 It was a different little confetti. Why am I salted on chocolate chip? But not this spicy. But not this spicy. It's not a good idea about this spicy. Oh, I mean, they're putting their body. You know, it's no fun. You'll put nothing. It's kind of hot chocolate, and I was afraid that somebody would bite into it and have, like, an attack. Yeah. So I didn't get any. That's fair. But if I'd known that they would have been eating, I wouldn't have said that. That's the problem with that. It's a different message. We're recording? We are recording. I'm not sure why you don't have video. Did you have to just start from the video? But again, I have to go. Yes. And there we are. Yeah. We have plenty of video. So everyone who's joining us on lunch will be able to see us. Good evening. Today is Monday, February 12th, 2024. We are downstairs in the Butcher conference room. And those of us who are joining us online for the Burlington City Council meeting, the time is 4.39. Yeah, and we'll begin our evening with item 1.1, which is a motion to adopt the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? There is, President. Wonderful. Councilor Doherty, seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Councilor, actually, I'll wait for the second. Why don't you give me the motion? And then we can thank you. The motion is to amend or adopt the agenda as follows. To remove the consent agenda. Agenda item 8.21 can place down the deliberative agenda as item 9.9. First City Council President Paul or Councilor Doherty removed from the consent agenda item 8.16. Placed on the deliberative agenda as item 9.10. First City Council President for Councilor Grant. Add to the consent agenda item 8.823 communication to Margaret Prindle, excuse me, regarding the neighborhood vote. Add to the consent agenda item 8.24. Communication from Solvee Overby regarding why the city, why is the city to rail the gateway block in quest for proposal process? February 12, 2024, agenda item 4. Add to the consent agenda item 8.25. Communication from Beth Anderson, member of the elective light commission regarding explanation. Great, thank you so much. And Councilor Carson. Oh, there's one more, which was saying 9 out of, move from Kingston. Oh, no, you don't have, oh, no, actually, we don't have it. It's just removed from agenda item 9.2 for city achievement staff for the whole. So, so yes. So that, with that. Okay. Seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Is there a discussion on the motion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. And I'll assume that those in joining us online are also speaking. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. We have an agenda, which leads us to the second item on our agenda and the reason why Jamie is here with us. It's 2.1, a legislative update. And it's the affirmative type of team. Welcome, Jamie. Thank you so much for being with us. We've allotted a whole hour for this. So, you know, if you wanted to be plenty of time for questions from the council, the session, the idea was to give you some input on, you know, about things, you know, where our priorities are and my failure and how things are going and I'm sure you have plenty to say. If you want to start with some, you know, whenever you'd like to start with then, even though this is within the, within the guise of a, you know, the council meeting has started, we're all here downstairs and those who are joining us online and missing the cookies that are here in the room. It's just an opportunity for everyone to ask questions or just offer, offer you discussion. I'm sure. That would be great. And if I stray from existing protocols a little bit, I don't know, it's definitely a side of the box. In my perspective, I would welcome sort of a give and take with Q and A, you know, in terms of the issues that some that, you know, I did not set enough time on, so maybe too much. So, it helps me in terms of my team, in terms of where to focus resources and priorities for you all, as well as on their documents. So, as we move forward. So, I thought I would just open up by just talking a bit about where we are in the legislative calendar where there are some key dates coming, as well as then transitioning quickly into issues that are sort of stated priorities for you all, just to find some input and discussion from beginning to the past, as well as other correspondence, priorities from your office. They're very, very little. It's like they're very not necessarily matched all of ours. And we'll probably kind of work off of the subject matters that were sort of discussed at the delegation meeting last December and then carried forward to today. So, that works for you. I think we'll see you along that. Great. So, legislative calendar, we are in mid-February. There's about three or four weeks of legislative work before the first significant dates show up. I think everyone's familiar with crossover, which is the date when a bill has to be on the calendar in one chamber for the other chamber to consider a passage this year. So, that House and Senate have set March 15, which is the first Friday after they get back from the traditional county recess. So, they'll meet until whatever that first town, even Tuesday is, build out that week off. I think we'll be back. We can meet on that first Friday. We'll meet across the road for all the state communities. With the exception of the money communities, those communities get another week to March 22nd to kick out their bills, as well as any bills that would refer to them by policy. So, this is a good date to kind of, you know, sort of thin the order of bills, I guess, you know. It's convenient for legislators to say, sorry, I don't want to make it a crossover. We're not going to take it up this year. It does show priorities on the communities that we're working on and continue to work on. And I'll also sort of put out there the standard caveat I always use crossover. Yes, it's a very convenient date. There are also multiple ways to get around the process. And the most common thing in the legislature is amending language from one bill that didn't make cross over to another bill that didn't help us. The more that you remain, that's often the vehicle that can choose. How many bills can go later, right? Yeah, with the exception of, you know, if you go up to the charter, there's also rules committees in both the House and the Senate that can grant exceptions to various bills including community bills. So yes, that's, you will see that process will go more often than not because of an issue made with phones or whatever this is addressed to. So this will lead to some substantial community work. And I think the budget will be coming around all the money will be coming out around the 22nd. Which is a big sort of date of the overall calendar which puts us on track for a mid-may term. All of this bill. Sorry to interrupt. I don't know how close you are to the mic, but when you trail off, we can't quite hear you. So I don't know if the mic can be brought a little closer. Right, right. So I would like to let everyone know that we have had an unfortunate issue in this room that I'm working with Scott Barker to fix. And that is someone stepped on the wire to our microphone and it is a $300 microphone that is no longer working. You can go see its remnants in Scott's office and we're ordering a new one. But for now tonight, please just yell because there's no microphone or we're any closer to you. So I apologize. Where is the, where is the, is it way up there? Yeah, you're yes. Usually we have the one that we can bring and that does improve sound quality and we are working on that. Well, project where's the screen? Yes. And that knows. Yeah, right. If there's something I missed and you like me to restate, I'm happy to do that. But I was just talking about some legislative calendar items that are coming up across over in particular and it's a way to kind of move the calendar along. But let me jump into the issues unless there are any questions on the calendar. First and foremost, it's kind of like new and developing and I'm sure you've read about. We can spend as much time or as little as you want because I know it's probably more focused for the school board commission. But property taxes are a huge issue for this legislature to continue to be even there absent any changes by the legislature or school budgets. Fund is on track to require it just in the excess of 20% increase in the property tax rates, which if you translate to dollars, it's well over $250 million just to buy down that 20% increase to a two or four percent range, which means new revenues or cuts or some way of being bound out of school. Act 127, which had many elements, many of which helped benefit Burlington in changing the student waiting factors. So that, for example, students with ESL or diverse populations, towns, municipalities benefit from the adjusted waiting formulas. Towns were able to see that as a few economics. It also had a 5% sort of intended cap on spending for municipalities. In actual practice, that 5% cap has driven most municipalities to spend right up to it or even exceeded. I don't know the intricacies of that very one. Well, education finance, but the school boards do and they realized that they were able to sort of maximize the spending without affecting their local tax rates. And so if you compound that on a statewide basis, we have some preliminary expenses and the school boards will say, and it's true, healthcare costs are driving factors. Inflation like everybody else, the loss of pandemic, monies are now coming to a roost. And so there's a whole amount of them in addition to their driving these costs. So the legislature to put it bluntly is freaking out the possibility of a property tax increase without that magnitude. And so they're screwing to try to find various levers to put that from happening. Houseway of the Means voted out of the bill last Friday, age 850. It's currently in house appropriations today for a vote and is on track to be fast tracked through the Senate into the government prior to town meeting today. The bill does a couple of things. One, it repeals the 5% spending caps that were put in place in that 27 retroactively so that they were implemented. It has instead sort of a gradual percent incentive to towns to lower their school budgets over the next five years, sort of a step down benefit to those towns. And significantly it asks towns or gives them flexibility to delay their school budget votes on town meeting to a date later this spring with the hint that I just did please come up with smaller budgets to help control the cost of education therefore help control the potential property tax increase. And also Do you think there are going to be unsupported? Yeah, I think they're seeing the message. And you know, otherwise they may be looking at other levers ready to look to cut costs or to adjust performance in greater detail. For your all purposes, it does require that anybody who's asked for an absentee ballot has to get a new one in the mail or that the governor has asked that everybody be sent a ballot because number one, we're not getting a lot of high participation in town meetings on two, and we should be able to weigh in on this issue. So that still is an issue that we'll probably play out. Those are the major issues in this one bill in 1850. As I say, it's being cross tracked through the Senate to the governor with a lot of fortified scenes to perhaps do. The last we knew the run has not been delayed. Is that accurate? I do not have the answer to that and I am going to pull up the latest email I have from our friends at the school district. I have something for Jared and Joe McNeil, which says essentially we're all in a waiting game and it's still unfolding. And that was fun as of today. No, that was last Friday. I read that they were meeting today. I think it was unusual like they never do that. We got a Monday. Yeah, they do at the end of the session, but House of Appropriations is meeting today. I think the Senate is still likely to have done the same. Martin, did you have a question? Yeah, I did. I guess quite a question related to the ballot. The ballot question is less complicated than it's been. These past years it just asks for an approval on a budget amount. Doesn't say anything about the tax rate anymore. So I'm wondering if you can still pass it. I don't know if it would make a difference or not. Plus, of course, I wonder if we missed the budget amount. But my primary question is about the tax cap. Burlington is obviously benefiting from the change in student weights, but with the tax cap we're also being sheltered from some additional tax rate related to expenses because I think our expenses are over five percent. So the 13.97 percent tax rate increase that we've been talking about I've heard without the tax cap is actually like 15.6. And so I'm wondering if there's any advocacy on the part of the Burlington delegation to whatever mechanism is put in place instead of the cap to sort of protect Burlington from tax rate above 14 percent because a lot of that is due to like 60 over 60 percent of our increases. This year is death service on the new school of the states haven't been filled. So much of the rest of the CLA. Is there a kind of level of appraisal which we have no control over. So in sort of addressing marks and if we just add those. Yeah, I'm not sure if I'll let the latter CLA. That's getting into a piece from the yes. So we're going to play with very active for the city in terms of both education committees and the delegation. We have a lot of ways to meet. It is always a champion of the city. And I believe to plan against the preference would have been a shorter transition time frame over the five years haven't been a three year frame was lost to me why that is. But maybe there's a way to sort of social impact that way sort of more targeted. But I believe you know the. So the answer is yes there has been a lot of communication from the students to delegation. It's not this point in towns and this is a very difficult situation. I mean this is pretty much so for that to be trapped before they push off decisions that aren't made in the war. So trying to stand that sort of isn't this 20% is there a role we have a resolution tonight that addresses this on in some fashion and I don't know if you're familiar with that but if you're not I would suggest that you take a look at it but besides that resolution is there anything that the council can do with the administration can do not the school district to advance the interests of the city as a whole because you know I mean the school boom is really related to how people will look at say the public safety steps to increase their public proposal and you know there are many other intricacies that are you know germane to this. So sure I guess it's a matter of what what do you want to ask to make sure that they're not going to get this let it to a delay or any particular it's really the 1850 maybe a little bit more of a challenge there which is bigger what's still to be made absolutely so I think you know a number of tools you can use are sharing resolution or whatever resolution you think it's the members of the television defer that I'm to talk to their colleagues to sort of this is always the use of the professor who is out of the houses that keep the bottle. I need to certainly use the delegation in the state house I think it would help if it's a joint effort perhaps you know the councilor's office if you want this as well you know I did have one other school thing which is on directly related to this but just has to do with the $400,000 valuation sort of circuit breaker if your house is valued assess valuations over $400,000 negative the effects I think greatly the income sensitivity which a person is eligible and we are really the last we're phrasing pumped up against that. Is anybody talking about that? Yeah, those are the so-called levers that I mentioned earlier right now ways of means and the finance we have set aside are looking at potential revenue options to help build the app not necessarily system there were several CLA was introduced last year. There's more to have a pause on CLA's I'm looking at relative experience and some other times to not have other risk balance based on potential magnitude because of rising private values that are taxed by the defendant. That didn't go anywhere but they're going to look at the income sensitivity for now. They may revisit some of the policy decisions made in Act 27 that we are not investing in tax. This is sort of an attitude of the interest sort of everything's on the table. But right now, the policy discussion is where might we get hold of what? That might be a reducing income sensitivity eligibility. Let me just finish by saying it would be a disaster to the foreign working people of the city for that to happen and we need real leadership down there to make sure it doesn't happen and in fact with people being stretched as far as they are we actually need greater interest sensitivity and need not to fall off the $400,000. If the median income, if the median valuation is like $386,000 or $386,000, $14,000 is already passed in this CLA. There's no doubt about it. However, unlikely something like that would happen or less and I wouldn't say anything about it. But it's always a good conversation. Perhaps the rest of the chit-chatting can get on the board. I don't know. Let me just, that's my press for a legislative action on this. I think it's essential that we act assertively and so far. Well, I take it I can start to spend more time on the tradition of finance going forward on the health data center. I mean, I have been sort of solving kind of theoretical at the moment. Now we have something to talk about. I have some questions and I apologize if you have to repeat yourself because I have probably a little bit of this to be confusing. I just want to make sure if that's true. So to the point of voting for the total budget as opposed to the tax rate, would that be something we would really want to do? Because when the people of Burlington want to know what the tax rate slows. So I just want to throw that out there. I would have a hard time voting as much as I have been voting for school budgets all these years in this current scenario and also from hearing people in the community. That's a burden and right people really have said I'm sure we've all heard. That's not going to change. Whatever, two years ago. We used to vote on the tax rate. Now we only go to the budget statewide. Right. But when we vote on the budget, we know what the tax rate is going to be. Correct? We're not voting on tax rate. We're voting on an estimated budget that will produce a tax rate depending on how much money this state gives us. So we give the people an estimated tax rate in the past. Have we ever gone over that estimated tax rate? I can't answer that. I don't know. But the language itself is mandated. The language we've been dealing with, it was very sort of arcane. The cryptic was part of that. They required us to put that language and we could deviate very little from that language. They've since repealed that in the language now. I understand. I don't know if we still have to put the ballot language as is on the city ballot, but I do appreciate that. But my question still stands. Have we ever gone over the estimated tax rate that was given to the property tax players in Burlington? I don't think we have the answer to that question now, especially on the school side. We would need to check in. I think that would be very important to know. That would be a very bad place to have given an estimate. Ask people to vote on the budget. It's not a good one. That's a concern of mine. So we have got into this mess due to the state having the delay in their estimate of the CLA. Is that correct? Yes. But their estimate is hugely more than anyone thought it would be. But they came in late with that estimate. They always come in the same time of the year, which is late. Well, there's a statute that requires taxes to send a letter to the legislature to send the first. So that December letter rejected 18 and a half percent of the time, which has now been updated to be just over 20% based on other factors. So what I'm trying to understand is what is the delay, the source of the delay that they're asking to. So the, I said, you know, 20% ads and changes being made. The school budgets are coming in at such a number that was contributing to this 20% increase. So the legislature hopes by delaying these March budgets that would otherwise be voted on by municipalities across the state. Those municipalities won't go back to the drawable and reduce, reduce, they're hoping to reduce their budget. So the, the ultimate tax rate is sort of unknowable can be predicted, but it will depend on what taxpayers' appetites are for what they're being asked. Well, we know what the outside suck, right? That stranger doesn't know the town budgets until the end of January. Second time we put ours out. Right. But I'm just trying to have a little understanding of the moving pieces with regards to where we're at. That is now put them in this situation with regards to 850. And, you know, 127 is important to me because it was addressing issues affected. So because we're in this situation, how's, you know, how will that be affected because there were legitimate equity issues in the state, in our city? Like, is this going to, I mean, I'm just throwing it out there at this point, not necessarily if you can get an answer, but I just think it ends a big question out there. How is this going to affect the changes we meant that we made in order to be more equitable? That's a really big question. Where we end up taking steps back because of this. So, and if we have, if we have too many school districts make a decision to delay their votes and we have our vote, the chances of us coming closer to the vote are going to be a big one. And so, going back once again, if we then come back with something higher than the estimate, that's going to be a huge problem. And so that's, that's my big concern. I just can't believe. But if you can give feedback, this is, this is a, I can't speak to the second one, but I can tell you that we have a lot of, I can tell you that we've received assurances early on from the palace and senate leadership, but I think that it's the people that they knew. Okay, so they're going to still support that concept on that. That's why ours is not 21%, it's only 14%. 15%. Yeah. And then also, you know, throwing it in there that the state is kind of screwing us over because they let the, we have a sixth school, and they haven't helped with that. And that's an equity issue as well. Thank you. Should we move on? Yeah, yeah, for sure. There, I can, I can see Jones, Soraya and Hannah, actually, it's a little more formal, but if you, you know, if you just, if you want to add, just use the raise hand function, I can see the three of you. You have any comments or questions? And I assume that you can all hear us. Please. Well, okay, great. Great. Switching over to emergency housing, because this is another one that's going to play out from the next week or two. The legislative sort of bill where this is addressed is the budget adjustment bill, which is HK 39 budget adjustment. It is what it did. It's the FY 24 bid year ups and downs based upon unexpected expenditures or transferring money where they didn't think they needed it to some place that it does. And the emergency housing cohorts are addressed in the current BAA pending the legislation. The governor proposed a hard stop for the pandemic era hotel hotel program as of April 1st and I'm speaking quickly in general. The House disagreed with that vehemently and you all were very active on that. Thank you. And decided to extend and find money to extend the program through June 30th this year and then even pick it up again, you know, other questions in the FY 25 which starts in June 1st. The other significant piece that has remained in the bill from the governor recommended budget is to find five new shelters around the state that will house and the governor admits not all of the population but the segment of the population of those that are elderly. But again, so the House and the Senate agree with the five shelters but they are very much different to the governor on the Seattle program. The Senate on Friday passed an amendment before passing the bill that doesn't go as far as the House but doesn't go as far as the governor either. The Senate, as they say, agreed to the four million for the additional five shelters. However, and they did not touch the inverse of whether policy currently in place. However, they are extending only the program for those who are eligible for the vulnerable population through June 30 and no more. So this will not include all the cohorts. It will include JETOs that will now go through general assistance and meet this definition of vulnerable which, by the way, includes some security dependent over age 65 to age 18 or 19 but still depending on the school and a few others. I don't have for you, this was again a Friday amendment. I don't have the exact number of what they estimate and how it will be but I will look to do that as soon as I can. The bill passed the Senate on Friday, as they say, it will now likely go to a conference with the House and the Senate to hash out the differences overall in the middle. That discussion will take place this week and then typically in the conference community the last week or two that each chamber votes on the bill and then sent to the government. Can I ask a question? Yes. How many people are the five shelters supposed to house because I've heard from what I've read about them sending for one in Waterbury that might be 50 people but some of them are much, much smaller and is there any concept there of what are they doing with elderly and disabled people after June 30th? Is there a sense of obligation to take care of people? I will get for you all in the next update I'll link to a document that the Department of Children and Families shared last week that speaks specifically to that number but you're right, it's a handful in each location that does not come near over the September of 730 or in particular so it's so I it's maybe 24 in one place 34 in another a dozen in one place there more as I mentioned there is discussion on going down for the FY 25 budget which will kick in July 1 which may or may not address what happens at June 3 House Human Services in particular is looking at reform of the general assistance program in general which has the housing component of course and so that's certainly the area where you all think your way back to me so the legislature's plan is to allow people who are disabled to be completely unsheltered after June 30 or even yeah I can't say that because again this is just FY 24 budget adjustment so it's only funding for once in place through June 30 when fiscal year ends and the next budget will then pick up funding starting July 1 so there's certainly information and hope in both the House and the Senate this will be addressed for well I don't want to say well up until June 30 how many how many need shelter versus how many are getting shelter to June 30 yeah I need to follow up with you all on the specific numbers because it isn't clear to me with the Senate of how many fall into this vulnerable category through general assistance silo or how many are in adverse weather but there will be I believe a substantial gap between shelter and disabled I'd appreciate knowing the number that are unsheltered not just how many are vulnerable I think anybody who is not sheltered is vulnerable so if you could get that number and find out how many how many people are living unsheltered and how many will are being proposed to be sheltered through June 30th that would be great thank you I can tell you now isn't the number 4 much more than that it's 1628 I can tell you I thought you were talking about these changes that are being made by the House and the Senate so many changes whatsoever the total number of households that we're talking about is 1628 in the adverse weather 875 are in that 1628 the so-called June 30 cohort the pandemic is 616 and categorically eligible which I assume would be vulnerable population and so on is 137 that's households the number of individuals is higher that's 2605 number of adults is 1970 total and the number of children is 635 if you could get if you could get us that those numbers so those quickly taking it down I see Joan as quickly taking it down I think Sarah Russell and Cth you obviously have a chart I do this is what I was thinking what I will be interested in what the expectation is for people that aren't being included for shelter of some sort is the state going to give out more tents and sleeping bags like they did last time have we no shame I mean this is just really beyond the House in particular has been very strong on this but I will I'll send that information so everybody has other numbers and I will also try to pinpoint some numbers based upon the changes because again well you know you've got two bookends right do they go towards the middle or do they go towards either end of the bookends and then what will the governor be willing to sign that can you get a briefing on the budget next year's budget that they're working on as soon as possible sure look at the numbers that are going to be impacted since you know first thank you I find it confusing when we're only talking about like segments of this population and it would be helpful if when we're talking about continuing like the cohort discussion I'd like to know of the total population what are the plans for the total population there's plans for this cohort to house them in such a way until June 30th what about everybody else yeah and that's not my vernacular vernacular the legislature has adopted so I'm sort of restating how they're they've chosen to categorize these individuals based upon when the program became available as opposed to the existing program for general assistance at risk level yeah I understand that that's the way they talk about it I just want to make sure that we're talking about everybody not just specific cohorts thanks Ali yes first let me say thank you so much for the written report as an independent I think it was valuable for me to understand what's true and for the first time as a city councilor I found a budget right about the by side that the state would be doing do you know what time it's in what and do you know about the timeline they build it it would be indebted so the city is more comfortable with this so I can put it that way and also what are the costs to assist in deep learning in various ways I believe that information is in this document that I will send but I do know a couple of answers first these shelters are only proposed to be up from people one through two third they are not your own mix of sort of congregate but this is individual type locations for example is talk about using the portion of the water that looks like that's not individual type others examples may be adding on to an existing facility set number but I will I thought I had my politics so other than housing and and of course sorry I didn't see you sorry this isn't related really to that specific thing but I'm just wondering if you also have an update on the just cause eviction so we're taking a more preventative approach of our charter change yeah I can answer that unfortunately shortly they have not taken up any of the just cause eviction bills I think in the legislature as of today we continue to plug away at that but at the moment there's been no activity either on charter changes or statewide there's even a new version that I saw was introduced this year that would put a pause on while we're dealing with this crisis that doesn't take Thank you legislature too much on town meeting data deal with charter changes we only have one and it's like relatively light lift well there wasn't just there were some other series of just cause just cause yeah yeah I don't want to leave housing completely yet because there are some significant bills that are there as well depending on how you make it through there's in the senate it really doesn't have a number yet it's being called the e-home act which is the acronym for bringing everyone home that's in senate economic development it is as of now a probably a 90 page bill with 61 sections our focus your focus has been multiple of course but the primary interest is reducing a sort of duplicate review of Act 250 and permitting and citing to let cities and towns like Burlington that have robust zoning on the books their approach to that to continue to do that and then not have to have those projects go towards a similar review by Act 250 there are various variations of this being considered but the good news is that there seems to be both political will and sort of buy in by opponents to these efforts in the past to allow this to happen it's just a matter of what it will look like in the legislation there are numerous studies that the natural resources were conducted that would sort of spoke to these issues and they created sort of multiple tiers each tier would have relative Act 250 review or not and tier 1a is what I'm speaking about with the municipalities that have robust zoning and permitting to be exempt from Act 250 and the bill on the senate has that tier concept in its draft the committee hopes to vote the bill out by the end of this week it's got a lot in it it's going to have to go to multiple places including the finance committee because of some tax incentives there's also a separate bill on the senate almost primarily devoted to Act 250 and the natural resources board studies and so the two committees natural resources and energy and economic development and housing will have to figure out how they can address those issues together but that is will be a signature housing bill in the last year's format there's also a bill in the House Energy and Environment Committee it's going to be working on concurrently we'll probably cross chambers and that bill it is House Bill 687 which probably doesn't quite go as far as we would like for a complete exemption of from the Act 250 but it does sort of speak to exemptions for example certain designated areas for but again things are trending in a much better direction than the other Act 250 want to switch over to public safety issues sure we can try to wrap up in the next 10 minutes that would be great please go ahead yeah public safety is absolutely on the minds of the legislature there are several bills going that I spoke to retail theft is a tricky subject what started off as a bill that would sort of enhance penalties for violations of retail theft and kind of aggregating the value of the theft to move from a misdemeanor to a felony has lost steam and shifted instead to addressing programs that have not become repeat violators and to kind of address the root causes rather than the penalties and so the House Judiciary Committee in particular is looking at these restorative approaches to justice steps that can be made within the juvenile court system steps that can be made within the adult court system last year for example the so-called work program which was a name of it which was a popular sentencing alternative for the courts to use for retail theft violators was suspended by the State Department with Corrections because of funding of their efforts now to re-institute that program and we will see in the budget bill significant resources devoted to the court system to try to reduce the backlog of cases which is ultimately in part for issues related to people arrested for retail theft or not and having the cases just going in for so long creating an opportunity for work so that one is absolutely a priority of the issue how it plays out is still to be developed and the House Judiciary will certainly get a bill out before we tilt that they just voted on Friday an auto theft bill unanimously so this one went through very quickly this kind of generally fills some gaps it does increase penalties but for example you know it wasn't clear how can you arrest someone who you can only arrest them if you prove you didn't have consent of the owner if you're taking them for something wrong closing some of these loopholes and creating these penalties to close gaps and enhance the time it takes to smooth this Senate Judiciary is looking at I can ask a question specifically about that so here in Burlington and in other areas in the last couple of years record numbers of auto thefts so we had this charge that the only charge that actually all the states it's in the city they only have this charge that they can use what will it be the same level of charge like we're saying we're adding more penalties but will they like change the name of the the charge but what is their plan there are increasing the penalties but they're also broadening the ability of the authority to be able to charge in other words to address that consent of the owner of the issue or taking it without permission etc. so the history is yes but with all of it we're willing to arrest them also and possibly changing the the name of the crime order I don't know it's the same charge but they basically lower the threshold for what prosecutors must prove in order to bring the charge so they added language that I believe is like reasonably assumed so if the prosecutors prove that the operator should have reasonably known they did not have permission then they can bring the charge they basically just lower the threshold they make it easier to charge but it's the same charge so I think it's more flexibility in terms of what's effective with those types of cases I'm going to give the bill now they're not changing the title of the crime okay thank you could you report that I had an interest in that it's just something that's going to be heard a lot about it's incredible thank you thank you the update up maybe all of this can come along at the same time or around the same time the information on the shelters yes they're already easier yeah that's great excellent and just quickly, Senator Dushman is looking at throw up crimes particularly fentanyl escape death as a result of a drug that may have had fentanyl in it and we're also adding xylosine to that this Senator Dushman is also looking at prohibiting so-called ghost guns which are guns that have been manufactured or made with uncernelized parts or components and that will certainly be those two will certainly be additions that will set out over those prevention centers but is still pending in the Senate I think the Senate would like to try to find a place on the legislation where they can kind of fold it in so that it is with some other issues it makes it more enticing for guns and others but that is certainly a priority for the Senate and I know public transit is an issue for many of you and public transit funding in particular reports have been submitted that identify areas where the legislature can look to raise new money for transit providers getting them to actually do that this is the challenge many of the providers have advocated for the need to meet for additional monies to maintain existing services you think you're not in transit and in the absence of doing so they're either looking at cuts, cuts of service, personnel which is something nobody wants to see but in the absence of new revenue we're not putting that in the options we advise this as to the best except our own app we can see it not hear it now thank you transportation I can say what they're looking at is for sort of a statewide solution and not necessarily a remount and transit solution as you know there's an assessment authority that remount and transit has so it didn't have the loan the other providers don't have that and so I know that remount and transit is facing that so there are pressure points even in maintaining that system so it would be in the context of overall the other challenge is that the T Fund in general is underperforming so they're legislatures conscious of overall not necessarily a particular center is there a commitment to mass transit as an essential function of climate change or are they still back in the I felt like it would go that sweeping in the statement I think there's absolutely support and commitment for transit for a variety of reasons it helps the most vulnerable for communities for general purposes and we've seen some very good support for transit for good expansions with pilots I suspect that'll be too just hopeful on the funding I know councilor we have something for them thank you thank you for update I have been following each other basically so it was introduced and so I'm glad to see that the senate is looking for a way to step forward to the extent that the city can play a role and ensure that that actually is across the country with something close to the total conferred we appreciate the having a more active role in that council had several resolutions opening up the legislation so I would hope that as this gets to a more serious conversation with the senate not just keeping an eye on what happened doing that even if they don't have to approve the majority that's probably what's been done to put in the senate someone has a standard that should have something else that brings people up I will absolutely keep you further out of the city councilor going back to overdose prevention centers you said a comment about trying to make it I see I see can you tell me what you meant by that we can you all knew it here what would the governor like and what would overcome oppositions he in my point of view I have been very public about this for quite some time he has not fully understood the dire situation that we've been in he has not taken previous stances from previous governors where we acknowledge an emergency we acknowledge that in state-wide we acknowledge we have to do things differently because the old ways are not working kind of in the office where he's like you can only do things that are tried and true and that is not the case of so-called third wave that we are in right now that's why I was curious as to what they think they can do to get him on board or is it that they hope they pass something that hasn't been to George it would be one of those either of those two options it wouldn't bring up a standover but the other way maybe the governor doesn't need to we could spend all sorts of doing here talking about all of this this has been incredibly informative and really for the first time the council has had this opportunity and it's extremely I think extremely valued by everyone so thank you for being here I think we will I debated about whether or not we should try to do this to do this again would be near crossover meeting on the 11th which is a month from now if we wait till the 26th it probably is too late to really have a whole lot of input although if you wait until the 26th would be better we'll let us know seems going through into April might be a little more problematic because there's only really one working meeting in April and that's on the 15th which should really probably be I can certainly I don't think we ourselves have to do more but it's like a period of time okay well I'll wait and see if others have a strong interest in doing this maybe we do it a little more often we do it for a shorter period of time but this has been extremely helpful and just to echo what Councillor McGee said there are people who would have an interest in coming to Montpelier on things that are of particular interest or Councillor Berkman the more information that you can give us about when those dates might be understanding that they're moving targets you know is incredibly helpful to us sure and I invite anybody to shoot me an e-mail staff to be interested in this issue great I know you're right that'll help spur some communication being my overwhelming with you know you're all taken in I will say I always have a standing interest in anything related to the drug rights and in particular for the OPC thank you for the time thank you as well so we we have we're going on to item 3.1 which is the presentation on the former YMCA Bruce I'm not really sure where you'd like to be we can move the cookies elsewhere which is fine and then we understand do you have either a community to share screen so why don't we do that so we can see spot 3 we have lots of help more than enough people are willing to help with the cookies that's very sure so we'll be able to we'll be able to we'll be able to we'll be able to we'll be able to we'll be able to we'll be able to we'll be able to you bring we'll bring I'll take one Bryan yeah you're probably one of the few people who should remember that one should I comment Oh here's a when you get on there it should be a BT-Guest then all you need to do is get on, then zoom to move And then we can get to our screen. So we'll get that link for you. have to send it to the rights. Right. City Council. So. Yes. In the meantime, as well, they're all getting set out. So everyone, for those who don't know, I assume everyone knows Bruce Baker, they're, they're here to talk about the project. I hate to call it the former YMCA. Do you have a name for it? We don't really have a name. Okay. Okay. Karen, just for the first. I think I'm getting it. Okay. You should be able to promote you and then you should be able to screen share. But in the meantime, first, I wanted to start us off and then go to, and then we can, there are probably going to be some questions from the counselors. And we do have a couple of counselors that are joining us by zoom. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So clearly he's going to show a video rendering of what this will look like, what we have approved at the. So, so any approval for the, for what is 90 minutes of housing and some supporting news. Because we have some unused portion of the building that may support some of these as well. Places without a lot of windows. Pays can't support. So many other. Offices or something. So one of the things that's going to be clear is, you know, once you give them approval like that, people like, oh, they can start building. And this is not that site. One of the reasons I got it, how I got involved was I, I knew the people that were trying to develop it from that stage. I called them and they clearly in our conversation didn't understand complexity of this. And there's complexity on two levels. One is stuff, you know, you're looking at from the outside. That's a problem. Urban soils and as you saw, every, every poverty and that area and brook. And so to the extent that you're moving, so they've got to have a documentary, that's going to be a light. They didn't know about, but they know that activity. So yeah, they didn't know that their part of it was an active 50. Come in private, which is the first thing we should do in office. Before you start that. there is a second tier of them that we don't know until we do some exploration to do some testing and I think clear is ready to show you this and you'll strike a little bit more of this but that's going to be the theme you'll ask a question and I'll say well we think so or we will know or we just figure this out. So this is a video that we produced for the zoning application. The project is substantially the same although there were a few tweaks to color and the composition of the back that we're getting to that made it better. Would you mind starting a loop? I wouldn't at all it's about to end and I think it may just not sure if it loops automatic or not. So hopefully this the existing building is on the historic register except for the pool addition that is on the north end of the site it was all built at the same time the bitch truth part that you see here and the flat roof part that goes north from here that housed the gym we're all built at the same time. We have negotiated with the local and the state historic preservation groups we've got an agreement to tear down all of the existing structure except for the part with the gable roof that you can see on the corner. The project has nine new apartments in it and some amenities spaces on the ground floor and some parking below grade kind of in the back. The site has a pretty significant grade change from South Union to the area that is sort of down behind City Market at the Howard Center. So we have some access to the parking back there. The project six stories tall. We have done working drawings to a design development level. Those were completed I guess about four weeks ago and we're working with VR company. They're a local construction management and development company. They're working on creating a cost estimate for this which is going to be really important for performing how a project is stored. We expect to get the first look at that next week and we are cautiously optimistic. Personally I think it's a great project to be a big improvement in the city. Just one design idea. So here's just a still rendering of the building context. I've always really liked that church on the corner so we're trying to pick up some of the color and coloration of that yellow brick and also being sympathetic to the brick or the existing building at any time. I just want to ask a question to respond. So Councillor Shannon and King just so you know we can see we can and Councillor Hightower we can see you now. So do you have any questions? We see you. Councillor Dorey. Yes thank you. At some point in the recent few days someone made a representation that this was going to be student housing and I've heard a lot of questions from constituents about that and I was hoping you could address that issue and clear up what needs to be cleared up. Sure I think in their use they were looking at alternatives outside of hotel and I told them actually if they was kind of like a project. We're now real housing. We're hoping that we'll build in units of different sizes. Hopefully young families. Can I pass to them? Sorry for disturbing you but what are you doing specifically to the tracks? You know a broader range of particular. Well so these are all going to be correct. I think well one we don't we're not first of all purpose built for all the towns and has some amenities spaces and which make it really hard if you go back to another kind of houses. So we're not doing one step we're not we're I think the proximity to downtown is really going to attract other folks that we haven't done it in particular. I don't know that from the legal perspective I'm going to say that I guess other than just build something that I'd like to look at next versus another percent residential. Well so that's a good question so one of the things you're seeing so if the construction budget comes in at a really high level you're seeing how you figure out how to make something. And they're the grumpard cafe. But we didn't want it to be reached. We were interested in speed. We were worried about property having fire or something internally burning some of the structures down. So Steve was at work so we went for the burning at the zoning line to be involved. But cafe could be a lot of my office and support and the car could be there. But primarily our interest is building a house. You're going to recognize this. This is going to feel like a house. What is the timeline as one question to what are the English and the zoning elements of the construction and what interests also do we have that in one point do we want to also change the change the quote on. Well so number one. So that's a great question. We're really hopeful. So one of the things we're doing right now is we are proceeding on parallel tracks. Normally what you do is you would get out of your everything if I saw your design. Know all of your costs in this architecture. So you'll notice there's a fence around you know people have been out of this substance debate. So we're doing all that because we've done one of the things that we're experiencing in development. One of those things that we've talked about in 18 months. So what I wanted was saying we're hoping to start doing the construction company and start construction and that construction will be two groups. Yes. So one of the things that was clear to me and I see this theme happening over and over again and it's that outside folks that don't have a vested interest in our cities are doing this may lose heart. Right. They may have good attention. That's the beginning of the start complexity is stronger than they think. So I have investors and one thing that was critical to this is that they're sometimes actually to look like that. Look what we're doing and we're leaving that for ten years and that means this project has the best chance of being successful. And they're also ultimately including. So I mean we'll likely be at the 20 percent. And we'll be managing them ourselves. We'll be outside. We can now in June. Like the condition of the world ourselves. Well that's interesting. So as I was talking to them early on before we all did. So I think it's just back in March. They asked me to also kind of shore up the building that we did. And I said can I ask if I could take you to. We did over three days. I don't know. Some people work out of the wild. Two days later in the back business before. And I don't know. You certainly can protect the building. In many ways. I get to answer Barlow. Councilor Grant. There was someone else as well. One of the questions about the timeline. This is really exciting. What is one of the signature polite properties. Smaller wood that Memorial Auditorium right now. It's just like all over the BD and it's had a number of problems. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for fencing it off and putting it into a lot of that activity this morning. So I'm excited about the projects. We are too. We think it's going to be a nice cornerstone. Sort of has a longer list of all the urban problems of Alex. And that's. But we're really lucky. You're really blessed. I just got to know if we were doing this. And he's done a great job. And we have a team that every one of them has their own area. He's the maestro conducting the orchestra. And he's done a good job. Quickly. It really is a very challenging project. More challenging than typical things we see about today. The ravine ran through the northwest border of the site. We don't know what they used to build that in. All of the soils are not sufficient to support the building. So we have to upgrade those for preserving a historic structure. Well, cutting off part of a historic structure that's all attached to the preserving apartment. It's a very tight urban site without any area for construction laydown or sequencing or, you know, which makes it complicated. And then we are forced by zoning to build it to the gold standards as well, which I think we would all agree that sustainability is important, but it might not do every item on that list or not. But that's important. So just all of those things sort of keep adding flexibility to the project. Mr. Kranke, would you like to talk to Trappers? You said you are working at 90 units. I was wondering if you had an idea of what the configuration would be in terms of lending to the redevelopment. I think there are 23 studios. I don't have that breakdown memorized. I should have done that before I came. But yeah, there are, in that range of studios, there are, so there's probably 20, 25, four bedrooms. Three in an office. We were finding a lot of, there's three bedrooms. There are, it's heavy on fours and threes and studios. And then there are half a dozen twos, one bedroom. But having on threes and fours, that's something we hardly ever hear. So that's a little refreshing. What we're trying to do to see if we can attract, we're seeing two people working from home. So that could work for a family or it could work for two young professionals who work from home and want to use the other two for an office. So I don't know if we're right, but we're trying, we're seeing that the market's not producing that. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely correct about that. With regards to raising the fence and issues of people either climbing the fence or breaking through the fence, because there's been a lot of, it's been a symbol of some of the life that we've had in the city regretfully. So I know that I could speak to many, many people in the city that aren't going to be moving forward. But are you, until you can get through all these processes to get to the point where construction starts, going to have it monitored for some of that activity just to help make sure that the property is kept clean, that I know already that it's been cleaned up a few times. So one of the things that's seen, well first of all, we got permission from the fire marshal to block the new notes from the inside. Normally they wouldn't do that, but it was, we couldn't protect it, it would have been broken into, what's happening is people are stealing tools from construction sites and using them to break them. So I can't detect anything from the block and the saws. So what they, so the fire marshal allowed us to do that and that's been a significant barrier. The second thing is now that we have people there, hazmat removal is going to take about two and a half months and we have people there every day. So then we'll know pretty quickly rather than maybe a few days if I want to out. And that seems to have sort of cast a disinfectant rate on the little activity that was happening inside that we didn't know about, because the guys have orange fluorescent paint on them to figure out how to get them out. It has 28 different levels. It's really hard to be fine when you go in, it's very difficult to figure it out. So it's just, it's an odd configuration inside. So that's our initial, and the second thing we're going to do is I'm going to task one person. In the summer when we start construction in full to be responsible and we'll have a number where people can call and say to community needs. When we're full on working on the site. So that'll be because construction in the type you heard it was going to get. It's going to cause traffic growth. This is going to cause some issues. Well, thank you for that information. That's really good to know. We can thank you for having a full thought of a number that we can call once the kids started. That's not a scholarship. It's really important. Thank you. Before we go to that, just so you know, the microphone before you got here, we have a problem with the microphone. A very nice microphone that I'm told costs $300. It's not working. It was broken. Somebody stepped on it. So the only thing that we have in the room is what you're looking at right above the screen. So if you can just, as hard as it is to speak to someone's back, if you can just speak to the microphone, there's a few people that are online and do want to hear very much what you have to say. So the best, whatever you can do to a company. Thank you. Councilor Traver, someone from Berkman. Thanks. I think that was. Sorry. I thought if I turned off my microphone right here. Thank you very much for the presentation. I agree with the way it's been very exciting project. There's a few new measures that this council has enacted over the last few years that can potentially impact your project and touched on some of it. Just wondering if you can dive in a little bit more. One is with respect to the elimination of minimum parking requirements. And just if you could speak a little bit more about what your parking plan is for this building, I just wouldn't be interested in that. And then the second question is, I know that in a residential building, there's probably some technological hurdles with respect to domestic hot water in particular. But curious about the extent to which you think you'll be able to electrify other energy systems. So those are my two questions. I think clearly you can speak to the energy systems better than I could. Do I talk to the park again? Sure. So we have a little over 40 spaces. It's 43 right now at a level below, which is obviously less than the previous. I think this is probably going to be some off-site. Hot water generation will be, that is the catalyst, dynamics of large-scale hot water generation. It's very expensive across lots of small hot water heaters in it. In it's sort of gradient mission right now. So he talks about electric systems pretty great right now. It's gas for hot water. The HVAC systems will be electric. They are other split systems. So that's all tight and well-insulated building on low. I mentioned the two gold standards. So that's part of the city approach. CX Associates, Christiane, but not Christiane at that. Yeah, you did. I mean, I think acknowledging those technological hurdles, I know about carbon feed that the city just stood up, doesn't go into place with respect to domestic hot water until 2026 at this point. But I'm really glad to hear about your sustainability efforts to electrify the other energy systems in the building. I think that's great. That's all. Thank you. I'll just say one thing about parking because I'm a little bit of a part of the community. Parking a management building. It's tedious. You have to spend a lot of time in your tenants and advance your tenants to the plan. You've been able to reduce the demand substantial dependence by explaining what it really costs. You know, it makes it a flyer. We tend to be able to reduce that demand. Sorry, I'm using the follow-up question here, but you've been partnering that into multiple organizations and buildings in terms of assistance with transportation, demand management plans and so on that are now required, the elimination of our parking requirements. This is something you're taking on your own. It's just a question of curiosity. We haven't yet. Yeah. Quite frankly, I've never worked with them. We've been for a long time, so we couldn't help with some concepts. Yeah, ironically, we want you to open up your own ordinance, like the concept I just described, where we sit down with the tenant and choose to follow-up. You don't need. And one of the advantages of what we're targeting is no response to all the benefits that they're going through. That's important to us, try to get them tenant and women's tenants. Maybe if my questions were just asked, that's fine. Ben, the size of the square footage of your, that's fine. It's one of the branches. It's one of the branches. I got a 40-year-old. So how big is the building that's small? Yeah. And you're talking about families. Which is great. The noise proofing between the units since three-year-olds and four-year-olds are loud. Yeah. Predictions between units have a 2x8 on the floor and then staggered 2x4s so that stuff doesn't go through. And they have just that insulation. And will you not hear anything? No, you will hear. But it's certainly trying to be responsible in that regard. I think often sound transmission is greater through the floors. Well, this building happens. It's an interesting mix of steel and concrete floors and wood floors. And it's probably a little too wonky to go into all of the reasons why we're doing that. But so where there are steel and concrete floors, they will be more, they'll be better isolating than wood. But the wood or the summaries we're using are consistent, like the kinds of things you'd see. That's good that you're thinking about. I guess the last thing just relates sort of the follow-on in terms of the TDM work that you're going to decide that the link is part of the parking badge. It sounds like you have decided whether you go somebody like Kappa or to what you're looking at. It's called steel. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Councilor Jain. Is there anything that you would like to say to all of the enterprises? Is there anything that you would like to say to all of the buildings that you would like to cover? Right. And, you know, at least one of us has a little question about trying to change and we're still wondering if there are opportunities for you working with them that's going to continue to, like I said. Flat out. Yes. We can talk about, there are, right now the design does not have that. And I would categorize that as a sustainability upgrade. And there are a number of those things that have been talked about. I think the actually cost estimate is that's going to be a point at which we can start to talk about that ability to operate. But I think, you know, you are, I'm confident that you are considering participating in the serious goals about the recent commission from my perspective. This is an important time for me. I love being in the classroom. I'm confident that it will be helpful. Again, I'm joining everybody because that's just my excitement. I'm excited. Thank you. I think you have, oh, Councilor McGee. All right. Just one more, one more question. I apologize for this. That's not for the construction timeline. In terms of the demo, I think it's the more substantial demolition starts like actually taking part of the building. We're hoping to construct some permit in June. The key point will come when we find out the cost. One of the problems we're having here is you're in an uncertain environment in terms of what needs to be done, soils or whatever. And we're in a rapidly inflationary way. That's the construction cost. So that speed is important to us too. So we're hoping June, unfortunately, is going to take two years to build. Will you all set? Yeah. Okay. So, by the way, I don't, of course, I don't think we're going to have others and I don't see any of those that are trying this on soon. One thing I just wanted to add is that this is a private development. You are not looking, you are not going for a federal funding of any sort. And as such, this is not a private public partnership. You're a brave person to come here and listen to all of us. This is a private development. But one that is incredibly important to this community. And we are, I'm sure, are all grateful that if I would be willing to take the time and talk with us, take our questions, but mostly I hope you hear a blast of excitement about this project. And I'm sure we all wish that it could happen in a lot less than two years. But it does take time to build something. And perhaps in a, any year you'll come back or maybe give us all a tour when it gets going. Well, thank you, Karen. We're excited. You know, I was walking around the downtown and I saw this happening. I saw this happening in the Netherlands. And someone from the new one walking eight children down step in the new one around that. And, you know, that's when I get these folks together and we have to do something folks that are trying to do the development really don't understand what they're doing involved. So, you know, we saw a big thing that's happening. That's the evolutionary construction environment. But we'll be able to, I'm hopeful we can pivot in some way to the corporate chains of projects or whatever. It needs to be done in those numbers. Because we're really committed to building the houses inside the city that in turn is still locked in the downtown. Oh, no, it's wonderful. That was people who clearly are incredibly invested in Burlington. And the only thing I just wanted to add is that I know that there have been we all have received a number of emails from people, particularly who are in that neighborhood, who are concerned and are hopeful that putting out three and four bedroom apartments will be a will be an opportunity for our families to live there. You know, we all love the vibrancy of UVM, but we also are concerned that that area could become another place for our students. So, if they can somehow or other it's a way to market that to the families we don't think will survive. Were there any other questions? Or, you know, actually we have a whole bunch of staff members here. Anything else? Anything you want to say on that? Or, you're good? Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. Take your time to bring a rush. Yeah, we lost it pretty fast. Scared ladies. So the time is 6.15 or so, 6.17. We'll move on to item 4.1, which is a communication near Mauro, Denver, starting from south end for development. For redevelopment, redevelopment, for redevelopment agreement of gateway block 3 development agreement we will fill with the gateway block first to accommodate those people that need to enter that item. But as they relate to real estate negotiations, we have an expected executive session. I don't see the mayor here. We normally, we go to the mayor, see if there's anything in public that he's able to say. I don't know. See your director pine if you can do that, or if there's anything people can't update. And if you don't mind coming over here and just speaking to the mic. The mayor is on his way down. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here he is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Like an update. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. From my own charge. I, you know, if I didn't know better, I would tell you that somebody might have been watching this. You were multitasking upstairs. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, so if there's anything we want to show you. I do want to just take a check. I would like to just say a couple of things about just your executive sessions where we talk in about both gateway block, including the moratorium and this memorandum understanding for the south-edged land that the city owns and that we are exploring whether we can jointly pursue a kind of master plan with two other major land owners Shipley College and the ride-your-bike partnership also with the trust scholarship and its partnership. In a way, in some ways these are very different agreements that will address completely different issues. The the kind of circumstances of the two different projects are quite different and the location is quite different. The goals are different. One thing that two agreements that we are working on, however, share is that they are is that the stage that they could ease both of these agreements we're going to talk about an executive session and then we're going to talk about publicly very soon and I'll come back to that in a moment. Are really agreements to try to agree in the future. Both of these projects are at point early stages. The we are not in position. We're not going to be able to come back to you in the next few weeks with clearly just my development projects that have binding commitments on both both sides. Other than a binding commitment that we support now to continue to work together. What we are trying to do, however, is is this administration is entering its last couple of months is to see if we have consensus between administration and the current council about the direction that we hope these projects will go about what public goals are and that these public goals are consistent with the current thinking of private partners that we are working with. And it is I think we have a good chance to succeed at that and to hand off that to the next administration future council a important foundation for the binding agreements that will need to come if these projects are going to be developed in these ways over the next year or so. So when I say this is going to be going public public conversations you don't guess what I mean by that this is the first time we are talking about these agreements with the city council and these are real estate negotiations and thus it's important and it's ultimately important for our doing our job to taxpayers and all residents of Burlington that we have the ability to prop amongst ourselves and not prematurely release information that would actually kind of work against us as to why we're proposing this executive session excuse me however the plan is to come back two weeks from now with work sessions public work sessions for both of these agreements that would be a time when there will be public discussion public questions asked no action will be taken at that time if we stay on track and I think there is some uncertainty about that because again this is one of the first time we're talking about these agreements at this level the hope is to come back after that in March with these actual pre-development agreements that we're using these preliminary agreements for the council to to act upon so this is the first of what is the vision it's three three meetings and later two like all of them so hope that's helpful and I'll leave it there thank you very much great thank you so with that we'll give a motion did you wish to ask some I can probably ask it I think in in the as long as it's not going to out of order in the context of the first motions it might be substantial I have provided questions about this process okay actually as I believed this is the case there's only one motion is that correct correct yes it's not correct but yes so we would go to the motion and then we'll go to discussion and then you have the is that what you wish to do or do you want to ask now an open session I'd like to ask you an open session so that and let me I guess it's a I think and I've heard real criticisms from constituents about the process that we have had going into executive session things like development degrees and for people not knowing about it and I tend to think and this seems to me to be an example where the order is most appropriately switched I absolutely appreciate going into executive session to talk about real estate negotiations because we're like this negotiation that makes no sense to me but to not first on both of these issues have a public conversation that invites public comment on the public policies and goals the general issues involved in the areas the zoning allowances things like that and then for us to be informed generally by that and then go into executive session makes this seem more open and transparent giving us most information and it feeling not like a realm so I would like us to switch that order and I guess that I'll wait for emotions like so not a not a question but I think that I'm just to let folks know that I would probably vote against this process and want it to be switched and I'm sorry if that delays thing I didn't know anything about this until Thursday Friday so there's that so thank you for giving me this chance uh thank you first of all I just think it's part of my out that I'm not fully following that comment that both these projects even kind of do I think what else is serving that's part of the list a public presentation about just in the last approximately a month I don't remember the exact date but with the developers of uh that we are contemplating going into an agreement it came presented to the council presented the public laid out their their current thinking had a public discussion about where where this might go so that has taken place similarly in the south end um we have gone through an extensive uh long period of time we'll be talking about the development of these parking lots in the south end you know the community is very eager to see a higher better use happening here we had months of public discussion to aid around zoning of all those of the parcels district that is largely comprised of this this area um and you know had public hearings and the public made clear they want to see housing and other development of these parcels take place so we're trying to to take those public discussions and now advance with you with the city council towards create a development agreement that's gonna be an idea something is being railroaded here when I just described that this is we're envisioning a process of taking place over about six weeks to get to preliminary agreements it would have no binding elements to them I think is this is the opposite of railroad it's what we're trying to take place here I think it would be valuable the council and it would be it would make it would improve how we take the next steps of the public conversation and ensure that there's some level of agreement about the way in which we're going forward be it's the next step if we didn't make this slide but if the council doesn't want to the council prefer to skip this step so good so thank you for that Councilor Hightower do you want to speak to this before we go into executive session yeah I guess just a comment along the same lines as genes which is that we I guess there was just several things that the mayor just listed off in terms of what the goals were and one of them was like to make sure that we're on the same page in terms of like what our goals are in turn like what the council and the administration's goals are with this and that doesn't feel like an executive session comment or discussion so I just want to make sure that an executive session we're talking about that second part of that which is what a pre-development agreement would look like which is not I think the same discussion your point on you have your hand up councilor Grant yes I kind of disagree with what the mayor just said with regards to the memorial block the gateway project because we were asked to vote on something the same day we got a got first introduced to it so that that wasn't an extensive process I personally had a lot of feedback from my constituents about that so there is something that is valid about having a public process first thank you Kenny first of all again can you clarify councilor Grant what do you mean by what did you what did we ask you to vote on I'm sorry but the first time was with um the MOU L.O.I. I think you have that like L.O.I.T. yeah of the L.O.I.T. intent thank you thank you the L.O.I.T. the L.O.I.T. intent so uh councilor Giorgiori you have the motion in front of you there's no other comments before we go into executive session councilor Giorgiori motion short as a follow I would move to enter into executive session council communicate with the legal council and the city administration about negotiations related to the south and the board made it redevelopment fleet development agreement and the gateway block redevelopment agreement just moved to 1 BSA section 13 313 great thanks councilor Giorgiori is there a second to that motion seconded by councilor Barlow thank you so much is there any discussion on the motion to go into executive session okay seeing none will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion to go into executive session please say aye aye aye aye any opposed to that motion go so we have a we have a vote I'm assuming that I heard one voice councilor Hightower a guest um we're gonna need to do you know what we're gonna need to do this to my role because it is if I just realize so we'll go on one of information very quick before we we haven't received a draft pre-development agreement right that we are talking about in executive session that is correct yes so yes we have not received yes we have not received okay so we're gonna bear with me because I don't know at the top of my head everybody in alphabetical order but I will do it by I will do it by word so we'll go with councilor Hightower first no we should go into executive session I or nay nay so okay then uh councilor bergman nay okay uh councilor McGee yes for councilor carpenter yes councilor per uh councilor travers yes yes um councilor paul yes councilor jay yes yes councilor king yes uh okay councilor grant yes uh councilor barlow councilor shannon yes and councilor gordon yes okay so we have 10 eyes and two nays so the motion passes to go into executive session so we are in executive session and now in addition to the mayor's staff to the assistant city attorney to the cao the executive session will include cedar director brian pine assistant director samantha dunn director of planning megan tidal planner charles charles charles billiard and as well for the gateway project on our consultant jett clasper i'm leaving anyone out no okay all right so um the uh the executive session we are we will be out of executive session in one hour and then we will go upstairs for public forum for those who are joining us on zoom you should have in your inbox a a zoom link for an executive session if you can leave this and join us on on the other we will wait for you it's just that the let the volume in here is so loud that i didn't know if my microphone was working but that's okay we apologize for keeping everyone waiting time is now time is now 738 so we're a few minutes behind with public forum before we begin public forum like to note that we have a process for public forum and i speak for the full council as we share a strong commitment to an orderly process and one that honors all voices and above all a respectful discourse for those that are joining us in con toys we have a timer system that is on the table in front of me it has three lights the green light will shine when you begin speaking the second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and then the last red light will shine when your time is up please complete your sentence when the sound and the light indicate that your time is up so that we can give everyone equal time and keep this process moving along as if you're joining us online there's a timer system that is set up on zoom we don't have a light system but when your two minutes is up and the clock winds down to zero please complete your sentence so we can move on to the next community member we have a hybrid system for public forum if you wish to speak in person there are forms to my right in the back corner of the room please bring them to the clerk in the front or if you can just leave them on the table we will collect them it's been our practice that burlington residents will have first priority to speak we will go to burlington residents in con toys who've submitted a form then to burlington residents online who have completed an online form we will go back to con toys for any burlington property owner or a representative of a burlington based organization joining us in person then online and we will complete the public forum process with non-burlington residents joining us in con toys and then finish up with online non-burlington residents during public forum we ask that you please use respectful language we'd like to remind everyone here this evening and everyone that is joining us online that there are families who watch our council meetings it's their connection to civic engagement and parents use our forum to teach our children our city's children about city government and we expect that everyone will refrain from using profanity when you are here in person please face me when you sit at the table in front of me director comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table nor to the audience that is gathered in back of you and please do not personalize your comments this rule will be enforced and again we are very interested in what you have to say and it's a lot easier for us to listen more intently when you speak respectfully with that we will go to those burlington residents that are joining us on that are joining us in con toys and just also wanted to acknowledge that in addition to the counselors that are joining us in person we do have counselor high tower that is joining us on zoom the first speaker is jake shuman to be followed by james charard jake good evening good evening so i am here tonight i will be presenting with a group of my peers on the dog task force report coming up so i just wanted to say that i think that task force is a great model that i hope that the next council can learn from as a group of citizens coming together to solve a problem representing all the different diverse perspectives reaching agreement on things that might be complicated and difficult where some people might not be happy with the result but trying to find a solution that works for everyone and moves us in the right direction i think that this group really shows us what we can do in this community and i regret that we don't do it more often on january 22nd we had a divisive city council meeting and i had proposed to you president paul a not a compromise but something that i think would have made that situation a little bit better modeled off this task force in december we had another divisive council meeting on december 11th on december 12th they wrote a resolution and it looked like that had a not just a majority of council support but enough counselors potentially who supported it that it would pass the procedural hurdle of revisiting the motion of december 11th that was nixed by allies in my coalition and i'm not sure that everyone knows that i guess to put to put this to a fine point i really regret that i really regret that not every not all of those 1700 people who this council decided not to honor the voice and perspective thank you not all of them will show up to vote i want all of you all 1700 of you to please show thank you on meeting day thank you very much so our next speaker is james charard to be followed by jane mcdougall good evening no worries good evening jane good morning how are we well good evening how are you we're doing great um the situation that i am before you i have a friend named paim that runs the lingerie to a birth of church we were talking privately and she was asking about how about police how about policing church street and basically there's not enough cops there's not enough cops to uh fix the situation as well as you know there's not enough cops in the community all i'm just saying is if you want not to have disasters fighting drugs and everything else let's see more police let's see more police patrol the community from cathedral square to the courthouse i'm asking you a lot because for the simple reason we used to have cops and there's no more what are you going to do about it i mean what is the mayor going to do about it the new mayor can you give me some answers well public forum is not an opportunity for us to engage in a back and forth but i can assure you that your voice is being heard cathedral square there's drugs right around cathedral square there's drugs how are we going to clean that up it's a public building we certainly hear your we certainly hear your comments and we appreciate your coming forward we will go on to our next speaker we'll go back to james no thank you good evening james hi thanks so much thanks for here thanks for your help yeah um madam president mayor counselors thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening regarding deliberative agenda item 9.4 amending the city place development agreement start off with a definition the definition of a bait and switch being the intention of the seller to encourage the purchase of substitute goods making consumers satisfied with the altered goods under the threat of acquiring no goods at all it suggests that the seller will not show the original product or service advertised but instead will demonstrate a lower quality product in either case the seller expects to earn a higher margin on the substitute product I believe the request of the city uh city place developers to sacrifice 70 housing units for 350 hotel rooms is in fact a bait and switch I could talk about the how brilington's 38 percent owner occupancy rate pales in comparison to south brilington 60 percent owner occupancy rate I could talk about how in 2021 uh may refer to housing as a human right I could talk about how it was promised to the city of brilington 312 affordable homes by 2026 in the 10 point plan but I don't have time for that in two minutes what I do have time to remind the council of is that there will never be a shortage of investors finding more way to make more ways to make money there is however an acute and critical shortage of housing for brilingtonians at this very moment I believe that a vote for the amendment is not a vote to address the housing crisis in earnest and I believe that a vote for the amendment is a clear statement that the desires of the wealthiest among us are being prioritized over those struggling defined housing in brilington so I urge the counselors to um encourage the developers to honor the agreement as it currently stands thank you thanks thanks very much our next speaker is solveig overby to be followed by romeo von herman good evening hello my name is solveig overby if you all know me for speed I'm going to read and I know you had an earlier executive session on the gateway block pre-development agreement at which these private arrangements are being devised for development of three valuable downtown properties I have concerns about this situation and I have communicated with council president paul and other city counselors asking the question why has the city derailed the gateway block request or proposal process this communication is available on the consent agenda for this meeting for those who want to read it on may 15th 2019 the public works commission on which I sat at the time received a briefing on a robust public gateway block request or proposal process that was underway the gateway block includes municipal properties of memorial auditorium the historic firehouse and the parking lot at main and south prospect streets my communication summarizes how this RFP has been derailed and has been replaced by a sole bidder letter of intent from developers Eric Farrell and Joe Larkin who makes probably nice guys I ask however that the city counselors insist on a robust public request for proposal process for any gateway block development do not consecrate a deal hiding behind a series of executive sessions a deal designed to lock the city into a vague development agreement by march 29th right before mayor Weinberger leaves office somewhat referred to the same situation that's happened with city place council must not facilitate a repeat of our Burlington town center city place experience which has been 10 years of development agreement sigs and zags amended restated 2.0 version and now to be potentially amended further continually changing development agreements as the saying goes the hurry you go the behinder you get and city counselors you have the power and responsibility to prevent this mess from happening again please take it thank you very much so our next speaker is romeo von herman to be followed by kathy allwell thank you good evening good evening madam president mr mayor good to see as always city counselors city administrative team fellow burlingtonians just like the speakers before me I just want to share my concern regarding the ever-changing priorities of the city place project city place current the current plan as I understand includes a maximum again I could be very very well wrong maximum of 350 total hotel units and a minimum of 350 housing units fewer than original planned this means that city place was permitted for up to 422 units housing unit rather and now they're saying it'd be no more less than 350 housing units of that 70 being affordable housing I think the decision to change what originally was is a short sighted additionally the perception of hotels as a symbol of urban development of our shadows the more fundamental need for additional affordable housing in our city we have enough hotels there are at least quite a number of them pretty close to each other I'm not sure we need so many hotels considering the chronic housing shortage in town Madam President thank you thank you very much so our next speaker is Kathy Allwell to be followed by Karen Long and then Michael Long good evening good evening I'm Kathy Allwell I'm living more at one and again I'm here before you to ask you to heed the MPA's request of 45 days to give the citizens a chance to understand what is before the council and be able to discuss it with our counselors so last meeting it was the zoning rewrite and this week it's the change in the number of housing units being taken out of city place and not one but two hotels now being proposed and the third the RFP process on the sale of the gateway block that I thought you were going to vote on tonight but I found out that's not so but I'm glad but I still think you should slow down on it and without a correct RFP process having been publicly asked for something we on the school board which I was on for many many years would never have been allowed to do as this wreaks of back room deals in impropriety and this can open up lawsuits slow this all down we want a fair and open process don't rush into it and I would ask you all to please as far as the the zoning goes please all read Paul Bearman's digger opinion piece on February 8th you will see how understanding of ecology and science and creative mind give you alternatives for building housing that is on green space and we need to protect the lake and the runoff into it so anyway please slow down thank you thanks very much so our next speaker is Karen Long to be followed by Michael Long and Chris Gish good evening Karen hi neighborhood code is only being talked about now because people have sounded an alarm what started as a process to allow two three and four units morphed into eight to ten units on almost every city lot my neighborhood is under constant pressure to become student rentals if you really think neighborhoods are the soul of our city you will send this back to committee two weeks ago council Shannon said they did not discuss stormwater or infrastructure because that's not a zoning issue last summer the beaches were closed 51 days compared to 32 days in 2022 that's a 59% increase the planning office and the joint committee should discuss the lake and water quality not density at all cost be bold and say no until we get this right this administration loves to keep the public out while claiming there was a public process the amended development agreement before you replaces 77 city place housing units with 350 hotel rooms the development agreement keeps changing or the project becomes to a halt for years because the financing isn't there the financing should be there from the start we're in the middle of a housing crisis and our downtown doesn't need 50% more hotel rooms city place is back on the agenda because the zoning was fast tracked and rules to safeguard a project like this were broken and now the gateway project the council or gateway block sorry the council was misled in November and pressured to vote this no bid contract for the gateway project may be illegal Vermont state law does have something to say about no bid contracts we need an opinion from an independent attorney not one on the city's payroll and one who does not have the city as a client thank you thank you so much our next speaker is Michael Long to be followed by Chris Gish good evening Michael good evening I just want to say that it's time I think for for the council the community and the mayor to all take a deep breath there's so many items on the agenda on on the table we have two big public policy decisions that are upcoming the MOU and the neighborhood code zoning revision we have two major developments that are a foot city city place and the and the gateway block and I just want to emphasize that I think it's it's it's far more important to proceed thoughtfully and get it as right as we possibly can than it is to move forward hastily in an effort to get it done before a new mayor and a new council are sworn in thank you thank you very much our last speaker that's joining us in Contoy's a Burlington resident is Chris Gish good evening hi I'm here tonight to try to express as respectfully as I can how frustrated I am at the process that Burlington residents have experienced as far as climate policy and I think a similar statement could be said about many other issues in our city a lot of the counselors here tonight have told us to have faith in representative democracy to not bother with prop zero or voter led referendums or these petitions and all these things we should just engage with the process that's already in front of us but with climate policy and particularly I'm talking about closing this one really specific loophole for biofuels in existing climate policy as an example we've done all those things we've met with our counselors we've attended more than a dozen meetings council and committee meetings over the last year to raise exactly this concern we engaged in a ballot question last spring that we did not write or have any hand in writing because we couldn't and guess what we're at the same place nothing happened it doesn't seem maybe I hope folks are listening but there's no change has been made it doesn't seem like we have any ability to to have an impact on policy I know I met with counselor travers for about an hour and a half last spring about exactly this issue and then I heard almost a year later that there hadn't been much process and that this was like something new that was coming up at the last minute so when I hear there hasn't been enough process what I'm actually learning that means is there hasn't been enough process that's been led by Burlington Electric or Vermont Gas or other special interests and that honestly is appalling to me so fine please vote yes on item 9.9 today give the city a chance to have a ballot item in August and maybe we can make some progress there but more so please learn to listen to people not special interests or polluters we are running out of patience on this issue so I can only say to my fellow Burlingtonians please don't stop organizing don't stop trying to hold your elected officials accountable and please vote in a few weeks thank you so much so we will go to those that are joining us online we have three Burlington residents that are joining us by Zoom the first is Rye Sherman and Rye I have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak you just unmute on your end wonderful can you hear me yes we can please go ahead okay thank you hello city counselors my name is Rye Sherman and I'm a Burlington resident and a student at UVM I'm incredibly scared for our future we need real climate policies and it's up to you our elected officials to stand up and lead us towards positive positive climate action I'm here today to ask you to please vote yes on the resolution to put the carbon impact fee ordinance on the ballot I along with my fellow Burlington voters have the right to vote and say yes to stronger climate on action stronger action on climate the science is clear we need to reduce our emissions from buildings it's important to put a fee on fuels that omit carbon pollution rather than falsely treating them as zero emission fuels and it's important to expand our policies beyond the very small number of buildings that they currently cover I also want to say that UVM has spoken against this resolution at the last city council meeting and I want to make it clear that UVM does not speak on behalf of its students on this issue I'm one of 136 and counting students alumni and employees who've signed onto a petition created just a few days ago asking UVM to stop lobbying against stronger building decarbonization yeah please vote yes on this resolution thank you for your time thank you thanks so much the next person is Sharon Busher and Sharon I have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now yes thank you President Paul I want to let you know that I have no picture I just have this this pattern and I can't see you the only person I can see is Councilor Hightower so Councilor Hightower but anyway okay well thank you for letting us know we'll see what we can do so I'm I'm focused like many other people on many of the moving targets the very big and real issues you know the statement divide and conquer I feel like the council and the administration have been very effective with the community because there are so many significant issues that impact our lives before you in a very short six months or less time period to act on and with little time for public input we feel left out it's our community you happen to be elected by us but it's our community and we are not feeling heard I want to focus on city place and what other people have talked about the change the two hotels versus one hotel I just wondered if the mayor and his administration had reached out to UVM or the hospital to ask if they would like to have had some residential presence there for their employees we just met with the hospital in ward one and the hospital is looking for collaboration in places for their employees to live also at the Y that's a private development but Bruce Baker I'm hoping that I can I'll reach out to him separately but I was hoping that perhaps he could have reached out to once again the hospital or the university to get collaboration I do not believe that a four bedroom unit is going to generate a family they're not going to be able to afford it that's going to be four students with around what thousand dollars a bed it's not going to be for for families and what's sad to me Karen I'm sorry President Paul is that we don't know the cost and that neighborhood is already under siege so it's really sad thank you thank you very much so we'll move on to the last person joining us online and that is Caroline Caroline Weidman and Caroline I have found you and enabled your microphone just need to unmute on your end hi can you hear me yes we can awesome first and foremost I want to thank you all for your time this evening and dedication to the city of Burlington today I am going off of I'm here with Rai and continuing on to that point that we as UVM students are demanding climate action and I just want to remind you all of the crossroads we find ourselves at at this point in time in terms of climate action our choices today will permanently influence public health our infrastructure our education and so much more so I urge you all to vote affirmatively and place this item on the ballot enabling voters to vote in favor for this energy tax I urge you all to open your eyes to the fact that the impacts from human activity are already here as said by another speaker this evening whether it's the way Lake Champlain is rendered unusable at times due to the algae or the way our ski seasons continually grow shorter these are also some of the industries that are what makes Vermont the state that it is I urge you all to make your decision today and not just the best interest of your generation or the money in your pocket but for our posterity and the dreams that they may never get to have the most expensive price we can pay after all is irreversible irreversible damage to the lovely state of Vermont thank you thank you so much so we will return to con toys there is one person who is joining us who is a Burlington property owner or representative of a Burlington-based organization that is Lauren Marino good evening if you can just get a little closer that's great thank you I'm the project manager at Cathedral Square a non-profit housing organization which primarily serves older adults Cathedral Square wants to speak in support of the use of home and CEVG funding to provide affordable housing particularly service and rich housing for low-income older adults home funding has provided a critical source of capital used to construct many of our housing communities including Juniper House and Thayer House to name just two a little about who we serve our average resident participating in SASH support and services at home has 7.4 chronic conditions indicating the vulnerability and care needs of the population we serve we serve 1,300 residents in 27 housing communities 10 of which are in Burlington 93% of our residents are low or very low income and nearly 20% were previously homeless our SASH-supported accessible housing supports our residents and living independently for as long as safely possible we all know how severe the need for housing in Burlington is and throughout the state our waitlist own is over 1,000 households with Ramon's aging population and the 65 to 74 year old age demographic being the fastest growing the provision of affordable age specific units that can support aging in place is critical not only for older adults but for the overall health of the housing market as well when seniors move into our housing some of them free up other homes that can be made available to younger households we support the use of home and CDVG for three program areas new permanently affordable housing construction renovation of existing affordable housing and housing retention services to help us support our residents being successful in their housing preventing evictions and preventing homelessness thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback and for your support of affordable housing thank you so much is there anyone else who wishes to speak during public forum I will check online as well okay seeing none seeing none we will close the public forum at 809 and continue with our agenda the next item on our agenda is item number six which is climate emergency reports is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer our climate emergency report Mayor Weinberger thank you President Paul I've got a couple updates to share with the public and the council several weeks ago I shared that the administration was supporting a new ambitious change the state renewable energy standard and that BED was working closely with a coalition of environmental groups and other utilities on a framework for the bill wanted to just update folks that last week this new renewable energy standard cleared the House Energy and Environment Committee a key milestone in the passage of this new standard which will have wide ranging impacts I'm excited to support this legislation which would largely achieve 100% renewable energy statewide by 2030 meeting the goal that the where the city has been since 2014 and doing that while maintaining existing renewable resources and allowing BED's procurement of significant new non-renewable sorry significant new renewable energy with anticipated growing demand as more Borlintonians switched to electric vehicles and heat pumps and other electric technologies so this is I believe very likely the most significant piece of environmental legislation moving in Montpelier this year it's on track the city through BED is at the heart of this debate and we will continue to engage it just also a smaller note but an important one something that used to be rare and a big deal and you know and we for years bemoaned the lack of technology to do transactions like this the Borlinc Electric Department just took possession of two new electric F-150 for lightnings that replaced gas burning pickup trucks and we got some assistance from the state to pay for this as well as the federal incentives that are out there and you know it's now something that it's just such a striking change from just a few years ago when you know the only electric equipment we're able to to add was like lawn mowers and maybe a small vehicle to help us access to work on the bike path now we have new new automobiles are electric we're moving into the light truck area and have viable electric options and we are actively in conversations about expanding our heavy-duty electric as well so it's an exciting time with the fleet conversion and there'll be much more on that in the months ahead as we complete a fleet study and bring that forward to the public and the council thanks President Paul thank you so much Mayor Weinberger are there any counselors who wished to offer a climate emergency report seeing none we'll close out that item and move on to item number seven which is the public health and safety emergency reports go to the council first is there a councilor grant thank you I just wanted to do another report on information provided by the Chittenden County State's attorney with regards to the number of cases that they have the backlog and also some information on the types of cases we're still seeing a huge issue of the fact that there's a lot of fear in our community a lot of frustration a lot of anger and that has created a hotbed of misinformation disinformation and a lot of it is around the state's attorney's office what is and what is not being done when it should be a conversation of what can and cannot be done so I'm going to try again to address some of those issues so first of all these numbers are for Chittenden County because the court system can't separate out how many things are from Burlington the number remains around 3,000 cases beginning of February 2,990 to be precise if that is not at all an insufficient load is in fact quite a heavy load so this perception that nothing is getting done by your state's attorney is false and we really need when we hear that in our community to push back on that these cases include 45 pending assault and robbery charges 182 pending burglary charges 789 pending retail theft cases 222 operation without owner's consent i.e. car theft charges so the state's attorney herself is carrying over 200 cases including several murders clearance rate is still good had a couple months where it dipped but then it went back up murder cases take more court time so if you have a particular case that's taking more court time that takes away court time from other cases because their court time is limited the other thing I would like to say is again that the state's attorneys across our state cannot prosecute something that they've never received so if individuals in the community feel very strongly that something has happened they feel there's sufficient evidence there may be there may not be you have to have the incident number but you can contact the state's attorneys or you can contact your city counselor and we can reach out to the state's attorney to determine if in fact a case made it to their office because they're not responsible for not prosecuting cases that they never got and that is a reality of a situation for a whole variety of things I don't have time for but I want to give a shout out to the ward 8 MPA I did go and we did a whole segment on myth-blah-myth busters with public safety as well as having an understanding of where we're at with the numbers on our police force and what we're actually going to be budgeting to and why thank you thanks very much counselor grant any other counselors who wish to offer a public health and safety emergency report seeing none we will seeing no others did you no yes Mayor Weinberger please go ahead thanks President Paul I'd like to give some updates on our efforts to expand methadone treatment and the progress that we have been making at the war warming shelter a couple a couple of items there I think when we when we think about how can we address the challenges we've been seeing in the downtown over the last couple of years improved drug access and expanded homelessness services are two of the most important elements to doing that and and this is a a little bit of progress on both both fronts first of all the opioid I serve on the opioid advisory settlement committee of the of the legislature along with numerous other local officials and one of the things that I've been pushing for for well over a year now is expanded methadone access it's clear that in the current drug crisis which is a different drug crisis than in 20 before the pandemic we fentanyl is the dominant drug and for numerous people buprenorphine the old treatment drug of choice is no longer nearly as effective having methadone as a an option is more important than it's ever been the legislature agreed an appropriated five million dollars to sorry eight million dollars to a variety of treatment efforts a variety of responses to the opioid epidemic epidemic two million of that was for expanded methadone access it took until November until after Thanksgiving for an RFP to be released despite many of us pushing for for faster action and different action than a time consuming RFP process and what I wanted to share with the council however has heard that before is that that the Chittenden Clinic the Howard Center did respond with the city's support to that RFP at the end of January since last time we met and it is my hope that that will now be funded and that the Department of Health will work with the Howard Center and the city to quickly set up this new dosing unit that would bring methadone treatment back to downtown Burlington for the first time in many years and be an important addition to our services to address the drug crisis I urge the council to stay focused on this in the months ahead even once I'm no longer serving in this role in that we have seen again and again across the state methadone facilities be delayed and delayed and delayed for years and that could happen here too if the city doesn't stay vigilant so want to bring this to your attention if approved this dosing unit would be co-located with the community health center and save harbor and we would have another key partner would not just be the Howard Center it would also be the community health centers of Burlington that would be part of this second update I wanted to give was with respect to the winter warming shelter last I believe it was two weeks ago I was proud to accept on behalf of the city team a $90,000 award from hanaford supermarket to support that winter warming shelter and other initiatives by the city to address unsheltered homelessness this $90,000 will be used for meals and basic need supplies and also has helped us properly staff that facility this is the largest gift of its type that hanaford is making in any in its service area in addition we have just received a grant for over $37,000 from the state to fund nursing services at the three low barrier shelters the Elmwood Avenue shelter the Champlain in and the winter warming shelter these here too we have a partnership with the community health center and that they are providing these services and working closely with the Burlington fire department community response team to help these high-risk guests get help the winter warming shelter served over 100 people and thanks to our hardworking city staff and community partners at the efforts of this since it opened in December going very well thank you President Paul right thank you so much Mayor Weinberger if there's no others then we will continue my apologies just one quick note that I forgot that case count that I mentioned early is criminal cases only it does not include the family court cases just as a FYI so there's actually more that they're working on thank you great thank you so much Councilor Grant before we get to our deliberative agenda and our consent agenda we do have four other meetings that we have to attend to so we will recess the council meeting at 823 and call to order the local control commission meeting at the same time the first item on our agenda is item 1.01 1.1 which is the motion to adopt the agenda Commissioner Shannon move to adopt the agenda thank you so much seconded by Commissioner Travers is there any discussion on the motion to adopt the agenda seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye aye any opposed please say no we have an agenda that brings us to item number two which is the consent agenda Commissioner Shannon is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda yes there is and take the actions indicated that sounds good to me seconded by Councillor Travers is there any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes and we have our approved our consent agenda we have one item on the deliberative agenda it is 3.1 a first and third class liquor license application for the archives Commissioner Shannon I move to approve the 2024 25 first and third class liquor license application for the archives thank you so much Commissioner with all standard conditions thank you so much Commissioner Shannon seconded by Commissioner Travers is there any discussion on that motion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes and with no other business on that agenda and seeing no objection we'll adjourn the local control commission meeting at 825 and call to order the local cannabis control commission meeting the first item on that agenda is also 1.01 which is a motion to adopt the agenda Commissioner Shannon moved to adopt the agenda thank you so much seconded by Commissioner Travers is there any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye any opposed please say no that motion passes and we have our agenda the only other item of business on this agenda is our consent agenda so I'll go once again to the chair of the license committee Commissioner Shannon I move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated great thank you so much seconded by Commissioner Travers is there any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes and again with no other business on that agenda and seeing no objection we'll adjourn the local cannabis control commission meeting at 826 we do have two other meetings and that is the full board of abatement of taxes and the city council with mayor presiding both of which are chaired by the mayor so I will pass the gavel to Mayor Weinberger to preside over those two meetings and we have it would we did call the board of tax abatement earlier in the agenda so we if you can go to that one first and then we will and then do the mayor presiding so that we because we're not so but we're not we shouldn't be calling that meeting to order until 830 just in case there are people that are planning on attending great thank you President Paul I will call to order the full board of the abatement of taxes at 826 p.m. and the first item on the agenda is the agenda and I would welcome my motion to adopt it I move the adoption of the agenda as stated thank you second Councillor Bergman second by President Paul any discussion of the agenda seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the agenda please say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously this brings us to only or business which is the adoption of the consent agenda and I welcome motion on that and I would move the adoption of the consent agenda just acknowledging that there are two items there that when if we were to adopt it and take the actions indicated and that if we were to adopt it we'd be taking the the recommendations approving the recommendations of the the subcommittee of the Board of Tax Abatement thank you Councillor Bergman do we have a second for that motion a second second by President Paul any discussion of the consent agenda seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye any opposed the motion carries unanimously and having completed the warned agenda if there is no objection I will adjourn the full Board of Abatement of Taxes at 8 28 p.m. and just to confirm I was understanding you properly President Paul I will now go to to the City Council Mayor presiding or do we have a timing issue we um we call that meeting because we have to schedule them on Civic Clerk we call that for 8 30 but I I think we're probably close enough great we are we are quite close so with that I will call to order the City Council Mayor presiding at 8 28 p.m. and we would welcome a motion on the agenda motion to adopt the agenda thank you is there a second second by Councillor McKee discussion of the agenda amendments seeing none we'll go to a vote on the motion please say aye all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously that brings us to item 2 which is the consent agenda we would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated so moved thank you President Paul is there a second from Councillor McKee any discussion of the consent agenda which is just a communication on the openings of the boards and commissions seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously okay this brings us to our deliberative items which we do have three board and commission appointments the first is for the conservation board for a term expiring June 30th 2027 and I will open the floor for nominations Councillor Travers I nominate Leslie Spencer thank you are there any additional nominations are there any additional nominations seeing none I will close the floor denominations is the applicant Leslie Spencer here in attendance or online and interested in speaking to the the council don't please I'm just going to check okay then I'll turn back to the council is there any discussion about this appointment seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favour of appointing Leslie Spencer to the conservation board please please say aye aye all right are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously the and Leslie is appointed congratulations thank you for your interested in serving this now the next item is the development review board alternate position for term expiring June 30th 2026 again I'll open the floor nominations President Paul thank you I would like to nominate Marina Campbell for the seat on the DRB alternate with a term expiring June 30th of 2026 thank you are there any additional nominations are there any additional nominations seeing none I will close the nominations and is Marina here or online and she is okay great welcome yes please come to the microphone and thank you for for your interest and and being here and if you could make brief remarks about your interest that'd be great sure thank you first of all count the nomination I'm really interested in this particular board because I have a really keen interest in disability and accessibility and experience in working with ADA compliance and so I think that would be an important perspective to bring to that board great thank you very much I'll turn back to the council any discussion about this action before we take it seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of appointing Marina Campbell to be the alternate to the DRB please say aye all right aye any opposed that motion carries unanimously thank you Marina and good luck with your service on this critical board for the city this brings us to the third and final opening which is for the Board of Health for the term expiring June 30th 2025 and I will again turn to the council go ahead Councillor Shannon I nominate Jane Seymour thank you are there any additional nominations I actually just a a point of order given the number of applications we got for this particular position is are we allowed to hear from people first or we have to put forward typically our our process has has been to put in to make nominations and then at that point for people that are nominated to give them the opportunity to to speak is the way we have we've long done it so I think unless we've done it right tonight but certainly if there's someone you're interested in hearing from you can make those nominations if you believe well I was definitely interested in in hearing from Jane Seymour so since she has been nominated I will nominate Judy Rivers who I'm also interested in hearing from great are there any additional nominations are there any additional nominations seeing none we will close it with those and now are the applicants Jane or Julia in attendance and interested in speaking Jane is joining us online okay great if we could welcome Jane go ahead if you can hear me yes we've unmute you should be able to speak now hi everyone I'm really glad to be here virtually tonight I'm sorry couldn't be in attendance in person but I'm really excited about a possible appointment to the Board of Health I'm trained as an epidemiologist and see myself as a social epidemiologist I study access to healthcare in my day job and would really bring a keen eye to ensuring that we bring data to bear in the city and use science to guide our decision-making as a city and to ensure the well-being of all who live in Burlington so thank you very much for the nomination great thank you Jane for your your interest in your application I am not seeing Julia Rivers in this room do you have any sense that she is online she is not okay so then I will turn back to to the council any further discussion on the nomination's councilor grant are we allowed to ask questions I know we don't usually but considering this position I have some I don't believe we typically subject applicants to to kind of questioning here so I you know I don't think we should kind of depart from the past practice there so I I think we can have discussion but it's not time when we've sort of put applicants on the spot like that so any further discussion councilor travers yeah thank you mayor I do want to note as councilor grant pointed out that we we did have a number of very qualified applicants for this position and I think many of them would be more than qualified to serve on this board I think it's a real testament to the great work that our Board of Health has been doing where they've really broadened their mission and their scope to address issues like gun violence in our community as well as health equity and you know unfortunately there's only one position here and I will be offering my support to Jane Seymour but as I'm sure you typically do as well mayor I'll say myself that I hope that those who have applied for this seat will remain interested in the Board of Health because there's many qualified applicants and I and I do wish there were more openings because I think they have much to offer thank you thank you for saying that councilor travers yes it is pretty remarkable that I'm counting six applications for this one position and I do think that the city of bronc is very fortunate that there is such interest in serving in municipal positions I do encourage people who both for this position and there was one other applicant who is not successful for the the DRB alternate position want to thank people for their interest and encourage them to consider applying in the future as often that is necessary for people to apply several times before they are able to be appointed so I hope if there are applicants out there they will consider that any further discussion of the nomination the two nominations before us seeing none I'm going to go to a vote and we'll start in voting in the order nominated so we'll start with Jane Seymour and if she receives more than seven votes then we'll conclude the voting there all those in favor of appointing Jane Seymour please raise your hand so we can count the votes and it appears to be a unanimous vote congratulations Jane again thank you for your interest and serving on this critical board and again thank you to everyone else who applied as well with that President Paul we have concluded the city council with mayor presiding agenda at 8.39pm and I will hand the microphone and gavel back to you thank you so much Mayor Weinberger we will reconvene the council meeting at 8.40pm and the next agenda item is number eight our consent agenda is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated so moved thank you Councillor Jang seconded by Councillor Shannon is there any any discussion on the motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye any opposed please say no we have approved our consent agenda thank you this brings us to our deliberative agenda we do have a fairly lengthy agenda we have a fairly lengthy deliberative agenda this evening just a gentle reminder to Councillors about the five minute rule please self monitor and be mindful of your time and I will kindly interrupt anyone who is drawing near or going way over and I I I I wasn't that great at the last meeting about doing that but I felt I did it fairly so we'll start off on a good note and be mindful of the five minute rule just respectful of all Councillors the first item on our agenda is a public hearing it's 9.1 the city's 2024 2028 consolidated plan for housing and community development and prior to calling the public hearing to order we do have CEDO director Brian Pine and I'm going to take a guess that that is Rebecca Rebecca Lawrence Gomez who is the housing program manager so good to have you thanks so much for being here and if you wanted to say a few words about the about the report and then we'll open up the public hearing sure thank you for the record I'm Brian Pine the director of the community and economic development office thank you very much for allowing us to come my name is Rebecca Lawrence Gomez I am the housing programs manager for CEDO we are here tonight to gather public and council feedback on affordable housing and community development needs as part of the consolidated planning process creating a plan that will guide the allocation of federal resources for the next five years the consolidated plan is really the federal government's way of so they require it of us but it's a way to help cities think long-term and strategic to assess their affordable housing and community development needs and market conditions and to make data-driven place-based decisions about how to invest the scarce federal dollars that we do get it really serves as the framework for a community-wide dialogue to identify housing and community development priorities and align and focus funding from the federal government through the formula block grant programs community development block grant you'll sometimes hear the alphabet soup the cdbg program that is and the home investment partnership program which is home funds go out to affordable housing and I am going to ask Rebecca to speak about the broad stakeholder consultation process that we've engaged in already that has reached well over a hundred probably hundreds of individuals actually when we get down to the counting up all the groups and organizations so we're hoping to hear your feedback and public feedback tonight about our priorities as we move forward and I'll just note that online joining us remotely is Christine Curtis who's our senior community development specialist and she's a wealth of knowledge on this program as well so if if we get stumped we're going to look to Christine to help us out take it away thank you very much as director pines said we've been engaged in community outreach and connecting with folks who are both participating as all different sectors and areas within the city so we've met with over a hundred individuals so representing a broad spectrum from healthcare providers mental health providers folks who are experiencing homelessness folks who live in our affordable housing our affordable housing providers landlords property managers folks who support families department for children and families the department of aging and independent living representation etc so lots of folks we've talked with we've also had an online survey which we'll be sure to share and make available to folks and we've had over 800 responses via our online survey and we wanted to hold space in place here or just to hear from the public about what are folks identifying and seeing certainly you all as counselors as representatives of folks in our communities as well as individuals who live in Burlington what are people seeing as our greatest needs where should we be looking to prioritize our work and our funding and I would just ask if you could speak to the timeline for coming back to the council and when we have to adopt this plan thank you we are collecting feedback currently we'll be putting that feedback into our consolidated plan it has kind of three main sections one that's about a needs assessment which is this process what's going on in our community where are things working really well where do we find that we are still struggling and then there's a market analysis that is pre-populated that looks at our housing our demographics and then there's our plan our strategic plan about how we will proceed so we're collecting feedback collecting information through the month of February it's slightly into March we'll be returning to you all in April looking for you to review and approve our draft consolidated plan and we'll be submitting it to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in June actually end of May okay with that we will open the public hearing if there is anyone in con toys who wishes to testify during this hearing you can just stand up and come forward if there is anyone who wishes to speak online if you can just use the raise hand function I will be looking and I'm happy to recognize you former city attorney told me that I'm supposed to say going once going twice we will close the public forum we will close the public hearing and with that I believe you would add you had said something about wanting to get feedback from the council that's not normally the way we do the public hearing but was that an opportunity for us to speak to it now is that what you were looking for and we certainly could do that if there are people if there are counselors who have comments it's up to you it's your call it's your busy night so if you want to send them to us that would be fine as well but sometimes the dialogue generates ideas so I didn't know if you want to proceed that way all right well since we since we didn't we didn't have a robust public hearing we'll try the council Councillor Hightower great and apologies if I just don't remember director pine what you've done in previous years but with such so many folks doing the survey are you planning on giving a presentation what the survey revealed and how that's informing what your final decision is yes absolutely we last time we did this plan it was actually 2018 so it's been quite a while and we will absolutely be sharing the results what we didn't want to do is share the results before the survey's over could kind of you know influence how people respond but we're hoping to at least reach the survey response to the to the dog park survey that's our hope which is I think about a thousand we got to get there is that is that all Councillor Hightower yes thank you you're good okay thank you are there Councillor Carpenter will be followed by Councillor Chang I'm just curious are there any major changes that will drive how we used to use these versus you know coming from HUD or anything else we're seeing HUD has not given us any sort of guidance or direction lately that is very different other than to continue to see due to inflation to see our grant actually decrease over the years it's gone down precipitously since I mean really in real dollars since when I arrived at CEDO in the mid-1990s it was substantially more in actual dollars and for inflation it was considerably more than we get now so we're we're continuing to try to make an impact of what we have we may be coming back to you and suggesting that managing lots of small grants is labor-intensive and it may not be possible to continue doing that so that's one area where we're thinking already so we might need to get more cost-effective and efficient in that respect great thank you Councillor Carpenter we'll go to Councillor Chang thank you President and thank you Director and again for being here we are a city of nearly 42 45 000 people right it just depends on who you ask I was just wondering about when we talk about civic engagement or engaging the communities in this what success like what's the number of people you need to reach in order to say this was successful I'd be happy to respond I think we are less focused we're certainly excited and looking to engage with a number and as many people as possible but I think our main focus is on the diversity of the population and folks with whom we're connecting so we've looked to really engage like I said as wide an array of possible as providers of residents of especially focusing on folks whose basic needs are not being met currently or who folks who are most likely to be experiencing hardship and might be impacted and supported by services that the city is helping to fund so I think both right it is about the quantity but it's also around the quality and specifically the populations that we're looking to aspire to serve thank you and to that leads to my next question in terms of how did you utilize a language access plan that the city has developed in order to reach people who don't speak English yeah so we've both met in person and connected with the association of Africans living in Vermont and worked in partnership around what do they identify as needs in the communities that they serve the survey that we've completed we've had it translated into multiple languages and so I've also provided that as a tool in written form so if folks want to engage in the survey in the you know in their first language or a language that's more comfortable to them and then we also joined the trusted community voices meeting and just heard from them directly about what are they experiencing both as Burlingtonians right but also for their community and the folks that they serve and work with and if there are any other suggestions we're always really interested in hearing yes I think it's one thing to connect with AALV and their leadership and try for them to provide input then also to connect it directly with the people that live here also I know that the trusted voices they're not all Burlington residents and I think the focus here was for Burlingtonians and I think it would be great if you still can continue to reach out at least let's say communities that Congolese Nepalese and to just say five people that actually live here we want to hear from you directly and not having an organization in between and I think that would be great definitely thank you okay thank you thanks very much Councilor Chang seeing no others we will close out this agenda item with our thanks for all of the work that you've done and we'll look forward to hearing more item 9.2 has been removed from our agenda so we'll continue with 9.3 which is the city of Vermont 2021-2023 dog task force report and there are a multitude of people that are here to talk about this report talk about a group of people that have taken an assignment seriously just want to add for the record that not only are Parks and Rec Director Cindy White but also Parks and Rec staff Megan O'Daniel of those people that are joining us in person and please come forward so that we can see who you are there's also a number of members of your task force that are joining us online so if you can all introduce yourself that would be great and just want to also acknowledge the number of people on your task force that are joining us remotely as well so we've allotted about 15 minutes for this report and it's a long report but if you can just give us a number of the highlights the recommendations and then give us a little bit of time for some questions from the Council and welcome and thank you for being here Rita just want to thank so Cindy White Director of Parks and Recreation Waterfront thank the task force the city's been blessed with an amazing group of people who've really dedicated an incredible amount of time for this project and I'm going to pass it over to Maria who is our fearless chair thank you Cindy um I just want to say introduce who we have here tonight we have Jake Schuman we have Kyle Tansley Alona Blanchard and Lori Cutler and myself Maria Carnungen so we um we were tasked with a mixture of policy recommendations and implementation requests so it was an interesting process putting together the report we did this presentation for the Parks Arts and Culture Committee and they reviewed the recommendations and gave us guidance on them we're looking forward to hearing the next steps one of the recommendations that we have is to update the organisms which underlies most of the areas that we looked at that is important for a framework for updating policies and so specifically we looked at chapter five of the city code there is a markup of that chapter included in the report including documentation to support the recommended changes the recommendations fall primarily into four categories updates to language to modernize it improvements to animal shelter policy licenses and other recommendations to improve the welfare of dogs and cats and measures to strengthen enforcement we recommend improving the licensing process and dramatically increasing the number of animals licensed in the city and we recommend allocating a portion of the licensed revenues for programs and activities that support healthy and happy dogs and cats within the city this includes educating the community about how to license their animals and why it's important to requiring cats to be licensed expanding the consequences for not licensing dogs and cats by increasing penalties by requiring stray animals to be licensed before they are returned and by working with landlords and housing associations to include licensing requirements and lease or HOA agreements we think this will increase revenues for the city and we'll show you more about that in the next couple of slides we want to mention here that we do have recommendations for how the licensing revenues are allocated and that is to create a special fund that would support annual licensing efforts the development of a streamlined process to share licensing data improved incident reporting and data tracking and improved responsiveness from the police additional companion animal programs and education low-cost spay neuter services and additional prac facilities for animals these next two slides go into more detail into the licensing and revenues and benefits it could bring to the city I just want to point out the current rate of licensing is 11% and if we are to increase those you can go for next currently based on that 11% we are bringing in 24,000 a year if we made some modest effort to increase licensing we could increase the revenues somewhere between 70,000 to 270,000 dollars per year and then I've already talked about how those funds could be used trying to go quickly here because I know you guys are have a busy agenda okay cats so we recognize this is one of the more interesting areas that we have done some work in so I want to spend a little bit of time talking about this the task force recommends that the city of Burlington require cats to be lessened for their own welfare and that of other animals to aid in identification for animal control purposes and to better ensure public safety Burlington would not be the first to do so as both South Burlington and Shelburne require cats to be licensed the many benefits of licensing are enumerated in Appendix C of our report and show the benefits of improving the health of cats and reducing the number of cats who are lost with no way to identify the guardian increased revenues from licensing cats could also help support better responsiveness to cat related incidents as well as support affordable spay neuter options for low income residents the task force also recommends that the city prohibit at large cats that are off of the premises and not restrained by their guardian free roaming cats are more likely to experience disease and both accidental and intentional injuries as well as fatalities and thus have shorter life spans cats permitted to roam off premises can easily become nuisances on both public and private property and are classified as such in some neighboring municipal ordinances free roaming cats are also well documented in the scientific literature as immensely destructive to wildlife particularly birds another area was reporting enforcement and compliance and we looked at these in particular in terms of the ordinances this included reviewing reporting mechanisms social media front porch forum and police department data for incidents related to off leash dogs aggressive dogs attacks by dogs as well as responses by the Burlington police department data obtained from the Burlington police department likely reflects only a small portion of the actual incidents that involve animals in the community many of the social media posts explicitly avoided reporting to the police it can be assumed that many residents do not bother to report animal incidents and thus there is no record created currently the city's community service officers also known as CSOs respond to dog and rabies vector call for service they don't really deal with cat issues aside from facilitating removal of deceased cats CSOs also have many other responsibilities besides responding to animal incidents if there's a higher priority incident such as a car accident for example their attention may be focused on those the task force recognizes the work that CSOs perform every day but strongly recommends that a part to full-time animal control officer be hired by the city an ACO would respond to incidents but also proactively enforce ordinances such as leash laws and oversee the overall health and safety of animals within the city an ACO would have specific and ongoing training and certification in the handling and welfare of animals be able to perform inspections on and monitor facilities that shelter animals educate the public on how to care for animals and investigate trends and repeat problems conduct in-depth investigations and overall be a point person and resource for the Burlington community in conjunction with the enforcement of leash laws in the city the task force also recommends increasing designated off-leash spaces the goal is to ensure healthy and safe access to appropriate outdoor space for dogs across the city and to support enforcement of inappropriate spaces where dogs should not be off-leash the task force recommends piloting some shared use of park space for off-leash dogs because of the 520 acres of city parks only 3.5 are allocated for off-leash dog use this represents less than 1% because there is also a strong desire from Burlington dog guardians for easy access to off-leash areas and their current use is indiscriminate and unregulated leading to conflicts with neighbors because the parks are a limited resource and fencing in additional areas could exclude regular park growers from using those spaces so here's a map of the city of Burlington and in blue we have a publicly accessible land I should point out here that dogs across the city are required by law to be on leash so everything that's blue they're supposed to be on leash and so the suggested off-leash areas are in orange and it's hard to see because there's really very little land that we're talking about piloting off-leash areas in but they are those orange bits on the map last spring we did a survey to collect input from residents and we looked at current usage and based on all of this feedback we came up with this current proposal that is under consideration by the parks arts and culture committee these details are also in the final report you want to look at them more closely part of the original resolution the task force was asked to educate the public on all of these issues and to set up community events we developed an annual calendar of educational outreach and as you can see it crosses many departments we are hoping that that this will be something that can be implemented currently because this was an action item for their dog task force and so we're not sure who will pick up the pieces here but we created all of the material for it and are excited about this so this is our presentation and here's a list of everybody not everybody's here but this is a full list of everybody that was on that helped us out in Cushio Brigade so just a big thank you it was a monumental effort two years and many hours of time and collaboration thank you thank you so much Maria just also wanted to acknowledge that Megan O'Daniel is joining us online as well as Abby Duke and Joanne Callis I'm not sure how to pronounce the last name are all are all joining us online so you have a you have pretty good representation of the entire task force I'm pretty impressed I think we're all very impressed and impressed with the work that you've done if there are questions from the council Councillor McGee thank you President Paul I don't have any questions but I just wanted to say very quickly that the Parks Arts and Culture Committee has worked in collaboration with the dog task force to help get this report to where we're at tonight and we did vote on this and are fully supportive of the recommendations moving further in the process and being referred to committees to begin implementing many of the important recommendations that are made in the report and I just want to extend my personal gratitude to all of you for the work that you've put in over the last couple of years it is very comprehensive and I don't think there's much left for committees to have to do once that work is referred so thank you very much thank you Councillor McGee are there any other Councillors who have Councillor Doherty yes thank you President Paul and I want to also echo what President Paul and Councillor McGee said my thanks to the incredible work that went into this I just wanted to highlight two pieces of your comprehensive work that I thought were particularly from my perspective anyway well taken one was the observation and analysis and pointing to secondary literature regarding the impact of stray cats on the environment particularly on songbird life I think that's a really important issue for the City to consider and address and as part of its environmental mission I also thought and I recognize that you recognize this might have gone a little bit beyond your ambit but the work and analysis that you did on exotic pets and the potential for environmental degradation particularly in our waterways as a result of exotic pets again really an important issue for us to be thinking about and considering policy steps going forward on those issues given the environmental issues that we're currently facing so thank you so much for your hard work in your presentation I want to acknowledge that Laurie Cutler I'm sorry we Oh I want to acknowledge that Laurie Cutler was instrumental in everything that you just talked about we also got input from Kyle Hemsley who's on the conservation conservation board great great thank you so much Councillor Grant I have a question what is the definition of an at-large cat so that would not only be strays that would be cats that people would consider quote-unquote outdoor cats so people would have to find a way to keep their cats on their property thank you thank you so much Councillor Grant are there any other Councillor Councillor Barlow thank you President Paul and I also also want to echo my colleagues and thanking you for this extremely thorough report and all the hard work that went into it my questions around you have given us a number of recommendations are there any prioritization in these recommendations is there are there any that you would feel are more important to get into place before others thank you so I would say that two things strike me one is that excuse me one is that we don't actually have an effective policy in place right now we have draft policy that was implemented in I believe 1998 and we've just been coasting on that so I think having an actual off-leash policy codified in ordinances is important the other thing is our budget recommendations are impactful for the upcoming budget season so I would encourage you to take a look at that sooner rather than later that way we can affect those changes now instead of next cycle and for the record I had a five pound cat that would take down full grown geese needless to say I was mortified just want to point out that that there is a markup of chapter five that is super thorough and a lot of thought went into it so that would be a very easy way easy place to start great thank you Councillor Barlow are you all set I am thank you okay so we'll go to Councillor Hightower which is a question more to the Councillors but I note that the I can't say that I'm 100% supportive of everything that is in the report but I wonder if instead of having the motion be to wait the reading accept the report and place it on file if we should be referring to the ordinance committee it would seem as though we certainly could do that is that would that be amenable to the city attorney yes Councillor Hightower do you wish to make that motion I guess I will ask if it's a friendly amendment to the makers of the motion the motion hasn't been made yet oh okay well then wave the reading accept the report place it on file and refer to the ordinance committee okay is there a second to that I will second that great seconded by Councillor McGee if there's a Councillor I'm sorry did you wish to did you wish the floor back Councillor Hightower no okay thank you Councillor Carpenter thanks I'm certainly amenable to that and I want to again thank the committee for all their work but there's some other parts to it so there's the marked up ordinance which would should be easy for us to take one thing I noted was our underperformance and licensing which is probably not something the ordinance committee can deal with so I'm sort of noting that because I think a lot of things fall from that and I'd like to pass that on to somebody too so that we can figure some plan of action and I don't know if that's parks arts and culture or because I just think yeah then I'd like to amend the motion to pass on to our parks art and culture that they look at the how we get more revenue from licensing basically or something like that so items that are germane to the ordinance committee would go to the ordinance committee and items germane to not the ordinance committee would go to parks art and culture is that what you're asking for is that amendment friendly to you Councillor Hightower that is friendly okay how about you Councillor McKee yes with I guess a question for the city attorney would it make more sense for us to look at the different recommendations in the report and see if there are other places where they belong that are more fitting than parks arts and culture in the ordinance committee because there are so many that I think the two committees wouldn't cover all of the recommendations so I believe I mean yes it would be appropriate to look at that I have not looked at that I can look at that for you but we could do that yes okay maybe it makes sense for us to postpone action on this until our next council meeting very quickly just so that we can make sure that all of the recommendations are getting to the proper body for further deliberation is there any way to do that just so expeditiously at this meeting with a with an appropriate motion I'm sorry you wanted to speak I think it'll take longer than than yeah okay all right uh before we go be uh Councillor Councillor McGee are you all set I am okay so before we go we we have a motion but before we do before we do we have a motion um Councillor Councillor Jang did you want to speak to that motion yes okay and I was just wondering if the motion we accept the the report and we send it back to parks arts and culture committee and for parks and art and culture committee to break it down what specific committee these recommendations need to go to be transformed into law all right so that would be an amendment to the amended motion chair of the parks art and culture committee how do you feel about that Councillor McGee it feels unnecessary to me for us to take the report back I think this is something that if we just postpone action for the from the full council until our next meeting that the city attorney should be able to provide an adequate motion for us to make sure that those items get where they need to go okay um if we do that then Councillor Hightower do you wish to take back your motion um sorry we're postponed do you wish to withdraw your motion yeah sorry and joe's suggestion has to postpone oh sorry I see what we're saying sure or I guess it's just just accept the communication and place it on file okay so we've had a but we've withdrawn the motion that is okay with the seconder and the motion now on the floor is to waive the read waive the waive the reading accept the report and place it on file yes yes okay is that is there a second to that motion it's not complete can I really want to just be able to postpone action on this item and come back with a better motion so is that maybe that's the best way to do this yes you could just put postpone the action okay I'll make a motion to postpone action on this item until our meeting on February 26th with the understanding that we will get full motion language to refer the recommendations to the appropriate committees and commissions great thank you so is there a second to that motion seconded by Councillor Travers is there any discussion on that motion to postpone to a date certain seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes with our unbelievably amazing thank you to all of you for it's been what about a year and a half or so that you've been working on this more than that about two years but I want to say that what you guys are doing now and the actions that you're taking by making sure that there's a clear path forward is the best things that you could give to the work of this committee that it isn't just a report that goes on file but you have action plan to continue the work forward yes well we respect your work thank you so much and thanks for thanks to all of you for being here and to those who joined us joined us online the next item on our agenda is item 9.4 which is the second amendment to the second amended and restated development agreement for city place partners LLC and for an introduction I will go to Mayor Weinberger before we get to a motion Mayor Weinberger thank you President Paul I do have some remarks to to start the this action tonight I then the leaders of the city team that have been working on this are here to amplify it's some of the highlights of the amended development agreement that is before you for action tonight and we do also have two of the three local partners from city place partners here with us tonight and as well as Patrick O'Brien to Dave Farrington Alison O'Call and Patrick O'Brien who's been leading up their efforts in a lot of ways and they're available to the council as well if there are questions as we get into this so with that road map I'll get started here about a decade ago we set out as a community to do something hard to take control of our future we decided to correct old mistakes and fix long broken and fix a long broken no worries we decided to correct old mistakes and fix a long broken part of our downtown that was lost during urban renewal to turn a community planning vision into reality and to make it possible for hundreds of new people to live and work in this great but small city to do this we pursued a public-private partnership to redevelop the old and failing downtown mall and to get back two streets the city had gave up decades ago a lot of the work to achieve this vision has involved actions and debates here at the city council together we've approved zoning changes infrastructure commitments the settlement of a lawsuit against the past developer tiff investment in a number of development agreements and amendments in the fall of 2022 the council approved what we refer to as arta 2.0 which allowed the new local development team to move forward and break ground and begin construction on the lowest level of the project that we refer to as a podium the concrete base of the project the local city place partners were very clear at that time that they were still working to put together a financing plan and they were still considering a range of potential development plans but remarkably and it very rarely happens this way Scott Ireland Dave Farrington and Al Senecau wanted to put their own resources at risk to move forward even while they figured those major questions out builders don't usually take risks of this magnitude but these guys have after four years of having a dormant construction site at the time back in the fall of 2022 we were very happy to see the project move forward and we structured and approved an agreement that would allow that to happen while protecting all of the city's municipal interests with the approval of the arta 2.0 then and with the first round of amendments that you approved last June both the developers and the administration had said that this is a complex project and that likely more changes would be needed what is different tonight as we engage this project again that at any previous time over the last decade when we have talked about this development agreement is that after years of hard work adversity and perseverance we can finally say with confidence that this daring and worthy effort to reshape our downtown will succeed since the fall of 2022 city place partners has put tens of millions of dollars of value into the ground a couple blocks from here the south tower is now the largest building ever constructed in this state and it will be complete and open to residents and visitors about a year from now most of the massive foundation for the second building is also built and the north tower is scheduled for opening in 2026 there's been other progress as well not just the construction progress city places added a new minority equity partner who came to our announcement last week bringing more financial strength and operational capacity to the local team together this new partnership has finalized their plans for the site and last week secured amended permits to build it by approving the ARTA amendment before you tonight you will allow the project to take another critical step forward a lot of the discussion public discussion since we released the new ARTA last Thursday has focused on the addition of a second hotel to the current plan and the reduction of about 70 permanent homes from the projection from the fall of 2022 it's true that this amendment before you will allow up to 350 new hotel rooms to be built as part of this project which will bring much needed new business to our downtown and revenues to our city however I want to make sure that the impact of these amendments and the new building plan is it's much greater than just the addition of a second hotel and I want to make sure that a few things are clear one the project described in the new ARTA will have at least 350 apartments 70 of them permanently affordable and built with no major subsidies making this project the second largest housing project in not Burlington's history but the state's history second only to the project that you took action on last time we met at Cambrian Rise this final version of the building plan has nearly 30% more homes in it than when the City Council first approved development agreement in 2018 so don't let anybody fool you this is not a bait in a switch this is more housing than was initially contemplated by a substantial amount than when was first brought to this council and this agreement represents a major step towards addressing our housing crisis conversely a vote against this agreement is a vote to put those 350 new homes at risk two the fact that City Place partners is back here tonight asking for this change is proof of the enormous progress accomplished on this project since entering into the ARTA 2.0 and restarting construction in the fall of 2022 despite the enormous headwinds they've faced of high inflation and high interest rates that have hit the country and the city since 2020 the local partners deserve our gratitude and our partnership at this critical decision point this is not the time to nitpick and second guess I urge the council to demonstrate our commitment to this project by approving this agreement tonight as CPP said at the press conference last week everyone is counting on them and failure is not an option CPP is counting on us too this administration and this council to be a good partner and finally this action tonight will continue a trend that will be very important for our community's future massive private and public investment in our downtown two weeks ago you approved that Cambrian rise development agreement the only policy project bigger than this one last week we broke ground on a 30 million dollar TIF project to renew vital public infrastructure on main street that will enable even more growth and investment in years to come and later tonight I am hopeful that you will accept the 22 million dollar raise grant for the downtown the largest non-airport grant in the city's history to build even more public infrastructure in the years to come the downtown certainly facing serious and new challenges we talk about this every time we meet and we did so again earlier tonight however it's important to also recognize that we have never had so much private and public money being invested in new housing as we have right now we have never had so much public investment being made in great public spaces and our critical subsurface infrastructure and even as we know we have many businesses struggling right now we also see in this amended agreement that many businesses like CPP are betting big on the future of our downtown so with that I'd like to hand the microphone over to our city team Brian you want to take it next I actually I don't have I don't have a whole lot to add to what the mayor just provided you and I will just say that we are here tonight hoping that we can provide you with the information you need to make your decision but we're also here obviously to take questions and as the mayor mentioned the partners from city place partners are here and if you have questions for them they're also available any folks we've got a I think simple wish power point is that something Tim if you could get just a tiny bit closer to the microphone just so we can hear you is that better yes it is so thanks again I'm Tim Sampson I've had the pleasure of representing the city for the past several years through this process and as the mayor mentioned it's a momentous time for the project because it's it's getting to a place where this major new investment is going to happen you see the first tower up already the new partners are here the new financing is around the corner I've mentioned to you I think every time I've been in front of you that you shouldn't be surprised if you see me again because that's the nature of these complex projects this time this may be it I'm hopeful that we're setting this project on course with these final changes here or these next changes I better be careful to be in a place to be much more self-sustaining so we're here to talk about first of all a picture of the project to rendering of course but you can now begin to see some real life in the in a photo because it reflects what's up on the site now at least the framework for it so it's getting exciting out there for discussion tonight I'm going to be brief on the development history quick project updates and then get into a bit of more detail on the provisions in this second amendment to ARTA 2.0 and then we'll have some time to address your questions so by way of context as the mayor mentioned the original development agreement goes back to October of 2017 and then it was a big pause and everybody remembers that big pause and we had the amended and restated development agreement the first one ARTA 1.0 in May of 2021 and you recall at that point in time the original ownership was was still intact and we were finding a solution away from litigation another about a year after that the current local partners took over the project and the real momentum began ARTA 2.0 then was in November of 2022 and then we've had a series of updates to that to keep things moving a letter agreement facilitating the project in January of 23 the first amendment was in June of 23 you remember that that's where we enabled the issuance of interim TIF financing to get that in place for the project as it proceeds and then we're back with the second amendment now so project updates mostly you heard about this from the mayor the coming into the project of the GERI group a hotel group to partner into the into the project to provide a source for substantial third party financing CHT as you may recall had been an anticipated partner in a deal for some time the city place partners and CHT worked tirelessly to make the details of that work in the end they did not but in the end there's a a silver lining to all of that in that in that the opportunity is exists for CHT to move the public resources component of the affordable housing into the Cambrian rise project city place partners here will continue to develop on its own the inclusionary units here so it's really the same amount few fewer units maybe 10 fewer IZ units at city place then we're going to happen under the CHT concept but citywide it's a it's a net increase of about 70 some units because you get the CHT's resources deployed at Cambrian rise again project update you can see it every time you walk down the street the south building is topped out and it's framing and the and the foundation for the north building now very well underway so the big five things that are happening in the Second Amendment some program changes some adjustments to the timing as it's currently set forth in the agreement adjustments to the inclusionary housing provisions adjustments to allow for progress payments toward the public improvements that the partners are doing and and some updates on the TIF financing and I'll say you know going through that list of of the five major milestones I did it a minute ago in those agreements this one is not it's kind of like there's not a whole lot to see here honestly these are we got to dust off the the agreement and make it work but the changes here are not as dramatic as they have been across across the length of my involvement in the project here a building program changes topic number one originally as the mayor mentioned there are 272 residential units proposed for city place that increased over time with the change to you know closer to an all residential project and it and it currently now the art of 2.0 anticipated over 400 units the plan now as you've heard multiple times is is to adjust that downward somewhat but still to provide no fewer than 350 new new units currently the approvals are the the approved development plan is for a maximum of about 140 hotel rooms and that would increase to about 350 or no more than 350 it all stays within generally the same massing and scale of the project and as we talked before and as I you know the hotel room is a smaller than a residential unit on average so you can accomplish this change in a way that the project is still two-thirds a residential project with a supporting hotel to provide you know that stronger financial base to get it going timing another change that we're addressing right now in the current deal the north and south buildings would have delivered in November of 2025 and the CHT phase of the project a year later in November of 2026 as proposed with these changes the south tower which is now under construction would be delivered in about a year as the mayor had mentioned but the outside date in the agreements would remain the same of November of 2025 and the north building would would push out from November of 25 to June of 26 again in comparison to the current approvals or the current development plan where CHT's phase of the project was going to get extended to November of 26 this is actually kind of advancing in time what would be the final completion of the project turning to the inclusionary housing again the partners will develop all of the IZ units within the project the one adjustment to what would otherwise be anticipated in their current approvals is to allow the component of the IZ units that would be generated by the south tower to be constructed in the north tower the north tower represents about 65 or 70 percent of the overall mass of the building it's by far the bigger of the two towers that dynamic creates challenges to provide to providing the units in both of the towers and it would be a benefit to the project to facilitate providing all of the units in the north tower what does that mean it means somewhere between eight to 12 yeah eight to 12 units it depends on exactly of course how many residential units are provided in the south tower but somewhere between eight to 12 IZ units would instead of being in the south tower be in the north tower now as I described a minute ago the north tower is proposed to deliver a bit later in the south tower so as a practical matter those eight to 12 units could be delayed for seven to 12 months between the delivery of those of those two towers and importantly though as I mentioned before the IZ units with the current proposal with the CHT element would not have been delivered until November of 2026 so either way under the current plan all of the IZ units would be delivered earlier then in the I should say under the proposed plan all of the IZ units would be delivered earlier than they would be under the the current development plan we have protections in the document to ensure that there cannot be some sort of bait and switch where the IZ units are delayed in the south tower and never materialized in the north tower if the north tower is not materialized on time their provisions in the agreement for those requisite number of units to free up in the south tower and serve the the IZ role there next category of changes is gets even more technical about progress payments for the public improvements as you recall the TIF debt has been issued it was issued last June for the project it is sitting in an account not being used for the project right now because the project hasn't reached the milestones that that the city required of the project before those funds could be deployed in the current agreements those funds would not be deployed until both of the towers have been under construction contract and have construction financing in place for them the proposal now is to shift that so that the progress payments can start a bit sooner when the south tower is has been fully financed again we've got protections in there to ensure that the payment of those city dollars to reimburse public improvements would not get ahead of the project's ability to repay the coffers someday with tax dollars generated by the south tower and also they would become second in line to the city's own ability to get reimbursed from the the TIF allocation and then finally the the provisions for TIF financing in the in the document or brief being brought forward I think is the way to describe that they're technically their amendments but they're very much the same in concept as they are today the current agreements you may recall that facilitated the issuance of the TIF that last June anticipated that permanent financing would be issued sometime later this spring about a year later because of the construction schedule at this point in time it's likely that the the bond issuance in June of last year will be rolled over for another interim period of a year before permanent financing is in place all of the protections that we had in place last year would remain in place with the with that situation now including the partners being responsible for paying any borrowing costs of the city associated with that continuing to roll over the debt so that is a mouthful it's a summary of the of the changes and we'll be happy to answer any questions yeah great thank you very much before we go any further we'll go to a motion I'll look to Councillor Carpenter thank you I would move to approve and authorize Mayor Murrow-Wineburger to execute a second amendment to the second amended and restated development agreement of city place partners LLC in substantial conformance with the attached draft in subject to final review and approval of the city's attorneys thank you so much Councillor Carpenter is there a second to that motion seconded by seconded by Councillor Shannon Councillor Carpenter did you want the floor back just to briefly I don't want to repeat what the mayor and and the city team has but I'm I'm just really excited to see this move forward and I think it's really pretty much a win-win I'm more than anybody else always want more housing but I think the fact that we're getting 350 units over the original 272 is a win and we really need to remember that and the fact that we're we're getting an additional 63 out on Cambrian rise so the total package I think is great for the Burlington and the hotels are we we talk a lot about how do we bring business into the downtown business that pays really good taxes and doesn't use a lot of services and so I think hotels are actually needed kind of business for us and so the fact that it's bringing both of this to us I think is a huge step forward and it's a step forward that it's rising out of the ground great thank you so much Councillor Carpenter before we go to counselors and open the floor we do have the three partners of Cityplace if Dave Farrington Al Senecaul and Patrick O'Brien who is almost the same as having Scott Ireland here if the three of you if you had something that you wanted to say you're you're welcome to come forward at this time thanks thanks so much for being here I'd like to think that the whole city team with Morro and especially Brian David White and Tim we have weekly meetings we've been totally transparent with everybody every step of the way every week we're just how you're doing what's going on and we talk about all the changes and so we're as we move through the iterations of you know they went through it originally was this and this and this and Tim's always said and we'll be back hopefully we won't be back because we we have got a final plan in place we're confident about it we've got some great new partners and I heard the word bait and switch two or three times tonight and we don't really look at it that way we're we're calling it pivoting we had to because of reality economics the in the we brought this up at the meeting last Thursday construction costs labor costs interest rate costs the shaky lending environment that's out there we had to reshuffle the cards and and we're in we're in this thing we're not going away you know I speak speak with my heart I'm there every single day I'm building this place I got my partners all with us we're everybody's there we talk every day and this is special to us and we're doing the best we can and this is what we had to do to keep this thing moving ahead we did not want to put this thing on hold while we had to go figure something else out and so this is where we're at and we're wide open any questions we're here for for answers we're not trying to hide we're not dodging anything so and we appreciate all your support I've heard from a lot of you people that everybody's behind it and it's it's really appreciated great thank you so much it's hard to follow behind Dave sometimes but sure I really want to thank Mayor Weinberger he's been an extraordinary advocate for us and it's much appreciated we do we and we are working hard every day to get this thing completed you know President Paul you've been a great help for us as well and the whole board but I also want to thank the city because you know although there's a few people out there maybe not talking great about the project and how we tried to cut corners here or whatnot the majority of the city is in full support of this and we just couldn't be thankful enough for that so again thanks for all your help okay yes well that that would make sense because Scott usually is a it's also a yes exactly exactly and again thanks so much for being here we know how invested you are in this as we are in this community Councillor Bergman thanks thanks the city team and thanks to you all for being here I totally appreciate the the sentiments about being transparent and the need to reshuffle the cards so for the public and for me I really do need you to explain how and why a vote against making these changes puts the project at risk I guess it gets back to the economics of what's driving it and you get the support of the the bankers who they're they're gonna be contributing 75% to the funds of this project and without that we stop at 25% we're we and we're there so to continue forward you have to show the the banking people that the more you borrow and you have to borrow more because of the higher construction costs and the labor rates and the interest rates you need a way to pay that back it wasn't happening on paper with just doing apartments we needed to bring in some component that raised the net operating income to pay back the bigger bill that we're stepping into and so we had numerous partners potential partners that had come and catered to us and there was always a little catch like we were gonna have to give up more than 50% of the project which was one of our number one rules we're not gonna give up control that's how this thing kind of spiral out of control a number of times so that was like hard and fast we're not giving up we're not gonna give up control the second thing was you know we didn't want to stop have to stop it had started and stopped and started and stopped too many times and we wanted to keep this thing going and when we finally settled on a partner after talking to numerous partners and you know we felt good about these people like-minded same energy and passion they brought some good financial strength to the partnership we felt that it was the the right team to keep moving ahead with and so when we went to the bank with them and the banks were feeling the same way and so we we've been able to keep the train chugging down the tracks with this new plan and partnership otherwise we would have hit a wall and had to stop so this is this is driven not by your new partner but by the banks when all is said and done it's a yeah I'm not a fan of the loss of 75 units of housing which I think is about going to be about and maybe Brian would correct me about 14 IZ units because you got a 20% or 25% and I actually don't see the original cynics agreement as being the benchmark we don't have to go into to that those decisions so you know I mean that's a concern that I have got but you know there are benefits for there in my mind for there being the hotel not the least of which is the gross receipts tax not the least of which is having people come down so this is not you know an easy thing to you know to to make a decision about because that's that's not an insignificant amount of housing I have gotten some questions related to the inclusionary zoning component of this since you guys are going to be taking over the that that that piece of it and so you know it is the inclusionary zoning that you're going to be under control of going to be available to the general public how is that going to work will people be able to sign up and become eligible and come on a first they you know first come first served basis just use the microphone Calta we SDI have done something similar in the past at Mayberry apartments in Burlington and I believe we're one of the only private developers to take on such a role rather than put the inclusionary units in one portion or one tower of the project and we're going to do this project the same way that project was done at some point in the future a waiting list may be developed but it's far too soon to even start talking about that so it's going to be very simple like any other market driven project at some point our marketing efforts will be put together and the go button will be hit and hopefully the phones will ring for both the inclusionary and the market rate units I suspect that they will give us the housing crunch that we've got so the intention is not that the IC units are going to be for hotel workers for example that is not the intention but that would be a win-win because I think one of the things that is lacking in Burlington are places where service workers can live and I think that if you were to talk to the restaurant tours in town they would say that's probably one of the one of the biggest things that is prohibiting them from getting back on track since COVID hit so that's not our target market but if we can fill up our IC units with people that work downtown that'd be a beautiful thing yeah no I hear that and perhaps in the future we'll ask CEDO to look at guardrails in case there may be games being played not necessarily with you but just in general with the inclusionary zoning ordinance that's it for me thank you great thank you Councillor Bergman we'll go to Councillor Hightower and then Councillor McGeage you have your hand okay and then to Councillor Grant go ahead Councillor Hightower great thank you all for coming to present and for the long introductions for from everyone as well as the questions the willingness to answer questions I don't have I am supportive of this I mean obviously don't love the amendment but I'm supportive of the agreement as a whole even with this amendment I know that many of my constituents do feel very blindsided because even though you've been very transparent with the administration this wasn't released to the public until end of last week and so I think that folks are feeling like they don't have any control over their downtown or even have a voice in their downtown and so I don't think this will be successful but I think that this is I think that this is a big enough issue that we should have given folks a chance to digest the information come to conclusions like the administration had time to do like you all have had time to do like city councilors have had time to do and therefore I'm gonna move to postpone this vote to our second February meeting all right so there is a motion on the floor to postpone this to our second meeting meeting the meeting February 26th is that correct yes okay is there a a second to that motion there is no second to that motion so we'll continue did you continue did you want did you continue to want the floor councilor hightower yeah I'll just say that I think it's disappointing how quickly we put things in front of the public and then vote on them in ways that councilors can't possibly reach out to constituents or get feedback and I sincerely hope that the next administration does a better job with that than this one has thank you thank you hightower we're gonna go to councilor McGee and then councilor grant thank you president paul and thank you to the city team and to the partners for being here tonight and presenting I do share the concerns and I don't necessarily not directed at the partners but at the city team for the way that this has come to the council and was presented to the public I am supportive of the change I recognize that this is a hard environment to get anything done in from a construction standpoint and the fact that you all are continuing to to get those buildings up is a relief to to many of us who didn't want to look at a dirt pit for another several years so I have a lot of gratitude for that and how much effort you've put into getting us to this place and also there are two additional phases of city place that are going to eventually go into design and development phases that I think we can't say for sure right now but we'll hopefully also include more housing units and so looking at this project from a 30,000 foot view and the needs that we have in the city I see a benefit of having more hotel rooms potentially reducing the incentive to convert long-term rental units into short-term rentals I think that is another area where this could be beneficial and the additional revenue certainly won't hurt so I am supportive of this tonight with the caveat that continuing to leave the public out of these conversations with such a short period of time for us to adequately engage folks is an ongoing problem and hope that we're able to would encourage us to remedy that going forward thank you thank you so much so we'll go to Councillor Grant and perhaps then we can go to a vote Councillor Grant thank you so VT Digger did an update on this project last week and I was quoted and what I said was I was disappointed to lose any number of new housing units but the economics of building right now are difficult and expensive we're lucky this project continues to move along the pit is a stark reminder of the blight in the city so the sooner we get rid of it the better so I support this I recognize this now having said that not saying anything's your fault but just giving you something to chew on with regards to what Councillors Hightower and McGee just said and it has been something that the council has been talking about based on feedback from the public so we have to be very careful about not getting all up in our feelings and there's a lot of us guilty of that sometimes myself included about public feedback so when people say things like bait and switch or they quote unquote Nick pick or second guess is because they don't have information so you describe being very transparent because of the number of meetings that you're having but you're not having those meetings with the public right so what more can you do to release more updates to the public with out jeopardizing any financial plans that you have in the works because I'm recognizing that you're kind of going along got to readjust or pivot as I believe the word was used and like I said I just I just want that pit gone so I am loathed to do anything that would interfere with that but I think we need to have more awareness of how the public is feeling this is a very important project to the public the amount of information that you have the amount of information that we have is not the same amount of information that they have so I'd love to talk to you about what we can do about more public engagement in terms of getting out updates because then these type of complaints that we're getting would be reduced I mean we really we make things public so quickly and people feel like they not that the public can be involved in every conversation or certainly not every negotiation because of things that have to be kept confidential but just not feeling like there's there's any input or questions that are fully answered so if we could just chew on that I would really greatly appreciate it and thank you for being here this evening thank you thank you Councillor Grant we'll go to Councillor Shan and then Councillor Zhang thank you and thank you all both for being here for being transparent and for really driving hard to keep this project moving forward as I've been watching this go up and I've been watching interest rates go up I've been greatly concerned about the project and its future yeah all along the way I have said that this is probably not the last turtle and this is probably also not the last turtle we gave permission for this project to go from 14 stories and only 272 units to then I think 278 housing units and then we gave you permission I think for 420 units and 10 stories so now you're asking us for permission to go to 350 units and I think that the public often thinks that this is our project the City of Burlington's project and that it's our money in it but it's your money in this and thank you for that these kinds of things are not a matter of public opinion it's a matter of what's going to work and keep the project going forward but I do appreciate Councillor Grant's comments that the public wants to stay informed and that you all have a desire to be transparent and keep the public informed so just an idea to put on the table and I'm sure there are many but but you know having a newsletter or something that people could sign up for so that you can you know seeing the praises of all the progress that you're making as well as keep people informed when when things are taking a turn and if you need to pivot I think probably everybody at the table would rather see more housing than less but what is possible is critically important and that you all stay solvent and moving this forward is critically important and thank you for all that you are doing to to assure that that continues to happen thanks thank you so much councillor shannon we'll go to councillor jane thank you president and thank you for being here and for everything that you've been doing so far right from my perspective I am coming from a level of concerns because you would all recognize as community members people who were born and raised here you went to school here you have great projects happening all over the state of emond so you're basically local and I think a project of this magnitude with the change of this magnitude I really wanted you come here and said we have talked to these NPAs we have engaged with these commissions we have engaged with X Y and Z but from my perspective the lack of community engagement is a little bit concerning to me specifically I have always supported this project but it seems that you are opening a new door of continuing to move the business forward but now forgetting the people who are actually supporting all they need is just information and not from anybody but from you directly these are your NPAs these are your community forums why don't you show up or hire staff that can show up on your behalf to talk to the people so that we all be good partners this is an invitation so that we can do better next time and for all those that are concerned I am extremely concerned too because the most fundamental aspect problem in this city is housing and we are changing this development agreement for less housing for our community members but to support more the tourists if it is not solving the issue and I think that need to be our fundamental drive to get this through so that we all can be happy and I understand the concern about lending money the interest rate everything is going up but at the same time we just were supposed to be aware we have a podium I feel that you're going also a little bit too fast if this was just supposed to be from the pit to the podium but it is going up and very quickly right from my perspective let's take the time because once it's built it's built what are the opportunities to at the same time to be able to solve the most fundamental problem of this city which is housing now my question is this with this agreement how many IZ have we lost how many inclusionary zoning have we lost into it 10 units and okay so 10 or 11 units and I think from my perspective we need to bake that loss for this agreement to also you be able to pay it to another housing development for low income people that's that's my request those 11 IZ units that we have lost I think at the same time you need to figure out a way to pay it back to the city or to pay it back to the housing developers that are here and was just wondering if it's part of it go ahead I just want to say that the city didn't lose IZ units I understand we're still maintaining the same percentage that we're required to so we're not losing any we're just moving them down the street and actually the city is gaining several IZ units because of that move with CHT now moving down to North Ab and building the number of units they are we're still maintaining 70 units which is the 20 percent of the 350 so no one's losing any units with this with this proposal and that's perfectly being perfectly transparent exactly so I mean I think you'd now coming back to my point that yes the Champlain Housing Trust in collaboration with Cambrian Rise they will be building it elsewhere you know kind of right but now the perception of the community members is not that you heard it the word I don't know you heard it so many times here today say it again Payton switch Payton switch which I again coming back to my original point of engaging the community as we move forward and again as you also move forward please recognize that people need housing and for you to be better partner and try to help the city to get there and I know you can right thank you for your time and best of luck as you move forward and I'll be supporting this but please with those requests for you to consider as you move forward thank you thank you Councillor Jang seeing no others in the queue we will go to a vote and why don't we try this just simply on a voice vote the the motion is to approve and authorize the mayor to execute this agreement this amendment to the current agreement with city place partners all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously thank you so so much the next item on our agenda is 9.5 which is a resolution supporting students and educators through statewide education tax relief and for a motion we'll go to the lead sponsor Councillor Travers thank you President Paul I moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution ask for the floor back upon a second great thank you Councillor Councillor Travers seconded by Councillor Jang Councillor Travers the floor is yours before turning to remarks I have a parliamentary inquiry which is that and giving the resolution yet another once over I noticed a small clerical edit that is necessary at the end of it and so it's a question for the city attorney's office that if a word is plural instead of singular is that something that can be changed before this if it passes gets sent off or does that require a formal amendment I believe we can change that yes okay all right so thank you very much for that President Paul like many in our community I've had some sticker shock in response to the proposed education tax increase of 13.97 percent as the father of three young kids including two at Champlain Elementary I'm invested in the success of our schools and I'm worried about the extent to which the proposed tax increase will influence the outcome of our school budget vote what I'm most troubled by is the fact that well more than half of the proposed tax increase is being mandated by the state for reasons outside the control of our local school district because Burlington and Chittenden County home prices have skyrocketed in the past year the state is mandating that Burlington homeowners pay even more than what is required by our recent citywide reappraisal insult to injury because the state acted years ago to end its school construction aid program Burlington taxpayers are primarily responsible for the cost to construct a new high school and technical center to replace a building that was mandated to close by the Vermont Department of Health I know many communities in the greater Burlington area and across Vermont are similarly dealing with unprecedented state mandated tax increases under the common level of appraisal system or CLA which is tied to a real estate market that was to say the least upwardly volatile during the pandemic I know many members of our legislative delegation share concern about the extent to which tax increases are impacting affordability here in Burlington and in other Vermont communities I know our legislative delegation share our concern about the potential consequences for our students and educators if school budgets fail here in Burlington and around the state let me take a moment to sincerely thank our legislative delegation for their ongoing work to address these concerns and the resolution before the council this evening is intended to support reasonable efforts that will mitigate the impact of state mandated tax increases and looking forward establish a more equitable state education financing system importantly this resolution also sends a plea to Montpelier that when considering how to fix our current education financing system and the consequences of state mandated tax increases that they please not walk back the progress secured by Act 127 which last year brought per pupil funding into compliance with the equity standards demanded under Vermont law and needed by Burlington school students thank you President Paul I ask the council for their support for this resolution right thank you so much Councillor Travers is there any other councillor who wishes to speak to this resolution Councillor Barlow thank you President Paul every year the Burlington school district goes through a thoughtful budget planning process when I was on the board that planning process started in early October it included concluded in January this year that careful planning incorporated both savings and increased expenses as well as other operational investments 61% of that budget increase is due to the debt service we're incurring because the Burlington school district is building a new high school and regional tech center but too often any careful planning becomes secondary to the pressures imposed by surprises that come from the state late in that planning process this year that surprise was the common level of appraisal as Councillor Travers indicated and without any BSD Burlington school district increased spending at all the education property tax rate was increasing by 8% when large shifts like the CLA adjustment happen it creates a lot of challenges for the district and puts the budget at risk with the voters BSD is not alone in this recurring school budget challenge and I'm hoping that the legislature will take a serious look at our concerns and those of other districts and look seriously at structural changes as a way in the way that we fund school budgets and school construction thank you thank you so much councillor mckie um councillor Marlowe is there anyone else who wishes to offer any comments on this resolution seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution please say aye aye aye any oppose please say no that motion passes thank you councillor Travers for your work on that and to the other co-sponsors that brings us to item 9.6 which is the raise reconnecting downtown grant acceptance associated with the BTC public improvement project this is a this is an important milestone in our city's history it's not every day that we get a 22 million dollar grant with no local match and I'm sure you'd love to talk about it so please go ahead and then we will go to a motion well I really don't I'm an engineer but uh so Laura we luck with public works I have Julia or Saki here with me also from public works and our director Chapin Spencer we worked with several city departments CT office the new grants program our own office and a few others to be able to secure this opportunity it is an add-on to a grant that came before the city council late last year which was a congressionally directed spending this project will be a transformative opportunity for our downtown being able to reconstruct all the blocks of cherry street and all of the blocks of bank street so it's a little bit larger than some of the way that we've described this work previously but as council president Paul indicated it is a zero local match which is an advantage to being able to fund a scale a project of this scale thank you did he did either of you wish to add anything else? no? okay so oh i'm sorry did you want to say something mayor Weinberger? I apologize so i'm looking i'm looking over here and i should be looking over here well president paul thanks i've spoken fair amount tonight already so i'll i'll try not to to go on much longer but i um certainly I do think this grant is um allows us you know which is we've been kind of looking at the city place we've been talking about the city place project tonight and reflecting on the history back when we went to the voters about the city place project the tiff investment and the the zoning change we said at the time that we hope to be able to fund up to eight blocks of public infrastructure being rebuilt to great street standards in the blocks immediately around the project with all the delays the project the making the project smaller the what's happened with interest rates and construction pricing had the original plan we wouldn't have been able to get anywhere close to fulfilling that vision which you know was not a promise we always said it was up to eight blocks and we were clear what the priorities would be but with this grant with the the congressionally directed spending from senator lehi we are now back in position to try to realize that full vision maybe even a little bit more than that full vision and bring all of the this big area up to these great street standards and really have a very positive impact on the future of the downtown so I'm really grateful for everyone who put work into this I Laura just said this but I think it's worth repeating we one of the things we did together in the last couple years to create new positions within the city to go after opportunities like this and this is one of the first big payoffs of that investment and I think really shows what's the importance of in this new environment of having that capacity Thanks President Paul. Thank you very much we will go to Councillor Barlow for a motion on this item and this motion is a mouthful I move to authorize the director of public works to execute the amendment number one to cooperative agreement CA 0811 from the Vermont Agency of Transportation to accept an additional grant amount of 22,384,000 for construction of the reconnecting downtown project for an authorized raise grant acceptance in the amount of 22,384,000 resulting in a total authorized grant acceptance amount of 37,384,000 including a previously authorized CDS local match in the amount of $3,000,000 with project cost to be paid upfront by the city of Burlington and then reimbursed by the Vermont Agency of Transportation with no local match subject to the approval of the city attorney's office and two to authorize the director of public works to execute the U.S. Department of Transportation grant agreement under fiscal year 2023 raise program to define the scope of work project schedule and city's reporting responsibilities subject to the approval of the city attorney's office and three to approve necessary amendments to the BTC public improvements project budget great streets bank and cherry streets project budget by adjusting the accounts as described here in in the attached draft budget amendment form and further authorize the chief administrative chief administrative or designee to affect all necessary transfer of funds in furtherance of such amendments thank you so thank you so much Councillor Barlow I mean for 22 million dollars it shouldn't be just four words right is there a second to that motion seconded by seconded by Councillor Carpenter is there any any Councillor who wishes to speak to this motion seeing none will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion is outlined by Councillor Barlow please say aye aye aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously with our with our thanks for all of your work and all of your effort on securing this grant we will then we will now move on to item 9.7 which is a request to one convey the so-called North Hanger Building at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport to Beta Technologies by Bill of Sale and two to execute a ground lease agreement with Beta to replace the existing building lease between the parties before we get to get to some comments from our airport our airport team will go to a motion I'll go to Councillor Travers and before the motion President Paul I will be recusing myself from this vote due to a professional conflict of interest okay so we're noting a recusal due to a conflict of interest from Councillor Doherty please go ahead Councillor Travers and just another parliamentary inquiry I know there's two parts to this motion to confirm that it would be appropriate to make both of those parts in a single motion at this at this time I believe that is correct is that okay with the city attorney yes it is okay great thank you so I would move to authorize the conveyance of the North Hanger Building located at 1150 Airport Drive in South Burlington to Beta Technologies Inc and to authorize the mayor of the city of Burlington to execute a bill of sale to affect the conveyance subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office and to authorize the leasing of certain identified space at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport to Beta Technologies Inc and to authorize the mayor of the city of Burlington to execute the ground lease agreement subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office and upon a second we'll turn to our guests thank you so much Councillor Councillor Travers is there a second to that motion um seconded by Councillor Berkman you do not need the floor back okay so we will go to Director a Director of Aviation Nick Longo and then we can go to some questions if there are any questions from the council and uh I believe do you have some and and we do have uh Jeff Glasberg joining us online right thank you President Paul thank you councillors uh just a quick brief history of this particular lease and what is being proposed tonight beta technologies did come to the city the airport back in 2018-2019 which this very lease that you're contemplating tonight is that original lease back in 2019 the building that they have occupied just to paint a quick picture was scheduled to be demolished this was a building that the majority of the space was not able to be occupied there were no tenants in it and the city and the airport had no means to renovate it or or utilize that space any further without significant investment we were using the space the hangar as storage for snow removal equipment and other various storage needs beta technologies came to the city and the airport to to occupy this space and this is when the city the airport commission the board of finance and the city council authorized a lease agreement in 2019 for this entire space with the understanding that there would be improvements to the building and of course renovations we've been successfully leasing this space all terms of these current lease are satisfied there have been over five hundred thousand dollars in investments into the property itself which was part of the original lease and the beta technologies has been remitting payment as per these original lease what I and the team here deputy director Dave Karman director finance Marie Friedman I also have executive assistant Hannah Deuce Blan and our consultant Jeff Glasberg here tonight is requesting of course those two motions to sell the property to beta technologies because of more than just their half a million dollars of investment but their fifteen million dollars of investment into this property as well as continuing to lease the ground back to beta technologies a very important request of the city of the airport is to remain revenue neutral to make sure that the city is made whole with this particular change and new ground lease with beta technologies beta technologies continues to be a partner of course with the city and with the airport not just with this facility you've authorized not just this original lease but two additional leases as a reminder both the major manufacturing site which is now built at the airport as well as a smaller general aviation hangar and this hanger that you're looking at before you tonight they also help us with many other things including the space that is here before you tonight which is renovations to parking lots renovations to apron space in front of this hangar all of which the city and the airport would have had it to invest but we don't have to because of the partnership with beta technologies there's residual partnerships as well and Jeff is going to get into the details of what we're requesting tonight we're partnering with electric energy we're partnering with electric chargers for vehicles we're partnering in many different areas of the operations of the Patrick Leahy Burlington international airport I'm going to hand it right over to Jeff to talk about the very particular details of this lease for a brief statement on what we're asking for tonight thanks thanks for having me back this evening with respect to this transaction what we're seeking to do is to put this lease form for this property in the same structure as two other leases that the city has previously approved the lease the ground lease for the construction of the reduction facility on the south 40 and the ground lease for the construction of the new general aviation hangar and training center and the west valley both provide a mechanism for beta to recover the cash it expended to construct those facilities giving beta a tool to put that capital back into its growing business so in the case of those two subsequent leases west valley and the south 40 beta has the opportunity to either sell and lease back its building or to put in place a leasehold mortgage to recover its capital in the case of the south 40 building we're aware that beta recently did close a leasehold mortgage transaction with the export import bank and it allowed them to recover that expensive venture capital and put it back into its business using capital from a source that's well suited to finance real estate in the case of this particular transaction that we're proposing to you beta did make the investment in the building and as a Nick notes that was approximately 15 million dollars the terms of this lease would have those improvements that that building revert to city ownership at the end of the lease term the lease does require the creation and capitalization of a replacement reserve fund to ensure that the building is properly maintained so that when it reverts to city ownership it's in good condition the goal here was for the city using the limited tools it has to be accommodative and supportive of beta and economic development at BTV part of the work that beta does is not just building airplanes they're also recruiting they're a growing company and they're marketing BTV and the area as a great place to live and work that has value to us going forward as well what we've tried to do is accommodate beta in a way that is financially neutral to BTV and we think we've we've achieved that with the proposal that's in front of you there is a summary of the lease terms that was included in the board memo I also had the opportunity to review the transaction in greater detail with Councillor Barlow earlier today and we'd be happy to go through the Council's questions at this point right thank you so much if it's okay well if if you're if you're you've completed your comments I haven't I'm ready for any questions or great so if there are questions from the Council now would be that time Councillor Barlow thank you President Paul on first off thank you for coming again I know we had you aboard a finance last week I'll just start by saying I consider myself a supporter of of the work that beta technologies is doing and in the relationship that beta has with the airport and the city and and I want to support that continued partnership at the same time though I take seriously our responsibility to represent the public interest and perform due diligence on significant real estate agreements involving city assets like this one we are only made aware of this requested change a week a little over a week ago I talked with Director Longo before the Board of Finance with some questions that I had and he answered those but the questions began other questions I had and so I we I feel like this is a case where I really wish we had been brought into the process sooner like we often are with a lot of the city real estate deals where we're allowed to provide input give feedback and sort of shape things and so going forward I'm asking the airport to please make sure they bring these agreements to us a little earlier so we can provide that feedback and input and also I would like it to go through the airport commission before it comes to the City Council so it's my respectful request of you in the future to to try to adhere to that because I think it gets better vetting that said I appreciate that Director Longo and Mr Glassburg have been very responsive to my questions and I've shared those with the rest of the Council and so to now just I'll ask three the first is can you speak to the revenue neutrality of the agreement and address claims that beta might be getting more than than the City is getting in this deal absolutely I just want to mention I know at the Board of Finance there was a discussion of the airport commission the airport commission has seen this prior to come into here with a unanimous vote to support it as well as far as the revenue neutrality of the deal currently there are essentially two components to the existing lease we have building rent because at this point in time we do own the building therefore we're renting the building on a square footage rate consistent with other building rent at the airport there's also a limited section of ground rent this is being shifted entirely of course to ground rent because with this approved authorized transaction there are no longer be an asset owned by the airport therefore there would be no building rent associated with this the ground rent would not be in itself a revenue neutral deal therefore again it was extremely important during the negotiations that the ground rent be consistent with a revenue neutral deal inclusive of both the building and the ground rent to include other items such as parking revenue standard vehicle parking revenue which in this particular deal is 125 parking spaces at our standard rental rate that we charge every other tenant that is a flexible deal as well so we have we have some options and are not held to that 125 locations we also are charging landing fees associated with all of their aircraft very consistent and identical to all aircraft that are landing at the airport from the smallest aircraft to commercial aircraft all of those within that deal create a revenue neutral deal for the airport so both the old agreement and this new agreement the airport is walking away with an annual revenue consistent with what our deal is today some of the projections are even further because again we don't know exactly how many landings or operations beta technology is going to to do over that over the future time period especially when they roll out their brand new electric aircraft I believe I answered the just of the question there thanks I'll move on I had questions about the landing fees you had expressed to us that the landing fees were a new feature of this lease I looked at the old lease in the current lease the language is almost identical in terms of landing fee so how are landing fees a new benefit of the new lease yeah I wouldn't say they're a brand new benefit because both agreements do have landing fees associated with them but again very similar to the parking geographic locations as well as the fee they're flexible meaning the consistent rate of a landing formula is spread across this particular deal traditional not even traditionally right now our landing fee is over 6,000 pounds we charge per thousand pound of landing at the airport if the aircraft is over 6,000 pounds with this new deal and with new rates associated with the airport that is adjusted to 2,000 pounds and again that's consistent across the airport so this that change would be an increase in revenue again making adding to the revenue neutrality of this deal and just to be clear the this fee didn't exist for below 6,000 pounds didn't exist for anywhere on the airport prior that's correct so that's new across the entire airport that is correct and lastly can you just and maybe this is a question for Mr. Glasberg I'm not I'm not sure but can you explain how the change in lease terms and building sale affect the city's control in the event of a business failure loan default if or or change in ownership yeah yeah Jeff Jeff would you be able to answer that so we because that's a complicated question we actually gave you a chart of all the terms that that and I appreciate that your question and we contrasted between the existing lease and new lease without you know reading through all of that the city's interests are protected in the event of of failure of the well let's do it this way in the event that beta puts in place a leasehold mortgage and if it fails to pay its mortgage the mortgagee has the right to step in and perform for the tenant in order to keep the ground lease in place so the city's interests are not diminished by having mortgagee in place it provides another level of potential payer in the event of failure by by data in the event of sale leaseback the relationship of the city would at that point be with the subsequent owner um who would have to have financial capacity and who would be responsible for continuing to pay the city beta's failure as a tenant would then be their problem the city would look to the new owner of the property for its performance under the lease am I addressing the yeah yeah generally I just yes thank you and I was just looking for sort of an the then the cliff note narrative on that and you essentially have provided that so thank you for that and with that I will rest my questions thank you thank you so much Councillor Barlow we have come to the magic hour of 10 10 minutes past the magic hour of 10 30 with that and we do have in addition to this item we do have three deliberative items remaining for a motion and in order to proceed I'll go to Councillor McGee for a motion thank you President Paul I would move to suspend our rules in order for us to complete our deliberative agenda a motion to a motion is made to suspend our rules to complete the remaining items on our deliberative agenda seconded by Councillor Bergman is there any this requires a two-thirds vote is there anyone who wishes to speak to this motion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion to suspend our rules to complete our deliberative agenda please say aye any opposed please say no okay so we will go and we will continue with our deliberate to the end of our deliberative agenda thank you again Councillor Barlow is there any other Councillor who wishes to offer any comments or questions on the agenda item before us nine point nine point seven seeing Councillor Travers I just I want to echo the thanks that Councillor Barlow mentioned for the presentation and the work here an alignment with some of the comments that Councillor Barlow made with respect to sort of additional information on these times on these kinds of agreements you know we did hear about the development agreement earlier and sort of very early on in that process you know we've heard from the developers there to expect them to continue to come back with respect to sort of further changes and amendments down the road and I guess my question for you all is in the airport's relationship with beta you know what what do you see as next is there is there a next step here that you anticipate you're going to be coming back to the council for or are you in a position to talk about that at this point in time so that's what I'm curious about I see beta being one of the first to develop and manufacture in full-scale electric aircraft and that's really exciting and that comes with a lot of changes to the airport as well including operational changes that this coming spring you've already approved many of those those items including new ramp space and the the other half of their manufacturing facility again these are things that have already been approved by the council right now I don't see any other changes besides those three with this item before you tonight those three leases being beta's beta's footprint at the at the airport okay great I'm looking forward to supporting this I was grateful to in my council role take beta up on an opportunity to come and tour their facility and if other counselors haven't done the same I would encourage them to do so because it it truly is an amazing state-of-the-art facility when you're there you almost feel like you're you're not in Burlington because of the the really cutting edge work that they're doing there with really you know such a growing workforce as well it's exciting to see what they've done for the airport and how many employees and innovation they've brought to our area so thank you for the work that you're doing thank you to beta and I'm looking forward to supporting this motion thank you thank you councillor travers councillor jane very quickly and thank you for the presentation and happy to support this and also want to recognize beta people that are here you've been sitting all day thank you for being here you know and I think councillor Barlow did mention something really important that director we simply requesting for you to think about it as you move forward I think you've been doing an amazing job right and I thought that the alignment between the council and now the Burlington air particularly international airport has gotten better but hearing here today that this did not go to took is was a little bit concerning from my perspective yes it went to commission but I think equally to try as much as you can to make that alignment it will be great and also for the took members to also consider you know reaching out more even though they're not on the agenda but whatever happening in transportation equity energy utility committee the director or a designated staff should know so that we build this alignment because it's all the same the commission should be considered equally as a transportation the city council committee this is just a simple request and thank for your work and happy to support this thank you thank you councillor jane councillor councillor grant hi couple quick questions uh kind of following up on what councillor jane just said um does your commission do you do a report for your commission and would this have been included in your report to your commission I do so we have monthly airport commission meetings with various topics of course uh a month ago I did present this during executive session to the commission uh and they voted on it last week with uh with border financial as well so yes we've had various conversations okay so then as of last week it would be considered public that's correct okay so then maybe um two two weeks ago because it was published two weeks ago okay okay so maybe uh just kind of throwing this out like when I joined the public safety committee I uh requested that chief Lachance for the report that he gives to his fire commission and so it's just one report that he creates he just forwards it to our committee as well maybe your report to your commission can be forwarded to tuc and then that way the city council gets looped in a little bit sooner um and then we can start to discuss ideas about when it's appropriate to make things available to the public to know because because we're all getting a lot of feedback around uh transparency issues but thank you for your report and your presentation thanks very much councilor grant um and thank you for being here from veda appreciate it um is there any other councilor that wishes to speak to this item I do think it is worth noting in the memo that you had for those for the benefit of the public who may not have read the report or method memo that beta now employs four hundred and sixty five people in administrative and prototype manufacturing facilities or actually at the burlington at the burlington facility out of a total of six hundred employees at the company many in high paying positions and also to note that beta is currently seeking to fill another hundred and twenty five full-time positions and eighty five internship opportunities at the burlington international airport in all beta projects total expenditures on capital investments and salaries in excess of two hundred million dollars through 2024 quite an accomplishment um with that we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously thank you so much for your time and thank you for being here with us um that will move us to item nine point eight which is the south end coordination schedule update and for this item I believe we have dpw director shape and spencer we also have city engineer norm baldwin as well as senior public works engineer quarry mims and perhaps others i'd laura you're here as well um laura wheelock also public uh senior senior engineer um we've we've allowed 20 minutes or so for this presentation including some questions um and is the hours getting later and later um but this is important so um this is really an informational item there's no action required from the council uh but we will we will continue with the with the update which is an important one thank you president paul uh thank you we will be expeditious here uh in the fall of 2021 we put together the south end construction coordination plan with two main goals to deliver generational infrastructure renewal and minimizing the impacts of that investment on our community by coordinating our projects together in three years we've been very successful to accomplish a number of projects that norm will go over now we have added downtown to the construction coordination plan as we have many generational projects there as well in some over 200 million dollars of investment in our infrastructure is critical that we do this in a way that it treats our stakeholders as well as possible during these uh invasive investments so uh tonight uh we want to give you an update on the projects and how they have either been accomplished or shifted over time and specifically next meeting we will be here with some requests for contract and budget amendments for the Champlain Parkway to make sure you understand the context of all the projects in that ask we have this update city engineer norm baldwin thank you japan so this first slide is an indication of of the projects that we've been working on ones that are complete ones that are currently in construction and those that are in the process of development that will eventually arrive at process of construction so i'm not going to read through the list but those lists um presented to the council in advance so you should be able to already read it so i'm not going to spend time reading through those but what's important to the public is of course what are we talking about in terms of projects what do they look like what are we referring to bank street cherry street here's uh um and btc here's the drawings associated with that project the champlain parkway and uh its corridor and we have the rail yard enterprise project and its uh design and concept and then we have of course main street gray streets which is currently underway and you're seeing the active construction as we speak and then you have the schedule that is the schedule that was previously noted years ago um obviously when we advance projects we encounter things things start finish so on so forth but they're all the best prediction we can at the time but what's worth noting is this is the updated schedule with all the the products that are in play the top row is the products that were complete these are the the blue area is the products that are currently underway you'll see a red line which is the current date and time in which we are at which is the first quarter of 24 um the products that we have added since the last round is of course main street gray streets uh the cherry street gray streets bank street gray streets and btc one important element to this schedule is the fact that rail yard enterprise is continuing forward and we actually were successful in getting the environmental assessment complete which means we also had a determination of uh finding of no non significant no significant impact which then allows us to proceed with preliminary design and uh once we reach a stage of reasonable preliminary design of 60 percent we'll then begin the process of railway construction you will see in in comparison i know the council has expressed interest in this is champion parkway was broken to two phases the first phase is nearly complete and we'll be likely complete this august the second phase we're looking to to advance is potentially beginning this august right behind that work and so we are working right now to package that design and keep that moving as was required by our partners in that process some of what i think this presentation does is it provides you kind of the the compare and contrast and some of the challenges that won't go along with projects as i've noted the rail yard enterprise did get its environmental assessment which means we have a third alternative selected and we can begin design surveys already started underway and current schedule suggests the august april 2027 start of construction it's um as our best guess as i noted earlier the parkway is anticipated to be complete this summer early summer august first and main street great streets as you know is already started important elements to the update is champlain parkways final phase is worth noting is uh the northern segment and then southern segment the northern segment is pine street from kilburn to main the southern segment is 189 to the seven interchange it's basically south of home avenue it connects into the interstate system as i noted previously we're looking to potentially business in march of this year federal highway and v-trans have expressed urgency to repackage or bid final phase no later than july 1st given the financial scale of the project and its impact on their transportation project priorities this project is a very expensive project ccrpc and all the other products have kind of worked around over the years is the fits and starts of whether it's going to go or not go and so there's a lot of concern how this financial swing will impact so many other transportation priorities so that's why you hear from federal highway and v-trans about us moving ahead moving forward as chaplain noted there was a this is an attempt to brief the the council on where we are with products to be prepared for the will be in next month's ask at the board of finance seeking to authorize contract authorizations for the parkway to advance packaging of design for phase two and also completion of the first phase with some additional costs that were anticipated and then one final note on main street great streets on this slide is we're preparing to submit grant applications for the second phase of major great streets which is intended to connect from pine street west to further points west for main street there is some discussion about how far west potentially either battery street or all the way to college street and then you've heard earlier tonight the uh the fact that we were successful in receiving a raise grant and uh congressional direct dispending with anticipated starts of spring of 2026 and bank street start 2027 and as we as was noted by staff Burlington town center public improvements is currently underway and then it's just uh I'll leave this to questions and there's the listing of staff members that are participating in those various projects hopefully that was quick enough maybe too fast but great thank you so much so again this item is informational and it doesn't require any any action from the council but that doesn't mean that we don't have questions uh Councillor Bergman um so you guys know my interest in the railroad enterprise uh project and its relationship with the Champlain Parkway so talk to me about the finishing of the parkway like three years before an estimated construction or beginning of the railroad enterprise um and uh talk to me about the pitfalls the potential pitfalls that would have you come here and say whoops can't do the railroad enterprise project and yet you have already Mr. Bergman voted to authorize the completion of the Champlain Parkway despite you having said that you would not do that talk me out of my quandary I'll start uh thank you Councillor Bergman uh the plan that you saw tonight uh does reflect that the railroad enterprise has reached a milestone the fact that it received its environmental assessment from federal highway means that this is a viable project in terms of moving to preliminary design the state and the feds have committed up to 20 million dollars on this project that is a major commitment and one that we are continuing to advance the Champlain Parkway which is a separate project uh is moving in a way that when it goes out to bid in march and starts in august it will not be completed until 2026 or potentially 2027 but the uh plan is to have the rep under construction in 2027 so there is a bit of a gap there with the parkway final uh construction contract being completed uh a year or so before approximately a year before the railroad enterprise project is under construction that is a shift in the sequencing that what we showed three years ago and that's why we felt it was very important to get in front of you to explain the that change well thank you so talk me out of my concern about voting to like complete the parkway which i don't believe should be ending up in the king street neighborhood and and i said i wouldn't support that and i understand the financial hit but it's just fundamentally wrong so talk me off of the ledge when it comes to my fears that there all of a sudden is going to be in that year period when we're not going to be able to do the railroad enterprise project talk me away from that please so i first say that the really good enterprises continue to be the one of the highest priorities right there along with the parkway itself and maybe even more so given the unique challenge of trying to develop a project in such a constrained site obviously you know that it's got historic elements building elements it's got it's got archaeological sites it's got contamination it's got a rail yard which we don't actually control and cannot condemn and we've worked very hard to get through a federal process to get this ea in a matter of fact we meet on a weekly basis to really kind of pound forward and make this thing happen and i think federal highway knows and understands that what the council's interests are in terms of getting this project done well in advance of the parkway but also is of the mind that if we really want their support for the regular enterprise project they need to have the Champlain Parkway complete and operational and so we're we're at kind of as a city when we're asking for federal dollars and state dollars we're at a disadvantage where we don't really fully decide schedules only we try to keep our work as far forward as we can to accommodate what council is asking for and so we are partners with an agency that may not fully appreciate or understand where we are with because they have another interest in that is the broader city broader state and community Chittin County community who are fighting for transportation dollars so we're trying to do our best it's obviously not a simple process we wish it would have gone much further much faster we have worked very hard very diligently to kind of arrive at where we are today and i i feel proud of that work even though it's not arriving at where council just so i wanted to be i'll finish by thanking you nor might know how hard you work and Laura and Cori and Chapin so this is not a hit on you when i when i when i say that and i totally appreciate that you haven't talked me off the ledge thank you so much councillor bergman um are there any other councillor councillor McGee thank you president paul i share councillor bergman's concerns and um you know when we approved moving forward with phase one i think it was pretty clear that we were doing so in anticipation that the really ardent price project would come first so i will probably be reaching out to figure out who we need to appeal to to get the federal highway administration to um be a little more flexible um i think given the fact that it's taken 40 plus years for the Champlain Parkway to get to this point it would hope that uh we could apply an equity lens to finishing the the last uh bit of the work here and understanding that you know for the king napal neighborhood it's really a non-starter for um phase two to happen before the really ardent price project so that that's where i'm at right now and just so i fully understand the action you'll be coming to the council with at our next meeting or the next board of finance meeting will be to approve additional funding for phase one or funding for phase two it would be uh for both it's an updated project budget along with three supporting contracts one being the designer gha one being dnk who's supporting our our work with the Champlain Parkway and then w spu is a resident engineering services and public engagement that supports the project itself for parkway and just to be clear it would not include the construction contract for phase two those are the supporting consultants for phase two that norm just referenced some of the scope for those contractors would carry through into phase two uh in full disclosure i think it's important to notice and various counselors can have all different perspectives but the city did embark with our federal and state partners a very robust NEPA process which is the national environmental policy act which looked at the impacts on the king and napal neighborhood and found that there was no disproportionate impact in that neighborhood uh the documentation is all on the Champlain Parkway website there is a projected increase in nine percent of traffic an increase to traffic of approximately nine percent in the neighborhood but that is balanced with exclusive pedestrian phases bump outs traffic calming and other measures to uh manage that traffic so happy to talk to counselors offline this is a complicated situation we're happy to make ourselves available i appreciate that and also want to echo counselor Bergman's thanks for the work that you all are doing i recognize that this is not an easy environment to operate in and uh i know that you all are working hard so i definitely don't want my remarks to be taken as anything other than gratitude for that thank you thank you councillor McGee seeing no others will oh my apologies councillor traverson then councillor grant just um thank you very much for the presentation just a couple clarifying questions so i understand that your next ask of the board of finance would not be for any construction contract for phase two of the Champlain Parkway but do you have any anticipated timeline as to when you would be seeking council support of construction contract and on phase two so as we speak we're trying to we're working to repackage the uh final phase of the parkway we found some uh some uh details that need to be worked out to be able to advance to the next phase of bidding the final phase which we anticipate bidding potentially in march and uh there's typically a big process that takes at least three weeks of open bid process or review and then uh we'll probably be looking to um come to the council probably in april may for potential contract for construction depending on how it lands with the bids and finance one thing that i will note that federal highway and the state have been very clear about spending the right amount of time to refine the design to make sure we know and understand costs the uh that we found some complications with the design and the respect that the road to affordability really discounted many problems and many issues and this first phase that cost substantially more than what we originally anticipated as a result federal highway and state have been asking us to spend the right amount of time to repackage this in a way that's going to account for costs in a very more refined way so we'll see how our schedule goes but um i will also note to you that the first phase was originally anticipated to be complete at the end of this coming construction season and we're really only maybe three or four months short of that schedule by ending in august um thank you for that i i trust that in a perfect world um you would still very much like to have the rail yard enterprise project complete as soon as possible to the completion of phase two of the Champlain Parkway looking at the schedule as you've laid it out here and i don't anticipate you may have the answers at this moment but on the rail yard enterprise project do you see any areas where looking forward there may be opportunities to crunch the timeline a little bit i mean looking at let it right now i mean are we currently looking at right of way acquisition for the rail yard enterprise project is there for whatever reason some steps that we need to finish up before we can start that process is there a way for us to do final engineering for example before we've completed the right of way acquisition i'm just curious as to whether or not it actually needs to be in the sequence as we're seeing here in the in the block schedule or are there any opportunities from your perspective to crunch the timeline a bit so this is a very simplified schedule right obviously there's critical path elements that we're monitoring and tracking and trying to keep ahead of the schedule and keep things moving as quickly as possible as an example we did not have an EA and we were looking to advance baseline survey for purposes of design assuming that the right of way that we have or picked by council was the one that was actually going to move forward so we've been advancing that scope of work early to do the very thing you're talking about is how quickly can we make things move and these is what this is one of the things that we try to identify and work with but there's so many things that the federal process requires that is requires it be sequential but there are where we can exercise some flexibility with them they are working with us to do that right i know it's very late but with you all here i want to take the opportunity to express gratitude for the great work that you and our construction partners have done on phase one of the project i think it's very impressive how far along you've gotten it i know many south end neighbors are um pleasantly surprised by what they found through all that and are very eager to get that open i know you all have heard from folks that are wanting to use that shared use path uh right now for the purposes of getting out and walking and biking um so thank you very much for that work i i too um you know share the concerns about completing the parkway without the rail yard enterprise project i would love for those two projects to be as close as possible i do also want to say though that i'm i'm mindful of the fact that there are also significant traffic uh and pedestrian vehicle safety concerns that exist on the south end of this project as well there are many neighborhoods um in south meadow neighborhood and in the addition neighborhood for example that for many many years have been dealing with uh in northern traffic impact along home avenue and along pine street um that for years has been promised to be relieved by uh our ultimately opening the entire parkway project here so so there are competing demands i think on on either end of this project here that that we're going to have to be uh mindful of as we uh work to bring this to completion so thank you thanks very much uh we'll go to councilor grant hi it's late i don't want to get into a big back and forth but uh there are equity issues around uh the sampling parkway um and the king street maple area and they're traditionally equity issues across our country with regards to projects like this i remember when i'd be younger my mother explained to me you know what they mean by the other side of the tracks and that when you're in communities and you look at how neighborhoods are divided by railway tracks um and then also uh later on major highway projects and things like that so i don't think we should undervalue or discount discount that because if that area had more political power those people made more money in that area there might have been more debate about it thank you thanks very much councilor grant um so i see no others in the queue um and as i said this is an informational item so thank you again for your time and i'll all of your effort on this on all these many projects um we have two more deliberative items the next is item nine point nine which is a resolution regarding implementation of a carbon pollution impact fee and for this item i will go to councilor bergman for a motion thank you president paul i ask i'd move to waive the reading and uh adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second great thank you so much councilor bergman seconded by councilor king uh council bergman the floor is yours thank you um i'm cognizant of the time so i will try to be brief and let me start by saying that despite the various comments that we have gotten about this resolution putting something on the ballot and i wish it was something that we were going to do it just does not do that it simply sets up a process to put something on the ballot i hear my friends at this table his desire to look at more than a fee something like incentives and the need for more input and for more granularity and this resolution is exactly what that calls for the resolution calls exactly for that i hear a desire to act i also hear the desire to not deny not to deny climate change by using the tactic of delay delay delay and this resolution takes up this challenge it takes up the offers made in december by some of my friends at this table to look at august as an alternative to a town meeting day ballot item it allows us to engage in a process that both opponents like vgs and uvm and uvm mc are calling for and what many people including folks who were here tonight and who wrote to us are asking us for in terms of dealing with the carbon fee ordinance and with climate action generally so let me conclude by asking you to please support this resolution and don't act to deny by acting to delay thank you thank you so much councillor bergman is there any other councillor that wishes to speak to this resolution uh councillor grant i was out lit dropping this weekend it was in the fifties on saturday it was a nice day for lit dropping but it was deeply concerning thank you thank you councillor grant councillor bar barlow thank you president paul um you know i'm not i'm not a climate denier i'm i'm not but i i do think we need to be realistic about how we decarbonize buildings smaller than the ones we've already assessed a carbon pollution impact fee for and i know i've said this again i feel like a broken record sometimes but at the tuc meeting on january 9th we saw a list of 112 parcels between 25 000 and 50 000 square feet and based on the composition of those buildings we saw a lot of buildings that weren't on the tax rolls buildings that um housed small businesses like coffee shops or retailers and restaurants in our downtown old north end pine street north avenue and it's just not clear to me that the carbon pollution impact fee is the right tool to decarbonize those buildings if we make it onerous to own property in burlington commercial industrial property in burlington um or hard to operate businesses there i'm not sure we decarbonize if those businesses and property owners just go to one of our neighboring communities because it's less expensive to operate known there so i'm not saying that it's off the table but i'm just saying i'm not going to presuppose we're going to have a ballot item later this year to expand expand the the fee we assess on carbon for those buildings and i i do hope there are other ways we can address it through incentives through weatherization through whatever other tools are available um but i just have real concern about expanding assuming that we're going into a process with an outcome but i i look forward to a process i look forward to continuing to work with my my colleagues at this table on decarbonizing other buildings um i'll just leave it there i'm not supporting this tonight but i'm committed to continuing to work on this thank you thank you councillor barlow uh councillor uh councillor travers thanks president paul um you know i understand the dangers presented by the climate crisis and as a father of three little kids and deeply concerned about the future we're creating for next generations this this is why i was proud to work on strengthening and passing our new carbon pollution impact fee ordinance last november you know during the committee process on that ordinance we we heard and responded to testimony from dozens of stakeholders and strengthened that carbon fee in many important respects the carbon fee for fossil fuel fuel years users is based on the social cost of carbon in vermont as calculated by the vermont climate council and its latest climate action plan they calculated that figure to be 128 dollars per ton of greenhouse gas emissions our carbon fee actually went higher than that figure in setting our carbon fee at 150 dollars per ton when this was before the ordinance committee we took action to significantly strengthen our carbon fee ordinance by mandating that new construction prioritize electric geothermal or solar heat in primary thermal energy systems it's only if electrification is infeasible uh that a building may choose between using an eligible non-fossil fuel system or a fossil fuel system and paying our carbon fee i do certainly hear and respect that a number of individuals still feel that our ordinance even with its improvements and the strengthening that we did for it did not go far enough I really don't agree though that we failed to listen to those stakeholders I certainly don't agree with some folks who've been claiming that that we are anti climate for not supporting the resolution before it I don't agree with and take exception to any implication that we are unconcerned about the 50 degree temperatures that we had just recently I'm I'm very concerned about that we haven't even taken a moment though to celebrate the the work that we did just last November when our carbon fee was enacted just a few weeks ago we stood up the most progressive forward-thinking climate policy of any community in Vermont indeed perhaps of any small city in the United States that said I completely agree our work on climate change is far from done I also acknowledge as I did during the committee process that this work may require our revisiting the carbon fee I thank you for raising that point counselor Barlow this is why in again in addition to the improvements that I just mentioned that we made to the carbon fee ordinance that the ordinance committee did add strong record keeping and reporting requirements such that once we've secured actual data on how our carbon fee is working we can make evidence-based decisions on a future path as previously mentioned our new carbon fee was stood up just a few weeks ago I'm not even certain that over those few weeks a single building applicant has applied for a permit yet under our carbon fee at this earliest stage while I agree with the openness to our revisiting the carbon fee at a later date I can't support a resolution that's already setting us on a path to make significant changes to a new ordinance that's barely gotten off the ground I certainly respect the reasoning for bringing it forward but can't vote in support of it this evening thank you thank you counselor Barlow I'm sorry counselor Travers counselor Grant I find at times that this counselor regrettably has a habit of what we've called in the past of kicking the can which leads to further delays and doesn't incentivize businesses to do the right thing building owners to do the right thing I think that we have to really think about this because we leave things at the time goes by so quickly and we leave things open too much without following back up on it in a timely way and I think this is something where we can really affect real change and this would help to motivate people to think about what they can do sooner rather than later thank you thank you counselor Grant we'll go to counselor Mickey and then hopefully a vote at that point thank you president Paul and I will do my best to be brief there are really just two points that I want to make I think in government we talk often about carrots and sticks so I am fully supportive of incentivizing conversion to electrification I think that's something that we have to do if we're going to get to where we need to be as quickly as we need to be there but without some I don't want to say threat but without some other incentive pushing folks in that direction which is the carbon impact fee we're not going to get there as quickly as we need to and this resolution works towards putting a question on the ballot in August that question will not immediately implement an additional carbon pollution impact fee it will give us the tool in our toolbox and I don't see a reason why we would delay adding tools to our toolbox to address the climate crisis thank you thanks very much councillor McGee Laurie we're gonna we'll go to a vote on this and we'll do this and we'll do this by roll councillor Barlow no councillor Bergman yes councillor carpenter no councillor Jang yes councillor Doherty no councillor Grant yes councillor Hightower yes councillor King yes councillor McGee yes councillor Shannon no councillor Travers no city council president Paul no six eyes six nays six eyes and six nays the motion fails I did want to note something for the record that I had misspoke on item 7.9 which was the beta item if we could just make sure that that was a vote it was not a unanimous vote there were 11 of us that voted and there was one recusal so just wanted to note that recusal that moves us to the last deliberative item on our agenda it was 8.16 on consent and is now 9.10 the van purchase for Burlington Cares and councillor Grant you had requested this come off consent my understanding is you would you would like to have the mayor perhaps speak to some questions that you might have had or that weren't perhaps answered at the board of finance when we discussed this a week ago well not necessarily have any questions but it's come up many many many many a time about our failure to keep the public updated about things that advance community safety and so part of the resolution that we had passed was to make sure that we were informing the public and not putting things related to community safety in the consent agenda not that we have to have a long conversation but this um this allocation of funds uh in order to purchase the van for the Cares team I think is a really important step it shows that we're getting closer to they still have to make hires there have been interviews but we're waiting for the team to be hired but we're getting closer to getting a real community driven resource this is something that it's our version of the cahoots model and the cahoots model from members of the community from stakeholders who are on the front lines of the mental health crisis have really been wanting in our community for a long time and I just wanted to make sure it was talked about in our meeting as opposed to sometimes we know the consent agenda is not something that the public always looks at in detail thank you thank you councillor Grant councillor McGee I'll come to you for a motion thank you president Paul I would move to approve and authorize the chief of the Burlington police department to enter into a purchase agreement with new england motor car company to acquire a ram pro master van for use by the Burlington Cares team in the mount not to exceed $84,995 with review and approval of any purchasing agreements by the city attorney's office and would ask for the floor back after a second that thank you thank you councillor McGee seconded by councillor jane councillor McGee the floor is yours thank you president Paul and I just wanted to say quickly that I'm glad to see that this is moving forward and it's something that we have talked about at length for a number of years here at the council and look forward to hopefully by the time that my time here in the council is done be pretty close to seeing this team operationalized and also just want to echo councillor Grant's remarks that you know it is important for us to have these items on the deliberative agenda not only is it a moment for folks to tune into the recording and and see these discussions but often the items on our consent agenda aren't always written about in the media the next day so to the extent that you know even if we have a brief conversation to show that these things are moving forward it does reach a broader audience so I would be supportive of that going forward thank you thank you so much councillor McGee are there is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously and with that that concludes our deliberative agenda and also concludes our meeting I would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved seconded seconded by made by made by councillor McGee seconded by councillor Berkman all those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye aye any opposed please say no we are adjourned at 11 31 our next meeting is Monday February 26 and we will look forward to seeing you then have a good evening