 Hi everybody. I hope I'm the right Karen. Karen Durfee, Ward 7, joining in. I volunteered to emcee the debate and now I see I may be doing more than that so just bear with me. I did not have this on my, I thought I was starting at 7.30 so welcome everyone to all Ward's NPA. I am not even sure who's chairing this NPA but I'm here and I will do the best I can. I can give you a hand too. That sounds like that's a little bit of a miscommunication. So I'm pleased to make your acquaintance Nathan. Hi Tom, everybody. So I can go through what I have for an agenda if that is okay with folks. Okay, so what we're doing here is we are going to, we have translation services. I think that's the most important thing that's happening here and we have four languages that are being translated. We are recording this in French. My, my, Arabic, Nepali, Somali, and Swahili, which I think is amazing. Sorry, there are just two more languages that are, it's six languages in total. I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, that's okay. I can see, those are the ones that I can see on my English, French, My, my, Arabic, Nepali, Somali, and Swahili. Do I have those right? That's perfect. Okay. I think I might have left out the English in French. Sorry. So that's, that's happening and it's very exciting. Hats off to the NPA folks for getting this together. And then I do not have notes on the ballot initiatives. I was working with someone that's on the team to go over those. So I do apologize for that. Should I go over those now or is someone else going to help me out with that? Yeah, I can help you out with it. Great. Thanks. Yeah, sorry about, sorry about the miscommunication there. Not at all. This was a last minute and I'm happy to do it. So thanks for your help. I'm glad to have you here and we're glad to have, you know, everybody here, all of the presenters on behalf of the ballot questions are translators and interpreters, CEDO for helping us out with a lot of the planning and everybody who's helped make this happen. So as you all know, Tom meeting day is coming up really soon. Ballots will presumably be hitting your mailboxes within the next week or so. So we wanted to give chances for people to hear some different perspectives on the upcoming ballot questions. So we have some representatives from a couple of different sides of things, some in support of them, some, you know, opposed to some of the questions, some that are just coming from a neutral perspective to kind of just share, share with the public some of the things that they're thinking about these questions and and going from there. So the five ballot questions are in relation to just cause eviction, which will be the first on our agenda, followed by rank choice voting, followed by retail cannabis sales in Burlington, which is an advisory question, followed by thermal energy regulation and the expansion of the Burlington Airport Commission. Some of those questions we had two representatives for. We were originally allocated about five minutes for presenting for those sessions to accommodate any of the interpretation needs. We extended those sessions to 15 minutes just to give a little bit of adding in a little bit of time. So it's about seven and a half, you know, approximately for both of those. We're not going to be taking live questions, but I'm sure that many of the presenters would be happy to follow up afterwards. But with that, we're going to start it out and introduce our first of these ballot questions, which is on just cause eviction. So we're going to start with Angela Sikowski of the Vermont Landlords Association, and she'll be followed by Tom Proctor of Rights and Democracy. So Angela, thank you very much and we're glad to have you. Nathan, thank you very much for having me and the opportunity to weigh in and provide a little information about the just cause eviction. The Landlords Association is urging you to vote no on this issue. There's been a lot of, I think, miscommunications and bad information that's been shared. There was a flyer that went around and it claimed that evictions have led to ballooning rents, gentrification, discrimination, and exploitation. It also indicated that landlords can evict any tenant at any time for no reason. This is simply not true. Most evictions in the state and in Burlington are for nonpayment of rent. Property taxes and rising maintenance costs impact rental increases and are part of the reason why we have seen rents go up in Burlington. And no cause notices currently can only be used on month-to-month tenants or at the end of lease term. So the assertion that a tenant at any time can be evicted without a reason is simply not true and doesn't follow what the law currently says. Just cause is rent control in disguise. This is a way for the city to impose restrictions on how much a landlord can raise the rent each year. It will cause rent increases to be litigated and it will provide a financial burden on landlords. And probably the biggest piece here is that just cause is going to require that neighbors and other tenants become involved in the eviction process and become involved in tenant behavior issues. Good tenants and good landlords do not have problems. Problem tenants and those who are bad neighbors run into issues and run into evictions currently. Those tenants also sometimes use the system against other tenants and their landlord. Just cause protects those bad neighbor tenants. It protects potentially those tenants that are just not nice to live next to. That neighbor who makes terrible comments to you. Maybe that neighbor that makes racially inappropriate comments to you. The landlord will lose a tool to deal with that situation. So sometimes the easiest way to describe these is to lay out some scenarios. So here's one. Jill has lived in her apartment for a couple of years. Joe moves into the unit next door in her building. Joe asked Jill out. Jill says no. A couple of days later Jill finds a scratch down the side of her car. Jill finds that her mail has been rifled through. And she finds that when she leaves the apartment, Joe stands in the window and watches her. Jill describes these issues to her landlord and asks for help. Under just cause, Joe cannot be asked to leave for these things as he would not be breaching the lease. And there's no direct evidence to implicate Joe in these other incidences. Under the current system, the landlord could ask Joe to leave with a no cause notice and not involve Jill any further in the interaction. Under just cause, Jill would have to either move or continue to put up with this behavior from her neighbor. Another example, Bruce and Robin move into a new rental unit. Robin and Bruce are a mixed race couple. Almost immediately after moving in, they have the police knocking on their door because a neighbor made an unfounded complaint. Robin and Bruce are met again with the neighbor watching them out the window every time they leave their unit. The neighbor uses a racial slur against them. Robin and Bruce bring these issues to their landlord. Under just cause, the neighbor probably hasn't violated the lease and the landlord is going to have a very hard time asking that neighbor to leave and provide some relief for Bruce and Robin. Sort of the same scenario as with Jill. Another example of what we could see. Amy works an hourly wage job. She needs to work her full amount of hours to support herself. Amy's neighbor has a lot of parties. The parties are loud and keep her from sleeping and she has personally witnessed the tenants from next door urinating on the front lawn. She reports these issues to her landlord. Under just cause, the landlord started an eviction for this behavior. However, Amy is required to be a witness in the court proceedings because she is the one to provide the evidence of the behavior by the neighbors. This means Amy has to take time off of work and lose wages and when the neighbors find out that Amy is going to be a witness, the noise issues escalate and the neighbor starts a campaign to make her life incredibly difficult. These are the hoops that will have to be jumped through under just cause. It will impact neighbors and it will impact other tenants. Just cause makes these scenarios a reality. Just cause is protection for bad tenants and bad behavior. Many situations that landlords work under or face do not warrant or will not support a breach of lease type notice, mostly due to hard proof, not wanting to involve other tenants or neighbors in the court process, or the behavior engaged in makes somebody a bad neighbor, but it doesn't rise to the level of justifying an eviction. All of those are reasons why a landlord would use a no cause notice right now and ask a tenant to leave. Burlington is seeking to take this tool away from landlords and from the community. The landlord would no longer be able to ask a tenant to leave at the end of the lease term and will have to involve others in the eviction process. For all of those reasons, we are urging you to vote no on the just cause eviction proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Angela. I was just about to tell you time so you came in right at the mark. Thank you very much. That was Angela from the Landlord's Association and we will have Tom Proctor speaking from rights and democracy up next also on just cause eviction. So Tom, the floor is yours. Thank you, Nate. And thank you everyone for turning up this evening. And thank you, Angela, for that great presentation. So I'm going to share my screen and got a few PowerPoint slides I'm going to go through. So give me a second. Okay. So my name is Tom Proxner. As Nate says, I am a resident of Ward 1. I am the organizer, regional organizer for rights and democracy. And I'm also the campaign director of the just cause eviction coalition. And tonight I'll be asking you to vote yes on question five. Tom, just before I get started, sorry, let me just say we do have the interpretations going on. And one of them asked us to just slow down a little bit through talking. So just make sure you keep that in mind as you go through your presentation. Thank you very much for the heads up. So current state law, what is the current state law? Current state law is allows for no cause eviction. And as I pointed out, what no cause eviction is is allows landlords to evict tenants without any reason necessary. But this little is 90 days notice. It's 90 days if it is a, if you've got a written lease or 120 days if you don't have a written lease. This often comes in the form of a non-renewal of a lease. But not always, as Angela noted, in some scenarios, this does actually happen mid lease as well. The vast majority of no cause evictions do not go through the courts. And so go unreported. That's because A, tenants don't like a blemish of eviction on their records. And B, often tenants don't actually know their rights. C, no cause eviction most often comes in the form of a non-renewal of lease. So what is just cause eviction? Just cause is a law designed to protect tenants from being evicted for no cause. It would ensure landlords can only evict for a justification. And so it would allow landlords to resign their lease and stay in their home if there is no reason to evict. If you're a good tenant, you should be allowed to stay in your home. A lot of people have asked, what is a just cause? And now enshrined in the charter change language, we have put it as four separate things. First, a most obvious non-payment of rent. That's the vast majority of evictions right now not going to change. Second of all, breach of lease. Like if, for example, you're smoking inside and that's against your lease or destruction of the property itself. Violation of state statutes or rental agreements, for example, breach of the peace. Like Angela said, if you are peeing on your neighbor's lawn, that is a breach of the peace. That is a just cause. We do live in a nation of laws though and everyone is innocent and proven guilty. We believe that landlords shouldn't be judged, jury and executioner and unilaterally decide whether or not someone has breached a peace. It should go through courts. Lastly, refusing to sign a new lease containing reasonable changes. We have made sure that this is not rent control and as such, landlords are allowed to increase their rent year on year. If a tenant refuses to sign that lease with a rent increase, that is also justification for just cause or for eviction, which means this is not a repeat, not rent control. Some exemptions to just cause. We have listened to a little landlord and creating this language and there was a few areas where we really felt landlords don't need to be protected. For example, if it's a sub lease or your landlord lives in the building with you, obviously if you're a landlord and you live with a problematic person, you should be allowed to get rid of them. If it is an owner-occupied duplex or tri-plex, again, if you're living in the same building as your tenants, you have a right to say who you're living around and therefore they would be exempt from just cause. If the unit is taken off the rental market, for example, if the house is sold to a non-landlord or a family member is moving into the unit, that again is an exemption from just cause. You can still no cause evict people. And finally, if the unit needs substantial repairs, if you need to move your tenants out because you've got substantial repairs to do, you can move them out. We think that is fair as well. We've really tried to listen to all sides when crafting this. Why we need just cause? Well, it allows tenants to put routes down in their communities because they know they can stay there for a long time. This increases civic engagement. It slows down gentrification and yes, angelic doors also slow down ballooning rents because landlords often hike up rents after evicting tenants. And as we see in Burlington with 64% of people renting, often way over the 30% of their income, this has become a major problem in Burlington. It also prevents landlords using eviction as a cuddle to continue bad housing practices. Many units in Burlington have really failed when it comes to code violations. Landlords know that if a tenant complains, they can get rid of them easily. And this has happened time and time again. Whereas Angelic is coming up with imagined hypothetical scenarios, we have talks during our research for many tenants where this has happened to. This is real life and actually happening rather than an imagined scenario. And finally, it prevents discrimination against marginalized people in BIPOC. In several scenarios, we have heard landlords evict people because they've got a helper dog. They've got a helper pet and the landlord has evicted a tenant because the pet was going to scratch up floors. In another scenario, the landlord evicted a young woman who got pregnant because he feared the baby would cry too much. Again, these aren't imagined scenarios. These actually happen to tenants we've spoken to. And in some cases, landlords admit this themselves during the process of crafting this language. So this does happen and it happens in Burlington. But finally, what the bottom line of this is, is no one should be removed from their home if they pay their rent, respect their community, and take good care of their home. No one. If you're a good tenant, you pay up on time each month. You take good care of the people who live next door to you and you take good care of your home and you shouldn't be evicted. Just cause will enshrine this ideal into municipal law. If you believe that no one should get evicted if they've paid their rent on time, respect their community and take good care of their home, you should be voting yes for just cause eviction. Voting yes on question five. And you wouldn't be the only ones. This is supported by rights and democracy, of course, but also the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, CVO, Legal Aid, Champlain, DSA, Northgate Properties and VT, AFL, COO. It passed 10 to two on the city council, including Sarah Carpenter, Brian Pine, Soraya Hightower, Jack Hansen, Karen, so what's my trainer thought there? Perry Freeman, but also many members of the community support this as well. We've had to be really brief today, and this is a very complicated issue. But if you want to learn more, go to justcausebtv.org. We have a town hall discussion involving six experts on this tomorrow at 6pm. And I'll put the event link in the chat for anyone that would like to join. Thank you so much for this evening. Thank you, Tom. And thank you both for speaking on behalf of the just cause eviction charter change, which will be question five on the ballot. I'm going to pass it back to Karen, who's going to take over for the next few introductions. So thank you both. And Karen, it's all yours. Sorry, just to interject again, I just want to remind about the speed of talking. Tom, thanks for slowing down. We're still getting a couple of requests to slow down a bit more and I think maybe add a few more healthy pauses in between sentences as you speak. So that would be great if you could just pause every couple of sentences. Thanks so much. Thank you for that reminder. Okay, so our next ballot initiative will be ranked choice voting and I believe Terry is with us. I'm unmuting. Okay, I'm here. Hi, Terry. I'm glad you're here and I'll let you take it away. Okay, so rank choice voting. First off, I should say there's a lot of different phrases. It used to be called instant runoff voting IRB and nowadays it's often called ranked choice voting, RCV, and political scientists call it STV, single transferable vote. I might jump back and forth between the various ones. There's a screen share going on. This is the Burlington City ballot from 2006, the marriage race, which was the first election in Burlington using the ranked choice voting ballot. You can see the candidates listed on the left and then there's an opportunity to rank candidates by their instructions above it. Also at the polling place, we had visual explanations. Basically, people would fill in the oval for their first choice in line with their favorite candidate and then they could indicate if they wished a second choice, third choice, and so on. Terry, not Terry, but for a few moments. Do I need to slow down? Yes, yes. I've always told that I speak too quickly. So this is nothing new for me, but I will work on that. So first, I just want to talk about what the problem is that this is trying to address. First, people need to understand that the voting system used throughout most of the United States called a plurality or whoever gets the most votes wins only works well when there's only two candidates. If there's three or four or five candidates running in a race, there's this risk of a spoiler issue. There's the issue. I really like this candidate, but I've been told by my friends that if I vote for them that they don't have a good chance and I really should vote for this other candidate. I don't like nearly as much, but if I don't vote for my second choice candidate by voting for my first choice candidate, it will actually help elect the person I like the least. And that dynamic can happen any time there's more than two candidates. As I said, United States is pretty unusual in using this voting system where you just vote for one person. Most of the world uses some sort of majority voting system when you're electing a single person like a mayor or they use a system of proportional representation if they're electing a representative body like a legislature or city council. But because most Americans have only experienced that one voting system, they're sort of surprised to learn that it's an outlier. It's an unusual defective voting system that most political scientists who study voting methods agree is probably the least democratic and worst voting system. You can take the ballot down now and so people can see my face again. It's worth noting that while voting for just one person is considered easy, say keep it simple, it's easy for the people who are counting the ballots, but it's not easy for the voters because they often have to do that calculus of should I vote for the person I like the most or is it wiser to vote for this other candidate who has a better chance to win even though I don't like them as much. And that complication that the voters suffered through is largely, although not 100%, it's largely eliminated by the rank choice voting method. Here's what rank choice voting actually does. By voting for your first choice, everybody votes for their first choice. They count the ballots at the end of the day if one person, one candidate has more than half of all the votes, more than 50% of the first choices, your election is over. You have a majority winner. However, if no candidate has more than half the votes, no candidate has a majority, the alternatives that are used in many places in the world are to go to a runoff election, a separate election between the top two candidates. What a rank choice vote ballot allows is for that exact same dynamic to play out, but without calling the voters back for another election because voters have had the opportunity to indicate who their runoff choices are if their favorite candidate gets eliminated in the runoff. The advantages of doing an all-in-one election rather than having a separate runoff election, well, there's several. The first one is money. It costs more taxpayer money to hold a whole new election. Also, the candidates are in a mad dash to try and raise campaign money all over again, making the ability of the candidate who has easiest access to big money have even a further advantage, but also in runoff elections, in a large majority of the cases, the voter participation plummet. There are fewer people vote in runoff elections than in the first round, so you often find in the United States places that do have runoff elections that the person who wins in the runoff got fewer votes in the runoff election than the person who lost the runoff got in the first round, so they've actually gotten fewer votes than their opponent got in round one. So what the ranked choice ballot does is allow us to have the exact same dynamic of a runoff election that the top candidates go up until you're down to just two finalists, and whichever one of them is preferred by more voters is declared the winner. Usually that will be by a majority of all voters. However, it's worth noting it is always possible that some voters will say I'm voting for my first choice and I don't like any of the others, and they choose not to rank a second choice or a third choice, so it's possible that the final winner will have a majority of those who are still voting in the runoff as in a runoff election, but not necessarily a majority of all those who voted in the first round. That can happen, and that has happened in the Burlington election in 2009, so a couple things about instant runoff voting or ranked choice voting, worth noting. It was invented back in the 1800s. It has been used for well over a century in places like Australia. It's used in places like the United Kingdom for certain elections in Ireland. It's used, it's been used by many millions of voters for over a century, very successfully. It's used in the United States in a variety of places, San Francisco, Minneapolis. The state of Maine uses instant runoff voting for all their state elections. The city of Bangor, Portland, Maine, rather, adopted it for their mayoral elections and they just recently expanded it to all of their city elections are being conducted using a ranked choice voting. It works very well. Voters do not get confused by it. When we had the elections in 2006, we set up helpers at each polling place, somebody who could answer people's questions about the ballot in case there was confusion. But by midday in almost every ward, they were sent home because nobody had any questions and over 99.9% of all the ballots that were cast in that ranked choice election were valid. In fact, there was a greater incidence of spoiled ballots in the non-IRV elections than in the IRV election because some people mistakenly voted for two people in city council race, which in those days was not conducted by IRV. So it's not confusing for voters. It works very well. It has a long track record. I will say that there is one fellow in town who has a pet project. He has a voting system that he wants to try. So he's opposing this ballot item because he wants to use a condorsay method without going into the details. Just say that his proposal is for a voting system that has not been used by any government anywhere in the world ever that no voting machine company has a system ready to implement it, but he thinks it's better than ranked choice voting. So it's an example of his best being the enemy of the good. I'll stop there and see if there are questions. We're actually not able to take a lie of questions due to the proliferation of Zoom bombs that have been happening recently. All right. Would you be willing to take questions if people wanted to follow up with you? Sure. I feel safe giving my email over the Zoom. I don't think it will be abused. Is that how I should do it? Or are you going to do it? That works. I should do it? Yeah. So Terri B, T-E-R-R-Y-B at BurlingtonTelecom.net. Thank you, Terri. All right. Okay. So with that, I think we're going to move on to our next ballot item, which is retail cannabis in Burlington. And we're going to welcome Andrew Subin and Tim Fair. And Andrew, if I said your last name wrong, I'm very sorry. No, you did. That's right. You got it. Okay. So you gentlemen, whoever is presenting, I think you heard Liam say we are being translated. And if we could speak a little bit slower and maybe take some intentional pauses, that is very helpful for our translators. Yes, definitely. Terri, thank you so much for giving your best shot, but slower than that for sure. And with more pauses sort of speaking in between the words and the sentences. Thank you. If you think that some of the previous speakers were fast talkers, would you hear us? We will really do our best. And I think it's great that this is being translated into so many languages. That's really neat. So Tim and I are not doing a pro and con here. Tim and I are business partners. We're both attorneys at Vermont. We're the founding attorneys of Vermont Cannabis Solutions. So we're located in Burlington. And we are the only cannabis dedicated law firm in the state. We're working right now with a lot of hemp and CBD businesses. And we're working now in the adult use industry in getting people prepared for the licensing process. And part of that is towns opting in for retail. So we're going to have this issue on the town meeting ballot for Burlington coming up. And so we're just here to sort of lay out what the issue is. And yes, we are hoping that Burlington will opt in for retail cannabis. So Act 164, which is the bill which has legalized a cannabis marketplace, most people realize that in 2018, marijuana was legalized. But there was no method or mechanism by which to conduct transactions. Now we have passed Act 164, which will establish a cannabis industry in Vermont commercialized. As one facet component of that retail sales, the bill requires that each municipality within Vermont put the question of whether they will permit retail marijuana sales within their jurisdiction to a meeting, to a vote of the registered voters, which can take place either at the annual town meeting, or in the alternative, a special meeting called specifically for that purpose. We here today are basically explaining it. And I do think this will be one of the easier issues to kind of understand. Many of these issues tonight have a very complicated and a lot of arguments. This is much more straightforward. Does Burlington do the voters want retail cannabis within Burlington or not? Andrew, if you want to. Yeah, well, and I think it's a pretty straightforward issue. There's complicated, perhaps by the thought that towns have the ability to influence the timing of licenses. That's not the fact. The licenses are going to be issued by the state and by the cannabis control board that is being formed right now. So the town's ability to control retail cannabis is limited to this opt-in question. First of all, the town can say, no, we don't want it at all. And beyond that, if the town says, yes, we do want retail cannabis, the town can do some things with regard to zoning and nuisance in terms of where cannabis business would be appropriate. So that's the issue that's going to be before the voters and in Burlington and in about 13 other towns in the state. Obviously, that leaves a lot of towns that are not going to have this issue on the ballot in March, in this March. But that means that these towns are going to be deciding this by special meeting or that some towns may need to wait until town meeting next year to decide this. So the opportunity that these towns have who are going to vote on this now, including Burlington, is to get out in front and to have businesses that are preparing to become licensed know that Burlington will be a friendly place to start a retail cannabis business. So that being said, I think Tim and I would be remiss if we didn't point out some of the reasons why we think retail cannabis is a good idea for Burlington and a good idea for any town. First, we believe that retail is coming and Burlington as the leading city in the state should have the flagship cannabis retail in Burlington. For Burlington to be left out of Vermont's cannabis industry strikes me as not correct. So Burlington should be a leader on this issue and not let some of the other towns become leaders on this cannabis issue. Cannabis retail is going to bring a lot of benefits to any town that ops in. Chief among those are jobs. A cannabis dispensary will create depending on how many square feet and so forth could create 10, 20 jobs. These are high-paying jobs and jobs that attract young people to either come to our community or to stay in our community and attracting and retaining young people is important for Burlington and for Vermont. So number one, it's a job creator. Number two, it's a tax base and Burlington has a local option tax. There can be 1% of all cannabis sales can go to the town in that case. So the numbers, I don't want to quote any numbers because it's going to be hard to compare our market to Massachusetts or to Oregon or to any of these other much larger states. But the numbers are going to be significant and the tax revenue is going to be significant. And that's another good reason for Burlington to opt in. I also want to remind everyone that it's important to note Act 164 does allow for a local cannabis control commission as well. So by voting for this, it doesn't mean there's going to be retail. It means that entrepreneurs and business people have the opportunity and there is the safety mechanism for those who are concerned about the uncertainty of a local control commission, which would have, as Andrew mentioned, control over zoning and nuisance issues, signage, things which could impact the community negatively. So this is an opportunity. There's been a lot of people who have fought this battle for a very long time. And it's now Burlington's opportunity to make the decision as I think each community should make the decision. Do they want to take part in this industry, which is not only going to bring the jobs from a dispensary, but from the cultivation, from the ancillary businesses that are going to spring up to support the industry. And we do both feel that it would be in the city's best interest. Anybody has any questions or wants to talk to us about this? We love talking about cannabis legalization in Vermont. You can reach me. I'm Andrew at vermontcannabissolutions.com. Tim is Tim at vermontcannabissolutions.com. Please feel free anytime to give us a call. We're happy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I saw the effort to slow down in talking. Thank you very much. We are going to move on quickly to our next item. It's thermal energy regulation. And I think we're going to be welcoming Darren Springer from Burlington Electric and Bill Ward, Director of Permitting and Inspections. And I just want to say great job again with the interpretation or with the slowing down for the interpretation, but it is a very difficult task. So take that speed and just slow that down even more. Thank you very much. Great. Hello, everybody. I am Darren Springer, General Manager with Burlington Electric Department. And I'm joined this evening on this item by Bill Ward, who is the Director of Permitting and Inspections in Burlington. And we're going to talk a little bit about the thermal energy a ballot item. I believe it is question three on the ballot. And Bill and I are not going to present a pro and con. We're going to just provide information about the item. And when we think about this item, it really is about the city's desire to address climate change and to have more energy efficiency in our buildings. And that's the idea behind this. And what we're talking about with the ballot item is that the city would like to have additional authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions that are coming from the heating sector in our city. We have a plan to move towards what we're calling net zero energy by 2030, which is really about reducing our fossil fuel use for heating and for ground transportation. We're already 100% renewable when it comes to our electric sector. And we're trying to bring that type of accomplishment to transportation and to heating. And so this item would give the city the ability to set new regulations for how buildings are heated and would give the city the ability with voter approval to enact compliance fees associated with those regulations. And perhaps important background information is that the city had begun to move in this direction and had learned that the charter didn't provide the full authority to require some of these new technologies and to assess these types of compliance fees or carbon fees associated with them. And so that's where the idea for the charter change came from. I want to just mention a couple of quick things and turn it over to Bill for some of his thoughts. Sometimes when people think about this charter change, they're thinking about the idea that somehow there's going to be a tax on your existing heating system. That's not included in this charter change. There is not a ban on any specific technology, including in the charter change. We're not talking about going back to the old inefficient electric resistance heat that was present in buildings in Burlington in the 1970s and 1980s. What we are talking about is really trying to incentivize newer, modern, more efficient ways to heat and cool buildings. For example, things like cold climate heat pumps and geothermal heat pumps. These technologies are already in use in over 800 residences in Burlington and dozens and dozens of commercial buildings and schools in Burlington. So these technologies are here, they work, and they are capable of being more widely deployed. And so I think when we talk about this concept of moving towards more modern, more renewable heating, we're talking about technologies like heat pumps and renewable fuels as well. So let me turn it over to Bill because his department would really be the regulator of this charter change. Burlington Electric, we are providing our energy policy information and technical guidance, but let me turn it to Bill. Yeah, thank you, Darren. I appreciate that. And I'm sure that everyone watching appreciates that. You always do a great job when we're talking about Burlington energy systems and particularly eloquent when it relates to the city's net zero roadmap. I enjoyed hearing from you and learning a lot about it. And what I think was probably the biggest takeaway for myself in looking at it the way a typical customer might or a resident of Burlington is that in the city's net zero roadmap, there is a need for two things, incentives and policy. So for the folks who are, you know, wondering how is it that Burlington Department of Permitting Inspections has partnered with the Burlington Electric Department. Well, Darren's Department of Burlington Electric, they represent the incentive side. They are the folks who are helping to educate and provide incentives for what is available for the city and to try to reach that goal. Our department is the policy. And I guess I would also say the enforcement arm. Folks probably are familiar for the most part with our department as either code enforcement with rental housing or the newest portion of the department includes zoning and the building trades. The mayor has created this new department called the Department of Permitting and Inspections. It has brought those three different parts together. So we have the zoning, the building trades and the code enforcement aspect all working under one department. So we represent that policy and the enforcement portion of the way that the city can achieve the goals through, you know, in the net zero roadmap. Maybe I'll just add for folks who are listening. In addition to this policy, as Bill mentions, at Burlington Electric, we offer a number of programs to help Burlingtonians make these types of changes. We have programs for individual residential customers. We have programs that are focused on multifamily buildings and renters. And we have programs for our businesses and schools as well. And so if you go to BurlingtonElectric.com, you can find information, including about our green stimulus incentives, information about assistance programs that may be available during COVID-19 as well. And if you are interested in following up with us to ask any questions about any of this, please email us at efficiency at BurlingtonElectric.com. So I'll also say that in our last few minutes here, I was going to mention that the proposed charter change, one thing I appreciate is probably, I think it's the shortest one. I think it's one of the easier ones to understand. It's very basic. But if folks are not clear, it's not simply to change things. It provides the city authority. That's what this is about. So if the charter change is approved, it would have to go to the state legislature who would need to approve it and then go to the governor for a signature. And it would require an additional vote by voters in Burlington to enact specific regulations after that. Karen, thanks for the time. We really appreciate it. Oh, thank you so much, Darren and Bill. Thanks for slowing it down. And I will turn it back over to Nate to introduce our next item. All right. Thank you all. And thank you, Bill and Darren for joining us. The last charter change that is on the ballot this town meeting day is in relation to the airport commission. So a little bit of background about commissions. Commissions are, there are several commissions throughout the city. There are citizen boards that, you know, primarily residents of Burlington are appointed to in June by the city council. Folks apply for them and they often deal with things that are similar to the work that's being done by the city. So for example, myself, I'm on the Parks and Rec Commission. I think Karen is on the police commission. There's a number of different ones and one of them is the airport commission. So for years, the airport commission has been made up of four Burlington residents and one South Burlington resident. So you'll know the airport, although it's the Burlington International Airport, it's actually located in South Burlington. So because that is a regional regionally used service, there's a charter change in place to add two seats to that commission, raising it from five to seven members. And one of those added members will be from Winooski. As I previously said, one of the members is already a representative from South Burlington. So to add this member from Winooski is to, you know, include the other community that heavily uses the airport and is also impacted by its usage to the commission that has a say in its affairs. So in adding a member from Winooski, we're also would be, if this is approved, adding another member from Burlington to keep it a odd number of commissioners so that in the case of a vote happening, it won't be a tie vote every time. It can have a decisive vote. And yeah, that's the main thing for the airport commission. It's a relatively straightforward question. Voting yes would add those two members to the commission. And I guess with the rest of the little bit of time that we have, I would say if you're at all interested in serving on a commission, certainly do. It's been a great experience for me. And I think that any person who has been on a commission would say that it's a great way to give back to the community and participate in something that you may have a lot of knowledge in, but aren't able to work on at the city level. I think that really wraps it up. It's a pretty straightforward question. Thanks, Liam. I really appreciated all of that. I did not know any of that. So thanks for clarifying. It's very interesting, the airport that it's in South Burlington, but it's on the ballot. Okay. So moving on, we're going to take this meeting into our mayoral forum. I'm sure everyone has been waiting for this moment. So a short note here. Moreau is very sorry he's not going to be able to join us in person. He had a family commitment that prevented him from joining us, but we do have a short video so that he has an opportunity to respond to the questions that we are going to be asking. And I think, Liam, I think we're going to show that first and then we'll move on to interacting live with the rest of the candidates. Yes. I just wanted to clarify. Kevin, who we just admitted to the panelists, I just want to make sure that that's Kevin McGrath. If you could just take your camera and turn on your camera for us, that would be great. And I'm going to move back to the attendees just for now. But if you are the Kevin McGrath that we're looking for, you can always raise your hand in the attendees list. But at the moment, we'll be back to the attendees. Okay, great. Give me one second just to get this video going. Thank you to the MPAs for bringing us together tonight. I look forward to the day when we can all gather again in person. I'm very sorry that I can't join you tonight due to an important long-standing family commitment, but I appreciate this opportunity to share a few thoughts with you about topics that I know you'll be discussing tonight. First of all, while I truly believe that better times are coming soon. For now, we continue to grapple with a once in a century convergence of multiple simultaneous crises, a pandemic, a historic recession, a long overdue reckoning on racial justice, and an accelerating climate emergency. Moments like this demand proven leadership. Moments like this are no time for a mayor to be learning on the job. The last year has shown us how high the stakes are right now. Since the first days of this emergency, I've asked the city team to act on this simple, powerful belief in a global pandemic, local actions matter. In response, we remade city government and launched dozens of new initiatives that combined with the incredible vigilance of you, the Burlington community, have made Burlington one of the safest cities in America throughout this pandemic. I want to touch on a couple other topics now as well. First of all, housing. Housing has been a priority of my administration for the last nine years since the day I came into office. I came out of an affordable housing background and stayed focused on it. And we've made great progress. I want to be clear that my housing policies would continue to take us forward while what my opponents have proposed would take us backwards. Solving the housing crisis is pretty straightforward. If we're going to make good on the idea that housing should be a human right, we need to create a lot more homes. And that's been what I've been focused on. I've had an end and approach that, first of all, builds on the policies of Mayor Clavel and Mayor Sanders to build as much permanently affordable housing as possible. We've done a great deal of that over the last nine years. And we have accelerated the building of housing for households of all types. On my watch, Burlington has built more than 1,300 homes, more than twice the number that in the decade before I took office. Rent has stabilized and rates, vacancy rates have more than doubled. There's one more thing I'd like to speak to, which is public safety. This is an issue where the differences between me and my two city council opponents could not be more stark. I've always been very clear. We need a well-resourced professional police department in the city. I believe we need structural and cultural transformation of American law enforcement and policing here in Burlington that roots out systemic racism and achieves a new community consensus on policing. But we need that well resourced professional police department at the same time. Unfortunately, the city council does not agree. The council has created a crisis in public safety in this community by voting to eliminate 30% of the police officers without a plan, without any plan for how to continue to respond to the 30,000 incidents a year that Burlingtonians rightfully expect us to address. Twice I have proposed compromises to avoid this crisis. Twice, including just last night, the council has voted to reject these compromises, putting us on a path towards major core elements of public safety services in the months ahead. The only way to fix this crisis now is at the ballot box. If you believe in police transformation and also believe we need a well resourced and professional police department, I ask for your vote and for you to consider supporting other democratic city councilors on a before town meeting day. Again, I wish I could have joined you today to answer your questions and earn your support. I hope to hear from you. If you have any thoughts to share with me or questions, please email me at info at morofermayor.com. You can also go to the website, that website, to learn more and to get involved in our campaign. I also continue to have public coffees just about every Wednesday morning. Open to everyone by Zoom at 8 in the morning. Join us tomorrow if you want to talk. You can find the link at the mayor's Facebook page. Let me close by just saying this. It's been the honor of my life to serve you as mayor for the last nine years. If you give me the opportunity to continue to serve this great city, I will apply the relentless commitment that I've brought to fighting COVID-19 to leading the economic recovery and addressing all of our other major crises over the next three years. I truly believe we have the opportunity to emerge from this incredibly challenging time a stronger or racially just, greener and more affordable community. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this way tonight. I hope the rest of the event goes well and I look forward to seeing you soon. Okay. If we could take a little speed again and just slow it down, take what he was saying and slow that down a little bit more, that would be great. Thank you. Also I will be throughout the questions. I'll have time cards for one minute, 30 seconds and time. Liam, if you could help me pin me out or pin me up. So folks can see me, but Karen, it's all you. Now all I can see is Nate. That's okay. I don't mind. All right. Let's move on to our big event of the night. I'm going to go in order. I know I have not done this before, but I'm going to go in this order. I'll start with Max and Ali, Will, Kevin and Patrick. I imagine we have Kevin back with us. Do we have Kevin? Okay. Great. All right. So I'm going to minimize my screen. And so first question. Housing has largely been an issue for many in the city. What are your housing related priorities and what policy would you pursue as mayor if elected? That's to you, President Tracy. Great. Well, thank you. Are we doing questions first? Are we doing opening statements? You can do your opening statement. That's my bad. I didn't get a script for this. I'm like the last minute person. So why don't you do your opening statement and then we'll go back to the question. Yeah, I can fill in three minute opening statement and then four questions for four minutes each. Okay. Great. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for that. It's a test. It's only a test. Go ahead, Max. Thank you so much. Well, I really appreciate it. And I'm really just grateful that you all have put this wonderful historic debate together, which is the first ever, if I'm correct, debate in Burlington to be interpreted into over six languages. I'm going to do my best to speak with pauses to make sure that the interpreters are able to stay on top of what I'm saying. My campaign has prioritized to new Americans through materials in Swahili, Somali, Nepali, and Arabic on our website and on written materials delivered to every door. If elected, your mayor, I will work so that translation and interpretation services are normal, not a rare exception. I'm hoping to be your next mayor to make Burlington a city where everyone can afford to pay for their housing and work toward owning a home. Housing costs in Burlington are too expensive and families should not need to worry about whether or not they can pay these costs. I support making property taxes more affordable for working families and for working families and people living on fixed incomes. Also, we'll fight for affordable rent and we'll make sure that people who are paying on time can't be evicted. My administration will focus on support for small businesses in Burlington. The businesses run by new Americans are important and vibrant parts of Burlington that provide necessary resources to our community. It will work hard so that these businesses can stay open and to support our community. I believe in high quality child care and education that is affordable for families. Our children and elderly deserve the best we can provide. We'll also make sure that we support our elderly in aging in place or in high quality facilities, depending on what they want. As mayor, I will invest in a vibrant future for the whole community. Together, we can keep our community healthy and safe. I know that some of us here tonight have lost family members and friends to the coronavirus. I will continue to fight this pandemic so that we honor those who have died and prevent more losses from happening. I love Burlington and I believe that our city has so much potential to be a welcoming and inclusive place for everyone who lives here. As your next mayor, I will be your partner in building the future we deserve. Thank you so much and look forward to the conversation we're going to be having tonight. Thank you. Nate, I'm looking at you because everybody gets the opening statement and then I can go to questions. Is that okay? So next I'll call on Ali Deng, Councillor Deng, for your opening statement. Yep. Thank you for bringing us here today and for those who do not speak English very well. I want to say greeting. As you all know, I was just greeting in different languages. I am someone in this community who work directly with vulnerable populations. I am the founder and manager of the Burlington School District Parents University. Just like you, I can't hear not understanding the language nor the culture, but I love serving. I love supporting you and I have demonstrated just that as a staff at the Burlington School District. Most of you, I know you by name. Know your culture, your religion, how you celebrate, and I am you. You are me. We all live in hard times right now. It's a COVID-19. I was there with you to make sure that you get tested. You have the information around your student's education, the support that you need to live with dignity during hard times. I became City Councilor, an elected official and also been pushing many people like you to also run for office. This debate today, I will be talking to you. I have spoken in so many debates and more debates to come. We have events coming up with the Mai Mai on Thursday. We have events coming up with Nepali people and I look forward to getting your vote on Town Meeting Day. There are great people like Adal Haji, Mohamed Jafar, Sandrin who are already working hard to make sure you have all the information to show up and vote. Thank you for being here and looking forward to talk to you today more. Namaste. Bonjour. Jambo. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi ta'ala. Wabarakat. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. A plus for the pauses. That was a perfect speech. So that is the role that we should follow. Absolutely. Next, I'll call on Will Ammons for his opening statement. Hello. How are you today? Hopefully everybody watched the last debate. A quick shout out to all the ladies at Cabroma Optics on Sheldon Rowe for helping me with my service today. I need some glasses. Shout out to all the people speaking through an interpreter tonight. Many used to play pick up soccer with me where I'm known ahead of but a ball across the soccer field. I've been involved in many community interactions and advocacy work where language barriers have been used to educate each other on customs and communication through body language. Poor leadership, gentrification, and housing discrimination has been the result of the drive to build rental properties and upscaring hotels catering to out-of-state solicitations of wealthy, over-currently residing citizens from all states who are struggling. I'm from the Democratic-Republic congregation of America. In other words, I'm an independent with worldly values and extremely educated. A long time I've worked with my community. Your vote counts. Get out and vote in person to the extent possible. This is the right people I've fought and died for. Wear a mask. Research, battle a moment. Eminent domain, threat stripped. Eminent domain stripped my family of its land in several locations throughout the history. This comes through zoning manipulation, targeting the less fortunate. I see a lot of that kind of stuff going on around here. More stage props than Tom Hanks. That's an actor, not a mayor. Great grandson of a Russian immigrant and another one that came, another grandmother that came from around the block from the Jets play. We all came from somewhere. I grew up with a lot of immigrants around this area as well. Exposure of fraud, waste and abuse. Many good employees in Burlington, including police and many other employees for the other factions of the city, sold at the lowest possible level to cook stats. Arbitration certified. I've proved an election tampering before. Atlanta, trading Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando, New York City, area, tri-state, Boston, New England. Been challenged with many court cases, since I testified in the city against a racial profiling case. I'm not really seeing the equity that I keep hearing so much about. Paper route ward 4 and 7, 1, I was 12, Lakewood Estates, Ethan Island Parkway. Public speaker, Champlain College, full scholarship awarded. Highly trained, America Postal Workers Union, AFL, CIO. Naturally, they have over 200,000, I think it's about 330,000 members. Trained in Chicago, New York, New England, Boston, Vermont. Great grandfather slain in a freehold rug mill. So wages, hours and working conditions are always very dear to my heart. Empire State Building was constructed in one year. City Hall Park, two years, five million wasted. Homeless and disabled, shipping them to the next town over, telling them there's no handicap accessible rooms in all those upscale hotels. The mayor just threw up, this is the type of stuff I'm seeing right now as I've been going out of town to interview people that have been displaced and bust to the next town over. That's housing discrimination and we have not even gotten started with how race plays into that. I see no action from the mayor, any of the candidates in this race to address the problem. I see COVID crisis being used by leadership to make things worse. And I actually just interviewed two amputees this week. I see a mayor bringing in Clevelle's method this way. Then I see him claiming that he has, he's about. That's your time. You're done. Memorial Auditorium, social gatherings, dismantled long before. We're going to hold on for a time. Your time. Please mute yourself. You're done. Why is- We're going to move on to Kevin McGrath. You have, your time is up. Hi. Kevin. Hi. Can you hear me? Okay. All right. So Kevin, you're opening your You can see Nate has got the time card. So please go ahead. Didn't it say three or four minutes? Nope. That's not what the email said. Three minutes. You know what? I really wish you would just- It was two minutes on the opening stage. Okay. I'm ready to go. Hi. My name is Kevin McGrath. I'm a candidate for mayor. And I like to say hi to all the immigrants that I've worked with. I've worked with hundreds of them in some of the hardest, dirtiest factories in Vermont. And I like to say hi to them because they know me. I'm running for mayor because one thing I'm qualified. And for another, I want to start conversations about processes in the government. Processes of government and Wilmington really need to be be corrupted. So I'll run through my candidacy statement really quick. The purpose of my candidacy is for the establishment of government systems that equally protect and respect merit and attempt to ensure that these systems work for all citizens and residents of Burlington, Vermont. My goal as mayor is to create continuous systems of merit, direct democracy and critical thinking that actually solve problems. Create an atmosphere of racial justice that works for the good of the entire community. Work to create livable neighborhoods. And then the unaffordability by design policies of Burlington. One of the main things I want to touch on really quick. I won't say too much about is social justice reforms and proposals in the state. Burlington State of Vermont needs to start walking the walk when it comes to social justice. 181 prisoners are sitting in a private prison in Mississippi right now. That's not American values. We need to work to decriminalize the law enforcement, the escalate tension between the residents they serve, change the nature of law enforcement for police to public safety, have a grandfathered residency requirement for police officers so that they are forced to live in the community they serve. I also would like to address city governmental reform policies. And one thing I'd like to see is a full-time city council, not this Lord of Flies type government we have. My proposal would change to a seven-member full-time council that are actually paid a salary based on medium household income. We need less ad hoc government, more direct democracy, and less adjunct government. Work for economic justice by supporting the right and dignity of those who rely on earned income from the negative effects of the excessive concentration of wealth. That's it for me. Thank you. Right on time, Kevin. It looks as though we are Sam's Patrick White. Are we okay? I do not see Patrick in the panelists list or attendees. Okay. Well, that's too bad. I think we'll move on. So as I said before, there's four questions and I'll get to those questions. I will start with Max. We'll go in the same order as we did for opening statements. Max, this question is for you. Housing has largely been an issue for many in the city. What are your housing-related priorities and what policy would you pursue if you're elected mayor? That's in four minutes. Awesome. Well, thank you for asking this question. I think it's an incredibly important one for us to address in this mayoral race. We often say that housing is a human right, but we certainly don't do enough to make that a reality in our community. Too often, we treat housing like a commodity and place profits over people when it comes to housing. Poor people are forced to accept substandard housing while everyone else competes for a limited supply of safe, decent and affordable housing. Stagnant wages combined with increasing rents mean that almost 60% of renters pay more than 30% of their income for rent, which is the level that is considered to be the upper threshold of affordability. This causes people to have to make incredibly painful decisions between which basic needs they can afford from week to week and month to month. In response, we'll certainly focus on the three Ps of a progressive housing agenda, but not only these things. I will say that we do need to produce new housing with an emphasis on homes that serve low and moderate income families and specifically press, as I did in the context of the city place project for large developments to include additional affordable housing. We also must preserve the existing stock of affordable housing and recognize and respond to any threats to that housing proactively. Finally, we must expand tenant protections. Those are the key three Ps, but we have to go beyond these strategies because while these strategies have prevented the problem from getting worse, they are not enough. We need to do more to go beyond a strategy that says if we just build more housing, rents will fall. I feel like we have added, as Mayor Weinberger said, additional housing, but we have not seen rents fall. That in fact is not what I've heard from many people. So I think that the city needs to implement rent stabilization policies that will bring rents into alignment with real people's incomes. As Mayor, I will lead this effort through a charter change, granting the city this authority, and then would facilitate a public engagement process that would culminate in the passage of new rent stabilization ordinances. This is crucial not only to making sure that people can afford their housing costs now, but also in terms of being able to set themselves up to one day own a home because it's impossible when you're paying over 30% of your income to even think about owning a home. When we bring these policies together, we will see real progress on housing and make sure that it is in fact a human right. Thank you. Thank you as a reminder to keep it paused and nice and slow. Thank you. On my time cards, is this forward or backwards? It's forward. Okay. It looks good. It's backwards to me, but it's looking good. It's helping me. Ali Deng, I will repeat the question for you. Housing has largely been an issue for many in the city. What are your housing related priorities and what policy would you pursue as Mayor if elected? You're on mute. Shukran means thank you in Arabic. Merci beaucoup. Kiran, Don Nebat, Nathan. The three different languages saying thank you to you too. Housing is a big problem. The problem did not start 10 years ago or 20 years ago here. I will not sit here to tell you that I will do X, Y and Z. What I will do is simple and clear. When you elect me to be your next Mayor, I will bring all the organizations that works around housing to have goals that we can measure over time. One example, every year we want 100 affordable homes. That's concrete. That I promise you I will do that. Two, I will bring those who build houses in the city and we will together have a private and public partnership to create housing that you will rent and over time you will own. It called rent to own. That's two. Three, for developers who build homes, the city right now have what we call inclusionary zoning. Example, if you build 100 units, 20 to 30 of them should be affordable. I will strengthen it and with the council you will push for inclusionary zoning to be more. Three, I will have programs for you to stop renting and be like everybody else to buy your own house because that is what housing should be in the city. Where you can have rent, where you can raise your children, have your chickens, have your goats because it's your home and you are building equity. The more you pay the bank, the more you're having money. That's what housing should look like. Where we all came from and here it's completely different. Stop renting. Save money. Get help from the government and buy your own property. That's my vision. If you are renting, I will also make sure that we control the landlord cannot just wake up and put the rent up. No, we have to stop that. If you own a home, we will make it easier for you to add another unit for your grandparent, for your neighbors or also something you can rent to make money. All I want is your vote on meeting day. Thank you. Thank you so much. The next person is Will. Will, you have four minutes. Okay. Housing. I'm sorry. I didn't read the question. Did you want me to read it again? That's fine. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry. I apologize for that. Housing has largely been an issue for many in this city. As I'm sure you know, what are your housing related priorities and what policy would you pursue if you're elected mayor? Housing is a major problem in Burlington. What I'm seeing over the last nine years, six years especially, is increased rental property construction. Also, hotels, you know, so caters to a certain class and a lot of citizens have been voicing at the most recent city council meetings that there's housing discrimination concerns have been raised, especially code violations that are not being enforced. I actually went and interviewed a couple amputees last week. These were homeless people and people that lost their housing in Burlington and have been shipped to out of town hotels, which seem to be getting run like prison camps. I don't see this in the Burlington hotels. What I intend to create and propose as policy is to have rents that are reasonable and controlled within reason. And New York City is a good example. They have a lot of rent control apartments so people can have affordable housing. I'm in a low income unit myself. I would always want to provide a path to ownership and the contractors that do the work on constructions will be working on building ownership units instead, if that's what you're building as a compromise to rental housing. Over the last few years, what we've seen in Burlington is places like the high school being targeted for production into rental properties. City Place is a good example of what was once a community gathering point that is going to be transitioned into a boutique city type of atmosphere where it's too expensive to live. And I intend to change that and the way that I will do it is by creating policy that makes living more affordable for working class citizens. Instead of having white collar economics in a blue collar city, it'll be blue collar economics in a blue collar city. Thank you. Thank you. And next we'll have Kevin. Kevin, I'll give you the question again if you like. Housing has largely been an issue for many in the city. What are your housing related priorities and what policy would you pursue if you are elected mayor? Yeah, thank you. Housing, that's another thing where Burlington has for the last 20 years failed to walk the walk. I mean, let's be honest, every year you turn on the news, housing, housing, housing, housing, housing, it's never going to change unless we make structural changes in our city government. And a good example of that is the planning and community and economic development departments in Burlington. They are out of the realm of the citizens. They are controlled by special interests. Planning department is controlled by real estate and real estate developers, and CEDO is controlled by a political party who is ever in power. And so we need to get those two forces back into the community realm and start working on a different more grassroots policy towards housing. Like I say, more owner occupied. Try to get the slum lords to divest and try to get owner occupied multi-family units. Also too, Burlington's housing stock is in horrible, horrible shape. I'm qualified to make that statement because I've had experience in housing and in community and economic development. Some of it is not even salvageable anymore. And that's why I want voters to vote for anyone but Morrow-Wineberger because it's never going to change for the next three years. Nothing will change. And I like to see it less divisive rhetoric around everything anymore between the city council and the mayor. And I really think we can work together a different change of venue as a city council that actually works full-time for the citizens. The track record for the last 20 years between the city council and the mayor's office is sad. It's been dysfunctional. And Burlington is not a better place than it was 20 years ago. The neighborhoods are more dilapidated. There's more slum lording going on. And the main thing we need to do is have a zero tolerance for slum lording. And we can work together with community and economic development grants and we can actually get them to divest their properties. They need to take their money and go home. All they're doing is strip mining the community. And it's been going on forever. So if we can get a new mayor who can just lead us in a different direction, I would support anyone. Thanks. Thank you, Kevin. All right. Well, we'll move on now to our second question. And Max Tracy will, I will give you that question. Workers and small businesses have been hit hard not only by COVID pandemic, but through a series of changes to our economy over recent years. What is your plan for an economic recovery and economic recovery in Burlington for workers and businesses? Let's go to three minutes on those just to get a little bit closer to that ideal ending time. The city government has a fundamental role to play in our recovery from the COVID pandemic. We must leverage the power of city government to provide direct assistance to small businesses and also to the people who work in those businesses specifically around evictions. I'm particularly concerned that as we emerge from this pandemic that both commercial businesses who before the pandemic were thriving but who have run into hard times now in the pandemic are going to be evicted from their spaces. And so the city and specifically the Community Economic Development Office needs to intervene directly and proactively to make sure that businesses are not evicted from their spaces. In also in speaking with business owners who have been impacted by COVID, they've also identified a key concern around the ability to maintain a workforce. And specifically and this links back to the last question that had to do with housing in the sense that their employees can't afford to live here and are also afraid of being evicted. So we need to make sure that as a city we continue the policy of preventing evictions going forward as a city. In addition the city needs to do more to support BIPOC businesses throughout Burlington making sure that those businesses are able to thrive. And when I say that I mean that we need to again target direct technical support resources from the Community Economic Development Office towards those businesses and embrace innovative strategies. One idea would be to create incubator spaces in the context of a renewed Memorial Auditorium project. So thinking about a lot of food-based businesses coming up in Burlington but having real challenges finding appropriate spaces and getting off the ground could provide incubation spaces for businesses to begin to grow in our city. And I think we also need to do more to facilitate cooperative ownership models. This isn't really important because again it lowers the barriers to entry. I think about that. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for your answer. Ali Dang I will read the question for you. Workers and small businesses have been hit hard not only by the COVID pandemic but through a series of changes to our economy over recent years. What is your plan for economic recovery in Burlington for workers and small businesses? Businesses not small businesses? Sorry about that. Yeah. Merci beaucoup Madame Curaine. Je suis ravi de répondre à votre question. So comme vous savez moi je parle aussi quatre langues. I was just saying that I thank you for your question and I speak four languages. So I understand the issues around economy development, business entrepreneurship and when I become the next mayor I will answer one that workers who work in small businesses are paid appropriately. Right now in the city the city has a minimum wage of around $13. The state is looking to increase it by $15. And I think that's one concrete way we can support those who work in businesses so they get paid appropriately. For business owners especially those who are BIPOC people of color or new Americans. In my administration I will have one staff who would work full time to support them in creating business in accessing grants in accessing all the services such as tax, etc. And also how do we help them promote their business? In terms of promotion of business I already started that work with a good friend and professor of economy here in the new north and called Eric Mercer. Together with the Church Street Marketplace and Will at CEDO it created a business website by Ward. People in Ward 7 have their own website. Anyone can go and check them out and we'll do one exact same thing for businesses that are owned by new Americans. All I want again is your vote. I am seeking your vote on Tuesday March 2nd. I'm not only talking and you know me I take action. Thank you. Thank you. Will, I will read the question again workers and small businesses have been hit hard not only by the COVID-19 pandemic but through a series of changes to our economy over recent years. What is your plan for economic recovery in Burlington for workers and businesses? Thank you. I just ran into somebody this morning and he indicated to me that he was priced out of Burlington. A lot of citizens back in the day would remember old Burlington and the thriving place that it was even back as far as most recently as about 2011 I meant to say. I would bring back community. Places like the memorial auditorium have been used for social gatherings which were dismantled long before coronavirus. Mardi Gras, art hop, golden gloves, mixed martial arts, concerts, basketball practices, flea markets, plays and performances. These were things that kept kids off drugs. It was things that kept community members collectively gathering with each other and obviously with coronavirus you need to do that in a safe way. But I have several business owners. Some of them have learned how to transcend their business into the current way of doing things which is to sanitize everything up and down. More often things of that nature force people to wear masks, take their temperature when they come in. I would have a liaison appointed to help businesses wondering how to stay open. A lot of them have shut their doors in this city that I've dubbed going out of business but this has been happening for some time. Bringing in new businesses and vendors that will benefit the tax break and bring tourism to a once thriving city. That's how Burlington recovers. Advocacy and managerial experience dating back many years. I've also been a youth advocate and a coach of sports to keep kids out of trouble and occupy their time with something other than streets and drugs. When you have a city full of vacancies and codes that are not being upheld and you realize the problem we're in where we have people being shipped to the hotel in the next town over covering up a problem and then being run like prison camps over there in a way. When you have situations like that you are driving out business. It's not the coronavirus. I seek to reacclimate things like prisoners who have done their sentences to help them get integrated back into society. That will assist the community because people will be working. It will also reduce the crime rate. I intend to seek consulting to help businesses stay open and safe amongst the pandemic. Although this problem will be over eventually. I've not seen a noted recession since around 2008. I know that the claims that have been made that were in a recession here in Burlington indicate that under current leadership candidates our report card is below average and that performance is directly related to intentional proper misleadership in the city which has driven us into the ground. I will dig us out. I will engage with the community in ways that is currently not being served. It is currently not being served. Many self-respecting Burlingtonians have left because it has become a rental paradise with nothing to offer renters where businesses are unavailable. This increases crime drives away business, shrinks the value of the city overall, and causes what you have here in Burlington, vacant houses while our less fortunate are being busted the next town over. Youth will flourish under me. Money will be raised to resurrect the North Burlington Little League fields. Things of that nature. Money will be raised. I'm sorry, you're at time. I'd like to have more opportunity. Better equipment sealed pools. You're at time. And when I say time, I mean time. I see you have someone to join you. So I will read the question for both of you. Workers and small businesses have been hit hard not only by the COVID-19 pandemic, but through a series of changes to our economy over recent years. What is your plan for economic recovery in Burlington for workers and businesses? Thank you. Let me say this. It's going to be hard. We're going to look, we're looking at the next three years. It's going to be a long, hard road. And I know a lot of people who have lost a lot of things. I know a lot of people are suffering. And I live in the Third World War. And I see a lot of suffering people. And the main, we need to try to rebuild some type of quality retail economic base in the downtown that was destroyed by the city place project. I've got to be a first thing to get, you know, just like, like I want to reiterate, like I said, the last talk we had is Macy's was a store for a lot of people in Burlington. You know, now everybody has to go out to Williston or out to South Burlington. And we need to rebuild that. But the big issue is housing. And the people you need to work in Vermont can't afford to live here. I know I moved here 25 years ago, and it was relatively affordable. It's no one can make it. You can make it if you want. But there's a lot of substandard overpriced housing. And the reason why in Burlington are students, we need to build student housing. I think we start building student housing, start getting a development project, replace what's down there at city project, and start enforcing codes more, and things like that and making the city more livable. Believe it or not, I think Burlington, Vermont has some of the longest commutes in the United States. I mean, you understand the people I work with, I live in Burlington, the people I work with live 100 miles away all the time. I work with hundreds of people who live, who drive an hour and a half, you know, because they can't live in Burlington. So we need to make a livable community. And we need to try to, you know, get something going in the downtown region. There's all kinds of grants and things we can do with community development block grants and things like that. But unless we have structural governmental change, that probably won't happen. We'll just get more concentration of wealth. Thanks. Thank you so much. All right, we'll move on to our next question, getting through these quickly. For Max, public safety has different meanings for different Burlington residents. What will public safety and policing look like during your administration? That's an incredibly important question and something that we dealt with. I'm a little tired tonight because we had a long debate at the City Council meeting last night. I think to see Councilor Chang smiling as well. It was a long night discussing public safety last night, and we have some very different distinctions and different views, especially between Mayor Weinberger and myself in terms of how we see public safety. I believe that we need to create a public safety system that works for all. Currently, we have a public safety system that does not work for everybody and in fact causes incredible harm to people of color in our community. We know this because we know that they are stopped in their cars at much higher rates and that force is used against them at much higher rates, including having guns pointed at them in those incidents. In response to these trends, I believe that reform is not enough. We must fundamentally change how public safety works in our city. This will mean leaning into not stepping back from the efforts to take armed officer positions and transform those positions into unarmed community support roles that directly address specific community social needs. These are things like substance use disorder treatment, support to individuals experiencing houselessness to navigate that system and find permanent housing, as well as supports for individuals who are dealing with mental health crises in a trauma-informed way. It is also fundamentally important that we build an accountable public safety system with real community oversight. We had an opportunity to do that and to put it on the ballot this year, but that opportunity was vetoed. As mayor, I will create independent community oversight. What that means is a new body separate and apart from the police department with independent authority to investigate misconduct and to hand down or to issue discipline in response to their findings. Believe that this strategy is crucial to uprooting systemic racism in our city and specifically in public safety. Thank you. I will read that question again for Ali Dang. Public safety has different meanings for different Burlington residents. What will public safety and policing look like during your administration? Thank you. This message, what I want to talk about is for new Americans. People who are here who do not understand the language or the culture. As your next mayor, I want you all to be safe. Whether you are new American or you were born and raised here, I want you to be safe and I want you too to make sure that this community is safe. Right? Safety is not the job of the police only. It is a job of all of us. I want to transform public safety in this great city. To transform public safety, the police, when you look at the police officers, you want to see people that they police in there. So basically police officers have to be Mai Mai, have to be Nepali, have to be Kirundi, Swahili, Dinka, Wolof, have to be all the language that we speak here, all the ethnicities, we should see it in our police. Umar Bule is the first Mai Mai the first new American who became police officer. He called me when he applied to let me know. Tim Ash helped him to get there. He studied, he did everything. I want to see that. This message also is for you and your children. If the police stop you, arrest you, do not resist. Stop, listen. If they want to take you, go with them. Never arrest and make sure you tell it to your children to not resist arrest. The job of public safety is not only police. We, New America, in this community, we solve our problems before we call police. That's how I've been leading as a city councilor. If there is a problem, I step up and try to solve it, bring people together and solve it. Police is the last thing that I want to call. Thank you. My time is up. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Let me read this for you, Will Emmons. Public safety has different meanings for different Burlington residents. What will public safety look like? Public safety and policing look like during your administration? You're on mute. You're on mute. I'm sorry. Public service, policing, I was actually going to say it like this, protected service, the intention of the police. What we've seen over Burlington in the last few years is patrol and control. That's not a shot against all police officers. That's a shot against some police officers. I was involved in testifying in a civil rights case a few years back. As a result of that and other things, writing about misreporting of stats in this community, things of that nature to my senator, my life has been turned upside down with lawsuits in seven different forms, legal actions. Very corrupt. I used to get all my dresspants for court in Macy's, but then I just started getting overwhelmed. There was no more Macy's. I've just been recycling my dresspants. If you clean up the Flint, Michigan lake and things of that nature, you're going to need more police. You're going to need more police force if you're or less depending on the stats of the citizenship and the needs of the community. Once police and other stats in the city are being reported properly, you're going to be able to assess the needs of the community. Once you bring in more business, you're going to have to assess it again. That may add to the addition or the separation of a temporary employee that's on the path to career, something of that nature, depending on how the contract is structured. I believe that police need to be armed. I also believe in causing calling out instances of brutality and improper use of force, profiling, also class citizenship, surveilling, co-intel, pro all things that they've been doing in the city of Burlington. The solution is to go down there when you get elected, bring a couple of officers you know and a couple of citizens from the community that you know have been looking out for justice and equity and enforcement of the rules in a proper manner and making sure that protect and serve is the motto, not patrol and control. Those are two very different scenarios. That would be the first thing on the list, along with code enforcement, preventing things like amputations. Thank you. Thank you so much. Kevin, I will read the question for you. Public safety has different meanings for different Burlington residents. What will public safety look like during your public safety and policing look like during your administration? My idea of law enforcement in Burlington is definitely much less demilitarized than it is right now. We definitely need to work to de-escalate tensions. I have to say that I agree with 99% of what has been said by the other candidates here on this issue. There's definitely a need for change. We definitely need these unarmed social work public enforcement, public safety officers, excuse me, and I think that's a very, very, very good idea. We definitely need to look at the issues that we have now. We actually have three epidemics going on in the United States and one of them is opium. In terms of crime, you know, in my neighborhood I see less crime because of cheap fentanyl and things like that. So the police department really needs to concentrate on things like fentanyl because it's deadly, it's killing the community, and I know all kinds of stories recently about, you know, a lot of use in the city. But overall, I agree with what the two counselors said and much of what Will said. You know, we definitely need a change. We need a, and I would agree for a independent police commission too. I will agree to that too. Thanks. Thank you so much for your answer and I guess we'll move on to our final question. Picking up steam here. For those of you who are up late last night. Okay, so the NPAs were created out of a desire to increase citizen participation in city government. What is your plan for constituent engagement and what do you see as the future of the neighborhood planning assemblies while you are mayor? That's going to go to you, Max Tracy. Great. Well, I just want to again thank you for this and I just want to thank all of the NPAs across our city for keeping things going during the pandemic and creating community. I know that's one of the things that we're sorely missing and being able to come together and the form of the NPAs is incredibly helpful and supportive for so many in our community. I think that we need to expand the NPAs and build on the momentum that you all have built in your neighborhoods. We've seen NPAs grow and add music and food and so many other aspects that help to make it an accessible place to come. But I think that part of it is also that we need to best or give real decision making authority to the NPAs. Think that this is part of a strategy of giving more neighborhood scale control that I would support. And specifically, I would like to see the city of Burlington and move towards participatory budgeting. This is an idea where you set aside a certain amount of money and then within the city budget and it can be a big amount. Some cities like Porto Alegre in Brazil make big, big decisions about it, about their city and their infrastructure using participatory budget. It can also be small and focus on neighborhood scale projects. I would like for us to start small, see how it works and build from there so that people would have an opportunity to bring their ideas and propose projects, access technical support so that they're able to see if their projects can work and understand some of the aspects, some of the more technical aspects specifically around budgeting for their projects. And then if they're determined to be viable, elevating those to the town meeting day ballot and giving people a real say over how their money is spent on projects that will directly and positively impact their neighborhoods in particular. Also want to make sure that we are building off of this model that you all are establishing in this debate of providing more comprehensive translation services so that everybody is able to participate. I think as a part of that we also need to do a lot better when it comes to accessibility services for individuals with disabilities, making sure that they too can participate. And then we also need to recognize that the lack of childcare at city meetings is also a barrier for many in our community and do more to provide childcare resources so that people with children are able to more fully participate in city government. We're at time. Thank you very much. So minimize my screen here. This is going to Ali Deng. Ali Deng, the NPAs were created out of a desire to increase citizen participation in city government. What is your plan for constituent engagement and what do you see as the future of the neighborhood planning assemblies while you are mayor? Thank you. Thank you. There are three questions right there. The future of the NPAs is bright. I believe as a next mayor it will be bright. I am making this promise that as a mayor every month I will visit one NPA. Whether there is a ballot and I will come early, sit down, talk to people in that neighborhood, have dinner with them, get to know them so they get to know me, every NPA. I will also make sure that in every neighborhood we have a neighborhood capstone. Someone who is well known, who knows almost everybody, and someone who will work with my administration to identify issues and report to my administration so we can fix. As a mayor, I will also do once a month, a town hall with new, once a year, sorry, a town hall with new Americans. We did it with Senator Sanders, right? I want to do that all the time so that I understand that new Americans cannot go to NPAs every day. But I also will make sure that new Americans start to be part of the steering committees in NPAs to help, to bring their ethnic foods in NPAs, to bring their culture, their music in NPA. NPAs, their features are bright. I am a social entrepreneur and I attended, I made, I brought a resolution around how the city can better support the NPAs. That resolution is already a policy. As a mayor, I will just implement it, very easy. And also, most importantly, I will make sure that people who are not part of the political system start to run for office, start to serve in boards and commissions, because this is our home now. We have to understand this is our home. We have to be part of this community, your culture, your religion, keep it, but also be an active member of this great city. Again, vote early, because Ali is not only talking. You know him as someone who will do to get things done. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll move on to Will. Will, your question is the NPAs were created out of a desire to increase citizen participation in city government. What is your plan for constituent engagement? And what do you see as the future of the neighborhood planning assemblies while you are mayor? You're muted. Sorry about that. About 10 years, I put in as a as an advocate union representative, I was an American Postal Workers Union. I went to training all across country caught the pay was about a cup of coffee a day. So I think it broke down to about $3.33 was a yearly salary. But the job wasn't about the money. The job was about the community. The job was about the people that were being underrepresented by the contract in a lot of ways I see that that's where the taxpayers in Burlington are being misrepresented. So I've taken my knowledge and applied it to a lot of different situations and help people out during that process, whether it be making them whole due to financial loss, their rights as veterans being tampered with election tampering things that nature. What I see neighborhood planning assemblies functioning in a role as a capacity of not only a watchdog, but a enforcement bureau for the city to to make sure that they're getting their neighborhoods are being represented. I will be down on the ground every day. It's not going to be hard to get ahold of me. There will definitely be a number available for the citizens to get ahold of the mayor when he needs to be contacted. And the application of a person that's going to turn a community around would be to be down there every day in different neighborhoods, talking to the planning assemblies, finding out whether they feel that their voices are not being heard, making sure that those concerns are being actually handled and addressed. And then once you address them, you if and then you follow up later to see if those people feel that there was a conclusion to the requested actions, things of that nature. So yeah, I believe in community voice. I believe that the citizens are the owners of the city and I believe that a thriving city can't function if the citizens don't have a voice and that they need to have full transparency and that transcends into a thriving city, which, you know, people from old Burlington, many of which may be listening or maybe not, remember a sense of community and a city where where people, it's not the largest city in the world. A lot of people know each other around here. Rest, sorry. All right. Thank you, Will. And Kevin, I'll read the question for you. The NPAs were created out of a desire to increase citizen participation and city government. What is your plan for constituent engagement? And what do you see as the future of the neighborhood planning assembly, your mayor? Well, they would be the same as they are now. Essentially, those are really what those are are a requirement for federal community development block grants. You know, they you have to have some type of apparatus between the government and the citizens to do public hearings and things like that. What I would do is change things at the top. There's nothing wrong with the NPAs. They can expand whatever they want to do on their mission. But it doesn't matter if the city government doesn't work for the citizens. It only works. The city government of Burlington works extremely, extremely well for a few people. And everybody knows who those people are. So what we really need is more direct democracy. And that's why I'm pushing a charter change within the next couple of years to a full time mayor council form. And I'll give you a little rundown on it. A full time mayor council form, a mayor, a citywide council president, and six council members elected to three year terms all on the same date in November. That's that's one of the big problems with Burlington, the way that the city council is set up is you got all these rolling dates and things. That's that's like I say, that's Lord of the Flies stuff. And we these will be full time employees of the city who cannot accept other employment. And the salaries would be dictated by the US census, median household income. And Burlington's median household income is $50,000. So one city council member will be six, six council members from wards, they would make $50,000. The council president would make $75,000. And the mayor would make $100,000. And it's important being mayor of Burlington is an important job that deserves $100,000. And so would a council president. And these salaries would just be strictly tied to the census data. Census data goes up, it goes up, it goes down, it goes down. And that with the NPAs could be a recipe for more direct democracy instead of convoluted democracy. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. I think I made it through all the questions. I think the candidates more importantly made it through all the questions. I apologize to everyone for sort of coming in hot. I did not have a script. So I really appreciate everyone's patience. At this point, I'm going to thank the translators. I think number one, what a beautiful, amazing thing that one of the widest cities in the United States of America has so many people, so many different ethnicities represented translating. I am so proud to be a resident of Burlington tonight. Also, very proud to have a city councilor who can speak most of those languages. I have to say it's really a, that's a beautiful moment. And we do need those moments. Thank you so much to the planning committee for this amazing NPA. Just the technical stuff happening when I tuned in at 615 was a big lift. So thank you. Thanks to all of our ballot items presenters. I would name you all, but I will not get that right. So I will say thank you to you. All of the candidates, CCTV, CEDO, and anybody that I forgot, thank you so much. And thank you for the opportunity to represent and moderate at this important All Words Awards NPA. So I'm going to, I don't have the ability to end the meeting. So if there's anything else anybody wants to say from the planning committee, I think that's Nate. Take it away, Nate. Thank you. Thank you so much, Karen. The only thing we don't have is just given the candidates one last 30-second pitch where folks can find out more about them. And I think with that, after that, I think we're good to go. See, I'm always trying to run you guys out of here. I'm so sorry. We'll go around and start with Max Tracy. Sure. Thanks. Well, I really appreciate all your work in bringing us together for this important conversation. I believe in a Burlington that takes care of and empowers everyone that lives here. As mayor, I'll work to make sure that housing is affordable and available. Our community is kept healthy and safe, and that our businesses are successful. More of the same isn't getting us where we need to be. I have nearly a decade of leadership as a city counselor and as council president currently, and I'm ready to be your next mayor. I'm asking for your vote for mayor because the change we need to make life better for everyone can't wait. I need your help to make these changes possible. Please vote on March 2 or before by mail. Information on how to vote can be found at www.maxfirmayerbtv.com in several different languages. Thanks again for hosting and look forward to record turnout on Town Meeting Day. Thank you. I think you will see that. Councillor Dang. Yes. First and foremost, thank you, Nate. Thank you, Kiran. I think you have done a great job bringing us together here and the steering committee, all the NPAs. It is just amazing that you come together and also you bring people together. For the first time, new Americans being in attendance is just amazing. Thank you. As a closing, Wellington is a great city. It's a beautiful space and we all have to be proud that we live in one of the greenest cities in the nation. We have a beautiful lake, we have beautiful people, we have beautiful schools, right? And we are also a very diverse community. It is about time that those who are minority to see a minority person leading this great city. I'm asking for your vote. Visit my website www.alijeng.com. If you speak my mind on the 11th Thursday, we have an event with you only. Thank you so much. Thank you. Your closing comments, Will Emmons? Okay, so thank you, everybody, for paying attention tonight. And I intend to bring change to a once-driving city. Like I was saying earlier, a lot of citizens around here are from old Burlington. And when I say old Burlington, I mean a city that was great just a few years back with a bunch of places to go, family friendly, some of them were adults only. The sense of community was there. Youth sports is something I've always participated in. Youth advocacy work and helping people out if they need help with their litigation, things of that nature and filing cases to make people whole. My social media is at Emmons for Mayor. And I encourage you to go and check it out. And I encourage you to vote in person on March 2nd. By mail if you have to, wear a mask. And stay safe. Thank you. Closing comments from Kevin McGrath? Yes, I'd like to thank you, everybody, for the good discussion we had tonight. And hopefully in the future we can, as a city, start to speak more like what we've spoken like tonight and the last meeting that we had where people, we were having good meaningful discussions. And I'm willing to push, help people push reforms and push change in Burlington. We just can't go the same direction. We can't have three years of the same. And I'll be putting out a PDF this week that I will be emailing around and it will have more in-depth ideas that I've exposed tonight. And I'd like to thank everybody tonight. It was a great, great discussion. Thanks. Okay. And now I think you probably, I'm going to wait. Did I forget anything? Say thanks to Liam. Liam's been a great thank you so much. Good night, everybody. Good night, everyone. Thank you again for attending. Thank you.