 Good evening and thank you for joining us on town meeting television as we move towards that first Tuesday in March March the 2nd 2021 in town meeting day. This is your place to stay informed about what you'll see on your ballot what candidates You'll see that you can vote for on town meeting day And that's that time in Vermont when Vermaurs are traditionally come to vote on those local issues and local elections So town meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision-makers and connect you with the issues to shape your local community and Tonight, we're pleased to be covering this Burlington City Council South District and we'll be welcomed by Joan Shannon incumbent Democrat and also Grayson med. He's running as an independent If you're watching this live, we welcome your participation. You can call in with questions at 802 862 3966 again, that's 802 862 3966 Please note that if you ask questions, it'll be available all candidates. So we'll have everybody at a we'll have an opportunity to answer Remember you can stay tuned to town meeting television on Comcast channel 1087 also Burlington telecom channel 17 and 217 and the town meeting television YouTube page So for tonight's format, we'll have a one-minute opening statement for each candidate And then we'll move to questions if there's questions from the public or from moderator Each candidate will have two minutes to respond will rotate between folks Oh, it'll hold up a little note when you have 15 seconds left on your time and when time is expired We appreciate everybody abiding by those rules We also will Provide an opportunity for candidates to have up to 30 second rebuttal comments or questions For each question that's asked if those are used and we'll try to make room for 30 second closing comments for candidates So with that we're excited to welcome our two candidates and Joan Shannon We welcome opening statements from you on for one minute as to why Burlington voters for should choose you Thank you Seth and thank you to town meeting TV for hosting these forums It's really a wonderful way to get to know a little bit about candidates And a great source of information for voters. So I'm grateful that we have this service in our community I'm running because of my deep love for this city and for my neighbors I ran for city council for the first time because I really wanted to bring the collective voice of the community to the table Our community doesn't speak with one voice on almost any issue But giving different opinions and not just the loudest or most frequently voiced opinion Consideration in my decision-making has been My commitment to my constituents That doesn't mean I cast every vote in agreement with every voter Obviously, that's not possible But I do weigh the strength of each argument in making my decisions I'm forthright about where I stand and I tell you how I voted and why Sometimes we disagree. I also respect that sometimes I'm wrong and try to question my own confidence in the right answer What would be different if I were not elected? I have a reputation for speaking directly and plainly telling the story of what happens at the city council You would lose my voice at the table, which of late is often a voice of dissent And the council would be more homogenous in thought And I do want to emphasize that it is important to Even when you don't win to represent another viewpoint at the table and fortunately, sometimes sometimes I do win, but It is important to have a diversity of thought Thank you councillor Shannon and Grace Ahmed welcome and we welcome your one minute opening statement Oh, you're on mute That's the that's the top line Yeah, so um, my name is Grace Ahmed. Um, I've been living on Howard street for the last 15 years raising my five children and I have been doing community organizing work with workers rights and educational equity for a long time And racial justice as as a backdrop of of where that stuff lands And I'm running for city council now because I was approached and asked to do so and I am Not just Trying to replace Joan Shannon with grace Ahmed But I really am committed to changing the structures that we have so that there's more direct democracy and less reliance on us being good representatives that represent everybody Thank you grace So no mercy. We're going to move right into a lightning round and that's there's six initiatives on the city ballot this year Which of those um six uh ballot items stand out to and why and if you can quickly share with voters what your position is on those items And since we started with Joan first grace, we'll start with you We'll move to a two minute response format And it looks like we've got a frozen grace. So actually we'll shift. Oh grace be there I'm having I'm having some internet access issues. We've got you now Yeah, um So honestly the thing that stands out to me most is the seventh item that's been dropped Out and was not allowed on as a charter change item to be voted by the people um Of what's remaining um You know, I think Just cause eviction is a place that Joan Shannon and I disagree. There's probably many places that we do agree um I'm definitely Pro getting a new ambulance things that are easy low hanging um, I've had My own experience with not being able to access an ambulance. And so that's something that's very crucial to public safety um And um Do you want me to in two minutes go through one two three four five six? Yes. No, or um Your your your time so, um I think that um Just cause eviction is probably the one that we will be disagreeing on the most Um, I'm a landlord concerns about this. My concern still is that I don't know how it protects tenants enough because You can write anything that you want into a lease agreement um, and so I do appreciate it as a sort of symbolic gesture of How how we're going to manage the rapid gentrification that keeps people from being able to work in burlington and then Afford on the wages that they're paid in jobs that they work here to live in the city that they work in um going from service workers in restaurants people working in our schools All the way up to police officers that I've talked to in bpd who cannot work live in Great and that was time in the city Thank you grace Joan same question back to you on the ballot items what stood out to you the most and if you have time to go through the six items in your stance on them Yes, thank you. Um, and I agree with grace that we disagree on just cause evictions and uh I really disagree with it because I think the name in itself is misleading It has very little to do with evictions. It has to do with permanent tenancy perpetual leases rent control And making the landlord tenant relationship very litigious It will disincentivize landlords who take a chance on tenants that maybe don't have a great rental history um, or maybe not such a good credit history or um You know a variety, uh, you know, maybe uh a criminal past or something We really need landlords who will take those chances and in this market There isn't a financial incentive to do that already But when you add this on top of that you're really disincentivizing landlords taking a chance On on tenants with imperfect records um You know a lot of people say that well, you can always get a tenant out because as grace said you can put whatever you want in your lease But the problem is that with just cause evictions your lease will never terminate your your lease is not the end of tenancy And even if you put into your lease The lease is the end of tenancy. The lease is still not the end of tenancy and whatever You feel is a breach of the terms of lease you would have to prove that um And there's a lot of things that happen outside of a lease you may have two tenants and one may be making racist comments to another We heard testimony of one tenant Sexually assaulting another tenant and the victim was a child and they didn't the family didn't want to come forward about that So it's very hard to prove and in that case it would be the victim that would have to move Because you wouldn't be able to get the perpetrator out as long as they're paying their rent Thank you. Thank you City of Brillington, this is your city council, right? And you race and you can participate tonight by calling 802 862 3966 and we're now going to go to the front where you've got a couple of calls Get in my 30 seconds here. Um, because I'm a landlord I had that very same Initial reaction when I heard about just cause and I said Well, doesn't that it dis incentivize people to take a chance on someone that doesn't have a stellar rental record I I manage properties for my family and we have people in that We we exactly took a chance I think when you think it through when you get to the end of that If they are not in violation of their lease those people that you took a chance on Are good tenants those people that you took a chance on and have violated their lease have done a criminal behavior have Um harassed their neighbors. That's all stuff that Is dealt with just as easily with this change as without it. Thank you Sure John with your 30-second rebuttal Um, thank you That's really not true because with the current with the status quo at the end of the lease you would be able to say to that tenant I'm sorry. I don't want to renew your lease But now you would actually have to go through a formal eviction process And you would have to prove it in court. It makes it very litigious You would have to prove whatever breach there was and these things that happen between tenants Is not easy to prove and that would be asking one tenant to rat out another tenant in court Not just calling you up and saying They just called me a racist slur. That's no longer enough Thank you very much. We'll now go to the phone lines Caller if you can please share your name and the town that you're from please Yes, my name is matt. I'm from burlington. My question is this Is the city of burlington and the council in general best served by more activists on the city council when In essence, the role is to be neutral and dispassionate Uh across the board. Thank you Great and your name in the town you're from caller Yeah, I'm i'm matt from burlington Thank you matt So we started with grace first last time so we'll go to jones first two minutes Thank you. I think that probably um, most of us come to the council Because we are some kind of activist. I was an activist in in my community. I was organizing my community. I organized a neighborhood fair I got camps for all the kids in my neighborhood, which is a low-income neighborhood And my kids the kids here were getting into trouble because unlike the more middle-class Kids they didn't have camps in the summer So there is uh, you know when you're talking about maybe more militant activism I do think there were things I was active on such as I was very opposed to the champlain parkway southern connector And I realized when I became a city council Counselor no longer could I be looking at my personal views on something I now had to listen to those who felt like the southern connector was their lifeline um in their neighborhood for a variety of reasons as well as People in my neighborhood who feel like they would be negatively impacted by this road and then balance all of those interests So you can't have a narrow focus when you're on the council You have to have a very broad focus and you have to have a very broad level of interest um, I don't know that anybody is really an impartial arbiter of uh of these issues, but it is certainly important to not be blind um or deaf to a different point of view um And I I think that's responsive Great grace up to two minutes um, so I think that Someone that's on council by nature. I think is an active force that's going to be making decisions and Saying that someone's an activist doesn't give them more of an opinion than The status quo that's here that's certainly an opinion in and of itself And the idea that the incumbency and the establishment Is a neutral and impartial thing And that things that are seeking to change that is activism um, I think Misses the active part of it of maintaining The status quo um And I think maybe that question is meant for me because I'm saying I'm a community organizer And the concern there is that I am biased and that I am not going to be a rational decision maker Um, so I guess I'd like to give more of my background I'm working on a master's degree in data science and complex systems. I have a science background And what I'm looking for for our city is to really step up our Commitment to having vigorous scientific method inform our efficacy studies and our policy analysis And make our city more accountable to the people who are vesting it with with our power and our voice and our vote Thank you Thank you grace That's drum 30 seconds. It's not so much a rebuttal but just to to kind of Bring it together. I think that what's important is not being married to married too much to an ideology What's important is listening to the entire community and making a decision based on the interest of the city And and not just furthering my own personal ideology on any particular issue Thank you So we've got a little over 10 minutes left. So we're going to move along We don't have another call on could we talk a little bit about policing and community safety Which has been a hot button issue in the city lately Was the city council's decision to cut the police department budget by 30 the right decision? Why or why not and what needs to be done to meet the community's safety and policing needs for the city? And I believe we started with jones first last time so grace we can start with you Okay So Yes, I think that The 30 reduction Is a step that needs to happen now. It is what the the Community is really calling for. I think that the racial justice alliance is not a small Thing I think that that is multiple people that are involved and have been doing this work for many years Before the zeitgeist made it pop up into our consciousness here and I think that the the The idea that We need to come to consensus that Is the consensus of the incumbency that we need to compromise until we all agree with the incumbency is a really Big problem and it's one of the motivating things that that drove me to run because I found it very difficult to swallow That we had acts of violence done by people That were authorized to do so and when our community came together And and cried out and said we do not feel safe with those people Policing us. We do not feel safe with those people being armed and authorized to use violence against us And we were told that there was no legal recourse to remove people that we don't feel safe having walking around in our community with guns it's it's unacceptable to Require us to come to the consensus that everything is a okay And what is needed here is creativity in thinking about how we are going to address The needs of people who live here who Don't feel safe Do not feel safe calling the police When a crime is occurring So who do you call? Thank you grace and shown two minutes on the same question about the council's decision and community policing Thank you Grace is exactly right. How are we going to meet the needs of people who don't feel safe? That is the bottom line and unfortunately the question was not asked or answered when we defunded the police by 30 percent without a plan And uh, I know that my progressive colleagues would say oh, but there is a plan the plan is to replace to use those funds For other community services that is not a plan that is a goal um You have to look at what are those other community services that we need to fill in What do they cost in comparison with the money that would be saved by Defunding the police Can we can we leverage other community resources outside of berlington? I will tell you I see a profound need in this community for better mental health care I think it is shameful that a man went to our hospital Three times in one day was refused service Then went out on the highway And five children died that night And we cannot blame the police when they are the last stop when people are unable to get other services I think the police themselves would be the first to say We welcome other services they go to calls that are mental health calls and they call For help from the mental health providers and they can't get it So yes, we do need to look at our public safety system And we do need to invest in other resources A lot of that investment comes from the state and federal government It cannot come from the city and you can't just take what we have from the police To do that because it's not enough Thank you councillor shun And now we have a call in and caller if you could please share your name And what town you're from and please speak up if you ask your question Good evening, my name is Monica and I'm from Burlington And my question is VT digger just had a powerful piece on the number of women of color who due to racism and exclusion Have left their homes or leadership roles in vermont out of concern for their safety What is your plan for ensuring the safety and inclusion of women and people of color in Burlington? Great. And the last time we started with grace. So this time we'll start with Joan Um, I think that that's a really good question and there's no simple answer to that question. Um, I'm It's it's absolutely shameful the The way people feel comfortable attacking People in public right now Is is horrific and it is worse for people of color It's not very good for a lot of us And I think that we need to change the conversation in our community And we need to start Talking to each other Uh And trying to find our common ground Um, you know, I wish I did have an answer. Uh, I am I really think that there's a lot we need to do to fight racism in our community And I welcome the new awakening we have around this issue I welcome the work that the city is doing we have established the office of Racial equity inclusion and belonging we've invested a million dollars in In these efforts and I think we have to continue doing that continue doing everything that we can Um, we want to support people of color in in a variety of aspects of our lives We want to support them in business. We want to support them in politics um And I I also support the reparations task force that uh, the city council started to start that discussion Because we really do need to have more of a reckoning We need to not yell at each other about it, but to Raise awareness and educate people Grace if you'd like to address the the caller's questions um, yeah so, um We've had In in vermont. We've had, you know, a few very disturbing instances of Women of color being threatened and that being really not taken seriously So that's you know, that's not that's that's something that's a cultural issue and something That where the police are the thing where people are making threats against someone Sometimes it is time to call the police um But I guess what I'd like to touch on there is Accessibility for women women of color, especially I think um I can think of things that are helpful as a as the as a mother um, you know having child care available at meetings during meetings during these things where public Processes are happening and having food for families to make Women who are also managing families make make that accessible to us I think stipends for public service for women and underrepresented People and people who can't afford to take Time off and need to be paid for their time Is a is a mechanism that can be used and I um, so in my education Organizing we've done what we call listening campaigns, which is where we go into a setting And we just start having conversations and we ask people what they need And so that would be really my first step in addressing it instead of making up my own thing would be Talking to women talking to women of color. What are the barriers that you are facing? And and how can we make a public service and public process more accessible to you? Thank you grace and you can actually stay off mute because I'll ask now that you each take 30 seconds to do Your closing statements as to why you're the best candidate for burlington Grace we'll start with you So I Am the best candidate because I am not running to be the best candidate I am running to make more options for direct democracy. I want voters to be able to bring Charter changes directly to ballot. I want us to be able to Directly govern ourselves so that we know that we have the consent of ourselves to be governed by ourselves Thank you grace and now John will we'll shift you for 30 seconds for closing statement Yeah, thank you and thank you to grace for for raising that issue and it's a it's a good point of disagreement. I think respectfully um, I don't think that we want every issue on the ballot and I think it's important to have representatives that can you know Listen to different voices in the community and make a decision in the best interest of the collective to the best To our best ability The charter change is a good example the one that was vetoed. It was six pages long What would have gone on the ballot was a short paragraph? People really wouldn't have known what they were What they were voting on because these topics are complex and you need people at the table who will dig in decipher it Communicate it to the public and then make decisions based on the informed feedback that we get Thank you Thank you both so much. Thanks. I know the Residents are brilliant are grateful for your willingness to serve And thank you for your time tonight Don't forget that on that first Tuesday in March March the second You can vote between 9 a.m. And 9 p.m. You can also make an early voting plan to vote safely And we appreciate you tuning in to town meeting television to learn more about the issues and candidates And grace and jones. Thank you very much for joining us today And this has been a production from town meeting television. Thank you all and have a great evening Thank you sat. Thank you grace Thank you