 Hi, I'm Roxanne. Welcome, everyone. The mic situation is a little different today. So, this is only for online folks, so I'm attempting to project my voice, but let me know if I'm not doing a good job of it. It's fine. So, tonight we are starting with announcements. Thank you all for coming. This is awards two and three NPA meeting. We do understand if you can only stay for part of it, but if you stay to the end, you'll be eligible for a prize. There's a box and the prize over on that table. So, if you haven't put your name in yet, do that. It's art by Melissa Cain, who's a member of our community. So, we'll start by introducing the steering committee members. I'm Roxanne. I'm from Ward three. Tonight, we also have Shelby glass from word to Molly from word to three. Chris Haysley from three. And Charlie is our cameraman. Word to three. Okay. Yeah, we need more. What? I live on St. Paul's Street. What are you asking? Oh, welcome. Yeah, you are welcome. And yes. So, on the corner, right now we're live on YouTube. And so, when you leave here tonight, we will hold and you can go back to YouTube, type again, type in NPA once, and you can watch it over again. For a new day, you'll be able to go to cctv.org, cctv.org, and do the same thing. So it's archived in two different places. So, you can use your personal computer to either go on to YouTube or cctv.org. If you go to cctv.org, you're going to want to use the search method should be the date. So, if you use today's date, this is the only thing I'm recording today. So, it's going to pop right up. So, you'll see this meeting come up very, very quickly. The last thing is if you want to be heard on the tapes, you need to use this microphone here. So, you'll need to walk up to the microphone, which I've got leaning against the pillar because there are certain people running around the room and I'm afraid it's going to fly. So, you'll need to use that microphone if you want to be heard on the tape. So, these microphones do not amplify anything. So, that's why we kind of need silence in the room because this is just for the recording. So, Roxanne will have to project her voice to be heard. And if anyone over here just starts talking without using a microphone, no one online will ever hear a word you say, although you'll probably hear the response. So, unless anyone has any questions about all that, I'm Charlie Gee and this is Roxanne. Thank you. Thank you. And continuing the steering committee members, Erica Word 2. And we have Jess Hyman, who, as you may know, leads the dinner with a group of volunteers and with support from City Market and I think tonight it's Intervail Community Farm that also supported this meal. So, thank you, Jess. We also want to recognize Barbara McGrew, who recently retired from the steering committee after many years of service. So, Barbara, if you're here listening later, thank you for all of the attention and work you've put into this group and therefore this whole community. And if you're interested in joining the steering committee, especially if you're on in Word 2, you can get more information on CEDO's website or talk to any one of us. If you'd ever like to speak at an NPA or have a suggestion for something that we talk about, you can email us, but there's also a form. That's great to use. It's on CEDO's website. And another thing online for you to do that we'd love everyone here and all the people you know in Word 2 or 3 to do is to take the community survey we have. The link for it is on any of our agendas that are online. And there are a few printed copies if that is a better option for you. And just give them to one of us. Because that way we will know more about what people are looking for with these meetings and the NPA as a whole. Have you all been able to hear me so far? Okay. And so our next meeting is Thursday, January 12th. They are always the second Thursday of the month. Unless you hear otherwise. And like Charlie said, recordings can be found online, town meeting TV's website or their YouTube page. And yeah, so next up is the public forum. That is 10 minutes where anyone is welcome and encouraged to bring up anything they want to share. When you speak, you have two minutes to speak. And when you do, please state your name and word at the beginning. And that begins with no further ado. And please again, use the microphone up there. So public form is open. I'll jump to the same, just this one here that goes up and down the fence. Okay. Is it okay to take it out? Yes. Thank you. My name is Jim Lockridge. I'm from Ward 3. And I wanted to make sure everybody knew that there were proposals on the city's website now that are for determining the future of Memorial Auditorium. And I encourage you to look at them. There's only three, two of them support redevelopment of the whole building. And the organization that I work for, Big Heavy World has submitted a proposal specific to lighting up the old teen center again. And I hope you might take the time to learn more about the organization and our vision for that. It would fit in with anybody else's proposal if the city chose to do that. I also want to say a couple of years ago, there was a public process that the community fought for to determine what the future of Memorial would be. And the result was a list of about 25 priorities for things we wanted to see at Memorial. None of those was housing. Housing could land anywhere in the city on any parking lot. Memorial Auditorium has been a public commons for 100 years and should remain in service to the city as a gathering place for the community one way or another. And that's important to me. And I'm saying it tonight because I hope that if that's important to you, you'll speak to your city leaders, whether it's in the administration, the city council, and make sure your opinion is heard. It's important. That's the only way they'll come to understand that. So thank you. Hi, my name is Neela Grant. And I just a brief comment on what Jim just said that RFP was just thrown out there in a really shifty way, like no public announcement. They know the city made it very clear that they wanted to be a community space. So I'm running for city counselor. Try to do something about the way we we cut our citizens out of the public process. So just want to let you I feel like I'm in a different city of Burlington in the metaverse. I never thought I'd get into politics. But here we are. I want to thank everyone for their support. I'll be reaching out to people. Please participate in the caucus in January, progressive caucus in January. And I'll be letting you know when I need some volunteers. Thank you. So if you go to the city of Burlington's website, they have an area for RFPs, which are request for proposals. And you can see all the open requests for proposals that the city has. And Chris Haseley, I'm gonna put on my marketplace commission hat for this one. This is love. Is this working? So I'm Chris, in addition to being here on the steering committee, I'm also one of the resident representatives on the marketplace commission. We will be holding a work session at our January meeting the third Wednesday of the month. Unfortunately, it's at 9am in the morning, which is I think a barrier for a lot of folks, particularly in this room. We're particularly interested in hearing from the residents that live and work in Burlington about what you think of the marketplace, what you want to see and if you have any thoughts and feelings on it. So if you have any opinions you'd like to share, we'd love to hear them. Thank you. Last call for public forum. Okay. Great. So we will move on to grant announcements. Introduced. With everything going on, we need more outlets for our community to get together. Big Heavy World has a very strong and long track record for providing opportunities for youth in this community, particularly with respect to the performing arts. So I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda to have a brief discussion about that and offer up a resolution in support of that for discussion here tonight. If the books are amenable to that. I would need a second to entertain that. Thank you. So I tried to be close and sustained here with the resolution but simply say be it resolved that the wards two and three NPA support the proposal from Big Heavy World to reestablish the teen youth center known as 242 Main Street located in the lower level of the Memorial Auditorium. That was the that was the language I put up. I don't know if folks want to have a conversation. The language I would propose if folks are agreeable would be as follows. Be it resolved that the wards two and three neighborhood planning assembly support the proposal from Big Heavy World to reestablish the teen youth center known as 242 Main Street located in the lower level of Memorial Auditorium. Did everyone hear that? Does anyone have anything to discuss about it? Read all of them and think on it. I don't know if I want to go ahead with a yes on something that I haven't looked at all my options yet. So I think it's premature for us to be saying yes at this moment. I don't say no to it. I just want to see all of my options and say yes to what I feel most inclined to choose if people don't mind them. That's my view. If I'm reading the news reports correctly, there were only three days. One is to turn it into apartments, cozy apartments. One is from a company that claims it is part of city place when it is not. I can't see either of those being accepted. And the only one that makes any sense is Big Heavy World. However, that's only in part of the building. Am I correct? Yes. So I still think we need to. I can't see them accepting either of the other proposals I know, but I'm looking at the timing of this particular thing. Here's what made the show. It's this I feel like this is not the right time to be voting on this. I feel like we're premature in going ahead with that. So I would ask that we be given time to read the materials that are offered and perhaps next session put in our voice about it. I agree that if we could put it off till next time to, I don't know if it's time sensitive. I personally don't know much about this. And I think that's a good point. Then we can warn it for next time and put it on the agenda. Right. I'm sorry. Milo. My concern would be. Because of how this was just kind of, and I feel a very sneaky way. Of being put out there without public process or input. Who knows if before our next meeting. It gets put before the city council. And I don't know if our council is going to be able to put it on the agenda. Right. Milo. My concern would be. The city council. And I don't know if our counselors can speak to that. And then you're asked to vote on it because I know the. The one of the proposals was from somebody who claimed to be involved with city place and they're not actually, but I don't know anything about the third proposal. It'd be interesting to me to find out if they're connected to the Marin anyway. Just asking. I can touch briefly on. The timeline that I read in seven days. I haven't heard anything. If that's, if it's okay for you to do that now. Anybody else has something to say. Go ahead. Okay. It sounds like CEDO is going to be reviewing. The proposals that have come in so far. And the only thing that the seven days story says is that they plan to bring it back to the city council in January. I don't know if they plan to come back with that first meeting. I know we have three meetings in January. So. With that piece of information, I would understand if folks want to take a little bit more time, but. I don't believe that it'll come back to the council before. Before the January meeting of the. NPA. And I, our next meeting is January 12th. I'm open to. We do, we do have a little. To work with. So if there's time to fully. Under. So we can all understand it. We can do that. We can have a raise the pan. So I don't know if that's the official way to do this, but. We can do that. Can we have a raise the pan? So I don't know if that's the official way to do this, but. We can do that. We can have a raise the pan. The proper motion would be to postpone the discussion to. To make that motion as the sponsor of the primary motion, but if someone else. Wishes to put that forth and say so moved. We will need a second for that. So who's secondated. So the discussion now will move toward the discussion to leave. We want to talk about this now or what. January. So. So vote to post them. I just think it's a little ironic that we want to rush ahead when we're criticizing. Others. For rushing ahead. I'd like to see it done methodically and thoughtfully. And. I'd like to be a fully informed citizen. When I make a decision on something that is. I consider quite important. You got to get to a microphone. I just want to say everybody is very kind to have this conversation. Chris, thank you for the initiative. And also thank you over here for. Your attention to. Process. And I'm just grateful. Thank you for entertaining this. I didn't expect it. And it's. It's just. It's our world. So thank you. It's just. It's our world. So thank you. Yeah, I think. Yeah. All in favor. Thanks. Sorry, but I've never done this before. So now we're going to. Yes. Yes. To. Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Jess. I'm on the. Steering committee live over on our champagne street. I'm going to tell you all about the grants that I hope all of you voted on last month. How many of you actually voted on the community grant proposal. Hey, somebody be wonderful. So, so as you know, we put out the RNPA has all NPAs have a certain amount of money to allocate throughout the year. So we've got a lot of money. So we've got a lot of money to allocate throughout the year. All for community projects. And we received 10 projects. All fantastic. Really. A really diverse mix of creative activities. And the outreach. And other community and community events. And we had folks vote. We received a total of 97 votes. The steering committee has decided on some allocations for these funds. What, and I just wanted to share a little bit about how the decision was made. So as you remember, all everyone had the choice to everyone. I'm still hot from frying potato pancakes. So everyone reviewed the grants and chose whether to fully fund or not to fund each proposal. We looked at all the data and decided that any proposal that received more than 50% of fully fund would get fully funded and proposals that received less than 50% and would get partially funded. So, on that criteria, two proposals received full funding, which was $750 the old north end repair bay and the old north end farmers market. And then the following proposals received partial funding, which is $400 a mural for the sustainability academy. I'm sorry for the integrated arts academy called let's talk about blank, the everyday neighbors to 2023 multi-lingual community wall calendar from Evan we was here. And then there were three different proposals for arts, music and dance festivals and so each of them was partially funded at $400. And what the steering committee proposed is that these three groups joined forces and you maximize those funds to have one bigger festival and so they're talking about it and I think that's going to happen. So the proposals that were pulled from from the ground pool. One of the proposals which was the NPA explainer scene, we actually decided was an NPA outreach project, and we wanted to make sure that it was funded because the goal of that project was to increase awareness about the NPA get more people involved. With the partnership with other NPAs around the city, that project will be fully funded and we'll have a little more money from other NPAs to to allow that to happen as well. And then the last one of the last proposal which was for the cold spin outside of battery street jeans that proposal was not funded, but it could be reconsidered in the spring, when some permitting issues are sorted out. And we really want to thank all the people who submitted applications and who are putting these wonderful creative ideas into the world and into the community. And we also want to thank all of you for voting, because that's what makes it all happen. So, I'm happy to take any questions. And if there are none I'll pass it along to the next Chris is there a question. Well, they're already voted. The only if you go to the NPA website, which is, whoops I don't know the words to and three NPA.weebly.com slash community grants community. Well, if you words to and three NPA dot weebly.com and go to the community grant page you can see the full allocation there. Any other questions. Nope. Okay, then we will pass it along to the next item. And just a minute. I'm just going to ask one thing can the people online have they been able if you all been able to hear everything here. More or less. Okay. Yes. All right, thanks. The microphone certainly helps. And then we will move on to updates from our elected representatives. So tonight in total we have Emma, we have Jean and Joe, and I think the school board is not here they had a prior commitment happening tonight. So this. So from now to 725 save a little more time than normal so more in for discussion. Start. Sure. That's okay. Councilors. Okay. Hi everyone I'm state representative Emma Mulvaney Stanek. Thanks to those of you in district 17 for the reelection I got reelected in November. I appreciate the contestant but still I appreciate the support. I so awards. Sorry, chin and 17 lines for got redrawn a little bit with redistricting it basically runs up Park Street and then over to pick in, and then all the way up into the New North then to about the Ethan Allen shopping Plaza and Ethan Allen Park roughly as the one number district I represent from battering park up to that. I think a little more time I would do. We are in the, about a month out from the legislative session beginning it starts January 4 it's a new biennium so in Vermont every two years everyone from governor on down to the things you probably don't even know in the palette, probate judge myself included high bail if et cetera get reelected. So we're all onto your terms so every two years the entire state government system in theory turns over. So just a little interesting notes about this biennium. We have a record number of new legislators, there was a historic number of retirements people who did not run again. So it's upwards to 50 or 60 new people in the House and Senate combined which is a historic class of new legislators. I had an all member briefing yesterday in my player which I can mention a couple things about about the state of what funding is looking like, and whatnot but I'll say they seem like a really feisty new group of legislators which I think is great for us from around the state, and they have no problem speaking up which is a great culture shift in that building. So I thought I'd start first with something more hyperally local this is the season that we're starting to drop bills to be introduced for January so I have three that I'm going to highlight among my list. But I want to start even more local than that about an ongoing issue that's been going on for years in Burlington in the new north end and really unfortunately coming into the old north end. A series of transphobic stickers have been going up I've mentioned this in a past MPA or two. It's ongoing and several community leaders in the end members and neighbors in the new north end as well as here in the old north end have been trying relentlessly to take them down and to get the city to address issues and I just want to acknowledge Rachel Jolly who's here from the Community Justice Center. We have a few very hardworking partners in the city, but there's there's a lot of inertia on a higher level in the city to actually bring an end to these stickers. We know who it is the person is not a safe individual to be around and it's creating a very hostile hate environment, given everything else that's going on in Vermont against the LGBTQ community but especially our trans siblings, as well as nationally. And with the what happened in Colorado Springs is even more imperative that the city take this seriously when we have a hostile environment stuff like that happens. People think it's okay to harass and beyond hate speech but to actually take action which I'm very nervous about for the sake of Burlington and Vermont. So very long story short, a few of us. Essentially, I'm going to use the word demanded a meeting with the mayor to finally get get this on his radar to actually take action and to bring a lot of partners to the table who've been trying in a piecemeal way to really get a solution so that we actually move on this and stop letting it roll into year three of this going on so stay tuned it's going to happen by the end of December and I'm I hope I will come back in January with something a lot better to say that they are all been eviscerated and we have, you know, inclusive wonderful welcoming messages going up instead. Okay, so back to state, state level. So I have three bills I want to highlight tonight. I know that there are hundreds of bills that get introduced beyond what I do as a legislator. The first one is related to abortion. And I assume most folks know the Supreme Court put out a major decision in June the dobs decision, which really was a seismic change across the states around individuals access to reproductive reproductive care specifically abortion care. So Vermont because we have in statue and now due to November putting into the Constitution. We have like a double layer protection for Vermonters ability to access abortion care which is great. However, there are still gaps, there are still gaps in a couple ways. One, if you're low income, and don't have the ability to take time off of work to access reproductive care, that's a problem. If you are in certain more rural parts of the state, because of the contraction of abortion care in other parts of the country, providers like my parenthood had a close clinics here in Vermont. So now you could go, you know, an hour or plus not have access to a provider that actually provides abortion care, if you're up in the Northeast Kingdom, for example, or more rural areas so there's access issues still here in Vermont. I would hope to address some of that and also start to look at crisis pregnancy centers which are not medical facilities, but there's eight of them in the state, and they are deceptive centers that are really trying to counsel people away from abortion care and provide misleading information. They're not funded by in the state of Vermont they're not a public clinic at all they're funded by private, I would say right wing organizations religious organizations to deceive people who are seeking pregnancy or contraception advice or abortion advice away from making those decisions. And because what I said before about gap of access, these are popping up in places that no longer have abortion clinics. So in Middlebury, for example, they used to have a Planned Parenthood in the literal space that the Planned Parenthood was that close is now a crisis pregnancy center so it's really misleading. I serve on the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, I'll probably get a point to that again and that regulates consumer protection, so I'm hoping to come at it from a consumer protection angle and regulate these they're called CPCs for short, through our, our, our consumer protection laws for forcing to be transparent forcing them not to use the data of clients who come in, thinking that it's a medical facility and then their data gets scraped from them to, you know, to do who knows what. And to make sure that there's enforcement if there's violations of being transparent about what CPCs are or not. The second part of that abortion bill going back to economic barriers is to provide a public fund for low income people California did this in June. I would like to do that here in Vermont where we set up a public fund. We can't need gas money or housing overnight to get to a clinic in the state to actually provides an abortion to be able to do that, and to remove those barriers for folks. And the third and final part is to look at our sick leave laws in Vermont so we have 2015 or so we passed state laws for people who work full time, it's not the perfect law. We'll get into that maybe in another session, but people who will work full time are able to access sick leaders a bare minimum of sick leave you accrue as you work for an employer. So, I wanted to make sure that we add conscious language in there that says that it also includes accessing reproductive health care the language now is a little vague, make sure that's protected and make sure an employer can't ask you why are you going to take sick leave and tell me exactly what to do before to protect the privacy part. So, I'm going to go, how am I doing with time. Okay, so I want to talk to I can talk super fast and I don't want to talk to it. Okay, okay. The second bill that I will be introducing is a firearms bill. This is to pick up a couple pieces that Burlington past probably about eight years ago in a charter change structure to try to allow the city to regulate firearms more so there's two pieces I'm going to talk about this bill. One is on safe storage so if you are a firearms owner a gun owner that you must as follows I think I think I not I think every state in New England except for Vermont has some form of safe storage Vermont does not. So it's required to you when you're not having the gun on your person to be in a safe storage. Like a safe or a trigger lock or something like that to make sure that the gun doesn't get into the hands of people who shouldn't have it. There is so safe storage. 10 day waiting period is another piece to make sure that there's some time and cooling off time for people being able to easily access a gun. People can walk in and walk out with a gun within an hour or two. If you don't have a background that would prohibit you from owning a gun in the state of Vermont so it is too easy to get a gun. And as we see, we have a lot of issues going on with gun violence, this firearms legislation is just one piece of it because it's a bigger more complex issue, but I think that would help. Two other quick things in that bill would be again going back to the charter ideas from eight years ago prohibiting guns and places that sell alcohol. So those would be bars and restaurants. That is something that has been used in other places just to again vulnerable spots was a legal term for vulnerable spots where people might have heightened whatever, and if they access to a gun. Things don't always turn out so great so that would be another piece of it. One part for folks who have kids in the school districts that I'm looking into is creating a model policy around active shooter drills in the state of Vermont so that there's consistency across the board with districts. Right now it's every district sort of has guidelines but it's not required that they all follow a certain regiment and having a second grader who just went through the first one here in the Burlington school district I was quite alarmed to even just hear how Burlington does it. This is the age appropriate. I think kids under a grade ninth grade should not be involved at all in the drill they do not need to be trained on how to hide they need to follow the adult like they would in a fire drill. There's studies out there they're showing that this is traumatizing a whole generation we've been through 20 years of this now. And I think we have to be much smarter about who needs to be prepared and not saying we don't be prepared of course unfortunately, but we need to really be mindful of putting young kids through this traumatizing drill process so there's it's oblivious to create a model policy that the agency of education work on. So, I'll just wrap up with one last one, unless you're giving me the hook. Okay. I suppose probably know I labor issues are my core issue I have a few bills but the one I want to highlight tonight is a Vermont version of the pro act so on the federal level this this legislation didn't make it all the way through but essentially to make it easier to organize a union in the state of Vermont. So right now, they, the, there's four components of it, one component which would simplify the actual process so this would impact public employees because the state can only regulate the public employee process these are school workers, municipal workers, state workers, anyone employed by government in the state local or state government, federal or sorry on the federal level, they regulate private employers like the Starbucks in the Walmart and all the, all the private employers the world that's not that's a federal legislation, but majority sign up is what the concept is called it would make one step rather than the two step process that happens now. There's a gap in between step one and two, where an employer can intimidate employees and talk try to talk them out of organizing union, and when people sign up the first time, it's indicating their support that these are all you know signature verified cards if you will that people sign. So to add a whole other step that usually happens weeks later on the former union organizer I'll tell you it happens even in schools, it can really deter peoples actually going through with it because there's all sorts of promises and things that really take the wing and wind out of the sales of a union organizing drive. There's a couple more elements but then I can take questions if that's okay Chris to the bill. Yeah, were you waving at me that I'm doing awesome or something or yeah. Yes, it's our new attempt to try to try to get it a something that people would understand a little more so we'll see how it goes. The other just parts about the pro act would be giving all employees just cause employment rights which means that when you are which is the vast majority of the workers it wouldn't even you wouldn't have to be part of the union for this to apply to you that you have the ability to have to process in your workplace so if you were disciplined or fired that employer would have to follow process. Now there is no process required. And if you are feel like you've got discriminated against you could, you could seek like a job discrimination claim but those are very onerous and difficult to fall through on, because you usually need a lawyer to help you and you'd have to, there's a lot of burden on the employee to prove that the employer, fire you because you're a woman or fire you because you're black or fire you for you know your disability. So this would make this more universal and make sure that folks have a fair shake at having a process for before they were disciplined or fire. The last piece in that. So I'm going to wrap up now is to add. So the, we have such a big agricultural sector in the state of Vermont, and less so domestic workers but we're going to go forward with both but the agriculture workers and domestic workers are notoriously carved out pretty much every labor law, federally and state level they're exempted from minimum wage they're exempted from workers compensation. The list goes on, and it has very racist roots to it to be perfectly frank, because a lot of the folks in those industries, other sectors are BIPOC folks and women in particular. So this would be since the federal government does not include them in the laws to allow people to organize a union states can take action so this is modeled off of something New York is put forward to grant state bargaining rights to agriculture workers and domestic workers who are based in Vermont to give them the ability to organize a union to make their workplace safer and more just and to work on wages and benefits and all those classic things so those are three things among more more to come but those will be in the hopper and be introduced in January. So I'm happy to answer questions about that or anything else feedback as we start the session that I should be thinking about the state level stuff. I know that was a lot so thank you for coming to my TED talk. So we yeah we can do like one maybe two questions but have to keep it as short as we can, and if you can use. Oh yes, yep. It's the mic is again for the people that are online so you do have to project for folks that are here. I don't think that'll be a problem can everybody hear me. So I'd like to take a moment to visit the one of the charter changes you spoke about and it's specifically the banning of firearms in facilities that have a liquor license. I think that immediately we tend to look at this from the vantage point of thinking customers guests, but I'd like everybody to take a second to think about the current what our downtown is like around two or three o'clock in the morning and think about from an employee standpoint, somebody who is leaving late at night, potentially with a stack of cash, and not able to defend themselves because they're leaving their shift at work, and they weren't they are aren't able to engage in their constitutional right to carry to protect themselves. That's just all I'd like to, I'd like everybody to try and look at it from a different vantage point I understand that we don't want drunk patrons shooting out on our streets. I, I, I'm empathetic I totally don't want that either but I also don't want our late night bartenders and servers to be moving targets with cash. That's all I've got thanks. Thank you. I don't know if you heard Charlie but show and Jean. Do you have any responses to that. Actually, no I think it's sort of not. We don't have the time to get into a debate about gun control legislation that's going to happening there we very glad to have that conversation but you can bet that it'll chew up all of our time. I part of my update is going to be talking about the gun violence resolution that we're bringing to the council on Monday so I can wait to talk more about that then get right into it. I think we're going to move right into you two. And then if there's still time after that then. Okay, we'll see. I just want to note quickly before I get into the gun violence resolution. We voted on Monday on a map for redistricting. We were up against our deadline in terms of being able to get that on the ballot for town meeting day. I am not a fan of the map that was approved on Monday I voted against it. I was not a fan of, we are going to continue to have eight wards and four districts. I'm not a fan of the district model, I voted against that as well. I would encourage folks to go look at the map it is changing who exactly will be representing the, the old North End and downtown Ward three will now cover mostly south of North Street to maple and Ward two will come across to cover everything north of North Street in the old North End so I would just encourage folks to look at the map online I'm happy to share the link with folks and answer any questions that you have. There will be public hearings on that as it is a charter change and it'll be on the ballot come March. On Monday, I, as part of the public safety committee as chair of the public safety committee, we worked on a resolution addressing gun violence in our community. This is built off of a resolution that was passed by the board of health in November that they presented to the council and referred to the public safety committee. This resolution, among other things calls for the city to partner with the community organizations that are already doing essential work to interrupt the cycle of violence in our community, especially partnering with the school district to come up with supportive solutions to ensure that young people in the city aren't engaging in violence, especially the gun violence that we've been seeing but you know it's not just gun violence we've seen increasing violence of all sorts, including domestic and intimate partner violence so really just trying to drive home that this is an anti violence resolution that we are looking at this issue very broadly. And within that is advocating for the legislature to do exactly what what Emma is proposing in her legislation and pass the charter changes that Burlington voters overwhelmingly approved a number of years ago. And we would gladly like to see those laws enacted statewide we don't think that should just be a Burlington should be exclusive to Burlington and the other piece I'll mention here before I kick it over to Jean is that we'll be calling for the legislature to also roll back the state law that blocks municipalities from further regulating firearms. And so I would encourage folks to go on board box and read that resolution and reach out with any questions. Okay. Um, so on the gun in bar proposal. We should just be clear that the city of Burlington passed that quite a long time ago and it sits right now with the legislature. So, in terms of the debate in turn, like for example, should there be an exception for bar employees. So that the circumstance that was talked about is not does not come to pass. Well that is actually going to be something that the legislature has in front of it, not the city council. So, I mean, it's not me trying to kick the can down the road, as much as just being clear about where that that decision comes in. There are two categories of work that I want to share with the council. One relates to charter changes and the and democracy on the chair of the Charter Change Committee and so that's one, but I want to just start with climate change because I mind the transportation and energy and utilities committee and there's a few things that we've been doing in that committee that directly relate to the way that the city is going to address the climate emergency and the burning of the planet. And the first is the funding of our mass transit system. Right now we've got fair free, but that was really dependent upon a very major federal, federal and state funding of that program and the likelihood of that happening again is very, very small. So it is, I think probably very likely that that fairs will be reimposed on in the buses come this next fiscal year which will be in July. And the city also is going to be hit with a major assessment increase for not only the buses, but also the, the SST a services transportation funding is abysmal in the state, the city does something but we can't really do it on our own. So the question of the funding of the bus system is critically important and I've been pushing the mayor to add this to our legislative agenda, been pushing the Regional Planning Commission to elevate that been pushing general the Green Mountain transit to really organize around the funding and there was a study that was commissioned by the Regional Planning Commission, and they just need to start acting on it and bringing that in front of the legislature so one of the things that I've been doing in that transportation committee is really pushing for that to go forward. And I think that anybody who has an interest in either mass transit or just dealing with the climate emergency and transportation we need to have your voices at the table. The second climate issue that we were starting to deal with and this is really a first is to look at the emissions that are coming out of the Burlington International Airport. One of the things that is driving the, you know, the burning of the planet is, is air is aviation emissions and we really even though we have all these plans, haven't been looking at it we haven't even been calculating it. So, I, and along with other citizens who are looking at the issue have been pushing our pushing the, the airport to start to to calculate all the emissions, and that includes the F 35s, because those things are just burning fuel, like there's no tomorrow. And if we do not take them into account then we can't really figure out what we should be doing. So that's something that we're starting to get some traction on, and it will reveal, I think, just not only the noise impacts that we have very clearly but also the climate change impacts that the the F 35s have got, not just for our community but for for all of us. And then the last thing on transportation that I that I want to mention is transportation demand management. In order to really address transportation we've got to do it in a very comprehensive way, and we've got to build the infrastructure the alternative transportation infrastructure to be able to get people out of single occupancy vehicles. That means getting people on the bikes means people getting into buses, but it's all of the shuttles and all the other things that you all know about car share bike share, and that requires information gathering and analysis, it requires when things happen that they have a stake in that instead of just throwing the the obligations on to the the public sector. So we have, I think fairly close in time, a major initiative on transportation demand management that would have for major developments of over 10 units or 25,000 square feet so these are big places which can have to have a lot of transportation impact a transportation demand management requirement, and that is being paired with the elimination of a requirement that a certain minimum parking spaces is built. The mayor has been pushing that, and it is without this other piece, just a major subsidy that shifts the cost and burden of transportation on to the public. And in my mind is a giveaway to big developers. So I think that we have the votes in the council to pass that. And we'll see but that that's that will, if we do that will will be very exciting and will put us in a position to then take the next step which is how we create the public infrastructure to you know continue this work and build this system out. Let me pivot to democracy and just say and I've talked in front of the, the NPA before, but just to remind us that we're going to now have three, what I consider to be democracy related charter changes before you and all other voters on March. The first is all legal resident voting in local elections that means if you're legally in the United States on a not temporary not a student visa or a tourist visa but you're here and living here that you're going to be able to vote on in local elections. So this is going to be before the voters, it's the, it's fundamentally what Montpelier and Winooski passed. And from my way of thinking, it's a way to really say we are a government of the people by the people and for the people. So I hope that people will will support that that that matter. So you know team, you have two more minutes. Thank you. Joe mentioned redistricting. One of the issues in redistricting is where you put a polling place. And what you will see in collaboration or in conjunction with the redistricting proposal that you'll be voting on is another proposal to allow us the city council with the input of the ward election officials like the ward clerks to have flexibility in where a polling place would be. It should be in the ward, but if it is more accessible in a place that is close to the ward, then that is what would be. I don't think that words two or three have a problem even under the new system because you've got both Barnes will still or the I the sustainability Academy will be in Ward three still and the arts Academy will be in Ward two still, but I think for Ward six and eight where you've got Edmund school. This is a big deal. So I hope that people will support that flexibility. And the very last thing that we've put on the ballot is ranked choice voting for the mayor for the school board and for the the ward election officers and that will go with that would allow us to add to the already approved ranked choice voting for city counselors. So all those three were passed out of committee my committee and also passed through the city council and will be up for your consideration and anybody who would like to chat with me about any of this stuff. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks. Thank you. Alright, is Christine Curtis here. Online Christine the floor is yours to talk about the community block grants. Thank you so much for having me. I'm here tonight because we are seeking the city of Burlington. The city of Burlington, the department of CEDO specifically is seeking a Ward two representative for the 2023 community development block grant advisory board. I am just going to read through some bullet points quickly it should take me just a few short minutes and then I will be available for questions. This is a federal HUD administered grant that the city of Burlington receives every year. The city then in turn award sub grants to local organizations as well as operate several CDBG fund programs ourselves in CEDO and other city departments. We receive this grant annually. This is an ongoing practice that has been implemented by the city and we rely heavily on the service of the advisory board to help us with the sub grant allocation process. So to the advisory board itself a little history there. It was created in the 1980s for the same purpose that it is used today. It is to make difficult but very important community based decisions that will address a broad spectrum of poverty related needs with a very finite funding resources. The board typically consists of a representative from each ward, two to three members are appointed by the mayor's office. One member represents Burlington youth and there is typically a member that represents the state of Vermont. This practice and the advisory board itself have received national recognition including a local best practice award from the U.S. Department of HUD. And is my understanding that Burlington is one of the few entitlement cities that implement such a community based and community driven grant allocation process for this CDBG program. So MPAs role and responsibilities of the appointed board member. Every fall the city asked the MPAs to appoint a civic minded volunteer to represent their ward on the advisory board. The board member will attend an orientation meeting at the end of January and then they will read and rate grant applications. They will then attend two to three allocation meetings during February and March where board members will work together to discuss and evaluate all applications and then develop a balanced budget. Based on the amount of money requested from applicants and the amount of the CDBG grant available for that given year. Board members will then develop funding recommendations for the mayor and city council to approve. And finally our hope is always that the board members are reporting back to each ward that they represent to discuss the process and the community work and projects that are planning to be executed with CDBG funding for that year. Just a few bullet points before I conclude, we are seeking a board member from Ward 2 only this year. I will need your appointed board member no later than January 13. And this is a voluntary only advisory board position. Each member once appointed is allowed to keep their member seat for two consecutive years if they choose to, although they are not required to do the two years. The orientation meeting will be in January. That will be virtual only if the board collectively decides they would like to do their allocation meetings in person in February, March. The city will provide dinner for those meetings and they will typically start around 6pm and run for approximately two, two and a half hours. So that's all I got. If there's any questions, I'm happy to take them. Thank you. Any questions? The January 19 deadline for submissions flexible. And I asked because the announcement of the proposals from Memorial auditorium will be made at the city council meeting on the 23rd. So CDBG wouldn't be available to efforts like ours to put the teen center back in that case. So the deadline is January 13. There is flexibility with that date. The only person who would kind of suffer with pushing that out later is the board member themselves. So if you do appoint the board member later. You know, right now we're looking at having that orientation meeting, although virtual, we're looking to have that probably the week. So January 25th or 26th. So if you appoint someone, you know, just days before that doesn't give that person a lot of turnaround time to kind of get all the information they need and to schedule that meeting day into their schedule. So there can be flexibility. But again, that, that burden then gets placed on the board member. And if they can work that tight schedule in once they're appointed. All right. Sure. Okay, so actually you answered two of my of my three questions. The first one being that that these meetings are going to be in person. Because pre pandemic, they were only in person, obviously, but during the pandemic, they were only online. So that's the first one. The second thing is you're going to feed people. One thing that I do have a question about is, could you, do you have anything in front of you where you could name some of the organizations that are that are basically have gotten funding in the past, or are currently seeking funding so that people have an idea of the types of organizations that are requesting this because it's so important to the community for these funds to be distributed. And I think if most people heard the types of organizations that are seeking that assistance, they would be impressed. Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you for that. That's a really great point and great question. So, typically, and I say typically as in the past few years, because that's how long I've had this role and I've been managing this grant for the city. We have a lot of repeat applicants. So a lot of these organizations that I'm going to name off are our current 2022 program year applicants, but they tend to apply every year. So we have CV OEO, they typically apply for two different programs actually within one given year. We have Echo, we have Mercy Connections, we have Pathways, we have Steps, a new place, Sarah Holbrook Community Center, Lund. We had a new one this year, but not new to CDBG Living Well Group. We have a new organization to CDBG this year was Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. Who else? So, you know, those are ones we have, again, currently, and as I said, a lot of those organizations do apply to us every year and they are for programs that most of you probably have heard of or are aware of. It's very important work we're doing here with the CDBG program and the advisory board. Could you confirm if these will be hybrid or in person? Yeah, so that's a great question. So during COVID, obviously they were virtual. The orientation meeting is definitely going to be virtual just because just to accommodate everyone's schedules. This year, we are going to leave it up to the board to decide collectively. We certainly would love it if we could do these in person, but we don't want to, they are in the dead of winter, right? It's February, March meetings. We don't want to put any pressure on board members to feel like they have to be in person if they have COVID concerns or just like traveling in bad weather concerns. So I'm going to be very open and flexible and I'm hoping at the orientation meeting to leave that up to the board members to decide, but my hope is we can do it in person. My experience, it's always been a such more rewarding and robust experience when we are all able to gather in a room as opposed to online. So sorry, I can't say for sure yet, but I am going to leave it up to the board to decide what they want to do. Thank you. Were there any other? Who is our ward 3 person who is on this chat? I don't know if you heard that. We're wondering who the current ward 3 rep is. That's a great question and off the top of my head. So I believe it's Allison Spasic. I would have to look that for you. So she, I believe that's Ward 3. So she's serving her second year of her two year term. So these seats do hold a two year term. I can find that if I believe it's Allison, she's going to be, she confirms she would like to join for a second year. That's a good point. And we will be the NPA will put out a friend porch forum post with information too. So, and can maybe include her information. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't hear the comment that person made. So I'm not sure what, what was said. Oh, sorry. She, they were making the point that whoever might be interested in being the word to person might want to talk to the current. So, yeah, that's a great point. I wanted to clarify with folks that based on the timeline that we're working on our process is that we're asking people who are interested in serving to send their name and a brief statement about why they want to serve to the steering committee. The steering committee will decide on the representative because we don't have the timeline doesn't work for the NPA decide in January. So that's the process we decided. Right. Yes. I don't want to say that I'd like to pull up with one one. I had to make some 15 years ago and it was very interesting. I was new to the city or newer to the city at the time. And it really is a window into all the wonderful programs and stuff that's going on here in the city. I just want to ask that we have our two representatives come back and kind of give a overview of the process and what the recommendations are. And I just want to quickly mention that people this is a two year C and every time we elect a new person in from award, and I asked them to serve a second term they have no obligation to everyone comes back for a second term because it is it's a great process. It might sign a little dry and, you know, right now as I'm trying to present it to you but it's such a wonderful group. It's a wonderful process. It's a great way to the other people in community and to network. It is, it's so wonderful. So I just I want to say that it's one of the greater joys of my job. I love doing it every year. And like I said, people always represents always want to serve that second term, because it is such a rewarding process. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all that. Thank you. So next up is Jeff pageant from the city. Great. The floor is yours. Thank you. So thanks for having me tonight. My name is Jeff pageant. I'm the division director for parking and traffic for the city of Burlington. And I have about five, six slides that I put together that if I can share my screen. We go will guide me through and keep me on, keep me on task here. I'm here tonight to talk to you about give you a quick introduction to parking services and some of the pretty dramatic changes we've made over the past couple of years. And I'm going to kind of blow through it because we've been doing a lot of stuff. Certainly feel free to interrupt me and happen to answer questions during this venue or afterwards for sure. So anyway, I'm going to dive right in. So again, I'm the division director for parking and traffic, which means I'm in charge of the group that runs parking services, which are the folks that sell permits for the garages. And they write the parking tickets and tow vehicles. So it's an interesting group. It's sort of retail parking. It's, I'll give you more detail as we move through the other thing that I run is parking facilities. So we actually manage the city owned garages the marketplace garage downtown garage and all the surface slots, like the one that's behind those, the one at Main Street, the city owned lots. And then I also manage or lead the traffic group, which is actually fascinating. It's the track. They've run the all the signs and the lines and the traffic signals and the crossing guards. And what's fascinating about it is that it's completely all of my groups are completely non tax revenue based. They're self completely self sufficient. So traffic I think is what surprises folks is that all of our signals and all of our stop signs and all of our painting is all paid for by the revenues that are generated by parking meters. So we're paying for our signals a quarter at a time, which is pretty impressive. Anyway, but what I talked about tonight is parking services because we've made some pretty big changes. First of all, I want to sort of set the stage that we have made a commitment to safety and equity. And we believe that the city ordinances outline all kinds of violations, you know, things like parking here at a corner parking in front of a driveway overstaying a meter and they're all very dry and wonky but as we read through and realize that really they're all about protecting the safety and creating equity within our communities. We consider these to be our communities values. So that said, we are committed to exploring new and creative ways to enforce those. And that said, we are committed to minimizing ticketing and minimizing towing and I know if you just got your car towed yesterday, that probably doesn't sound very good. But we are committed to that and we are making concrete steps to reduce the amount of tickets that are and most importantly minimize the amount of towing that happens because we realize that that that puts the vulnerable community at even more of a disadvantage when they get their vehicle towed. So what have we done to achieve some of these goals. First of all, we moved the staff from the police into parking services into DPW so what used to be parking enforcement in the police department which was I'm sure you probably heard John King he was here for 50 years. We actually moved them out of the Burlington police department and move them into public works department. So now they're not parking enforcement officers their parking service agents. We also moved staff out of the garages and into the parking service agent role, which are the ticket writer folks. We remove the gates from the garages now the gates operate via kiosks and Park mobile exactly the way the garage on street parking works, and what allowed that allowed us to do was move those staff out of the garage, and into a new role so we'll talk about that a little bit more. We have shifted to a very customer service focused approach. We really feel like we're there to solve community problems. We've re envisioned a management position and we've actually created a coordinator position and that's sort of a little wonky but it's important to understand that we took the man, we took the old the person who was managing parking service agents what you speak of parking enforcement officers, and we combine that with the parking operations manager is the person who ran the garages because we figured the same person should be selling products, and also corralling the inventory which is fundamentally what parking enforcement is. So we really re envisioned that position and actually eliminate a management eliminated a management position and created a whole new role. We created a new coordination with that we created this senior coordinator position is kind of the, the assisted to that position so we were sort of able to outsource into a asked me position. This role of providing a more robust customer service experience. We've increased our coverage and we've increased our services. So we were able to now staff the streets. Basically, we used to have five people doing two shifts throughout the day so at most we had to maybe three people on the streets at any time. We had five people in the street during the day, five people in the street during the evening, and overnight where we as soon as we can hire three or four more people and we have open positions and they're posted so if anybody wants to come work with us where we're looking for folks, we're headed towards a 24 hour service. So that at two o'clock in the morning if somebody's blocking your driveway and you need to get out you don't have to call the police you can call us and we'll come help. We'll leave the load off the police and also provide greater service for customer. So, all this wraps up into a one stop shop we want you to come to us if you have a question about parking of a problem parking if you need something with parking, you come to us. One of the things that we did in the midst of all of this is we also reform scoff. We raised threshold from $75 to $275 which means that if your car in the old days before this change, you could basically you got two tickets and your car was being towed. Now you've got to get six or seven tickets depending on what kind of tickets you get. And we also expressly took expressly changed the ordinance language to prevent parking services from hunting for scoff. So if you hear about like, in communities where the officers will drive around and just type in license plate looking for people who are scoff and then tow them, we are expressly not allowed to do that. I'm not saying that Burlington ever did that and I don't believe they ever did, but we want to make it absolutely clear that we are not hunting for folks we don't want to get people in the trouble. We want to provide safety and equity. The exciting thing that's happening right now is fines for food. If you have overdue parking tickets and you pay them off right now in this period before the end of the year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we're taking half of that money and we're giving it to Feeding Chin. Last year we gave, we gave them a check for $40,000. So it's pretty exciting. And also all those folks that paid off their overdue tickets now they're not exposed to potential scoff and a national towing. Free holiday parking Fridays and Saturdays during the holiday season from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We have two hours free parking at all city owned parking assets so at the meters in all the garages and including parks facilities. One of the things we worked a lot with is a Bronx in high school, obviously they're in Macy's building and they need somewhere to park so we work with them to provide discount parking. We've also worked with them to create help them to create a rooftop garden on the downtown garage. And we're working with car share to provide electrification in the parking garages we already have publicly accessible charger stations in the garage because car shares a third party entity. It's a little trickier legally for a third party to install hardware in this in a city facility but we worked through it and we're working with them directly to support them like in the electric electrification of their fleet. So other things we've done if any of you folks are in a resident only area, we've gone to res fully digital resident permits so if you have a green sticker on your car. You don't need it and if you think you need it then you should stop down by 645 pine street and check in and we can get you up to date and get rid of that green sticker. We're headed towards a fully digital system for guest parking we're not quite there yet, but we're we're close. Additionally a big problem real big problem that we had with was with contractors continuously they were getting parking tickets in resident only areas and they were just trying to do their work. We created a specific contractor parking permit for contractors to use while they're doing parking in resident only areas. We've also created a whoops program. So if you have, if you got a ticket and it's for parking in resident only or or if it's overstaying a meter, you can get out of one ticket a year, and then it will be waived. It doesn't apply to parking in front of a higher grant or parking in a handicap space. You know anything that's safety related certainly doesn't apply. But we, but this is available to everyone who parks in Burlington. We've also removed the transaction fee for online payment so if you have a ticket and you're paying online. So before about three weeks ago you were subject to an additional $202 and 75 cent fee. We just felt like that was just insult an injury so we took that out. And again, I'm just going to reiterate we're really trying to focus on service where parking service agents were not parking enforcement officers, where we want to be here to help. Like I said, we're headed towards 24 7365 service. We just upgraded our whole back end platform and improving our web sales capacities. We're working on ordinance right now to change some of the issue of Burlington is almost every violation that's not a meter violation is towable. And we think that's a little extreme and we need to get a little more surgical with that. And also marketplace garage is 50 years old. We're headed towards the end of life on marketplace garage so hopefully this in the winter spring we're going to have a be in a visioning project for looking at what's what goes on in that space in the future and we have the downtown garage now which used to be the College Street and Lake View garage complex, which was just a mouthful nobody knew it was this is the downtown garage now it's the one behind the Hilton and the hotel of the month so anyway so I apologize I blasted through a lot of stuff there, but we're doing a lot of things and I wanted to get get some of the word out if any of that picture interesting I'm happy to answer questions or now or later. Go to you first in my going to the mic. Hi, my name is Carol. Winters coming. My driveway is not parkable in the winter and during a snow ban. I'm concerned about the increased number of people who want to park their cars. Last time I tried to use a parking garage for snow ban, it was full and I think I was only there at like 6pm I was there pretty early in the day. It's not like I waited till late in the night. Have you increased your number of snow ban parking spots for those of us who are going to need that. Right now that part that there's free parking in the downtown garage and the marketplace garage and that represents almost 1600 parking spaces, and that's all the capacity that we have to provide off street parking during snow bands so all the lots obviously the lots need to be cleared because the snowing on the lots the garages are are useful because they're protected from the snow. So that's really the issue there. What's the earliest that one can park for a snow band evening. You know, we just had a week. I believe it's six o'clock. Yeah, we just had a meeting today we had an hour long meeting talk, you know, preparing for snow bands and preparing about we, you know, one of the things we would need to do is update our flyer. And we just said okay, I'm going to do that next week so we set up a meeting for next week to go over the flyer so I don't have those numbers off top ahead but we we moved it to it used to be eight or nine o'clock, and we did we moved it I believe it's six or seven now so it's a reason more reasonable time. So strategically, can I park at five pay for an hour and then have the car sit there for the rest of the night. Absolutely. I'm worried about not having enough slots. Yep, no you can come right you can come at noon you can park for the rest of the day and then you'll be there overnight. The car will be ready to work all day but then immediately go to the parking spot and yes, yes and pay for that hour or so yeah. Do you have any numbers about how many people use the parking garage during snowman and do you have enough slots for those of us who do that. I'm not full, but that this is the question and this is where the visioning is going to come in it at the marketplace reconstruction I mean, you know there's only 365 spots the marketplace garage. And the question is, do we want more parking in downtown Berlin, do we want more sheltered parking. And that's the question for the community to work on. Yeah. I think I just want to emphasize that snow ban needs to be taken into consideration when you look at the numbers. Yeah, like we're trying to be good citizens and do what we're told and yet when there's not enough slots. That presents a huge problem. Yeah, yeah, that that is challenge. Thank you. Yes. I just wanted to ask you so you were saying that the, I think you should call that the marketplace garage. Is that the one right on church street, or right next to church and is like, is this does the structure needs to be really done or the structure you maybe just need to remodel and or thinking about what you're going to do with it next so I just wondering. Yeah, the short story is that garage is 50 years old is falling down it's well into its end of life. And actually right now if you go into the marketplace garage you'll see there's construction going on. And we're putting over $500,000 into that garage in the next six months to shore it up to repair the deck repair the ceilings. And there's actually a couple of beams that are physically falling down that need to be structurally renovated. I mean the garage is safe to use now it wouldn't be wouldn't be open if it wasn't. But to your point is, it's old, we're putting money in a lot big money into it to get us a bandaid for three to five years that hopefully will give us the time to do the planning needed to get the right development back in where marketplaces now. We got time for one more question. Hey, Jeff. I'm hearing like my head's chopped off. Thank you for taking a look at the scoff law program. You know that I think that's going to be a big improvement on the threshold there and I was not aware that folks were able to troll for that and other judicial jurisdiction so I'm glad to see we have that a couple of things I wanted to touch upon here. Putting on again the marketplace commissioner had as one of the resident representatives. One of the things that I've been hearing a lot of concerns about from people that work in the downtown area, particularly on the marketplace is you know the safety issues we all know and issues that have happened in the garage and one of the concerns is is we have the downtown employee program I forget exactly what its formal name is, but it's the program for folks who work downtown and it is on on that the one garage they're down on college street that combine one Lake View or whatever it's downtown garage. The downtown garage. So what we're hearing is feedback is that you know folks are not comfortable walking down there at the end of their shifts after dark, particularly having to walk through the kind of run the gauntlet there by the park and not in college street. So I think there's some interest, maybe have that program expanded so that downtown workers can really park at any one of the city garages. It's something that I intend to bring up to the marketplace commission I'm not sure how that'll play out but there is a possibility we may put forth a formal resolution asking the public works commission to take a look at that. But you know there would be some interest it seems to have that program expanded so that it's not confined to the to the one location. The second item I wanted to talk about is as more of a downtown resident. I had for many years a truck loading zone or a vehicle loading zone in front of my building and we have 32 residential units there on college street and at some point that changed to a vehicle loading zone, and I was informed by one of the parking service agents that apparently was an oversight was always supposed to have been a vehicle loading zone but what they'd mentioned to me is that with a vehicle loading zone, you had to be a commercial vehicle and one of my neighbors like park there to unload groceries and got a $75 ticket. So I think we need to take a look at our parking in the downtown like with the respect to the loading zone so that people who actually live in the downtown can use those loading zones for their intended purpose and not just limit him to the to the business community. Also building on that and recognizing that we're going to be losing 40% of our parking spaces on Main Street, should the Great Streets project actually come to fruition. So I hope that as we move into the discussion about the marketplace garage that the timelines are such that they don't conflict to exacerbate the problem. I would say that with respect to the resident only parking pro resident only parking program, you know, looked at kind of the areas in the city, where that happens and we have a bit of a parking issue in crunch downtown and with the recent changes to the zoning regulations to allow parking maximums I believe, and there's been changes the requirements and so if there's new development it's likely that the amount of parking with the new development may not be sufficient for the number of people who live there. So speaking as a downtown resident we'd like to see a downtown resident parking only program or someone who lives in downtown could you know pay a set fee for a month by the month or for the year to be able to park it pretty much any metered spot down there and really if you were trying to get people to live in downtown and make it a livable city and we take into you know consideration the new development over. I think it's on St. Paul Street I think it's the Netty project and then of course if city place does come to fruition. We're gonna have a lot more people there and just want to make sure that you know folks who live in downtown, they're taking care of as well and I think that's all I have to say. So I don't know if you have any feedback or anything on that but I have been in conversations with Commissioner Overby and hope to make it to one of your meetings with a more formal request. Okay, so I'm glad you brought that up this is part of the reason I'm coming out to these MPAs is it's a little wonky but a lot of what you describe there is really design and policy related to the actual provision of parking, whereas what my role is is not operational. We were, we really run the show on parking. So the tech services group decides what kind of sign is going to go up, no parking here to corner, load loading zone truck loading zone, whatever the sign says that's the tech services So Norm Baldwin and Laura we locked that group and then my group goes and their task with reading the sign and looking at the car and say does that car comply with the sign. So I'd encourage you to reach out to tech services with those the design sort of design type of things. With respect to the two with respect to the free parking for employees. We have 800 people with permits for the, the free downtown employee, the safety in the in the downtown garage is paramount. We've spent 10s of thousands of dollars improving safety in the garage from putting in new cameras to putting in new monitoring locations to landscaping to new lighting to revamping lighting to painting to graffiti control. It's been a full core press to get the garage as safe as we can possibly get it. The concern is the reason I mentioned the 800 employees, not all 800 are parking on any given day. It's maybe 50 to 100 are parking at any given time, but imagine those parkers were parking at the marketplace garage. They're now consuming over 30% even if it's just those over 30% of the capacity of the marketplace garage, which is very, very valuable spaces for the visitors of downtown that are you know the downtown merchants perceive the marketplace garage as their front door. We're very concerned about having employees parking in their garage, taking space from what would be ostensibly a visitor this is a very large complicated long drawn out story that I'm happy to talk about but we want time. Yeah, I will happily reach out to you as Commissioner overby has suggested I was just going to say that while cameras are great for, you know, providing forensic digital evidence after the fact they're very little for the for the deterrence there. That's the key is we don't just have cameras we bought sorry to interrupt but we bought monitors. So if you go to the garage you can actually see on the month as you enter the garage you can see that somebody's watching you. And we meet with the hotels on a quarterly basis and there's a palpable improvement in the perceived safety in the garages from the hotels that was unsolicited from them so we thank you. Great. We do. Yeah, perfect. All right, moving on to the next agenda item, can you need driven to public thank you to public safety and justice. So I think there's two people speaking on this. If you want to come up here. Great. Hello everyone. That's right this just connects to yeah, we connected to us. Hello and welcome to the Burlington Community Justice Center is first community. Okay, so this is my name. All right, no whispering. I suggest you like, should. Yeah, we can look at that. Thank you. Thanks. So talk to the last person. All right, let me try this again. Hello and welcome to the Burlington Community Justice Center's first community information session on community based approaches to public safety. I look forward to discussing public safety as it relates to Burlington, and how our role as victim services specialists in your sex with other resources in our city. We decided to introduce his presentation and what we hope will be the first of many presentations given to the community to support a local and collective effort that responds to the needs of Burlingtonians and Vermonters in regards to public safety and community justice. In our role here at the Community Justice Center bridge and I support community members who have experienced crime and harm in a few different ways. In the community justice program, we provide emotional support resource navigation and systems advocacy to anyone who was experienced harm, regardless of whether they go to the police. Bridget is based at the Burlington Police Department and there's an invaluable resource to people who have either made police reports, or people who have questions about the criminal justice system. I'm based at the Community Justice Center, where I look to support our community through self referrals, where in community members are looking outside the criminal justice system. And in our youth team, I support teen and young adult victims when their cases are referred to us for a restorative process. Our presentation is community focused and it's evidence based over the last three months we've met with community members as well as local regional and state level stakeholders and representatives, working in the field of public safety and a variety of roles from direct service providers to researchers to our very own state's attorney Sarah George. Any research reference in the presentation will be made available on our community information session page on our website. Thank you all so much for coming. I'll let you introduce yourself. And hi my name is Bridget Blazik. I'm a victim services specialist along with Lauren. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all tonight. And to discuss public safety as a release of Burlington and how our role of victim services specialist intersects with other resources in the city. I'm going to go over you and I know that the screen may be small. So, if I can, we'll be referencing things that are on the screen but to start just the objectives is going to be to review current crime in Burlington to know what to expect after crime happens to understand root causes of crime, identify community based approaches to public safety and harm, become familiar with community resources and as Lauren said a Q&A at the end. We are community based and focused we're going to start with a couple quotes from our community members on what public safety means to them. It is not criminal to be poor to be mentally unwell or to have an addiction, and yet we treat it like it is mutual respect between police and people. Yes to more community based social workers. I'm hoping to the conclusion that an unusual situation is a dangerous one. Community doesn't jump to fear based reactions. Decriminalization of substance use addiction. I think one of the places we could really improve is in providing well funded alternatives to the police. Huge fractions of our city budget gets put into the Burlington police, despite the majority of calls to 911, not demanding an armed response. For example, mental health response does not need people with guns. We are trying each other, saying hello to each other, not being afraid of being friendly to each other. Police departments that are supportive of progressive police. So as we can see, folks in the community want community approaches to community violence which typically involves a relatively small number of people, but has a lasting impact on the entire community. So the violence is learned, which means the circumstances that increase a person's risk of being a victim or perpetrator can be undone. We will discuss prevention later in the presentation but first we want to talk about the current climate of crime and community violence in Burlington. So this image shows reported incidents of crime as of mid November 2022. I know it's small and it's even smaller looking at it now. So this is what is current mid November 2022 and we recognize that this depiction also does not capture unreported crimes or crimes that maybe are called into dispatch refer to online reporting but never make it to that point. But it is a good representation of the general climate of crime and of note so these red arrows here represent considerable increases in incidents of gunfire, larcenies, mental health issues, overdoses and stolen vehicles. This next slide is just another depiction of the previous slide and it shows the percentages of those same categories. Data like this informs community based approaches to public safety and community violence intervention programs. For instance stolen vehicles which have the highest increase it's a 435% increase which is on the bottom there. So it's really high, but the recovery rate is also really high so the likelihood that your stolen vehicle will be returned is a high rate but the condition of the vehicle upon return is not the same as you might expect. Needles bodily fluids stolen items and personal items from the person who stole the vehicle are left behind, indicating that the car is being used as shelter or consumption room for drugs and then left abandoned when gas runs out. The data of stolen cars indicates that a need for housing and support for substance use. In a few moments we will discuss the root causes of crime and how to use it and program implementation to address the needs of folks in an effort to deter them from using crime as a solution. This is another depiction of just basically so what to expect so in our role as victim services. As we can mention before we kind of respond to crime majority of the time in our role. So this is what you can expect that after a crime occurs, and there is a suspect. So there's either a report or a no report, an investigation begins, an arrest can be made, and that officer has the option or authority to either refer directly to the Community Justice Center, or to the state's attorney's office for you. So those are the two, like categories where it could go the state's attorney's office could then choose to prosecute the case and it goes to the criminal justice system, in which case you would be assigned a victim advocate to help you through. They could decline to prosecute, which means it could come back to Lauren and I to support and give information and resources, or it could go to diversion, which it goes back to the Community Justice Center. You have the parallel justice program and the victim services division that supports victims, then we have the restorative justice coordinator who supports the responsible party. And Lauren can talk a little bit about what happens when there is a crime that occurs but no report is made. And so there's a thin line on the screen, albeit a line that connects a crime, all the way back to us at the Burlington Community Justice Center, and there aren't any other little boxes or other processes that that needs to go through in order to get to us, which is just to say, we look to support people regardless of their adjacency to the criminal justice system and so that's people who they don't want any involvement with the criminal justice system and there's a lot of reasons for why that might be so those people can come directly to us to find support and begin any kind of healing process for themselves. We also work with people who maybe they have questions, maybe they're unfamiliar with the criminal justice system. So we work with them, as well as folks who are caught up in the criminal justice system, either as responsible parties, or as victims. And oftentimes people who go through that system do feel stuck. So it's a healing system. It is also a system that either, you know, wherever you are within it, you can be experiencing pretty significant harm. And so it's great to be a resource for people when they're not sure where to go. And then this next slide shows what happens when a crime occurs but there is no suspect. We also recognize that some of you in the room may be very familiar with crime in Burlington and know all too well what happens after crime occurs. We at the Burlington Community Justice Center realize the incidents of crime and harm in our city about tremendous impact on everybody, and that losses have been emotional physical tangible and monetary and have been traumatic. We are sorry that some of you have been victims of assault larceny burglary and stolen vehicles to name a few, and we hope that you felt supported by the community in the aftermath. If you have not felt supported by the community, that's partly why we are here. We want to give you options and resources and this is part of what that presentation is. And so just to explain this part of it is that after a crime occurs and there is no suspect. Again, a report or no report can be made an investigation can be opened, but no arrests is made. And we just want to let you know that parallel justice is still available to those of you, if this is where you find yourself or friend, family, other community member. So to prevent crime, we need to understand and respond to its roots. So I did as much research as I could, and I'm really interested in this portion of the presentation. And again, I'm sorry if you're not able to see some of the data that's on the screen at our last presentation we welcome people to get as close as they wanted to in order to see it. In addition to that, I know that we are going to be on, we're on the TV right now. So people can take a look at that later. And then also if you have questions about the slides, or if you want to see copies of it, please just let us know. So what I found in my research, which is also a phenomenon that I'm already familiar with is that people who experience multiple arrests within a year. And this also makes for a quarter of all overall arrests each year and this is national data are people who experience significant health needs that are overwhelmingly unmet before during and after criminal justice system contact. And certainly in Chinatown County, we have a growing emphasis on services for people with mental health and substance abuse disabilities who come into contact with the criminal justice system. And a lot of those programs are actually housed within the Burlington Community Justice Center. This is a step in the right direction of treating substance abuse mental illness and poverty as public health issues. And this is created to live in a community that has increasingly shown its support for community members who experienced such significant barriers in health equity. So using nationally representative data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prison policy initiative found that for the at least 4.9 million people who were arrested in jailed in 2017, at least one in four of those individuals were booked into jailed more than once during the same year. The same graph there tells us that over half of those people who were booked into jail more than twice had a substance use disorder, and a third of folks that were booked more than twice had serious psychological distress with a quarter of those folks experience a serious or moderate mental illness. And so it concluded that people with multiple arrests are disproportionately black, low income and unemployed, and that the vast majority of those arrests for that year were for nonviolent offenses. Low level offenses such as drug abuse violations and disorderly conduct make up over 80% of all arrests with serious violent offenses accounting for less than 5% of arrests. But all of this is to say that most of the people who are arrested multiple times, don't pose a serious public safety risk. And our folks that are instead being punished for not getting their most basic needs met. I can't help but consider how at present, we're relying on a system of punishment to address an issue of health and life chances. Research information, relationship building and understanding, however, can direct public and community investments in care. This might include employment assistance, education and vocational training, financial assistance, mental health and substance use treatment options, and checking in on your neighbors. These are assessments that can help heal the conditions that lead our marginalized community members to police contact in the first place. So on the screen, there is a tree here that represents for folks who are not familiar adverse childhood experiences also known as the ACE assessment and adverse community environments. So these are terms that are familiar with a lot of folks who work in the mental health field. And I have a background in that work. And so it's always these are all these have always been tools for me to understanding social issues within a community. And I've always been interested in the research that connects adverse childhood experiences adverse community environments and then also people's chances of criminal justice system involvement. And for the purpose of this presentation I did some of that research and I was really surprised to find that there's actually a lack of research on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and adult criminal justice system contact. And considering the exposure to trauma, particularly in childhood and how that's been associated with a greater risk of substance use disability and mental illness. And that a significant amount of adults who go to jail each year experience these adversities, then the lack of research on that relationship is a pretty critical limitation, and it's also a key area for crime and harm prevention. So ACEs, they're determined by an assessment that was created by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the assessment uses a scoring system that attributes one point for each category of adverse childhood experiences. There are 10 questions and they each cover a different domain of trauma and refer to experiences that occurred prior to the age of 18. So higher scores, like a four or above with the highest score being 10 indicate increased exposure to trauma, especially when this four is informed by adverse community environments, like racism, poverty, poor housing quality and affordability, lack of opportunity and overall community disruption. So the two of them are shown here. And that's to represent that a root cause analysis so there's a tree and then there's the roots of the tree is pretty essential and it's in our best interest to consider when we're thinking about a person's experiences and their environment leading up to an arrest. And so this was done by was actually an August 2022 research study from the Academic Pediatric Association. That's what I reviewed and the study itself also confirmed that there was a significant lack of research on adverse childhood experiences, adverse community environments, and then also adult criminal justice system contact, which was really striking for me to say the least and a lot of why that was striking for me was because the last 10 years, I've primarily taken a role working in direct service with community members. And then also my own personal experience growing up with a parent who had a significant mental health disability and a substance use disability, and then always feeling my whole life like the system had had failed him. So for me, I thought it was pretty easy to understand how all of these things would relate and I thought, let me look at the research to see if it confirms that and then to see that the only significant study that had taken place was in August of 2022. And so I think that's one of my minds. And I think considering that the criminal justice system is disproportionately composed of adults who have experienced significant traumas, then punishing these people is just not an effective approach to improve lives that have been so characterized by harm. And I know in the interest of time. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, alright, victims preferred increased investment and treatment options and prisons and jail. This, the charts that we'll see on the screen which indicate that out of a national survey that was taken from the Safety Injustice Alliance is another national organization. This study was also the first of its kind and they made sure to emphasize that this is from 2016 and the study they surveyed a diverse group of crime victims of violent and nonviolent crimes, all across the country to see about their experiences with the criminal justice system, as well as what their hopes would be in terms of looking at alternatives, and it's overwhelming majority of the victims that were surveyed and this was a random diverse sample expressed that they believe that prison is more likely to make people commit crimes than to rehabilitate them and that 73% would prefer an investment in more drug treatment and mental health options. Alright, so this just kind of portrays of yeah now we've talked about current climate of crime, maybe some prevention and causes of crime and then what we do so victim services at the Burlington Community Justice Center. So, Laura and I work in the parallel justice program. And so as you see here, we provide emotional support safety planning systems advocacy resource coordination and limited financial assistance. We recognize that not all crimes are going to be prosecuted and then not all victims are going to see the inside of a courtroom, and that justice for victims can be many different things so Lauren and I help people kind of forge their own path towards justice, and give people choice and also fill a gap, especially for those who either choose not to report crime or have, you know, experienced something that they don't know where to turn to and maybe it doesn't fit into some kind of box. That's what the parallel justice program is for. And Lauren can talk a little bit about the other program which is the conflict. Yeah, so our conflict assistance program just celebrated. It's one year anniversary. This is a position that we also house at the Burlington Community Justice Center, where our program coordinator works to empower community members in talking to conflict and establishing their own solutions. And so this position. They have a few different hats that they wear they also do workshops in the community around conflict. And they do one on one conflict coaching and they also offer mediation services and restorative dialogues and so restorative dialogue is a guided and structured conversation that aims to open communication develop understanding and come to agreements about how to move forward. The points of conflict are examined with both the case coordinator, and also the person who is experiencing that conflict. And it also examines the impact on each person and relationship to determine whether and how repair or accountability work is needed. And so the goal of this program is to really build a stronger community through stronger relationships. How much time do we have left. Just a couple of minutes. Yeah, if you're able to keep it for more minutes and then we will extend the meeting a bit for. Yeah, yeah. If you can keep it for a while. Okay. Yeah, no problem. So we will we wanted to talk about a few community based approaches to public safety in addition to talking about the root causes of crime. And so, first we'll see the boots model so these folks are based out of Eugene, Oregon, they have been around for about 31 years. And so cahoots or also known as crisis assistance helping out on the streets. They're a mobile crisis intervention program and they provide free confidential services in the Eugene and Springfield, Oregon metro area. And it's a free response that's available to just a broad range of non criminal cases. And that would include homelessness, substance use and mental illness and as well as dispute resolution between businesses and community members. And a lot of what they work to do is a service or a support that would otherwise be dispatched where patrol officers or police officers will be sent to the scene. Instead, it's a mental health clinician and as well as an EFT. And then a little bit about a local intervention program or advocacy program is the crisis advocacy intervention program so in my role as a victim services specialist at the BPD. I'm involved in the group of people that also includes a domestic violence victim advocate a domestic violence prevention officer, as well as the new positions of the community support liaisons. So we all work together to do kind of like a coordinated efforts and approach to help somebody, let's say they were a victim of crime, but maybe they're also facing chronic homelessness and maybe that's something that like a CSL can help out with, or maybe in the middle of talking about, you know, something that's like a, like a stolen phone, like something it brings up somebody, you know, past trauma and maybe that's something that the domestic violence victim advocate can address so that's what we do there. And then we just have a bunch of other ones that are here local and it's sometimes it can be, you know, like hard to remember that when you're seeing a lot of like reports of crime rates and what's going on in the city that there's also resources here to support you. So these are some local ones, including turning point center, which is a peer recovery group. Howard Center has their street outreach team. And then there's some other ones that are doing in other cities like more and mentioned cahoots. There's also the New York City Office of Naval Safety, which similar to we have COMSAT that addresses substance use they have like a neighborhood stat was different stakeholders that address public safety and neighborhoods. So we want to make sure that we kind of left it maybe on a positive note. Yeah, and as Bridget said, I think it is. It's, it's easy to forget how much community already exists all around you. And I know that in a lot of the work that we do just getting to talk to folks and talk through what's been happening and we've heard a lot that people appreciate so much of just being able to connect and talk through it. And so it is of my belief that the secret to a healthy community really does lie in our relationships to one another. I would say our doors are open to you all. And even if you aren't really sure what we do or if what we are able to do is is what you need. We can help with resource referrals and just as well as making connections. So thank you so much for being here today. So if we can take five minutes for questions and answers. Thanks for saying later. Oh, I think we've got one person. Hi, I've got a couple of questions. We talked on the phone. My name is Milo. I was curious about. So we know during COVID and then as things started to return to normal, the courts were still running COVID protocols. So I assume that increased the number of referrals to you. And I was curious as to what did those percentage increases look like. And did they come primarily from the police department or primarily from the state attorney's office. So that's a good question I do get we did talk on the phone and that was a really good point and we did have so we did another presentation, and we did include some like community justice center data, but we had to eliminate some of our slides based on time. There's a lot to talk about. But yeah, so I know like, so I don't know if I'd have to look at the data to see if there's a correlation between like COVID and backlog, or did we increase referrals because mental health issues went up you know what I mean like so I don't know if we can look at data and see like yes there's a direct correlation to like the impact of COVID, the backlog that the court is experiencing and eliminate some of the other factors I think we'd have to do a deeper dive I really liked your point, but I think we just need to do a deeper dive into like what those factors are, but good work. I can say anecdotally. I'm Rachel Jolly a director at the Burlington CJC anecdotally we just saw a shift in the numbers so we saw a big downturn in diversion referrals that come from the state's attorney and an increase in the Burlington Police Department direct referrals. But again we can't draw the correlations but we can we saw that trend. We just don't we can't say what inspired you know we know that the court's closing certainly had to do with the diversion referrals going down. So that was the idea that was direct referral correlation to the BPD increase. Thank you so much Rachel. Right, anyone else. If anybody wants we created a fancy QR code that goes to, we're very proud of it. I like those are just some of the safety tips that maybe are like tools that you all can take that maybe you are doing already which is great or maybe haven't thought of so you're welcome to and if you don't like the QR code you can always email one of us. So when you know there's a lot of information dumping that happens and you've all been sitting through so many other presentations. So, you know, sometimes we just need a night and then we wake up and we have these brilliant questions and so if you have them tomorrow or next week or forever please. Yeah, reach out our doors are open and we'd love to hear from you. You just have to email for that, or is it on your website. Well, you can find us at the Burlington CJC dot work. We have our emails as well as our phone numbers here. So you can also give us a call if that works better for you you can also come to 200 200 church street in Burlington. That's where the Community Justice Center is. I can't always guarantee that I will be there so a call a heads up is great and we can we can connect that way. The tip sheet is on the website as well. Yeah, I just want to say thanks for coming out tonight. I really appreciate all the data rich a lot a lot of things to take in. Certainly the issues you've described are things that we are working through, you know, on the marketplace. Yeah, I don't have a background in the human services so I've been trying to get up to speed and you know talking to different folks and had a bit of an epiphany yesterday when I talked to some of the folks that were formerly part of our on house community. And really the thing that stuck out is the importance of the building the human relationship so as we look to resolve some of these issues here. What I will be looking to do I think is to try to see if we can provide opportunities to folks and I also think that there's kind of a lot of conceptions about like what the situation is with on house for folks that do have permanent housing and it was a surprise to me that I wanted to learn that a number of folks actually have a lot of resources they just don't have housing and the barriers to that that I had heard was the lack of a rental history and a lack of a work history. So I don't know that I can really do anything about the lack of the the rental history but I'm hoping that you know we can maybe put in place some programs to provide folks with an opportunity to perhaps build a work history to move that so I'm going to review your presentation and try to digest all of the data science and we'll probably be following up with you but thank you for coming out and putting this together this was definitely a lot to take in and very good stuff so appreciate it. What's your name. I'm Chris Haseley Chris Haseley Thank you so much. Yeah, we look forward to speaking with you. Right, I think this is it Thank you so much. Sorry. There you go. I can do this. Hi. Hey, I have a really loud voice I could probably just do this. So, um, I just wanted to say, thank you. I just wanted to say thank you and look backwards for a minute. I started doing sort of the kind of thing you're doing only way not so professional. I started this years ago here, and somewhere on tape in some dusty place is a few minutes of tape of a mayor respond to concerns about domestic violence, literally saying, oh we're just talking about a little slapping around. So, I'm going to cry when I tell you even though I don't know you and I've never hung out with you. How excited I am that you are who you are, and you are where you're because that's where we started when we started the first domestic violence hotline. I once met with chief of police years ago with a new advocate, and she was going to help train people of peace academy. And the police person I forget if he was the chief or who he was but he looked at her and he said, you're not 100 pounds. When you're soaking wet. You're a little lady like, what do you think you're going to teach the troopers. So anyway, that's not my focus in life but this was a perfect moment to look backwards. And so I just want to say thank you. Thank you are where you are and what you're doing and educating your public. It sounds like you laid pretty good groundwork. Yeah. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Meeting and join. Thank you everyone for staying late. Oh, yeah. Reverse. I don't know. We have. Thanks. Right here behind you. I forgot about this. How many wins these door risers. Who's it going to be. Do we have anything that we have to do. Do we have anything that we have to do. When you want to speak. All right, yeah. Thank you. Thank all the speakers. Thank you for joining me.