lot of people don't want to come to meetings, but they might want to let people know how they feel about things. You can you can send your written comments to Joe Dempsey, who is the staff, the city staff representative on the committee. And that's J. Dempsey, J-D-E-M-P-S-E-Y at Burlington-VT.gov. Earlier this year, Ward 1 purchased a subscription to SurveyMonkey, a one-year subscription to see whether this is something that we want to do more regularly. But it's a way in which we can we can poll folks who may not come to meetings to express their opinions. If you have a topic you think should be surveyed, please let us know or you can help us write the survey too. The level could be redistricting choices because it's a very small number of choices. It would be great to get a broader cross-section as to who feels what about what. Then some updates from DPW. The first is on Prospect Hill and Prospect Hill sidewalks are about to get redone. And so I think things are going to close like as of tomorrow. It's going to get a little hard on Prospect Hill. And then Rob Goulding from DPW has a report on North Prospect Street. And the short-term update on North Prospect Street is that tomorrow morning the contractor will be paving the trench at North Street and North Prospect, the intersection right over there. But the road's going to be closed. Basically everything's going to be closed at that intersection for the day. It should be opened by rush hour in the evening. The long-term update that he writes, our contractor has finished relining the water main as part of the normal process for water main relining. We then conducted pressure tests to ensure structural integrity of the new liner. On one section of the liner the pressure test did not pass due to leakage. All other sections of the liner have passed the pressure test. We will be sending a camera through, there's going to be a little colonoscopy on North Prospect Street. Send a camera through the liner to finalize the plan for this section, which will determine the repair method. Either relining or replacing the whole section of the pipe. That will determine the scope and duration for the remainder of the project and ultimately final paving the road. We expect the remaining water work to be done this year. All access pits will be paved to grade before the season is up. At this time due to this delay we now anticipate full width paving to happen in the spring. So if you have questions about that you can address them to water resources or to the DPW communications front. And we'll work to make sure that there are ongoing front porch form reports on this to keep you up to date. And with that I think we should move to speak up. Before you do that Dr. can you just ask someone online to try and speak to see if we can get them in here? Okay. Fletcher could you introduce yourself? And you're on mute. I'd love to make this a habit. Great. Great. Thank you. Can you try just a little bit more? Jim could you just speak a little bit more just to test our audio here? I think so but I don't know. Is it not enough just for the computer to go? I've got one other thing. These are just folks caring best for you than somebody else you want to get. Is it you have to type in or? Well I can send them out to see if that works. I'm totally out of an interpretive dance representing the current state of public safety. I'm doing that. Someone might get hurt today. So the only speakers you have available are last pop. Yeah. Last pop. Sorry I didn't know you. Yeah that's fine. Can they hear us? We can hear them if we listen. Can you all hear me? Yes. Was that louder than it was before? No but we can hear it. That's very quiet. I apologize everyone. I'm actually in another meeting and I jumped off that meeting to come to this one. So unfortunately I can't stay too long. Oops you're late. Other things come at the table. Okay why don't you start to speak up. Okay great thanks. My name is Martin Cronk you look and I'm running for state senate in this district which is the Chittenden Central District. It's a new district some of you may be familiar with it. Hopefully you are at this point but it's basically most of Burlington, Winooski, most of Essex and a little chunk of Colchester. It's kind of hard to find a good map of the district. If you are courteous please send me an email and I'll send you one. But I just wanted to introduce myself. I will come back in October when I have a little bit more time to stay and hang out. I'm at a Vermont School Board Association meeting tonight. Some of you also may know me from the Burlington School Board. I'm a free term school board member. A little background I grew up in South Burlington. I taught at Essex for 20 years. And I like I said I'm on the school board. One of the reasons why I decided to run as many of you know it's been it's been a rough few years in Burlington. Our high school closed down due to PCB contamination. And I don't think I need to tell you how difficult that was. We ultimately were displaced into a Macy's building which has served us well. But it's been a really rough period of time. And I know that this kind of upheaval is something that we're going to be seeing across the state as more and more aging school buildings need renovation and rebuilding. So something I want to do if I make it to the legislature is bring back school construction aid for one of the only states in the country that doesn't have school construction aid. And it just seems at this point in time is something that we need desperately. Also very, very concerned about PCB and radon contamination. I recently wrote a resolution for the Vermont School Board Association to make sure that that is elevated to a high level of concern in the legislature. And also just being someone who has worked in education for most of my life since basically since 1988. I know the kinds of travails and suffering that we have in our society. When you are an educator, you see food insecurity, housing insecurity, you see mental health issues. And these are the forefront of your consciousness on a daily basis as you're helping kids and families navigate society. And we know coming out of COVID, things are hard for many, many people. So I'm really happy to be stepping up and trying to do my best to support my community. I would love to answer any of your questions. If you have any, please reach out. You probably have my board email, which is mgulik at bsdbt.org. But my home email as well, martingulik at gmail.com. I'd love to speak with you. I'd love to answer questions. And like I said, I will be back in October. So I look forward to seeing you then and being able to stay a little bit longer. Thank you. Thanks, martin. Who else would like to speak? I would like to. Ryan? I was invited to come tonight because I'm running for reelection as a state representative for Chittenden 15, which includes most, if not all, of Ward 1 as well as a piece of Ward 2 just across the other side of Willard Street where I live. And I don't want to take up too much time because I might want to hear from new people more, but I do think it's important to report directly to constituents. And so I am running for reelection again. It's been rough the last two years as a healthcare worker. I've had COVID three times and it's taken its toll on me in the long term. And I've also experienced ongoing trauma as a healthcare worker that's not getting better because our healthcare system is falling apart. We're seeing 40 to 60% vacancies, which is clogging the system of care at a time when acuity is higher. There's been a rise in overdoses, rising suicides, a rise with people with co-occurring disorders. As methamphetamine has come to Burlington, it's created a perfect storm of the opioid pandemic and the meth pandemic during the coronavirus pandemic. So under these conditions, we're all seeing the impact on the streets and our homes and our schools. So I think it is important to have some people in the legislature with that direct experience. What I'm working on over the summer is as a healthcare worker, I'm trying to come up with ideas about things we can do, what we realign services or do our work differently. So that with the same amount of money, we get more from it. And I'm trying to figure some things out along the way to maybe bring back to the legislature next year and also talking with members of the administration, with the governor's administration along the way. And I appreciate that he is working with me on a variety of things right now, at least in terms of this. Even if we have our differences, we have the same goal of wanting to prevent violence and wanting to enhance public safety. The governor just released a plan in which he talked about strategically using police resources statewide and data to target violent crimes and to clear up the clog in the courts by having people prosecuted. And we are letting people, as a society, we're enabling people to hurt themselves and others at this point. It's really sad to witness on the ground level. But if we just round people up and throw them in overcrowded jails where we don't have enough corrections workers, it's going to be bad for the workers, the people in the community. So I'm hoping that we can work together to use this moment in history to implement a pilot project in Vermont to try out the Norway model. And I'm happy to come back and talk about that in detail. But in Norway, the idea is that prisoners are your neighbors and you treat them as neighbors and that there's community campuses that people move into as they transition out of prison and then a system of housing and support and their recidivism rate went from 70% to 20% with this model. And if Vermont did this, we would become the fifth state in the U.S. to try it. California passed a bill last week to start exploring this and the world always looks at California and Vermont. So all eyes are going to be on us now. So now is the time. And I'm hoping to work with the governor and other members of the legislature to look at how to make corrections actually be a rehabilitation system for people so that when we take people's freedom for causing harm we don't cause more harm because violence begets violence. And when the state uses force to try to get people to comply what I've learned, whether it be as a health care worker, as an activist, unhoused people at Sears Lane, as a legislator, et cetera, that the prison system makes things worse for people. So this is a chance for us to actually help people when we hold them accountable for the harm that they cause by not causing more harm. There's a lot more I want to say, but I don't want to take up too much time. I think we also need to look at the training of police when we deploy them and the training of health care workers and create consistent training across all the pieces of public safety and improve the coordination because I'll end with this. Like I said, 40 to 60% of health care workers of jobs are open. And when you look at exit surveys with my union at the Howard Center, AFSCME 1674, people say the reason they're leaving is they don't feel valued. And when I talked with Lacey Smith, the police social worker, she said that on the police exit interviews, what is the main reason they're leaving? They don't feel valued. So instead of us all being pit against each other, we need to bring people together in public safety and create a culture where we're all getting supported properly so that we're not harmed in the process of doing our jobs and so that we're not causing any more harm to people and that we're truly promoting the public good. So I'll end on that note. Happy to come back. Just other people. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Yeah. We just need to figure it out. Sure. Good to come over here. My name is Katherine Hill. I'm not running for any day. I'm here to support my friend, Jake Shimmer, who is running. I'd like to say a few things about him because he personally helped me do a lot of stuff. So I think he's a good candidate because he has race awareness and what I mean by that, there's a lot of racial disparities in the hospitals that I dealt with personally, along with me and a couple other people of my color who have dealt with social workers in DCF and not following guidelines. And Jake went to the extreme to reach out to councils and to write newspapers and people on blogs to make this aware that these things are happening. And as you were saying, a lot of nurses to leave in because they are placed in situations where they just want to be good people and they are in here with a bunch of people who are being not great people and I dealt with a lot of racial stuff personally myself. Jake is mission driven. He's a creative problem solver. Everything I'm saying here, I've seen with my own eyes. He's investing in relationships. He demonstrates integrity. He has a vision. He's teamwork, willingness to learn. He communicates very well. He's self-motivated, cultural aware. He has integrity. He's dependable. He has goals and he's driven. He goes to the extreme under the ground where people say things like, oh, this is so not great. We should do something about it. They do nothing about it. Jake takes that next step. And I know for a fact that he has a lot of schoolwork to do and I've been taking up so much of his time because he makes a difference. This one guy here made a difference with a lot of people because a lot of people are just not aware. They are afraid. They are afraid to step up. They feel like this is wrong. This shouldn't happen. But they don't express that voice. And Jake said, screw that. I'm going to take this voice and I'm going to go with it. This is happening. And it's happening right now and something needs to happen about it. He's just an all-around great guy. I love him to death. And I will vote for him and I will make signs to have everybody vote for him because this man is the man for the job because he would not let it go. If it's something, no funding, we're going to find it. I don't care if he out here would eliminate Stan. He's going to get it because he's that driven. We have no idea. You have anything going on that's really important that no one's listening to you about. After this meeting, you talk to him. And I'm serious. He is going to go all the exchange to you. He cares about the elderly. He cares about children. He cares about the way people are representing themselves and not doing their job. For example, I went through something personally with DCF, Department of Children and Family, where I had a diabetic attack. And they took my five-month-old baby out of the house and assumed it was some drugs. Just because I'm black and I'm sanded. So this is a fact. It was drugs. I went to the hospital. Everything was taken care of. The drugs was not the issue. I was not only any drugs. And they were just like, oh, what are we doing now? Let's invent the story. But Jake was like, no, that's not going to happen. I'm going to write this person, that person. I'm going to Waterbury. I'm going to Mount Perrier. We're going to make this right. And he did. So, like I said, he's a man for the job because he would not let it go. So that's all I have to say. Don't want to take up too much time. Yes. What are you running for? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're sold, but who wants a job? Charm rule. Yeah. Thank you, Kat, for announcing my candidacy. So, yeah, I started conversations this summer with different folks, notifying people and kind of learning about the process. I think that I have reached a point in my life where I'm ready and I think the community has a need that I can fill. So I am stepping up and I am now announcing my candidacy for the East District Council seat. Thank you very much for your support, Kat. Yeah, I won't go through my whole resume, but I'll tell you that I have lived in Burlington my entire adult life. So for the past 13 years, mostly downtown. In 2018, I moved to Ward 7 and I have now been in Ward 1 for the past year. So I'll give you my professional history since the beginning of the pandemic. When the pandemic started, I said, you know, I can't sit at home for 12 to 18 months because, you know, everybody who says they didn't know how long it was going to last. Tony Fauci was saying 12 to 18 months from day one. So I was listening and I was hearing that and I was saying I'm not going to sit at home for 12 to 18 months. So I worked with Liz Curry and some folks at the state and helped stand up the COVID Recovery Center for folks with housing insecurity who needed a place to quarantine and isolate safely. After that was stood up. I transitioned and worked with CBOEO to help set up the hotel housing assistance program and I ended up working at the holiday in for 12 months. During that time, I, you know, was helping folks in mental health and other forms of crisis when there was no one to call. You know, we could call the police and we could call the ambulance but for mental health, there was no first call. There was no emergency evaluations to be done in the emergency department. So, you know, I have that experience of dealing with crisis and emergency situations. After that position, I became an EMT. After working as an EMT, I've spent the past summer working with People's Kitchen and I'm currently helping my friend Kat and I'm also working on creating an organization so that we can have a community-owned integrated food truck for nonprofits feeding folks, things like that. I would love your support because I believe that there are a lot of reasons why individuals in our community are currently experiencing despair and we don't need folks to be in despair. We are a strong community. We got through the pandemic so well because of our strength and I think that we can build on these strengths. We can build bridges. We can work with our state representatives and our state senators and we can do better. This divisiveness that we're seeing in local politics, that doesn't need to be happening. That's reflective of the national politic but that's not how we do things here and I think that we can do better. I'm working with my friend Infinite on his campaign so I'd love to turn it over to him and then maybe we can be done with the politics folks. Thank you, Jake. My name's Infinite, cold pleasure. I live in the old North End. I've also been here for most of my adult life for about 30 years now. Worked at Spectrum Youth and Family Services for a few years and for the past decade I've spent almost a decade, about nine and a half years working with voices for my children as a community organizer and policy advocate. So I have been technically a lobbyist for children and families in the state house as a guest of vocation, so to speak and as well as a community organizer with families who have children in the Burlington School District and Winooski School District. So I've gotten to see both sides working with folks on the ground with families and students in the Burlington and Winooski Schools and I've also had the opportunity to advocate for not just new bills but specific provisions in some bills like the literacy bill that just came out community schools bill. I am a member of the Act 1 working group of ethnic studies and social equity in schools and so I've been doing that for the past couple of years and did a lot of work on the education quality standards around literacy in that document. And I have to say, I've had the opportunity to sit at the feet of people who have been working in the legislature for decades. Some mentors of mine who have really kind of walked me through the legislative process which sometimes can be a little opaque. A bill comes from the house as a kind of a template and then it gets to the Senate and it has all these new items in it without very much public input and so it's coming from people like myself sometimes as a so-called lobbyist to say special interests that they sometimes call us and sometimes just from people who are sitting in the Senate who have their own ideas around how bills should go. Needless to say, I don't see a lot of engagement of the public with our legislative process and that's really something that I want to bring to Montpelier as a state senator representing Chittenden County as an independent. So I'm the tortoise in this race. And that's okay because as an organizer I do see some openings after the redistricting being able to canvas from the new North End to Essex Junction. In Burlington, it stops at Maple Street at the south of Maple Street and so luckily for me I won't have to try to convince Ward 5 and 6 to be on my side. But that's okay too because I'm not sure how the districts were divided but I do feel like I would be representing as much as Chittenden County as possible. Chittenden Central happens to be the most diverse district in the state of Vermont and the most dense district in the state of Vermont. As far as legislative priorities, I've seen a lot of bills pass and then just kind of we move on to the next bill and so I'm really curious about the implementation phases of some of these bills as they're going into play in particular we have passed a bill to create an office of a public advocate office for children and families and I think that's something that we have to really watch closely because we really want that office to have some power and some authority to look out for children and families. The community schools bill only targeted five schools I think we should expand that bill. The literacy bill needs to be very watched very closely in the implementation process. Half of Vermont's K through 12 children are not reading at grade level. Half, half and then when you break it down by ethnicity and race and disability the numbers get even more tragic. So we do have a literacy crisis and Martina's right. We also have this I think this environmental justice issue with our school building. My hope is that we don't focus so much on the building that we don't forget about the underlying issues that kids are facing, families, kids and families are facing in our education system. Our teachers are being asked to do way too much. We have a power shortage right now. It's really, I mean, talking to school workers not just teachers but school workers it's really sad. Having gone through a teaching licensing program half this year and then stopping short because I was talking to elementary school teachers who were saying, you know what, Infinite this might not be the time for you to come into the classroom because we're really struggling right now in the classroom and so if there's anything else you have on your bucket list you might want to wait on this one. So my email address if anyone's interested in contacting me is i.c-u-l-c-l-e-a-s as in Sam, u-r-e at gmail.com Jake graciously accepted to be my treasurer so everything that was said about him is true. He's really stretching himself to try and help build the capacity of folks who haven't done this before although this is not my first rodeo I did run for mayor back in 2018 and we got lucky and won a award we got lucky and won a whole award that being awarded and we hope to get that lucky again so thank you for your time and thank you for the invitation hopefully I'll be back next month. So first of all can I say something about for all the people that are here that are running if they have any campaign literature it would be great to leave some because now I didn't write down any of your emails or contact info so that would be wonderful and I was a city counselor and I was an independent and so it's not easy when you're not affiliated with the major parties so I wish you very well and I do remember you because I listened to the mayoral debates and I thought you did an excellent job so I'm just going to state that so very good thank you okay my name is Sharon Busher and I'm still alive even though there's a room named after me so that's a big deal actually so I came for two reasons one Jonathan mentioned because although I don't live on North Prospect I wondered what the heck was going on with the construction that was never ending and never seeming to have anybody ever working there either so I just wanted to understand that so I reached out to DPW to find out today and Jonathan shared that he had been reaching out to and I think both of us feel like we can understand problems but if you don't communicate those problems it's really hard to live with those and understand that there is going to be a timeline and hopefully a completion date so I'm not going to say anymore about that because Jonathan covered that I'm here because I although I'm no longer a city counselor I am a political junkie and I can't let go of it and so I have I'm what I call a ghost counselor I sign in and I attended every single city council meeting since I lost my election and I don't always talk but I'm finding my voice again unfortunate for all of you but anyways so one thing that I have tried to do is to really try to keep involved in issues that I think are important to the community or our ward and one thing that is about to happen is the rezoning of Trinity campus by the University of Vermont and this item is now before the planning commission and I've been following that with UVM's presentation but it came to my I became aware that none of the planning commissioners had ever been to the site and so I asked for a site visit and that unfortunately happened yesterday in the rain but having said that there's still some value the problem and any of you don't know that you know Trinity campus has opportunity to add some additional housing and we all know we need housing and the idea that we all hope to embrace is the fact that if the University of Vermont can create some housing that could retain some of the juniors and seniors on campus maybe also attract graduate students who currently live in the community not that we don't welcome them all but we have a housing crisis and a shortage and if we could have more housing and some of that dedicated for these people during their educational years we would all benefit from that so they want so UVM wants to rezone Trinity campus to allow to create more housing some of that so it's 20 acres but there's a steep slope behind and we're not California was smarter than we were and I tried when I first got elected to deal with not having slope land that you can't build on count as part of the acreage and so like it or not that means that you can develop more densely on a smaller parcel even though because some of the land isn't developable having said that so they have 20 acres but not all acres are you're able to develop so they want to put in they have setbacks from Colchester Avenue one setback is if you're familiar with the buildings there's this big if you go in the driveway where the light is there's a white house it's called Villa but to the left of that is a big brick looks like a school and that is Mann Hall and that is 150 feet back from Colchester Avenue and that was the setback so you couldn't build closer so UVM is asking that that setback get adjusted to 110 feet from the Colchester Avenue and that would allow buildings that could be up to 80 feet and that seems appropriate to me and the feedback not many people have been following this I must admit but it seems appropriate to me and I think that there's space there's a map unfortunately I didn't make copies but if you go on to the Planning Commission website and the agenda for last night I believe you can find this map but it will show where they plan to put a structure like this they're planning to put in around 400 beds but then they also want to be housing closer to Colchester Avenue in the green space initially they wanted to put it 25 feet from the sidewalk I've taken a lot of time done my homework, gone to Redstone anyways I've got them to now say that it will be 45 feet from the sidewalk I didn't want to have us walled in and feel a tunnel effect nor do I think it's great if you live right on top of a busy road I think your quality of life I'm not a planner but that's how I feel so anyways they're going to set that back to 45 feet and those housing those units are supposed to be for grad students this is still in planning I don't agree with everything that I just shared with you although I do support the 80 feet and the housing that they're going to create I don't really support the housing closer to the road and I can go through the fact that there are surface parking lots which I think they could build over and still maintain that parking and still create the housing they need and I would prefer to see that go first before they take green space so having said that it's in planning planning meets on Tuesdays and they meet they met last night and they're going to meet in two weeks in November and I think in two weeks they will have a proposal that they can chew upon so if anybody they meet at 6.30 you can go by zoom you don't have to go to the meeting oftentimes you can't meet with them most of the time it's remote but you can hear the presentation there's a public forum they're very willing to allow people to weigh in and make comments either in support or raise questions and I believe that they hope to either bring forward some more questions and fine tune these owning amendment or actually vote on it and then move it forward for public hearing and just if all of you people don't know because I'm a political junkie if they move it to public hearing I just want you to know you'll have a chance to speak then then if they then can need to act and send it to the city council where it would go to the city council ordinance committee because it's a zoning amendment so there will be opportunities for everybody who hasn't taken the time or had the time to get involved to look at it and say hey I want to weigh in on this or not so I know I've taken a lot of time but I think it's an important proposal I think that Richard Cate the vice president was there last night and was asked directly if indeed he thought this housing would provide relief to our community and he said he could not guarantee that and he wasn't sure which is a safe answer but I think he's right I think he's right because they've done their own internal surveys and juniors and seniors do not want to live on campus for a number of reasons the type of housing the restrictiveness the fact that who wants to live in a dorm when you can live in your own apartment so that's it and thank you so much and it's good to see everybody in person in the flesh if they meet next Tuesday they met yesterday they'll meet in two weeks at 6pm at 6.30 usually it's remote so you go on the agenda the city website and the meeting agenda and then if you click on planning commission at 6.30 it will expand and there's a link that you can get right into zoom you're welcome thank you Sharon who else would like to speak with Karen I know you're running I think we're going to this is good first of all it's good I'm not going to be facilitating next month Tom is not going to let people go on like this so ski guy and so what I think we're going to do is we're going to take the bylaws and put them up until next month and then give people the opportunity to speak now so I'm sorry I have to run out one thing I wanted to say is a message from Jared Wood who also talked to Jonathan about this he thinks that for every stop sign there should be a stop line meaning a place where the car should stop I guess that was it so anyway I wanted to say that he and I share the frustration that many many many cars don't stop at stop signs he's a walker I'm a walker and a biker and it happens all the time you just have to be careful because they tend to cruise right through but I also have a question on streets Willard has you know Willard is a state highway and so they repaved it but they did not level the manholes or even the side streets like Loomis what is it they're going to come back and do a second course and they wait so that engineering things that we don't understand can happen so they are coming to town they do like our size measurements because it's really it's been a while since they abandoned the project and no one has come back it is very dangerous especially on a bicycle if you hit one of those so anyway that was all well thank you I just wondered what happened like did they run out of money and they just quit or what happened when asphalt in the summer it makes it so it doesn't be hard like it should and they wait until it's settled I see they need to level it up Loomis and you know the side streets that was all I appreciate you bringing up Jared's concern and I wanted to ask the group of questions it's just kind of a general poll he's very serious about this and it makes a lot of sense to me so if you think about the paint on the road and you think about street signs they're all the same it's signage for drivers the line on the road is really a sign for drivers whereas the stop sign is a sign for everybody can I just have a general show of hands and you can use that little hand button if you're on zoom if you think that as award we should write a letter and send it to DBW and bring it to the city council pretty simply saying and as I was talking to Jared about it it occurred to me that you know if a stop sign gets knocked down the city will put it back up and they'll put it back up pretty quickly because it's a safety hazard the same goes for that line the line serves the same purpose but it makes absolutely sure the car stops at the intersection rather than halfway through it or some other place so is this something that as an award we should just simple show of hands and don't feel bad if you don't think it's a good idea you don't have to raise your hand but if we wrote something up and then voted on it next month and then maybe sent it to DBW is that something people might want to do and I would encourage that they start enforcing something and stop signs because I know that's something they don't do in three years I don't know here are John here are active chief whatever he's called them he says they just don't do that but I think they need to they used to and more stop them but anyway well that's a safety if we're going to have a line what's the point of having a line that nobody is going to enforce that people stop them I mean that's it okay I'm seeing enough I saw enough hands that maybe the steering committee can write something up and we'll be talking about it next month see where they're going to forward from there who else would like to speak who else let's just go to the screen Sarah no yeah me can I have a mic so I just wanted to let you know about other candidates they were all I can't see you I can see it all the candidates who are invited to just introduce themselves informally tonight so Tanya Vahovsky was not able to come Phil Veruth was not able to come and so Tanya, Phillip Martine and Infinite are all running for the three senate seats okay and you're probably hopefully aware of that Troy Hedrick was not able to come Brian did come obviously they're the two that are running as our representatives and we get two of them so they're unopposed so we continue to ask people to come to this time during speak out so hopefully you'll hear from Tanya and Troy and Phillip next time I also, Dan Hill was not able to be here he's on your agenda I don't know Sam if you can show that handout so Dan Hill is the traffic manager for the city and he's really concerned about trying to fill the crossing guard positions there are 17 open positions and we have several copies of this if you're interested so there are obviously there are the shifts there's the pay and then what they provide as well as the training and what's expected so please consider doing this it's a really important need that needs to be filled and we don't have 17 places in the city where kids are crossing the street we don't have coverage yes Sharon this has bothered me it's been going on for quite a while and do we know what they're doing like are principals going out to help kids cross or what's happening I mean if we've got all these spots that don't have crossing guards what's going on I don't know I think Dan would be the person to address that and I think that when he comes or however I think I would respectfully ask the steering committee to ask them how we're providing a safe crossing for children during this time because it's really troubling me alright we will do that thank you so that's it for me John thank you who else would like to speak in our extent speak out yeah so did Brian is running again correct Brian Sheena yes okay and who's the other person Troy Hedrick okay we have two seats thank you Christopher Christopher McCandless and I live as I said across the street and I'm also for the last 37 years been the person primarily responsible for the buildings on this property and caring for them and trying to encourage community groups to use them so I'm delighted that you all are here tonight I have two concerns that I don't I'd like to have a group like this consider going forward one is that as someone who lives on Prospect Street I have been struck by the reduction in traffic that has been caused by the construction down at the other end of Prospect Street people drive past my house at 40 and 50 miles an hour regularly the number of broken mirrors that I have counted over the last 30 years on this side of Prospect Street defies description especially when trucks and buses meet each other so I have wondered whether there's ever been any consideration of turning Prospect Street into a one way street and I just raised that as a question my second thought is that in my entire voting life I have never failed to support a school bond issue or a tax an increase in taxes for schools but during the reassessment process that happened my taxes were up by 3400 dollars which was a bit of a shock and now I am led to believe that were I to vote for this school bond they will probably go up another 1800 dollars and I don't know what to do I feel I feel at a sort of moral crossroads and so I invite conversation about that not necessarily tonight I'm feeling like maybe for the first time in my life I need to think about what the implications are I know that we need a new school there's no doubt about that I don't quite understand why there aren't more federal government funds available or being sought for this project but I am worried about the implication on my family for what is needed thank you we do have this on the agenda for later so there will be Q&A at that point and thank you for the input other people who want to speak I have a couple of things to say in response to Sharon something that you said first of all, we miss you terribly and when we're in your room I keep looking around like we're Sharon so it's a delight to have you back here and I'm very happy to hear you speak because I've always spoken with a lot of wisdom and thought and that means a lot in a community that isn't always what happens these days as you know one is to thank you and another is to address an issue that you spoke about which was the Trinity Campus and I want to say just very generally that I have been hugely frustrated by the by the city and the university being at forever longer heads about what to do about housing problem city and it just feels as if there's some unspoken agreement that they're not ever going to talk about and that we, the members of the community who we're fine with having some college students in our community but it's making it's making it very difficult for people who have of limited means to get a total in our beautiful city of Burlington, Vermont which we would love to have so I'd just like to say I'm delighted to hear about Trinity Campus I'm delighted to hear that they're planning more beds I'm not so delighted to hear that Vermont just accepted, the University of Vermont just accepted the largest freshman class in history and will they be able to house them I don't know but I just want to bring that point up that I wish the University and the city would actually talk with each other about what the crisis it is for individuals, for our community that so many students have to live off campus the other thing that I want to address I don't make it short has to do with the amount of dissension in the community and many of these people have spoken about this tonight the amount of dissension in the community about public safety and in our neighborhood up here it's become a little tenuous and nerve wreck and I want to say that there were city counselors some of whom were ARVs who made a very quick decision in 2020 to and I won't say defund the police those are those words are poison but our police department has been decimated by actions that the city council took without really anticipating what could happen as a result of their quick actions and what has happened is that the police force is a, decimated, b, discouraged and doesn't have such a great reputation as a place to work we need police officers we respect police officers I do and what I want to say is that there is a lot of anger and dissension in the community about that which happened in 2020 which is painfully trying to be rectified I think that a simple acknowledgement or even an apology by the council members who acted too quickly without thinking an acknowledgement that they may have taken an ill-advised step I personally think that that would help in the amount of anger and stress we feel in this community that I'd like to hear somebody say we we acted too quickly it wasn't right we're going to try to do better we're sorry I know that one of our city councilors has reached out and taken some actions and I appreciate that Zariah has done that I'm very sorry that she isn't here tonight so that I could say that to her personally I wish she were here tonight so I think of course I could go on because I always could I want to thank you for the opportunity for speaking up both about the mess of the university and the mess of the people who argue about the police who we need as to remind us as deterrence and to be civil members of our community and to remember to respect each other again we've lost thank you who else would like to speak maybe one more person so we can pretend to get back on anything well yeah I just want to say there's a bunch of things our folks brought up that I've got to get more regularly on my way here I was going on Mansfield Ab in Bullchester right there taking the right after that right here in Newspath and someone rolled right through the line I don't think it was looking because I was in the bike lane there it was just driving over and it was fine but it literally just happened that always happens I like to work down that where you go through was it the new ski where they're repainting there and hit that that manhole cover oh good morning yeah it was not great um yeah the other thing I was going to mention was just I am Carol had said that there needed some help on the NPA steering committee and I've been trying to carve out time for a couple years now to try to be more active in NPA stuff third part time job that I have finally is wrapping up so I'm stopping some like remote jobs in New Hampshire and so yeah I'm really interested if help is needed if folks will have me have something to help out yeah and I guess that's what's going on great thank you Carter we can talk we can talk next month about the bylaws but we would welcome steering committee is certainly welcome beyond the steering committee it's a matter of the community vote the NPA would vote on it but we definitely want to support let's move on to the next item on the agenda we're going to skip the bylaws I will probably post links again in front force form once or twice before the next meeting and then we can go through it and I think what I did was the bylaws themselves are only three pages long they're not too long but I also created a four point presentation which summarizes it's like the net of the net and then I could do the net of the net of the net too if you wanted but just so that next month maybe we can just go through them and move on that's because word one shortly to be changed but word one does not have a set of bylaws for the NPA next on the agenda is the Charter Change Committee about legal resident non-citizen voting councilor travers you're here to talk about that I think excellent thank you yes we can hear okay great so thanks very much for having me so I'm sorry to not be able to be there in person to see it but I'm glad to see it virtually over the screen I'm here tonight in my role as one of three members of the city council Charter Change Committee this is my second city council meeting of the evening I had one earlier on in the Sharon Busher very much alive here we are now meeting with you all each committee are Dean Bergman and Sarah Carpenter and we as a committee have endeavored to go around to all the NPAs as part of a broader community engagement session to talk about the fact that that we have been tasked with looking into as a committee whether to put a ballot question on the town meeting day ballot again in March with respect to all resident voting looking at we define a legal resident as someone who's not otherwise able to register to vote there legal resident here but they are a non-US citizen this is a matter that was on the ballot some of you may recall in Burlington in 2015 and was voted down on the ballot at that time the city council considered back in 2020 whether to put this matter back on the ballot again but at that time that the council elected against it and it was at least in part at that time it wasn't on the council I certainly recall the discussion around it concerned about whether we had really put the time in to engage the community to inform them about the work that's going on and to answer any questions there may be particularly from folks who will be impacted the most by this which are non-US citizens who would gain an opportunity to register to vote in local elections and they understandably have had and will continue to have a lot of questions surrounding the matter so if I could just provide sort of a very high level overview of what this would do is again, if Burlington voters voted in favor of this in March the proposal would citizens in Burlington over the age of 18 to register to vote in local elections so what would that do is they could vote first so just in councilors for the school board for ward clerks and inspectors of election and of course for the mayor and they would be able to vote on local questions future charter change measures or school bond votes or other measures that are unique to the Burlington ballot we've been working very closely with Gillian Matton who works in CEDO works very closely with the program that's relatively new to CEDO the trusted community voices program that's been working with Burlington's diverse communities to relay to them the work that we're doing the potential that this may be before voters in March for folks who aren't interested and want additional information we've put up a website which is at BurlingtonBT.gov slash all resident voting and I'd be happy to send you that link I'm very grateful that Gillian at CEDO when you go there there's FAQ page which has been translated into multiple different languages for folks who may require that and learning more about it and we are out there to let folks know about this work before moving ahead as a committee and then ultimately as a council I'll make a couple of their points here and then we'll be happy to answer any questions you all have which is that things that have changed since 2015 when Burlington voters both voted on a similar measure down is at that point in time Burlington would have been one of the first in the state to take this measure but since then both Montpelier and Winooski have proceeded to stand up all resident voting with quite a bit of success in Winooski since this was put into effect a few dozen folks who were not otherwise eligible to vote have registered to vote and nearly all of those individuals who registered to vote came out and voted in promising sign there was some concern about whether or not because this is a charter change of the state legislature and ultimately the governor would sign off on these measures what we've seen in Montpelier and what we've seen in Winooski historical reservations we've heard from folks in Montpelier permitted working actually very closely with folks from Winooski in particular including those before the voters so that is where we are at right now as a committee again this should be if the committee votes this out we anticipate it will it will be heard before the phone council and then ultimately as a matter it will be on the ballot in March and I would be happy to take them to answer them I don't know the answer at this point sometimes those are the best questions and I will be taking those back to the committee and get answers back let me just ask you what has the committee gleaned from the people that would now have an opportunity to vote I can't imagine that it isn't all positive but I mean the point that it was Councilor Roof who was going to move this in 2020 and then pulled it because there was some criticism that the community wasn't well informed about this this and that it was premature to move it without doing that leg work so has there been any insights I know that one of the councillors that still serves felt very strongly about the need for people to be citizens before they had a chance to exercise their right to vote but that was the only statement that I recall in 2020 so can you give us some of what you've gleaned from the community thank you I will tell you one thing that I've heard from folks in my ward and from folks throughout the city the committee has received that feedback from some folks who really believe that voting should be a privilege of citizenship and that folks who are not citizens should not be awarded that privilege for lack of a better term it's not an opinion that I personally share but we have heard that feedback for a couple years or so I think folks are rightfully so taking a look at democracy and the importance of participating in that democracy in a different light than we were around so that's where I stand but we have heard that concern with respect to again those communities that obviously would be the most impacted which are those who would gain the opportunity to register in those elections generally speaking I would say the responses that we've seen thus far have been positive and folks are excited about the opportunity to participate in their local community historically I think there's been some questions around the logistics of how this will work you know if you look at the state voter registration form as an example you're required to enter in the driver's license or personal ID number or if you don't have a driver's license you're required to enter a social security number and of course if you're not a US citizen you wouldn't have a social security number so technically speaking the application put out by the state would require you're having a driver's license or personal ID at least to enter the number and so there's been some questions around some of those logistics and whether they would present hurdles to certain folks having an opportunity to register those are logistics that we're working with the city clerk's office to figure out if whether I mean Burlington would have to manage this process and it's all because folks are registered to vote in local elections it's not something that we would forward along to the state like we do with other applications for folks to be able to register for state elections so we are working through some of those logistical hurdles that folks have rightly had questions about how it would operate but I don't anticipate them being hurdles to our own but like getting us done Thank you I wonder if we could just take a very quick five minutes for you, you're also a member of the redistricting working committee, right? Unfortunately the Congress and Council are not there so I'm certainly willing to provide feedback on redistricting on the time this evening but there are other questions about I'm disrespected the agenda tonight quite a lot so don't worry about that but I think if we can get the school district on it at 8.30 we might be able to settle everything out and be fine so if you could take five minutes to talk a little bit about where you think the working group is going and what are the big considerations and then we can send we can send questions and suggestions to Zariah after that or to UN recently redistricted at the state level because of the recent census here at the local level we are also required to pay very much more so we're going to award one which is where we need to if we're required to have the most important equal population because if they defend they provided a number of suggestions from the perspective of what they would like I would be looking at considering how to proceed since then a number of variations of the different maps and proposals keep the number of awards that the district is saying or change the number of awards and set of awards and we've seen a 12 award map as well and I think you're going to question whether we award a district model where we have councils running equal awards as well as a peace district there and award one where you have councils representing two awards I would say the discussion has been narrowed down the discussions have been narrowed down to one where we're looking at two different variations of maps one being a map with seven awards the other being a map with eight awards and there's still some outstanding questions what that would mean is how many individuals are on the council whether or not we continue having 12 counselors 16 counselors 14 counselors in order to keep this discussion moving forward in our last council meeting last night there was a motion to create a subgroup of folks myself included along with Mark Barlow a few award-winning counselors Ryan Hightower and for three counselors Joe McGee the four of us have been informally working together to get some maps on the agenda for you all to come to public hearing for the council but again if folks have any questions or comments right now they're thinking we'll certainly be happy to take it but that's where we're at right now as a small register okay thank you will the working group meetings be open meetings or will the working group meetings be open meetings or okay great so that if people have questions or comments or input that would be the place at this point that we should be providing at those meetings at the end I think that the benefit of this small group it's really going to be built as a working session trying to knock down some of the formality to be defined before the council meeting and have these meetings be more dialogue thank you very much and let's move on to the Burlington school district come on over we left you a set of chairs oh great yeah or you can stand at the front of the room this is sitting hour right Ben we very much appreciate you being here absolutely thanks for having us Kathy is here do you want to come up with us there's three chairs and if you can just use this microphone for the recording sure okay okay and we do have a presentation and they're going to just going to show it up they'll forward or get us to this side so we need to change it okay okay okay yeah we're ready yeah bring it up can I introduce yourself sure good evening everybody it's great to see you all this is a great place I've seen it driving by to go to the office but never been in here it's a great place I'm Tom Flanagan I'm the superintendent of Burlington schools and I'm Joe Weith I'm with Whitenberg real estate advisors our firm is the project manager for this project and I'm Kathy Owald the east district school commissioner from warts 1 and 8 and we handed out a couple of pieces of paper for you the first is a one pager where we tried to just get every bit of the biggest information our most important information in one place and then we have a frequently asked questions document that is a companion to that we are not going to speak off of those exactly tonight but we can take questions on those we're going to talk off of the presentation and Joe and I will go back and forth we're available to do is try to run through in about 10 minutes and then we can open up for discussion if that sounds okay to everybody good to see you thanks for having us alright so the first thing that we wanted to make sure that you knew about we'll go to the first slide is the project history of why are we in a position where we need to build a Burlington High School and Burlington Technical Center by 2025 we're aiming for the August of 2025 and if we hit our timelines we can meet that deadline but it is an aggressive deadline but not one where we're hurrying either so we feel good about so the first thing is takes us back to 2020 even before 2020 we knew that the high school needed to be renovated seriously renovated in I don't know 2015 14 before that because it wasn't accessible it didn't have major HVAC upgrades it needed windows it needed a bunch of major upgrades just to be a school that was built for to be accessible really and a space that is usable and accessibility specifically to individuals with disabilities because it's a series of different buildings with runways in between there are lots of stairs and it's really inaccessible building so that was one of the issues you can also see accessibility outdated learning spaces, failing mechanical systems the building really desperately needed repair that was significant and the people of Burlington approved a bond of $70 million for the renovations and that was called the re-envisioning project as a part of that project we started to look at the we were required to look at the environmental condition of the building and we learned that there were PCBs that are a toxic chemical that has cancer causing that is cancer and other health impacting chemical that was in the air and then we learned right just prior to the start of the school year in 2020 which was actually the first day of my time as a superintendent here literally the first day of school I got a call from the mayor's office actually because they got a call from the state saying the day before saying we were going to shut the building down and I was like it was COVID so I was thinking it was a COVID related thing and I didn't really know about PCBs but we learned about those PCBs we met with the EPA and the Department of Environmental Conservation and we learned from them that the building needed to be closed so that we could better understand we got the first set of test results back and we were waiting for more test results from the air quality to come back what we learned was that from the EPA and the Department of Environmental Conservation that in a school building and sort of outside of a factory setting these were the highest levels of PCBs that they had ever seen in a building and so it was really significant they were really high in the F building which is in the back and they kind of got lower and lower in the air as they moved kind of moved down the hill but still even throughout the building these PCBs exist and we learned that after the air quality testing you have to then test building materials and so we learned that those PCBs are in the ceiling in the light ballast they're in the glue that you put the tiles that fix the tiles to the floor and they're in the windows and in each of those places PCBs over time release and so they they've gone into the foundation into the flooring down in and they've gone up to two feet into the cement around the windows and so if you think about when we talk about the building in some ways it's like a car that is totaled if you look at the walls the windows we would have to replace and two feet around the windows except for the gym if you look at most of the other buildings that means there ends up being no more walls and we also have it in the floor so at that point it really is it's not salvageable as a building anymore and so we borrowed that we bonded for the $70 million but we didn't borrow the $70 million we used 4 million of the $70 million to understand the PCBs and deal with the PCBs but we did not borrow or we are not using the additional $66 million from that bond so that all just was either borrowed and given back or part of it was borrowed and given back and part of it was never borrowed and so that money was never impacted taxpayers beyond the $4 million that we used for the PCB to get to the point where we realized the PCBs were going to not allow us to continue with that project and so I think that gets us that's the history of where we are so we go to the next slide and then this speaks a little bit to the more recent history so the more recent history is we did a public engagement process around where the building should be we looked at 25 or so a bunch of different sites around town and we chose Institute Road we did a survey of the community and we got feedback from the experts that we work with and it was clear that Institute Road because we owned the land and because we were able to just build right there was a space for us to build right on the land it actually ended up being the least expensive or projected to be the least expensive and least complicated of options for us to build and also an option that many people really prefer because of the campus field because of the fields that are there and the space that's available the proximity to the bike path the lake, the arms forest and everything that that site offers once we chose that site then we looked at five and a half there was one that was we looked at about five different designs so the design team developed five different designs of what that building could look like and one of those designs had a point had a different option to it that's why I said five and a half we ended up choosing option C which was the least expensive of the five options and also the most energy efficient and the most efficient use of space to build a great building but also being as mindful as we can of the impact to our community, to taxpayers on this building so we've been really working hard to balance at each step of the way having a great space for learning that is modern, that is accessible that is flexible that is connected to the woods and the bike path and the lake and the fields and creates flow and community for the community but also that is not going to, that is the most mindful of impact of the impact to taxpayers because we know that is significant so we all, as we've moved so you can see where the design sits and we have some design pictures we'll show you in a minute but you can see kind of the general design so it's compact there's still some outdoor space and there's lots of light and access and sight lines to the outdoors and common spaces so you'll see some of that we did decide half of the students we have a Burlington High School which is about, which is 900 or so students and we also have a Burlington Technical Center half of the students in the Burlington Technical Center are from Burlington and the other half are from the sending districts across the region so nine different high schools can send their students to our technical center so half is our students, half are from the region and so we decided that we should build half of the Burlington Technical Center at the site here and we were fortunate that our aviation teacher and our technical director applied for a grant an earmark from Senator Leahy and received the award for ten million dollars to build a program at the airport that is related to aviation and so we are able to move our two aviation programs advanced manufacturing, pre-tech and probably auto out to the airport and so that just happened at the right time and we ended up being able to pull 20 million dollars out of the project and we'll be able to use that 10 million plus other funding from the airport and from other support to build that program at the airport so we're really actually excited about that because it puts the technical center a little bit further into the region a little closer to the sending districts and also right next to the field where this work is happening with beta with the Vermont Flight Academy with the airport all looking for people who have transferable skills and also specific skills related to aviation so it's a really good option that we were just really fortunate that it all came together at this time and so we also have throughout this process been looking for ways to secure funding I'll talk a little bit more about that afterward after Joe talks about the design and where we are now is that we have the school board approved a $165 million bond request and that is an up to we really are committed to raising funds to get that $165 million to not have to borrow all of that and we're already making progress and I'll talk a little bit more about that the money part later and we're headed in city council unanimously approved with support of the mayor the bond placement on the ballot and now the bond language for this project will be on the November 8th ballot and those mail home ballots are coming out probably around September 28th so I'll pass it to Joe to talk through the schematic design all right thank you so this slide shows our proposed site plan for the new high school and tech center on the north side of institute road so our plan is to demo and fully remediate the contaminated buildings that currently exist on the site and then construct a new 250,000 square foot high school and tech center the new building will be four stories it'll be relatively compact in size to minimize environmental impact and as you can see it's pretty much centered on the site with an orientation to institute road access to the site will be from institute road and just to highlight a few of the design features there will be two main prominent entrances to the new building a south entrance and a north entrance the south entrance will face institute road and the north entrance will serve the new parking area on the north side as well as the bus drop off and pick up area back there both entrances will provide access to a student commons which is being designed to pretty much be the heart and soul of this school and the hub of student activity there will be a significant amount of seating and space in this common area for students to dine gather and collaborate the cafeteria will be on the first level of this student commons area there will be a 750 seat room with balcony and a three station gym both of which will be accessed off the student commons and the third station of the gym will actually serve as a community gym with a separate entrance that can be closed off from the remainder of the school so it can be used by the community during evenings or on weekends we're also proposing a strong connection to the outdoors which Tom had said earlier which is something that we heard very loud and clear from the students and from teachers something that is very important and highly desirable in the new high school and tech center so in addition to maintaining and enhancing the connections to the arms forest which is on the to the north of the school we're also proposing two outdoor learning areas which they're kind of hard to see on this plan but they're those two circular features there's one on the east side of the building and one on the west side and these are really intended they're going to be designed as small amphitheater type outdoor learning centers and so these yeah so these will be areas that where classes can be held on nice days probably not too many in the winter but here actually down where that number one is just to the west of the building yeah right there yeah oh yeah and then the courtyard in the middle of the building there so just a couple more highlights the building and site are being designed to be highly energy efficient and sustainable we will be pursuing a lead silver or better certification fossil fuel free energy sources will be used including primary use of electrification with geothermal heating and cooling and also solar photovoltaics the roof structure will be solar ready for installation of solar units by a third party provider who will own and operate those solar units there will be, as Tom said earlier there will be a generous natural light throughout the building again that's something we heard loud and clear from the students and the teachers that's something being critical for a school building that's something that they don't currently have at the downtown high school and so they've been able to experience what it's like being in a building that has no windows durable long lasting low maintenance finishes will be used inside and out and then finally there will be extensive bicycle connections and bicycle parking and improved pedestrian access with new walkways and paths so if you just want to scroll through some of the renderings that we have here this is the south facade of the new building looking at it from the intersection of north avenue and institute road so that would be the south frontage that looks on institute road go ahead and then this is the north main entrance off of that parking lot and bus drop off pickup area on the north side of the building and then this is a rendering of a typical classroom with plenty of window area for natural light next slide please and then this is a rendering of the two level student comments that I talked about so again plenty of seating for students to meet, eat lunch collaborate the cafeteria will be on this first level leading up to the second level and you can see there is stadium seating off to the side of the stairs again more spaces for students to congregate and collaborate next photo next rendering please rendering of the new auditorium with the balcony next slide and then this is a rendering of the library of media center again showing plenty of glass a lot of natural light open floor plan for today's modern school library and media center and I think that might be it okay so I'll give it back to you thank you very much so we as I said we've been really mindful of the impact of this pending bond vote on taxpayers and so you can see that the overall cost to the BSD budget on a $165 million bond is up is there and then the tax rate increase this is on a $370,000 $100,000 our home is $15.67 percent and the other percentages are also there and one of the things that we've been working to explain to the people of Burlington is that the school board multiple school boards have been working and advocating at the state to make sure that the funding for our city schools is equitable and it has been inequitable historically where the wealthier districts have had a lower tax impact because of what we call the weighted pupil which is essentially how much an individual student is weighted or funded or gets funded based on their weight and that has that what that has done is essentially given more resources to wealthier districts so Essex South Burlington and CVSD some of our close neighbors who are also colleagues and friends of ours they are benefiting from an inequitable funding model and we are being harmed by an inequitable funding model that does two problematic things to us one, the citizens of Burlington are committed to a high quality education for their children people are paying higher taxes than they should have to for less for less service so we have what this will do is fix two things for us that we can't exactly predict we can't predict exactly how the percent of impact it will have on taxes yet but what it will do is it will ultimately mean that we don't need to tax as much for the level of service that we that we need and so this 15% if you look at the way that districts across the region are impacted you will see districts have a plus 15% meaning they are they are going to benefit 15% and some that are negative 15% and so we are we are moving in a positive direction as it relates to the weighted pupil and it's about 15% it doesn't mean that it will totally balance this 15% because some of it needs to go to higher quality services that are particularly under weighted now for English language learners and for students who are in poverty and in secondary schools so the school board did a great job of working on that and that's been part of what we've been doing to support taxpayers and improve our schools moving forward and I think we know it will have an offset here we don't know exactly how much and so we want to be really careful not to promise something that isn't accurate and so we're just showing you what the tax rate increase would be on the $165 million bond without any of that weighted pupil calculated in here so if you go to the next slide this shows this is a little much to look at but we do have a sort of calculator that you can see that shows how this impacts individual home values and I think I just have one more slide do you want to hold or do you want to ask your question now I know it took too much time one more slide sound like a plan got it sorry about that okay well then let's talk go ahead to the last slide what am I asking that's fine one question is the $66 million that has left over from what we voted the bond before is that part of this $165 million or is that in addition we still are bonding for that no that $66 million was half of that we never borrowed and the other half of that we borrowed and are going to return so we're not using those funds so that will have no impact on taxpayers it's as if it never happened the $165 million is totally different I'll let Sharon go sure I'm a broken record because you've never seen me before but you've heard my voice because I follow this through the planning commission and the DRB with your sketch plan etc but I have two questions one I'm asking on behalf of someone else who isn't here tonight and his concern is when you're talking about contamination he has he is he feels that no one has answered whether or not I understand it's around the windows in the foundation his concern is have you done soil boring tests so that you know how much how deep it is and how much earth you might have to remove or is that an unknown that might add some costs that won't be well received if you have to if you have to come up with some additional funds sure I understand they have done they have done those soil boring tests and are they on file with the city I guess that's my question we have all that information we have an environmental consulting team that's been working on all of the testing and they're currently working on a remediation plan that will be presented to the state to determine environmental conservation and EPA for approval but they've this environmental team and district representatives have been meeting with EPA and DEC on a monthly basis for the last two years so everyone is fully aware of the extent of the contamination and they're working on an acceptable plan to remediate so that cost although it's still not actually nailed down is in the total bonding cost correct? so you've anticipated a certain dollar amount to address not only the foundation and the taking down of the building and getting rid of the building but some soil remediation also that's an important point that we haven't talked about a lot but about 25 million of the project is the removal and remediation of the building and the site so we have characterized the soil we understand where the soil is contaminated and it has not thankfully gone out too far from the building and so we know where that ends and we generally know the extent of the soil so that's for the person who isn't here Karen's neighbor and my question is the one that I've asked the mayor about at the board of finance and I asked at the city council and the superintendent you did pick up on this is that I feel that I'm hoping that the school I'm hoping the community has gone to Montpelier and I read your communication that Montpelier said look at other avenues but I'm not satisfied I'm glad you read that part of it I read that but you know I don't agree and I feel that it's a community issue and I'm just going to be very brief on this I feel that first of all they applied a more stringent standard than the EPA did the state did and then when they realized that they couldn't really apply that statewide they pulled back and changed the level but in the meantime they made Burlington students we can never take away that harm but financially they made Burlington students learn remotely there was a cost there they made Burlington renovate Macy's and I know the state did some money for you on that but I don't remember what that is but they made us go that route and that cost us some money too it wasn't just the state it was the high school for 70 million they delayed that now construction costs and materials are more expensive so in my estimation in my old estimation and I've run this by another past member of the Board of Finance I think they owe us around $15 million I'm not asking for the world but I'm serious about this and I really think the mayor and you the school administration would go and have not a confrontational conversation but a factual confrontation a conversation with Montpelier about these various phases and the harm and the financial costs that are incurred by this community and I do feel that they should contribute somewhat to this new school I agree and collectively not that I can speak for everybody but we collectively agree with everything you just said the reason I dwell a little bit on the poor people is the impact to taxpayers that will offset some but also that what we heard in Montpelier from behind the scenes I made a direct ask to the Secretary of the Agents of Education he came to Brownington in April and we walked Macy's and we went to the old school and he said it was one of the worst schools in our state and I agreed and I said yes and we need 30 million to remediate the PCBs and 20 million to build the technical center and he said I hear you and so we did make a direct ask and and also we did receive 3.5 million to build to do Macy's from the governor he did give us the legislature but he helped us make that happen but what we were hearing is that people were talking at the state house about how we had already gotten our funding through the way to pupil we disagree with that because that is something different and so what we're doing now is we're really pushing on we're applying for grants in the current fiscal year's budget that we're eligible for and so we're going to do that we think there's funding there and then we're also going to gear up for the next legislative session we're really serious and we have an MOU with the city our commitment to seeking funds to lower the bond the borrowing that we need to do on this 165 bond but we're really committed to continuing to seek funding and one of the things that I think we may need to mobilize around like we mobilized around the way to pupil is construction aid and so that's something that we'll probably start mobilizing around for the next legislative session we are working with someone who's lobbying in Montpelier who helped us with the way to pupil who really understands how this stuff works so we're really really committed to continuing to do that work and then in the current budget there's $32 million for PCB work and so we think that's across the whole state so we're not going to get all of that but we believe strongly we're going to be eligible for some of those funds once the rules are written and we're able to apply and there are other avenues as well we also talk about federal grants there so we're also eligible for federal grants through the EPA, Clean Water there's environmental grants there's grants that we can go for with the Broenton Electric Department so there are a couple of good opportunities there there are a lot of opportunities for us within this current budget to apply for and we think receive significant funding I just want to tell you that I'm on a fixed income but I have said no to a number of the bonds that have come forward from the city because I was saving my money of course I couldn't because everyone else supported those bonds but I saved my money for the schools and you've got my vote I am definitely and I'm trying to convince people to make that sacrifice but it's a big sacrifice and I really want this to happen I really want the school to happen so anything you can do anything that any one of us well anybody that supports it can do to help certainly I offer any assistance I can give you thank you we appreciate that we are really going to be aggressive to seeking additional funding and we think we'll be able to bring money to this well no I just appreciate following it through the news or talk about it but I appreciate the equity lens that you all took with it there's one thing you said when talking about the energy that's going to be used and not relying on fossil fuels is natural gas and biofuels in that mix that you're kind of just not a fossil fuel? the architects would be better suited to answer this but my understanding is that they're moving forward with designing a system that won't require the use of any fossil fuels however one of the things they're still trying to figure out is whether gas is still needed for some of the curriculum like some of the labs and things like that but they've already decided that they're going to design and construct the new kitchen without the use of gas which is new for the high school but the issue of whether or not there needs to be determined heating and cooling will not use fossil fuels did you say geothermal? there's good geothermal access on the land itself which is good and the building will be net zero ready which means that as technology advances we'll be able to generate the energy we need to run the building on the site but we also need some advancement around solar and other things to make that happen but it's going to be a very energy efficient building and that's actually one of the reasons we chose this building that sort of compact design allows it to be more energy efficient too so this is kind of a basic thing but everything that was in the school like the library supplies and the desks and you know anything I mean what's happened to all that that we used or and like you mentioned that the gym was fine but we're still getting a whole new gym anyway and all of A building is going well the gym the gym is not fine we're able to use the gym for small parts of time and A building is more than just the gym so that gym space is one of the lower airborne places with lower PCBs but there are higher airborne PCBs and other parts of A building and so you get to a point where there's just no reusing and it's also not just about air quality once we learned the problem in the air we then had to test the materials and we're regulated on how much PCBs are in the materials and so those spaces still have PCBs in the materials so yeah so that's and in terms of the we actually we have a recently retired principal whose name is Shelly Mathias she was at Edmunds Elementary School yeah she's wonderful she's going to help us project manage getting out of the old BHS starting with A building we've taken a lot out and are using it at BHS we also have more at BHS that we that we will need that we will keep and we have storage we're going to rent some storage on Pine Street and then there's some stuff there that is a value that we don't need anymore and so we're going to have to figure out how to get you have people have access to that or whatever that looks and then there's also a lot of stuff that's old I mean sometimes Ed you you know we tend to hold on to things so there's some of that too so it's really an intensive balancing act but we are working on that and we're also going to go and catalog people are asking there are a lot of plaques there are a lot of things that have sentimental value that are important that we don't want to lose and so we're also looking at we're also going to make sure we're preserving those things thank you is there anyone on the screen who has a question no hands I would like to say one thing hey thank you well it's I haven't been to a school board meeting I don't currently have children in the school district and it's been two and a half years but I want to say thank you for coming to lead the school district despite that COVID happened none of us knew that it was coming and it must have been like Dante's circles of health because it was just one thing after another that you were having to contend with and you were new your family was new to this community and you are mastering it all of you and I just want to say thank you it's been two and a half years and I haven't had an opportunity to say it well done keep it up thank you I really appreciate that it's with the support of the school board we have an amazing school board with Kathy and Claire and Jeff the team we have a wonderful school board and the community is so committed there have been a lot of hard decisions but I haven't felt like I feel good about the work I really love the work and the families here in our schools and we love it too it's a gift to me but thank you I appreciate it I think maybe we can close the meeting thank you very much thank you