 on the first Tuesday in March, March 1st, 2022. Town meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in Town Meeting TV election forums. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. My name is Emily Brewer and I will be moderating tonight's forum between South Burlington City Council candidates, Tim Barrett and Linda Bailey. Tim is the incumbent and this is for a three-year term. Now, if you are watching this live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. And you can watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087, Burlington telecoms channel 17 and 217, as well as online at Town Meeting TV's YouTube page. With that said, we'll get started with tonight's discussion. And Tim, we'll start with you for opening statements. Can you please tell us why you are running and what will be different for South Burlington if you are elected? Thank you, Emily. As you know, I'm running for city council. Again, it's a three-year seat and this will be my third term if I'm elected and I do hope I am. I came to Vermont in 1981 as a new engineer at IBM. I've been there for 40 plus years through the transition to global foundries. I've served on the library board of trustees for the city. I've also been on the DRB for four and a half years and I was the chair for the last year and then I was elected in 2016. I hope to maintain the type of attentiveness and attention to the details of the subject matter that's facing the city over the next three years as we've just come through a really difficult time with the pandemic and a bit of discussion about some recent changes to the LDRs. And I think we have some other goals and challenges ahead of us and I wanna be part of that discussion and I wanna have that vote of the five people that are on the city council when that time comes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tim. Linda, can you please tell us why you are running and what will be different for South Burlington if you are elected? Hi, everyone. My name's Linda Bailey and as you've heard, I'm running for the three-year seat on city council. Why I'm running is a question I get a lot. I wanna support our city and being a place where all of us all across the cultural and financial spectrum can thrive. I want to help balance the needs between the environmental needs and the human needs. The residents in all corners of our city need to have attention. South Burlington doesn't exist in a bubble and growth is inevitable here in the heart of the state's highest employment area. The choices we make here and now, they're gonna affect things for a long time with wide-ranging consequences not just for us but for the region. I wanna build a future that's sustainable and welcoming for our children and grandchildren. I would be a fresh voice and fresh ears for everyone here. Let me know what your needs are. Thank you very much for that, Linda. And now we will get going on our questions. So we will start with you, Linda. What do you think is getting overlooked in the conversations that are taking place at the South Burlington City Council? Well, over the last several months, I've been either attending or zooming in on the city council meetings. And I've heard a great deal of talk about city center, a new city center and about the SEQ or the Southeast Quadrant. We need to be looking at the rest of the city. So we need to continue to build bike and walking paths that connect all parts of their city for work and for play. Maybe another park in some of the areas like the Sheldon Road area where they have two small parks with some more for that level of residence wouldn't be a bad idea. And one of the biggest things we need to do is we need to ask the people who maybe aren't has connected to the daily city government what they need. We don't want any corner of our city left behind. Thank you very much, Linda. Tim, what do you think is getting overlooked in conversations right now in the South Burlington City Council? Well, we've been preoccupied for the last few months with lots of heavy discussions about the draft regulations that came out of the planning commission and not to minimize the other things that have come up in small bits and pieces, but there are some pressing issues that we need to address and one of them is overtime for the fire department. There was a slight misunderstanding for a while about the number of fire department members that were active that's been resolved at this point. So they're not really down on their numbers but they have had to work so much during the pandemic servicing. So many people between fire and ambulance that there needs to be some recruitment there to fill in some slots to get more people on the fire department. They've got a couple of recruits they've had in the last couple of years. We've also had some departures unfortunately but it's really important that our public safety, police and fire don't suffer through too much overtime because I think you can have a long-term stress effect on their good being. We also had to kind of put the rec center on a back burner for a while until we get through the budget process and through the LDRs to figure out what our true direction is that and whether we're gonna bring something to the voters. And last but not least, if you haven't noticed trying to drive between Trader Joe's and Williston Road those lights don't function very well. They don't talk to each other and there is a block of money and a project to be done to put adaptive controls on all those traffic signals from Trader Joe's down to Williston Road so that they interoperate, they detect cars that are in the lanes waiting to turn and then change the light after the lane empties. It's little things like that plus repaving that section of Dorsey Street that's got the ruts in it to make that commercial area of the city much more palatable to drivers. Great, thank you, Tim. And we will stick with you and move on to the next question here. Given the rapid growth of housing options in South Burlington do you think that the city has enough public safety resources and school capacity to handle this growth and how do you think this problem can be addressed? That's a really great question. And like I just said, they're finding it. Lots of businesses are finding it hard to hire people right now because the participation level in the workforce is down across the whole country. And I think that police forces are also finding it difficult to find people but they are getting some. It depends on how much extra roadway and density of housing that we add whether it depends on how many police personnel we need to hire. And as far as the school goes the school is already under some pressure in two of its schools in the Orchard district and also at the Marcot Central School they are preparing to go out to bid to put trailers to extend some area in the school so they can make more room for the different activities that the kids have to have. The city's part that they can play in that is that there's already a committee right now to study impact fees and how to set the correct impact fee for new home construction to aid the schools in their ability to meet future budgets and also take on extra load of kids in the future. We've already worked well with the school with the building of the library city hall by having to engineer a storm water facility underneath the new parking lot after we reached a land swap agreement with them which benefits them because it helped them to meet their storm water permits because they have more than three acres of impervious surface. And so it met their needs and we engineered that for them. I think we paid for it as well and then it also took care of the new city hall. Great, thank you very much Tim. Now Linda, do you think that the city has enough public safety resources and school capacity to handle the growth of housing options in South Burlington and how do you think this can be addressed? Well, let's under the capacity of the schools is still up in the air a bit in my opinion. We are showing some slow growth here in South Burlington but across the state most of the schools are showing declining enrollments. A lot of the students that we get here are being tuitioned in. So that certainly affects what we have. One thing to keep in mind is that statistically across the country, family sizes are shrinking. So even though we might add more housing here that doesn't necessarily mean a big jump in the number of students in the schools. As far as the public safety, crime and public safety I believe is what you are asking about. Climb certainly impacts the quality of life for everyone whether there's someone who has been hurt by crime directly or not. Fortunately, we do have a very good police department. When I'm on city council, I'll request that we get regular updates on what crime is happening, where it is, in our city, how they're occurring and then work with the police and the residents to make sure that everyone can know what's happening, be proactive and feel safe. Short or buttle? Absolutely, go ahead. Just a small correction. The only tuition students that the school district has is in the high school and they're usually up from the islands area. The elementary schools do not have tuition students and that's where the need is right now. I just wanted to make sure. Yes, that is a good distinction to make. Thank you, Tim. All right, thank you both. We will move on to, we'll stay with Linda. Where do you see opportunities for addressing racial justice in the community of South Burlington and how will you use your council seat to meet this challenge? Well, this is certainly a very serious issue but it doesn't start or stop just with our borders, the borders of our town. We should, for starters, I think work with our neighbors, Burlington, Winooski which have a higher mixed population than we do. They both have been working hard and we should learn from what they're doing as well as learn from their mistakes so that we can make sure that everyone in our city feels safe and welcomed. Great, thank you, Linda. And Tim, where do you see opportunities for addressing racial justice in the community of South Burlington and how will you approach this on your city council? I agree with Linda on this and I think there are several aspects to this question. It's very broad, right? But the one laser beam that came out to me in 2016 after a black man was shot in his parked car after a police stop out west was the fact that we need to really maintain a lot of attention and focus on how well our police force is trained in recognizing their own bias and to make sure that our police forces as diverse as it can be is that we can hire into and that the training happen annually and be above and beyond whatever the federal regulations are. I asked the chief whip will come in and talk to Helen really in me back in 2016. And I also have had, we've had Chief Burke come in a couple of times and talk with city council and review for us what the training schedule is for the police force. And I think that South Burlington has a really good police force and I think that they are one of the best in the state for this type of problem. As you've seen the studies come out of UVM regarding the percentage of stops of different races of people when their cars are stopped, that South Burlington was like right in the middle in that Pareto chart. And we improved a little bit, I think, for the second review of the data, but we need to do better and we have to make sure that we keep training for that so that the police understand exactly what is correct thing to do. Great, thank you for that, Tim. Let's see, let's move on to... And Tim, we'll start with you. What is the city of South Burlington's most important source of revenue for city services and how does this relate to the overall financial health of the city? And as a follow up, how do you propose to support financial vitality? So, I mean, if you look at the budget sheet, right? The biggest source of income is from property taxes. And I know that everybody that's watching, all 12 of you, got a shock when you got your tax bills last year. Probably most people saw increases in their taxes and that's because we had to reassess the entire city, both residential and commercial. Unfortunately, commercial values were assessed to be depressed because of reduced revenue, which is how they're assessed and the burden came and shifted over to residential. And then you had a lot of out of state people bidding up the prices of homes. And so those values went way up and plus it hasn't been done since 2006. So a lot of homes were actually fairly far undervalued for what the real market price was. So now the housing prices are about at the correct level. I think the CLA is like 100.9% or something like that. That's a part of the factor that goes into calculating your education taxes, which is not what municipal is, right? But it's important that that CLA is around 100%. So most money comes from our property tax revenue. The other biggest revenue source, I think, is from our local sales option tax. We have an extra 1%. 70% of that comes back to the city. Montpelier keeps the rest. And then you have the rooms and meals. And of course, what killed that was the pandemic. It has come back. I think Amazon sales contributed a lot to surprise us, three cores away through the pandemic that sales tax actually didn't suffer as badly as we thought. There's also revenue that comes from electrical inspections of new duplexes and commercial and multi-family housing. That brings in a significant amount as well. And so I think you have to tailor your expenses in your budget to what your property tax revenue is and make sure that you cover all the services and also ensure that your capital improvement plan doesn't get lost because you're gonna need things like ambulances, which we're gonna get next year. You're gonna need to do fire truck at some point. So we have to make sure that we stay on top of these things. Great, thank you very much, Tim. Linda, what do you believe is the city of South Burlington's most important source of revenue for city services? And how does this relate to the overall financial health of the city and how do you propose to support financial vitality? All right, Tim, you did a great job of talking about where all of that revenue comes from. I'm not gonna bore anybody by saying all of that again. One of the things that is good for our future on tax revenue, one thing, the commercial, I expect will balance back out in a year or two once we come through the pandemic stage so they'll pick up more of the burden of the taxes. But we've also been really fortunate to attract some clean employers like beta technologies that's looking to expand here in our city. They'll improve all of our lives with good jobs and good jobs lead to people with the money to pay the taxes. One of the problems I've heard from business owners is the difficulty in attracting those good employers. Housing for them would be a good help here. These businesses and employees, they'll help create the sustainable tax structure and secure future. Let's do it smart. Great, thank you very much, Linda. Linda, we'll stay with you and the next question is about the airport neighborhood. The neighborhoods around the airport continue to face pressure from airport expansion and a need for noise mitigation. How do you think South Burlington should assist the residents in this area? This is one that is close to home. I live in the Chamberlain area so I definitely hear the airplanes, the F-35s, the whole thing. It's one of the things I evaluated when we moved here. All of the folks here near the airport, they've seen their neighborhoods go through drastic changes and it's really hard. For the airport things that are going on there, there is an airport zoning pass force. Not a bad idea, but there are some questions that need to be asked along or even before that. The airport property may be under exclusively FAA control. It may because I haven't been able to find where we've done anything to find that out for sure. As a city councilor, I'd want to ask the city attorney to provide an opinion on defining just what extent of control do we have over the zoning, future building, the things that are going to go on with what's now the airport's property. Great, thank you very much, Linda. We'll move over to you, Tim. How do you think South Burlington should assist the residents in the airport neighborhood? Well, I just want to back up and say that the single biggest blow to affordable housing in Chittenden County was the destruction and demolition of 200 homes in the immediate area around the airport that were within one of the decibel lines over the last 10 years. And we all grieve that loss because those people left the area, they're gone, and those homes, they were single family, small yards, picket fence. It's just the type of thing that I think when affordable housing advocates talk about the type of housing that they would like to have for a lot of people, those were the types of houses. And so the people that are remaining in that neighborhood are very sensitive to any other changes. That being said, now that the FAA is paid and the airport owns all that property, you can't build housing on it again for a very long time. I think it's at least 25 years. But in that ring around the airport that's contiguous to it, there's a lot of opportunity economically for new businesses that would work on projects that concern the airport. So I would love to see a business get a chance to go through a process and take advantage some of that property, but we can't do this without engaging the neighbors in that neighborhood very closely and make sure that their voices are heard and to ensure that at the very least, there's no new noise that's injected into the neighborhood. I would hope that any buildings built at the edge of Pickhart Circle would actually act as barriers and prevent some noise from entering the neighborhood. But we have to have a defined process for including those residents to make sure that they're happy with whatever the final disposition is. Thank you very much, Tim. Now sort of going off of this question and we will start with Linda. While the talk about the F-35 seems to have quieted some, is there anything that you are hearing from the residents about the planes right now? You still hear about, boy, they're noisy, that sort of thing. Some people have concerns about safety about them, but I think they're here. They're gonna stay here as long as the air guard does. And that we guard, there's not a lot about it that we can do. And the air base, it really isn't under the city's jurisdiction. We can certainly work with other cities in the area with new skin such that are so much affected by the noise like we are here in the Chamberlain area, maybe keeping flight training schedules during business hours, things when people are waking up. Certainly keep an eye on the noise mitigation that is going on by the airport and the FFA. Make sure that that is going along at a good pace. It's not being slow walked, otherwise they're here. Great, thank you, Linda. And Tim, any comments on what you're hearing from residents about the planes right now? Yeah, there was, you know, if you follow the arc of the discussion about the F-35s before they came and then they arrived and then, you know, there was a lot of protest either in Front Porch Forum or in other venues. We had people show up at city council meetings, you know, who were protesting them. I think, and I agree with Linda, you know, they're here. The congressional delegation has said over and over again they're not going anywhere, that fighter wing is here. Those planes are here. We had a six month hiatus of noise when before they arrived after the F-16s left back in 2019, but that's gone now. So there are some positive things that are happening, okay? So there are 19 homes now that are selected for new windows, new doors, sound insulation. That's a project that's just starting off. Helen really is a representative on the airport commission. She had some news about that last week. And there's also, there was a project to reinstall some brand new HVAC, including mostly air conditioning in the Chamberlain School, which was really important because it meant that the school didn't have to open their windows during warm weather. And from the school board's report at our steering committees they're very pleased with the amount of sound mitigation that they get when the planes are taking off. So that's a positive thing. And most importantly, that's for the kids in the school who are trying to learn. And I've been in that school when the F-35s took off and the teachers would have to stop and pause for like 20, 30 seconds until they were gone. I know it's a short amount of time. But now they report that that doesn't have to happen, which is, that's a good thing. There are also three new sound meters, South Burlington-Winooski and Willis-Nayton, I think. And you could go onto a webpage and as planes are flying overhead, you can actually see what the decibel readings are on these pole-mounted sound meters. Thank you very much, Tim. And I think we're getting close to time here, but I believe we have enough time for one more question. And then we'll wrap it up with some closing statements. And I will send it off. So while we have time, we'll stay with you, Tim. What role does municipal government and specifically South Burlington play in the mitigation of climate change? So it's a really good question. And this issue has come to the forefront over the last, well, I mean, if you've ever watched Al Gore's movie, you know, after 2000 until now, this subject has been building an attention in the media for a long time. And there are a lot of parts to this equation. The city has the difficult role of acting as an arbiter to try and understand what the balance is between growth, right, because growth is going to mean, in today's definition, growth is gonna mean more houses, more natural gas, CO2, more driving and CO2 from cars and just, you know, more energy use, right? As opposed to preserving natural open spaces and or forest blocks, which act as, you know, sequesters for carbon and also to act as filters for rainfall, especially heavy rainfall to clean that water and let it go into the, you know, to the water table and not have it spill over and run into potash brook, which is an impaired waterway and have that then flow into Lake Champlain because Lake Champlain is where we get our drinking water. It's also where our wastewater goes as well. But the point is that we want to send the cleanest water we possibly can in there. And so the city has that responsibility of trying to figure out what is the best, smartest growth to be able to make the best of both worlds. Thank you very much, Tim. And Linda, what role does South Burlington play in the mitigation of climate change? Yep, we've got a climate change task force that I know is working on proposals. They expect to have that out this coming September. I will be eagerly awaiting to see what they have come up with. As far as climate change, that we might have any form of control over. One of the major contributors to greenhouse gas is vehicle exhaust. According to the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, 45% of Vermont's greenhouse gases are from transportation. So we do have a role to play in that. We are, as I said before, in the heart of the employment for the whole state of Vermont. More homes here in this heart of employment would mean that there's less driving. Every home that we have here is one that is not having to drive an hour, coming and going every day. It's one less house that is out in a major forest and open areas in the state using up that land. There are certainly ways to balance what we do here as far as open space and what we need for housing for people. I know that here in South Burlington, as of today, there is about 15% of our acreage that is already conserved in one way or another that isn't going to be built on. And that's before the new land development regs, which are predicted to take about another 1,000 acres out of our city. So that would put us at about 25% of our city with no development on it. And I just don't think that that is doing our part for helping with climate change. Thank you, Linda. And- Can I have a shorter bottle on that? Yes, of course. Go right ahead, Tim. I just want to emphasize the enormous amount of work that the city and the city council did since 2017 to create the TIF district and have it passed by the voters and create Market Street and create Garden Street and create the Allard Square building for the seniors and create the other affordable housing complex that CHT owns. And I want to emphasize the amount of land in city center that's going to be utilized to build housing four stories tall and it's on a bus line. So the city has this other responsibility to ensure that they make the best use of their urban core to create a lot of housing. And we have been very well dedicated to that and we have spent a lot of hard effort and time and also an enormous amount of money. Thank you. Thank you for that, Tim. And we are pretty close to time. Yes, go right ahead, Linda. I said ask if I could have a slight rebuttal. Sure. We'll do a rebuttal instead of closing statements. Okay. Tim, I agree that city has put a lot of time and money into coming up with these new land development regs. Unfortunately, I think that the biggest thing that they have done is keep land in the Southeast Quadrant from being usable for housing for the people that need to live here. The Southeast Quadrant according to census data is the wealthiest highest income area in the state of Vermont. I don't want to see something that resembles a gated community down there. We already have built and paid for the roads, the sewer, the water, all the things that are there and paid for to build Admore housing. I think that it's something well within our ability to have housing balanced with good environment for the people to live in. Great. All right, unless you would like to do very quick closing statements, which you are entitled to do, I will move on to wrapping it up. Linda, would you like to say a quick closing statement? Just that I am so part of, I love my city of South Burlington. I want to see it to be a good place to hand off in the future to my children and grandchildren. I promise that I will be a fresh new voice and new ears for the residents here if I am elected. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Tim, go ahead. So I just want to re-emphasize the people that I am a moderate-minded, independent individual when it comes to city council. If you've ever watched any of the city council meetings, I will argue with anybody if I feel there's a point worth arguing. I have argued with the conservationists and I have argued with the business people. I have endorsed exit 12B, which most other people didn't, even the planning commission. And I have also argued on other things as well. And I just want to say that I look forward to serving in another three years if elected. And it's my hope that I can do that job. And when you go to the voting booth on March 1st, this is my name and how it's spelled. I know that Linda's name comes first on the ballot, but I'm the next name, please. So don't forget, Mark, feel the circle on mine. Thank you very much to both Tim and Linda for part four, participating in tonight's South Burlington City Council election forum. And thank you to our viewers for tuning in to Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of local community candidates, budget and ballot items. You can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv. And don't forget to vote on or before the first Tuesday in March, Town Meeting Day, March 1st, 2022. Early voting by mail is available by contacting your town clerk's office and polls will also be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thank you for watching.