 We are joined tonight by Ben Littenberg and Andrew Albright. We're going to play some music for us for about 10 minutes. Thanks guys, take it away. Every honey bee fills with jealousy. When they see you out with me, I don't blame them goodness knows. My honey suckle rules. When you're passing by, flowers droop inside. And I know the reason why. You're much sweeter than this nose. My honey suckle rules. I don't buy sugar from them. You just have to touch my cup. It's so sweet when you stir it up. Or when I'm taking scent from your tasty bits. All the honey fallow drips. Your confection goodness knows. My honey suckle rules. Confection goodness knows. Honey suckle rules. Thank you. That's Waller, honey suckle rules. Thanks. The audience is, it's very odd, but we're happy. It's very happy to have any audience, frankly, so thanks. How we doing? Oh, sorry. Yeah. It's in Approximately C. It's another Fats Waller tune and it's about recycling. So. Thank you. Recycling from the 1920s. We got one little quickie from Irving Berlin, who was putting all his eggs in one basket. Joe Albright on the double bass, Ben Littenberg on guitar. Thank you. That was excellent. Thanks, Ben and Andrew. Really, really great. I think I introduced myself to start. I'm Nelson Martel. Another MPA, three committee members here. Matt Grady, Michelle Maraz, Mary Riley and Carolyn Hauser. Now begins, I guess the public comment period. So the floor is open. Let us know if you have any public comments. I just want to say thank you to our musicians. They have raised the bar. Yes. I don't see any hands up. I actually haven't come across this yet before, but steering committee members, do we, do we kind of wait, wait out the whole 10 minutes in silence, or do we proceed if no one's raising their hands? Go ahead. I see. I think Jessica Hyman from a fair housing project is on. And I think we're a month late. For fair housing month officially, but. I don't know if you're ready. We could go ahead and hear what you have to share with us. Sure. Thank you so much, Nelson, and Matt and the rest of the steering committee. And I'm here today with Erica Johnson from, from Vermont legal aid. And we're really happy to be here. And I'm very glad that you didn't make a sing for 10 minutes or something during, during public comment period. I'm also really excited to be here because I'm on the board, and I'm a member of the three steering NPA steering committee. And I love going to other neighborhood NPA meetings. It's great to hear the, hear the music and, and see other people's faces. So I'm Jess Hyman with the fair housing project of the Champlain Valley office of economic opportunity. And the fair housing project is one of our statewide housing advocacy programs. So along with Vermont tenants, which has a hotline and provides resources and classes and support for renters as well as the rent right program, which has excuse me, which includes tenants rights and responsibilities information, financial literacy information, and a preferred renter certificate that can help folks get a leg up and renting. Also the mobile home program, which provides resources and support and community organizing for mobile home park residents and groups. And then also the fair housing project. And we do consultation referrals and support for people who are experiencing housing discrimination. We connect them to our partners at Vermont legal aid and the Human Rights Commission and HUD and other agencies. And then we also do workshops and trainings about fair housing for housing providers, landlords, housing authorities. Also for service providers and municipal officials and the public. So today Eric and I are here to talk to you about fair housing. And so CBO and the, and Vermont legal aid have been doing the tour of NPAs in April for fair, for a fair housing month. And I think it's actually a really good thing that we didn't make it to, to all the NPAs during April, because it's a reminder that even though we celebrate fair housing month in April, which is marks the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it's an issue year round. People are getting treated unfairly in their housing year round. And organizations like both of ours and others are here to provide support and resources and advocacy year round. So fair housing month should be fair housing year every day. And, you know, because we all know that, you know, where we live matters, you know, where, where our homes are, effects where our kids go to school, how easy it is to get to work, you know, what our various opportunities are, what we're exposed to in our environment, our recreational opportunities. And so when people are, when anyone isn't given, isn't allowed access to a safe and stable and affordable place to live, they're, they don't have access to all these other, other opportunities. And, you know, this was made especially apparent this past year during COVID, we're all told to stay home and say, stay safe. Well, if you don't have a safe, if you don't have a stable home, how are you going to do that? And so we saw over the past year, we saw a lot of, there are a lot of pressures on an already really tight housing market. Because as we know, when there's a tight housing market, it provides an opportunity for even more, more discrimination and exclusion in housing. So, so as I said, so Fair Housing Month, which is in April, celebrates the passage of these really important protections in both in federal, federal law and expanded in different law, protections against discrimination and harassment and housing. And the Fair Housing Act also sought to repair and redress patterns of systemic housing segregation that were caused from decades and more of, of, of, of federal and state policies that, that caused exclusion and housing. So we're, we're celebrating this great law and we're also recognizing that these inequities still exist. And we really need to renew our fight for safe and stable and affordable homes for everyone. So for Fair Housing Month, we had a whole series of activities and I, they were wonderful, they were fun. I'm not going to tell you all about them because you missed them and then you'll be sad, but there are still ways to access the information. So a lot of the activities were recorded. So we have a great series of events called Fair Housing Fridays that were presentations and discussions on topics like the impact of racial discrimination in housing on communities. And that was presented by a South, South Brownton High School student who was amazing. We had discussions on equity and choice in housing and what the housing landscape, scape looks like after COVID. And there were also workshops and trainings from Vermont Legal Aid and the Human Rights Commission trainings for landlords, a fantastic workshop on housing, on voucher discrimination. And a lot of these are recorded and available at fairhousingvt.org. That's fairhousingvt.org. And so you can check out the recordings. And there's also links to a reading list that was prepared by our partners at the Vermont Department of Libraries and information about our community art projects, so tons of prompts and things that you can still do year round. So I would encourage you to check that out. Also as part of Fair Housing Month, the number of cities and the state did proclamations to recognize the importance of fair housing. And one of them was here in Burlington. So our mayor, Morrowine Berger, proclaimed April Fair Housing Month. And so we've been reading the proclamations at each NPA. It goes through, it gives you a little bit of history. And what I think is really important is it, it strengthens our city's commitment to this work and our commitment to making positive and systemic change. And so I can share, can I share my screen? Yep. So I'm going to share my screen and we'll go through it quickly and you can read along. And then after that we'll hear from Erica about what we see here in Burlington in terms of discrimination and what we can do about it. And then there'll also be time for questions. So does that proclamation show up on everyone's screen? Perfect. So whereas the Federal Fair Housing Act was passed in April 1968 in order to take steps towards eliminating discrimination and housing opportunities based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status and disability, and to further housing choices for all Americans. And Vermont's Fair Housing Act strengthened the proclamations of the Federal Fair Housing Act to include age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, receipt of public assistance, and people who've experienced abuse, sexual assault, or stalking as protected classes. And the month of April is now celebrated as Fair Housing Month, both nationally and locally. And the ongoing struggle for dignity and opportunity for all in housing is not the exclusive province of the Federal or state governments and vigorous local efforts to combat discrimination and expand housing opportunities can be extremely effective. And Burlingtonians need safe, decent, affordable, and inclusive housing and illegal barriers to equal opportunity in housing no matter how subtle diminish the rights of all. And the city of Burlington supports these efforts of fair housing organizations, concerned citizens, and the housing industry to create broader housing choice in Burlington and Chittenden County and to promote understanding the Fair Housing Act. And inclusive welcoming and affordable communities promote diversity and a climate conducive to equitable and vibrant development. And Burlington submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Assessment of Fair Housing, which was subsequently approved by the department in December 2017. And Burlington continues to work to expand housing opportunities and the availability and affordability of housing in Burlington through policy reform, including the development over the last two years of new policies to implement energy efficiency standards and rental housing, eliminate requirements around parking standards in order to reduce a major driver of the cost of housing and align the city's land use policies with its climate goals and restore and increase the dedicated funding for the city's housing trust fund, among others. And whereas the coronavirus crisis has put an additional strain on the city's housing and support services and exacerbated existing inequities for people for whom fair housing laws seek to proclaim from discrimination, seek to protect from discrimination and particularly for people of color. Now therefore be it resolved that I, the author of this, I, Mayor of the city of Burlington do not do hereby proclaim the month of April, 2021 to be fair housing month in Burlington. And I hereby urge all individuals, agencies and institutions public and private to contribute to the observance by continuing our efforts to eliminate housing discrimination in our communities and increase housing opportunities for all. And so that last bit is really the most is so important to continue our efforts to eliminate housing discrimination in our communities and increase housing opportunities for all. So it's really wonderful that the city has made this public commitment. And we, we and all our partners really look, look forward to making that a reality because no one should be excluded from housing. So after that grand reading, and we like to really thank the mayor and also CEDO for, for making this proclamation happen. I will pass it over to Erica to talk a little, a little more about what, what we see here in Burlington. And then we'd love to have a conversation as questions. Thank you. Erica, I think you might be muted. No volume. Testing testing. Okay. Perfect. There's a microphone issue that I've never experienced before. This is the technical life. Cool. So like Jess said, thank you so much for that introduction and that presentation. My name is Erica Johnson and I am the staff attorney in the housing discrimination law project of Vermont legal aid. I am based here in Burlington, but I work with tenants statewide. So I wanted to take a few minutes today just to talk a little bit about what my work is at Vermont legal aid. How we help tenants with fair housing issues and some of the issues that we see commonly pop up in Burlington. And what to do about those things. As Jess mentioned in the housing proclamation, there are several different bases that. Protect tenants against discrimination. And those come from a combination of federal, state and local discrimination rules. I won't go into too much detail because I know. That legal information is not always interesting to people who aren't immersed in it 40 hours a week, like I am, but very quickly, a brief overview of those protected bases. They're racing color, national origin and ethnicity, religion, disability, having minor children, which is sometimes called familial status, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, being a person who's experienced abuse, sexual assault, or stalking, age, public assistance, which includes housing vouchers and marital status. The ones that we see pop up most often in Burlington. Our disability. And that comes up in two different ways. I should say disability discrimination comes up in two different ways. The first is sometimes landlords will try to treat tenants with this disability. So for example, some landlords don't realize that they have to accept particular forms of disability income, or they don't realize that disability income comes in on, say, like the fifth of the month instead of the first. And they are, they try to make a distinction between tenants with disabilities and tenants who don't have disabilities for those purposes. That doesn't come up as often, but it is still an issue. The more common area that disability comes up in Burlington is when landlords often don't understand their obligations to provide what's called reasonable accommodations. So a reasonable accommodation is just a change in a policy or a practice that a tenant with disabilities needs to have each of their own responsibilities. So that's what we do. So a reasonable accommodation and housing is an emotional support animal. So there are a lot of tenants who, their doctor tells them that an emotional support animal would help alleviate the symptoms of many of their disabilities, or many of the symptoms of their disabilities, recommends that they get one of those animals. And we see a lot of people who don't have disabilities. And we see a lot of people who don't have disabilities, because they get one of those animals. And we see time and time again, especially in a tight housing market like Burlington, landlords don't understand, certainly not all landlords, but some landlords don't understand the difference between an emotional support animal that a person with disability really needs, and a pet that someone without disabilities might enjoy, but doesn't have a need for, to have equal access to their housing. So a big part of our work at Vermont Legal Aid is doing an education and outreach type trainings to community partners and landlords and other folks to help people understand kind of the nuances of reasonable accommodation laws, and what landlords obligations are, and what tenants obligations are under those laws, so that they can have equal access to their housing without putting an undue burden on landlords. So that's a little bit about disability discrimination. That's a really common one we encounter in Burlington. Another one that Jess mentioned in her presentation is section eight discrimination or public assistance discrimination, and that one is really a challenge of Burlington's tight housing market. We see that coming up primarily where landlords don't want to go through the administrative hassle of accepting section eight. They don't want to go through the paperwork or they don't want to have the extra inspections. So that's a big problem. Another one that is kind of a more systemic problem. It's not technically fair housing discrimination. It's not technically a violation, but it is something that has a really big, big impact on folks who have vouchers because the housing market is so competitive. A lot of landlords can set rents right above, like above what a voucher will cover in the housing market, and they might not necessarily be doing that. So some landlords do that as a clever way to avoid accepting vouchers, but I think most landlords who are doing that are just seeking to get the market value for their property, and that is always going to be a challenge for folks who have vouchers to get into that housing if the housing market doesn't open up. So again, not necessarily a violation, but something I wanted to raise because it's an issue that we see coming up time and time and time again for our tenants with vouchers and something that really impacts their ability to have high quality housing. And the last one that we really commonly see in Burlington, I think because of a knowledge gap is landlords don't always realize that they are not allowed to tell tenants that they can't live in the property with kids, or they'll say, well, we are okay with you having your teenager living there, but we're not okay with you living there with the baby because the walls are thin and we're worried it'll keep people up at night. Or, well, you can live in this unit because it's a unit with younger people, but this unit has older neighbors that were concerned the young kids are going to make noise and disturb. That's not something under federal and state fair housing law that's okay. That last practice that I talked about where you can improve a family with kids for one unit, but not another is referred to as steering, it's also a violation of fair housing law that I think is not, you know, not as intuitive as saying no kids period, but it's still a violation under the law. Another of these kind of more subtle violations is saying, okay, well you can live in this house because like you can live in this house because it's a bigger house, but if I only have a smaller unit available and you have three children, this unit is too small for your family. That is in most situations also a violation of fair housing law. There might be an exception if you know it's a studio apartment, you and your seven kids are trying to live there. That might be a concern about like actually causing damage to an apartment that is really too big to accommodate those size numbers, but for a reasonable family like two parents, two kids in a three bedroom unit, that's something that should be reasonable. So that's another one that is kind of one of these more nuanced areas of the law where I think a big hurdle is just the information gap between landlords and fair housing advocates. And that is what one of the areas where monthly delayed comes in. Like I said, part of my job is to do trainings for community partners, landlords, anyone who's really interested in learning more about fair housing law. That's a big part of my work. Another part of my work is representing tenants in litigation. I always say to my people who call me for advice, I always say, so when you talk to me, you're going to get help. No matter everyone who calls me will get legal help. Some people I give brief advice and consultation. Some people I do what's called limited assistance. So I will help people with just particular motion hearings or file particular legal briefs or will try to help them negotiate with their landlords on kind of a discrete issue. And then there are some cases that I provide full representation in. So these are the cases that I take to state court or take to federal court or represent before HUD or the commission. So kind of the whole spectrum of legal services happens at Vermont legal aid because every person is different. Every person's needs are different. And I think that the best thing to do if someone, what someone really needs is just a quick phone call to the landlord that it's going to be a better experience for them to just have that phone call, then to go through an entire court process and get the same result at the end. So that is what I do at Vermont legal aid. So if you know of any tenants who might benefit from legal advice or representation, you can tell them to contact us one of two ways. So we have an excellent website that has a wide variety of legal information called vtlawhelp.org. And there's also an option to fill out a request for legal assistance. So you can go that route and summarize your legal problem and give all the contact information. And one of our advocates at our partner organization, legal services Vermont will give them a call back and go through our intake process. And the other way is that you can call legal services Vermont and leave a voicemail and again, they'll call back and go through the intake. And that number is 1-800-889-2047. Actually, I'm going to take a leaf out of Jess's book and see if I can just share my screen really quickly so you can see that number. Here it is. So this is our website vtlawhelp.org. It's a very pleasing looking website. I think very friendly colors. And here's how to get help. You can use our legal help tool, explore web pages, call the stemmer, fill out our legal help request form. And folks at legal services Vermont are really, really good about giving prompt calls back and giving excellent follow-up steps. So would highly recommend them. And that is everything for me. I am really excited to talk more with you folks and answer any questions that you have. And I'm going to try to stop sharing my screen. Thanks, Erica. And I also wanted to add to, we've talked a lot about, about renters and how housing discrimination can show up in rental transactions. And, but it's really important to note that both federal and state fair housing law protects everyone from discrimination, harassment and intimidation when you're, when you're looking to rent, buy or finance your home or, and also when you're living in your home as well. So what questions do you have? What are you curious about? I have a question. If I could start things. I think other people too. I was wondering what you two thought. What implications do you see from the recent just cause, a ballot item do you expect? What do you expect to see in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months from, from that ballot item having passed? How do you think it'll change things for, for housing and so forth? Well, assuming, you know, assuming that it, it, you know, comes back to Burlington and we can get a good solid ordinance written on the Burlington side. What it's going to do is it's going to level the playing field and it's going to make housing more, more available to more people with, with, without discrimination. And actually what you, Erica, why don't I turn this over to you because you can, you can, I think you can explain the implications really well. Um, because that legal aid has done, it was a really big part of the campaign to, along with CBOEO and rights and democracy and a lot of other organizations, the campaign to, to help, um, people understand the benefits of just cause eviction ordinance. Sure. I'm happy to talk more about that. Uh, so as just mentioned, there was a coalition of fair housing advocates and housing general who pushed for the passage of the just cause charter change in Burlington and the housing discrimination law project, which I work for, uh, submitted a statement to, I think it was one of the committees. I don't think it was the whole council, but we submitted a statement talking about how we believe just cause is going to advance fair housing rights in Burlington. And the reason that we mentioned that is because under the current system, which allows for no cause terminations of lease agreements, landlords can terminate a lease without having to give a reason. And our experience, both from the testing that we do where we have, um, you know, anonymous testers contact a whole bunch of landlords for a period of time, respond to applications and see who gets calls back and how far they get in the process from the reports that we get of tenants who are experiencing, uh, discrimination in the housing market and from all of the academic research, the indication time and time and time again is that no cause is often used as a way to hide what is actually discriminatory in time. So this happens for, we see this happen a lot in some of the common examples that I talked about, landlords who would prefer not to accommodate a tenant with disabilities or landlords who, uh, don't want to rent to families with kids or aren't willing to have an emotional support animal live in their unit, things like that. It's a lot easier and quicker for that landlord to give a no cause notice than to meet their fair housing obligations under the law, which is an unfortunate reality for a small percentage of landlords, but enough that it makes folks, uh, struggle within a housing market. Actually, one of the studies is probably more than, more than you bargained for, but you can look it up in the report that HGLP gave to the city council. If you're really interested in the details, but one of the studies out of Boston in, I want to say 2020, they did this enormous, uh, testing campaign to see what applicants could get through the door. Um, and. And like even get past the initial application stage to go and visit an apartment. And it was something like 80% of tenants with a voucher just didn't get past the application stage, just didn't have a shot at all. Um, and those are the kinds of, those are really consistent with the kinds of reports that we hear here in Vermont and especially in Burlington. So that, you know, the voucher discrimination isn't necessarily something that just cause in itself is going to fix. That's, you know, that's a bigger problem than I think we're able to fix with just one ordinance, but I think it is really illustrative of the fact that um, discrimination is happening and it's happening often in ways that we can't see it. Uh, and that will require a multitude of legal and creative approaches. And I think just cause eviction is a really critical step in that piece because, or in that process, because it gets rid of the, you know, kind of the, the cloak that allows discrimination to hide in an eviction context. So that was probably a longer answer than. That's great. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Eric. Yeah. Excuse me. Thanks, Jess and Erica, um, both, both for the presentations. Um, I think it was fair housing. VT.org. And Vermont law help. We'll put the contact info in the meeting notes, but thank you both for the, for your time tonight. Thank you so much for having us. Yes, thank you. I think. Go ahead, Mary. Okay. Tiff, did you have your, your hand raised? Did you have a question? I actually, you know, I, uh, I just wanted to thank, um, uh, the two presenters for the work that you do. We've been hanging out with legal aid now for the last, um, I don't know, two, three weeks. Um, I don't know. And to kind of hammer out a bill. A housing bill, uh, that creates a rental registry, but it also, um, makes investments in, um, Bringing abandoned or vacant apartments, um, up to code and improving those. It also, um, Commits more money to, uh, Um, It's, and there's, there's an opportunity for kind of a, for a moonshot, um, in terms of housing, building, housing, transitioning, um, from motels to, um, rental housing for folks who are currently unhoused. Um, and I'll have a lot more. I can share more of that with you. Um, I'm going to move on to the next agenda topic. Um, the next meeting because we'll have hammered out the budget and we'll know what those numbers look like. And certainly, um, Chittenden County will benefit from some of that money. So at any rate, thanks for the work that you all do. And, and, um, And for your colleagues help over the last several weeks. Thank you, um, for, for that. Um, With that, we're going to move on to the next, uh, gender topic, um, which has to do with, um, Brooklyn schools updates, uh, general district news. I see we have a superintendent Tom Flanigan here with us. Uh, and school commissioners Claire wool and Jeff. Thank you all for joining us tonight. Um, and, um, Take it, take it away. Great. Am I starting Claire? Um, so we were, uh, I'm coming tonight to talk specifically about the, uh, high school and, and technical center. Um, and, and I have some talking points to sort of talk through where we are. Uh, but then also want to definitely save time for, for any questions you have and, uh, any thoughts. Um, so I know there's, this has been pretty well documented in the news. Um, so, um, you know, I, um, I, um, I think you may, you may know some of these pieces. So I'm not going to sort of belabor the timeline and all that kind of stuff, but I do want to sort of run through a little bit of the high level of, of where we are and sort of what got us here and then talk about our next steps. And again, I'm sure I'll forget things. So, uh, in, in my comments here. So I'll open it up for, for questions at the end. And we'll go from there. So we, we, uh, as, as you probably know, we found PCBs in the air in August. Um, uh, of last, uh, school year. Um, and we actually found those PCBs, uh, because we were planning the renovation project. People have sort of, uh, put that finding together with the air quality testing that we were doing as it relates to COVID, but it was completely different. So we actually kind of through our due diligence with this project uncovered a problem that we didn't know existed. Um, and so we closed the building while we continued to test. And we have continued to test since August. Uh, up until last week, we've been testing the building. And the problem that we have is that we continue to find new sources of the PCBs. Most recently, this is the last source we found was that it's in the glue underneath the tiles of the floor and has seeped a couple of inches into the concrete of the floor. Uh, so it's, it's everywhere. I mean, it's in the floor in the concrete of the floor in the glue and the tile. Uh, it's in, it came originally, we learned that it was in the caulking around the windows. So it's in, it's in the caulking, but it has also spread across the, into the walls. Uh, it's in some of the ceiling tiling. And as a result of all that, it's also in the soil kind of right next to the building, the soil, the, the PCBs have not leached into the soil out very far and they're not going down very far. So there's no plume or there's no, there's no significant long-term concern for the, the, the health and safety of the site, but we will have to, uh, deal with, um, uh, the site as we, as we take it down, um, and very carefully and to take into consideration all of the rules and regulations around how to do that with a hazardous material. Um, so ultimately the contamination was really extensive. Um, and also Vermont screening threshold is really low. It's lower than, um, the EPA threshold, but we did meet when we made this decision to, to not return to the, to the high school back in August. We did meet with the EPA and the Vermont department of health. Uh, uh, commissioner, uh, chair will was, was with me and Claire and I met with, with them and they told us, you know, the EPA told us follow Vermont's guidelines, uh, and that the EPA's numbers are not, uh, uh, uh, a hard line, um, but they're a point at which you look further. And the Vermont department of health told us that theirs, their, their levels are appropriate and taking into consideration the health and safety of, of the people who inhabit the building and, um, are not, uh, PCBs are cancer causing agents, but they don't only cause cancer. The cancer causing, um, the cancer correlation is, is, uh, has to do for impacts folks who were in the building more than really anyone would be in the building, uh, long, long hours and many, many years and sort of every day of the year. Uh, so not really what any teacher would do, but there are all these other, uh, long-term health effects that come, that PCBs are known to cause. And so we, we asked at that meeting, you know, does anyone here really feel like we could safely go back in? I, I originally thought because we had met the EPA standard that we had some room to have a debate about this and we could possibly get back in. It was a clear no from all of our, from, from the EPA, uh, uh, and the department of health. So just wanted to, we're sort of old news. I know, and I apologize for going back through that, but I think it's really important just for people to, to hear. So our, our best estimate, um, was for, for the full remediation was that it would cost seven to 12 million dollars and, and, um, 12 being people, our consultants telling us that 12 million was probably the, the, the, the, the, the where we would land or even a little higher. Um, and there's no budget to, to cover the cost of remediation. Um, and so, uh, at, at this point, completing the renovation project with the PCB, um, challenges would result in a building that would definitely still contain PCBs, um, and would require a significant ongoing monitoring. And we don't know the, the, the amount of, of that. And we also don't know if we had continued with the building, if we would be able to go back in it at all, if it would actually meet the screening, uh, value and with the, with the remediation that, uh, that costs in addition to the 70 million dollars for the, for the re-envisioning project, you know, this project would cost 80 to 90 million dollars as a, as a whole. And we, we don't have the funding, uh, for that overall cost. And in addition to that, it would leave us without a home for the Burlington technical center because the Burlington technical center was going to be in the F building. And the F building has the highest levels and those levels are significant or significant. Um, and so we knew right away, uh, that we were not going to be able to go back into the F building. Um, and we needed to find a long-term solution for the Burlington technical center. So, uh, for all those reasons, it just became really clear that this was not a project that could meet the, the goals that were set forth by the school board when they came into this, uh, project and not, uh, something that voters, uh, kind of, it's not the sort of project envisioned by the voters anymore. And it's really because of the PCBs. Uh, it is wholly because of the PCBs. And one of the things that keeps saying at the board meetings, and I really think it's important to just continue to say is that it's not, we did our due diligence as a district, as a school board, as a re-envisioning group that was working on this to, to, to get to the point we got to. And the fact that we have to shift gears is no fault of anyone who's been a part of this project. Um, except for the folks who made the chemicals back in the 1960s. And now they're sitting in our building and we didn't know the depth of, of the, of the, of the extent of the contamination. Um, and, and we had done other pilot tests. So we do, we have a pilot test from Champlain. And so in other buildings that are of similar age, they didn't have screening values that caused alarm, uh, and allowed us not to be in those buildings. Uh, so it is something specific about the, the materials in, in Burlington High School. It appears. So on Tuesday night, the board voted to end the project and pursue building a new high school, uh, in Burlington. It's, it's scary. Uh, it's, it's a crisis that we have to, that we have to deal with. We've got to work urgently. We've got to collaborate across city and state and federal agencies to, to make this happen because we don't have a high school building and the high school building is the heart. Uh, in many ways of our city and, and something that is really important to our community, which is so clear to me in, in my short time here. Um, so we're going to move really fast. We're looking at all options, every option we can, um, including current property at Institute road that, that is viable property for us. We're also looking around, around town. There are, we're not going to look around town. I don't too much because we can't spend a couple of years trying to identify a site or we're pushed out five years. Right. So we have to find a site as soon as humanly possible, um, to be able to get into a building in a reasonable, in a reasonable time. And I think we can do that, but we just have to be kind of disciplined up front. Um, we've done site assessments in the past. We've seen a, but we have drawings of, of some different spaces. So we've done engagement around this in the past. I think we really need to kind of use a lot of the stuff that we've done, uh, that upfront work that we've done to, to, to build the project so that we can really start drawing, uh, getting and, and getting moving on, on building. Um, so the first step is, is a site assessment. We're going to get started on the site assessment. As I said, as soon as possible, looking at a few different sites, there could be a couple of sites downtown. There could be a site at the North 40, uh, and then, um, uh, Institute road and, uh, those, I don't have a strong sense of sort of which one of those is, is, is winning right now. Uh, so there are a couple, but there are, there are some legitimate, um, sites for us to build on. We currently have a 3.5, three and a half year lease. We're coming into that. We're in that 0.5, uh, three and a half year lease at, at Macy's for the downtown BHS. And that's actually going really well. I don't know if you all have, have been in there, have kids there or have worked there. Uh, but, but we're really happy with, with how it's going. There's some, you know, some growing in and moving in pains and, uh, but so excited about the deep learning opportunities that are available for students where they are learning is so closely, can be so closely connected to the, the partners in the city, uh, that is right around the school already work going down a lot to echo and doing a lot of close work, uh, there and utilizing that space and valuing that partnership. So there's just a lot of opportunity, uh, in that downtown Macy's and in downtown, I think it's an exciting space to be for us, at least for the next three and a half years, that least we can continue beyond three and a half years. So there is the possibility to extend the lease. Um, and, and we, we addressed that upfront as we were, as we were doing the lease process. The other thing to know is we got, we have gotten a lot of support. The governor put $3.5 million into his, uh, budget amendment or budget adjustment. Legislature helped support that and we're really grateful for, for all of those folks who helped to make this, make this happen. And, and I was actually shocked that it, that it happened the way it did, but that was the cost, um, of the three and a half million was the cost of the fit up. So, so the fit up was all on, uh, all covered through the state, through the state, um, state budget adjustment this year. Um, so we're going to, we're going to keep asking, uh, I guess if I, I learned, if you ask, sometimes it comes. So I'm going to keep asking, um, and we'll be shameless about that with, with our school board. Um, and Devin and Claire and, and I have been sort of doing this all together. So, uh, we'll, we'll keep, we'll keep going, um, on, on that, um, you know, seeking funding, whether it be from philanthropy from the state, from the federal government. Um, we're going to, we're going to keep, keep pushing there. Um, but still once, once we have a solid plan in place around where the site will be and what the building will look like, which we want to do as fast as possible, we are going to need to identify, um, you know, those funding options that I just mentioned, um, and we have this a $70 million bond for the current project. We've spent three and a half million of the 70 million. So not a huge amount. And then another half a million we spent at a local budget. So there's still, uh, the 70, 70 million dollar bond out there, or almost all of the $70 million bond, but we'll likely need more, um, to build, to build, to build a new high school. The estimates when we first got them were 120 million. Um, or about that, that number, um, I think I'm hopeful there are ways to bring that cost down, whether it be, you know, I don't know some ideas for that. Um, but I think that I'm hopeful that we can try to bring, bring that cost down, but we will need to go back out to bond. No question. And, and so that's just going to be a part of the work that we do. So we really want to make sure people have the information I've been on every, I've taken every interview that's come my way in the past two weeks, just to make sure that it's really out there. It's, it's not, we're not hiding anything. It's all out in the public. And, and people are, are, are informed of what's happening. And now that we start moving, we really want to hear where, where, where the community wants us to go. So, um, not necessarily site, but site and, and, and, and kind of, uh, program space and all that. So those are my points. Probably talk too long. I apologize. No, that's, that's really great. I, I, it's a lot of information and it's a topic. I'm sure. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people are very interested and I actually was hoping to, I want to leave time for, for, uh, Claire and Jeff as well. But, um, I wonder if there are any questions right now from people. Yes. Yes. I have a question. Um, so regarding the budget for building the new school, will that have to include the cost of tearing down the current BHS or what would happen with that? Yes. Who is responsible for that? We are responsible for that. Um, I think that that could be a place where that could be a, an, an ask though. So that could be one of the costs that I ask. I ask somebody to help or we ask, uh, somebody to support us with because, um, I think we just think there may be some options there. We also think there may be some support through the, the CTE, uh, programming, the career and technical education programming, a lot of interest in that in the region. It's a regional tech center that we have. Um, and so maybe support from the region and support from the government really into that. So we're thinking about, you know, those kind of two areas as places where we could make direct, direct asks for support. Right. I'm sorry. Can I just have part B? A building is not possible to be torn down and rebuilt just in that site right there. The problem. So a building actually, there is one little corner of a building, which is where the gym is and, and the cafeteria space in the back is a big open spaces and the auditorium sort of on the edge. We're, we've been using the, the auditorium. I mean, the, sorry, the gym and, and that, my department of sales said, yes, you can use the gym, but you can only use it for a certain number of hours, a certain number of days a week. And yeah. So there are all these restrictions on it. Um, I don't think we should build on that exact spot because we want to be able to, I think we need to be building while we're dealing with the, with the old building, right? So that will save us time. And I really think we have to save time because these types of projects can take five to seven years, right? So if we save or two upfront, that gets us to a more reasonable timeline. Right. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. Um, and thank you for your presentation. I'm wondering given the. Presence of the PCBs and their persistence, has there been an effort to track faculty and staff who may have had decades of exposure and to know their health status and to at least capture that information going forward? We have reached out to all, all the staff, all staff who have been impacted. Um, and we, we've offered to provide the, you know, services, um, for those staff. And so that's, that's, that's been the first step that we have taken. Do you know if there's any illness that is potentially linked to the, to the PCBs and their exposure? There are a number of different illnesses. Um, and, uh, cancer being one of them. Uh, but there are other, there are, there are other sort of a list of other illnesses that. Yeah. That exposure could cause. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions? Um, now we're going to give, uh, uh, Claire and Jeff a chance at this as well. Okay. Uh, Claire. I'll be brief because we're right at seven 30. Um, we are, uh, super, uh, excited that, you know, we have made this decision, uh, honestly, um, our efforts to address a building that is an incredible need. Um, and again, is not ADA accessible in 2021. So we, even with the PCBs, uh, and our challenges ahead, we have a team of people that have dedicated citizens of Burlington, uh, that have dedicated years of service to, um, addressing, uh, where and when and how to build the next BHS. And, you know, we are grateful that. Thank goodness the citizens two years ago supported us in, uh, passing a bond over 70% of the citizens passed the bond. And, um, wanted our success. Uh, and the fact that, you know, here we are, um, but we did our job and finding that, you know, this building is a sick building. And so moving forward, even though this is an incredible hurdle and is incredibly frustrating to our community, um, having two children at the high school right now and when they graduated. So I feel I'm, we're going through it. So we're very familiar. Jeff and I with what it feels like to have students in this transition, um, and Mary as well. Um, and a lot of alumni, the greaties, you know, to us, you know, the, as one of our student representatives on the board said, um, you know, it's the community BHS is, you know, can be anywhere. It's the people and the teaching. Uh, and you know, all that encompasses it. So we need to find a location, um, that really does speak to, um, a college town sitting, you know, with our universities. Um, and, you know, potentially larger than we expected in the past because we do have an incredible technical center that it felt hard going forward and not an ignoring that aspect of that, that, um, element of the project because we were limited in our funding. So I think this really does highlight the talent, um, that we have within our high school and our technical center and, and thoughts of what an entire campus looks like, um, at the federal state and local level. Um, but to superintendent Flanagan's point, you know, it, we, I don't feel it needs to be shouldered by the citizens of Burlington. So it'll be our efforts to explore how we fund, um, these, this project moving forward and obviously location will determine, um, you know, that as well as, um, you know, the team that is involved in, in thinking, you know, outside of our challenges of how to, you know, build the next, um, what we should, what we should have in a, in a city, in a, in a city that's built on education, um, we should model, you know, a great institution of learning, uh, two great institutions of learning being the tech center in the high school. So I'm passionate about this, dedicated to it and, um, so appreciative of superintendent Flanagan's leadership, really, uh, just very appreciative and our partnership with the city. I know our city counselors and our mayor are dedicated to our success and that feels really good. So thank you. Thanks, Claire. Uh, Jeff, do you have anything to add? No, but I do want to thank Superintendent Tom. Call me Tom, Jeff. Uh, for sticking with us through this very difficult time. Welcome to Burlington. Thank you. Yeah, I would say too, just, I mean, while we're all thanking each other, our school board is really amazing. I know you all know that, but the way that they've been able to sort of organize and stay together and advocate, you know, Claire and I have been at all over town in the state, you know, begging for money for the, for Burlington and, um, so I really appreciate, you know, your, your support and the whole community. It's just been really, uh, in, in such challenging times, the way that we've been sticking together is really, really impressive to me. So thank you. Okay. I think we did give a few minutes of a late start on this section. I don't know if there's any other sort of final questions for Superintendent Flanagan or commissioners Will and Wick. Okay. I have a quick question unless someone else has their hand up. I think it's yours. Go, Michelle. Um, I'm wondering if there's any recourse for the district from the manufacturers of this glue or the contractors. I mean, these entities may be long gone, but is there any legal recourse for the really deleterious effects of this chemical? Yeah, we're, we're, we're looking into that. It actually, there's a couple of school board members have brought that up. Um, and, and, and we're, we're looking into that. Yeah. Um, I think the, yeah, but that's something that, that, uh, has happened in the past in the state I've, I've learned. Uh, and so it's something that's definitely is on our radar. Yeah, I've done a ton of research, uh, PCBs. The month Monsanto is the company. Uh, and, uh, Maine, New Hampshire. Uh, and I've looked at lawsuits. Um, so absolutely Michelle, that's one of the areas that we'll look at, and we have been looking once now. Decided to stop. Great. Thanks. I just want to say thanks to the three of you. I mean, you guys, it's been a tough call that you had to make, but really you, you're kind of inspiring everybody, knowing that it's the right decision. There are too many negatives with the high school and going forward. It can only be a positive result. Now they'll be in a healthier building and currently the kids that are at VHS at Macy's are having a great experience. It's, it's a great building. It's got soul. I mean, no other building, no other high school in the whole country is like it. So really it's a win-win. It's just going about it the hardest, worst way, but the result is going to be fantastic. And the kids are fine now. They're resilient. And, and so thank you for taking on these challenges. The three of you, really, I know I've said it before, but you never would have anticipated the challenges of three of you had to come up against. And I just really, I want to thank you for, for dealing with it all in such a positive and inspiring way. That means a lot, Mary. And we do laugh thinking, you know, how, how unique to have a school with an escalator, but also, you know, to try and sell it. We look forward to all of you and giving public tours once COVID and vaccines. I know superintendent Flanagan, we are really excited to show off what we were able to do in 10 weeks and make that a reality, given the all the things we had to go through to actually get into Macy's. But the press, the worldwide press, we had a crew from China yesterday. The worldwide press has been absolutely uplifting to not only the citizens of Burlington and our students, but it really, you know, we're so fortunate because, you know, young adolescents are fragile and to want to make a cool place is important to go to school. So thank you. Fantastic. All right. Well, thanks Tom and Claire and Jeff for joining us and the presentation was really great. We're going to move on to the next topic. Robert Goulding is here is the public information manager from the Department of Public Works. And I think you're going to talk to us a little bit about some upcoming construction projects as well as the consolidated collection study. That's right. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. All right. Well, that's a hard presentation to follow. Thanks for the Burlington school district for everything they do. But thank you to award six for having us back. We find it is really important to at least request some time. Like, you know, you know what our construction plans are, how we're stewarding your infrastructure and how we're using your public dollars. So we really appreciate the time we realized after we requested this time that we should also update you on consolidated collection as we're moving closer and closer to what we've been making. So thank you for squeezing that in. We'll be really quick to hopefully leave some time for questions. I am joined by my colleague Lee Perry, the division director for the maintenance program. He'll be taken over to talk about consolidated collection. If it's all right, I'm going to share my screen. I think I should be able to right here. So we have gotten started on our construction season already. We're doing a little bit of sidewalk work here and there. And we've just started up. We're going to do a little bit of a little bit of a, a pump station replacement project, which I'll touch on a little bit in a second. You can see some photos of last year in this year's construction activity already started. We do maintain and manage a lot of infrastructure around the city. The things I'll focus on for the most part today are the 95 miles of roads, 130 miles of sidewalks. And a hundred plus miles of water mains that we do manage. In the public right of way. We are coming to the end of the sustainable infrastructure plan. We've talked about over the last few years when we joined you in, in April or May. And it was passed in 2016 funded by the voters in 2016. I was really strong support by your city counselors and by the mayor who proposed the plan. What we did in the ensuing time, you know, managing this core asset investment is to triple normal sidewalk production, almost double the average amount of paving that we would undertake and really for the first time in at least recent memory, you know, I'm going to focus on this on drinking water. The chart to the right maybe is interesting, but I'm not going to focus too much on numbers. I just want to make sure you get some of the highlights of the work we're doing, especially in your neighborhood. So, you know, to start with the big picture on next steps here for infrastructure. We are at the end of that 2016 funding, which allowed a really enhanced level of activity. To sustain that kind of work of the last four years, I know it's never polite and awesome to read off your PowerPoint, but I wanted to make sure the word we are answering. So I am kind of going step by step here. Just to make sure that that information is out front and center for everybody. Right now the mayor and the city council are having that budget discussion on the use of the American rescue plan funds, which may or may not be able to be devoted to enhanced infrastructure for this coming year. If it is, we do have plans in place to pivot to an even more robust project list this year. So what I'll present for the most part is our, our modified list. And then if there is more funding, we'll have more work hopefully to do pending goods and contracts. This is a community conversation that's going to evolve. I know city counselors are talking about this. The mayor's focusing on it. There are upcoming meetings at, by which public comment can be heard and certainly encourage you to let us know. Let your city counselors know any particulars about infrastructure that you care about. With that said, we're looking at all other sources of funding, all other ways to partner with the state and, you know, find other sources of revenue so that we can keep moving forward on important projects like you heard about last month with the Shelburne roundabout project. As for paving, these recent investments I mentioned have nearly doubled what we've normally been able to do. Now we do have 95 miles of roads, still a lot of roads to maintain. We hear all the time, you know, we live in a winter climate, the roads are never perfect, possibly never can be perfect. But the enhanced funding has allowed us to almost hit about 20 miles of paving over the last four years. This year's list is out to big. You can see the streets below. All of this made its way into the contract. Those last four streets are what we call kind of add alternates. If the bids come in well under what we expect, if more revenue is found, then we're able to do even more work. I highlighted in blue, I think half of that stretch of St. Paul Street will be technically in Ward six. So quite a bit, quite a big stretch of paving will be coming your way in the coming months. Because the contract is out for bid, I can't give you a very close or clear idea yet of timing or even the traffic control plan, but we'll certainly be sharing that as the contract and say, and then we have that conversation with the contractor. Sidewalk construction, we've done about 13 miles over the last four years, pretty much tripling what a normal average is concrete, sidewalks tend to have a 40 year life cycle, some more, some less. But these recent construction trends really are necessary to maintain that sustainable cycle of sidewalk replacement so that we don't continue to get sidewalks in serious states of this year. This current funding that we do have allows us to kind of focus on short run repairs this year. My colleague Lee Perry's group takes care of the in-house sidewalk list. We've done about a mile of that this year, back to what our kind of normal levels are. You can see the streets and Ward 6, some segments of those, not full segments, anywhere between maybe 20 to 100 linear feet of the most damaged segments of those streets. With supplemental funding, we are focused on at least four additional streets and Ward 6. I should say all of this is tentative and really depending on revenue, depending on bids, depending on a favorable weather schedule, the rain will just decide what state we'll like. We wouldn't believe. Water main upgrades, we are focused for the first time in recent history on repairing. We're replacing our water mains. We did not do this work last year due to COVID. It often requires some level of in-person engagement or in-house visitation. We did not want to undertake that as you can imagine last May, June, July. This work this year, as I mentioned for the other assets, we'll use up the last of the 2016 funding. The streets there ledged the forest over Lake North Prospect home, any of which are in Ward 6 this year. So it'll be quite a bit of activity on these streets in the coming months. This also is out for bids. We'll have more certainty in the weeks ahead. If you live on any of these streets, on any of the affected segments, you should have received some information. You may recall in 2018, the city passed the Clean Water Resiliency Plan overwhelming support of the voters thanks to your support for our work focused on seven areas to combat kind of an aged stormwater wastewater system, especially coming on the heels of that disruptive challenging summer that we experienced with the wastewater treatment plan. You can see some of the core areas we focus on in this plan. Some of the progress we've made or are about to make, we've actually completed this spring, some of the major work that needed to take place at the wastewater treatment plants, which directly addresses some of those key challenges we had in 2018. I'm not going to go into great detail right now, but certainly if you want to follow up or ever want to have the water resources team back to talk about this, I know they would love to. But we did complete the major disinfection work and kind of computer replacement work. This will have a significant impact on preventing issues. It can't prevent all issues, but it is likely to make significant headway. We did start the Flynn pump station replacement project. That is underway for the next three months. It'll be a little disruption on Flynn. I have west of city market. So no impacts to city market. Some slow going to Oak ledge park, but we still want you to go to Oak ledge park. There'll just be some traffic control in that area. We have miles of sewer and storm pipe repair currently out for bid. And you may recall from a couple of meetings. And if you live in the neighborhoods, a lot of email and kind of project meetings around a green infrastructure rain garden project. That's planned nearby. That's planned to kick off later this month or next month. Stay tuned for email and front porch forum announcements. If you live in the area and if you don't, but want to want that update, let me know. And I'd be happy to connect to you to make sure you're aware of when that project kicks off. You heard last month about the Shelburne street roundabout. Some of you on the call may not have been, been here for that. Just want to let you know that's that project is going to start soon sometime this summer. Last for about two years. There is a really the state is managing the project along with our kind of partnership on it. We have a really great team of folks who are ready to answer your questions. The contact information is there. The city is a resource. The state is a resource and the state's contractor for. Some of these engagement questions. That contact info there is also a great resource. The projects, you know, at times can be disruptive. But we do, you know, want to encourage you to reach out for information or be part of the, what will likely be in every week or every two weeks. Email newsletter that'll be sent out. We have some really key resources that I hope you folks. Take a look at the construction portal. Burlington. Backslash construction lists all of our construction activity. For the most part. Has some contact information on there. If you have questions. See click fix. We're our customer service team for any maintenance or infrastructure requests. Awesome resources. BT alert for major. Urgent issues like major traffic control issues. No bands. Each closures. We send out real-time text email alerts. And for really serious things like the boil water advisories that we. Had. We will also do robo calls. That's my contact information. Certainly happy to share this later. But I do want to just keep moving in the interest of time. And I'll let Lee Perry take over for now. Good evening, everyone. As. My colleague Rob Goulding said, my name is Lee Perry. I'm the division director. For. City of Burlington public works. I oversee. Street maintenance equipment maintenance and recycling. Teams. So we're here to talk consolidate collection. For those of you that might not know. I'm going to go ahead and share with you. I'm going to go ahead and share with you. I'm going to go ahead and share with you. I'm going to go ahead and share with you. And I'm going to go ahead and share with you. Consolidate collection. For those of you that might not know. You know, consolidated collection. As a franchise model is using a private contractor. To pick up your trash recycling and compost. And we are proposing it for one to four unit. Residential dwellings. Next slide. We have. A. Resolution directing DPW to. Conduct a study. To. Consolidate. Trash recycling compost for. City of Burlington. And it really is a common practice. A nationwide study of 461 cities found that 83%. Of municipalities. or another hybrid version. The consultant reports found there's a lot of benefits. Environmental reduction in truck traffic means a reduction in vehicle miles traveled greenhouse gases, economic benefits. You can get all three waste streams picked up just for about the same price that you pay for trash and recycling. And quality of life benefits. You're reducing truck traffic in the neighborhoods, reduce noise, more safe streets. There's a lot of condensed neighborhoods around with a lot of on-street parking. And then you get multiple vehicles on one of those streets throughout the day. And it really presents a safety hazard. Next slide, please. And the possible scenarios going forward. So as a city, we need to decide if we should do consolidated collection or leave it the way it is where residents have subscriptions with private haulers. If we do, then there's a couple of scenarios. One would be a franchise consolidated collection, which I've explained where we would contract a private hauler to bid on districts in the city to collect trash, recycling, and compost. And the other option would be a municipally ran model where the city of Burlington would create a division to pick up trash, recycling, and compost, and supply all the help, administrative, capital, and all that. Next slide, please. So this slide is the scenarios we came up with for a municipal model, as well as the franchise model that our consultants presented in the study. So there are two options that came from the study, a 0% opt-out, which means all residents would participate in one to four unit dwellings. And a 15% opt-out where 15% out of the residents can opt out of services if they choose to self haul. There will be multiple variations going forward, but these are the two base models that we came up with. So as you can see in the municipal option, 0% opt-out. Our monthly cost of $34.53 is pretty comparable to the franchise model. And obviously, as you decrease residents in the service, that it's going to increase the price. So we're a little bit higher than the franchise model in our monthly price by a few dollars. I do want to say that the 25% opt-out model, we went with that version first because we, as staff, thought about it that we thought we would, there would probably more than 15% of the population that wanted to opt out of services. But when we presented that at the TUC, it kind of wanted to see the original 15% model that went along with the study. So that's why you see the three options in the asterisks are because the consultant didn't supply a 25% opt-out number that those numbers are not accurate. They're going to give me the updated numbers. I believe they're supposed to get them to me tomorrow. Spoke with them today. Next slide, please. So we're evaluating all the scenarios, and we're going to present our recommendations to the Public Works Commission on the 19th and the Transportation, Energy, and Utilities Committee on the 25th of May. And depending on the outcome of those meetings and recommendations, and we'd like to make a motion after that, either supporting our recommendations or an alternative proposal. And we'll take that to the full council, likely in June. And if the council decides to advance either model of consolidated collection, it's something that you've got to take your time to do. It's not going to be overnight. So it's approximately two to three years to implement either model. Next slide, please. And we welcome your feedback. As you can see listed, you can go to the city website, brandwincompt.gov, DPW maintenance, CC for any background materials, public comment available at commission, upcoming commission meeting, and DPW communications. With any feedback you'd like to share directly, you can reach me by the number shown here. My email is also attached to all those documents, to those links, so I can be reached that way as well. Next slide, please. Where is that at? I think that's it. All right. Thanks, Rob and Lee. Are there any questions for Rob and Lee before we let them go? Hi. I have a question for Rob. So thank you, Rob, for presenting all of the fine work that you have in the works here and all really, really meaningful and valuable projects. I guess I have a question about the plan for sidewalk repair. And so as a neighbor and a resident on our street, many of us have been submitting C-click fixes and reporting on the state of our very, very poor sidewalk on our street, and yet we don't see our name on the fix-it list for this next year. And this has been going on for several years. So I guess, is there a way to expedite that, or is there a way to see ahead to when we might see a sidewalk repair on our street? Thank you for the question. And I'd love to take down what sidewalk you live on, if you're willing to share now, or if you'd like to email me and certainly can look into that. So sidewalks are a challenge, right? I mentioned they have about a 40-year lifecycle, some deteriorate quicker, some less quick. We do maintain 130 miles of sidewalk, and we do try to get to as many as possible. But basically, even with the enhanced funding we've had over the last couple of years, I think 3 and 1 half miles between a mile that Lee Perry's in-house team does, the other kind of two to three that we'll be able to contract out for, we can't get to as much as we'd like. So I can say a couple additional things about that. We are conducting a city-wide sidewalk assessment this year. The last time we did that was 2014. And what we do is we contract out and we use a mechanical assessment tool that covers all 130 miles of sidewalk to give us some kind of statistical data that helps inform our kind of sidewalk list, which is coupled with kind of proximity to schools, proximity to senior centers, things like that. So that's kind of a next step as to how we're gonna be figuring out what our sidewalk list looks like. On our construction portal, we do have this year's list and we will have future year's list, but we tend not to have much more than a year or two. C-Click Fates is the best tool that you can use to let us know that you're having a problematic sidewalk. Pictures are very helpful, encouraging your neighbors to share similar ideas or pictures about sidewalks do help us kind of figure out what our sidewalk list is going to be. And you are always welcomed and encouraged to email us to ask for your sidewalk or your road for that matter on paving might be. So that's probably the most I can share about or the most I'm able to share about sidewalks and how we do our list. It is frustrating thing for all of us. We'd love to be able to do much more than three miles, but even with the enhanced funding, there are capacity limits. I think we're always looking at different ways to do more in-house to the extent we can because our crews are doing a lot more contract work if resources are available or coupling that with other projects. The Champlain Parkway is a project down the line that helps fix sidewalks. We're always looking at different projects that bring in additional funding sources and projects where maybe we're not the resource manager to just enhance the capacity we have to do extra work. So I hear you and know that it is frustrating. It frustrates us too that we can't do more, especially on sidewalks. We know how personal and important that is to everybody's neighborhood, to our way of life. Yeah, thanks so much. I really appreciate that and I do understand it. And I know we're a rather small court. It's Ludwig Court, by the way, in Burlington. So I'll send you pictures. Please do. I'll send you an email. Thanks. Thank you. All right, I think with that, we got to move on to the next topic, but thanks, Rob and Lee, for the presentation and we'll be sure to put a link up to the information you shared with us. Okay, thank you for having me. All right, so moving on, Stephanie Seguino is here with us. She's the police commissioner for board six and she's going to talk about department news, including community goals for public safety. Hi, Stephanie, thanks for joining us. Happy to be here. Thanks. So just to clarify, I was asked to talk about police reforms. And so I will talk about some of the things around the work being done about understanding more fully what the community is looking for with regard to public safety. So let me just start out by saying that right now we have two consultant teams working in Burlington. One of them is Talitha and they will be sending out a survey very soon that is asking for input about what the community is looking for in terms of public safety. I think that there has been a significant shift in people's understanding of public safety issues in Burlington. And I think there's a, what I am seeing is a widespread desire for reform in how we approach public safety and the Talitha is trying to capture that. I'll say a little bit more about where I see that happening or in a few minutes. The other group that's here is CNA. They are looking at staffing levels in the police department. You may recall last summer a resolution was passed to limit the number of police officers to 74. And so CNA is looking at both staffing levels from their number of former police chiefs and people with police expertise that are working on that. And they are also looking at alternatives to the current policing model. And so what I see happening in Burlington really is a widespread interest in the Kahootz model from Eugene, Washington, which is a model in which social workers are much more involved in policing. And this is an area in which, when we look at calls for service in Burlington from 2012 to 2020, the number of calls for service for mental health issues has doubled from 450 to over 900 a year. That is by far the most frequent call for service. Many of the others that I think activate us around not only larceny but domestic assaults and physical assaults and so forth are actually very low frequency events. And there's been very little change or a decline in those calls for service. But mental health is really, I think the most significant area that people are asking for change. And so there have been some means to address that. More recently, the city council rejected the police department's request to hire more police officers but did approve a hiring more community service liaisons which are essentially in the role of social worker during outreach. And in many ways proactively, we have numbers of people that will call 10, 20, 50 times a year or have calls about those people. And so really having the police respond to behavior that is the result of a mental health episode is probably not going to solve the problem in the longer run. And it behooves us to put the resources into supporting those people up front. So we're going to hire, I think it's one more CSL and also the city council approved hiring CSOs, community service officers who are people who would not be carrying guns and would be responding to low level events like noise complaints, fireworks, possibly traffic stops. I think that is going to be if we are able to move that forward in a significant way, I think it's going to change the climate a great deal in Burlington. So those are some of the sort of broader things that are happening at the police, the police commission at the request of the mayor, the police commission developed a new policy on making public body-worn camera videos. And really the effort is towards greater transparency. And so we just recently discussed this policy. We've had it vetted by the city attorney and I think there's some further refinements to it, but by and large the police department will be releasing proactively anybody can video related to incidents with use of force, especially discretionary use of force around guns, but also other uses of force. The other policy that we revisited again around transparency was around the complaint process and the disciplinary process. So now complaints will not only come to the commission, but they will also be posted monthly on the Burlington police department website, anonymously with anonymous information about the officers and perhaps individuals, but the community will be able to see those complaints and the police commission will now be reviewing complaints and weighing in on the chief's disciplinary decisions. We also as part of that policy, I had actually requested that we add information at a section of that policy that would require that disciplinary decisions in the past be made public. Right now the union contract says that all disciplinary decisions will be expunged after one year. So we would not be aware of that. And the problem with that is that in many police departments and I can't speak specifically about ours, but in many police departments because they are insular and because this information is confidential, it's very frequent that there are officers that have had repeated complaints against them and the discipline has maybe been light, but certainly the frequency of misconduct suggests that police chiefs may not be as vigorous in disciplining officers and addressing disciplinary issues. So we felt it was important that that information be retroactively made available to us in Burlington PD just to let you know that New York state recently passed legislation that does require all disciplinary records to be made public. So we wouldn't be being pioneers in this. The city attorney basically removed that from our policy. The only thing that was kept was disciplinary records going forward would be made public. And the reason that she eliminated that from our policy is because it violates the union contract. And so we are really running into problems with the union contract about getting greater transparency. And in fact, they are going to challenge several components of that discipline policy in upcoming conversations with the city attorney. So the union contract remains something that we have to address in the upcoming negotiations to get both the transparency that we want in the community and also I think some other changes that people are discussing. Just looking at my notes here. Yeah, so I would, I will just leave it at that and I'm happy to answer any other questions. I just focused in my notes on the reforms that we're discussing, but I'm happy to answer any other questions. I have a question. Yeah. Well, two questions. First of all, I felt for so long, so many of the issues that we've faced are related to the union contract. And when is it to be renegotiated? My understanding is that it expires next year that negotiations will begin this summer, but I know Joan Shannon is on the call and she might have different information than I do on that. Yeah, because it just seems to me so many of the issues that the city has been put in the position of seeming like they are unresponsive in many cases because of the union contract and their legal responsibilities. But yes, Joan, I'd love to hear about that. I have another question too. Can I just respond to that? I'll give you an example of how binding it is. When we in this new policy, when we've made it one of the items in the policy is that all disciplinary decisions going forward be made public, the union is opposing that based on that it departs from past practice. Right, you know what I mean? You can see that anything we will try to do that may be what we face. But yeah, it's gonna be a very tough negotiation, but you can't move forward without challenging those barriers. Yeah, Andrea, it's June 30th of 2022. Yeah, so we have to live with another year. Six to eight months before. Yeah, wow, so we've got, well, you'll be starting it so, and they'll come in with a lot of requests so you'll have to, anyway, my other question is the graffiti. It's so terrible. And I mean, I understand that the city doesn't have the police staff to deal with that and what's going on with that? It's just a blight, you know, on our time. I can't speak to that. I've been hearing about this. It's not something that's come to the commission. Really? Yeah, we have not, it's not come to us in a complaint or people have not raised that issue. Well, how do we get it raised? Because I mean, everybody I talked to was concerned about it and, but you know, someone's gotta be riding around at midnight and seeing who's doing it. So what do you do? I mean, Karen or Joan or whatever. Actually, a lot of work has been done on graffiti. That's what I'm talking about. There is a plan to go forward and there will be funding that we will be discussing at the Board of Finance meeting at the next meeting on Monday as part of about a million dollars that will be taken of ARPA funds for FY21 that will include the hiring of 10 temporary employees to address graffiti as well as a van that will be monitoring and tracking where graffiti is done. And there are a number of private businesses that have also stepped forward to help us in funding this. So hopefully we are gonna see some significant improvements in that. But it actually has been about five different departments that have been working on this in the city. I wonder if it's not involved with police. That's probably why I was just gonna say that's probably why Stephanie isn't that aware of it because graffiti really is not a police issue. It's really an issue of cleaning it up, not arresting people, but cleaning it up and getting rid of the graffiti which is what we're attempting to do. Well, we certainly have to get on the people that are doing it. I mean, otherwise it's just gonna keep coming back. My understanding is that even if the police catch the people doing it, they won't be prosecuted. I don't believe Sarah George prosecutes people for graffiti. Really? Wow. Because it doesn't work. So to continue with Stephanie, to get back to Stephanie for a second, Michelle, I think you had a question for Stephanie. Yeah, I did. So it's sort of multi-part. I'm interested in learning more about traffic stops, police alternatives to traffic stopping. And I'm wondering, so what kind of traffic stops and who would be implementing or conducting those traffic stops and what do you know about other municipalities who use non-police officers for traffic stops? Yeah. Let me just say a few things about traffic stops. The data in Burlington are very clear that there are racial disparities in traffic policing. And I think it was hoped that Brandon Del Poso a few years ago basically told his officers that he would no longer evaluate them based on how many traffic stops they're making. And so there's been a dramatic decline around I think a 40% decline in the number of traffic stops in Burlington. This past year, so the police engage in two types of stops. I would say one is public safety stops if people are speeding or running stop signs. The other are what we call pretextual stops. That is they wanna get a look inside the vehicle and so they will use a traffic, identify a traffic violation that is probably very minuscule, but as a reason to get into vehicles. And it looks like probably I'm guessing we're gonna see the data soon that vehicle traffic pretextual stops are probably down last year because of COVID. And we'll be able to see what the impact is on racial disparities in traffic stops. So this has been a topic at the national level as well in a number of communities about over policing through excessively using traffic stops. And there are a number of communities and this is a big discussion in a lot of communities is using non-armed police officers for traffic stops. I think it's been favorably received in the communities that I've read about. There are certain types of stops that are high risk. Those can be stops in which there is known illegal activity that detectives may have information on. And my guess is that if we were to move to that model, but there has been no discussion of this at the police department yet. So just to let you know, but this is of interest in what we're thinking about, but in those high-risk cases could see a scenario in which armed officers might be engaged in those kind of high-risk stops, but not in the regular public safety traffic stops in town. And as I said, a number of communities in cities are adopting this. So it is a much wider discussion, not just here in Burlington, but elsewhere. So Stephanie, does that mean that police officers are conducting those stops? They're just not armed? I don't know what the different models are. There are some that are not armed, but as I said, we have this category called community service officers, CSOs who are non-gun carrying and have a different type of training, a more limited training. So it seems to me, so I don't know what other communities have in terms of that kind of differentiation, whether it is police officers that leave their guns at the department when they do traffic policing or they actually have a different category of person who is not a sworn officer that may be doing these stops. I would imagine that there are a lot of different models out there based on how the departments are constructed. Great, thanks. Yeah. Any other questions for Stephanie? Okay. Stephanie, thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. Okay, on to the last agenda item. So councilors Paul and Shannon are here with us to update us on city activities. And I guess just a general update on the city. Thanks. Did you want one of us to go first? I don't have a preference. Karen, if you'd like, would you go first? Okay. So I have a PowerPoint that I think would be helpful in terms of talking about the, there's really a lot to talk about, but one of the things that I think is probably most important is the budget. And we are getting information about that. We've had a couple of board of finance meetings to discuss the budget. The last one was on May 3rd, which was a couple of days ago. And there's really, unlike last year when we were in the midst of trying to do a budget with the onset of a pandemic and worried that people weren't really going to be able to pay their property taxes, where we find ourselves in a very different situation this year. And so the mayor's proposal includes bringing back all city services to be restored to pre-pandemic levels. We had cut seasonal employees. We had halted really all non-essential services in order to make the city work, do the things that had to be done. But there were certainly no frills last year. This year, the priorities are investment in critical infrastructure. We are going to fully fund the unassigned fund balance, which is part of the reason why we found ourselves in a better situation last year than many cities because we did have reserves. The only tax increase that we will be including is the third ambulance, which the voters approved in 2019, which we did not use last year. And the city is going to be making long overdue investments in racial equity, language access, livable wages. And we will be using a lot of the ARPA funds, a good amount of them in order to make this, make good on all of these principles without raising taxes. And just to give you an idea briefly, these are a number of the priorities all city workers. Right now, if you are a part-time seasonal employee, you do not make a livable wage unless you've been an employee for five years. We will now be changing that and all city employees will make a livable wage. We're greatly expanding the racial inclusion, a racial equity, inclusion and belonging department, funding, economic recovery. There are some employees who are, quote, limited service, which means they do not get pension benefits. We're reducing those down. That's been a thing of mine. I think if you've been an employee of the city for two years, you should get the same benefits that everybody else does. And then we will be having the third ambulance and we've heard from lots of people that we need to have more restrooms available, more public restrooms. So there will be more public restrooms available, particularly in the expanded summer and fall season. And this is just a number of other items that we also will be doing. The racial equity, inclusion and belonging budget is going to triple. A year ago, we had one employee. We are now proposing eight employees. And there will be additional funds for city council committees. We've long had issues with having enough staffing. And I've served on a state board. State boards pay people for meetings. It's really a question of equity for a number of people who are perhaps unable to give time simply for public service by volunteering. And so we are going to start compensating board and commission members for meetings in the hopes that it will make the system more equitable. There's also, as we all know, lots of non-English is a first language community members. We will be funding the language access plan. It's about $40,000, I believe a year. And a number of other things. One of the things that Stephanie mentioned was the CSOs and CSLs that the Burlington Police Department budget will be discussed at length at a budget meeting on the 19th of May. And we will be talking about money that we will be using due to the attrition of sworn officers. And one of those is what Stephanie had mentioned. A group of us met with a group called Mental Health Burlington and they want to bring the CAHOOTS model, which is in Eugene, Oregon, to Burlington in cooperation with the Howard Center. Just the only other thing I just wanted to mention is this is a little bit about where the ARPA money, we have quite a bit of money, $27 million. This is where a lot of the money will be going. And when you talked about graffiti, this million dollars that is listed as immediate reopening in RRC needs, part of that million dollars is going towards graffiti remediation. And then the last item was just simply, the Board of Finance was pretty clear about the fact that we need much more citizen engagement in the budget process. And so there are going to be three opportunities, three different kinds of opportunities for the public to weigh in on the budget. There is going to be a city budget survey on SurveyMonkey, I actually did it myself today, so I know it's live. There's also a city website that has the entire budget process laid out. And the Board of Finance encouraged the administration to have a community town hall in the next two weeks to give people yet another opportunity to talk about the budget. So we're moving forward on that. Clearly is a significant issue. There's probably very little that the city council does that is perhaps more important than the budget in setting the priorities for the coming year. And that will, really the month of May is when all of that work is done. We vote on that in mid June, and then of course we implement the budget for July one of each fiscal year. And I think that's, since we only have a certain amount of time, I don't want to take up all of it, that's, I'll leave it at that. There's obviously plenty more we could talk about, but I'll leave it at that. Thanks, that was a great presentation, Karen. And I think clearly the budget is the most important thing going on at city council right now. The only other thing that I really wanted to mention, I've been trying to post things about the assessment on from porch forum, and there's just one thing Nelson, I think asked me to raise, which is if you don't like what the results are of your tax appeal with the assessors, then what do you do? There is going to be another level of appeal to the Board of Tax Appeals, and the Board of Tax Appeals is a citizen board. We're working on filling the seats there, but I think we have a group of citizens who are well-versed and property values lined up. So I think that that's going to be a helpful board for everybody to go before. And then I also have seen things posted on from porch forum about tax assessments and how can my tax assessment be this much per square foot and my neighbors is something, completely different price per square foot. And that would be because it's not really priced per square foot. There's kind of a base price for having a house in a neighborhood, and then you add or subtract from that base price to get the value whether the house is larger or smaller. And that's the way it's done in bank appraisals as well. That's not unique to the city assessment process. The other thing I hear is, why did my tax assessment go up percentage wise so much more than my neighbor's tax assessment? And that may be an indicator that there is a problem with your assessment, but it could also be that your neighbor's assessment had been adjusted because they did some work or that the previous, in 2005, we certainly had various assessments that were not in line with each other. And that's why we're reassessing is to make these corrections. So I think we only have two minutes and I'm sure people have questions. So I'll leave it at that. If nobody does have a question, just also wanted to mention that it probably will be coming in June. And if not June, because I know we don't have meetings in July and August, but hopefully in June, we are going to need to start the process depending on how the city population does weigh out in the census. We are going to need to start the process of redistricting. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna be anything like incredibly dramatic, but as many of you will recall five years ago, we went with a compromise system in order to get an item on the ballot. And it has been, depending on who you talk with, some people like it, some people don't. There's a number of people who would prefer to go back to the ward system. There are some that like the system that we have. We need to have a community conversation and get input from community members on how you feel about the system that we use for representation, for city council and for school board members. So that may very well be coming in June. Question. Can you tell me when will we know the tax impact of our reassessment? I mean, mine went up like 80% at the value of my house. I'm really worried about the impact of that. How, when will we know? There is, if you want to look at today's taxes and how that converts with your new assessment, there is a reappraisal tool that is on the city assessor's site. And I can post a link to it maybe in the chat. I mean, I did go to the site, but I couldn't anyway, go ahead, sorry. The new rates are going to be established when the city council votes on it the end of June and the tax bill starts in July. So there isn't really. No warning to them. Warning, no. Well, there are some good indications. The general tax rate, which is the majority of the 17 different, I believe it's 17 different parts of the municipal tax rate is not going up because we would have had to come to the voters in March for that. There are lots of other things that make up that tax rate. One of the things that is going up, which I had mentioned is the fact that we do need to fund that third ambulance. We got approval for it in 19, didn't do it last year because we just couldn't raise taxes on people last year. We also got funding for an additional amount of money for the housing trust fund. And CHT has said that they are going to be so flushed with cash that they don't need the additional amount. So we're not going to be doing that. The only things that really will change, Andrea, are the retirement, the unfunded liability, the amount, the city's contribution, which may or may not be a contributing factor. So on the municipal side, we're doing everything humanly possible not to raise that amount. The bigger question mark is going to be the schools. And I... And this district is sitting, I mean, I think Joan, you were the one that told us that if you live here, you just start out with being at a higher level. But I was shocked. Anyway, thank you. I mean, I always, I believe in paying taxes and I always vote for the schools, but I was pretty shocked. I think it's sort of funny that a year ago, the city council received an update from the city assessor and we were told at that time that while every part of the city had increased in value in 15 years, that the south end had increased much more proportionately. And I believe Joan at the time, I believe Chip Mason at the time. I know I did at the time mention that. I mentioned that in a newsletter and I remember people thinking, oh, okay. Well, it's hard to really put that together until you actually get your letter. And I think most people, despite the fact that that was a known, that was sort of known, it's never real until it's real. Well, I think we will know the, 70% of our tax rate is the education tax. So I think we'll know that by the end of May, won't we Karen? It depends on the legislature, but hopefully we will know, you know, I mean, I think it's fair to say that before by early June that we would know what that is. In fact, I was hoping to ask the superintendent about that, but just didn't get the opportunity. Joan is right, it is 30, 70%. You know, despite what the municipal side has done, really it's really in the hands of the school. And we did, and if you recall in March, we did vote for an increase in the budget. So it clearly is an amount that will go up by how much I couldn't say. Thanks. I'm sorry, the chat, there is no chat for me to put that link in for the reappraisal tool, but I know Karen posted it on front porch forum if you want to search that or we can. I can find my way to it. Just go to the assessor's page. Yeah, no, I've been there many times, thank you. I have a quick question if there's time, Nelson. Sure. So you talked about redistricting in this structure of our representation. I just wanna make sure I understand, are you talking about the district and ward system of representation and is that what you'll be seeking input in from your constituents? And if you want to, if not, that's fine, but I wonder, I'm curious how you two feel about the ward and district representation format and how it's working or not for you. I mean, the answer to your question as far as getting feedback is, certainly, do our people happy? We've had five years where we've had the ward district system. It was something that truly was created due to a compromise. The, I won't go through the ancient history, but the bottom line was that that was a compromise proposal in order to get enough counselors to support it to be able to have it go on the ballot. And that was in 2014. So the question is, there are a lot of people who are very comfortable with it. There are a lot of people who aren't. There are a lot of people that prefer two city counselors in their own ward. There are some for whom it doesn't matter. So we need to get that input and find out what do people want? I don't know that we did a good enough job in doing that the last time and redistricting took a very long time. It was highly contentious. Joan can speak to that much better than I can because I creatively found a way not to serve on that committee because it was incredibly contentious and she did serve on it. So she can speak more to it than I can. I just, the outcome was not an outcome that I think, I'm not sure that the public really wanted it. It was an outcome to get it on the ballot. And I think it would be that personally, I think it would be best just speaking for myself for us to get input and try to do what the community wants and not what the city council wants. Yeah, if I'll have Joan, if you do respond, I'm actually curious to know how it has worked out for counselors city-wide and not to speak of your own specific experience if you don't want to, but I'm just curious what counselors, how it has worked or not for them. And I understand what you're saying Karen, but we don't, I don't as a constituent know the nuance and the details in the particular pros and cons for the person who's actually serving. So I am curious to know if you hear or know anything from your colleagues that point in one direction or another regarding the structure for representation. Well, I will say that the last time we did this, we came to the NPA and talked about it ad nauseam, I think. There were lots and lots of community discussions, but they were discussions where people kind of glazed over because it is kind of as you're pointing out, Michelle, it's very much insider baseball. So I think it's hard for constituents to really know and then people do have some very strong opinions about literally lines drawn in the sand and where they'll go and where they won't go. But as I did not support this when it went on the ballot, I voted no putting it on the ballot. I voted no on my own ballot. And I don't find it problematic, like for me in terms of serving, I don't find it problematic at all. I am happy to be representing wards five and six. I feel very connected to both wards. I've lived in both wards and have lots of connections throughout the community. So from that perspective, I have no personal problem in terms of my service, but I think that it is confusing to the public that people are confused about what is a ward representative versus a district representative versus a state legislator. And it's just a lot of overlapping and confusing boundaries. On the other hand, one of the reasons why we did this was to get the council down in numbers. We had gone up to 14. And that's just an awfully big council to manage. And I will say for as much as I don't like this current system, the idea of having 16 counselors from eight very small wards, I think is worse. And the problem that I see is if you're, it's better, people like to have close representation, they like to feel that they know their city counselor and that their city counselor knows them and understands their issues. But when you get it down too small, it just becomes too myopic to run a city because you're looking at these really micro issues rather than looking for the good of the city and driven too much, in my opinion, by a special interest in a district. You could look at issues like the Southern Connector, the Champlain Parkway, which is a big issue in one part of town, but how does that affect the rest of the community? And so having a little bit broader perspective on issues, I think is healthier for the city. Okay, thanks, John. And also I would say having a smaller council, we don't need a large legislative type body like New York City has or the state legislature. So I think it's worth considering the overall size of the council. Do you see it changing? Do you see the structure changing? Structure. Meaning, do you see something changing so we don't have the district and board system in the redistricting process? Like the outcome changes the current model? Sure, the last time it changed it, right? But like, why couldn't it change it? Nobody's particularly married to it, I don't think. No, I mean, I think there's a number of the city counselors that I've spoken with in other parts of the city are generally supportive of removing the district ward system. But again, it's not for us, it's really a decision that should be a community decision. And most of the reasons that I've heard from the inside as far as removing it are the cost of campaigning. There were city council races for district seats that went with candidates, you know, candidates spending and getting donations over $10,000. That is prohibitive to some people who may want to run for office, but something that is really just not within their reach. The other is serving constituents. There are others who feel that a district is too large to have a real strong neighborhood, feel for neighborhoods. You can't campaign going door to door, not that we did during COVID, but normally that is a prohibitive thing to do in a district. That being said, we've had the ward system for a really long time and we compromised in order to get something on the ballot. I don't know if that'll happen this time, the counselors I've spoken with seem to want to do something in as non-partisanal way as possible to move on with this and avoid the contentiousness that we had the last time. Yeah, it just seems that four people have twice the work as the remaining eight. So just off the top of my head is a non-insider. I can just see how it creates an inequity in that. We'll look forward to hearing all those opinions probably in June. Thank you both. Thank you. Okay, Karen and Joan, thank you very much for your time and I really appreciate all the information. Thank you. And I think with that, we will close this meeting and we'll see you all again next month, I hope. Thank you to everybody. Thank you. Good night. Good night.