 Good evening. Today is January 9th 2023 feels a little odd to be saying that it's our first meeting of the new year Happy New Year to my council colleagues and from all of us to our community a happy healthy and warm new year Thank you for joining us in person in Contra's auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 550 we're running a little bit behind Already We'll begin our agenda this evening with a motion to adopt the agenda and there is an amendment to the agenda that was Brought to us at the board of finance meeting Councillor Jang, would you be willing to move? The motion to adopt the agenda then make the amendment please Yep, I would like to move to make the motion as indicated on board that but to remove What's the name of the agenda my computer? Agenda 4.04 From consent agenda to deliverable agenda Okay, so you're moving the the The agenda as presented with the following amendment and that is to move Item 708 7.08. Yep HR director market factor Adjustment we will make that change so that will become item 8.10 Is there a second to that motion? Thank You councillor McGee Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion To amend to adopt the agenda with that with the one amendment. Please say aye. All right Any opposed? Please say no We have an agenda so that brings us to Item number two on our agenda, which is a work session on financial literacy for Burlington City Councillors understanding the audit and the annual comprehensive Fiscal report and for this work session. We have CAO Catherine shed Who will take us through a PowerPoint and then respond to questions? Just by way of background this presentation is the result of a request in a resolution done a number of years ago to increase financial literacy for the council and transparency for the community and readers of our audit and financial statement the The intent of the work session was to run to about 615 obviously we That's it's probably it'll go a little bit longer than that. Maybe we can make it by 630 So if you could run through your presentation Catherine and then maybe give us a little bit of time for questions and comments And thank you so much for being here and we're looking forward to your presentation Thank you so much President Paul I Was a little bit Intimidated when I first got this assignment realizing that it had been on and a to-do list for ten years I wondered why no one else had taken this fantastic task on But We have now I have now conquered it and hopefully we will get through it without boring you too much Rather than waiting until questions at the end. I encourage if you have questions throughout please stop me The beginning I just wanted to make you laugh if you don't know what any of these things are there are no dumb questions Don't be afraid to ask I Am going to go kind of quickly through some of these very beginning setup slides But for those of you who did not want to spend time in your early 20s getting an MBA or studying finance You may not be as familiar with gap, but These are the generally accepted accounting principles That your friendly accountants Go by We often talk about Gatsby the governmental accounting standards board As a piece of that because they help governments figure out what the standards for accounting are and These principles are continually evolving and changing as we learn things and so that we can keep paying our auditors I Before I got this job had spent a lot of time in the private sector and nonprofit sector And one thing I've learned is that there are a lot of differences with government accounting And you can see here These are just some of the distinguishing characteristics of Government obviously we're not Creating profit we don't have any kind of ownership stake the taxpayers are Providing our resources even though they don't have a lot of choice about them and we don't operate in a competitive marketplace I talked about Gatsby a little bit at the beginning, but this independent agency Really sets out all the rules about How we need to provide our annual audit and the statements In that audit I've listed here some of the newer Gatsby Bulletings that have come out most recently There was one on leasing and that's caused quite a bit of work for our office as we need to Go back and do accounting in a different way for the city's leases Now we get to the fun part. You will see that at least every other one of you So you might have to share has our annual fiscal report from last year The FY 22 report usually get these in about March So we won't have the new one for a little while next week The board of finance Alina our lead auditor will be here and will give us probably like a ten Slide PowerPoint about how we finished at FY 22 so This presentation is well timed because a lot of what we talked about today will go over tomorrow You just won't get this big thick book. That's here But going over this is what we'll spend the rest of this work session doing And you'll see here. There's kind of These seven main parts Really we are gonna focus on sections two and three Here the management discussion and the government-wide financial statements, but you'll see here. This is kind of the overall table of contents the Independent auditors report Starts on page 15, which Lori helpfully tabbed for you here And this is really the standard letter that explains what the audit is What the auditors responsibility is not that much exciting in it if I'm honest Because it stays the same kind of year after year However, if you go just a couple of pages over to 21 I have labeled this my pro tip if you have time to read only one section of the report This is the section that you should read Because this section is about Usually ten pages and this will give you the overview All of the financial highlights and you can get a lot of what you need from this statement from this summary And we'll go through that in a little bit more detail now as You go through this Management discussion and analysis some of the interesting things that you can find if you go to page 23 And you look at the financial Highlights a highlight that we are always interested in it is the second to last bullet It tells you what the unassigned fun balance was and how much it increased or decreased from the last year Another place you can look at that is on page 27 At the kind of quarter of the Way down the page Again, it's another look at the unassigned fun balance and the change between the June 30th of 2020 and June 30th of 2021 In this view you also see It's thirteen point eight percent of our total general fund expenditures That is important because you will recall we are trying to keep it between ten and fifteen percent per our policy So that's an easy way to check there Also on this page at the bottom you can see how all of our Proprietary funds are doing electric airport wastewater water storm water and the change in position there Beyond this summary We start going on to sort of the meat of the report and You can see in my slide Our financial systems are Really broken down into kind of three buckets And the first one are our governmental funds and that's where we'll focus our time first We mostly think of this as the general fund Second area is proprietary funds. We think all of these enterprise funds and it's electric airport and water wastewater And then our fiduciary funds, which is largely our pension fund so again starting with the government-wide the statement of net position This is for business type activity It shows assets that are broken up into current things like cash and investments It also has non-current assets. Those might be restricted cash investments You can't get your hands on right away as well as Your liabilities and your deferred inflow of resources this is Very similar to a balance sheet or what might be called a statement of financial position in The for-profit world One of the things that helps us do is to assess our near-term Operating needs It's less of a look for the long term And we'll get to that in a minute, but it gives us a good snapshot now our statement of activities is Something that helps us figure out whether our Organization has enough money to fund its activities and if not To help us figure out where changes could be made whether we need to increase Revenues decrease costs or both to fund a project This is a really where we look at program income a revenue versus expenses When we talk about our balance sheet This is a core table that you will want to look at and this is page 37 This is for our governmental funds and You will see that these are broken up into kind of major categories this information presents a More comprehensive picture about our financial position it What you'll see on this balance sheet are resources that we have available to meet our future needs on Here you will also see at the bottom our fund balances We often talk about the unassigned fund balance and that's at the bottom But in reality we have lots of other kinds of fund balances President Paul helped me remember the different kinds By the acronym new car Non-spendable unassigned committed assigned and restricted You don't have to remember all those I do you could just ask me about them The ones that are most important for this body are frankly assigned and unassigned Unassigned we've started calling the rainy day fund and that's the money that at this point is really just sitting in a pot For any future activities that this body deems they want to spend them on assigned came from unassigned and some past counsel maybe yourselves maybe people before you decided we wanted to take that money and put it into a pot and for instance this year we said We wanted to put five hundred thousand dollars to help subsidize everyone to get a new totter from DPW recycling And so that move that money went from unassigned to assigned It's all still part of our fund balance, but we assigned that money to a purpose And so next year you'll see the unassigned go down and the assigned go up accordingly And as you might guess restricted and non-spendable We can't spend so you don't need to worry about those I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on these slides that are are these reconciliation of fund balances To net position of activities I've included this here because you will see For instance on page 38 you'll see this reconciliation The way I think about these Reconciliations are you'll see the starting point You start from the total government fund balance and then There's a lot of accounting magic that needs to happen and you can see exactly what that is I'm gonna we need to show it different ways This is not a table Or information frankly that I'm using I'm using the balance sheet And I expect that you will too And I share that with you not because I don't want you to look at it But because I'm trying to be honest about where you might want to focus your attention and things that are the most useful for you as you're going through these and I'm simply pointing out. This is a different way to look at the same information. That's on page 37 Moving right along the statement of revenues and expenditures or What I like to call the budget to actuals. This is another very useful Page and this is on page 41 you will see In the first column, this is the original budget that in June of 20 Gosh, it feels like so long ago in June of 2021 that you approved the final budget Is the budget with all the budget amendments as it was approved And then you'll see the actual and you'll see how far off we are You can see how far off each department was and that's a conversation that is often Worth having There's usually there's always good answers and it's usually worth asking why if you have questions about Why things why there's a variance with the final budget? Okay Moving on to proprietary funds. These are our enterprise funds and we can go Pretty quickly because these have many of the same Financial reports as the governmental funds had You will notice that there is a statement of net position It holds The same purpose as the government wide One this is just for our business activity again electric airport and other and again is Similar to a balance sheet and helps us with our near-term operating needs Again we have The statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance We had something like this in the governmental funds section And there we saw revenues were taxes and pilot here We see that they're more charge for services and that makes sense And then lastly the statement of cash flows You can see this on page 45 And this shows net cash flows provided by operating activities And you can also see how that's related to operating finance Capital and various adjustments if you want to dig into those details and Then lastly we go through fiduciary funds, and I mentioned this is largely our pension. We do have a separate Reporting that comes out on our pension So I will go through this rather quickly We Have a full report on our pension contributions and investment earnings And then You will notice It is page 49 of This Everything after page 49, which is that literally two-thirds of this these are all the notes to the financial Financial statements, and so there's a lot there So really only page 1 to 48 are what we call our core financial statements and Then we go up to page 160 with the notes, so there's lots of stuff to dig into if You find something and you want to dig deeply But you really can get a lot of what you need from just a few of these pages And I hope I haven't bored you to death who has some questions Thank You Catherine Are there counselors who have some questions or comments as well? the power the idea behind the PowerPoint was to try to bring this forward and Putting it on the city website if anyone has any suggestions about that so as to carry this forward Not only from the council, but to help our community be able to read To read these financial statements, so if there's any comments We welcome them or is this just a lot of detail Councillor Barlow Thank you, and thank you for this I'd had a question about the unassigned fund balance And when my work when I was on the school board, we weren't allowed to carry one So we had to we had to basically spend it every year But this you referred to as a rainy day fund and we have a policy that targets that we keep this At between 10 and 15 percent of the current year's budget Yes, we have a fund balance policy, which I'm happy to send you there's a link to the website and we do say in there it was created before I got here, but we do say 10 percent is our ideal and it is 10 percent not just of the budget, but of it's that very particular wording of our total Operating expenditures because some of our budget is just the transfer of money back and forth So it's once you take out that transfer it's 10 percent of the operating budget and It does allow for us to keep anywhere between 5 and 15 percent and you'll see in this FY 21 or FY 22 we were well above 10 percent we Tried to get down closer to 10 percent last year and that's why we assigned some of that unassigned fund balance And so with this unassigned fund balance It's actually like it's basically like It's slop in the system so that you can sort of Handle any unforeseen over budgeting so you don't run a deficit, but has it's had ever occurred in recent Years have we run dead if we run over our Annual budget and had to dip into unassigned fund balance or has the unassigned fund balance been fairly stable And is it something that has continued to grow as you suggested in a couple years ago when it was too high We wanted to spend it spend it down a little bit In my time it has always been growing But we have an interesting slide and I'll ask Alina to share it next week That it was only 10 years ago that we had no unassigned fund balance so When the mayor was first elected there was no fund balance and that's slowly Been able to build up over time but certainly Over at least the past four or five years. We have not needed To dip into it for regular operating expenses Okay, thank you Thanks, Councillor Barlow That is true for quite some time. There was no Assigned there was no unassigned fund balance and I think it might be worth Mentioning why having an assigned an unassigned fund balance is so important I Think it is not only important because as you say Councillor Barlow it is Critical to provide peace of mind One of the other things in addition to going through FY22 results next week at board of finance. I will also be giving our first look at FY 24 budget Everyone here and our public knows what we have approved for Cola for next for this year for next year And in some cases either a year or two out And those are traditionally what I would think of as outsized colas larger than What we have done in the past and of course that puts pressure on our budget and we have plans for that But it's also really nice to know that there is a cushion should we need it beyond that It has been a key factor in Raising our credit score. It is something that Moody's looks at and they don't just look at the unassigned fund balance They look at the unassigned and the assigned together and us having such a Solid amount and the fact that we haven't had to dip into it And it's been able to grow a little bit has been a key factor when they've talked to us about the ratings about how we've been able to maintain a Ratings been able to grow and then we've been able to maintain that high rating Did you have anything else Councillor Barlow? No, I'm also. Thank you. Great. Thank you. We'll go on to Councillor Jang Thank You President Tracy Okay It's all right Seeing you smile was worth it Many people didn't get that but thank you President Paul Thank you for the President Presentation What first? I mean, I think my name is misspelled in this and made the request to change it It's not missing a number, but it's missing a letter. I'm so sorry. I've just heard about that. No problem So now talking about unassigned fund balance and also talking about audits We know that we are audited at the same time with the Burlington school district It's one audit or it's separate audits They are technically separate audits But then we bring them together and submit them under one umbrella So that's a little bit confusing, but they're happening Simultaneously and then we bring all of the audit kind of paperwork together So to speak and submit it under one entity. Okay, and you and both Audits are done by the same Agency or different different Okay All right Yes, and also talking about this unassigned fund it now makes sense because it's not the same all I remember is That joint audit when we receive the report here. Yes, but thank you for making the district No more questions. Great. Thank you councillor Jang Was there anyone else who had any? questions or comments on this On this presentation excellent presentation by the way If There aren't we will be so we will be doing the The audit the first go around on the audit will be at the next is that correct next cut and is that just at the Board of Finance or Yes, and then the following when we meet in two weeks in board and city council We can decide whatever one like to hear it again have enough people gone to board of finance Whatever the pleasure of this body is right, so if maybe we could make sure that we We let the entire council know when the start of the Board of Finance meeting is a little bit in advance So if others do want to attend this is a great opportunity to hear all about it before get the sneak preview before Seeing no other comments on this presentation we will Thank CAO Shad for the presentation and for your own personal commitment to financial literacy and Transparency and yes, you are the first CAO That has taken on this resolution and I for one am grateful Before we get to our consent and deliberative agendas We'll move on to item 3 and item 4 which are communications that will require Expected executive sessions the first is an update on the state order audit of the waterfront TIF district and the second is a personnel matter While we can't share updates regarding the personnel matters based on the motions Made to go into executive sessions. I would be asking of the administration if there are any comments So they could be shared on an open session on the first executive session and CAO Shad since you're going to be leading that one I don't know if there is anything that you can offer to the public before we Make motions to go into executive session. I Will just say that we are wrapping up a state an audit from the state auditor's office on Our waterfront TIF district. It has been a Lengthy but very useful process we can expect a report to be issued hopefully by the end of next week and Maybe that's all we want to share now Okay, thank you so With that I'll ask for The first of what is actually three motions to go into executive session and we'll look to Counselor Carpenter if I could have the first motion, please. Thank you I would like to move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of a discussion involving Confidential information from exempt records and attorney client communications concerning the status Of the state auditors Burlington waterfront TIF district audit We clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage because it risks disclosing its legal status see strategy of discussed in public Thank You councillor carpenter for that motion. Is there a second to that motion councillor McGee? Thank you Any discussion on the motion seeing none All those in favor of the motion as detailed by councillor carpenter, please say aye Any opposed, please say no that motion passes and With that we'll go to the first motion of the second executive session Councillor carpenter. Thank you. I Would like to move that the council find that premature public knowledge of Information concerning a personnel matter would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage Because the discussion will involve sensitive personnel and our confidential information and the council must receive Confidential attorney client communications regarding the matter Thank You councillor carpenter seconded by councillor McGee There's no discussion. We'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion Please say aye Any opposed, please say no So that motion passes and then we go to the last of the motions which we've combined into one motion Thank You councillor carpenter Thank You Based on the findings as indicated by the first two motions I move that the council go and do executive session to receive Confidential attorney client communications regarding the state auditors Audit of the brillington waterfront tiff district under provisions of one vsa third 313 a1f and six and Regarding a personnel matter in the form of an attorney client communication under the provisions of one vsa 313 a1f Thank You and I'll note that for the first executive session That will include CAO shad Is it does that also include attorney Richard Hessler? Is he here for this? Yes and Members of the mayor staff is there are there others that? That I'm unaware of to be able to add Martha Keenan and Jared Pellerin, okay Thank you so much and then for the second executive session and Ashley Parker. I apologize and Ashley Parker And for the second executive session, which will include attorney Pietro Lynn Acting city attorney Jared Pellerin, I'm not sure and then also members of the mayor staff if there's anyone. I'm leaving out Please let me know HR director Karen derpy's attention HR director Karen derpy. Thank you With that we will go to a second seconded by a councillor McGee Seeing no discussion on the motion we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion, please say aye And he opposed please say no So we are going to go into executive session because we do not everyone is here And so we do not need zoom for for the executive session We will be able to hold the executive session in con choice So we anticipate that the executive session will last about one hour and We're going to need to clear the room in con choice and we will be back in about one hour. Thank you Your patience as it is now well past the 730 hour. It's now 801 We'll move on to item 5.01, which is the public forum Before we begin public forum just a few a few pieces of information for those who may not be familiar with our process The system on the front of the table in front the table in front of me if Counselors could please take their seats The the system that is on the table in front of us has three lights a green light that will shine when you begin speaking a Second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and the last is a red light that will shine when your time is up We ask that you please complete your comments when the sound and light indicate that your time is up And we do that so that everyone has an equal amount of time to speak It also means that we can keep the public forum moving along We have a hybrid system for the public forum so if you wish to speak in person as as many of you do you can go to the table that is to my right in the corner sign a form that looks like this and Give that to the clerk and She will give them to me if You want to speak online you can go to Burlington vt. Gov Backslash public forum and when you do that there will be a form that will come out Come up. Please fill out the form and The answers that you give will be populated into a spreadsheet that I have in front of me And I will be able to then call on you As has been our practice Burlington residents will have first priority We'll go to Burlington residents that are present in person in con toys first Who have submitted a form and then we will go to Burlington's residents online? Back to non Burlington residents in person and then back to online Burlington residents a non residents non Burlington residents during public forum and This is very important We ask that you please Use respectful language, please direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table Please do not personalize your comments Again, we want to hear what you have to say and it is It is easier for us to listen more intently if you speak respectfully and with decorum As well There are many families in Burlington who use council meetings as a way to engage with their children in Civic engagement and it is not fair to them For those of us adults in the room not to use respectful language Thank you for all who have come and offered us and are offering to speak during public forum Getting the list here Stand by for just a moment. So these are all Burlington residents. Do you think? Okay. All right. Okay. Wow. Okay. All right. So the first person who is asked to speak a Burlington resident is Dean Doudal Fowler welcome You're gonna have you'll have two minutes to speak please That's right. And when you start speaking is when the timer will start. So take your time Dean and I go to school at IAA. I am in fifth grade At IAA we are a magnet school And we have a drama class We have a drama class and The school board is For some budget cuts and We we're going to lose that and because we are an art school. It's very important to have Like Performing arts which we get in music, but also drama is very important and I want to continue to have drama for years to come Thank you. Thanks so much for being here. The next speaker is Christine koala koala koala ski I'm Welcome chairman I Came because there's a problem in the city with bedbugs and the there seems to be a struggle amongst who would pay for the treatment and the elimination of the bedbugs and When there is a problem with payment, then there is a lack of treatment in other words if tenants are Forced to pay and they don't have the money then the treatment does not occur and When the the struggle continues with the landlord for instance, I myself had a struggle with the landlord and then He said well, I'll just evict you, you know, the bedbugs can stay and you go, right? So that doesn't solve the problem and I think it's city-wide and I wanted to suggest that there be Someone in the city that would be designated to investigate this problem because it can be a city-wide problem we have people coming in cosmopolitan areas coming in with money and You know coming into bed and breakfast coming into buy homes they're also coming in with bugs and So it will become a problem if we don't solve it collectively and I'm asking the city to Offer a collective solution with raising money from some funding source that is not going so that it eliminates this fight between Tenants who do not have the money to pay and the landlords who do not want to pay and others and rather than struggle about who is responsible to solve the problem itself and not to see it as a responsibility problem and so I ask for Somebody to be designated to investigate this problem and also for there to be Somebody to raise money a funding source to go to this problem. Thank you so much The next speaker is Jason van der Reis Jason do you want to speak now or during the public for the public hearing? the public hearing, okay The next speaker is Robert Bristow Johnson to be followed by Robin Lloyd Okay, so this is going to be about our CV again big surprise In Alameda County, California They're having a big problem because they are doing things wrong again And they ended up electing somebody and now they have to Decertify the election lawsuits flying all over the place. You don't want to go there now We're not doing that. We're not there yet at least but I have noticed a little bit of a problem I called up I talked to Sarah Montgomery about it. It's that sounds good from her from her points So I'm not complaining, but I just want to illustrate this on the city web page on the rank choice voting page it actually had a falsehood and The falsehood says that this process continues until some candidate gets 50% of the vote, but that sometimes doesn't happen The 50% is not guaranteed and again Burlington 2009 is a good example 50% of the vote would have been 4,488 votes in 2009 and Bob Kiskot 4,313 That's not 50% turns out to be about 48%, but we have to be very very careful That we just don't reverberate whatever fair vote tells us or whatever VPUR tells us or whatever RCV RC the reef RCV Resource Center tells us because they have a product to sell and they are in marketing mode They are not in product development mode anymore. They don't care about fixing their product. They just want to sell it But we don't have to be their stooches We don't have to repeat their falsehoods And so when our CV is going to come up again because I have no doubt that the the ballot question will pass but it's going to go into the legislature and then I'm going to make a stink again and We're gonna be talking about facts and truth and you guys better tell the truth when you when you when you sell this because I mean the truth will set you free and Fact and falsehoods will not thank you Robert Our next speaker is Robin Lloyd to be followed by Deborah Clemer Hi Robin. Oh Okay, thank you So I I support my friend with her concern about bed bugs I had the bed bugs in the rented room and in my building It cost me a thousand dollars to clean that room up. So I think her argument is very Very important for you to listen to however I my concern is of the greater scourge that faces humanity which is nuclear weapons and that I think everyone's become more aware of nuclear weapons when Russian President Putin kind of threatened them and got people thinking about the fact that the United States and Russia have 90% of the nuclear weapons in the world and there are 1000 No, there are 13,000 nuclear weapons. So this is is a very dangerous such situation but The point is that there is a bit of good news and that is that the United Nations has passed a Binding Treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons Can you believe it another words? 68 countries in the world and if there are 50 countries in the world that That turns it into a binding treaty 68 countries have said we We have to prohibit nuclear weapons and that event is coming up the second anniversary of this event is coming up on the 22nd of this month and we will be having some events happening here in Burlington and I invite you all to come and Maybe we can start a movement to really take seriously this treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. Okay. Thank you Thank you so much Robin. Our next speaker is Deborah Clemmer to be followed by scarlet grace. I came to talk about public transportation and the bus I Just started riding the bus about a year ago and my only regret is I didn't ride them sooner and I own a car and I think most people that own cars don't ride the bus, but I like I hope what we get funding It's been a real perk having them free and as we can get the cars off We're too busy too many cars in Burlington. So if we can get people to ride the bus I'm lucky that I live near the bus station. So I don't end up transferring but we really need a Vibrant bus service and they're great. I mean I read I good I use the bus to go to work As much as possible and I read on the bus and it doesn't really take that much time more time than driving your car So I'm hoping that you We get the bus is funded and they remain free and even like some of them run 45 minutes Or every 30 minutes so if we could get them to run a little More frequently so that people that have to transfer it's more doable. Thank you Thank you so much So our next speaker is scarlet grace to be followed by Carlos Escoville Carlos, I don't know if you want to speak now or you want to speak during the public the hearing on parking Now, okay, so wait for just a moment if go please go ahead and you'll be next I'm scarlet grace, and I'm another fifth grader at IAA and And my friends Some of my friends are in fourth grade third grade second grade first grade and kindergarten and also preschool wait No, I have no preschool or friends But I think that There should be drama at our school because Because acting is important and My friends who are in the fourth third Second first and kindergarten will have to like basically go to a school for like five or six years That has no drama class and I think that would be kind of awful I don't know but Anyways, I kind of think that there should be drama in our school Thank you so much scarlet Carlos Escoville, please correct me if I'm mispronouncing your name to be followed by Josie Bonnell and and the same as applies as well if you if you if you are here to speak to the parking Ordinance You have the option of speaking now or speaking during the public hearing So if you wish to speak during the public hearing just let us know and we can put you back in the queue for that We'd prefer that you not speak twice Carlos please go ahead that'll start when you speak okay go ahead. Hi My name is Carlos I'm a Borlinton resident and I work as a rapid rehousing coordinator for a nonprofit organization Through my job I've been able to talk with many folks who are housing secure or sleeping on the streets Some of them I will even call my friends and some of them are born and raised Vermonters now I'm telling you all of these because right where I live in North Winnowsky Avenue There's a parking lot that is the same size as the building that I live in Then people stay in this building and probably 15 more stay in the building right in front There's a maximum of 12 parking spaces available There for both buildings and I really wonder what the opportunity cost is now just to be clear The opportunity cost is a loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is choose is chosen What if there could be a convenience store a couple of art studios a Peruvian restaurant with deluge delicious food or maybe How many of my housing secure friends can stay in that area if we choose to house people Instead of cars, I know this is not the perfect ordinance, but it's definitely pointing in the right direction We need to eliminate minimum parking requirements and start thinking what's important for us as a city or cars or our neighbors. Thank you Thank you so much Well, we'll hold off on the applause so that we can keep this moving I'm The next speaker is Josie Bunnell to be followed by Ryan Thornton. Hi. Hi. My name is Josie I'm an educator artist and a resident of Ward 2 in Burlington And I also want to encourage the council to vote in favor of removing parking minimums Establishing parking maximums and implementing transportation demand management tonight as outlined in the proposed ordinance We all know that Burlington is experiencing a housing crisis and any space in the city is coveted and valuable by removing parking Minimums some of the space can be open to people-friendly services such as housing businesses or studios instead of dedicated to car storage with each new development I Also want to point to the city's web page regarding equity initiatives where it is written that the city of Burlington Strives to be a vibrant diverse livable community that fosters innovation Enriches the lives of all its residents and embraces intentional community engagement Eliminating parking minimums is one step in the direction of supporting these stated goals as mentioned by Some others here tonight. This will help create more affordable housing for a growing population Which in turn builds a more vibrant diverse and livable community a lack of parking minimums Will also create a city that can support more new local businesses within walking distances as it will eliminate the burden of Constructing and paying for asphalt lots again fostering a more diverse and livable city I'm excited that the city of Burlington has the chance to remove these parking minimums with the passing of this ordinance And I hope you too see the advantages of this. Thank you Thank you very much. We'll go to Ryan Thornton to be followed by Lena Greenberg and lean. I believe you have also registered online So we'll go with you in person if you are here Go ahead. My name is Ryan Thornton I want to express my full support for the proposed ordinance removing parking minimums as well as the resolution urging the city to identify a dedicated funding source for public transit in August 19 29 thousands gathered in Burlington for the ceremonial burning of the city's electric trolleys to make Way for the new motor age in the century since the city has carried forth the mission of ensuring the convenient movement and storage of Private vehicles at the expense of other community values and goals Including but not limited to the safety of getting around with or without a car The need of all residents to breathe clean air and drink clean water The duty of the city to be good stewards of public dollars the need to use our limited Developable land wisely to provide current and future residents with affordable homes and Proximity to jobs and services the need to ensure livability for residents of all abilities and incomes and Certainly the need to make our community sustainable and resilience against the present climate crisis Due to the city's own policies the cost of off-street parking has been well hidden But it has never been free or even cheap for residents a recent report showed that one required parking space per unit Typically increases moderate priced housing cost by 12% and two parking spaces per unit increases lower priced housing cost by 25% This impacts all renters regardless of whether or not they have a car to park in those spaces It's time to wake up to the consequences of our own municipal policies and recognize that the city cannot become the equitable Affordable and sustainable city it aims to be while continuing to prioritize the convenient movement and storage of cars over the needs of its residents Let's get rid of parking minimums tonight and get serious about identifying how we're going to fund public transit and give back to where we started a century ago Thank you. Thank you very much We'll go to Lena Greenberg to be followed by Marty Gillies Welcome. Thank you. Hi. My name is Lena. Glad to be here tonight I live in the King Maple neighborhood. I love where I live But you know, it's gonna change a lot in the next few years and I would love to see all of the development Both on Pine Street and in the surrounding blocks to be really people centric This is an incredible place to live and I want to live here for the rest of my life And I want to see Burlington build for people instead of for cars and for safety and affordability Allowed by removing parking minimums freeing up all that space for people to do things like walk and bike and garden and live Instead of just continuing to build buildings that hold cars that don't protect us They, you know, don't affirm our lives. They don't protect our lungs if we want the King and Maple neighborhood to stay Affordable and safe for people. We need people forward development Please vote against or vote for removing parking minimums and for people appreciate your time. Thanks. Thank you very much We'll go The next speaker is Marty Gillies to breeze to be followed by Evan Calves Good evening, everyone. My name is Marty. I work in the south Burlington planning and zoning department And I live on Locust Street in the south end I just wanted to briefly come up here and encourage you all to vote in favor of removing the parking minimum Thank you. Thank you so much The next speaker is Evan Calves to read to be followed by a Lisa Faber Good evening counselors. My name is Evan Calves And I'm a resident of Ward one. I want to speak in support of the ordinance on parking minimums and transportation demand management When I think about climate change and community sustainability I do so through the lens of how things will be 15 years from now Undoubtedly our winters will be mild and our summers will be hot but in a world of increasingly unbreathable air and undrinkable water of Mid-latitude city situated on a freshwater lake like Burlington will likely be welcoming a multitude of climate refugees These things are unavoidable, but what is avoidable however is the development of our city into a patchwork of parking lots From observing how other cities have managed growth We know that parking minimums put antiquated limitations on developers by eliminating Minimums sustainable development that prioritizes people and not cars can happen organically And it will be better for our community and environment. So please I strongly encourage you to pass the ordinance Thank you. Thank you very much Well, our next speaker is Alisa Faber to be followed by Jack Trion Good evening. My name is Alyssa Faber. I'm a resident of Ward 2 and I also work in Ward 2 as the art teacher at Integrated Arts Academy I'm here to speak about the proposed Burlington School budget that you'll see later in the agenda and specifically about the proposed cuts to the drama teacher at our school The drama program is a critical position and it is integral to our mission as a magnet school Our school is housed at H.O. Wheeler a school that has been part of the heart of the Old North End for years But the school is failing and the city of Burlington and the district made a radical change 14 years ago We became the Integrated Arts Academy Our mission revolves around teaching and learning through the arts We serve a diverse population and we believe the arts allow all students a chance to access rigorous academic content and build important social emotional skills Eliminating an entire art form prevents a comprehensive arts education for students Every art form represents a new opportunity for students to learn and to show their understanding Drama program experiences have helped many of our students some you've heard tonight Learned self-expression creative problem solving collaboration and confidence to become leaders in our Burlington middle schools and high school Drama at IAA looks and sounds like fifth graders building Collaboration skills while writing and performing skits that show their understanding of story elements or second graders making bugs with their bodies to show The understanding of the research they have done on bugs and ecosystems Our budget proposal in this budget proposal It looks like just one position is being cut and that a teacher can find another position Please know there are no other elementary drama teacher positions in the state and this individual cannot apply somewhere else This is more than just an issue of eliminating a position to balance the budget But it will affect the entire drama program at Integrated Arts Academy This budget may seem that it is equitable But it is not equitable for our students our mission or the districts. Thank you. Thank you so much our next speaker is Jack Tian and that will be and he will be followed by Colin Larson Or she will find my apologies they Hello, my name is Jack Tiano South End Ward 5 First I quickly wanted to verbally support the resolution on strengthening regional statewide funding for public transit But I mostly wanted to speak out in favor of the proposed ordinance change In regards to minimum and maximum parking requirements and transportation demand management I spoke into a number of you and we all seem to have mostly agree about the many positives that this ordinance will bring Around freeing up land for much-needed housing legalizing car free residences to the extent that the market demands it and allowing the city to More dynamically plan for its own needs, but I wanted to bring a personal note I've been happily living car free and renting in Burlington for 10 years and all but one of the rentals I've lived in came with free parking that I didn't use Coincidentally the apartment that separated the parking costs was the cheapest rent that I've paid and all the other cases the cost of Paving plowing and maintaining that parking lot was still passed on to me Those things aren't free and landlords don't run charities, so it was bundled into my rent But the thing that really strikes me now is that in almost all of these scenarios the parking lots had bigger footprints in the building I was living in this takes on more more significance in the housing crisis we live through today I asked we move forward with the parking minimum with removing parking minimums so that housing for those of us that live car Free can be legal. We are not the majority and it will not make driving illegal But by not allowing people like me to have access to housing that fits our lifestyle We miss out on many benefits as a city Please legalize car free housing in Burlington tonight. Thank you Thank you very much Our next speaker is Collin Larson to be followed by uh, Dan Castrojano Hello, my name is Collin Larson and I live in ward four I'm here tonight to emphatically voice my support for the ordinance abolishing parking minimums establishing parking maximums And expanding TDM requirements This is a necessary step the city must take to help reduce car dependence reduce pollution And carbon emissions and build a more sustainable future While climate and environment is a key component of this issue. I would like to speak on cost The victoria transport policy institute has calculated that current standard parking requirements in north america amount to a 10 to 15 Percent tax on development a cost that is immediately passed on to renters and buyers For low and moderate income housing in areas with higher land cost like Burlington That financial burden is even higher since a greater proportion of the lot is now being used for non productive non income generating parking Consider to the cost of commercial properties Rents for businesses are also higher in areas where more parking is required This burden is most acutely felt by small businesses who have fewer resources for increased costs and maintenance associated with parking Over time this prices out local entrepreneurs in favor of large chains with the necessary resources to compensate for expensive parking lots It helps create the ugly homogenous strip malls that many of you have seen across the united states Entire towns have obliterated their historic main streets to make space for cars and parking If burlington plans to grow and develop in the future with a thriving local economy and small business community We must eliminate these parking requirements and stop hurting small businesses and residents. Thank you Thank you very much. Our next speaker is dan castrugano to be followed by for read Dan welcome Hi council. This is my first time coming in person. So it's nice to meet some of you for the first time My name is dan castrugano. I'm a resident of ward 4 And i'm also here to encourage you to pass the ordinance abolishing parking minimums setting parking maximums and Implementing tdm in burlington This is a necessary step to reduce car dependency To slash emissions and to make a people-centric and better burlington I also support the resolution brought forth tonight to find a sustainable source of funding for gmt We must rapidly build out public transit as a climate solution as a way and as a way to promote equity in burlington I know that there's also an agenda item on the climate emergency That's what I care about the most and I know many of you know that But these two things abolishing parking minimums and Implementing a robust public transit system are arguably two of the best things we could do in burlington We know that transportation is the biggest source of climate pollution And we have to get cars off of the road that is integral to slashing emissions in burlington Finally, I'd like to thank jack hanson and other former and current city counselors for pushing for this for years It is past time to get this done and I urge you to pass the ordinance tonight Thank you Thank you very much. Our next speaker is for read and then we will go to burlington residents who are participating online Welcome Thank you I want to respond to some of the statements made in the media by the mayor as well as Supporters about the valid question in the upcoming town meeting Regarding the people's power to put to petition for binding ballot questions I believe the mayor staunchly opposed to the question because This was supposedly replaced the representative of democracy that we currently have that is not true And there's been also concerns about any group Who could be organized and to put any questions on the ballot The reason I volunteered for this project actually is because that's what already is happening Right now the city council can basically put whatever they want on the ballot whereas regular voters don't have that power And also this will not end representative democracy in fact When people make the Comparison with california or oregon or brexit even We should look at vermont because every other municipality has This powers enshrined in their municipal charter and burlington is the only one who Who doesn't let people petition for ballot question? So I urge you to please educate yourself and educate your constituents and Just take a look at our neighbors winewski colchester south barlington. They all have this in their municipal charter The sky hasn't fallen there and the world hasn't ended. Thank you Thank you for read. Uh, we'll go to online and just give the uh, the clerk a few minutes About to get the timer up Thank you um, the first speaker online is lauren schwepp and uh uh lauren, I have found you and I believe have enabled your microphone Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can go ahead Thank you. Good evening. I'm lauren schweppie and I live in ward four and I'm on tonight to express my support for abolishing parking minimums establishing parking maximums and expanding the tdm requirements There are many financial and environmental benefits that will come from passing this ordinance some of which have already been mentioned tonight But I want to focus specifically on the social aspect Community is an essential part of life in vermont and that's most evident at the heart of burlington on church street From street areas that exist because restaurants can use space for seating instead of parking To thriving small businesses, which are the lifeblood of our economy and suffer the most from increased costs associated with parking requirements Church street exemplifies the best of burlington By passing this ordinance we open ourselves up to the opportunity for more community centric areas in burlington like church street And we're one step closer to building a city where the focus is people not cars And the safety and comfort of those who walk around our city and bike around our city every day is prioritized over vehicles that pollute And pose a danger to our friends children and the community at large I hope that you'll pass this ordinance tonight and bring us one step closer to expanding the model of church street And continuing to support a community where residents and visitors feel safe and are able to enjoy the benefits of a city built for people not cars Thank you for your time It is for mispronouncing your name The next speaker online is nick uh persampieri and nick uh I have found you And have enabled your microphone. Please go ahead Thank you Nick persampieri And i'm here to address the proposed resolution to put out to voters a question concerning imposing a carbon fee on certain heating systems I support on putting such a resolution out to the voters And I support imposing the fee on carbon intensive heating systems however, i'm concerned with the um language of the resolution as drafted I've addressed my concerns at length in writing and i'll just just address now a couple of key points i'm concerned that voters are not going to understand the question Because it doesn't define what renewable energy is It proposes to impose it proposes to impose a fee on fossil fuel powered systems But not on renewable systems It doesn't tell you what renewable means if you dig In the city's ordinance as you see That there are a number of things this city considers to be renewable And some of them generate more carbon emissions and fossil fuels in particular burning wood And so I think that the fee should also be imposed on Generating heat through burning wood Whether it's done in someone's house or at the McNeil generating station And I agree with the recommendation of the biomass task group of the climate council that we need to consider phasing out McNeil Thank you. Thank you so much. Nick. Our next speaker is gordon dragoon and Gordon, I found you and have enabled your microphone. Please go ahead Good evening councillors. My name is gordon dragoon and I am a resident of ward five I'd like to encourage you to pass the ordinance that is in regards to removing parking minimums setting parkour mac Gordon my apologies. I think I unenabled you Um, why don't we start again if we could just put the timer back? No worries. Thanks. Go ahead. I'm my apologies. That was that was on me No worries In my research, I could not find a single town that has regretted its decision to remove parking minimums There's steward florida, greenville, south carolina, eugene, oregon and spokane, washington They've all enacted ordinances similar to the one you'll be voting on today And each of them has a success story to tell from it in a particularly striking case steward florida So a number of downtown businesses rise by 348 four years after their removal To me the removal of parking minimums is ultimately about choice This ordinance does not remove parking for anyone that wants it It merely gives people the option to avoid it if they so choose With automobiles negative impact on the environment of our world and the character of our cities being Nigh undeniable at this point. It's my belief that the city not mandating their existence is the least we can do Thank you for your time Much and again my apologies The next speaker is sharon busher Sharon I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead Good evening. I was going to speak at the public forum public hearing on parking minimums That's fine. I will come back to you thank you The next speaker is uh, philly poyos and philly i have not found you But I will come I will come back The next speaker is ashley adams and ashley. I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead Good evening, ashley adams. I'm in ward six I hear to speak about the agenda item 809 regarding the carbon fee resolution and I fully support imposing an impact fee on carbon pollution However, by excluding wood from the fee you're incentivizing a highly polluting source of heat and electricity Burlington electric and this council continue to mislead the public when you use the term renewable The term allows mcneal to masquerade as somehow beneficial to the environment And the fact is that cutting down and burning trees contribute significantly to our carbon debt and Simultaneously eliminates the carbon sequestering wild old growth forests that are one of our most important carbon sinks thereby exacerbating both global heating and the biodiversity crisis If you were to apply this ordinance fairly and acknowledge the 453,000 tons of co2 That mcneal pumps into the atmosphere every year at the rate of $150 a ton called for in the ordinance It would pay 67,950,000 per year to the city of burlington According to burlington's warped logic mcneal is allowed to pump 453,000 tons of co2 into the atmosphere every year Which is not counted in the net zero roadmap and burlington electric is not required to provide evidence that the co2 is somehow captured Which is good because no amount of fuzzy mass will make the case for them By the same logic a business owner should be able to avoid the carbon tax by simply pointing to the sustainable methods By which they are cutting down trees on their property Forest ecologists and climate scientists around the world have been urging governments to put a halt to biomass Some governments are already doing so australia and massachusetts among them Intentivizing the burning of anything consigns us to the highway to climate health at un secretary general Antonio Guterres spoke of a couple of months ago This council the mayor and burlington electric are the ones with your foot on the accelerator When will you let up? Thank you and have a good evening. Thank you so much uh, the last speaker is uh online is denise dutton and denise I have enabled your microphone and please go ahead Good evening, uh denise. They live in ward three. I'm a college student And i'm speaking about agenda item 8.09 the carbon pollution impact fee um, I noticed that the net zero energy roadmap suggests that burlington emits 210 000 tons of CO2 annually. However, we know that the mcneil generating station alone produces 453 000 tons of CO2 That was a figure for 2021 and it likely doesn't change very much from year to year And i'm wondering how we can guide our city to a net zero future based on wildly inaccurate emissions data and misinformation about how much better burning wood is than fossil fuels i'm asking to please Not condemn our forests and our future by chaining the city to false climate solutions like wood pellet heating And biomass energy i'm all for a carbon pollution fee But not if the point of it is to incentivize other means of polluting the atmosphere with CO2 So I urge you to withdraw the resolution relating to agenda item 8.09 from the public vote in march until Hopefully chapter eight article five of the burlington code of ordinances is revised to exclude all mention of wood pellets wood chips and renewable fuels Which are not supported by science to be viable alternatives to fossil fuels Not to mention the air quality and health issues that they perpetuate Or at the very least as nick person pierre said earlier Make it evident what is meant by renewable energy to the voters in the final resolution so that they are not misled Thank you Thank you so much The we did have one other speaker Online and that is kurt mccormick and kurt i did not call in you now Because it appeared as though you wanted to speak During the public hearing, but i've enabled your microphone if you would prefer to speak now That's fine. Just let me know Either one So kurt your microphones enabled now Okay, you can hear me Yes, I can I just didn't want to know it just didn't know if you wanted to speak now Or during the public hearing Can I do both? I'll speak now Okay, i live in ward two and I had the frustration of Developing a four-family house here in ward two on north muskie avenue. I were four apartments. I lived in one of them and I had to supply I would not have gotten my permit To rent if I had not Provided four off-street parking spaces 10 feet by 22 each And at 22 feet, we were obviously just accommodating the largest vehicle. I guess one can imagine Uh instead of doing the opposite So I did a study of this legislative district, which is the old north end in downtown And in that study, I found something that I must say surprised me But it was very very interesting and says a lot it says a lot about this district in this city 32 of the households In this district are car free I'm car free Many people are car free here We we might be a minority But it's a quite a large minority give an idea how how large that is The only city in the u.s. The rivals of european city In this regard being car free is new york and they're in their new york city and they're 56 percent so there's a lot of good things said and I I'm calling to To give my support to to this ordinance change and also to the TDM I think we will find some funding for TDM that that I think we created last year in the legislature and We also want to do something for green mountain transit and keep Green mountain transit free fair free is very important. It keeps ridership up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much Thank you so much kurt Fully poyos. We have found. Thank you for raising your hand I can enable your microphone and you're able to speak now Please go ahead Hi, good evening. Um, thank you. My name is fully pehoyos And I am seeking up to support the removal of minimum parking requirements in the city of berlington Uh, minimum parking requirements have been shown to result in an oversupply of parking and increased development costs, which is in turn passed down to residents Minimum parking requirements encourage casual car ownership and taxes residents that do not own a car The environmental impacts of car dependents are well known. Luckily for berlington. It is actually a very walkable city Suitable for different transportation modes I applaud the council for taking on this important issue and urgent to pass the ordinance abolishing parking minimums setting parking Maximum and implementing transportation demand management. Thank you very much Uh, so uh to uh to Sharon busher. We will come back to you during the um item 8.0 8.04, which is the public hearing, but for now we will return To contoys. There are two people who are not berlington residents who have requested to speak One of them is represent a representative latha man manjia puti puti Please welcome And please correct me if i've mispronounced your name perfectly fine Thank you, madam chair and thank you the counselors and the mayor My name is la rep latha manjia puti and i'm a state rep in new hampshire Listening to all the public comments. I see why i lost both my son and daughter to berlington I tried very hard to Lure them back to new hampshire, but i lost my bet And now my son is married and he married girl from berlington And we have our first grandchild you see my address as 117 narchamp plain That is my son's place and my daughter lives now and my son goes back and forth And I get to sleep on the daybed when I come up here So the reason i'm here is I have fell in love with Burlington and vermont you're doing a lot of things the right way And I applaud you have heard many of you have heard from me In regards to a proposal that we have done But i'm here more to introduce myself And to say I come here often if not every weekend To spend time with my grandson and sometimes I extend it And I would love to see a stake of my family here And instead of as much as my husband hates the cold He has no choice but to come with five layers to visit this grandson And thank you again if you have any questions you can reach out and you have my Contact information in the public records. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much Our last speaker for the public forum is the is uh honorable paul hodis Paul welcome Thank you, madam chair. Good evening counselors and mr. Mayor. Um, i'm uh latham on jupudis colleague in shanti energy And really this is a courtesy call. I just wanted to introduce myself um, I first came to burlington In 1970 when I owned I was partial owner of a business on church street when church street had cars I've been here a lot over the years and as a congressman. I shared a border With your current united states senators and had the privilege of working With both of them on cross border issues I've always appreciated the robust civic engagement of burlington Its community spirit and its spirit of innovation um, I i'm certainly not going to weigh in on The ordinance issue, but I will say I appreciate hearing About the values expressed in terms of people friendly Environmentally sensitive Development, uh, those are critical Issues, um and when the council considers What will happen with the memorial building if the council decides of that residential Adaptive adaptive reuse is the way the council wants to go um, I want to assure you that Our process would be open inclusive people friendly and sensitive To the community values and the care that the community has for the memorial building. Thanks very much Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, and thank you to all who offered their comments during public forum With that we will close the public forum at 8 53 And before we continue with the remainder of our council meeting agenda We do have one other meeting this evening that we need to attend to that being the local control commission meeting So with that I will recess the city council meeting at 8 53 And call to order the local control commission meeting at the same time The first item on our agenda And we'll give people a chance to get to that agenda The first item on that agenda is item 1.01 a motion to adopt the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Move to adopt the agenda. Thank you commissioner shannon Seconded by commissioner Traverse Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none all those in favor of the motion to adopt our agenda. Please say aye Aye Any opposed? Please say no. We have our agenda. There are There are three items on our agenda our deliberative agenda. The first is 2.01 Which is a first and third class liquor license application for Despacito councilor commissioner shannon Move to approve the 2020 to 2023 first and third class liquor license application for despacito on 294 north oneiski avenue with all standard conditions. Thank you commissioner shannon Seconded by commissioner traverse. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none all those in favor of the motion is made by commissioner shannon. Please say aye. Aye Any opposed? Please say no That motion passes which brings us to item 2.02 a first and third class liquor license application for the 126 commissioner shannon move to approve the 2022 2023 first and third class liquor license application for the 126 126 college street with following conditions contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions Thank you commissioner shannon seconded by commissioner traverse Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none Oh, i'm sorry. My apologies commissioner traverse. Just very briefly president paul. I'd just like to note for the record that Representatives from both these businesses were here earlier before 6 p.m Dave cantana from despacito on the matter that we just reviewed as well as emily morten from The 126 Seeing the time and knowing that we probably wouldn't be getting to this until 9 p.m I encouraged them to go home and thought this would have the support But do want to reflect the fact that they were here and appreciate their their eagerness and their work on these businesses So thank you. Thank you. In fact In my in my attempt to move our agenda forward We usually do ask if there are if the applicants are here and that was my mistake for not doing so So thank you for pointing that out Are there any other counselors who? Have any Comments or questions on this motion Seeing none all those in favor of the motion is made by commissioner shannon. Please say aye. All right Any opposed? Please say no That motion passes which brings us to the last item on our deliberative agenda Which is 2.03 and outside consumption permit application for the 126 and i'll return to commissioner shannon Please move to approve the 2022 2023 outside consumption permit application for the 126 126 college street Thank you so much seconded by uh commissioner traverse any discussion Seeing none all those in favor of the motion to approve this outside consumption permit. Please say aye All right Any opposed? Please say no that motion passes and With no one other business on our local Our local control commission agenda and seeing no objection will adjourn that meeting at 8 58 and return to our recessed Council meeting which will move us to item number six, which is climate Emergency reports is there a counselor bergman? So i want to take the opportunity to talk about Two items here one of which is on the consent agenda And i'm really pleased that it's on the consent agenda because that Means that we're going to adopt it Shortly and that is the gmt funding But i just wanted to highlight that because as was said 40 percent of vermont's greenhouse emissions are coming from the transportation system and If we're going to end that we've got to do a much better job of Our mass transit system and anybody who has paid any attention To the way that we fund gmt knows Just how pathetic That funding system is there have been funding studies sitting on the on the shelf for years and years and we have one now that is current and This resolution Seeks to have us be engaged so it does not sit on the shelf Does not do us any good to be studying stuff and then ignoring it If we believe in experts then we should try to you know, like do some some work on that. So, um, I just want to point folks attention to lines 41 through 44 of that resolution which asks us To well, which has the the council asking the mayor and the administration to work with the legislature and the governor and there and the administration state administration during the session and beyond to come up and Come up with and implement a sustainable mass transit funding system that meets the goals of this resolution This resolution Isn't worth anything if we do not act in the legislative session And we need to have this as part of our legislative agenda and by our action tonight We are saying please do that So I want to thank you all for this the other thing I just want to point out in this regard Is that gmt is going to be coming back to us with a pretty hefty Assessment increase like 11.6. That's not small change and People and this is as much for the public as for anybody else They're going to have the opportunity to weigh in on the budget tomorrow at a public hearing Both hybrid and Well, it's hybrid and that is remote or in person at their their offices to talk about the budget and get public comments and they're looking at service cuts right now even with an increase in burlington's assessment and clearly That is a It's like going down a hole like like Just a whirlpool if you know, you cannot improve Public transit by cutting head times by cutting routes So we have got to engage in this we got to engage in you know in their public process We've got to engage in the legislative process If we are going to do the work that needs to be done on transportation to meet the climate change and To do the best job we can to stop this planet burning for our babies and their babies Thanks for listening Thank you, councilor bergman. Are there other counselors or the administration who wish to offer a climate emergency report? mayor Weinberger Thank you president paul I do think the deliberative agenda is going to give us the opportunity to Engage a couple really important actions that the administration has been working on and is bringing forward or partnering in one case with the council to Take action on with respect to the climate emergency both with the new The ballot item that we are proposing that would give the voters a chance to endorse the city using its brand new Charter authority to regulate heating systems to Create really a very innovative carbon pollution fee And we also have on the delivery of this the site and this come up a lot tonight regarding the elimination of parking minimums and and other steps and So i'll save most of my comments for later. I do just want to say It is really refreshing You know the first time that I brought forward an attempt to eliminate parking minimums was I believe In the first year. I was in office in 2012 And there was virtually no public support For that step at that time and to have this coming back for a third time Tonight to have a substantive vote with the elimination market parking minimums and to have such Really impressive grassroots support from individuals linking action On the climate emergency to changing our land use policies getting rid of parking minimums making housing that is denser and that Will expand our housing supply and do it in a way that has a dramatically lesser impact on on the climate than Other Than other housing in vermont is really refreshing and welcome y'all to be here tonight. I hope you'll stay Engaged for as I know you are for the numerous other housing debates that we're going to have over the course Of 2023 is three very important additional zoning changes come forward Thank you. Mayor Weinberger. Are there any is there any other counselor? Who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we'll close that item and we'll move on to item number seven, which is our consent agenda Is there a motion to Move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated Thank you. Councillor bergman seconded by Councillor travers Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no We've approved our consent agenda, which brings us to our deliberative agenda We added an deliberative agenda item at the end 8.10 In addition to that, we have nine items on our deliberative agenda And there are time limits on each item Which we've agreed to by approving our agenda and we will do our best to keep to those time limits To move the agenda along The first item on our deliberative agenda is item 8.01, which is an indoor entertainment permit application For despacito and for this item. I will turn to councillor shannon for a motion That's okay Take your time Move to approve the 2022 2023 indoor entertainment permit application for despacito 294 north winewski avenue with all standard conditions. Thank you councillor shannon seconded by councillor travers Is there any discussion on this motion? Seeing none a motion has been made to approve the indoor entertainment permit Application for despacito all those in favor of the motion. Please say aye All right. Any opposed? Please say no That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to our other indoor outdoor Our other indoor entertainment permit application item 8.02 Which is the an application for the 126 councillor shannon Move to approve the 2022 2023 indoor entertainment permit application for the 126 126 college street with all standard conditions. Thank you councillor shannon Is there a second to that motion seconded by councillor travers? Thank you Motion has been made to approve the indoor entertainment permit for the 126 All those in favor of the motion, please or is there any discussion on that item? Seeing none all those in favor of the motion. Please say aye All right. Any opposed? Please say no That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to item 8.03 Which are the public hearings regarding the two ordinances that we will be voting on this evening Z a 2207, which is the maximum parking and tdm and z a 2209, which is the public art ordinance So with that will open the public hearing at 907 And invite anyone who wishes to speak to either of these ordinances to come forward At this time, we do have two that have signed up for that The first is here in person and that's jason van dreish jason Please please come and join us at the table Thank you president paul and city councillors and mayor weinberger. My name is jason van dreish I live in ward 5 And i'm here tonight to ask you to vote in support of the proposed ordinance regarding minimum parking requirements and Mr. Mayor just a correction. I believe I was at that meeting in 2012 and supported it Um So as a city planner, I'm painfully aware that zoning has a long history of being used as a tool of exclusion The most egregious examples redlining restrictive covenants and the like Um are behind us, but there are still many ways that zoning is used to protect privilege and parking minimums are such a tool From the perspective of individual development projects You could make an argument that parking minimums make a sort of sense I mean shouldn't each development project carry its own weight But I think the key thing here is to look at at this question from the perspective of our community as a whole Um parking minimums at that level function as a hugely powerful means of exclusion The core reason is that they are strongly regressive meaning the most modestly priced home The more modestly priced a home is the bigger a bite the required parking spaces take out of the construction budget To the point where absent subsidies it becomes difficult to impossible to build anything other than expensive homes As a result parking minimums are playing a not insignificant role in the hollowing out of our city This change will no doubt have downsides and unintended consequences, but they'll pale in comparison With the to the huge ongoing negative impacts of our current parking policies Please vote in favor of this ordinance vote for an inclusive burlington. Thank you Thank you very much. Um Is there anyone in con choice who also wishes to speak during this public hearing? Either to the parking ordinance or to the public art ordinance You can just raise your hand if you if you wish to speak Right. So seeing None and we'll come back but for now, uh, we will go to uh, online to uh, uh to sharon busher Sharon i've enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak Um, yes, thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I certainly have followed this carefully and um Feel that it has it is more of a positive act than a negative one I think that there are some going to be some unintended consequences Some of them have been identified by developers more in specifically regarding parking maximums But that isn't what I want to address Um as you move forward after this gets passed because I believe it has support um, I want you to Go back and look at an issue that I brought forward And I really wish that there was a counselor who I served with by the name of alan gear Who was an attorney, but he also had um a disability and so he lived in a wheelchair um And was very active in the community and I think he could speak better to what I see as an omission Um in this ordinance I did go talk to bill ward about this too. So as you all know When you build housing, um, there's a certain percentage that have to be a da compliant And when you have that when parking is provided at the site There's a certain number of parking spaces that are associated that need to be created that are a da compliant My concern is if you're successful and I want this to be successful If you build housing downtown and I'm speaking to the mayor too. Who knows this? Um, and you don't have any parking Let's say you have a site that you can build For housing and you take up the entire site and there's no parking because you can lease parking elsewhere in the city That would be a win-win. That would work really well But what happens then is that the a da compliant units get created? But because there's no parking associated with the project There's no a da compliant parking and so people that need that parking Are left with options that don't work for them if if you have satellite parking I think it's unreasonable and unsafe to expect someone to go With in a wheelchair from a satellite site to where they live So as you move forward this will get established But I would like people to circle back and think about this issue. We talk about inclusion But I'm watching carefully the steps we're taking with elimination of parking on street and now this This uh proposal and I'm worried who we are excluding Everyone who is able physically able to get around who is youthful This it works for them. But if you have any disability or as you age There are limitations and I'm really worried that you're really Really zoning them out of this community And I felt I needed this to be in the record even though many of you heard me say this before Thank you so much Thank you so much Sharon uh Is there anyone online who wishes to speak uh during the public hearing? You can certainly just use the raise hand function and if there's anyone remaining in contoys who wishes to speak during the public hearing Um, please raise your hand or come forward Going once Yes Yes, councillor shannon. I just wondered if councillors should ask questions during the public hearing I've or hold that for the debate of the ordinance um Yeah, I don't I don't recall that that's usually been the time to have that so if we can wait until the agenda items that would be great Um, it doesn't appear there's anyone else who wishes to speak during the public hearing so we will close the public hearing at 9 15 and move on to our next item which is 8.04 in ordinance um comprehensive development ordinance parking minimum and maximum parking requirements and transportation demand management Which is z a 22 dash 0 7 i'll note that we have with us uh director of planning megan tuttle if there are questions that come up or um councillors just simply just simply want to get some input from uh director tuttle in the meantime will For this item. I will go to the chair of the ordinance committee Uh, councillor travers for a motion Thank you president paul I'd move to waive the reading and adopt the ordinance as amended and ask for the floor back upon a second okay Thank you councillor travers and seconded by councillor high tower councillor travers you have the floor back um and did you Just so i'm sure you have moved Uh, I've moved the underlying version Although as i'll explain in a moment there are some clerical edits that will move Okay, all right momentarily sure go ahead So thank you president paul as you can see on the agenda. This is our our fifth reading Uh of this ordinance uh over over many months here dating back to well before I joined the council This has been through uh multiple meetings of not only the ordinance committee. It's been before this full council It's also been before uh multiple meetings of the planning commission and and before diving into The substance of it all I think that there's a number of thanks that are warranted here Certainly thanks are owed to our former colleague on the council councillor hansen Who's been instrumental in moving this matter forward? I'd also like to thank my ward five predecessor on the ordinance committee councillor mason um councillors high tower and paul most recently on the ordinance committee We've also had contributions from a number of other colleagues here including councillors bergman and carpenter I'd also like to thank former councillor busher as well Among a number of others Also, of course, we have a director tuttle here Assistant city attorney sturdivant has been instrumental in putting this together And they're really fantastic dedicated staffs as always Have been essential towards our moving this forward As I just mentioned to you president paul, this is a nearly 30 page ordinance I seem to have a knack here of Inheriting in my role as the ordinance committee some some hefty lifts here And as a nearly 30 page ordinance There's continued to be some adjustments and some clerical edits some of those final minor clerical edits are reflected in A version that's posted to board docs with the title of final with amendment Ordinance and at this point in time I would Move to amend the ordinance to adopt that version the version on board docs of the parentheses final with amendment in its entirety Uh, thank you. Uh, thank you beat me to it councillor councillor bergman Um, so we have a we have a motion. We have a second. We will go go to that first Um, is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none Do you want to go back to that but you're moving that oh wait a minute actually, that's right Okay, so I was going to just ask for a point of information to not Councillor travers wanted to speak to the amended version you want to speak to those amendments. Yes Well, I can speak to the amendments if if uh, it would be an order for us to vote on the amended version for us to then Return to debate on the on the overall bill, right? I think that that would be an order but but By means of brief explanation here There were some edits necessary to some of the numbering particularly in the in the tdm section there was some necessity to align the Parking maximums table with some changes that have been made to our Use table particularly with respect to our condensing lodging into one category This amendment also adds some clarity in the tdm strategies around the availability of car share spaces There's another section of the ordinance that Demands car share spaces in larger developments and This amendment is designed to bring some further clarity around that Redundancy to a certain extent. Okay, so it appears as though most of these are technical housekeeping Types of things yes Okay, that's how I'd characterize it. Okay, so um Don't know that anyone really needs to debate that We can just simply Take that motion and vote on the on the motion so Um, if we could vote on that motion first and then we'll go to the underlying The underlying ordinance amendment All those in favor of the motion is made by Councillor traverson seconded by councillor bergman. Please say aye Aye Any opposed, please say no So we were that that motion passes. Uh, thank you Thank you so much for to everyone for the amount of work that I know has gone into Even those technical corrections. Um, councillor Travers, you have the floor back. Yeah, thank you president paul So a couple years ago prior to my joining the council the city acted to eliminate minimum parking requirements downtown You don't have to look far from city hall to see cranes now rising over new housing projects along pine street and south shamp Plain among other proposed development And these are projects that have taken advantage of our removing parking requirements The proposal now before the council will extend the elimination of minimum parking requirements city-wide And for those who I've heard express concern about what I view to be an extreme possibility of projects now being developed with zero parking I say that the elimination of parking requirements does not mean we are Eliminating parking Instead this forward-thinking move will allow projects more flexibility To build the parking their residents or their employees actually need as opposed as opposed to uniform minimum standards established by this council As stated in the language of the proposed ordinance Requirements for a minimum number of off-street parking spaces have been recognized as an impediment to building housing and other desired uses Inhibit the expansion of alternative transportation and transportation demand management And act as an instrument to overbuild parking and incentivize single occupancy automobile use As you've heard from many of the members of the public speaking in favor of this The proposed ordinance still includes transportation demand management or TDM provisions Designed to further limit dependency on single occupancy vehicles While promoting increased bus ridership, car share membership, cycling and other alternative modes of transportation As folks here will remember in november the council sent this measure back to the ordinance committee To focus specifically on these TDM provisions With the unanimous support of the ordinance committee We are presenting this amended version that steers us further in the direction of requiring TDM plans that are more flexible and tailored to the city's very development projects This amended version also addresses concerns We've heard from the city's affordable housing partners and provides a different TDM path for them Better suited to their projects and funding models This will support their future growth It'll support future affordable housing And i'm thrilled we recently received a joint letter from ever north cuts cathedral square and champlain housing trust voicing their approval of this measure Of course as with many of our ordinances there is always and will still be after we act tonight room for improvement We have director tuttle here And i know she can speak to the city's efforts on for example conducting a study That will offer additional suggestions For our TDM plans I look forward to the results of that study And i'm committed to our continuing to make progress on TDM even after we take initial steps tonight For tonight i'm excited about where we are I enthusiastically support this measure I think it's important to note that this is not An experimental measure we heard in public comment about some other communities that have taken this step, but You know for the for the sake of the record Culver city california rally north carolina Hartford connecticut Buffalo new york Ann Arbor michigan south bend indiana Minneapolis minnesota st paul minnesota berkeley california portland oregon fayetteville arkansas Extensive cross section there of america all communities that Over the last five years mostly Have acted to eliminate their minimum parking requirements And and and i would venture to guess and no in fact i don't have to guess That if you do a little googling on what the experience has been in these communities after eliminating minimum parking requirements You will find that their experience has been the development of a more vibrant downtown of a more walkable and bikeable city of a more sustainable community That's also meeting our climate goals so I believe in putting this measure through Uh, you know, we will still have the park. We will still have parking in this city It's just that we'll have the parking we need And we'll be meeting that goal and we'll be meeting that need in a way that better addresses our climate and sustainability goals And our ongoing housing crisis and hope to have the support of my colleagues this evening. Thank you president paul Thank you. Councillor travers and thank you as well for all of your work and on this as well to Councillor hightower who will speak next I can't resist speaking on this issue. Um, and so happy to have so many folks both in the room and online Come to support this issue. Um, wasn't expecting such an outpouring, but i'm so so grateful That you hear because advocacy matters so much and i won't reiterate all of the reasons and it was especially important I think to kind of hear all the reasons again Why we haven't put this on the table to talk about to begin with and so we heard those from you all I won't reiterate them Um, but as someone who also does not own a car And when I thought about buying one recently found out I couldn't afford it. Um, I empathize with all of those reasons I'm also grateful that we as a council voted this back into ordinance a couple weeks ago When we had a version at the end of last year that we thought may not pass Or would remove the TDM requirements from this ordinance, which I think would have been a mistake I'm really glad that today we have in front of us An ordinance that both eliminates some of those parking requirements, which places as we heard burdens on especially renters and less affluent homeowners Um, but also increases TDM, which is incredibly important to me um in celebration of some of the Um owner occupied of the owner occupied car We've really under invested in some of the alternative forms of transportation And I think it's really critical that as we take away some of that cost We put back some of that reinvestment so that we do have that equity Um, and I think for that reason I can't agree with any of the concerns that chair and busher raised Um, both an ordinance in here, um for moving requirements first and foremost supports are lowest income Um, neighbors the TDM and the investments then also supports our most vulnerable populations Um, I don't have all the statistics that I pulled up during ordinance committee, but Disproportionately by magnitudes folks of color and folks are definitely abled or just much much much much more likely to use public transportation systems And they are to use owner occupied vehicles and so To make investments into those and to make opportunities for those Not only supports those folks, but especially those folks who are on lower on the income sales of folks of color who are lower income Folks with disabilities who are lower income who don't have the means of finding alternative ways to move around The city and so and we also know from other countries and other cities that having a robust public transportation system Helps people age in place much better than any private car ownership model. Um that we could possibly have So I'm I know we're on a fifth reading, but i'm really glad we had so many opportunities to Um amend and refine this ordinance. I know there's still some work that we need to do Around some of the institutional transportation demand management and some accountability around that I know we had lots of comments around that especially from barbara barbara. Hedrick appreciate all of those. Um, and I think we made a few those but didn't really get into it, but just um really hope that this Passes today and looking forward to the changes that it will slowly it will be too slow We know but that'll slowly start to make in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor hightower. We'll go to council bergman and then to uh councilor shannon Well, I I want to thank this this council for Not killing the tdm Provisions last time and referring this back to allow us to To make this more flexible and responsive particularly to The the affordable housing people the results Are before us in the letter from those housing developers today And I think it's a tribute to the work that many of us did The ordinance committee in particular and I know that They were very very gracious and In listening and working with me The um the importance of Transportation demand management. I don't think can be overstated Because otherwise you've just got a market approach, which is eliminate all the parking and then everybody's going to figure out What's going to happen? I was just on north whenewski avenue Today where bike lanes are going in Going with dpw and business support people to give support to Businesses and try to get their input into making this thing work. And we came upon a An owner of a large parking lot And asked them what their Utilization was and they could not tell us This tdm Proposal that I hope we will adopt if not unanimously then close to it We'll begin the process of getting us to get annual surveys and other information out there This is not a perfect Program this is far from it and many of the things that I proposed did not make it into this But I wholeheartedly support Taking this second step to expand this from the multimodal to the rest of the city parking areas because it's going to Help us begin to build the infrastructure human and resource infrastructure to be able to move people around in a clear and systematic way as opposed to the chaos That exists right now so We've got a lot That needs to be done and I look forward to working With any of you and every one of you to build on what we've done to make this thing work I've been working with the uvm transportation research center So work on surveys and how we actually begin to use information Is something that we've got to do I I think we've got to do it before We get to Getting that report back. I think the time to be doing work On transportation across the board including transportation demand management is now And I look forward to the opportunity to to work with Any and all of you in building this this system and I sure hope that we can pass this as close to unanimously as we can. Thank you Thank you. Councillor Bergman. I will go to councillor shannon to be followed by councillor carpenter Thank you president paul As As some of you are aware I posted Recently on from porch forum to ask for constituent input about this proposal Because as I viewed it There are positives our parking ordinance desperately needs revision and I Was not convinced that this is the revision that we need it addresses some of the problems it creates other problems um And I genuinely wanted input from constituents I tried to assure that what I put out there Was Not it was not intended to sway opinion but to make people aware of some key aspects of the of the proposal And also I noted that the purpose of this was to increase The increased building of housing in burlington, which I think we broadly agree is needed In the process a constituents raised many concerns and I wonder if you would allow me to Ask some questions And I I'm not sure who should answer them the first question. I don't know if councillor Um travis would feel comfortable Traverse sorry Answering with respect to What you reported about other communities that have done this um, I supported eliminating the parking minimums downtown and That is because there was a lot of process around that a lot of analysis about the parking needs about a lot of strategy About how to better utilize our existing parking Other communities that have Really robust public transportation have really robust alternatives already Makes a lot of sense to me that they would they would successfully Eliminate parking requirements, but I'm wondering if there is any comparison among our What I'll call our sister cities college towns of similar size that have eliminated parking in their Um In their college districts, you know where where a lot of college students live What I see in our community is is many places not providing the needed parking which is Unfortunately, it is not limiting the number of vehicles, but rather It's causing a lot of stress in the neighborhoods as people Create parking spaces both on and off street that were not intended as such So I don't know if any of the list that you have references Similar college towns Thank you for the question councillor shannon I think that as you look at the list of other communities and by no means was List exhaustive You find communities of different size you find large municipalities. You find smaller municipalities You do find a number of other college towns in there. I mean just looking back on my list here Ann Arbor michigan home of the university of michigan Uh Is one of those communities that has eliminated parking minimums south bend indiana Home of uh, notar dame Is one of those communities that have Eliminated parking minimums. Raleigh north carolina has a number of colleges there as well who have eliminated parking minimums Dr. Total not to put you on the spot with respect to this necessarily one way or another But I don't know if you're able to speak to your awareness and experience of What other communities perhaps of of similar comparable Size and and makeup to burlington What their experiences have been with the elimination of parking minimums? Yeah, thank you. Um, I did look into this question after councillor shannon shared it with me this afternoon Both in terms of looking for just what I would call peer communities in terms of Approaches that they've taken to their parking policies Um as well as other communities that I would describe as being more rural in nature And so I think it sounds like Many of the communities that councillor traverse mentioned are ones that have been on our radar Of course in the headlines. We always hear of big cities that have robust or seemingly robust transit systems as being on the top of the list of places that are getting pressed for their parking reform Certainly places like san francisco Minneapolis are large cities that have completely eliminated minimum parking requirements for all uses in their cities But in scanning the the map of communities that have embraced parking reform I also found communities More close to home like dover new hampshire, uh, which is a community of 32 000 just over the border Um does not have any minimum parking requirements and does have parking maximums I can't speak to their experience with transit and dover Um, but even smaller communities that are sometimes termed as destination communities like Hudson new york and the catskills and serenac lake and the aterondacks Both are communities of only about 6 000 people that see a lot of tourism and visitors to their communities that have eliminated minimum requirements And I even found a community. Um kaiyumet michigan in the upper peninsula 600 people They have replaced their minimums with maximum. So I think we're seeing that this approach is being Embraced by communities of all sizes in all kinds of contexts and I I would add to the couple college communities that councilor traverse mentioned Cambridge Cambridge, Massachusetts just made the news in the last six months for eliminating minimum requirements citywide That's a little closer to home for us. Um I found a number of examples of communities where they may not have eliminated minimum citywide But did eliminate parking requirements in significant ways in some parts of their community So both champagne Illinois, which is the home of the University of Illinois and Eugene organ home of u of organ Have eliminated minimums both in their downtowns as well as in the districts surrounding their campuses They've also lowered the max the minimum parking limits in the rest of their cities as well And I also found an example Norman, Oklahoma a pretty small Otherwise rural community about a third of their population has Is college students and they have removed minimums for everything except for single family homes and fraternities So the type of multifamily scale and commercial developments that we are often talking about When we talk about the benefits of parking Eliminating minimums is the policy change that they've made as well Thank you That's helpful, but I wish that Um, we had done a comparison to better understand The granularity of these decisions and that is something that we did prior to eliminating Our parking requirements downtown. We did an excellent analysis of We did an inventory of the parking that we had and we came up with strategies to better utilize the the parking that we had We have not done that yet as we extend this beyond Our multi our multimodal transit district My concerns after hearing from I've posted twice actually i'm from porch forum and her from well over 100 constituents who are Who are the vast majority are are opposed to this at this time um We have uh several counselors at the table um met with immigrant parents at king street And their number one complaint was their lack of parking and the impact that that had on their lives um We have not heard support for this from developers who will build housing and that seems to be the driving force behind it That developers will build more housing because of this ordinance, but we haven't actually heard that I have heard I have heard concerns from developers about this as we all have The nonprofit developers who will build affordable housing in our community Did send a letter, but it was not in support of this ordinance The letter that they sent was in support of the change to the ordinance that exempted them from these requirements um I have heard concerns from uh, uh bike transportation expert um, who is concerned that If we eliminate all of the parking it's a big challenge to get bike lanes in this community There's a lot of pushback around that And while this person was supportive of eliminating parking in some cases Um, they did not feel that the blanket Policy was going to be the best policy because in areas where you're trying to put in bike lanes Especially there you need off-street parking so that you can take away the on-street parking and still offer people alternatives um Tenants all over the city are struggling to find parking Uh decoupling the parking from the from the cost of housing May reduce the cost of housing, but it doesn't reduce the cost of living 85 of our households in the city do own a car And as many of us are trying to reduce the miles that we drive with that car Because I think we are all concerned with climate change When we're not driving the car it is parked and it needs to have a place to park And I haven't seen any plan as to where where people will put them um I also want to raise some specific concerns about this ordinance The very first change in the ordinance seems to have escaped review by anyone I have asked who who reviewed it in committees um The ordinance We we currently have height bonuses for various things that we wanted to incentivize at the time that we created those bonuses Uh parking was one of the things that we saw as a public asset that we wanted to encourage And so we had a parking um a height bonus if A developer were to meet their minimum parking requirements as well as build either 10 more public parking Or 25 parking spaces, whichever is greater. They could get an additional um additional story In the waterfront public trust district That is an area that I don't know that we particularly We've been very um Concerned about the height in that area now if we want to just increase the height in the waterfront public trust district Then we should have that conversation But right now with the change in this ordinance We'll be allowing an extra story for a developer to do virtually nothing All they have to do is provide 25 public parking spaces, which can be used By the use that they are constructing And they will get the height bonus because the requirement which was much more Costly to build the minimum parking has been taken away, but the um height bonus remains um parking maximums Have both increased Meaningfully and decreased meaningfully Because there was a decision to round the base number Which is the parking rate like one space per unit when that got rounded when that is multiplied in some cases that um will Result in a parking Maximum that's equivalent to what the parking minimum used to be in other cases It will be expanded beyond what the previous maximums work But I don't know that that was Carefully reviewed. I'm concerned that there are no handicap parking requirements Um no handicap spaces that are required to be built um We're not just eliminating parking requirements for housing, but we're eliminating parking requirements for every other use as well Including lodging which can compete with uh residents Who have cars compete for the parking on the street Existing parking that was previously required by permit could be eliminated by this ordinance and I've heard many people say we're not eliminating parking But in fact, yes, we may be eliminating parking people will no longer be required to maintain the parking that they have I really would have liked to I I know that has been a lot of time and there has been a lot of meetings and there has Been a lot of effort, but there still has not been the rigorous process That that should precede a decision like this Um, and I realize I'm probably the only person at this table who's going to vote against this ordinance But I think at the very least having heard from a vast majority of my constituents their opposition to this I think they at least deserve a voice here um Tenants will still have to find parking And this will increase their their costs the tdm requirements have been watered down to appease developers But that makes them nearly worthless I'm not hearing support Um from those with expertise in tdm either We've heard a lot of concerns. In fact, uh That this will be um This isn't going to really expand alternatives Developers will be able to to choose the cheapest alternative that's not necessarily very meaningful I've heard from over 100 residents on this issue Listen and listen to their reasoning and their arguments on all sides I've heard from Experts from progressives from renters and home home owners I've even heard many of us heard from bruce cypher Um prior to prior to his death he weighed in on this strongly opposed to this ordinance We're just at the brink of starting our transportation demand management study. We should revisit this When that is complete and we learn more about how to effectively offer alternatives that address the transportation needs Um of our community I and many others could be persuaded to eliminate parking minimums But we should not be eliminating parking minimums both past and present without a plan We need to reform our parking ordinance. We need to have a plan for where people park cars Analyze the costs or come up with plan to get them out of their cars, which we do not have No parking and diminished public transit, which we heard tonight Is not a plan for getting people to work to doctors offices and to daycare Low-income families and workers will be the most negatively impacted by this policy. Thank you Thank you councillor shannon. We'll go to councillor carpenter Thanks, um, I want to um, again, thank all the folks and especially, um councillor traverse on on the work they did with this and I am fully supportive I just wanted to make two specific comments. Um former councillor busher rates the issue of Folks needing handicapped access um The answer to that is the issues council high tower and bergman brought up which is we need more specialized transportation That is absolutely a gap in this community. Um I work as you know for many years advocating for this most and many of Um The folks I know that are not as able Do take the bus and they need better transportation. They don't own vehicles Um, and unfortunately won't ever own a vehicle So a parking space is not the benefit that they're going to get there are other answers and we need we need to work on that And that should not be um An issue not to not to support this. Um, I just thought of a side comment. I am someone who remembers Um council gear he was the attorney for us at heineberg housing and he helped us fight to get at the time Chittenden county transportation to be willing to swing down two blocks to heineberg housing and run the bus through it I mean, there's a ton of answers that we can do and this is not going to harm that The other thing I wanted to weigh in a little bit isn't I am no longer an affordable housing developer but um the letter that you receive from my former colleagues was speaking specifically To some administrative issues around administering the tdm And I'm very happy that we were able to accommodate them Most of their clientele Have free bus passes have supports. They do do tenant education and that They were asking for relief from that and I'm glad we were able to accommodate them In my development years We never wanted to add more spaces than we needed to they cost a lot of money and in this day and age with Planning as it should be where you have to do structured parking. I mean, that's a 25,000 dollar Or more probably these days. I haven't done it. Um add So you never want to add more than you need Especially in a city like berlington where you don't have gravel lots. You don't have an inexpensive way to do it So, um, you know, I I recognize that some of the developers Perhaps on the market side have more issue with maximums, but I've never heard that on the minimum side Uh, thank you counselor carpenter. Um, we'll go to counselor barlow and then to the uh, the mayor and Hopefully then we can maybe go to a vote counselor barlow. Uh, thank you president paul. I'll be brief. Um, I'll be supporting this tonight I would have rather that we decoupled the parking question from the tdm question and Take the tdm issue up after the citywide tdm study is completed about a year from now But I realized that a lot of work's gone into this We said we're on our fifth reading and it's not realistic to decouple these things tonight Um, so if this passes I I recognize that we'll probably be back here in a year or so talking about tdm again Um I am happy there have been some improvements to the tdm side to address some of the concerns from the affordable housing providers And based on their letter, they're satisfied with these And lastly, I'll just say I understand and I do share the concern about eliminating parking minimums because you know, I We all are by nature Multimodal many of us are anyways. Um, and when we aren't using our car, we need to place the park it But I do see this as a way to It's a tool By eliminating the parking minimums. It's a tool we can use to create more density and we know that our housing crisis Um, you know is severe with the vacancy rate we have and in the need for housing in the city So I I sort of see it as a trade-off And that's and that's why I'm supporting this tonight. So thank you Okay Did you want to go before the mayor? Mayor Weinberg and then we'll come back to councillor jang Yes Okay Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Thank you president paul I mean, I think I heard here some comments that I feel like were not completely accurate And especially about a meeting that was held at king street center It is important to make it accurate that those women what they were talking about is More available parking when they're picking up or dropping up their kids I think to make it very clear and they talked about many other different issues that are not related also wanting to say Rest in peace bruce cypher And thank you to his contribution to the greatness of the city This is a public hearing I heard from my concert here in sion is no longer enough I think we need to rally them and bring them here and speak to the council in order for us to make an informative vote And their thoughts and perspective are taking into account I want to also thank everyone for showing up, especially the young people of this city and speaking up in support of this I will be supporting this tonight. Thank you president. Thank you. Mr. Mayor Thank you so much councilor jang. We'll go to the mayor and then Hopefully go to a vote mayor Weinberger Thank you president paul appreciate the chance to Make the administration's position clear on this and and Make clear my strong support for This action tonight as well as to raise A couple points, which I think we may have to grapple with as we go forward together So I think I misspoke earlier when I said that we brought forward a attempt to eliminate parking minimum citywide in 2012 I actually think it was in 2014 earlier 2015 after we held a parking summit in mid 2014 Where this was one of the major strategies talked about and and discussed and I think this one of the things we talked about back then was that unnecessary parking can easily raise the cost of housing 20 or 30 percent And that's a that's a huge number when we are In the community that is so housing pressured and which has such Affordability challenges as as we do. I think this is a very significant action that we're doing tonight I appreciate councillors travers's point that we are starting to see the benefits now as we speak We've now I've never seen so many cranes in the city as you can see Right now and some of that is definitely tied to the changes we've made in the downtown And I hope this leads to a similar support for infill development Citywide not in the downtown or transportation quarters, but citywide There I don't think the concerns that have been raised I think councillor The concerns that are raised that this may in some places in the city result over time Incrementally eventually in greater park hurt parking challenges in certain parts of the city is is is true There will be greater greater challenges and that will Potentially that will But what I am I guess what I'm confident of is that we have the tools as individual households as neighborhoods as a city to respond To those site specific challenges as they as they come up We have the ability to put in we have a residential parking Regime quite robust regime that as new neighborhoods face additional parking challenges can be used to Address elements of that individual households and property owners Have the ability both to take steps to make their lifestyles less dependent on cars as we And is is more possible today than it's ever been with the many different ways that a car light lifestyle is now possible And but when the pressures get too great and different and changes need to be made to the on-street Requirements such as has been talked about around king street greater loading areas. Those are the kind of changes that we can make as well when Really we must have more permanent Parking we can look at off-street solutions Private structures Hopefully we are headed towards a period where that's going to be needed less and less But my point is there are lots of options available to households and communities if and when Parking pressures evolve. So I think this is really significant. I'll be enthusiastically signing this if it gets to my desk Um, I would have been a lot less enthusiastic at signing earlier versions of this because the other elements of this plan I think are not nearly so grounded in precedent or analysis and good policy as the parking minimum policy change is And we may have to grapple with that further in the future There have been serious concerns raised about the way in which the parking maximums have been set which Uh, I appreciate how hard Council traverse and colleagues have worked to address the concerns as they've come up late in the process We may not have adequately fully done that and that may be something we need to address further Similarly, no one should think that by this passage tonight um, the tdm the all That demand management is getting a a a major boost with um, this uh This alone we are going to have to work a lot more on transportation demand management But we we'll do that the right way going forward grounded in this innovative cutting edge area with The best thinking best practices for around the country in looking broader than simply imposing a new burden on new construction That can have a project killing impact. We will be looking brought more broadly at how we actually create a new transportation systems that actually serve the people of burlington Uh, and also allow much needed housing to get built Thank you, mayor Weinberger Uh, it appears that we may be ready for a vote The motion on the floor is to waive the reading and adopt the ordinance as amended All those in favor of the motion, please say aye Any opposed, please say no Uh, let the record reflect that councillor shannon has voted no on this ordinance. The motion passes 10 to 1 um, thank you so much to The many councillors who worked very hard on this and also thank you so much director tuttle for For all the work that you have put into this over. I don't even know how many years but a lot Thank you very very much We will move on to item 8.05 Thank you. We will move on to item 8.05, which is our next ordinance a comprehensive development ordinance on public art z a 22-09 Uh, councillor travers, we would read can I return to you for a motion on this? Sure, I'll move to waive the reading and adopt the ordinance. I'm going to ask for the floor back upon a second Okay, motion is made by councillor travers seconded by councillor hightower councillor travers. You have the floor back Thank you, president paul very briefly here This is a much shorter ordinance than what we just discussed there and it's for the purpose of clarifying That public art installed on private property Does not require a zoning permit. It sets forth some pretty basic standards here that Folks can can go forth and and display their public art as long as it's safe as long as it doesn't obstruct Paths as long as it's not discriminatory or hateful or or damage historic materials Some pretty basic standards in there absent that folks can display their public art without a zoning permit And that's the purpose here Thank you. Thanks for that brief overview. Um, are there any councillors who wish to speak to this ordinance? Seeing none The motion on the floor is to waive the reading and adopt the ordinance as amended All those in favor of the motion, please say aye Any opposed, please say no That motion passes unanimously Which brings us to item 8.06 The burlington school district regarding the update to the city council on their annual school budget and for this presentation, we have finance director nathan lavery chair of the school Commission clear wool and superintendent tom flanagan We've allotted 30 minutes from this item Does not mean that you need to take it but we have allotted that and I hope that you'll be able to take us through your presentation in the first 10 to 15 minutes and then allow questions for the council One thing I did want to mention for the benefit of the public that The school department's budget is approved and goes to the voters from the school commission Who has the authority to bring their budget directly to the voters? We have this annual presentation to inform the council But it is for our informational purposes As we do not vote to approve the school budget Just wanted to make that clear so people don't think that we are voting on your budget They the voters get to vote on your budget. So with that Don't know who wants to lead off, but the floor is yours. Great. Thank you so much for having us council president paul Mr. Mayor, it looks like he's stepped out for a moment and City council is great to see you all this evening again. Thank you for having us We do have a presentation. You all have access to that. It's linked in board docks I don't know if it'd be best to post it or if we just should roll through Did you want did you want us to go through the power point or do you have that with you or So if you all are looking on it's okay with me If we kind of walk through or we can post either way I mean we have we have the power point. I'm just wondering if you wanted to Do you want it up on the screen or do you do you want to be able to share your screen? Nathan to be able to do that or I'm not sure what you would like So we will just make it so that you can share your screen Or perhaps Catherine. Do you want to do that or Okay, um, so tonight, uh, what we'll what we'll do is as president paul mentioned we will Present to you the budget. We'll spend about 10 minutes Maybe 12 minutes talking through and if you want to set the timer for me, Nate and uh, we'll then Open it up for for questions. I'll I'll be leading the presentation executive our executive director of operations and finance Nathan Leverie is here to add any To take a few slides and to be able to be able to answer questions as well as our chair Clearable so here we are We're gonna start off the budgetary With budgetary assumptions talk about enrollment the way enrollment plays into the to the budget Talk about our equitable budgeting process And the baseline staffing allocations Talk about the rise funding which is a part of our annual funding Process that I'll get into in more detail The fund balance the tax variables and the timelines for next steps so The budgetary assumptions Are essentially that most bargaining agreements are settled in the range of six percent And wages and benefits and the high school Are the big pieces of this budget and the high school Is starting to factor into our budget proposal In this up in fy 24 health insurance premiums Are estimated to increase by 12 percent so significant increases to wages to benefits And then it's important to know that our American rescue plan funds Which we've called esser funds or recovery funds Here we're calling them esser funds those funding that funding stream goes away after next After next school year So that we still have the funding for next school year beyond that it goes away We've been careful not to add very many positions in there because as you know It's very hard to pull back positions Once they've been Once they've been given and we want to be we've always wanted to be careful about that But there are some positions in there Specifically our restorative specialists And so those three things are playing into our decision making here There's a slide that goes through our enrollment history. It's just important to know what our enrollment looks like and over time and We've been seeing a kind of a steady decline in enrollment not huge declines in enrollment Our our enrollment is still robust. Generally our schools are still Full we've been backfilling what you're not seeing here with pre-k classrooms So we've been able to balance some enrollment decline at the elementary school k5 With pre-k we now have pre-k in every one of our elementary schools, which was a huge step that we've taken in the past two years and we essentially have there's a specific definition for universal pre-k But we essentially have a universal pre-k in that everyone who would like Or all we don't have any open Everyone who wants pre-k has access to pre-k at this point So we're very proud of that and excited about about that You can see the bhs high school enrollment middle school enrollment relatively stable But generally there's been there's been somewhat of a kind of steady decline in enrollment and that's important important because enrollment Our enrollment matches our staffing Right and those two things are aligned and so if the enrollment is going in in A downward trend then it's important that our staffing match that and so you're going to see some of that tonight Two years ago, um if we go to the next slide we we began the process of building an equitable budgeting model that Ensured that schools got Robust base Allocation of staffing and then on top of that that they received an allocation that Incorporated our weighted Pupil funding Which was not approved by the state at that point but now is approved by the state So we use the specific waiting. We're excited about that too a specific waiting for that rise allocation Which stands for recognizing injustice and seeking equity and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes When we developed that model we did it with significant input from our community We heard from four over 450 students family member staff and community You can kind of see who we heard from under the community survey slide there We got a we were really really very pleased by the feedback we got and and the amount of feedback and and the Feedback that represented Really represented our city. So we were very excited about that back when we did this in 2020 2021 And the community survey told us a number of things the thing that really stands out to us On the next slide there is that 72 of all respondents Including 79 of bsd staff strongly agree or agree that resources should be allocated In a way that supports the students who need them most Even if it means reducing the resources at their schools. So it shows that our community similar to Um the the percentage that that voted for bhsbtc Um in the 70s in the mid 70s mid to high 70s is saying that Uh resources should go where the where the need is and so that's the been a part of our process in our budgeting Um, you the next slide shows what they prioritized you can see what uh what people prioritized again This is back in 2020 2021 And we'll skip ahead to the proposed model, uh, which I mentioned earlier And that proposed model has those three Things that I mentioned earlier, which is a solid baseline staffing model that provides each school with its core staffing and using a staff to staff to student ratios And so those staff to student ratios are about 17 or 18 to one Um, which is a really robust staffing model and and we um and also A staffing model that is um that reflects that we also need to be conscious of Of the impact of our school budget taxpayers. So really trying to strike that balance. We know that Um, we we need to be really uh conscientious in staffing Our buildings in that way. It also our staffing model includes Psychologists at all of our schools school psychologists at all of our schools school counselors social workers at all of our schools school counselors at all of our schools And interventionists Special educators el teachers are the full kind of component of of staffing that you would expect in a school That is really a robust staffing model Based on other models that we've looked at and national and state Um standards for for staffing. So we feel good about the staffing baseline staffing model On top of that there's non personnel funds. So those funds support the basic operations of the school They tend to roll over each year. They tend um to fund Inc and paper and you know the basics that you could imagine a school may need each year And then on top of that we created an equity allocation that is what I mentioned earlier That this is the rise allocation and it is based on the weighted student formula And schools have discretion over how they spend and and budget and spend those funds and each school has a school advisory group That meets to determine how to best utilize those funds those funds range from about a hundred thousand dollars At at some schools at a couple schools to In the four hundred thousand dollar range at other schools And again, it's based on size of school and also individual needs of students And so that's that was a big part of the equitable budgeting strategy. That's sort of taking you back a few years We're in our second year of implementing that equitable budgeting model And it's a process because we want to make sure that we're not kind of sending shock waves through the system as we get the baseline to a consistent in a consistent place And that we are Yeah, so that that really is a is a process and we're also learning from that process as we go This school year Is that We're running long executive director lavery tells me we're running long I'm gonna move fast the board guidance this year. Um, you can see up there It's really recognizing our staffing levels need to be responsive to enrollment changes limit budget growth to because of the increases in wages and benefits and depending bhs btc costs To ensure Funding for our strategic plan objectives. We do have a strategic plan that we co-created with our community that We've set aside funding over the past two years to meet and to continue to offer robust programmatic offerings Our community has told us clearly that That they want to make sure that there are The that the programming is robust whether it be in the arts or in world languages And or in intervention in in sort of all ranges of the of the model and to consider multi-year impacts of changes So we're not just looking at enrollment one year to the next. We're not thinking about this from one year to the next We're thinking about this over the the long term The next one is staffing staffing allocations And uh, I think I talked through that already. So I'll skip that slide To get to the summary of the anticipated staffing changes. And so what you see here are the totals Um, which is and these may shift slightly We met with the school board last week and we'll be meeting with the school board again next week And um, the school board will be making a decision on the budget recommendation Next week and at that point we developed the ballot language and it it goes out So these may shift slightly, but we're really working hard to stay disciplined to the the equitable budgeting model Um and and to utilize that to help us make decisions So that is what you'll see here the addition of 4.2 fte's Total reductions of 10 individual fte's. So the net reduction Of full-time employees is 5.8 percent 5.8 full-time employees With natural attrition and we know very specifically in a couple of our schools already that there are There are natural Places for individual staff to land Even within the the school building and in some places within the grade level And that's partially why we take this staged approach. So we're not negatively impacting individual humans As we as we make these changes so natural attrition will will Help kind of ease that at our school levels So we we are going through we do go through each of the schools I'll move through those really quickly. We have kind of simple enrollment based changes at two schools Those are Champlain and Smith where you may have a class that has 22 Students in a certain grade level and they currently have three teachers in that grade level. They only need two And so we we make reductions when that happens. That's something that we've we've always done and But none of these are ever easy as you can imagine Because it's hard to it's hard to take away And so there's there's always we always want to do that carefully The the next slide speaks to bhs and edmunds elementary school These are kind of reallocations Based on enrollment and so you can see a reduction of two fte's at the high school But we're we are moving the high school to the staffing model that the rest of the of the district has Which includes two fte instructional coaches We're still in conversation about about that in the coaching model The the next page you can see iaa and flin these are two situations that Are are carryovers from unique budgeting decisions that were made by previous principles under previous administrations And have sort of carried forward in that transition as we also work to get our staffing levels organized and coherent At iaa we are we are We are planning to reduce one fte Which is a unified arts position iaa has 1.0 Has a full-time arts integration coach And they have a 0.5 instructional coach Similar to sustainability academy, which is the other magnet school that school has one sustainability coach And iaa has one arts coach at a certain point back a number of years ago iaa was With what part had found Funding grant funding and had raised funds to bring on a drama teacher part-time that position In in the last year of the previous administration was created as a Uh a full-time position But it was a limited term contract because this was never a Intended to be but from the district's perspective a long-term position. We're proposing that that position Um no longer be funded through the through the baseline but funding allocation But could be funded through rise allocation funding if the school chooses that that's a position that they should school community chooses That's a position they should continue to keep Uh similarly similarly i'll at flin there's a stem position there. That's a in a carry-over position um and and um is is not a position like other positions in our elementary school so it's it creates inconsistency across the elementary schools And um the the next couple of slides i'm just going to keep moving through those two because I think those are are um I want to be kind of mindful of time here And we'll get we get down to the rise allocation Again, which I don't think we'll need to go through and then i'll ask Nathan to talk about the audit and the tax rates and get to the the specific dollars. We're talking about in this budget Quick update uh on so our audit is actually just about at the finish line, which uh exciting and also this information there that contributes to the city's audit, so Is a certain amount of value in us being completed But part of what our audit shows also is the money that we have left over to support. Thank you the um The budget that we're building right now So that's money that we don't need to raise from taxpayers by virtue of having some of that money left over And we continue to use some of that it's one-time money, but it helps support the budget as well as Also some of that money goes toward the uh the new high school So i'll skip ahead. There's a slide that defines that the tax variables But i'm going to go right to the the number slide and what they show There's four key variables those who have seen these presentations before know that in terms of district management We really only control one of those. That's the spending variable the first one on the list There equalize pupil count that number is going down about three and a half percent that um has the effect of putting upward pressure on tax rates The homestead dollar yield increase has the effect of putting downward pressure on tax rates And the common level of appraisal change puts upward pressure on tax rates So you can see these variables can move in different directions and they can have different um pressure on on tax rates the next slide shows the estimated impact of Calculating all those variables for a hypothetical property payer and a hypothetical income payer the Current estimate we have is that the property tax rate Would increase about four point nine percent um that again these numbers are not final we expect to go back and and kind of um look for other opportunities to mitigate some of that increase, but you can see that that Would produce an estimated annual impact on this hypothetical payer of around $252 a year and we do a similar calculation for um for the income payer below And the next slide we again reiterate um some of the Factors that are really driving the increase, but the point that I wanted to linger on for a moment here is um and really I would say Hopefully uh make clear to you folks, so I'm sure you'll get some questions from your constituents about this is that Of our projected tax rate increase and again it may change and what will finalize the numbers when when the board has made The final decision, but about um 2.75 percent or so percentage points of that 4.91 percent increase Is the impact of beginning to assume some of the debt service associated with the high school so another way to think about The budget increase is that um less than half of that increase is actually associated with the Impact of the spending decisions that we're making on all the other variables as well It was all the other variables that you know that impact that we don't control But the point is the high school coming online That's driving a little more than half of the projected tax rate increase that we expect to put on the ballot Yeah, and so looking ahead um There's a lot of unknown looking ahead We are again in the last year next year of the esser funds of the american rescue plan funding We also are in in fiscal year 25. The state will start to implement their new weights We look to benefit significantly from the new weights and as we discussed in the process of The school bond uh our bhs btc 2025 bond We discussed utilizing some of that for the bond And also some of that to improve services Um, and so uh, we're we're anticipating that there's also another another Variable in play, which is the special education block grant. So the state is changing the way they're funding um special education at at this time as well And we are we are um in in many ways We can do we can do some projecting here Um, but we're there's there are a lot of unknowns as we head into Next fiscal year And so we are really working to be as conservative as we can this year not adding any major new initiatives In in this budget and working to make reductions where we think it's it's feasible And so that's the that's that's the strategy and uh next steps. We've got the city council Obviously we're with you tonight school board meeting on the 17th and town meeting day on the 7th Um, thank you so much. Um For your presentation will The floor is open for questions and comments from the council councilor hightower to be followed by councilor bergman Brant and barlow Um, sounds like a painful process. Thanks for walking us through it and doing that work. Um, I'm going to kind of start at the beginning with the assumptions, which is the reduction in enrollment Sorry if I just missed it But what we think is driving that k through five enrollment and then just wanted to double check because for the high school and middle school the 2019 numbers weren't actually lower than the 20 whatever the first year was 2015 um and so if Again, not understanding what's doing the k through five if we think that reduction is permanent or just due to cova And we expected to bounce back so Yeah, there's there are a couple things happening at the same time. So I appreciate you asking asking that question and you're right It's a hard. It is it is a challenging process And we're really trying to take that make it happen over a number of years There are two things happening one you can see that the k five enrollment has gone down and um, and then you can see that the the secondary enrollment is staying relatively flat ups and downs we and so we're we're both We're both staffing the staffing at the elementary levels Has been a lot clearer over the past number of years because you staff A certain number one school counselor one principal right and then The number of teachers you need for the number of students at that class at that at that class the secondary staffing is much more complicated and so And it has to do with the the efficiencies you can create in scheduling It has to do with Just a lot they have to do with a lot of variables So one of the things we're doing here is working to make sure that there's consistency Across schools in the baseline allocation And in some places there over the past there there isn't consistency There's an additional position at SA there's an at ia. There's an additional position At flin there are you know some sort of extra positions that have been added here and there Over the years and then they just carry forward And so what we're trying to do is get that Copper get get that so that it's consistent Across in the baseline that big chunk at the bottom And then the rise allocation allows schools to make decisions About what they feel like their school community needs needs the most To best serve their their students. So those those are the two things that are happening The elementary decline is We are seeing in a couple in a couple of places, but we are still seeing really robust Levels of enrollment in in a number of our schools. We don't have lots of empty classrooms in our schools We have we have kind of decent sized classrooms. We've been able to add the the pre-k classrooms So our schools are are are still very healthy the elementary schools And I I hope that you know once people I think there are a number of factors that are that are leading to sort of that decline general decline and enrollment Over the past 10 years that we should be we should be thinking about pretty seriously as a district in as a city, but That's the trend great and then sorry just one more just trying to understand Are there just alternatives more in the k through five like how are we seeing that much of a decrease without it affecting the middle school? And then I have one more question, but I'll just leave that Yeah, so I think we we do have students coming and going throughout the the school year and I think that it it It shows that there's some level of Desire to be in the the middle schools And in the in the high school over the years that has kept we there is school choice That's a kind of a small number that that plays into these numbers But yeah, I'm not exactly sure why we see that level of decline at the elementary school yet And and why we're not seeing it at the at the high school Okay, and then my second question was around The the bar graph that you showed in terms of like what people's priorities were the number one was like teacher Retention and things like that and so just like this is I don't really need an answer to this. I guess it's more of just a philosophical question around how these staffing cuts are going to impact that retention and folks like Morale and wanting just like I guess and If you feel like that first statement that you made or one of the statements that you made around people being like Make the cuts that we need to make regardless for like the health of the school district if that Is kind of feeding into that and people actually feel fine about that or if it's going to be a big kind of culture problem for us in a couple years Um, I think that anytime you propose reductions it causes stress In the in the system and so we need to acknowledge that recognize that and that's why Last year we we found savings in In tightening up some of the operational parts of the district We're at the point now where we're really working to tighten up the baseline And so I think to me it's very logical what we're doing And if people see that staffing is in is aligned to enrollment and that When we make shifts in staffing or reductions in staffing we do it in a really thoughtful way That in every way possible works to keep our employees in our district That that there is a way to do it and that sort of reduces The anxiety that comes that it is natural when there are reductions But we do have a you know a couple of cases last year where we had we reduced a classroom at a school and A couple of teachers who were did not end up staying at that school Move to other schools in the district and are doing really well in those in those schools So that can and does happen. We do have really great staff. We have amazing educators in our district better than I've seen in in other districts that I've been in and While we have work to improve, you know always each of us We have really great educators. This is not about Individual people right but it does impact individual people and so we want to do Everything we can to keep all of the into all of the great educators that we have So I think it's a hard question to answer. I know you said you don't necessarily mean the answer But it's it causes it has an impact and I think it's it's the responsible and logical thing for us to do To make sure that our our enrollment is matching Our staffing is matching our enrollment Thank you Thank you. Councillor hightower. We'll go to councillor bergman, then brant and then barlow Well, well you you missed a very compelling couple of presentations by Some kids from my neighborhood school I'm going to keep calling it asia wheeler, but just to show my age But the arts academy and you know, it it's striking when I look at the community survey And I see up there Very, you know Significant number of people talking about providing high quality special programs such as art music and world languages as being a high priority, so The the question I have for you is how are you going to Keep the drama program at IAA if you're going to be cutting that That teacher Yeah, so the It's important to note that the IAA The drama teacher was was not a part of the original design of the magnet Understood it was funded through grant funds originally part time became full time And currently is a limited term contract, which means it's like it's not a full time educator position in our district and The the idea of integrated arts is in is that the arts are integrated into day-to-day instruction there's an arts coach there to be able to provide that and There are skilled educators there who can also Provide that level of support and integrate art drama Into into their day-to-day work that is takes Skill and is not easy and IAA would like to keep this position Or many of the people that we are hearing from from integrated arts academy But that's part of the of the of the of the process here because And and we've built in for that right with the rise allocation We've allowed school communities to make decisions About the level of programming that they feel they most need So they may say actually we can make do with with the drama piece of our program With our in another way through through partnerships. We have robust partnerships Or we or we need that All right, and so that's a decision that the school community can still make but what we're saying here Clearly is that it's not a part of the base funding That was ever envisioned for the school And that's that's the hard that's the hard part So I appreciate that I think that the message that I take from those presentations Is that um, they need to understand parents kids and those school Administrators and teachers need to understand that there is a path forward that they can make it happen that the department The district is going to support them that the board is going to support them in that It's not just throwing them to the wolves and say good luck out there And here's a stick go whack that wolf when you when you see it, but that you actually can help them Work through that and I would ask that you do that Because this is like the poorest even though it's a magnet school and it brings kids from all over this This neighborhood's the poorest in in the city You know wide spread and those kids really Need to have this and the magnet school has been great for this community and We need to keep as full a range of arts there. So don't leave them out there all We agree with that. I mean the we were at the pto meet was at the pto meeting tonight with principal shite and the truly the magnet schools are Are impressive I have I have not really seen in the two cities that I've worked in Desegregation efforts that have led to schools being desegregated in a way that they have in in brollington And the level and the robust kind of offerings there are are legitimate and Families want those schools and for good reason My kids are at a different school and that's a great school too, but you know, we have we have six great elementary schools honestly, and I think it's important to note that The our school communities Look a lot more alike than they did years ago, and so a lot of a lot of times people will go back to That thinking that ia is the school that has a high level of need and that's not necessarily the case anymore and so But that's neither here nor there all of our schools have needs and all of our schools need robust and great Programming and all of our schools. It's our goal is to get that for all of our schools Including So I hear a commitment to help them Beat off the wolves and then make this happen. So thank you Thank you. Councillor Bergman. We will go to councillor brant To be followed by barlow carpenter and jang And uh, yes, thank you Superintendent, I just wanted to say that your Outstanding leadership during the pandemic made a huge difference for So many families and so many children And I I think it really helped So many faculty members too Staff burnout is a real problem And your leadership was just amazing and I witnessed it firsthand um and Chairwoman will as well, you know in the school board. So so much has been going on With the high school as well But having that kind of stable Leadership was enormously positive for the entire community I my children did start out at ia and I strongly suggest keeping a drama position Um But the schools are thriving the kids are doing well and I do think we really need to make sure that the faculty Has resources for mental health You know help with maybe paras that move from classroom to classroom to prevent Burnout, which is very real. Thank you Thank you, councillor brant. We will go to councillor barlow Thank you, president paul. I have an easy question to start with I didn't hear exactly what you said But what does rye is stand for? recognizing injustice and seeking equity. Okay, thank you. Um the um You had you answered one of my questions, which was around the percentage of the increase that was actually part of the Increased debt service that'll come as part of the high school project and that that's in line with what was projected when um You did the um You had the impact statements that you circulated prior to the bond vote Yeah, yes, that's it. That's right. And you know, we relied on a lot of the same assumptions. Um, so Give or take it's threatened the same ballpark But it's important to understand that The other variables in the equation Change that right it's still spending that subject to the the impacts of all those other variables in the equation Right. No, I know I understand that But I just wanted to make sure we're still on track with the right um, you know The right amount of debt services it comes online as as it was modeled when it was discussed with voters prior to the bond And the other question related to that is are the borrowing costs still within the estimates you used to create the tax impacts Back during the bond vote. Yeah, I mean presumably you're talking about kind of that interest rate environment and so forth And that's something that I've had conversations Certainly with with rich goodwin Who I'm sure you all know and and so forth. And I think There's no doubt that kind of interest Rate levels generally have increased from when we started projecting those costs That But there are other factors as well that may that may impact including That may impact how How we proceed with the borrowing including considering going for a longer term You may recall that we modeled a 20 year Bond at the time which seemed when we started most favorable I'd say the pendulum has swung in in a sense and that I think if if rich were here too I'll speak for him But I I know the last time I spoke with rich. He said 30 years probably makes more sense now And and we'll have that Discussion again when we get to the point of of doing that the first Kind of tier of borrowing. We won't actually be borrowing making that kind of long-term commitment We'll probably be making a a one-year commitment and then a year later converting it. Um, but in any event so Uh, there are other opportunities as well in terms of how the bonds are priced To potentially reduce the amount of borrowing that we need to do It says say the amount of actual The cities That is incurred so More to come on that. I think rising rates Generally speaking aren't good But we're not at a point now where we're concerned that there's going to be a significant change in the projected costs Okay, thank you. That's all I have Great. Thank you. Uh, councillor barlow. We'll go to councillor carpenter to be followed by councillor jang Thanks. Um, these are just sort of two requests and you may already do this, but Um, I was interested in your enrollment figures and I was interested superintendent flan again of your comment about schools being more Um, integrated It would be really interesting and helpful if you could Maybe work with cito and provide us some down at the school level Demographic information who who goes to the schools? Where do they come from? You know, what do you know about them just to sort of Understand who's in our neighborhood schools and Where the where they're coming from? So I just that's sort of that's an ask if you could Yeah, do that the other ask is and I mentioned this after, um reappraisal And I'll give it to the CAO shout as well I really hope we can the home homestead credit is a black box to me And it probably is to you as well um, but Is it time for us to be pushing this state to relook at those formulas? And I don't have an answer to that um I recollect something like a four hundred thousand dollar cap on a home Is part of the black box should that be higher? You know, so I'm just um again a request that We spend a little legislative time figuring out if the homestead credit formula is Where it ought to be for a city like brook Uh, yeah, I um, I just wanted to the first question point out on our website If you have the chance to look at it under the district overview tab There's actually a a demographic kind of Little spreadsheet pasted in there that you can look at and just you know to the to the earlier point by superintendent integrated arts academy for example as 60 percent students of the global majority which Is the same as edmunds elementary school? And there's other interesting tidbits in there, but we also we also create a school Score not school snapshot. Excuse me not a scorecard snapshot every year for each school that gives You know a little kind of picture of the school on a on one page And we can send that we can send that around to you Thanks Thank you. Councillor carpenter. Uh, we'll go to councillor jang Thank you president and thank you for the presentation for being here I noticed that the burlington school district budget presentations used to be very detailed And I noticed over the past two three years things have just been very general and no enough information for any of us And I don't know why Maybe need uh, dr. Nathan you can explain sure. Yeah So we've continued to publish a lot of that same detailed information And you can find for example the stuff that's completed for last year all in our on our budget website We have tried to kind of streamline and focus our some of our presentations here And and the ones that we've given at our At our board meetings and so forth and part of that is to kind of You know some of the feedback we heard was like there's so much here We can't kind of separate the wheat from the chaff and so we've tried to really call out the significant changes So that they can be well understood and debated And the other thing that I think is is helping in a sense in that respect is When we publish some of that information about our our budget model So we don't kind of publish that in every single presentation It's kind of foundational and it's out there kind of separate So we have we have been changing some of the way we document some of that information And also something else that's continued to evolve is moving more of it into our our annual report We used to produce a big standalone budget document And while I like to think that people really enjoyed it I think most people didn't even know it existed didn't even realize existed and Really looked more to the annual report for that type of information So we're trying to kind of meet people where they're at and make sure that the information is he's in the right place Okay, wonderful. And I think my second question you answered it from the council carpenter's question But you know, maybe the annual report also if I don't know do you come here present it to this council or No No, we don't we don't put that the animal I just used to know I don't know anymore I have no idea what's going on But can you also explain a little bit if there is a mechanism of funding the schools Of funding the school basically we're talking about the school budget in general But of this budget, which percentage is going to IAA to hunt To somewhere else and also are there correlation with funding a school and also the academic performance of the students Good question We can Do that math I think the important thing I would say about the way we built our budget model is We had as as the superintendent mentioned the kind of foundational staffing levels Those are built more on ratios. So one principle per elementary school is an example, right? Um In practice, of course, you can have the same number of staff who for reasons of longevity Or perhaps the benefits uh packages they pick they actually have very different costs for the same number of staff So there are budget models in this country some particularly in larger used by much much larger communities where they Allocate just the dollars to their school and they have to go and figure out how many people they can afford in each position And so forth We don't do that We kind of use a hybrid approach where the foundational level just provides a number of bodies So we can you know, we we do have the total of what those Costs and we can produce it kind of like here's how much we spend at each school But I would say we're not trying to make that number the same We're trying to offer each school a foundational level of staffing that we know is Well more than adequate, but you know kind of preserves the the the basics that we commit to providing each school And then offer that rise allocation On top of it that provides extra Opportunity for schools to invest it in a way that is unique to their school community and that is purely dollars from kind of the district's perspective that then they They decide how they want to spend it And there was a cost saving of nearly two million dollars that you talked about here Was it due to ARPA money that you received or yeah, that that was there that that The balance from the prior fiscal year that we can bring forward You know, it's I was always tempting to attribute to one specific thing or not It's always and you know, we have a hundred million dollar budget. It's a combination of All those little things that go on some of which Inevitably is the ability to use other dollars and kind of preserve our own dollars where that's appropriate and available to us We try to do that, but it's also simple things like Staffing shortages mean that we can't fill all the positions that maybe we had intended to fill Right and so at the end of the day, there's there's things like that as well Is just the general frugality of if we don't need to spend money on something That's in someone's budget and it doesn't get spent, you know, whether that's a decision made by a department or school Or it could be anyone Yep And the last question It seems that the four percent increase budget increase would be around 200. How did he say it? Yeah, that was about I think 250 or so on that hypothetical 370 thought thousand dollar okay, but which medium household have you have you use? 300,000 270,000 307,000. Thank you. Thank you. No more questions Great, thank you. Thanks councillor jang Seeing no other comments from my colleagues will close out this agenda item Thank you so much to business manager lavery chair wool and superintendent flanagan for your presentation and for your time this evening Thank you The next item on oh before we get to the next item on our agenda, I will go to councillor hightower Uh, I moved to suspend the rules to complete our deliberative agenda Uh, our motion has been made to suspend our rules to continue with item 6.8.07 0809 and 8.10. Is there a second to that seconded by councillor shannon Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none all those in favor of the motion to suspend our rules to complete our deliberative agenda, please say I I any opposed, please say no We will move on to the next item, which is 8.07 an authorization to accept grant funds For the operation of the elmwood emergency shelter and for this item. I will go to councillor mcgee for a motion Thank you president paul. I would move that we Approve the acceptance of grant funds in the amount of 638 147 dollars from the state of vermont housing and opportunities program For the operations of the elmwood elmwood emergency shelter community and authorize the director of the community in economic development office To execute all documents necessary to accept the funding For the period through june 30 2023 Including retroactive approval for the period from october 1st 2022 to present subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office Thank you for that motion councillor mcgee seconded by councillor carpenter Councillor mcgee, did you want the floor back after on that? I don't need the floor back. I would just ask for a brief update from the director pine and If we could get an update also as to the timeline of the opening of the shelter community great Council director. I was going to say councillor pine director pine. The floor is yours. Thank you the record is brian pine director of the community and economic development office the Schedule for this project obviously we all would rather Have it open when the winter or even before the winter started our original plan was to have it up and running in the summer and then We had some delays due to our permitting process and that took an extra couple of months And we've had a series of delays due to supply chain and labor force challenges at the factory where they're being made in main As I explained at the board of finance the state of Maine has extremely Strict rules about when these extra wide loads can travel You're not allowed to travel on mondays or fridays or when there's precipitation or on either side of a holiday So we're not in a great season for those if you put all those variables on the table They got stuck last week and couldn't couldn't make the haul. So fortunately the What we call the common building which is the building that houses service providers It's where folks will meet with Therapists and and counselors and housing navigators food will be provided there. It's a it's a really good size structure It's think of it as like a double-wide home really the size of it However, the bathrooms aren't a separate building that has yet to arrive The common building has been A double-wide has been essentially what they call married together So you take two parts put them together and that's been that was done today actually So we're making some good progress and Really hope that the bathhouse arrives in the this week the coming days and if it does We'll be on target because it takes about 10 days or so to get everything sort of set and and ready to operate. So we're looking at, you know Opening by the end of the month is is really what we're At this point unless something happens to the bathhouse from south paris main to berlington vermont, which i'm hoping won't We should be in In good order for things the staffing levels Shipline housing trust has hired all the staff our parks and recreation waterfront department hired an onsite Person who will manage it somewhat like the staff person who manages city hall park In terms of all the issues you need to to maintain a public space like that And you know, it'll be exciting there will be the solar will be installed Of course after the building has arrived that doesn't do well if you travel with it on the highway Those panels have not been installed, but That's where the the timing is again I think there were some folks in the community who felt like the city was somehow Cavalierly saying it's going to be delayed until january. Believe me. This is something our staff has been Working diligently and feels horrible that it has taken this long. So We know that people are struggling and some are really suffering as a result and and we hope that The end is is close Great. Thank you director pine. Are there count? Are there counselors who have any questions or comments about this agenda item? Either to director To direct to director pine or the administration All right seeing none. We have a motion on the floor to approve the acceptance of grant funds From the state of vermont housing and opportunities program for the operation of the elmwood emergency shelter All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Hi Any opposed? Please say no That motion passes unanimously and thank you to all Your your staff and many other city departments who have worked tirelessly on this important project That will bring us to our next item, which is item 8.08 a resolution burlington police commissions appreciation of the burlington police department's efforts on gun related events We have a number of cosponsors for this resolution many thanks to all For a motion on this resolution. I'll turn to councillor shannon I'll move to adopt the resolution and just to be clear It's the resolution marked revised And asked for the floor back after a second. Great. Thank you. Uh motion has been made and seconded by Um, councillor councillor brant The floor is yours councillor shannon Thank you, president paul and thank you for your work in bringing this forward and I also specifically note the addition of councillors travers barlow bergman carpenter McGee and brant as co-sponsors. Thank you to all of you In 2022 burlington sadly lost a record breaking five community members to murder But proudly due to the exemplary work of the fine men and women of the burlington police department Working both on the scene of the crimes and through their investigative efforts afterwards And with innovative partnerships were able to apprehend the alleged perpetrators in all five of these crimes In the best of times when we have had 50 more sworn officers than the department has today Having just a single murder has put a huge strain on our police department To resolve all of these heinous crimes so quickly with such depleted resources was has been heroic The burlington police commission rightly passed a resolution to honor the excellent work of our police department This council with the passage of this resolution Echoes the sentiment expressed by the by the police commission and offers our own thanks and congratulations to all those involved and I would like to Read the motion for the record sure That whereas the following resolution was adopted by unanimous vote of the burlington police commission at its december 20th 22 meeting Now therefore be it resolved that the burlington police commission applauds the intensive and unrelenting Investigatory efforts of all members of the burlington police department in solving and bringing to justice Those allegedly responsible for many of the recent gun related events and resulting deaths The department initiated coordinated and deployed a creative and effective new multi-party collaboration That expanded its resources and responsiveness during a spare time for the department These successful operations involved the coordinated expertise and resources of the newly formed chitinning county gun violence task force This team includes eight local departments six federal partners and four state agencies While the increase in gun related crime and resultant deaths are mirrored by the rise in illegal gun use nationally The diligent work of the burlington police department is an important step toward decreasing gun violence and making burlington safer for its community members And police and be a further resolve that the burlington police commission Sincerely thanks all of the burlington police department for their efforts and excellent work Be resolved And this is our Our council now speaking in this resolution Be resolved the burlington city council wishes to memorialize the passing of said resolution By the burlington police commission and shares in the gratitude and recognition of the police commission And the good work of the burlington police department If you see an officer, please thank them Thank you. Thank you. Thanks councillor shannon. Um, the floor is open for questions or comments from the council on this resolution councillor jane Thank you president poll and I wanted to ask if the people the criminals That were caught and brought to justice have all Pleaded guilty. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that. Who knows the answers I don't know. Is there anyone here who might know the answer to that? Or is that something that we can get you that information? I don't know that I don't know I think Okay, you don't know no problem. Then let me go to the next question and it is um That I don't think even that this resolution is necessary It's not necessary Because they are doing their jobs This is what they hired to do to Catch criminals and put them behind bars And also they failed To prevent these crimes from happening That is from my perspective the commission have done a good job In in in putting this resolution forward But I do believe that the city council have been supporting the police for very long time and this did not start today This resolution also failed to name publicly the officers that were assigned to those cases We need to write their names because they have done The diligence whatever they needed to put it as a priority and cut the criminals I'll be supporting this resolution But I refuse to put my name as a sponsor and I want to thank the commissioners for doing this because it is about time For them and the police to start to build relationships People are hurting here Everywhere in the city has become a war zone, especially our downtown And we we pointing the fingers at each other and I think this is a Good resolution between the police commission And the police officers to come together and and and work on behalf of of of of the residents of burning them The police did not prevent any of these Deaf and all of these deaf if you look at it It's a people of color This is concerning. I think it's not time for us to to celebrate Until the justice system also do their part in putting those people behind bar I'll be supporting it, but I'm not going to be a sponsor. Thank you Thank you councillor jing. Are there other councillors who wish to Comment on the resolution before us Before we go to a vote Seeing no other councillors in the queue will go to that vote Um The motion before us is to waive the reading or actually we didn't waive the reading We did do the reading and adopt the resolution all those in favor of the motion. Please say I I any opposed, please say no The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much to all That will get us to the next item on our deliberative agenda, which is item 8.09 Uh a resolution implementation of a carbon pollution Impact fee for new construction and large existing commercial and industrial buildings 50 000 square feet or larger This resolution is sponsored by the transportation energy and utilities committee and for a motion i'll turn to the chair councillor barlow Thank you president paul. I moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and i'll ask for the floor back after a second Thank you for that motion councillor barlow seconded by councillor bergman councillor barlow the floor is yours. Thank you. Um This resolution is asking for town meeting day ballot language to implement a carbon impact fee starting in 2024 for building heating systems and 2026 for hot water systems Excuse me our net zero energy roadmap has identified emissions from buildings as the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the city And the council asked bed to research and recommend a policy to address that This impact fee proposal is the work product of their recommendation The proposed impact fee is somewhat narrow in scope It would apply to new construction and future permitting for Existing large commercial and industrial buildings larger than 50 000 square feet Of which there are about 80 in the city. I'm told And the impact fee would not apply to existing residential buildings or smaller commercial or industry industrial buildings It is worth noting that existing commercial buildings subject to this impact fee Could opt to use the fee for efficiency in greenhouse gas reducing projects in their building A draft of this resolution was referred to tuc by the council for review And we recommended two changes that have been incorporated into the resolution you have before you The first change sets a maximum starting price rather than a fixed starting price for carbon This will allow us to set our pricing consistent with other neighboring municipalities Like south brollington have recently implemented renewable energy systems policy And consistent with any resulting state policy that comes out of the affordable heat standard being considered again this session The second change to recommended was for more clearly articulating in the ballot language Who would be affected by the proposed fee? BED general manager darin springer has been patiently waiting for us to come to this item And he's here to answer questions and I'd welcome any additional Comments he would like to make before opening it up to other counselors Thank you councilor barlow. Good evening counselors I just wanted to note that my colleagues gen green chris burns are on the zoom as well as My colleagues at the department of permitting and inspections bill warden patty wayman We were pleased to work with toke to adopt those changes and advance the resolution back and Be glad to answer any questions if if there are any and otherwise we very much appreciate counsel's work on this Thank you direct. Thank you general manager springer and counselor barlow for that introduction counselor bergman I just want to say that I wholeheartedly support what we're doing now, but this is Something that we heard tonight related to the definition in the ordinance on renewables And the the biomass question Is a global question that is being raised On every continent and We need to be looking More critically at the definitions that we have in the ordinance that is not a reason To not go forward today and my colleagues in the from the floor May be disappointed when I say that because I do believe not only that We should put this before the voters, but we should pass it, but I do think that We should be relooking at the definition and Either through the toke of which I personally think would be a good place for us to do that or and Maybe in collaboration with ordinance committee to to do that We cannot avoid this question. It's of paramount importance that we do So, thank you Thank you. Counsel bergman. Are there other counselors who have their questions of general managers springer or Comments on the resolution Seeing oh, I'm sorry counselor travers I just have a question and Darren you may have answered it when we last got together on this, but I I do have a question about sort of the definition of a renewable fuel and you know, I know vermont gas for example already blends some renewable fuel into their supply and then there's other options by which Through the purchase of I may not be using the right term here, you know credits or what have you that you can Sort of check the box that you're using a renewable fuel And I guess I'm wondering if you can provide some insight on you know for those customers that install a system That's relying on vermont gas um Do they in sort of your eyes with respect to this ordinance become a project that's relying on a renewable fuel by Purchasing those credits or or what's the threshold with respect to that that that's the one sort of specific question I have here. No, absolutely So I think we have a couple of reference points one is the renewable heating ordinance that the council adopted last year Which does include a variety of resources electricity, geothermal heat pump type sources Includes uh, wood heating includes renewable fuels including biodiesel and renewable natural gas In our memo, we recommended a few changes to the Renewable fuels piece in terms of how the compliance would work But I think that we have confidence in Renewable fuel if it's being regulated by the public utility commission and I've I've looked Councillor Barlow referenced the clean heat standard. I think it's called the affordable heating act now the new legislation that was introduced in the senate at the state level And our definitions in burlington are pretty consistent with the definitions that are being considered statewide they include all the different electric options they include advanced wood heating And they include renewable natural gas As well provided that the attributes the credits that you just mentioned are being retained by the customer So I think there are a variety of pathways to ensure that we're getting a renewable fuel Our recommendation is to be as flexible within those pathways as possible So we're not overly prescriptive in terms of which building Is using which technology as long as it's renewable and we can account for it Thanks councillor travers, uh, we'll go to the mayor. Thank you president paul This is a really exciting I think an important action that we're on the cusp of making here It's coming at the end of a long night where we've talked about a lot of different things and we've talked about this item before and And I you know, I just think there's a possibility that kind of the significance about what we're about to do here could get lost And you know and the conversation so far has really been focused on this one Important but small, you know small component of what we're trying to do here and I just Want to make sure that the members of the public that are watching the media that's watching Fully understand that if this Council passes this item tonight and that it goes to the voters and the voters endorse us taking this step We will be taking environmental leadership actions here at the local level in bronyton that Very few other cities in the country are are attempting to do This will have the passage of this is another major step towards this vision of a net zero energy city that essentially We are trying to Get as close as we can and entirely if possible Take ourselves off of the burning of fossil fuels by the end of this decade This is a critical step in getting us there And then it's even more than that because you know what almost every economist serious scientist Will tell you is that we are to meet our climate goals We need carbon pricing. We need carbon pricing in partnership with Very significant subsidies and incentives and encouragements to move towards electrification and towards renewables That's exactly what we're trying to do here in bronyton this step Combines both those things this actually putting a price on carbon for new construction for major buildings For public buildings combines that with everything else that darin and his team is doing day in and day out to make sure That bronytonians are able to take advantage of major state Local and now federal subsidies and we're going to be talking more about that later this week about Exactly how bronytonians can take advantage so But what you always hear about carbon pricing is that it can't be done can't be done in america can't be done It's too politically Challenging and thus, you know, many people have really turned away from the possibility of a properly pricing carbon We're making a serious and significant attempt to do that here I hope the council will pass it tonight and when we do it It's the fact that we can make it work here in bronyton will be noticed and we'll have an impact far beyond Just our borders Thank you. Mayor wineburger councilor freeman Oh, I just wanted to add quickly and I think I've spoken to this before but I just felt like it was being glossed over a bit Is that I am supporting This item, but um by all means carbon pricing is like extremely controversial It's controversial on the left. There are just people who It's this is not I wouldn't say that this issue is like my extensive wheelhouse, but like I know enough of the of the debate in the conversation to say that to To make a generalization that like every economist is supporting this is just fundamentally not true and we can um I think we can Debate it and and talk about the pros and cons in a healthy way and And not gloss over the fact that there may be many people at this table who support it There may be many people who feel like it is economically sound or it is the next It is a very important step in climate policy, but It's simply just not so um black and white there And I think the main critique that is often Leverages that it it creates this sort of individualistic Context for the way that we solve Climate issues As opposed to looking at larger systems and larger scales I I'm not speaking to this specifically, but I think carbon pricing in general That is I think a legitimate legitimate critique and I just don't want to Gloss over it completely in the conversation because it's worthwhile to have those conversations But I will be supporting this so just adding that Thank you councillor freeman Seeing no other counselors in the queue We will go to a vote the motion before us is to waive the reading and adopt the resolution All those in favor of the motion, please say I All right, any opposed, please say no The motion passes unanimously. Thank you, and thank you general manager springer for being here Particularly at this late hour. Thank you and for all your work into all of the others that are joining us Be a zoom The last item on our deliberative agenda and with it the last item for this meeting It was item 7.08. It is now 8.10 human resources director market factor adjustment This item was discussed at tonight's board of finance meeting And was removed from the consent agenda to be discussed at our council meeting I will go to councillor hightower For a motion on this item I moved to authorize and approve the reclassification of the position of hr director consistent with a market factor compensation range of 119 531 dollars 247 233 dollars Thank you councillor hightower seconded by councillor Traverse Did you want the floor back? I'll just quickly say appreciate the discussion that happened in board of finance, which I partially missed because I was on the bus here but I think there's I think a desire to Um, or at least I'm going to speak for myself. So I think that I think there's we've done a lot of adjustments Recently, I think in accordance with what we're seeing in the labor market Um, I think making that consistent across different directors is what we've started to see and I hope that we also do that for some of the non director positions so that we're doing consistent market rate Um, adjustments and especially I know we still have some pending for the city attorney's office So just in the spirit of fairness that this isn't just happening at the highest levels But that we're really doing this for everyone at the city level Thank you councillor hightower. Uh, I would open the uh, the floor for comments or questions from other councillors Uh, councillor jang Yep. Um, thank you president Paul I mean, I do think it is important to do the studies before we make these adjustments And I think that's what the administration have done. Uh, they commissioned a study and the study itself And the memo they do not go together They do not there is no much and from my perspective. I am not against Compensating greatly city staff that are doing amazing job And I think the memo really stated that these reasoning the reasoning behind this specific one Was because of the bargaining's participation in bargaining And if you think about it, we use a consultant that will lead our bargaining efforts That's one and those bargaining do not take place on a yearly basis It's almost four years depending on which which one we're talking about Also, it is very important for us to commission this But also to put it into perspective and into into a timeline This specific one is concerning to me because we're talking about retroactive pay of October to now Soon soon we will be talking about the city budget again And we are expecting in each one of those again to Provide a salary increase for the city staff Because of three percent or six percent or seven whatever it is I think we need to be very Deligent and proactive and put things into timeline and try to put them into the perspective of our city budget We are in 2022 and soon we will be talking about the 2024 budget Let's make these studies and then put them in that so that the council can vote Can vote and then we try to move forward I will not be supporting this And especially other ones that are becoming soon will not be supporting them as well. Thank you Thank you. Councillor Jang will go to councillor Freeman. Thank you president ball I was on the fence on this. Um, I think that I've spoken Well, I don't know how long ago it was in the it must have been a while ago about executive pay and my concerns about it I understand that we're looking at Several positions across the city I just there's something that just really doesn't sit right with me about it And I I think I've spoken about it before I The minimum wage is still way too low for city workers It should be probably at least $22 an hour if not 25 at this point It's it's still extremely low. And I think we continue to prioritize expanding budgets are sorry salary for people who are at the middle or at the top in the city and Are really leaving out people who are at the Bottom of the pay hierarchy and tend to do a lot of the grunt work for the city and it just doesn't feel right for me I know that it's a it's more complicated and I would I think Voting yes or no on this doesn't change the sort of structure that we have for how we Create city pay structure and that I think would just In my opinion should be Changed I just I'm not sure if voting yes or no on this really makes a difference for that, but I I am gonna vote now So, thank you Thank you. Councillor Freeman. Uh, are there any uh, Councillor Bergman? um, I have Traditionally Voted against uh increasing executive pay. I've said that pretty clearly. Um, I'm gonna I I am making an exception tonight And I do that for Two basic reasons. I look at the amount of change That we're proposing and it is actually pretty minimal and That's important to me. It's Not a a huge increase that we're trying to do and the second thing relates to the expansion of the um The responsibilities that the hr director has got and it's not just around the union negotiations and management although Negotiations happen, um Every three years the the administration Of a contract happens every day So that happens, um Yes, much more significantly than every three years you've got a new uh payroll division that's under The hr director that that's not insignificant and I can tell you as a A former employee a long time employee of the city of burlington the importance of payroll In doing its job and running effectively and efficiently is really important So, um There are a number of other Roles that we have expanded the hr directors um Work and as a member of the hr committee. I I I've been impressed with director derpy and These are the reasons why my Usual position on this is is changing. Thank you Thank you council bergman. We'll go to councillor carpenter Thanks, I just actually want to concur with councillor bergman and my Time on the hr committee when we had no director to the expansion Of what is happening now is is really been impressive And we we clearly have to acknowledge that and i'm sure c. A. O. Shad would would support that as well Since she had to do that. So I think it's just really important to understand How that department has been crafted and I think it's really important that we set our compensation Competitive with other governmental salaries that they're not doing a private sector Review as other governmental salaries And these are tough positions to fill having had to do it myself And we want to keep good staff within the governmental pay range and we can you know, I I think councillor freeman has a valid point about You know executive salaries versus minimum wage, but nonetheless, I think we have to have a competitive Um Range to attract good folks to our city Thank you councillor carpenter Councillor jane, did you want me to come back to you? Yes, yes, okay Yeah, I mean, I think councillor carpenter has made a point Comparable to all the government salaries and when you talk about government salaries You need to also talk about what type of government you're talking about Is it federal government because the Report if you have read it, you will know that even the report is not recommending To make this it is just he made a Market factor and it just it now depends to the city council I think reading this into this are we talking about city government? We talking about federal government or state government? I think there the There is a level of unclarity Into into the memo and also into the study here And I just call everyone here to pay a particular attention as we move forward because city funds We need to be a little bit progressive as we move forward Thank you. Thank you councillor jane seeing Oh council. I'm sorry mayor Weinberger Thank you president ball and um, thank you to the board of finance for uh on a Split vote, but a strong vote supporting this Action, I think was a three was a three to one vote and I'm hopeful We're going to take this important action tonight and I'm grateful for that. It's an important employee step I do I as were As the memo states and This is not the last time we're going to have this conversation in that it has been 13 years Approaching 14 years since the last time a department head compensation study was completed. It was completed in 2009 It was implemented between 2010 and 2012 for all positions the Since then for a variety of reasons a whole host of reasons More than half of the department head Positions have there's been some further adjustment to to the compensation. I think it has gotten to the point where For the department heads where there has been no review Since 2009 we are are increasingly in an inequitable situation And we are putting ourselves at a disadvantage when those positions become vacant Slowing down the time in which we'll be able to fill those positions as we've experienced together multiple times in in recent years so We will be conducting a review for the remaining positions that i've not been reviewed since 2009 and This this issue will be coming back to you and and given that I feel need to respond to this notion I I have a challenge with The term executive pay being used to Uh describe what our department heads The salaries that they make the executive pay rightly has become a major challenge and flashpoint serious controversy in this country because of the outrageous levels of compensation that many private sector CEOs Are earning and and are earning You know despite all sorts of analysis suggesting that it's it's not good for the company got not good for the economy Just it's not these are unjust salaries to These are individuals who are making hundreds of times of multiples of Other people and in their company to take that issue and map it on to the city situation where We go through great strides to make sure that we do uplift our lowest paid workers No one gets paid. No one gets paid a minimum wage here in the and that is an employee of the the city of burlington We pay a livable wage, which is way above the minimum wage We've put great attention on The the whole organization and getting compensation, right? We've just come through a period of making major adjustments with union salaries We need to make proper attention to department head level salaries as well if we want to continue to attract high-skill effective people in in these positions and to suggest that they are getting grossly Disproportionate salaries just doesn't conform with the pay scale that we have here in the city of burlington. So Thank you for the opportunity to weigh in on that present Paul Uh, thank you. Thanks, mayor Weinberger Seeing no other counselors in the queue We'll go to a vote on this The motion before us is to authorize and Approve the reclassification of the position of hr director consistent with the market factor compensation All those in favor of the motion, please say I All those opposed, please say no No Thank you the um, they'll let the record reflect that there are Two no votes those coming from counselors freemen and councillor jeng the motion passes 92 Thank you. This completes our deliberative agenda and per the motion to suspend our rules I would entertain a motion to adjourn our meeting Made by councillor mcgee and seconded by Anybody want to second it seconded by councillor travers All those in favor of any discussion None not seeing any We'll make Go to a vote all those in favor of the motion to adjourn. Please say I I any opposed, please say no that motion passes and we are adjourned at 11 30 Our next meeting is january 23rd 2023 and we'll look forward to seeing you then. Thank you