 Today is October 24th, 2022. Thank you for joining us in both in Contoy's Auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 6.10. We will now call to order the council meeting with a motion to adopt the agenda and for that, I'll go to Councilor Hightower. Which I knew but still was unprepared for. I moved to adopt and amend the agenda as follows. Removed from the consent agenda item 5.26, market factor adjustment for city attorneys for President Paul. Add to the consent agenda item 5.30, communication from Keith and Penny Pillsbury, ward 8 residents regarding redistricting per city council President Paul. Add to the consent agenda item 5.31, communication from Brad Wildfong regarding disincentive driving by encouraging alternative and public transportation. Add to the consent agenda item 5.32, communication from Alex Farrell, Parks Commission regarding resignation. Also to, did you mention that? They were moving 3.2. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that motion. So there's a motion to approve the agenda with amendments by Councilor Hightower. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councilor Bergman. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed please say no. We have our agenda. I'll also note that Councillor McGee is joining us via Zoom is on our screen. Thanks so much for being here. The next item on our agenda is item 2.0, which is a work session on redistricting. Before we go to the work session, we will convene a short public forum to receive additional input on this topic. This was in response to several people that reached out to me and wanted one more opportunity to talk about redistricting. But in order for us to be able to have the work session and with a business agenda, we're going to set a timer for 10 minutes for this public session. And we have a few people who wish to speak. I believe there is, there's one person who wishes to speak in person. And then I believe we have one person who is online who wishes to speak. So with that, we would prefer that you speak for no more than two minutes, just so that we're sure that we can fit and everyone in just on the off chance that somebody else wishes to speak. With that in mind, we'll go to Jeff Comstock who is here in person. Thanks for being here, Jeff. If you could just make sure, Jeff, that you have the green button in front of you on the, right there. Yes. Wrong green button, okay. No worries. All right, here we go. Go ahead, start again, go ahead. Okay, so yeah, two thoughts I'd like to share with you this evening. The first is about the 10% deviation rule. And the second is a word of appreciation for the city planning office. So first, I think is unwise for the council to convince yourself that you have the flexibility to disregard the 10% deviation rule. This conversation came up repeatedly during the ad hoc committee process. And former city attorney Richardson made it very clear that municipalities do not have the same degree of latitude that states do when creating legislative districts. So I think that's a hard line for the council. Secondly, I want to thank the city council or the city planning office for the incredible amount of good work that they have done to support the ad hoc committee and for responding to all the conditions and requests that the council keeps making of them. It's my observation that the longer this decision drags on, the more contorted the redistricting map becomes. The planning office may not want to tell you, but on their behalf, I have to say that the most recent version of ward eight maps are not a quality outcome. The proposed configuration of ward eight the council is looking at tonight, I think damages the credibility of the entire redistricting process. The city council often makes decisions that people are unhappy with. So I contend that the redistricting decisions should serve the best interest of the city as a whole. So to that end, I support some version of option two or three from the October 3rd and 17th meetings. And I would also include their version 16 map submitted by Robert Bristow-Joneson that accomplishes this goal in the best way. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jeff. There is one person who's in the queue who wishes to speak online, that's Sharon Busher. I don't have hosting, so if you can promote that person so that they can speak or whoever it is that does have hosting abilities, if you could please promote Sharon Busher who is online. Thank you, someone has. Yes. Go ahead. Thank you so much. I wanted to thank the redistricting subcommittee who's worked really hard listening to all the constituents and all the concerns and trying to come forward with a map that really addresses and all of the concerns and keeps neighborhoods as much together as they can. I feel that the proposed two eight ward versions should be looked at carefully. I must admit that what it does for the ward that I live in, ward one, is that it brings back that strong residential component. I think those that don't live in ward one don't understand the significance of cutting out really the heart of ward one when other maps did that. That's more than just redistricting. That is really disrupting a ward in a manner that has never been done before. So I want you to look at the two eight ward maps. I must admit that I questioned why Brooks Avenue was sort of split East and West and you used North Williams as that delineator. It seems to me it's a small residential street that should remain in one ward. And the other thing I wanted to say is that over the process I've always heard people like two counselors and I know that we did the districts but there was a there still is concern about the districts. I don't really want to go back to that. I support eight wards and two counselors. That's my first choice, but whatever choice you end up with I think each ward should have two counselors. Thank you so much. There's no one else in the queue who wishes to speak. I'll give this a going once, going twice just in case there is anyone else who wishes to speak. If you are online, you can raise your hand. Or in person just raise your hand. Doesn't appear to be the case. So what we will do is close the public forum on redistricting and move on to the work session. And for that, for first we will hear from Nancy Stetson and from Megan Tuttle who have been hard at work on a number of new maps in addition to the many, many others that you have provided for us. I would also second exactly what Jeff Comstock said. Many thanks to both of you for all of your work on this. So if you'd like over the next five minutes or so if you could give us just an idea of what the new maps were that you have created the ones that are on board docs and then we will go to the council. Thank you. Sure, so what I did for this meeting was really bring two options. There's four maps altogether but they're really mostly just an eight ward and a seven ward map. The seven ward maps try to limit the changes to ward one but also distribute the athletic campus among three wards instead of just two wards. And I would say that's sort of the aim of them. I would say the issue with those maps is that it does create a sort of odd shaped ward eight similar to what we have now versus the seven ward maps. Again, try to limit changes to ward one distributing those athletic campus students and the issue with that map as you know is that it adds old north end populations to a new north end ward. So just looking through these maps here this is the seven ward version one. The deviation is close to 10% as is most of these maps and on campus students are split primarily between wards one and ward six with 57% of ward six being on campus students. On the next slide you can see the only difference between the two versions is along the border between ward three and ward five. The second version has sort of a cleaner split along Maple Street. The first version tries to keep that King Maple neighborhood together and that's sort of the trade off made there. The eight ward version splits those on campus students in three different ways. Again, the deviation is very close to 10%. The two versions in the eight ward map changes the shape of ward eight to either be sort of more compact where it resides right now sort of in that central part of the city or it sort of crosses across the city to the King Maple neighborhood. And those are the two new maps. Again, if you go online, you can see all the maps that have been brought to the working group and these maps as well. Yeah, I think I just wanted to draw everyone's attention. There is a link here, burlingtonbt.gov slash redistricting. It's really hard because of the city's geography to share really legible maps at this scale. So those are the easiest ways to see them. Okay, thank you. So to my colleagues this evening, we need to try our best, if we possibly can, to discuss the options that we have. It appears at this point that we are down to either a seven or an eight ward map. And if we can, as a group, come to some consensus around one of the two, then we could move forward with refining that map. So with that, the floor is open to anyone who wishes to speak to the maps. Councilor Hightower, thank you. I, of course, have lots of thoughts. I do agree with a lot of what former councilor Sharon Buescher said. I think it's very unfortunate that we have a lot of maps that split ward one on Brooks Ave, just because it is one of those neighborhoods where people are literally in the street, I think it would be a great disservice to that neighborhood. I think originally when we took that part out of ward one, I was like, oh, maybe they'd at least be okay with it because they'd be together. And now these new maps don't even do that, which I think is a great disservice. I think the only one that does accomplish that is the seven ward version three, which still gives a little bit of athletic campus to ward one, but not a significant amount. I do think that there is a way, I hope that there's a way to, if we are with any of those maps that at least Brooks Ave cannot be split up like that, because again, I think that'd be great disservice. Going back to some of the other just larger thoughts, I know that we had a different map that kind of split ward one and half. That was eight version, I think it's called the Barbara Hedrick map ward version one, which gives more athletic campus to ward one. But at least it kind of makes ward one and ward eight together, the old East End. So even though it really splits up ward one, and I think in a way that is problematic, at least it kind of keeps together those two things. And again, it doesn't split up those neighborhoods quite as much, or at least gives them an opportunity to be one NPA. I'm not sure what would happen with voting polling places if it were to be split up in that way is another thing. And then I just wanna go back to what somebody made a comment on in our last working group meeting, which was my thought all along, and I feel like it's gotten a little bit missed in this, is if we were talking about any other population, it would seem very unfortunate to keep saying we should split this group up amongst all the wards evenly so that they don't have a voting block or that they aren't to, and I understand how student is a little bit different in that, students are a little bit different in that, but I don't think that a main goal of ours should be to split up the students in as many wards as possible. And I also just wanna heart back to that, if that is the point, that ward one has more off-campus students than any other ward, as Sharon has said quite a few times. So with those lines, I don't think I can support a map that truly cuts Brooks Ave in half. I would much prefer that the line be moved to Pearl Street or at least that there's some way that we can have both sides of Brooks Ave in one ward. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Hightower. Are there other Councilors who wish to speak to this? Councilor Carpenter. This is just a point of clarification, I guess from Nancy, and I know we've done it, is there, it's awkward, but can you split streets basically in somebody's backyard as opposed to a street? I know there's a district in my district where the backyard is the dividing line as opposed to the street. And that's really relative to Councilor Hightower's comment about Brooks Avenue, whether you could go down the backyard of the south houses. I do not know the answer to that. I think what would be difficult is getting accurate population counts for both parts of a block. We are splitting the UVM block because we know the population of the dorms, but I'm not sure how that process would work. I also think then you would have to split neighbors. You'd have to, along Willard, you'd have to split neighbors from each other. Okay, yeah, thank you. Thanks, thanks Councilor Carpenter. Are there others who wish to speak to this? And then I think also what we probably would be helpful, I don't know if the CAO can do this for us, would just simply be to, you would send out a timeline of, I actually was probably Sarah Montgomery that did, but I think we should have a conversation about what the timeline is in order for us to be able to get this on the ballot for March. Councilor Jang. Thank you, President Powell. And I was just asking what was the consensus from the working group about a map if they came up with an idea? Anybody want to give the consensus, Councilor Barlow? Sure, I'll take a stab. There's consensus that redistricting's a very challenging one. That much we can all agree on. Beyond that, I think we have sort of, even though it seems like we've taken a lot of time, I think we have narrowed it down to a couple of different options, either an eight word map and a seven word map. And although there may not be consensus, I guess we'll find out this evening, any eight word map that we've discussed, at least two of us in the working group have indicated that in any eight word scenario, districts would probably survive or may survive into the next council district map. And if we went with seven, that the council would expand to 14. I think we've agreed on that much. There's been a number of discussions around the students, the on-campus student populations and trying to distribute it in a way to address some of the challenges that the city has experienced with that around engagement and staffing elections. And some of the maps do, they divide the students up in various ways and we've agreed that it's okay to divide census blocks where we can count students and that's what's been done on the athletic campus in some of the maps. And the other thing that I think we've all agreed upon is that where we do have to, like right now Ward one is a seventh of the city. And so in any eight word map, part of Ward one has to potentially move somewhere else. And I think we've all agreed that if that ever, if that is to happen, that we try to keep neighborhoods together and not split them up in ways that would break those communities of neighborhood interests. So I'd say that that's been agreed to. There's some variety of opinions on what the best way to accomplish some of the redistricting goals are. And I think that's why we've had a number of different maps, mostly on the eight word. I think we've had more eight word maps than any other map. So does that answer your question? Thanks very much, Councilor Jang and Councilor Barlow for that. Cliff note version of what the working group has been doing. Councilor Shannon. Thank you. I do totally agree that dividing a street, like in the middle of a neighborhood as Brooks Ave is problematic. It's kind of one thing if you're dividing on a major thoroughfare like North Willard, Main Street, Pearl Street, but I think we should really do our best to avoid dividing on a small neighborhood street. And I've spent enough time in Alaska around trying to juggle those census blocks that I totally appreciate when you reach the point of this is the only way I can make the numbers work. But I did want to make a case. I appreciate what Zariah said and I agree that if we were talking about a different population, this would be a very awkward conversation, but I think we need to reflect a little bit on why the student dorms in particular are problematic and that is that they are guaranteed to move, that they can't really serve from there. And when we create wards in districts that have such a high population of students, we're creating wards in districts with a lower voter turnout because many of them are not registered here, giving those who do vote more power than the voters in other districts. They're a larger percentage of a smaller number, each voter, and creating districts where it's hard to find people to step up as Keith Pillsbury has said often, we need people who can step up and serve on school board and staff the polls and all of the various volunteer opportunities that Burlington generously provides. So I do think it is important to kind of make that distribution to be fair. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Shannon, Councillor Bergman. If the problem is with just Brooks Avenue or that is a one problem, I mean, we could go out, I would authorize my staff person, I'd go with a tri-partisan group and we could count numbers, right? There's, we know that we can split census blocks. If you got one side of one street and it's as short as Brooks Avenue is, we could do that. And I think that we should if that's the big deal because that's just being bureaucratic and being slaves to a bureaucratic way of looking at it. If we just leave it to, okay, we have to keep it in the census block because it's too hard to figure out how many people live on that side of Brooks Avenue. So I think that that is possible. I disagree with Mr. Comstock's assessment of what the opinion of the city attorney was with regard to the deviation. I do think that we have more fudge than we're giving ourselves. It's not a hard line. This is court-made rules in as long as we are acting in good faith, but I don't know that we need to litigate that, so to speak. And I just wanna say that I just see no seven word map that can satisfy me at all. It brings in such a significant section of the old North End into word four that it destroys the very nature of that. So I'm hoping that we can get to an eight word map and we can litigate the districts after we get to that point if we can. And I personally think that the version two of the eight word map is the closest. I did read and have a chance to speak to Barbara Hedrick who suggested maybe a little alteration on that by going up to the central campus instead of going across Main Street and Prospect Street. So there, you know, and it would, I think eliminate the Salamander approach that people have a problem with. And the version two map of the eight word map does then bring a whole bunch more permanent residents into the mix instead of the people who are in the Buell Street area who are feeling somewhat out of sorts in the current word eight. And I can totally appreciate that. Obviously my suggestion of moving word two into that neighborhood somehow and to be able to give back word one did not make it onto a map. But I still think historically, word two has gone up to Main Street in the past and did encompass the Buell Street and Hunger for Terrorist area. I represented it for six years, three terms in the 80s. So, you know, that's a more, you know, maybe a more significant change. But thank you. Thanks, Councillor Bergman. There are others, you know, the one thing that we could do if we feel that we can do it, we can't take straw pulls as we found out. However, we can make a motion. And if there is the appetite this evening to make a motion either to accept a and move forward with a seven word map or make a motion to move forward with an eight word map. I think as Councillor Bergman has already said, we can debate the number, the districts, and the number second, but we do need to figure out whether we want a seven or an eight word map. So, with that, are there others? I don't have anyone in the queue. Is there others? Are there others who wish to speak? Just offer general comments. Or the other thing also, if you have questions of Nancy or Megan, we maybe can even, I don't know how interactive we can be, but perhaps we can at least look at things and see whether or not one thing is doable or not. That's the point of this work session. Councillor Travers. Oh, I'm sorry, Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I'll be brief as I think my preferences have been well stated in the past. Given the maps that are in front of us right now, I like the eight word version two. I think that gets us the closest and with some edits, I would be glad to join Councillor Bergen and then canvassing Brooks have. I think that gets us the closest to solving many of the issues we've discussed. And like Councillor Bergen and there is no version of the seven word map that I could support. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor McGee. Then we'll go to Councillor Travers and then Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. First of all, as a member of the working group, I want to echo the comments that have already been made to the planning team, especially Nancy Stetson for the work that they've spent on putting all of these maps together. I think just as a general comment, I'm relatively new to the council. This is my first process with redistricting. I would seriously like our council to take a look at once this process is over or taking this process out of the city council's hands. I think that first of all, it's problematic that this is something that has to go through the charter change process where even when we do put a question out there, it's ultimately something that's going to have to go to the legislature and we won't have answers until the legislature acts on it. And then beyond that, I think that there would be significant value in our coming up with a more sort of independent process that we would have to live with one way or another as to how we do this redistricting. In the working group, I've come around to the mindset in looking at the seven ward and eight ward maps that in looking at an eight ward map, we are realistically looking at an eight ward map that maintains four districts and 12 counselors. In any recent memory, we have not been a city council that has had 16 counselors, which would be the other option with an eight ward map. We are a relatively small city. I think you would struggle to find other cities of our size out there that maintain city councils of 16 counselors. And I agree with the concerns that it could present some unwieldy issues if we were to expand from a 12-person council to a 16-person council. That said, I hear the arguments that folks are making about the value of expanding the size of the council and the value of our going to a system where each ward elects two counselors, which is why personally, I have been interested in our continuing to pursue a seven ward map because it meets a lot of the goals that we've stated out front. I think that we've had a discussion about wanting to do away with the so-called student ward and ward eight. I think we've had some consensus around if in a perfect world, getting rid of the districts and moving to two-person wards. And I think that some of the seven ward maps that are on here, seven ward version two, seven ward version one, check many of the boxes that were laid out by the ad hoc redistricting committee and that we've talked about as wanting to address and redistricting. So I suppose, given that this is a working session as a query to some of the other councils that are opposed to a seven ward map, I would be interested in hearing more with respect to why that is the case. We have heard a number of concerns, for example, from some neighbors in the old North End who are concerned about a seven ward map requiring that the old North End blend in with the new North End in a certain area, but I would be interested in hearing more about what some of the concerns are around that. Historically, there has been a blended old North End and new North End. And if you look at even the most recent redistricting for house districts, there's a house district that blends community members in the old North End with the new North End. So again, I'd be interested in hearing more about that. I, on an eight ward map, I think we need to do away to the greatest extent we can with the so-called salamander ward. I think the issue to me here is that we have some common consensus here that we would like to do away with the Ward 8 salamander student ward, where a vast majority of the folks currently in that ward are on-campus students. And I agree with the comments of Councilor Shannon. I think that on-campus students, this isn't about students. This is about on-campus students who are freshmen and sophomores, who are guaranteed to move, who live in on-campus dormitories that are inaccessible to folks who are running for office and are looking to go door to door. And they're individuals who are relatively new to our community, who we have seen in Ward 8 right now. We struggle to find people to run for inspective elections and ward clerk races and school board races. We struggle to get people to volunteer and to run a polling station. So I am open as well to some tweaking of an 8 Ward version 2. I do think that in that ward, however, more students would have to go into Ward 8. I think there's a way for us to do it that there are fewer on-campus students in Ward 8. I'm not opposed to the concept that was raised by Councilor Bergman of the central campus, for example, going into Ward 8. But I do think, however, that the Ward 8, the 8 Ward version 2 map that some folks have spoken in favor of is still presenting some wards that, again, the vast majority, or not as much of a majority is currently in Ward 8, but a majority of folks within the ward are on-campus students still. So I think we need to have a discussion as well as to our comfort level with that. If we've identified as a threshold issue wanting to do away with the issues that have been presented in the current Ward 8, then what are we comfortable with as to what is that percentage of on-campus students which have presented that issue that we identified very early on that we would be open to? I suppose, finally, what I'll say here is that I appreciate Councilor Hightower's openness to also a map like the Hedrick map. We heard in the working group that we had that there were a number of folks concerned, and we heard from former Councilor Busher as well about what we've come to sort of refer to as the North Hill section here of Loomis and Henry Street and Brooks and so on in wanting to maintain that as a cohesive Ward. I do think that the Hedrick map presents something interesting for us to look at, especially if we're maintaining districts where if a Ward 1 and Ward 8 and Ward 8 keeping that district cohesive if they were put together like that and if that could be a district Councilor as well, that that old East End, so to speak, could stay together. So long-winded thoughts there, but that's been my impressions from the working group and would love to hear more from my colleagues as to what their preferences and concerns are and why. Thank you, Councilor Travers. We'll go to Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. So if we're primarily discussing the maps for 1024 City Council, I would say that the Ward 8 maps there are non-starters for me for one, two real reasons. One is I don't see that these maps solve the problem of the current Ward 8, the way it's configured, you're still gonna have this problem of finding people to serve and fill all of the offices that we have to fill within those boundaries. The second is that it's, you know, gerrymandered to wrap around into the UVM campus and it takes a neighborhood that's part of the South Prospect Street neighborhood and really disconnects it from its neighborhood and isolates it. I mean, if you take a big enough section of a neighborhood, you can kind of, you know, there's at least a cohesive body of a neighborhood there, but this just takes two streets, Robinson Parkway and Henderson Terrace, and puts them into a student neighborhood. I always kind of use the test of can somebody from this area get elected in this Ward and I don't think that it passes that test. So I'm not opposed to Ward, to eight Ward maps generally, but I do not think that these two eight Ward maps work. I do think that the seven Ward maps work, even though that does take the Old North End and the New North End creating one Ward with parts of the Old North End and New North End, there is the, it's almost 2,000 people in the Old North End, so it's a solid body of a neighborhood. And I do think people from the Old North End could get elected in that Ward. And somebody from the New North End could get elected in the Ward. And in fact, any counselor is going to have to appeal to both to get elected at all. There are sizable constituencies that could not be ignored by any counselor serving that Ward. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Councilor Hightower. Oh my gosh, I don't know why I keep forgetting that I'm coming up right after I say that I want to speak. Oh, the, I think I would really appreciate, I mean, regardless of which version that we go with, I think that unfortunately, what we did with the seven Ward maps is we just put in more athletic camp of athletic campus to keep Ward, Ward one the same boundaries. And I, so I think I don't have a preference when that hasn't been solved. So I think first thing is just, I would ask that we commit to removing some part of athletic campus. I realize on the eight Ward maps, that means taking maybe the only part of athletic campus. But again, I think that Ward one has a big, has under these maps. I don't exactly know what it is on seven Ward version three, but it has 30% of the student population that we've got main campus. We've got Trinity campus, which is expected to grow over the next 10 years, depending on how that goes. We've got a solid on campus student population as well as a solid off campus student population, which while more accessible is still transient in the ways that council Shannon was talking about. I don't care so much about it. I would happily accept all of the athletic campus into Ward one and welcome them with open arms, except that we're cutting out that chunk of Ward one that I think would be really hard. And I think in some of the versions of the seven Ward or the eight Ward, it just takes that, and it's the only little bump out that goes to a different Ward, which I think to what council Shannon was just talking about, it really isolates that neighborhood depending on what map we're looking at. So regardless of what map we're looking at, I think my ask is that we consider removing part of athletic campus, not because I don't want it, but because I think that that is the only way to get that part of Brookstaff back on unless we are okay with just having the other side of Brookstaff join again. But I really do think Pearl Street should be that divide. Beyond that, I don't, I think both, it sounds like we're not, I am fine with a seven by two, eight by two, would prefer not to have an eight plus four, but I understand that that's a compromise that we might get back to. And I don't think it's a horrible compromise in terms of the overall size of the council. And I will leave it there. Okay, thank you, Councillor Hightower. We'll go back to Councillor Travers. Okay, my apologies, I did not see the hand being raised by Councillor McGee. So we'll go to Councillor McGee, then Councillor Travers. Thank you. I just wanted to answer Councillor Travers's question about additional issues with a seven word map and note the comparison to the state house districts. The state house districts don't impact the most local level of our city government in determining the NPA make-ups. And to take this section of word three, what's currently word three and move it into the new north end would dramatically impact neighborhood decisions. And so that is an additional reason why I would not support a seven word map. And Councillor Shannon has me doing some math with the population blocks right now. So I will continue doing that. Thank you. Councillor McGee, now we'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Ball. While I recognize the interest in being careful around the way we discuss dividing the student population, at least the on-campus student population, the reality is that it appears to me that that is the issue that this discussion is boiling down to. And that makes sense because we started this process with consensus that the Salamander student word eight needed to go away and needed to be absorbed into either a seven word or a word eight map. However, in the current word eight, and these are sort of broad numbers, there's about 3,500 on-campus students. So the question boils down to if we have common consensus that the current word eight needs to be changed, where are those 3,500 on-campus students going to go? And I'm mindful of the fact that sort of the target numbers we have in an eight word map are about 5,500 people within the ward. So if you're starting with 3,500 students, you're not leaving that much space. Again, a vast majority of the folks in the current word eight as being on-campus students. So if we do away with the word eight, where are those 3,500 students going to go? Well, every version of the map that we've seen has the redstone campus, which is currently in word eight going into word six. And that's nearly 2,000 students who are not currently in word six who would be placed into word six along with on-campus students at Champlain College. So I'm of the mindset that word six in already taking the redstone campus and all of these maps is not in a position to absorb any additional on-campus students from the athletic campus. So where does the athletic campus go then? Well, it could go all into ward one. We do see some maps that show the athletic campus going all into ward one, but that presents issues as Councilor Hightower and others have identified because there's no way to put all of those on-campus students in the athletic campus into ward one and for that to not impact this North Hill section neighborhood of Loomis and Henry and Brooks and the streets along there. The third option is that then that all of the athletic campus goes into a word eight. And I do think that there's a way to make that word eight look less salamander-like if we put some of the central campus into word eight as well and extend it down into the downtown corridor, but the reality there is that you're still going to have a word eight which will not be dominated as much, but on-campus students will still be a significant number of on-campus students. So to me, this question is boiling down to really the athletic campus and which ward is in a place to absorb those on-campus storms. We've heard arguments about ward one, ward six, ward eight, and on an eight-ward map, it looks like to me that is the discussion. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Go to Councillor Bergman. Let me address the sort of electability or the people who may be willing and able to serve in the eight-ward to version two version that we have in front of us. There are many permanent residents in the Pine Street area, Battery Street, up and down College Street, and in the district, the Beale Street area. So I reject that critique of that ward is, I just don't think it's factually correct. You know, you can think about how divorced people are from the state legislature. I mean, just think about that. They are not divorced from us. They call us, well, they're not divorced from us. They call us when there is a pothole. They call us when there are parking issues. They call us when there's a gun incident anywhere in the city. This is very different. And the old North End, and this is not even my ward, although I have lived in the section on Drew Street, and on North Street. This is just something that those people need to have a representative in their community. And you just do not get it when you pop them into, I think it is ward four. I think that the questions that were raised around Robinson Parkway are real. I think you address that by maybe shifting so that you move the students that are going to be somewhere. There are residents in the central core campus up and then moving the people on Robinson Parkway like they actually are in this eight ward, version two, into ward six. So I think that that is a possible change that will create a contiguous ward for ward eight and eliminate the visual issues that many people have. And let me just add, and I obviously have not been at the working group. So I don't know what the discussion has been, but we have had in the Charter Change Committee discussion about the flexibility of sites for polling places. And in all likelihood, we'll be bringing back to the council to recommend that it go on the ballot for this coming March, a item and item that will allow for the flexibility in polling places. And if that therefore implicates, say the lines around Edmonds, then perhaps we have some more flexibility to go there. I just wanna implore you to not move to an option that takes a significant section of the old North End community and brings it into the political district, a political district in the New North End. I've lived in the New North End for several times for significant periods of time. I like people out there. I spend time out there. This is about just the integrity of the communities and trying to get the best and most accurate representation possible. And I think that we can do that. And again, the questions of the numbers, like 12 or 16, I'm willing to kick that down the line because this is the fundamental question, where the lines are drawn. Then we get to play on that field. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Bergman. Of course, the only way that we're gonna get to the lines is if we know how many wards there are going to be. Councilor Barlow, and then we'll go to Councilor Shannon. At the risk of violating parliamentary procedure. Actually, I'll try to skirt it, I guess, and ask the question in a way that doesn't. Are there any of my colleagues who, and if there are, I'd be interested in hearing from them that have objections to an eight ward four councilor or four district map? Because I agree with Councilor Powell in that this is a fundamental question. If we're gonna move forward to lines is to know how big our wards are gonna be. So I would be interested to hear from anyone who has objections to an eight ward four district map. Thank you. Councilor Bergman, actually, wait a minute, we're, okay, it's a work session. I don't know. Is that okay to? For a vote? Okay, so for those who want to respond to that question, and that would be Councilor Bergman and Councilor Freeman, yes? Okay. I don't support it, but I do prefer it over a seven ward map. I do prefer it over a seven ward map. I am a practical as well as an idealist, a practical person as well as an idealist, so I like to be able to eat the dinners that I can buy, and therefore I, What? That's a lots of mixed metaphors to tell you that, to tell you that this one person, if given a choice between seven and eight and the districts will look very, very seriously at making that work, if that is the only way that you can get to a majority of this council. Okay, Councilor Freeman. Thank you. I agree, I think with a lot of what you just said, Councilor Bergman, about the dinners maybe, but the rest of it, I think it's a good question, Councilor Barlow. I think you probably have, I'm guessing, have experienced this as someone who represents a district that it's really a lot of constituents, and I think that's how I feel sometimes, and I think that if this is how we're going to find consensus going forward, I think to Councilor Bergman, is it ideal? I think it's a little lamentable. I think the districts, I think a lot of us can acknowledge they're really just not that ideal, but I think that when I was sitting down and looking at the work session and looking at the materials and kind of trying to figure out where the consensus was going to be, it felt really hard to figure out where that might be going forward, and I think that if we can then ultimately find consensus through this route, then that is the way forward, and then I think to Councilor Travis' point, if we're going to have a different process for doing this in the future than so be it, or if the Council is going to do this process again, I think that it's something that we should still continue to look at resolving because I don't think the districts are ideal, but if this is where we're at, at this stage in the process, and that's the way forward, then so be it. So that is, that's my thought on that. I do, it does, it's not ideal, but if that's how we're going to move forward, then I think to Councilor Bergman's point, the seven word maps are just not, they're not something that I would want to support. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Freeman. Certainly when we're trying to reach consensus, I don't know that we're going to get to something that is everyone's version of ideal, but it would certainly be helpful if as a body we could have reasonably general agreement. Did you want the floor back, Councilor Barlow, or we'll go to Councilor Shannon, please go ahead. No, I'm also out, thank you. Okay, no motion or anything that you want to make? I guess I want to hear what Councilor Shannon wants to say first. Okay. Thank you. I was trying to respond to the question. Oh, okay. As a district Councillor, I love serving the district and I've also served as a ward Councillor and when I was a ward Councillor, I found that a lot of people outside my district would contact me, which we all experience. A lot of people contact the whole city council, but also our kind of definition of a neighborhood by ward is so small. I would say I had a lot of friends in close contacts that were also in ward six and to me, it feels quite natural for those two to be combined and to kind of, I won't say one neighborhood because even within each ward, we have many neighborhoods. So it isn't one neighborhood, but I have really enjoyed serving the district. At the same time, I really dislike the ward district combinations. I dislike them because I think they're really confusing and I think even people who are pretty engaged are very confused by the ward district system. So my preference would actually be to go to four wards. We can call them wards, we can call them districts. I think four is a good size for the city, but I also appreciate that I am in the minority in that viewpoint. So for as much as I don't really like the eight ward for district combination, over time, I think people have adjusted to it. It is what it is now and I can live with it. Okay, thanks, Councilor Shannon. Well, we'll go to Councilor Carpenter and then back to Councilor Hightower. Thanks, I just wanna express my support for the 12 councilors, the districts are awkward, but I think in terms of my many years of experience and sizes of boards and good governance, it's a much better working number. And given where we're at today and given the issues that have been identified with the seven ward map, I'm fine with an eight ward map knowing there's tweaks we gotta make and can support that if we remain with the 12 councilors to ward one district. And just anecdotally, I feel like somebody made a comment, I mean, in our region, I think there's a lot of treatment of the three of us as kind of always being in one neighborhood. So people don't identify often that Ali and I are different wards. I mean, we get the same question from the same people and markets them as well. So it isn't as disjointed. I mean, it's awkward to explain it to someone who's never voted in that kind of system, but once they kind of get it, and I would say that's probably true in other neighborhoods where there tends to be treatment of the three councilors together, so to speak. And it's not as bright lined as one might imagine. Thanks. Great, thank you, Councillor Carpenter. We'll go to Councillor Hightower now. I think that's probably, and I think maybe this is one of the reasons that ward one has so many arguments is because ward one I think does feel more like you are the new north end, there is the old north end, and then there's the old east end, which is just ward one. So I think other parts of the city don't have that as much of a district feel as some of the current cities do. My, if I'm just speaking as a ward one Councillor, my favorite is seven by two, then eight by two, and then eight plus four, but I obviously also won't stand in the way of consensus, but again, just wanna emphasize that not every part of the city has the same district level identity that some of the other parts of the city do. Okay, thanks Councillor Hightower. We're getting to around 7.15, we've got ourselves some time. There is no one in the queue to speak in public forum, so we will have to go, oh, I apologize. Okay, we will go to public forum, but we don't need to go to public forum for a little while. There are only I guess a couple of people who wish to speak in public forum. So with that, Councillor Barlow. You just had a point of information, I guess. So how would we go about sort of formalizing consensus on an eight ward four district map that still whose boundaries, in word boundaries are still to be determined? I would look to the parliamentarian, is it permissible during a work session to make that motion? That the motion that Councillor Barlow just referred to? If you could turn your mic off. Well, I didn't say it as a motion, it was more of an information request to know how we might formalize consensus or determine if we have consensus on that so that we can move forward with a more narrowed scope. I feel like that's beyond the scope of my brief years, the parliamentarian to be offering that kind of advisory opinion as to what might or might not be done to reach consensus. I don't think that's a parliamentary question. May I restate? Yes. Could we make a motion during a work session? I think so. Okay, I will move that the council move forward with the redistricting process, with the understanding that we're going to be talking about and discussing an eight ward four district map. Motion made by Councillor Barlow and I see a second from Councillor Freeman and with that we'll have discussion and then we'll go to a vote. Are there any Councillors who wish to offer comments on the motion? I just have a quick question. Sure, go ahead. Can you just remind me or can we, what is the timeline once we just, or we can do it after the motion if you want, but I just am trying to remember and then what's the process for, because it sounds like we are moving forward with eight wards four districts, but with the boundaries still to be determined. So what, are we planning another work session or will there just be another presentation to the council? So I may or may not be the best person to speak to the timeline. My understanding is that the last day that charter language can come to this body is the 12th of December. Now between then and now, any decision that we would make on redistricting must then go and be converted into charter language and actually Councillor Bergman wrote the charter language the last time around. So certainly can speak to that as well. That is a time consuming process. I believe that it does need to go to the Charter Change Committee unless the council were to determine that it doesn't need to go to the Charter Change Committee. So there is a little bit of time. I think we also have to be cognizant of two things. First is that there is a limited amount of time that we are going to have the services of Nancy Stetson. And the second is that we are gonna be then bumping into the Thanksgiving holiday. And I think it would personally, I mean this is just more of a judgment, would be that being able to make a decision for the most part by the 7th of November is pretty critical. So if we can get ourselves to one map configuration this evening, then that will narrow the field and we can then move forward on the 7th, hopefully with enough input to be able to come up with a map that will broadly reach consensus. So that's a long winded answer to your very straightforward question. That was helpful. So we would potentially vote on the precise boundaries sometime in November, if it sounds like. Yes. Okay, I just wanted to be clear on the timeline. Thank you for reminding me. Is that correct in your understanding CAO Shad? Yes. That is so helpful, thank you so much. Okay, now I believe that Councillor Hightower you had your hand up and then we'll go to Councillor Bergman and Travers. Great, and this is just on the motion itself which is just that I will be voting no, not because I don't support it as a whole, but because the Ward 8 versions that we currently have in front of us which I'm hoping we can fix, but I also know that there was a Hightower 8 Ward version 1, 2 and 3 that got rejected, I assume because it didn't have enough of the on-campus students. I do just want to say that Ward 1 does have 807 main campus students, 433 Trinity campus students, so which seems to add up pretty close to what we should be having in that in that fraction of total students. And so I just, I can't, I can't with us right now just looking at maps that Split at Berks have, I want to vote no, but I support the general. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. We'll go to Councillor Bergman and then Councillor Travers and maybe then we can, and then Councillor Barlow. Go ahead, Councillor Bergman. So I can support this as much as I dislike the district. So know that I can vote for something that I dislike. And let me also say and give credit to Jay Appleton who was in the planning office who actually wrote the Meets and Bounds and then there were some other things that I did the last time around to make it happen. So there does need to be some legal vetting. I do not believe if we settle on that, that the Charter Change Committee needs to see this, we may want to suspend the rules since the rules do indicate things go to committee first. And really the question that we have, regardless of what version that we choose is just to have enough eyes on it to catch mistakes. And that is what a committee would do. So although I don't think we need to go through all that process and we've got our hands full with some other things, if that's what needs to happen, I believe my fellow councillors on the committee would make it happen. Great, thank you councillor Bergen. We'll go to councillor Travers and then Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. As I stated before, I will admit, I liked a number of the seven ward maps and I liked them in particular. There's a lot of reasons why. But what I liked the most about it was that it did away with the districts and that each ward received two councillors. We would expand the size of the council. I know that's a change from not all that long ago. But I think that there's some inherent value in our opening up the opportunity for folks to run for office and join the council from where we are right now. That said, I've heard the concerns of my colleagues here on the council and it seems like this motion is a way forward towards consensus, which I think is a good idea. So I will vote in favor of the motion. If I may just be on that briefly. And Nancy, I don't know, are you able to share your screen and pull something up or no? I have to join the Zoom, so I might take it. Oh, okay, well, don't worry about it then. I just thought. What could, she could do that? Okay. I apologize, I did have it open, but my computer went on the fritz. So we'll give Nancy just a second. Well, as you're doing that, and I'm gonna sound a little bit like a broken record here, but there's still a lot of outstanding questions, even with our council finding consensus on eight wards, four districts, there's a lot of outstanding questions. We have a number of eight ward, four district maps here, and I don't know that we're providing you all all that much direction as to where we go from here. And Councilor Hightower just mentioned that the central campus is having 807 students. The athletic campus is really one entire census block, if you were to go by census blocks of over 2,200 students. Nancy Stetson has done an excellent job here of breaking it down more on a dorm by dorm basis, but you're looking at blocks, and I guess what I was asking is if we could pull up the map just to see a visual on it one way or another, of 514, 808, and 989 students. And after a really difficult process here, I hate to oversimplify the issue, but from my perspective, I think the direction that you all need from us is where those student blocks go. They are the largest student blocks that are still out there. As noted before, every map that we have has about 2,000 students from the Redstone campus already going towards six, along with on-campus students in Champlain College. So from my perspective, I don't think Ward 6 can absorb any additional on-campus students without perpetuating the Ward 8 problem. So from my perspective, the question is whether or not the athletic student blocks and the central campus block, which this is a version of the map that I don't agree with, but it's good for a visual here that we have right there where on this proposed map, Ward 8 is meeting Ward 6. You have 808 and 989 on-campus students. You have the living and learning dormitory above that with 514 students, and then you have the central campus dormitories above that with 807 students. So I'd be interested in hearing from you all. From my perspective, the direction you need from us is where those largest blocks that we're dealing with here are going. And from there, we can really start to narrow down what the 8 Ward 4 district maps are. So I'd be curious to hear your feedback. Am I oversimplifying things, or from your perspective, has that been sort of the wrench in the gears, so to speak? I think that has been a challenge this entire process. I think one point that would help me is if there is a hard limit to the percent of on-campus student, any Ward would accept, because there are maps where Ward 6 has 60 to 70% on-campus students, and if 60% is a hard limit, then we'd have to make other adjustments to the dorms. Otherwise, placing specific dorms will shift the other lines, but I think we can make that happen. The only other thing that I'll add, I do agree that because these blocks are so small and so dense in population, they do have an outsize impact on how the rest of the Ward boundaries get drawn. And just for reference, Councillor Traverse mentioned, these individual campus communities have between 500 and 1,000 people living in them. When we're talking about the deviation that's allowed between Ward's, a 1% deviation is only about 60 people. So we're really talking about very, very small numbers that we can move around. Even talking about moving part of Brooks Avenue, that may even be more than 60 people. So when we're really getting into the nitty gritty of where these lines go, there aren't many blocks in the city in general that have that few people in them, let alone those campus communities, for sure. Okay, I believe that brings us to Councillor Barlow. Thank you, Councillor Traverse, by the way. Thank you, President Powell. I just wanted to clarify for Councillor Hightower that in my motion, I wasn't endorsing any particular 8 Ward map and it would be inclusive of any of the maps we've considered so far and any new ones that may be developed by the Planning Department as a result of this motion. Thank you, Councillor Barlow. We'll go to the mayor and then maybe we'll be able to take a vote. Thank you, President Powell. Thank you, Councillor Barlow, for that last point because I thought that was an important one as I understand where this conversation is moving. This is a process that has been led by councillors. However, this is like any council decision, something that I'll need to sign off on in the end and I have tried to approach it and review it from an operational point of view from a perspective of good governance and how the work between the administration and the council is best executed. And I guess a couple of observations and I just want to make clarifications, I want to make sure the public's clear on it. I've been open to a wide variety of outcomes through this process and including, as I know many of the colleagues on this side of the table have been returning to the Seven Award, 14 councilor model. I didn't think we would end up there given having lived through this process before and understanding the reality that going to that would require a substantial, what we've talked about tonight that the new North End wards would have to be expanded to include substantial numbers, thousands of people from the old North End. And I think we've heard very clearly tonight the opposition to that. And it seems that we're on the cusp of moving forward, moving away from that definitively and I just hope that's understood by everyone as a significant compromise we've heard from councillor Traverse, how it was his preferred option. It wasn't really my preferred option at any point but it was one way to get through this. As we go beyond, I welcome that we're coming to compromise, it appears maybe on the cusp of something that has broad consensus. As we dig into the details of that, I find interesting the notion that we should go beyond the 10% deviation. I wanna voice discomfort with that if we're gonna go through this process and go through all the work to get to a newly balanced map. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that we would settle on something that immediately made us open to some legal challenge and that would kind of undo the hard work that we've put in to get here. I do just wanna say from the conversations that I've been in especially in recent weeks, it seems to me that I don't think the public should think that we have resolved exactly what the award map should look like based on the debate tonight. I think there's still significant discussion and compromise that's probably gonna be necessary to finish this process. Thank you Mayor Weinberger. Don't see anyone else in the queue and given that it's 7.30, maybe that's a good omen. To take a vote on the motion. So we will do that. We'll take a vote on the motion made by Councillor Barlow and seconded by Councillor Freeman. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. Okay, so hey, that's pretty good. Redistricting is not an easy thing and we have at least one unanimous vote. With that, we will close the work session and move on to, and just so everyone doesn't understand, we are, of course, we still have more work to do and I'm not really sure before we actually leave this, what would be for Nancy and for Megan, what do you think would be a good next step in terms of moving this forward so that we might be able to vote on the 7th of November? I think we can reach out to you, President Paul, about the availability for another work session. I don't know what your schedule already looks like for the 7th, but I do think, given the number of permutations that there are for eight ward options, it will be helpful to probably have some extended period of time to work through that with you. I think in the meantime, Nancy asked the specific question about are there upper limits on the student question? We would really appreciate any feedback from you on that question as early as possible. That'll help us get to being able to bring you some package of maps to consider at your meeting on the 7th. Great, thank you, that is very helpful. So with that, we will close that item and we will move on as it's now 733 to the public forum. Just for, there aren't and there is no one that has signed up to speak in public forum that is online, so that will, no one who is in the queue to speak online. So that means that we will only have people that are, and they are all Burlington residents who are speaking in person. Just to keep in mind, there's a light system in front of us. There is a green light when you start speaking and the second light is yellow. That's when you have 30 seconds left and then the red light will shine when your time is up. We just ask that you complete your comments when the sound or you see the light, that the light is red and just complete the sentence that you are finishing and that way we can keep the public forum moving along and everyone has the same amount of time to speak. Only other caveat is that we just ask that if it's easier for us to listen to you and really hear what you're saying if you just use respectful language and if you direct your comments to me as the chair. With that, we have one, two, three people who wish to speak in the public forum. The first is Todd LaCroy to be followed by Christopher Hesley. Todd, it appears Todd isn't here right now, so we'll move on and go back. So Chris, if you would like to speak and then Robert Presto Johnson. Good evening. The ad, that's better. So the advent of the colder weather might be time to start taking my fashion cues from somebody other than John Fetterman. But yeah, just the redistricting thing has kind of gone off. I just wanna say on the student question, previously we had kind of put everybody into ward A and then earlier this year I was working with some folks and I believe our goal was to distribute or integrate the college students across multiple wards and it kind of had a realization a while ago, take that phrase and you substitute in a different demographic group for the college students. If we said oh, we're gonna distribute black voters across multiple wards or Latino voters across multiple wards, it just doesn't sound as nice and it kind of came to an inclusion. I feel like we're kind of doing the opposite of what happened the last time and for me personally, I just kind of come to the conclusion that people live where they live and while I understand that college students are not a protected class, I think it's kind of irrelevant because at the end of the day the underlying motivations are still the same which is to kind of limit the influence of one or more groups of people based on a characteristic. So I just think that essentially it's younger people that we're talking about so and I think they're an important part but yeah, at the end of the day I just think people live where they live and try to draw the lines that make sense based on roads and natural boundaries and things of that nature. So that's all I had to say. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson and then we'll go back to Todd LaCroy. So I guess this is gonna be at our CV because you're considering that tonight too and I understand the motivation to get the mayor's race back into this especially after the last election. I mean, if Councillor Jang didn't run for mayor and if his voters, a 54% of the Jang voters had Mark Max Tracy as their choice we would have a different mayor sitting there. I know that but there was kind of a promise that we're gonna see how this goes before adding the mayor's race to this and we're not really doing that. Here's another thing. Besides adding the mayor's race to the language there is they want to change the method they want to on the charter level they want to reinsert the method back into the language on the charter level and you might want to ask yourself why did the House Government Operations Committee in the legislature take it out? And it is because they are fundamentally considering the method and there's a reason for that. There is some even current history not just the 2009 Burlington election. In Maine and in New York City it would be four days or a week before there was an election and it's because in this method of RCV that you're trying to reinsert into the language that it requires centralization of the vote and that is what's taking these large cities and what's taking entire states four days to an entire week to figure out who the winner is and both the Secretary of State's office and the House Government Operations Committee and there's a particular certain person in common and that's the current chair of the House Government Operations Committee. They are looking into this and you might want to consider that before just kind of like reflexively reinserting what they took out of the language. Thank you. Thanks Robert. Our last speaker is Todd LaCroy. Todd, welcome. So you guys seem to keep thinking that the world's going to continue acting the way it was in the last 30, 40, 50 years. You keep planning on tearing everything down while you're starting a war with China and Russia and I can promise you war with China is coming. Just the other day Hu Zhintao was taken out in a ceremony in front of the cameras. Most of you people didn't live in China like I have and understand China like I do. That was a statement that the friendship with America is over. Hu Zhintao was the one who built the China that was friends with us. We have pissed everybody off. Now let me give you a little history lesson. You guys remind me of the Germans in the middle of World War II, so arrogant and confident. But let me remind you, they lost that war. Do you know why? Because they tried to invade Russia which was supplying their military. They tried to invade Russia. They pissed off their friends and they opened up so many war fronts and the Americans, they had control of rubber. But more importantly, we had control of rubber with the British, but mostly us. And we squeezed their superior military and their superior everything into losing the war. Russia, America, all of us. We overwhelmed them with lesser technology but an efficient working together way. And you people are reminding me of that. And right now you wanna continue tearing everything down but I can promise you, I don't know where you're gonna get all the stuff to rebuild it. So I think you need to start adjusting to the future that you made. Thank you very much. We don't have anyone else in the queue who wishes to speak during public forum. I'm just gonna check one more time to make sure that there isn't anyone who has requested to speak online. And it doesn't appear as though there is anyone either in con choice or online that wishes to speak during public forum. So given that, we will close public forum and the next item on our agenda is the climate emergency report, item number four. Is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we will move on to item number five, which is our consent agenda. And I would entertain a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated. Move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. Seconded by Councillor Jang. Thank you. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of taking the actions as indicated on the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. And any opposed, please say no. We've approved our consent agenda, which brings us to item number six. Before we get to our deliberative agenda, we'll move item number six, which is an expected executive session regarding city place. And as we always do before motions to go into executive session, I would turn to either a legal counsel or the administration to ask if there are any comments or information that you feel can be shared in open session. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Powell. It's been just one week since the last public update. The week has been spent, focused on responding to some of the comments made by the council on executive session last week as well as continuing to work with city place partners to finalize a document as we indicated last week was possible. The agreement is not ready for action tonight, but there's basically nothing has changed with respect to there being a mutual goal by both the administration and city place partners to bring forward to the council for action very soon in the next couple of weeks, a finalized document for action. And the desire, I do think it would be advisable for there to be a follow-up executive session discussion tonight so that some updates can be given to the council without prematurely negatively impacting the city and its residents. Thank you very much, Mayor Weinberger. It's been brought to my attention that there is one person who is here who's waiting for the local control commission. And so that they don't need to wait for what will probably be about 45 minutes, which is the time that we will probably be in executive session. Before we get to those motions, we will adjourn the city council, or we will recess the city council at 745 and call to order the local control commission at the same hour. The first item on our agenda is item 1.01, which is a motion to adopt the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? I move to adopt the agenda. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion on that? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. The first and only item on our agenda is item 2.01, which is a first and third class liquor license application 2022-2023 for Paradiso Hi-Fi would look for a motion on that item, Commissioner Shannon. I move to approve the 2022-2023 first and third class liquor license applications for Paradiso Hi-Fi, 388 Pine Street with the following conditions. All permits need to be closed out contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. The applicant is here. I don't know if you wish to speak to this item or if not, we will go to any questions from the council. Okay, thank you. Are there any questions or any discussion on this agenda item? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much for being here. With no other business on the agenda and seeing no objection, we'll adjourn the local control commission meeting at 746 and we'll wait on the board of civil authority until after the executive session. So we'll go back to the, we will go back to the recess to the council meeting at 746. We are in the midst of item number six and need to go into executive session. And for that, there are two motions that need to be made. I will go to the, for the first motion to Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. I would move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning contract negotiations and attorney client communications regarding city place would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage with such negotiations. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Freeman. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously, which brings us to the second motion, Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. Again, based upon that finding, I move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential attorney client communications and updates on contract negotiations regarding city place relevant to one VSA subsection 313A1ANF. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. And that motion would also include that in addition to the city council, mayors, members of the mayor staff, CEDAW director Brian Pine, David G. White and attorney Tim Samson would also be part of that executive session in addition to Laura Wheelock. We have a motion. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Freeman. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously and that puts us into executive session. We will be downstairs for executive session. And as I said, it looks as though that probably will last somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes. And we will be back in open session as soon as we have completed this executive session. Thanks. Back in open session, the time is 8.33. And we will immediately recess the city council meeting after coming back into open session at 8.33 and go to the city council with mayor presiding. It's a brief meeting and then we will go to our deliberative agenda. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I will call to order the Board of Civil Authority for Monday, October 24th. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. I would walk on motion to adopt it. So moved. Thank you, President Paul. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Travers. Is there any discussion on the agenda? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We have an agenda. The only action item on the agenda is the consent agenda. And so I would walk on motion to take the action indicated there. President Paul. I move the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated. Thank you. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Travers. Discussion? Seeing none. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion is adopted unanimously and there being no further business and no objection. We will adjourn the Board of Civil Authority by my clock at 8.32 p.m., which I think deviated from when, from years maybe perhaps, but we'll leave it there. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. And actually I agree, I'm mistaken. It wasn't the City Council with Mayor presiding, it's the Board of Civil Authority. So thanks for clarifying. We'll return to the recess City Council meeting at 8.35. We have four items on our deliberative agenda. The first is 7.01, which is a reparations task force update. And for this update, we have, I see that we have Pablo Bose here, a member of the task force. We also, I believe, are going to have Christine Hughes as well and hopefully will be joining us by Zoom. Thank you. Thanks Pablo for being here and thanks for all of the work that you've done with the reparations task force. We've allotted about 20 minutes for this update. So if you could provide us with an update in addition to the comments that you have submitted, for the first half of that, and then we'll go to questions from the Council and I see Christine Hughes has joined us as well. So I'll leave it to the two of you to take it from here. That sounds great. Thank you so much for inviting us to speak. I'll just speak briefly and I think Christine will take over as well. So just to give you a brief update on the work that we've been doing, we were convened in, I don't know, 2020. I, all the years are a blur at this point, but we were convened with five members, I believe, to begin with myself, Christine Hughes, Rebecca. I'm sorry, I'm blanking on Rebecca's last name. Sorry, Zitlo. We also had Hal Colston and I think that was the core of our committee. We were charged with exploring the question, a several part question with the city council resolution looking at the city of Burlington's history with slavery. We were asked to explore the question of reparations, looking at the history and legacies of slavery and also again, to explore some of the different, kind of thinking around what reparations might look like across the country. To that end, we embarked on a process by which we engage several consultants to look at different elements of this work. And so you should have seen some of the consultants reports, I believe. And so we had a consultant who looked at the history of enslaved persons within Burlington. That was mostly from census data and archival records. So that was one thing that we had. We had another consultant who was looking at the kind of historical legacies of the institution of slavery in different kinds of ways. That was more of a documentary analysis that we had done. And thirdly, we also had another expert who was looking at specifically the question of racialized covenants, since we know what an important role racialized covenants have played in our process of segregation and racialized kind of spatial discrimination. So that's some of the work that we engaged. The one part of the work that we really haven't tackled in any systematic fashion is really looking at models of reparations. Now we've had certainly some very interesting conversations with some of the folks who are involved. For example, we had conversations with some of the networks that are looking at post-secondary institutions and their engagement with their own histories of involvement in slavery. We had former director Green brought one of the leading economists who works on this question, William Sandy Darity, from Duke, who consulted with us a little bit, gave us some advice, some strong feelings about what the role cities should be playing, if at all, within the reparations question. As you may know, we're one of very few municipalities that have taken up the question of reparations, Evanston and Asheville being two others. But again, that is one part of this that we haven't really done in any extensive fashion. One other thing that the consultant who was looking at racialized covenants did was kind of spur the city to go through and digitize its land records, which is an enormous number of documents. And so one of the things, we simply didn't have the capacity to kind of work through all of those on our own. Just as I've been working through some of these documents, we have 775,000 pages of documents. So that's a longer term process. I've been working with some students at UVM to come up with ways of going through that material, building on some of the work of the Mapping Prejudice Project out of Minnesota that gives some guidelines towards that. So that's kind of where we are. We're down to just the three of us, myself, Christine and Rebecca on the committee or on the task force. So there's not a lot of us. We certainly could use some help in that regard. And this is our first chance that we've had with the pandemic and everything to really come back and speak to, I mean, we've never spoken to city council, but just to give you a direct update on what we were doing, we've spoken with some folks at the REIB meetings and some other things, but I'm gonna turn it over to Christine and let her give her perspective. Thank you, Pablo. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Thanks, Christine. Thank you and good evening, Mr. Mayor and President Paul and the city council members. Thank you, Councillor Jang, for showing up at our back in school block party that we had on Saturday. That was a great success. Thank you, pet, for the support from the REIB office. And we did that at the Richard Kemp Center where I am the director and the daughter of the late, great Richard Kemp who I pretty sure was the first black city council member, just a little bit of history. So I am here tonight as an appointed member from the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. We spent a good part of the day today talking about this and just, you know, looking at it from a local perspective and also just kind of revealing some of the information that's out there about work that's gone on all over the place. Thank you, Pablo, for the work that you've done. We have had a couple of conversations where maybe Pablo would step up as the new chair, but that's not finalized. So we do need a new chair and it would be good to have some other members. So let's see, I just, I wrote a couple of notes so I wanna make sure I say everything that I plan to say. I think it would be good if you haven't looked at the resolution recently to maybe review that. And there is a summary report that Pitt did that's useful to look at. There was a radio program recently that I would encourage people to listen to on Vermont Public about the history of slavery in Vermont. Excuse me, and Dr. Bose and Elise Guyette and some others were on that, it was a good program. I think there's a lot that we actually don't understand about this whole topic. So I just wanna encourage people to continue to learn about it or add to the learning that you may have already done. Hopefully you're all aware of Proposition Two and that's a constitutional amendment to finally abolish slavery in Vermont. That is part of a national campaign and hopefully you'll all vote yes for that. Let's see what else. I would imagine you're all aware of the work of John Conyers. I think one of the tricky things that we deal with here is that Burlington has somewhat of a unique history but if you do the research you might find that there's just some really important stuff to understand about why Vermont and Burlington is one of the white estates in the country. It isn't by accident and if you pay close enough attention, Act 250 actually has something to do with that. So again, I would just encourage people to look at this from a broader perspective than how many slaves were ever in Vermont or Burlington. I think all the work that's being done with the racial covenants and everything is really important and I think it's part of it but I think it's also important for us to consider a broader perspective about the legacy of slavery which is basically systemic racism and the impact that it's having and has had for generations. And you're basically talking about something that occurred for 402 years or something. And so we can't think that the resolution or responding to that harm could possibly be some kind of one-off thing. So I'd also encourage you to look at what the United Nations said, basically condemning this country for its treatment of black Americans, especially black Americans that are descendants of slavery. And I'm saying all of that pretty much to say that the work is not done. And it's been really challenging between COVID-19 and Director Green leaving and our chair leaving. So it's really, I think we probably would have been farther if all of those things hadn't happened. I personally am not really interested in an apology but that's just me personally. I honestly think that would be insulting. And hold on, I'm almost done. So yeah, I would just ask that you would continue to support this work. We do need resources. We're very fortunate that Pablo has figured out a way to use the students and some of their labor which I would imagine they're, I don't know if they're getting paid or if they're gonna get credit, but it's a great approach to using the resources of the university to advance that part of the work. We're really interested in some kind of community engagement. I don't know if that's actually in the resolution or not, but we're really interested in doing something like that and could actually offer the Richard Kemp Center to maybe work with whoever the new director will be in the REIB office. But we would really like to do it in a partnership way, not just offering space, but potentially designing a series of community engagement so that we can inform the community of the work and what we've done so far. I think that is just about everything, except a couple more things if I just have a few more minutes. I just really, and I know some of you might have heard this, but it's really important when we're thinking about this topic to think about things like the fact that the median income of the Black family in Burlington is 1 13th that of a white family. Black children in Burlington and in the state of Vermont are 60% more likely to be removed from their homes by DCF. That's a frightening statistic. And here's kind of a, here's a mind bender for you. If Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery, how is it there's a constitutional amendment that's actually gonna abolish slavery? So it has to do with exception clauses if folks don't know. And then so, I think after you think about some of those questions and there's a lot more data, I think a lot of you are aware of the other data that speaks to systemic racism, which is the legacy of slavery. I would just like to encourage folks to think about, even the word reparations means responding to or repairing the harm that has been caused. And I just really wanna encourage us to not just get away from the Vermont and Burlington exceptionalism myth or whatever you wanna call it, because it's really important to understand. A lot of the history of this kind of stuff has been deliberately buried or destroyed or whatever. So it's no coincidence that we don't have a full understanding, but we need to have a full understanding. And in order to do that, we need resources and we need more time to continue the work. So thank you all for letting me speak. Thank you, Christine. And thanks Pablo, that was an excellent update. And good for the council to hear what you've been doing. With that, we'll go to questions and comments from the council. Are there counselors or the administration who have a counselor high tower? Thank you. I have several questions and comments and I'll say them all. And then whichever one of you feels most qualified to answer or just wants to answer, please go ahead. Which the first question is just around timeline of task force cash run down. So when you kind of, if you're coming back to us for more money by when you would like to see that happen, if it's happening, then just a comment on the focus. So I think in the report you said that you would like to focus on Vermont specifically and getting more raw data on Burlington, which I just, I agree with that focus. So I think that's, I would approve of that next step. Then for going through the land records, I'm curious as to what you're looking for in the land records. Specifically, because I don't, I wonder how that's tied to some of the things you just talked about. And then the last step around community engagement. I would love to have some community engagement around this. I think that's really important because it's even great to see the summaries of the reports, but if it just stays here, then I don't feel like we've done enough. And along those lines as much as there's of so many great voluntary slash ad hoc events around this, but I also wonder if there's any educators who are interested in using this and their things, whether that's educators of young people or I'm gonna say kids or young adults. So those are my questions and comments and I'm happy to repeat them if folks forgot them along the way. So I can jump in on a couple of those. I'll let maybe Christine respond about the community engagement because she's been a real sort of champion and sort of driving us on that. But just for a couple of the other things. So in terms of what we're looking for in the land records, one of the reasons I kind of, I took that part of it to start with and Christine and I've talked a little bit about some of the other things we might do with that as well is one, just the sheer number of them. But in terms of kind of what we are interested in looking at is really whether or not, we don't know until we actually look at the nature of covenants. We know certainly the time period in which racialized covenants were used in this country, but we don't know whether or not that is also true in the case of Burlington. There are some things that we might start off with certain kind of educated guesses, but we're not entirely sure. So actually one of the first steps that I took with my students was actually to look through and work with archivists on also important keywords that might be used in place of, in many of the racial covenants, you have particular populations that are identified explicitly, but in other cases, it's other kinds of language that's used as a stand-in. So for example, sometimes with Jewish and Eastern European populations, sometimes covenants targeted them by nationality rather than religion or this kind of stuff. And so it's a process of kind of working through and the records span a pretty wide range. And I've actually been talking to Pitt a little bit about like how we ended up with the ones that we have, because I don't actually know part of that. And because Director Green didn't leave, I think a lot of notes about exactly what happened. There's a part of this that is just unpacking that. The other thing, and I know you had a whole bunch of points, but in terms of the money issue, I think that that's a bigger conversation, I think as far as we understand, I think we've used about half of the money that City Council originally allocated. And so I think, and we've used that money entirely on the consultants to better, and I mean, I think two of the consultants were very effective, one perhaps a little less, so that's my personal opinion. But I think especially in thinking about what are the next steps needed? I think that we need to have a fuller conversation about what it is that we might be expected to do with the money that we have left and what it is that we might be interested in doing. So that's I think a bigger question. And then the last thing I wanted to say is I completely agree with the idea that if we're gonna invest all this time, effort and resources into doing this kind of work, it has to not simply exist, filed on a shelf. And I definitely like the idea of partnering with educators, community groups, others as well. I'm actually just starting this week. I finished up with someone else, a study of Burlington School District and Winooski School District's disciplinary kind of record and kind of looking at racial disparities, racial and ethnic disparities in school discipline and criminal involvement in both cities. And so we found again to Christine's earlier point, I mean, it mirrors the kinds of numbers you see nationally that there is such a disproportionate extent to which black and brown children and especially black and brown boys are disciplined like all the way from K to 12. And so kind of looking at those disparities, beginning on Wednesday, I'm starting a series for the BSD's professional development which is I think a series of workshops called supporting black and brown families in the district. And so that's one of the things, I wanna be able to bring parts of this work that we're doing here into that process as well. So Christine, I'll turn it over to you. Yeah, I mean, I don't really think I have much to add to that. I think that covers a lot. Councilor Hightower, did we get to your questions or is there something else? No, I think you covered it all. Oh yeah, so maybe, sorry, that was the other thing, maybe to follow up on the answer on cash, which I think to some extent city council is always a little bit of a weird body where we give all these other bodies authority to act and some resources to do so. And then we're like, you tell us what you wanna do, which I think is probably, I mean, we obviously, I have opinions on what to focus on, but at the same time, I as much, I think to some extent we started with an initial amount. I don't even remember what that was based on anymore, but I think I'd be more curious to hear like, oh, if you gave us this much, this is what we would do. If you gave us this much, this is what we would do because you know your work and capacity better than we do. And I think that can be with the assumption that maybe more folks would join. Thank you. I would also just add that one of the ways that I think about community engagement isn't necessarily that we do a whole bunch of work and we have all this information and we share it with the community. I would like to see us think about a way that we can actually involve the community in helping us figure out which way to go if it's possible. Thanks, Councilor Hightower. Are there other Councilors? Councilor Chang. Thank you, President Paul. And again, thank you so much for the presentation, Pablo, Christine and also special big up to Pat who inherited being part of the committee and she also been doing an amazing job. Thank you so much. And also for presenting at the REIB, I think it was really good. What I'm hearing here is basically the structure you know of the committee and how do you come back and also move forward. And what I'm hearing here is clear that maybe based on the resolution the city council president will need to appoint a member because the appointee from the last city council president left and also the REIB director or he's or her designate will also need to appoint another person in order for you guys to have a fully staffed committee. I think it's like next concrete next steps. And I think at the REIB committee we talked about if you have members of the community that you would like to appoint to please suggest those names to the council president and then she can make that decision. And again, you are always welcome and I believe that our next REIB meeting you are also scheduled to come back maybe to work around those details as a concrete next steps. And I would love for Mr. Pablo, it's at the discretion of your committee to be the chair because I think he been doing great work and very respected person in the community and we look forward to working with you. I love also the idea of the community engagement and we balance the idea of why not at the camp center because we need to bring some life and also what I witnessed at the block party I did not know that in the county we have this amount of people of color. Many of them I never met before and I think it was amazing to hear their perspective as well in the perspective of every single person in the city about this. In the beginning, I did not really know what reparations should look like and from my perspective, that's just me. No one can repair that, it's just part of history and it's sad, it's bringing it back is even a little bit challenging. But I would love us to support you and in any direction that you would like in order to achieve something great for the city because this was mandated by the city council. Thank you again so much and we'll see you next month at the REIB to talk about the appointments, et cetera. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Councillor Jang and actually that will certainly be that you bring up an important issue and that is that at the REIB meeting we realized that there is a need to appoint another member of the reparations task force and I would welcome anyone's input and suggestions so that we can move forward with that as quickly as possible. Are there any other councillors who have questions or comments? Councillor Bergman. Thank you all for that great report and I just wanna follow up on the money question. It would be very helpful if you need more than $25,000 which is what I'm hearing that you let us know what that is and I think it is totally appropriate to include in that thinking the moneys for collaboration on community engagement and education. So I think that is the one area that I have not heard enough on tonight and welcome that. I don't necessarily expect an answer tonight not looking for that. I just, if you have it, that'd be great. If not, then I personally would entertain the number that you put out so that we can do this really important restorative and reparative work. Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Bergman. If there are any others. Oh, Councillor McGee, I believe that is your hand up, right? Yes, thank you, President Paul. I thank you all for this report and the work you've done so far and the work you'll continue to do. I just noticed that the resolution has a resolve clause that says that the task force is to terminate 90 days after giving this report. And so I wanna make sure that we are doing what we need to do to make sure that this work continues beyond that. That deadline. So I'm not sure how we go about doing that, but I wanted to note that so it doesn't go overseen. Could I say two things? Of course. I'm not sure if, and Pete, maybe you can help me understand this, but the report that I think that Pete did was just kind of what we had done so far, especially because we had sort of fits and starts and just had some challenges. I think what the resolution is talking about is a final report. So I don't know, but maybe at our meeting, we can get a little more clarity about that. The other detail I forgot to share was that there was also supposed to be an appointed member from the Human Rights Commission. So that's something that we, let's not have that fall off our radar. Okay, thank you. Councilor McKee, did you have anything else you wanted to add? I know that was all. Okay, thank you. Councilor Jayne. Yeah, thank you. And I think to the question of Councilor McKee, this is just maybe an update. And maybe they did not talk about it because the group was stopped working in one point when Taisha left. And we were also in the middle of the pandemic. And I think they have not been meeting. This is just an update that the City Council is receiving today. And if I remember correctly, there is the third member is a person that was appointed by the Human Rights Commission from my perspective. It has to be five. Based on how I read the resolution that I did not write. So, yeah. So there's a third member who is still functional, but she's not here today. And Christine, by the way, your sister's here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jang. Are there any other comments from the Council or any member, all of you that we see on your screen, if there's anything else that you wanted to add? I also wanted to give a big shout out to Pitt for all the work that she's done to really keep us going and get us kind of moving again. Yes, certainly. Thank you. And thanks to the RAIB committee and the RAIB committee and the department who have done their best to shepherd this along. Seeing no other comments will close this agenda item. And as there is a communication, I would take a motion to waive the reading and place the communication on file made by Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Bergman. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And with many thanks to the members of the task force and the RAIB department and committee for their work and service to the city, we'll look forward to further updates and progress on your work. We'll move on to item 7.02, which is a mental health summit synopsis and report. Due to an unexpected need, Lacey Smith is unable to join us this evening. And as such, I would love to have a motion to postpone this item to our November 7th meeting. So moved. Thank you, Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Freeman. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously and we will have this item come back to us at our next meeting, which is November 7th, which moves us on to item 7.03 and ordinance elections, rank choice voting implementation. And for this item, I'll go to the chair of the ordinance committee, Councillor Travers for a motion. I'd moved to waive the readings to spend the rules and place into all stages of passage and would ask for the floor back upon a second. Thank you, Councillor Travers, seconded by Councillor Hightower. Councillor Travers, you have the floor. Thank you, President Paul. I don't know if there's a representative from the city attorney's office who's still with us. If not, I'd be happy to take it from here. Doesn't appear to be the case. Okay, so I will try my best and muddle through this because as President Paul and Councillor Hightower know from our work on the ordinance committee, there was some muddling on putting this proposal together because there are a number of intricacies that come into play in figuring out how we are going to stand up the tabulation process for our rank choice voting system for city council elections. I will say that we've heard quite a bit of testimony from different folks, Robert Bristow-Johnson among them who I see here, about the fact that in rank choice voting elections, there are different ways in which you can tabulate those results. That said, the initial version of the charter change that was passed by voters here in Burlington and an ordinance previously passed by this council in recent months started us in a direction of a particular process by which we would tabulate the results in rank choice voting elections. However, this council was not done when we last passed our ordinance change because in working with Sarah Montgomery and folks in the city clerk's office, it became clear that the vendor who we are using for tabulating results has various options within their software that required that we weigh in as a council to provide some more framework around how this would work. And I know Councillor Shannon, for example, had brought this up previously when we passed a resolution that there were some additional details that we needed to flesh out as to how rank choice voting tabulation would occur. So with great assistance from a number of different folks, I should particularly thank representatives in the rank choice voting resources center, as well as individuals from VPIRG among others. We have prepared the ordinance that's before the council tonight would be happy to answer any questions that folks have, but in large part, from my perspective, again, puts more framework around the tabulation results that were initially passed by voters of the charter change and then previously sent in this direction by a past council vote. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Are there counselors who wish to offer any comments or questions on the ordinance? Councillor Carpenter, and then we'll go to Councillor Barlow. Councillor Travers, can you clarify? So we had the charter change. It came back to us with no specific tabulation method, but the council went ahead subsequently and adopted a resolution asking the ordinance community to come up with something, I guess, basically. So I'm just trying to clarify in my head, you needed more guidance or the city needs more guidance in how to carry out the tabulation. I'm just trying to clarify in my own head, if I'm voting for this, what am I voting for? Am I, we have to do IRB, that's been voted on and we've agreed to that. And we obviously need to have a complete method that tabulates everything as we would want it to be tabulated. Does adopting this resolution further attach to this, or is this just guidance that we're gonna need if we're gonna adopt something right now? Or the long window way of saying that is if we choose to change the tabulation method, which would take another act of the council, can that be done? I don't know if I'm being clear in my... I think that question was clear and thank you for the question. From my perspective, again, as predated by time on the council, but when voters initially approved of ranked choice voting in city council elections that approved of a tabulation system where voters would rank their candidates, one, two, three, and so on down the line. And then those votes would be viewed in rounds and each round the candidate receiving the lowest number of votes would be eliminated until two candidates remained, in which case the candidate among those two who remained with the highest number of votes would be declared the victor in that election. Through the legislative process, the language that was approved in charter about it being done by rounds and about the lowest candidate being eliminated until two candidates remained, that language, at least parts of it, were removed by the legislature ostensibly to allow us by ordinance and opportunity to develop a different tabulation method. That said, I would say that the tabulation method that's before the council tonight is in alignment with what I understand. The council's intent was previously in putting this charter change question before voters and it's in alignment with, are still doing it in rounds, ranking one, two, three, so on down the line and eliminating the candidate with the lowest vote total. I actually think it was best practice for the legislature to remove the language from charter because putting it in ordinance does provide us additional flexibility and I think this will be a learning process as we stand up ranked choice voting again here and may need some additional tweaks and changes down the line. I feel pretty confident with what's before you all tonight. Again, it encompasses that process of eliminating the candidates with the lowest votes in rounds until only two candidates remain and then there's various other options in here that require additional information like for example, what if the two candidates with the lowest votes are tied? How is that tie broken? What if there is a skipped ranking where a ballot has listed a first choice and a third choice but left the second choice blank? Those are the types of options that were posed to us by the vendor who's going to be tabulating the results and the ordinance changed before the council tonight answers those questions. So, I don't know if that fully answers your question but that's some additional information here on the ordinance change. I guess I'm just trying to understand if we need something today to run the election, we need more guidance but if we choose another methodology we could effectively undo this if we chose to do that. Yes, we do need to do something today because we have a special election with three announced candidates coming up on December 6th that will be done by ranked choice voting. So, we need to put some framework around this. Now, should we want to make changes down the line? I do believe the charter language provides us some flexibility if we wanted to make that change. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter and for that answer, Councillor Barlow. I had just a follow up to Councillor Carpenter's question. I know that the state is also looking at ranked choice voting and if they were to use a different tabulation method than the one we're using, would we have to change ours? And I see the city attorney's on as well now. We want to direct that question there. I believe that, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, sir, go ahead. Thanks. I mean, that would be partly depending on the language that the state uses whether it's prescriptive or not. So, I think that would depend on what comes out of that process. Okay, thank you. And the other was just sort of a, on line 25, the word continuing is struck and the word active replaces it, but on lines 29 and 30, the word continuing is still used and I'm wondering if that is intentional or just an oversight. Would that be a better question for the city attorney or would you prefer to answer that, Councillor Travers? I think it's a better question for the city attorney. If you could, if you could answer that attorney's start event. I believe that was just an oversight. We had changed the language to active based on the terminology and the definition section. And so that is, yeah, so that would be probably more appropriate in line 29 and 30 to be active instead of continuing to be consistent. Thank you, that's all I have. Okay, thanks, Councillor Barlow. Councillor Shannon. Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you to the ordinance committee members for working on this. To Councillor Barlow's question, I would hope regardless of what's required that if the state comes up with a different set of rules, it seems to me you can't have one ballot with rank choice voting for different offices and different rules about how you're counting those. So I hope that if it comes to that, that we align our tabulation methods to the states. I don't know if the machines can tabulate two different ways at the same time, either, because I think they have to be programmed, but maybe they can. As a practical matter, it doesn't seem to me the way to go, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I wondered what, on the write-in votes, I didn't really understand what this meant. Write-in votes that have not been verified shall not be excluded for the initial tabulation. What, I don't know what is implied by that. It seems to me write-in votes will be tabulated. I don't understand what's trying to be stated about the verification process. If you can help us, oh, you might, go ahead. I think I can give that a try, unless, Councilor Hightower, did I see you reaching? No, no. Okay, let's do it. So the vendor of the city will be using to tabulate results, provides two different options, basically, in the way that the initial tabulation views write-in votes. One is to exclude all write-in votes from the initial tabulation, and to really not come back to them until after the tabulation process is done. The other is to take all write-in votes that have not been verified, in other words, we have not been able to assign a write-in vote to one of the candidates who are named and already active in the race, but a write-in vote that has not been verified, that the concept here is that in the initial tabulation, you can combine all of those votes, you can include them in the initial tabulation, and if the write-in votes combine, are enough such that they are the lowest vote-getter and should be eliminated, that you could then, at that point in time, sort of eliminate the write-in votes and not have to consider them at the end of the tabulation as opposed to in the beginning of the tabulation. And if your eyebrows are raised, there were many in the ordinance committee, but that's the concept, is that if the combined group of write-in votes is the lowest vote-getter in the initial round, then all the write-in votes would be eliminated and any other rankings would be moved forward at that point in time. Can I follow? Yes. So if on the ballot, we have Lily May, and Lily May gets a write-in vote, does that write-in vote get, so you're saying that verified means that it's that write-in candidate is affiliated with a candidate that's who is printed on the ballot. So does Lily May's write-in vote get attributable to Lily May? I imagine this might be a problem in regular voting as well. So I'll also defer to council traverse, but my understanding is this is a verified, is whether or not we have assigned it to a specific name as opposed to just it being a write-in. And so there's verified isn't about whether or not it's also on the ballot, it's about whether or not we know what the name is. So this is an administrative thing that says if all of the names on the ballot, all of the writing candidates aren't enough to go into the next round, then we don't look at the names, we don't count the write-ins, just like we don't currently count the write-ins in our current system. We just say how many write-ins were there, and if they're not close to winning, we don't go back and look at the ballots and say who was written in. So it's about not when you get rid of the write-ins, and in this case, we lump them together, and then if they get eliminated, we never verify them. We never see who was actually written in, which is similar to the system that we use now in the plurality voting. This use of the term verified seems strange to me, and so I'm wondering, there is a list of definitions here, but I don't see that in the list of definitions. Wouldn't it help to add that definition here? Because I think that's a confusion. That may be a question for the city attorney. I question whether or not the word verified is necessary here, I suppose the same goal could be met from my perspective of simply saying that write-in votes shall not be excluded for the initial tabulation, but Attorney Sturdov and I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah, I believe we can put in a right, yes, I believe we could remove have not been verified and just say shall not be excluded. Would that address your concern, Councillor Shannon? I think that's where I started, so yes I would. Okay. I would make that motion to, I have to go back to it, to strikes have not been, let's see, write-in votes shall not be, so strike that have not been verified. It will then read, write-in votes shall not be excluded from, actually it says for there, it should be from the initial tabulation. This is line 38. The line 38, write-in votes, I guess four works too, so we can leave it. Write-in votes shall not be excluded for the initial tabulation. Okay, so we would be getting rid of the words that have not been verified. Correct. Okay, so there's a, is that, we are, can we do friendly amendments in an ordinance? I was actually just looking at that, this is a motion to suspend the rules. Yeah. A motion to suspend the rules is not debatable and cannot be amended. Sure. I know this is coming up. I can hold on to my, I will withdraw my, my amendment and we can discuss further additional amendments that might be needed. What rule are we suspending here? The motion on the table is a motion to suspend the rules and waive the reading and adopt the ordinance. Okay, Councilor Shannon, we'll go to, I'm sorry, attorney's sort event, if perhaps you could offer some insight here. Well, I just want to clarify why, thank you, President Powell, I just wanted to clarify why it was a motion to suspend because we interpret this as the first read because it was sent to, the request was sent to the ordinance committee. So the ordinance was drafted at ordinance committee and so it's coming back based for the first read now. So to be adopted, it hasn't had two full readings and therefore it would have to suspend the rules. It's that Councilor Shannon. From the interpretation I just heard from the Parliamentary and I think we need to take a vote first on suspending the rules, but because we in fact do need to debate this. So I believe what he's saying is that it's inappropriate for us to do what we've been doing for the last, however, many 20 minutes. I think somebody, this has come up before and it's, it is complicated, but I think somebody might be able to move to divide the question. I would move to divide the question between with the first question being to waive the reading and suspend the rules and the second question being to place the ordinance into all stages of passage. Second. All right. Thank you, Councilor Trevor. Seconded by Councilor Shannon. So the first is a movement is a, is that one motion? It would be one motion to divide the question. Okay. So the motion is to divide the question. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. It needs a second. I got a second. You have a second. All those in favor of the motion to divide the question, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. So we have two questions. The first is to suspend the rules. So that is not debatable. So we have a motion to suspend the rules and a second. All those in favor of the motion to suspend the rules, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. All right. So we have suspended, we have suspended our rules. We've suspended the rules to waive the second reading. Okay. So now the motion is to adopt the ordinance. Okay. But before we adopt the ordinance that we can debate. So we have already been doing that. So if there are any others who wish to debate the ordinance before we go to a vote, now would be that time. Can I make the motion to amend? Yes, you may. Okay. I would like to make the motion that we amend line 38 to eliminate the words that have not been verified. So it will then read, write in votes shall not be excluded for the initial tabulation. And additionally, that we change the, I want, we had the word continuing in line 29 and that word continuing should be active. And in line 30, the word continuing should be active. Okay. How's that? That's good. So I think, so, okay, we have a motion and we just need a second to that motion. Thank you, Councillor Traver. So this is affecting line 38, line 29, line 30, have we been clear enough? And okay. So is there any discussion on that motion? Yes, Councillor Carpenter. Just a clarification on verified, and I'm fine with the intent. I'm just curious if there's any term that's used around verified votes, generally for write-ins, like there's certain requirements if you used a sticker for write-in. What if it's just a pen scratch and you couldn't identify it? So I just want to make sure by eliminating verified, we're not eliminating some standard practice about how you determine if a write-in is a real vote, so to speak. And I don't know if we even have those, some states have very specific things about when a write-in counts or doesn't count. And I don't know if we do or we don't, but I'm just raising that as a question. Well, that certainly is a valid question. I don't know if attorneys sort of it. You have any insight to offer on that if verified is a term that we should be including, or if there is a challenge that would come later on with that? I regret a bit. I don't at this point have clarifying on that term. Councillor Shannon's pointing out that it says write-in votes that have not been verified shall not be excluded. That's a double negative there. What is it? So I guess my question's, I'm simply, go ahead, I'm just simply raising it as a question. Yeah, I appreciate that question. And I think the best way that I can answer it is, again, the tabulation software that we will be using in ranked choice voting elections provides you, am I understanding? And I would turn to my colleagues in the ordinance committee to correct this. There are two options. Either you count the right-in votes when you begin the tabulation process, or you don't. And so for that purpose, I don't think the word verified means very much one way or another, I think Councillor Shannon's amendment here stating that right-in votes shall not be excluded for the initial tabulation. That to the extent that right-in vote can be attributed to a particular candidate, then it will be counted in that initial round of tabulation. To the extent it cannot be attributed to a particular candidate. My understanding is that those, even without the language here, those unverified votes, we don't know the sticker or the mark or what have you, is attributed to that those would be lumped together. And if they do not rise to a threshold where they would avoid elimination in early round, then those ballots would be carried forward. So from my perspective, I don't think the elimination of the word verified changes much, but I don't know if my colleagues have any other thoughts on that. We didn't look at where this fits into the rest of the ordinance, but I assume that somewhere else in the ordinance we have something on how to verify right-in votes and which ones to count. And if you can't read it, what you do with that. And so I assume that that is not here because it's somewhere else in the ordinance, but we didn't verify that ironically, but I assume. Councilor Carpenter, anything, you're okay? Good, great. Anyone else before we go to a vote? Seeing none, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously and I think that brings us, this was a lot of work thanks to the ordinance committee. Excuse me, I think that was just a vote on the motion to amend, wasn't it? Oh, you're right, I apologize. Okay, so we have an amendment, thank you. We have an amended ordinance, I apologize. So now we have to vote on the ordinance. Thank you. Are there any comments on the ordinance now that we are at the ordinance? Seeing none, we'll take a vote on that. All those in favor of the ordinance as amended, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, so now we have an ordinance, thank you. That brings us to the last item on our deliberative agenda, which is 7.04, a resolution creating a home share of Vermont pilot incentive program and for this item, I won't be voting or presiding on this item as I have a professional conflict of interest with this entity. So I'll hand the gavel over to Councillor Traverse for this agenda item. So we're now at 7.04, is there a motion on the item? Councillor Hightower. I'll move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, I would like the floor back after a second. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Carpenter, Councillor Hightower. Great. So this, I won't, I'll be brief, but this item came to the CDNR directly from our Burlington Aging Council, which the CDNR and the council worked to create last year and successfully created in April, 2021. There was a recommendation that the city partner with Home Share Vermont to implement a home sharing program where one person offers a bedroom in exchange for some help. This is both a way to help people age in place, as well as a way to increase affordable units, not affordable units, but affordable bedrooms in Burlington with the average rent in fiscal year 2021 for a bedroom being $323. The CDNR approved or supported the recommendation where urging the Housing Trust Fund, which has more funds this year, to allocate $30,000 to provide this incentive for up to 30 Burlington homeowners in a $1,000 track tax credit, $500 after six months and $500 after another full year. And I am complete. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. Would any other Councillor like to speak to the resolution? Councillor Garbender. I think this is a great thing and I'm such a fan of Home Share Vermont and have been involved with it since its beginning. But one of the reasons they're coming to us is the biggest demand for rooms is in the city of Burlington and it's one of their lower lease offerings. And I think there's senses that many older homeowners in particular don't understand the program and there's such a demand. So they're really offering this to try to let people know that it really can work and this is a financial incentive to open your home and create more housing. And it seems like a modest request and the Aging Council spent a lot of time vetting it. So I think we all should be really supportive and I will be anxious to see if it can open up because we've got a lot of empty bedrooms sitting around the city that could be used for housing. And if this is one way to open those bedrooms we should give it a shot. Thank you, Councillor Garbender. I see Councillor McKee followed by Councillor Shannon. All right, thank you. I just wanted to note that Kirby Dunn is an attendee from Home Share and would love to hear from her. We'd be happy to recognize Kirby. Is there anyone from the city able to promote Kirby Dunn to speaker? Thank you, CAO Shad. Thank you, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Great, thank you for taking this up. It is, you know, we have just a huge imbalance of people looking for housing compared to those homes that we have available. And most people of course want to live in Burlington who come to us. So we're really trying to just catch people's attention with this to encourage more people to think about sharing their home and just giving them a small incentive and home sharing programs around the country are seeing the same issue. A lot more people needing housing and not a lot of homes available. So incentives are something that other programs across the country are looking at and trying to experiment with. And we are hopeful that this could be successful. Thank you very much. Councilor McGee, are you all set? Great, we'll turn to Council Shannon. Thank you acting President Travers. First time we've said that, huh? I love home share. My own mom was trying to age in place, not in Vermont. We really felt the loss of not having a program like this, which would have been perfect for her. We had to kind of create something on our own, which was a lot harder. So I did want to make sure that it didn't say it in the resolution, but I did want to make sure that I'm fully supportive of offering a financial incentive to encourage people to do home share. Wanted to make sure that home share was actually involved in creating this incentive. Sounds like they were, which is wonderful. And I also wanted to know in the resolve as it says we urge the housing trust fund to allocate $30,000 in funding. And I feel like after all this time, I should know the answer, but I don't actually know who the housing trust fund is and how that money is allocated, what that next step looks like and do we know what they think? Councilor Hightower. I'm happy to take a stab at this, although maybe the administration would be better at answering it, but the housing trust fund committee, I don't know if that's what it's actually called, meets once a year and on it is a representative from the mayor's office, the chair of CDNR, the chair of CEDO maybe, and then am I missing one other person and they allocate the funds for the housing trust fund after opening application, after opening a request for applications. Okay, great, thanks. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Would any other councilor like to speak to this matter? Councilor Chang. Thank you, acting president, Ben. Sorry. I think this is amazing and what is great from my perspective is the aging council itself, like the work that they do sometime I listen to their meetings. I think this is amazing, but one thing that I feel like is missing on the resolution is how do we know that it's effective, where Home Share Vermont will provide a report about the effectiveness of the program, whether or not it need to continue. I think that's the only thing that's not clear, would they come back to CDNR, to the city council or to the aging council? Councilor Hightower. Yeah, so the resolution starts to speak to that, but I think maybe it doesn't get at your full answer. So this is a pilot program that's supposed to go for one year. So after one year, Home Share Vermont and the Housing Trust Fund are supposed to evaluate whether this is something we want to continue past a pilot stage into further years or not. And I trust that they would bring that to CDNR or the city council for follow up, especially if they are interested in continuing it. Is there any other councilor that would like to speak to this matter? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Travers. Just to address the question raised by Councillor Shannon, just want to remind us all, I think the Housing Trust Fund is in a well-positioned to be able to review and make these, this kind of invest in this, we've been supportive of Home Share for a long time, but to invest in this proposal and that the Housing Trust Fund is well-funded right now. We did collectively with the voters make the decision to essentially double that size of the Housing Trust Fund and have it increased with inflation. So the annual allocation has gone from, it's been a little while since I looked at the numbers, but I think we used to be, but the tax revenues going into the fund are only around $380,000 a year, not that long ago. We're now up well over half a million dollars in annual investment into the fund and growing with as we start to see new revenues flow to the Housing Trust Fund beyond the property tax investment. We also now have revenues flowing from the changes we've made to the inclusion of zoning ordinance where there is now an in-loop fee that is occasionally used, as well as the fact that the short-term rental resolution is resulting in new revenues flowing as well. So don't know exactly where that stands and I'll be, we should, as we move towards budget season, we'll come back with a comprehensive report on that, but I think the fund is better positioned to make innovative investments in new housing strategies than it's been ever really. So we'll review accordingly. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Does any other Councillor seek to be recognized? Seeing no one, we'll go to a vote. All in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's unanimous among those voting with Councillor Paul recused. Councillor Paul, I'll turn the gavel back to you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Well, that completes our deliberative agenda. We have a few items left on our agenda. The first is item number eight, committee reports. Are there any Councillors who wish to offer a committee report? Councillor Shannon and then Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. The PAC committee met last week, Parks, Arts and Culture Committee, to discuss safety in our parks. And we encourage the public to come to share with us what they're seeing in the parks as well as offer solutions to addressing these issues. And I won't go into the long list of behaviors that really threaten people in our parks, which was very concerning. But I will list some of the solutions that were discussed and we're planning a future meeting that date has not yet been set to discuss some of these solutions that were put on the table. I encourage Councillors as well to weigh in with committee members if there are things you'd like to see implemented in the parks. Some of those were cameras in problem sensitive areas. They may be live streamed or not. One of the, specifically, there was a desire to see cameras at the Oakledge Treehouse, but that's a particularly prohibitive place to put a camera because there's no access to wifi there. So I don't know that that's necessarily going to happen, but we're looking into it. Remove bushes that hide activity at Baird Park. I believe Baird Park was built actually as a private park and part of that neighborhood, but is now a public park. And so some consideration of a little bit of park redesign that may help not provide areas where people can hide and do things they shouldn't be doing. Closing the parks at certain times. Citizens patrol, citizen patrols of the parks, which are being done in some areas of the city where people would kind of monitor what's going on, pick up litter, et cetera. Having a neighborhood cleanup day, have more enforcement of the rules through park rangers, CSOs and CSLs, education of park users, and the director of Parks Recreation and Water Fund mentioned that gates are planned at North Beach and Oakledge and there is a gate at Letty, which needs to be repaired. So that's some of the things that are on the table for discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. We'll go to Councillor Barlow and then to Councillor Bergman and then High Tower. Thank you, President Powell. I just wanna announce that the Transportation, Energy and Utility Committee is meeting tomorrow at 5 p.m. at 6.45 p.m., where we'll be getting an update on North Moosky Avenue, hearing about the Shelburne Street Roundabout Evaluation Plan and getting an update on Recycling Tellers. Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Councillor Bergman and then High Tower. So the Charter Change Committee will be meeting on November 3rd now that we need to adjust our prior meeting from the first. And we have passed out the flexibility in the voting locations. So that should be coming to this council at its next meeting to begin this next step in the Charter Change process. The next meeting will be doing hopefully the same on the all legal resident voting in local elections. I would note that in the chief's communication on police officers, he noted that police officers who, the person who is a legal resident or a green card holder can be a police officer in the city of Burlington. And I think that's great. And I would hope that the city voters will increase that level of rights and responsibility by adding voting in local elections for them as well and that the legislature will do that. So that was actually kind of interesting. We'll also be dealing with the ranked choice voting question in front of us. So thank you. Great, thanks, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor High Tower and then Councillor McGee. Great, CDNR is also meeting tomorrow at five. I believe it's just remotely, but I apologize if there's a room that I'm forgetting that we booked. And in past meetings, just for an update for that is we've had an update, especially from Sarah Russell on the current status of houselessness in our community. I hope to bring that to the rest of the council, but I'm hoping to also work with President Paul and maybe inviting some of our folks who are running for legislature to that conversation, to turn it into a wider conversation than just our city. Along those lines, we are also finally turning back to the camping ordinance tomorrow. One of the things that we learned, and our update to houselessness, is just how much staff is having a hard time across the different folks in the administration, continuing to go to camps in the city, asking them to move, just to then find the same individuals at a different location needing to ask them to move and not really having anywhere to tell them to go because there's just insufficient capacity across student county, but especially in Burlington in terms of telling folks where to go, both in terms of shelters and other types of housing. So with that context, we'll be tackling a comparison of the camping ordinance tomorrow at five. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. The Public Safety Committee will meet on November 2nd at 5 p.m. Thank you. Great, I will look forward to being there and joining you, Councilor McGee. Are there any other committee reports? Seeing none, we'll close. Oh, Councilor Chang. I could have waited until November, but our meeting is set, is already set for November 15 and our agenda is generated. We have the Task Force, Reparation Task Force, exploration of a commission for the city, REIB commission, and we also are delighted to have Councilor Paul with us now. Thank you, Councilor. Thank you so much, Councilor Chang. Seeing no others, we'll move on to item number nine, which is City Council General City Affairs. Are there councilors that wish to offer comments on General City Affairs? Councilor Shannon. I'll be brief, but just prior to the meeting, I drove home and Pine Street was obstructed by four fire trucks and getting home was extraordinarily difficult and I would now understand that the Lakeside neighborhood does not have gas because a gas line was hit on Pine Street while repairing a water main, and so people should be aware that that looks like it's going to be repaired through the night and hopefully by morning, you'll be able to turn on the stove and the heat as needed and the vehicles on Pine Street will be cleared, but there's also a detour around it now. Okay, thank you, Councilor Shannon. Councilor Hightower. Thank you. I would like to address the fact, which we have not, we didn't have Councilor comments last time, that Alley House is no longer with us. I am incredibly proud of Alley for her time with us on the council and I'm very sorry to lose her as a member. I was very disappointed to see that some in our city chose to portray this as an attack rather than show the need of empathy for her situation. I believe that everyone who commented to the media knew as I did that Alley's circumstances means she could not stay in her legal home. It wasn't that she chose to vacate or even made the difficult decision to vacate but that she had no choice but to find alternative temporary housing despite the many other difficulties going on at the same time. It was not due to her age that she was a young person says nothing about, except maybe in that being a young person, Burlington says something about your access to housing. I would say that the fact that Alley is no longer sitting at this table with us is as much or more on every single member of this council, the mayor and others in the city who have not been able to realize our desire to make safe housing an affordable reality for too many people in our city. I really want to thank Alley for her time on the council and just say again how proud I was to serve with her on the time that she was here. Thank you. Thank you and thanks for those comments. We of course all wish Alley well. Were there any other counselors that had any comments on general city affairs? Oh, Councillor Bergman. Just briefly in that several meetings ago, I asked for a report on short-term rentals and so I am asking the mayor if we can get the administration to get us one. You mentioned the increase in funding to the affordable, to the housing trust fund. I would like to see the impact, at least the positive impact of that ordinance. I keep hearing about the negative impacts from people and I don't want to give that up. So a report, a status report on the effectiveness of the ordinance and the numbers of registered places and the taxes that are done that are paid in and the number of violators that we have, it's really important that we get that. I would love that to be on a future. It doesn't even, at this point, a written report for me so that we can digest it doesn't have to have people there. So I'm not looking to make it onerous but I think it's incumbent on us to get that and as somebody who supported that reluctantly, I really feel that I need that. Thank you. Thank you and thanks, Councillor Bergman. Are there any other, we don't often get to this part of our agenda so it's sort of nice to hear from one another about general city affairs. Councillor Jang. Thank you, President. I want you to take the time to definitely thank the mayor on behalf of the Vermont New American Advisory Council for funding their proposal to look into safety issues affecting from the New American community. And also we missed an important update today from Lacey Smith and I think whoever read that report would just see that there are concrete steps that need to be done and some of them in a very short term and some of them in a longer term. And for also to people to think about that mental health is a real issue. And we believe that the pandemic did highlight that it is affecting every single one of us. And through research we found that it affecting more women than men and also nearly 21% of American people have some type of mental health issue. And I'm glad that the city is taking a look into it. And some of those comments included, we need to also think about from the perspective of the county, not only the city to try to fund all of this, but I appreciate all of those really to look into this issue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Well, look forward to Lacey's report at our next meeting. If there, Councillor Carpenter. Just a quick reminder, hopefully everyone in this council has voted positively for the high school bond, but if it does not pass this council will have a huge task to deal with it. So I just, as we can help in our wards in our districts, this is so critical to us in the city. Thank you and thanks for that show of support for our school bond. If there are no others, we'll go to the next item, which is council president updates. We spoke about the reparations task force and Councillor Jang certainly alluded to this and we did briefly touch on this that we do need to make an appointment to the reparations task force. If there are any members of the council who have suggestions about who that person might be, please let me know. We do wanna make that appointment as quickly as we can so that they go from having, that they have a full slate of members of the task force. And then there was one other comment that I just wanted to make. Some of you may be aware of this that last week Burlington lost a wonderful creative human being from our greater community. And quite honestly when I first read about it, I was in total disbelief because it so took me by surprise when I read that Gina Carrera had died, had suddenly passed away. And I'm still in a bit of a state of disbelief. That's when someone is taken from you, there is that just suspended belief. It just seems unbelievable that such a kind and warm person could be taken from us way too soon. And Gina devoted her professional life to art, to her art. But her first love of course was her two children, Nick and Bella who miss her, well, beyond terribly. And just recently, Gina's life was really, really so promising. She had found love and she'd gotten engaged in Scotland a few months ago. And it's like this loss, like so many others just eludes any sort of justice. We in Burlington I think are really the lucky ones because in Burlington we have Gina's art. And we need to only walk up Church Street to look at the rainforest mural to enjoy her art. And now we can do that and in doing so we honor her memory. Even though repainting the mural was really physically very difficult for her, she was so happy to be able to repaint that mural. And I hope that we can all agree that we honor her life when we honor and preserve her work. And it's a common saying among many that may her memory simply be for a blessing. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Well, with that, we will go to the final item on our agenda which is item number 11, updates from the mayor, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you President Paul. And thank you for those words. So I've got a number of updates. First of all, I wanna thank the dozens of community members and city staffers and partners to the city that came out to be part of the volunteer effort on Elmwood Avenue for the new emergency shelter there over the last two weekends. I was there a couple of times the first weekend and it is, and drove by it again today and it's looking great. It's really come a long way and is on track for opening by the end of November. This is now the goal that Shemplain Housing Trust has set and I wanna really thank everyone involved in that effort. The Elmwood, the Elmwood Emergency Shelter was first proposed in December of last year. And though I think all of us were at times frustrated by the permitting process and how advancing anything with respect to land use can be a time consuming it really from conception to this opening being less than a year is very, very fast compared to how quickly most actual built projects take and I wanna congratulate CEDO on that work and we would like the chance, we're working on a full update for the council and the public on the full 10 point plan that was announced last December and including the broader changes to the homelessness system which Sarah Russell's position was created as part of that plan and we'd be in position to give that update at the next council meeting. Since I know housing is one of the hottest and most important topics to the public right now. Shifting off of housing, something we did together, the council and the administration and the budget was to approve a new nonprofit pandemic response, grant program, the business and workforce development department is heading up that effort and is ready to release and we'll be announcing tomorrow the opening of applications for that million dollar program where the city will be making 50 to $150,000 awards and that application process will be open until November 15th and we'll be sending out again information on this tomorrow and appreciate the council's help in getting this out to all potentially interested organizations. And finally, a really fun annual event is happening again this weekend. It's the 13th annual parks, recreational waterfront Halloween bike ride. The event starts at 130 in City Hall Park. My under, one of the great things about this bike ride, I mean the greatest thing about the bike ride is incredible creativity and effort that goes into the costumes that people come up with every year. Also, John Adams Colets, who always helps organize this event, makes sure that the latest all transportation infrastructure is highlighted featured in this ride around the city and my understanding is riders will get to be some of the early users of the roundabout during this ride, 130 to four on Sunday and then the ride ends at Roosevelt Park with refreshments. So hope to see everyone there on Sunday. Thanks, President Paul. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor Weinberger on that happy note. That brings us to the end of our agenda. So I would ask for a motion to adjourn. Moved by Councillor Jang and seconded by Councillor Traverse. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Aye. And opposed, please say no. We're adjourned at 10-10. Thank you for joining us. Our next meeting is two Mondays from today on November 7th. Have a good evening.