 All right, we're gonna start. We have a packed agenda and I'd like to welcome you to the January 10th. I think it's the 10th meeting of the Ward 1 NPA and As usual, we're gonna start our meeting by introducing ourselves and I'll start my name's Tom Darenthal I'm a member of the steering committee. I'll be your host tonight and we're gonna start back here with I'm Tim Doherty. I live on Colonial Square. I'm Hannah King and I live on King Street. Rob Gutman and I live on North Lane Street. I'm Troy Hedrick. I live on Billy DuCord and I also am one of the reps for January 15th and this Ward in the State House. Richard Hilliard, High Grove Court, Ward 1. In this lot. In this lot. All right, Louis Pervis, North Willard Street. I'm Catherine Vermehan. I live on North Street. I'll be all well. I live on North Prospect. I'm Angie Chaposokal. I live on North Prospect Street and I would like to invite all of you to have a piece of cake celebrating Jonathan's birthday today. The cake is full of fruity water. It's a cake, so I'll just say it. You're pretty good to write you five. I'm Jonathan Chaposokal. I live on North Prospect Street. Apparently it's my birthday and I'm on the steering committee. Thank you. I'm Ethan Fleming with the University of Vermont Student Government Association. Good evening. Jeff Hand, resident of Ward 1, live on Henry Street and I'm a candidate for the City Council race here in Ward 1. Hi, I'm Carol Livingston. I'm on the steering committee. I live on Calarco Court. Hi, I'm Chris Asley. I live on College Street Ward 3. I'm on the Ward 3 steering committee and I'm here tonight to hear the MOU presentation between the UVM and the City of Burlington. Thank you. Hi, I'm Gary Golden. I live over on Calarco Court and I'm the East District School Board Commissioner. Hi there. I'm Carter Newbeaser. I'm over on Riverside Avenue. I'm running for City Council for Ward 1 as well and I'm on the MPA steering committee. Hi, I'm Brian Pine. I'm the director of the Community and Economic Development Office here tonight to discuss the MOU with the Ward 1 MPA. Brett Bowden from Brooks Avenue. Linda Bowden from Brooks Avenue. Sharon Busher, East Avenue. Samantha Ayotte, member of the steering committee and member of the Old East End and live on Chase Street. Joel Collada on 20 Chase Street, also part of the Old East End. Alright, did we miss anybody in the room? I think we missed that woman over here. Colleen Siren from the District. It's a little different. It's like, it's a little different. And do we have any special guests? Do we not know? Yeah, yeah. Oh, we do have some people. About six. I just got a text from Dave Bowden that says they don't have audio. They cannot hear us? I guess. You've got a message saying there's no audio. Alright, there's people online, but I can't see their names yet. Let me go over here and then I can read it. I guess you need to use my phone too. Alright, Sophie, you want to introduce yourself? We cannot hear her. She's muted too. Can you hear us now? Yes. We can't hear you at all. Can you hear us? We can hear you. Lisa, keep talking. Can you see us? I hate to. Jack, they should be able to hear now. Alright, Sophie, can you hear me? No, no, we can't hear them yet. Alright, well, they should be able to hear us. And we cannot hear them. Are they all on mute? It's a straight. Okay, Cerell, you're next. You're on, Cerell. I've done that. So, yeah, I'm Cerell, I'm off of East Avenue and I don't want to spread any germs. So that's why I'm at a distance. Okay. Christine. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Am I just introducing yourself? Yeah, introduce yourself. I am Hugh. I'm the director of the Richard Kemp Center. Okay. I'm the director of the Richard Kemp Center. I'm the director of the Richard Kemp Center. I'm David Kemp Center. Um, Dave. He's, he's on mute. Hold back. Dave Collie, 40 Nash place. Part of the old East end. And I can see you and hear you. All right, thanks. Uh, Greg. Yes, hi, Greg Hancock. Henry street. I just dialed in and was having trouble with audio, Is that PJ who's on view? Yeah. Hi. This is Paula Gallo and I'm on North Street. Okay. Um, and then we have another person. Is that Winston? Okay. All right. All right. Hopefully I haven't missed anybody. Did anybody walk in? You have a Karen. Bestie. Karen Bestie at the very top. Hi, everybody. I'm Karen Bestie and I'm an interloper from Ward five. And I also work for the UVM Medical Center and was hoping to make an announcement when there was time. So hi, everybody. Okay. Okay. Well, welcome to our meeting and we're going to go right to announcement. So if you have an announcement, we do have one right here. Yes. So Gary golden again with the school board. Um, we haven't finalized our budget. So there was really not a way to speak tonight. Um, we last night was our pen ultimate. I've always wanted to use that word accurately and finally the opportunity meeting. We have we're in the ballpark of a figure. As you've probably heard from the news, the common level assessment numbers just came out. They're killing us. They're just killing us, but we're in better shape than almost any other district in the county. So because of the other issue. So what you're going to be hearing from me is we'll vote next. Back up the superintendent and our board chair will be presenting to the city council Tuesday night right afterwards. We will the board will meet and vote on the number. It's because it was mentioned last night open session. It's around 14% increase. Um, Burlington is looking at south burdens looking at 18. So we're affected by the bond. That was our choice, you know, 72% locally voted for that a year ago. Um, but it's coming, you know, we have $10 million of bond servicing to do this year. Um, and then the CLA is happening. So that's the brief news. What my plan is, um, over the next few weeks is to write, um, pretty, it's relatively extensive front porch forum post, and there'll be links from that post to all the different terms that are out there in the state budgeting process that no one understands if you haven't been apart. And I'm basically walking through this with you because a lot of this is new to me as well. Um, and then my plan is also to brief our two, uh, candidates for city council within the next couple of weeks, uh, so they'll know what they're going to be hearing from, um, for people as they're canvassing. And then the next meeting, I'll, everything will be final. I'll be able to present and answer questions. Uh, it won't be enough time at that meeting. So I'll also plan to do some zoom meetings and people can also, uh, reach out to me and we'll set a time to talk and I can send you documents that have been generated. So that's where we are currently and look forward to talking more extensively in a month. Am I unmuted? Oh, I think I am. Okay. So, um, hi again. Um, so I wanted to let you all know that, um, UVM Medical Center is preparing to renew its nearly 25 year old land use MOU and that, um, we held a, uh, an informational session with neighbors last week that was very helpful to us and we're going to be holding a second informational session on February 7th from 5 30 to 7 at UVM Medical Center. And I'll be putting this information on front porch forum a few times and in the calendar, but wanted to make sure that you all knew that if you'd like to have the opportunity for an in depth conversation or participation in that process, that would be a good meeting to attend. And, um, Jonathan, thank you for confirming today, um, that we will have also some time at the ward one, um, MPA meeting, um, next month. Um, and I plan to be there in person. I'm not with you all in person tonight because like, Sarah, I didn't want to, um, expose you all to my cold. So thank you all. And I hope to see you at one or both of those meetings. Any other announcements? Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I have two announcements that I want to let folks know. One is about the, uh, the Burlington Winooski Bridge project. There will be another public meeting coming up on Tuesday, January 23rd. That's going to be held at the Winooski High School at the Performing Arts Center. And that meeting will go from 6.30 to 8.30. So they have a couple of, uh, some, some designs I think that they want to share about the, uh, alternatives they're looking at for the placement of the bridge. And it's also going to be talking about the, um, what happens when the bridge is, uh, shut down and how will traffic be re-rooted. So I think those will be two of the topics that they'll be talking about. The other announcement I wanted to make was that, uh, in the old East End, we're going to be having our fourth annual Winter Lude celebration. Uh, this is at Shemanska Park, where we, uh, offer, uh, snowshoeing, sledding, cross-country skiing. There'll be music, uh, Sambu Tukata, and the brass balligan will be playing. And we'll also have refreshments. There'll be, uh, cider donuts, hot chocolate, as well as chili. So we have a lot of festivity going on there. It's going to take place on Friday evening, uh, February 2nd from 5 to 7 p.m. And it's also on Saturday, February 3rd from 11 to 3 p.m. Of course, uh, we are waiting. We're hoping the weather is going to cooperate with us, but we'll keep our fingers crossed. We've had good results for the past three years. And, uh, just want to let folks know that this is, uh, this event is being sponsored by the, uh, Gronington Parks and Rec, uh, AARP Vermont, and UVM Office of Student and Community Relations. So we hope you can come out and, and join us for some fun in the wintertime. Thanks, Dave. I don't see any more hands up on the screen. And so, Jonathan, do you want to or not? Let's just keep going. Okay. Thank you. Um, all right. We're moving ahead to a presentation on the Richard Kemp Center. Christine, I think you're online. You've got the floor. I am. I am. And I'm wondering if it's possible for me to, okay, joining as a panel. Okay. Okay. Here I am. I'm clapping. Yes. Is everybody able to see that? Yes. Okay. My next question is, I think I can figure out how to advance it. So, thanks for having me here and, um, giving me some time to talk about the Richard Kemp Center. Our center is, our mission is expanding programs and services that support Black Vermonters' wellness, preserves culture, um, supports our youth and advancing racial equity and justice. Um, and it, and the Richard Kemp Center came out of the work of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. Um, both organizations have websites. Uh, so if you'd like to learn more about it, you can visit our websites, but in even better ways to stop by. Sometimes we're usually there, um, somewhere between like 10 and five. Sometimes we have, um, evening activities as well. So I'm trying to see if I'm not sure that I can actually advance it. Okay. Yeah. Here we go. So, so you're doing that on your end. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Thanks. So these are just some fun pictures of our summer activities, um, in the center. And you can see on the right side, we were over at CCTV with some youth and that was a blast. Um, and then I think the other picture is at the Echo Center. So we had sort of a small group for our summer activities, but it was really fun and, um, we learned a lot and we'll be providing that again, this summer, we're able to offer youth free lunch from the Burlington School District. So that was nice. And then there's also a picture of a group of youth that were in the center from the, um, Racial Justice Academy from the Burlington School District. And you can go to the next one. Thank you. This is, uh, this past, uh, fall, we did our second annual, um, back in school block party. Um, that picture to the left is a little bit of a video, but we can skip that. I don't want to take up too much time. I want to leave some time at the end for any questions you might have. That is one of my favorite projects. That is the Vermont Black Legacy Wall. So you can sort of see the pictures. Sorry, you guys, I'm, I'm not a professional with this, but again, come in and see it because this is a work in progress. Um, you'll see, uh, Mark Hughes, my husband's picture there, who's a fantastic leader in our community and in our state. And you see Taisha Green, there's a picture of, um, there's sort of a, like a collage picture of New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church, which has been here since 1989. Um, and then there's, let's see, one, two, there's four, um, folks who established NAACP chapters around the state, Stefan Gillum, Mary Guillory, Tabitha Moore, and, um, Mia Schultz. And then of course the biggest picture on the wall is my dad, Richard Kemp. You can go to the next one, who the, obviously the center is named after. Um, so these are, first Friday is a really fun time that we have. We, um, bring youth and adults bowling at spare time. That's an activity that we do once a month. We have a chess club that it meets weekly. Everyone's welcome to that. That's on Tuesday night. And then the other picture that you see here is, um, for our second annual trip to, uh, the National African American Museum of History and Culture. I might not have said that exactly right, but, um, and we're really excited about that. Our theme for this year is Sankofa, and that is a, um, symbol that is a theme that we're, you'll hear a lot in the things that we're doing this year. It is a, um, a drinker. I hope I'm saying that properly. I believe it's a Guyanese symbol. That's where it comes from. Ancient symbol in Africa. Um, that means go back and get it or basically learn from your history. Okay. You can go to the next one. These are some of our other ongoing activities. Our, um, Youth Movie Night is one of our biggest hits. We love that. We have that coming up this Friday night. Um, and we, we try to show movies that have some kind of a theme or a message. We, we, you know, we've shown things like Ruby Bridges and a bunch of other, uh, really good movies. Um, and if there's a theme or some kind of topic that we can have brief discussions with the kids after the movie, that is always a fun time. And we, you know, arrange the furniture so it's almost like a, it feels kind of like a living room. We have rugs. We give them popcorn and order pizza. So that's been a big hit. We are, we also have a game night at the center. That's once a month where folks come in and have pretty lively spades games and, uh, we have a pool table there. So that's kind of like casual and laid back sort of an affinity space. Um, okay. You can go to the next one. If, if there's any way that you could play this just a few minutes, I don't know if it's possible or not. Yeah, it might not be. Yeah, maybe not. Sorry about that. I probably should have done a trial run of this, but so you can go to the next one. That was just a video of some of the youth who traveled with us to the museum last year. And, um, part of what they contributed was like a video interview of what the trip actually meant to them. And how meaningful it was for them. And that was before we went. So it was kind of part of like the application process. I think this slide also had a video. And if we're not able to play it, we can skip that. Yeah, unfortunately, this is a PDF. And so there's no links to any videos. That's okay. We can give us the links. We can include them in the meeting minutes. This is a art display. And again, you'll see those symbols in the middle. You can see that san cofa symbol and another thing to come to the center for and just check it out. We have a small but growing library. Definitely have some banned books in there. And we have some amazing art in the center too. So and an incredible, I think you can see it, but I think what I'm looking at, I can't really see it right. But oh yeah. So you can see the wood carving too, which is you really have to see that thing in person too. So I've given you like 10 reasons to come visit us. This is something that I would say is more of a Vermont Racial Justice Alliance initiative. But obviously, we're two organizations that work together. And so some of the initiatives from the Racial Justice Alliance are happening in the Richard Kemp Center. This is one of the newer ones. I think we just did our second one. The date on here says December 2. We did another one in January, and we're going to be trying to have these meetings on a monthly basis to talk about community health and wellness. What a lot of times is referred to as public safety. As we do with a lot of things, reframe the conversation and talk about it from the perspective of community health and wellness. Very interested in getting to the point at some point where we all should be talking about root causes and addressing some of those root causes. I don't want to stay stuck on that. We'll go to the next one. Sorry, there's a lot of slides here. This is something that's coming up. We are in the process of working with Champlain Housing Trust. We're also really excited about this. We're going to be helping people learn about homeownership and in connection with that, offering some financial wellness, training, and creating the trainer model. We're really excited about that. It's just about to launch. Folks will be hearing more about that. The other thing that's going to happen with Champlain Housing Trust as well is if folks are maybe not in the position where owning a home is in the very near future, but they maybe need some help with getting through the rental process or learning about the housing that Champlain Housing Trust has to offer or for whatever reason might need assistance with finding decent affordable housing will be helping out with that too. You can see the statistics there. I hope everyone's aware that the home ownership rates in Burlington and Vermont are not so great for people of color. You can go to the next one and we're hoping to improve those numbers. This is another thing that we are developing and are hoping to make happen. That's definitely a partnership with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and the Richard Kemp Center. We have a pretty good working relationship with CCTV and been in their studios. As a matter of fact, I believe Mark was there today doing his juxtaposition TV program. We've had some contact with some folks at Champlain College that might be involved in that effort too. You can go to the next one. We are some busy people, aren't we? Can you go to the next slide? They're trying to. That's okay. Hi, Christine. I had to step in for Fosca who's operating the laptop. It doesn't seem to advance beyond this slide. I'm not sure if that's your slide or not. It might be. I think this was a different version of something that I had completed. I was trying to get a different version in there, but that's fine. Let's close this and I'll just, if folks have questions or comments or anything, we could do that now. Thanks, Brian. Hey, Christine, this is Tom. I just have a couple of quick questions to complement your slides. First is where is the Kemp Center located? It is right across from the Community Health Center in Burlington. It's what used to be the Sam's Unfinished Furniture. People seem to really know when we say that. Yeah, 372 North Runuski Avenue. What hours are you open? 10 to 5. I mean, we also have some activities that go into the early evening, but our regular hours are like 10 to 5. Okay. Thanks. Do we have questions? Is that seven days a week or five days a week? Five days a week, although some of the activities that we have happen on Saturday too, but our regular hours I would say are mostly Monday through Friday. Thank you. I mean, I had kind of a lot of slides in here, but there's much more, if you can believe it. Sometimes when I look at all the stuff that we're doing, I get overwhelmed, but we've been having a blast. It's really fun to be in this role. We're developing a lot of really good relationships in the community and just really looking forward to doing some more amazing work in the coming year. Please stop by and visit. Karen's been there. Karen and I are old buddies, so I know she's been there. Karen's going to end up. We'll go about a question or... Yes. So, Christine, this is Sharon Busher. It's really nice to hear your voice. I wanted to say that, first of all, your dad would be so pleased with this. All of the things. It's just incredible. I mean, as you were going through this, I could hear his booming voice. You know, when he was a city counselor, he used to say he didn't need a mic, and he didn't. But he was such a presence and he made such a difference. Just one individual can make such a difference in a community. My question, though, I do have a question because I don't know, how long has this been formally opened? I think we're going... This is our second year. We just finished our second year going into our third year. And you've been at SAMS all that time? Yes. Huh. And I've driven by it and just not even noticed. So, shame on me. But that's something telling also. Is there any way to make it more known? Is there any way to... Is it well identified? Is it me just being oblivious or does it need more identification? Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for saying what you said about my dad. And there's so many times that he just... Yeah. I might go down the wrong path, but thank you, Sharon. I really appreciate that. We have a sign in the front of the building. And I think that traffic area is so weird. Everybody's... You know what I mean? There's a lot of traffic right there, but you're trying to get through and there's a light. And hopefully nobody gets distracted. We have some posters in the window with events and stuff. And we have a sign on two different sides of the building. But it's a good question that you're raising. We're always trying to get the word out. So I mean, we should think about ways that we can have it maybe be a little more prominent or just something good to think about. Is there a way to get a mural or something or some children to be involved in doing something on the building itself? Not graffiti. I'm not talking graffiti. I'm talking about a mural. But I mean, I think that that would be consistent with... It's a vibrant, energized place that is alive. And I think bright colors would call attention to it. And maybe it would make people notice more. But I'm hoping that enough people that really want to take part in the services are aware of it. So thank you so much. I'm so glad I came tonight to get educated. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Sharon. And that's a good idea. We're talking to somebody right now about a mural project. We tried to expand the art project that we did in the inside. There was going to be an outside part, but it ended up getting delayed and then with weather and everything. But the side of the wall on what is either high street, it depends on which part of the street you're on, is tagged. It's full of graffiti and it doesn't look very good. So yeah, we're really interested in that. We are planning on making something like that happen. So thank you. I think Karen has me hand up. There's someone asking a question online. Yeah, that's me. Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay, this is Karen. You all are going to regret that I was an interloper this evening. But Christine, it's just so exciting to see the ways that the Richard Kemp Center has continued to grow and expand the work that it's doing. And I just wanted to say how excited I am about it. And for those of you who have the opportunity to go down and visit, I think the artwork that Christine was describing is very, very moving and poignant. And I think at the end of the day, really roots us in the systemic work that we all need to be doing. And I also feel at the same time that it's very, very uplifting. So always great to see you, Christine. And I just would also echo what Sharon had to say. And I have a feeling many of us who are here tonight would agree that your dad would be so excited about this. Don't make me cry, Karen. And you owe me tea. I'm just going to say that. Thank you, though. I so appreciate that. It's also, you know, we have fun things down there, too. Like, yeah, the art is really amazing. And we have a pool table, which is a blast. We have video games. Whenever folks come in, we always, you know, we're going to offer you coffee or tea or some kind of snack or whatever. So I'd really, the only thing that's not super great is like, it's kind of limited parking. But yeah, it's great. Thank you so much, Karen. Yeah, you're welcome. And yeah, tea for anybody. There we go. Any other questions, comments? All right, Christine, thank you very much. Thank you so much, you all have a great rest of your meeting. All right, then the next thing on our agenda is to talk about the MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding between UVM and the City of Burlington. And we have a couple of guests here, Megan, and Megan Thuddle and Brian Fine. So you can come right over here. A couple of mics. I'll get out of your line. So sitting at this table, is it best to hold the mic, Charlie, or just the mic picks up? It is best to hold it? Yes, it is. You don't have to get very close. Well, thanks. Farrah Marshall would appreciate that. So we are tonight going to go through some slides that hit the highlights of the draft memorandum of understanding between the city and the University of Vermont. Quick piece of context. At least in my experience, having gone to UVM a little over 40 years ago and having been involved in local government since there was the first known agreement that we can find from 1990 that had really, as its origins, a long-standing conflict between the University and the City, and the City essentially through its regulatory process said to the University, you know what, until you deal with housing, don't bother coming to us for any zoning permits, because we don't have to issue them to you. That tool was available to the City back then. Fast forward now. It's not a tool that the City actually has the ability. Laws have changed. We don't have the ability to use that club over the University. So the 1990 agreement really was the culmination of a decade of Bernie Sanders and others, but Bernie really led the charge to get the University to step up between, I'll just keep historical note, between 1973 and 1993, UVM grew its enrollment by double, and not a single room was added to the housing stock at the University. So that period of time is really when a lot of the sort of impacts started in a significant way, and it was the Redstone Apartments on South Prospect, which is about 220 beds of housing, were added. That was the first, and that was 1993. That was the first addition to the UVM housing stock from 1973. So there's a fair amount of history here between University and the City regarding what is both City's role and what's the City's powers in this relationship, and things have shifted over time where the University's most recent agreement, which was executed in 2009, really was a five-year agreement that got extended four more years. It had two extensions basically, and in 2019 that agreement expired. And so we've been without an agreement since 2019, and I think some of the slides will show you what has happened to the growth in enrollment during that time. Okay, so it's important just to note that without an agreement, there's a enrollment growth pattern that I think is really important to note and look at and step back a bit and ask, what are we trying to accomplish? I think what we're trying to accomplish really with this agreement, at least from the City's perspective, is a substantial increase in the amount of housing available to UVM students, primarily undergraduates is really the focus. Undergraduate students either on or near campus for a lot of public policy reasons. That's a better outcome than having those beds scattered about Chittenden County. I think most would agree that the carbon impact of students traveling to and from the University from far away, that's sort of one of the basic concepts. We've got to get the University as the place where students will be incentivized to live because creating new housing, and not dormitories, but housing for upper classes for juniors and seniors, is really the essential piece to at least get our hands around that growth in enrollment that pushes or results in more and more students living in the community and competing for housing and often when it's competing for housing students because they can pair team resources together can afford much more housing or much more expensive housing than young professionals and families and working people for sure. So that's just a little bit of context and Megan is going to go through our slides. I think I know many of you, but if for those of you I don't know, my name is Megan Tuttle. I'm the director of planning for the city of Burlington. And I know many of you were engaged in the conversations that we were having back in 2022 about the questions around the rezoning of the Trinity campus specifically. Brian gave a much longer history for the background of how we got here and why we're discussing this MOU with you tonight. This is a much more recent history that's here on the screen. Won't read all of this to you, but I'll just note that the specific zoning for the Trinity campus was one of three major zoning amendments that were included in the 2021 housing action plan that our office and Brian's office have been working together on with many other departments in the city to help us advance responses to both our chronic and acute housing challenges. We, even in the absence of an MOU with the university around enrollment and housing plans, we know that a long standing goal that we've shared has been to increase the amount of housing on campus for students, on a near campus for the students. This is just an excerpt of our citywide comprehensive plan, which is called plan BTV, which affirms this goal that's been a long standing goal in our comprehensive plan for decades, as well as specific targeted action steps that had been implemented through our 2015 housing action plan. And then again, more commitments that were built on in our 2021 housing action plan. So that's kind of the background of why we're here. We did bring a draft zoning amendment to the city council back in February of last year, and the council voted to table that amendment in the absence of having an MOU. So we have been working with the leadership of UVM since the spring to try to bring forward an MOU that would help us advance goals of having more housing on the institutions campuses, institutions campus. We, some of you may have heard or were in attendance at the council's meeting on December 18th where UVM leadership presented some of their goals to the city council in terms of what they're hoping to achieve through this MOU and the commitments that are included within it. You can see a summary of those goals as they were shared by Richard Kate from UVM at that meeting. Those include maintaining the UVM's current annual enrollment plan of around 3,000 first year students. This is about the level that they've been enrolling for the last several fall semesters, and they anticipate that goal for their enrollment plan for the foreseeable future. As part of this MOU, they are committing to expand the available beds that they have for undergraduates on campus, increasing one and a half beds for every one student if their enrollment increases above the number that it was in the fall, and we'll talk a little bit more about what that number means here in a minute. And as part of that, they are then requesting a series of zoning changes, not only the Trinity campus zoning amendment, which we've been talking about for some time, but other zoning amendments for two other locations within their campus here in Burlington. Separate from the conversations that we have about undergraduate housing and undergraduate enrollment, the university has also expressed their goals to provide more housing options for graduate students, faculty, and staff. So we've certainly seen and heard about this kind of commitment through their project at Catamount Run at South Burlington City Center, where they're providing over 600 new beds for faculty and staff and graduate students in that location. They also recently announced a new project in South Burlington for about 550 beds that they are intending to use as apartment style housing for juniors and seniors. So just over the line behind the double tree on Williston Road in South Burlington. So these are the goals that they shared with the City Council about what their housing and enrollment plans are and their interest in this MOU at this time. These are just a few images of those projects in South Burlington that Richard shared. So diving in a bit to the actual commitments that are spelled out in the draft MOU, this is something that was presented to the City Council in December and we will be asking for their consideration of later this month. UVM for the next five academic years is committing to that 1.5 beds for every one student growth ratio. They are also committing to providing those beds within one year of seeing that enrollment growth. Brian noted that we've had MOUs with UVM in the past and I think one of the things that we've seen as an improvement in this MOU is that they're committing to making those beds available more quickly than they were in their previous agreements when they were committing to providing them within two years. So we think that this is an improvement in terms of meeting that goal. They are committing to continuing to provide data to the City about their enrollment in housing. In addition to the reports that they provided to the City during the term of the most recent MOU, they are responding to some questions that they got about how we know that the data is accurate and how we can have a broader picture of it. So in addition to the public dashboard that they've made available online within the last year, they are also committing to providing City officials access to the site that they use to report their enrollment numbers to the U.S. Department of Education so that we can verify that data. And then I think one of the other things that is in this commitment that's important to note is that the one-and-a-half beds for every one student ratio is the sort of minimum commitment as UVM is viewing it. Through the zoning amendments that they are requesting of the City, there would be significant additional capacity within the campus for them to add beds in the campus on the campus. And they acknowledge that they aspire to further increase the beds beyond this ratio if they are enabled to buy those zoning changes. And Richard Kate did say to the City Council a few weeks ago that those zoning changes really are critical for them to build on these sites on campus because of the limited nature of the existing zoning, just not really being a feasible kind of framework for them to build beds on campus under today. On the City side, the main thing that we are talking about is the consideration of these zoning amendments then that would support that increase on campus bed capacity. We have in the City a series of what we call institutional campus overlays. These are special zoning districts that apply to small areas within our institutional zoning district and they differ based on their specific purpose and role within the campus, within the institution's communities really. So these apply in varying ways to UVM's campus, the Medical Center's campus and Champlain's campus. And they really range in terms of what their goals are and what the allowable intensity of development is. So specific to UVM and this MOU, they are asking the City to consider creating a new institutional campus overlay for the rugby site. For those of you who aren't familiar with the rugby site, it's essentially at the intersection of E-stav and Main Street. That would increase the allowable lock coverage and the allowable building height in that location. They are also asking for us to consider creating a new overlay district at the Waterman Block. So essentially behind the Waterman Building on Prospect Street and to again revisit the discussion about amending the Trinity zoning within the Trinity Campus overlay. Just looking at lock coverage and height limits for that area. For those of you that were engaged in this conversation back in 2022, you may remember that they were also asking us to consider revisiting the 150-foot setback from Colchester Avenue for where buildings could be located. And they have taken that request back off the table at this point. We also have some language in the MOU about reasons that the City and UVM would come back and review these terms and review each other's performance on these commitments. But one of the notable ones that I wanted to point out is that while we were not able to make future-looking commitments specifically beyond the 2028 time horizon of this MOU, we did agree that before the end of this MOU, before 2028, the City and UVM leadership would come back together to evaluate and memorialize future commitments related to housing based on what we know is happening at that time. So one of the things that we've heard a lot of questions about is just what does this all mean in terms of what it will do for the housing demand, the housing supply here in Burlington. So there's two kind of ways that we have been looking at this as we've been evaluating the impact on the City of this MOU. The first, if approved, if the MOU itself is approved and UVM provides beds, one and a half beds for every new student of enrollment, this is a tool to help ensure that UVM is staying ahead of future growth in terms of providing beds in the future for their enrollment growth beyond where we are today. So what this means, for example, is that if their enrollment in the fall of 2024 is 100 students more than it is this year, they are committing to providing 150 beds in 2025. So within one year, they would provide those beds. The second piece, and this is, do you want to add something? Only that you can't build 150 new beds that quickly, so they would have to find some place to perhaps lease or find existing buildings. There have to be some mechanism there. So I just wanted to know that people think, how do you build 150 additional beds in or that they would have some project that they have been working to create and provide? The other piece then is looking ahead to the zoning changes themselves and if those were approved, UVM has indicated that kind of their initial assessment of those sites would enable them to build up to or around 1500 additional beds on campus itself. And we've been viewing this piece of the commitment as the piece that we need in order to help us decrease the off-campus housing demand. So the growth ratio is about future growth. The zoning changes really are about how we reduce the off-campus demand. Some of you may have seen us share this chart before. This is something that has been, I can see Jonathan shaking his head. This is a chart that UVM had been sharing for quite some time that was showing just how their undergraduate enrollment and their undergraduate beds were changing relative to the level in 2009. This is really the kind of chart that deserves more careful inspection. So for the purposes of tonight, I want to talk about this a little bit differently in this way. This chart pulls out some information about different points in time, what UVM's undergraduate enrollment and what their undergraduate on-campus bed capacity was in the same timeframe. You can see, going back historically, some of the time periods that Brian noted, the fall of 2000, the fall of 2009, which was the baseline year of our most recent past housing MOU. And what this is showing us is that undergraduate enrollment minus the bed capacity on campus equals the off-campus bed demand. So that's what we're looking at in these three columns. So in the fall of 2009, the demand for housing off campus by students was about 4,800 beds. We know that in the subsequent years, almost the last decade, following that 2009 agreement, UVM moved forward with building many new beds on campus. They also went through a period of time where their enrollment dropped and then grew again. So for almost a decade, they were more than meeting their commitment to stay ahead of enrollment growth by adding beds. What we've seen and what Brian alluded to as we skipped down to the fall of 2003 is that in the few years since that MOU expired, their enrollment has grown rather rapidly and they have not added new beds on campus during that time. So their housing demand, their demand for off-campus housing, I should say, has actually increased to a little over 5,200 off-campus beds. And that's where we sit today. The bottom part of this chart then starts to look at what happens as they deliver on the commitments to build new housing that they are articulating to the city. I don't want to walk through every one of these projects. We'll make these slides available so that you can look at them on your own. But the point of this is the first couple of projects, if they are to continue at the enrollment goal that they have articulated to us, we'll start to just bring us back in line with what the off-campus demand looked like all the way back in 2009. So it's not a huge improvement, but it's getting us closer to that period of time. It's really when we start seeing the bigger projects, you know, 500 beds at Rugby, several hundred beds at Waterman, several hundred beds at Trinity, that we actually start to see this commitment, I'm sorry, this off-campus demand start to have a positive impact on the community in terms of that growth. And ultimately, if they realized all of these projects and maintained that commitment, we would see that off-campus housing demand decrease by as much as 1500 beds. Go ahead. That's a really good question. The question, just for those on Zoom, was are we looking just at undergrads and isn't Trinity about graduate students? This separates out some of the Trinity beds. What we have heard from UVM is that they would like to put both undergraduate and graduate housing at Trinity. So this is looking at just the portion of those beds that would be for undergraduate housing. Is it, do we have questions for them? Sure, yeah. Has UVM articulated why their microphones? Has UVM articulated why upperclassmen will want to stay on campus? Because they have repeatedly said that they didn't see any reason to build beds for upperclassmen because the upperclassmen wanted to be off campus. Yeah, this is one of the things that we had mentioned to the organizers of your NPA. We want to be careful not to speak about UVM's goals. What we understand, the one thing that we understand about their future plans is the style of housing that they shared that they're anticipating building that would be more apartment style housing than dorm style housing. And I think that that is, they're viewing that as being a more attractive option to upperclassmen students. So, hi. This is Sharon Busher and I did send a series of questions to both of you the day after you gave the presentation to the city council. And I realize that you're very busy and I know I haven't got any responses to those questions. And I did share with some of the members of the NPA my reaction to that joint presentation between UVM and the city. And so, I think that picking up on what Tom said, and I know you're not speaking, you're speaking for the city, but UVM has come to our NPA and shared with us surveys they've done for their upper class students that have said that they're not interested in staying on campus. And that has to do sometimes with their age and access to alcohol and just other choices. And one of the points that I sent in the communication to people was that UVM, someone asked at the city council what the cost would be per bedroom for these new units. And it was $1,300. I took notes to these, I always take notes when I zoom into your meetings. Anyways, so, and bedrooms now, and I've done a quick range, I put in 800. So, the discrepancy is $500. But some bedrooms are $900 and high end, it's $1,000 a bedroom in the community, but there's still a divide there. And so, the financial, there's no financial incentive to remain on campus either. And so, that's a concern for me. And when we look at these numbers, there's an assumption by the city that we are going to benefit because some of the students that currently move off campus after their sophomore year will remain on campus. But that's an assumption, not a fact. And there's no guarantee. And I understand that from UVM. So, I think that's a big assumption. And when you presented your information, most of the information that a number of us have garnered is from UVM. It's not that we found information elsewhere, UVM's provided that. And they've shown a pattern of increased accelerated enrollment. And then that's plateau. And then accelerated enrollment. So, if you look at that pattern, it almost mirrors around five years. So, my concern is, this MOU is for five years, and I don't think they're going to change their enrollment, whether we have an MOU or not. So, I don't know what the city is getting from this MOU. And we are giving them potentially zoning overlay amendments, which I'm not saying I'm for or against, but I do have some issues with sites, et cetera, and the impacts. But I'm not talking about Trinity. I'm talking about pedestrian crossing and Williston Road, et cetera, all sorts of things. But the point with zoning overlay amendments are forever. So, they get a forever from the city, and we get five years. And so, that doesn't seem balanced to me as a person. What I was hoping, the two of you could try to do for all of us, is to present what the benefits are versus what are the disadvantages from this agreement for the city and for Burlingtonians. Because I think that's germane. Yeah. And I'll let Brian add what his thoughts are as well. But I really appreciate the question about, you know, and we've heard a lot of people share the concern that zoning amendments have a much longer lifespan than the duration of this MOU. And this is where I actually feel like looking at a chart, like the one that's here has helped me kind of understand, at least from an off-campus housing demand, what the impact would be of making those zoning changes or not. And ultimately, I look particularly at this line right here in the gray box, where we start to look at what UVM has shared with us about their current enrollment plans at about 3,000 students per year, where we know that they are today with their beds on campus. We know that that's having an impact of about 5,200 beds that people are looking for within the community because of that gap. They're moving forward with projects in South Burlington. They've shared with us, they've shared with the public their plans to build the beds at Catamount Woods. They've shared with us their intent to start leasing some additional beds in South Burlington this coming fall. So without any zoning changes, that's maybe the best thing that we can expect in the short term in terms of new beds that they might add, and that leaves us at that almost 4,700 people in terms of off-campus demand. I think when I start to think about kind of what is the benefit to the community, that feels really important that if we aren't interested in considering making zoning changes, it's going to be really hard for us unless they lose enrollment to decrease that off-campus housing demand in the short term. They will be looking at a much wider range of projects much further outside of Burlington in order to help them address their housing challenges. I wanted to respond to Sharon's basic question, which is what are the benefits. I started this by saying without an agreement since 2019, UVM's enrollment has grown significantly. Without an agreement, there's no guarantee that that won't continue to happen. There really isn't. So we're kind of fooling ourselves to think that somehow denying this agreement is going to get us a better outcome. I really don't think there's any validity to that perspective. I really don't believe that. I think if we have no agreement and they can't upzone, they build elsewhere, and if they can grow enrollment, they will. But if the demographics and the other conditions that determine enrollment don't support it, they're not going to be able to grow enrollments. I think there's a lot more to it than just sort of a simple, this math here is as a housing person for over 30 years. I'd much rather be with 3200 students competing for housing off-campus than 5200. So that's a benefit. Yeah. So I think there's tremendous track record here to inform our skepticism. And the 2009 year, I understand why you're bringing that in with regard to the MOUs, but it's a really deceptive period of time between their growth spikes. So the clear track record, and I've sent this information to the steering committee, I've sent it to the city, I've sent it to the city counselors. The clear track record is that every time UVM builds new housing, within five years, they've increased enrollment to expand and be on the capacity of that housing. So in 2006, I don't know, I'm not going to know the numbers off the top of my head, the Oakland University Heights. Five years later, they will be on capacity. And then those are the students who are jammed into triples when they'll be on capacity. Those are the students who then, after two years, are seeking off-campus housing. And then there was a period, and then in 2000, I'll be here, when did they open CCRH, the central campus, 2017? And we're beyond capacity again. So the clear track record here is that, and this highlights what Sharon was saying, that they build, they expand enrollment beyond capacity, so they build again, they expand enrollment beyond capacity, and then they sneak in those plateaus, not to pacify or to, anyway. So we are now giving them, with this plan, we are giving them permission to build again. The MOU is going to be, and fine, and maybe they'll, maybe that'll release some of the pressure of students in triples, and I can talk to you for a long time as a student, as a staff member who does student conduct about the stories I hear from students, and most empathetic students who, you know, are smoking too much weed or drinking too much, and a number of times I hear them tell me that they explain to me that they do that, so that they can get to sleep in a triple room, is not insignificant. Five years from now, when this MOU is gone, we're going to have a bunch of new housing, and they're going to have to fill it, right? And the MOU is going to be gone. This is what Sharon was saying. I'm just really incredibly skeptical, given the track record that they have proven time and time again. That's, that's my worry, and I get this, right? But this relies on a lot of trust in the university that just isn't there for me. So I just would really encourage the city to add some teeth to this MOU. Have you, have you talked to the university about making it mandatory maybe for juniors to be on campus, and not just freshmen and sophomores? Not recently. That wasn't part of this latest negotiation. Sorry. Not recently. I mean, they've made it clear over the decades that they're an outlier as it is for universities of their size, and state university, and all the other factors. Most are just first year requirements, and our kids went to school in various places, and that's generally the case. So first and second is not actually the norm for this type of university. So to add another year, they said would just, that's not, that's a non-starter. So, and again, I'm not speaking for UVM because the steering committee didn't and want UVM here. I feel like I need to at least answer what they have said in the past, but that's that's it. So with like your history briefing beforehand, saying that in, you know, the 20 years in the past that they doubled their, double their enrollment and then didn't build any housing, and then Troy just touched on it, and I know he's touched on it in the past, is that they currently have overcrowding in the dorms that exist. So are these, one, part one, do these numbers include relieving that overcrowding? If they had, they'd talked about that at all, and then part two is with them, with them building 1.5 per one student increase, and I know that you said that that's the minimum that they gave you, is there a way that the city could push harder on them to hold off on enrollments until the city's vacancy rate is closer to that normal healthy 5% is there a way that we can like, that could be a benefit to the city in a way? We don't have a mechanism for doing that. I think that maybe the legislature does, but the city doesn't have the mechanism for controlling enrollment. There's really no method that I'm aware of. The overcrowding issue, I think it's largely the forced triple issue. Forced triple is different from a triple. I was a kid whose dad had too many kids in college, so I was in a triple at UVM. That's how I started my studies at UVM because you could get a better deal, but forced triples are something that the council expressed very clearly. They want language in the MOU around forced triples, so we're pushing for that. Brian, talking about the forced triples, language saying what about forced triples? That meeting the obligations under the MOU would not be met through forced triples. The MOU doesn't speak to ending the practice. While I have your attention, can I just ask you a question about some of those numbers? On the right column, the 5,200 at the center of the top of the bottom part of that column, and then the 3,200 or so, that implies that about 40% of upperclassmen are going to, in those years, choose to live on campus. Seems kind of unreasonable. Unless I'm misunderstanding those numbers, 40% are going to choose to live on campus. Is that possible? Am I misreading that? That's pretty unlikely thing, right? You've got the math correct. I'm not really sure if your point is that we, even if they build it, they won't come, I think is what you're saying, which is sort of what I think others have asked. How do we know they're going to end up there? We don't know that, folks. We can't have a crystal ball. There's no perfect future that we can envision. I think the idea that UVM having the ability to add beds is the fundamental question. If they don't have the ability to add beds, what will happen? I think is really the more, to me, the more the important question. UVM will continue to meet their needs as they have in the past, whether zoning is up, whether we up zone or not. I get that, but I think those numbers are whatever assumptions went into that. They're definitely looking at a best-case scenario in terms of the capacity of beds that could be added based on the zoning changes. We agree this should be viewed as an up-to kind of number in terms of what the capacity could look like. That's a best-case scenario. I just want to point out that the university is a business. If there's no way that they're going to build dorms and not fill them, because they will lose money. If they have the capacity, they will put the students in it however they need to, whether it's incentivizing or breaking up the threes or whatever they need to. It just wouldn't make any sense for them as a business to leave them empty. I don't totally understand this. We would say no to this MOU as a statement that we don't really trust that UVM is going to do what they say they're going to do. What would be the purpose of saying no? That's my question. How would that serve Burlington to say no? Okay. Well, I think I have a very different perspective than the administration, but I guess my sentiment is that this university administration has not come to the table what I would consider fully transparently and with really a willingness to give us this to me reads like an agreement where they're like, we're going to do what we're going to do anyway for the next five years so that you will give us what we want and then we can do whatever we want anyway without making any promises. I honestly am very ready and willing unless I hear very differently from folks in the war to say, great, I'll wait for a different administration that's maybe a little bit more willing to be transparent on what their plans are because to the point of like 40% of upperclassmen would have to be in. I don't think their plan is to be like, oh no, the upperclassman won't live there. I think their plan is to fill that with more undergraduates with more underclassmen that aren't enrolled yet. So I think that this is just a, well, we have long term plans that we don't want to talk about. And so we're just like, we're not talking about graduate students and like switching to an R1 university and all the other things. So it's like, we're going to give them what we need to give them for five years so that we can do what we want and continue to do our plans after that. Zariah Hightower, Ward 1 City Councilor. Milo Grant, also City Councilor, Central District. I'd love to visit here. Thank you. Everything that Zariah just said, there's a real issue of mistrust. We get shown this draft and then we're told, if you have the time to go back and listen to the meeting, yeah, this is the best we're going to do. And even the mayor's press release said, yeah, this is the best you're going to get. So it's not really been a transparent process. UVM publicly has stated that they want to be a top tier research university. That's fantastic. That means they got to bring in more graduate students. So the fact that they don't want to count or put graduate student numbers in here, that's really suspect. The other thing, after that meeting that we had discussing this, people who work at UVM came up and said to me, hey, we've got the push to recruit big time internationally. So they're going to be working on that to meet their goal of being a top tier research university. And we need to worry about graduate students because I think they're going to end up filling a lot of these spaces that they want to. We are getting information. They are going to build apartment style. Those are good things, but five years is too short a period of time. Thank you. Okay, so I did hear those things. What I have not heard is how would saying no to this MOU serve Burlington? I've heard all these things that they're not trustworthy and all that stuff, but I don't understand how it would serve Burlington to say no. So could I have just a minute? We let the other two City Council people speak. Could I try to address sort of my thinking on this in my perspective? I'm Tim Doherty, and I'm the East District City Council person. I think this is a challenging question for the City Council. I think it's particularly a challenging question for Ward 1 because all of the activity is going to take place in Ward 1. So it is right and appropriate that we are heavily engaged and sort of struggling on the point of process. From my perspective at least, it's not accurate to say that the City Council was just presented with the MOU and told that this was the best we can do. Brian and Megan met with the City Council and the Mayor, I don't know how many times over the course of the last year, providing us an executive session because it was negotiation updates on where they were with this arms length negotiation with the University, which is a separate entity than the City, soliciting input from the City Councilors on what we wanted in our best case scenario, MOU, what we wanted them to press for, what we insisted on, and they would go back to the negotiating table and negotiate with the University of Vermont. And at some point, relatively recently, they did come to us and say, and correct me, Brian and Megan, if I get this wrong, we think that the University of Vermont is at the end of their negotiating ramp, so to speak. We think that this is the end of the road with respect to these negotiations and that this is the most they're willing to agree to in the MOU. And so I think that that procedural posture to quote the sort of lawyerly term is important to get right, just for purposes of accuracy and fairness number one. And I think it's really important for everyone when you're thinking about what you want to have happen here, and I want to hear from everyone because I'm still deciding how to vote on this. I think it's important for you all to make sure, and I struggle with this too, that we're looking at what the actual decision before the City Council is right now. The decision before the City Council right now is not between this MOU and some better MOU out there that contains things that many of us want in there. Troy's work, the things that Troy said that he wants in the MOU are basically also things that I would like in the MOU. And the University is not putting them in the MOU and they're telling us they're done negotiating. You can ask them why they're at that point, but that's where they are. So if we say no to the MOU and we turn down these zoning amendments, you know, we have to think about what the consequences of that will really mean. And that is your question. And I think that a reasonable possibility is that this 15, I heard between 15 and 1800 apartment-style units will not be built. Maybe it's true that the University is bluffing, and maybe it's true that a new mayor will be able to forge a better deal. But it's also true that the University may walk, build some units in South Burlington, more maybe, or just continue on its merry way. And we will have said no to the University seeking to build between 15 and 1800 apartments in a totally inelastic housing market where we have zero capacity. That is a, I think that that is a real risk. Putting aside all the bad faith that the University has built up over the years, putting aside the fact that it has not contributed for many, many years its burden to meet its burden to our community, I agree with all that. And I wouldn't want us to say no to this deal out of spite or to just make a point. If we're not clear on what the consequences could possibly, could likely be. Nobody knows for sure what the consequences will be. We could be wrong. They could, maybe, maybe Ziraya's right. Maybe we say no, and next year they come back and say, you know, we really, we really do want to build on these three sites. We'll give you a 10-year MOU year. Or we'll put in writing that these are for upperclassmen, not for underclassmen. That could be the consequence. I'm not, I am not thinking that that's what they're going to do, but I, but that is, that is what I think the choice is. Let's tell them right here. Thank you. My name's Todd Schlossberg. I first moved to Burlington in 1980, voted for Bernie. I was one of the eight. Yay me. So I was, so I've lived on Loomis Street since 1991 and seen a lot of changes on Loomis Street since 1991 that sort of tracks some of this. There's a lot of missing information there. I will say this. This is, you know, this is slightly misleading because there's some important data points. 2020, approximately 2,500 freshmen were admitted. 2021, approximately 3,000. 2022, approximately 3,000. 2022, Mr. Cates, Vice President, came here and also had a complaining commission and informational meeting and said, we have no intention to increase enrollment. These were anomalies, the 3,000 this fall, 3,000. Again, they are at 11, 898 according to the data that they just filed with the federal government. I don't know where the 11, 6, 18, 14, but it doesn't matter. It's close to 12,000. So I will, I just have, I like to make a comment. However, I would also like to ask a couple of specific questions and Brian or Megan, that'd be great. The 5208, which is, I'm sorry, 5217, which is where we are now. Does that, and someone nibbled around the edge of this or tried to ask it, but does that include, does that account for among the demand, they're providing three beds in many dorm rooms, but they're so-called four struples, but they are technically providing beds. So do you specifically know if that, does that include, does that factor in that, is that deficit saying, we, we, these are like really two bedrooms that shouldn't be three. So this is, this is the real number or is that a hidden number? There would be some rooms that have three beds in them within this number in the middle column in the 6397. These numbers are the bed capacity from UVM. So it would include those. Okay. I understand that, but my question is the deficit then. So when they say it's a deficit, let me just be clear. If they reverted all of the twos, all the threes to two, okay? No, yes. I understand your question now. With the number on the right side, it would go up. It would go up. So are they factoring this in? Are they saying, listen, part of our building plan, like when we say 3258, that great number at, you know, year 2028 or whatever, when we're all wearing jetpacks, will that be, will that, well, is that with the, the forced triples corrected? So the numbers on the bottom half of this chart are from me, from us as staff, based on our conversations with them about what we understand is the new bed capacity they would anticipate building in new projects. So the numbers that you're seeing in the bottom half of the chart do not account for any reduction in triples. Okay. Does that make sense? I think it's just new beds being added. I think what I'm hearing then is that this, these numbers don't factor in curing the forced triple problem. So, so these are actually inaccurate numbers because let's just be clear here. Well, if they're not inaccurate because we have not heard them commit to doing that. They're not inaccurate from terms of what you're, they're not accurate by your part, but they're inaccurate by UVM's part because we have in 2021, 22, 23, they took 500 more freshmen, first year students, let's leave out men and women, first year students each of those years. That's, I mean, I didn't major in math. That's 1500 new students. Where was the housing for them? Well, we know they didn't build new underclass housing to, to undergrad housing, underclass to make up for 1500 new students. They, they did a little bit. They build what was, there's one property now that's come on board in the last three years for undergrad students. Undergrad, like 500 beds. Okay. So they added about 500 beds. And yeah, I think that was the 2017 project that Troy was talking about. Okay. So, so they actually are, there's a hidden number here. Not, I'm not blaming you, you all, but there's about a thousand beds that are missing here. And so they start doing this building and let's just talk about reality and what we've all heard who we had no friends and family and people, you know, what we're reading and Reddit. People are sending the, you know, the 85% students, roughly 80% that are out of state. They're paying a lot of money. They're sending them to these, a lot of kids are in these forced triples. Let's be real. UVM is going to fix that. They have to. They can't stay competitive with these upper tier, you know, schools. They have to do that. And they're not factoring this in here. They are going to build up. They got to build a thousand beds just to get caught up. Okay. Just think about that. I mean, I'm not being, you know, I'm not, this is not hyperbole. A thousand beds to get caught up, which is not showing this chart. So let's look at these projects and we take the rugby off because that's going to be for apparently for grad and maybe upper class, but, but so we got a problem. Number one, that's not being addressed here. And we're all sort of putting blinders on. We'd say, where are the thousand beds roughly coming to fix their overcrowding? Okay. And if they're not being transparent, how can our city counselors in good faith say, this is the best deal we can get? UVM, this is my comment here. Our last question was, did you, did the city specifically seek in negotiations a commitment of some concrete degree, whether it's 5%, 10%, 100 beds, any commitment specifically for third and fourth year students? And did they say, we will not negotiate if that's what's going to be an agreement? Is that, I want to be clear that the city actually said we want that specific commitment to third and fourth year students, some measurable amount that's enforceable, and that UVM said, we will never do that. We'd rather give up all these plans. We did talk to UVM about two things. One, being a commitment to a specific number of beds, as well as a commitment to articulating their, the goal that they stated publicly at the council meeting, which is to increase beds for juniors and seniors. And those commitments were not agreed to in the MOU that we presented at council. So my question was a little different. There's a lot of things we don't agree to in negotiations, a lot of back and forth. We're going to have to speed it up. I just want to be clear, because this goes to what our counselors need to do. Did UVM say, it's off the table, we will not, we'll never include any commitment regarding third and fourth year students? We actually, I don't think we can answer it because that request was again forwarded to them in the last few days. So, you know, again, so we are really in the process of trying to get to a place where this agreement meets the needs that we're talking about at least somewhat, because right now I think Todd, if no zoning changes are approved, and the outcome is we are right where we are in a few years. I don't think I hear you saying that's a good place to be either. So I think that's what we're trying to deal with. Right. One sentence to finish. I agree, no MOU is not the outcome we seek. However, I would urge at this point at least six counselors or a majority of the council to say no until we have a commitment on third and fourth year students. Without that, we're going to have the same problem of thousands of beds that aren't being built. And there's no real change for us. Questions, more of a statement, two parts. We don't have a crystal ball, right? So any conjecture, mine, my conjecture is based on what if, other conjectures we've had in the room tonight are based on what if. So in the absence of crystal ball, we have to rely on past practice. Past practice is horrendous, absolutely horrendous. And there is no reason why if we focus on past practice that we should be allowing UDM to continue that practice. And we have to try and figure out how to do that. The other thing I'm just going to say is January 14th. Ethan, when did the students move back? Friday? We're doing this in the absence of students. Sunday. We're doing this in the absence of students. Half of my constituents are students. I have worked with college students my entire life. I love the population. And I do that work on purpose. And when we ask the questions what if and what are the bad things that will happen in Burlington if we don't have this MOU, I have to insert into this conversation. I am incredibly worried about the overcrowding on campus and the impact that is having on students. I'm incredibly worried about the equity matter of right now parents who can afford to buy their students out of triples out of the guarantee of having triples do that. That's not okay. I can tell you that students are being harmed by the fact that they are overcrowded on that campus. I would love to see more housing. For me, that has to come with the guarantee that they're going to end the practice of overcrowding under graded students into the housing that exists. And the plan as it stands only gives them more housing in five years to overcrowd five years after that. Okay. We're pretty much out of time. And I appreciate all the participation. I'm going to bring it up with the steering committee next week to see whether we should get UVM in here to give us their view and to convince us that they're serious about their headcount. But maybe, Tom, I don't want to interrupt. Maybe the key to this is maybe we need another month before the city council makes a vote on this. Yes. We just announced there's a public forum on the topic. We just wanted to put this up here too. There will be another opportunity next Wednesday evening at the library or on Zoom at 6. And UVM will be there. So if you have questions for UVM also, that'll be an opportunity that you can ask them some of these questions directly as well. Okay. Thank you very much for coming. Yeah, it's a rarity that you can get partially, um, all right. We're going to move forward with our agenda and the main event here is a candidate forum for Ward 1 City Council and Samantha is here to run that show. Good evening everybody, to the main event, so if I could have the two candidates, Carter and Chef please. Sam, could you stick up, that is not amplified. So I just wanted to go over kind of the list of rules that we're going to have. Number one, this is not, this is a forum and not a debate, so there is not going to be as much back and forth. It's going to be, you can direct questions to a single candidate, but then the other candidate would also have the option to respond. So we're going to have the candidates have an introduction and the steering committee has two questions that we are going to ask and then that will proceed with them having two minutes to answer the questions and then we'll have attendees ask questions and then we will also have the candidates ask each other questions at the end and then have it closed with a final three minute closing statement. So without further ado, we've got Carter and Chef, if you guys would like to duke it out for who wants to go first for your introduction. Thank you Samantha and thanks everybody for being here tonight, it's great to be here and see so many familiar faces here and then, here and then, yeah this is awkward with talking to the people online but not to the people here in the room, yeah, let's see if maybe Samantha can relocate. So good evening, my name is Jeff Hand, I live here in Ward 1 obviously on Henry Street, I want to say a little bit about my background but before I do that, just first I want to say thank you to Zariah who's our outgoing city councillor, Zariah and I actually served on the DRB for a couple of years together and I always appreciated her perspective. I know this is hard work regardless of whether we agree or disagree on issues and I thank you for your time, I appreciate it. So let me just start with a little background on myself, I've lived here in Ward 1 for about 20 years, my wife and I live on Henry Street, we have two boys who go to BHS, they're a junior and a freshman, they've come up through the Burlington schools and we've really loved that opportunity and that experience. We moved here from Montpelier in about 2004 and we were lucky to find a house, it took us about a year at that time to find a place close to downtown where our kids could eventually walk to school and where we could be part of the community. So the housing market was tight even then and we know it's only gotten worse. I work right now downtown at a small law firm doing mission driven work, I work on environmental energy, climate change, a lot of municipal law, non-profit and housing issues and I really feel lucky to have been able to build a practice around issues I'm passionate about and also to have the opportunity to be involved in this community. I actually was on the Ward 1 NPA steering committee for about three years, I'll forget the dates but I'll look to Richard, I think it was 2006 to 2009-ish. 2006 was on there. Yeah, somewhere in there, yeah. And that was really, this organization, this group does a great job of bringing people together in this community and I really appreciate the opportunity to learn about the Ward and meet my neighbors, work with some of the institutions like the ones we've just spent so long talking about. And have the opportunity to really understand what matters to people here. I had to step off from doing that when we had our second kid to support my wife and be home when she was working some evenings but I valued that time and I've continued that work as I said on the DRB. I've also done another work in the community with a number of non-profits. I've been on the board of the Burlington Boys and Girls Club for about 20 years working on issues related to kids in our community that I really feel passionate about. And I'm proud of the work of that organization and how we've evolved our approach to how we serve people in this community and I think some of those approaches are relevant to some of the issues we're dealing with now. I'm happy to talk about that a little bit more. And I also have interacted with a lot of folks in the community around kids athletics. I coached at Roosevelt and Center City and also helped found Burlington Football Club which is a local soccer club that serves about 300 kids now in the community including about 80 get scholarships. And the point of that program was to really expand access to kids. The point of all this is we really have loved Burlington. It's been a great community for us and I'm running because I care about the community. We're invested in the community. We will be invested in the community and we really want to see people have opportunities to build meaningful successful lives here regardless of where they come from. I am concerned about the current state of the community. We'll have a chance to talk about that. The issues that are most important to me are public safety and public health. We have a real crisis in those areas right now and we can talk in detail more about those. Housing, we just don't have enough housing here. This discussion we just had about UBM is a good discussion of part of the issue but there's a much bigger issue there in terms of housing and access, accessibility and affordability. And other issues I'm passionate about. I've worked my entire professional life on climate change issues. I think Burlington has been a leader in many areas there and I'd like to see us do more to maintain that leadership status. Including around resiliency in climate change because our communities are being impacted right now every day by climate change. It's here now and we've seen that down the road. So those are some of the issues that are important to me. I'm interested to hear more about the issues that are important to you. And I'll pass it over to Carter. Thanks. Just FYI, I'm going to try my best to have these sections of the forum timed out. And so I'm going to give you, since you've had an extra minute, you'll get an extra minute. So this four minutes and if there's a way that you would want me to like warn you, that's just kind of go like this. Okay, perfect. Yeah, the poll is killing us. Well, my name is Carter Newbezer. I'm running for Ward One City Council. I've been involved on local issues for coming up on nine years now. I first got involved, came here to attend UVM, graduated in 2019 right before the pandemic. So I feel pretty lucky in that respect. Yeah, why am I running? Mostly I want to focus in on property tax reform and affordability. My partner and I have a two-year-old at home. We just bought our first house over on Riverside Avenue. And between childcare, a mortgage, a tax increase last year. We haven't fully been hit by the high school bond yet. We're going to get hit by that next year, I assume. And to top that all off, the city's facing, which are not my words, but are alluded to in the mayor's memo on FY24 budget deficits year-over-year for the next three to five years. So that's a real issue, just as an example, because I love to give a sense not just to you all of not just my opinion on the matter, this is coming directly from the mayor's budget. Yeah, primarily it's because we've spent one-time federal money to cover ongoing programs. So for example, we use some of the federal COVID money to cover the office of REIB. And that's an ongoing expense. And we only had a one-time pot of money. So the deficit is in the $7 to $9 million range, depending on which city councilor you talk to for more information. So far, what I've seen in terms of how do we address budget issues is we've increased property taxes across the board in a regressive manner. And we've also, at the same time, we had an assessment in 2021, where commercial properties were obviously in the middle of COVID way devalued, and residential were at their highest in the modern history, probably the history of our country. And we ran an assessment. And we've took, to be fair, some measures since then to alleviate that. But ultimately, a huge burden in the last number of years has fallen onto residents. And so that's not an insurmountable challenge. A couple of things we can do, our municipal property tax is not income sensitized whatsoever, like the state property taxes. So that's a quick solution that I'm hoping is non-controversial, because we've seen that in action already at the state level. I think we need to start looking at second homes tax. There's a bunch of folks over COVID that came to buy vacation homes and power to them. I love Burlington as well. But it's having a negative impact on the housing market, and we need to account for that. So there's a bunch of other things, but I really wanna focus in on taxes, the main reason I'm running. In terms of some of my experience, I've worked for Zariah as council support staff at different periods, worked closely as council support staff with former councilor Hanson, worked very hard to get universal rental weatherization through and implemented in a bipartisan fashion, helped write rank choice voting, which we're all gonna be able to use for every race now, but was really involved in developing that policy, both from a community engagement and also writing the resolution. Because we are a mayor, heavy city, we had a little sort of committee of folks on the outside, reminiscent of the 80s when Bernie first got elected, and we're trying to develop policy and sort of do that research without, yeah, just looking at other cities for more information. So I've served on the Ward 1 NPA for the last, however long it's been, and have been involved in the community both sort of on the policy development, community engagement, my day job. I also super passionate about addressing the climate crisis. I work for 350 Vermont. I run all of our fundraising, so grants, major donor stuff, we're an environmental justice nonprofit, mostly doing work at the state house, but that also has been involved in some local issues, and I'm at time. No, just really glad I'm running, and I know that it's been a sort of two quick more thoughts. One, if I do nothing else right, if I do make it on, my hope is that you all feel that I've been responsive, that I get back to folks, that I help navigate folks through city government, bump departments if they're not getting back to you, I think that's probably the majority of the job. And the other piece just quickly, I've lost my train of thought, but well, constituent service is a good note to end on, so I'll pause it there. Awesome, thank you both for your intros. The next portion is questions from the steering committee, which we have a couple that we had to narrow down, but our first question, I'll have Carter go first. The first question from the steering committee is, what is your understanding of the time commitment required to be a city councilor? You have four minutes to answer. Or two actually, two and then you have two, yeah. So I have helped recruit a number of city councilors and then close personal friends with a number of city councilors. I know that on paper you're just going to meetings, you're going to things like the MPA, but really to be effective and do that constituent service work, you're really looking at 15 to 20 hours a week. On top of my day job, I'm already filling that 15 to 20 hours a week with community engagement work through local elections, through the MPA, a variety of ways. And so I feel like I'll have the ability to fulfill that. And I also think, if I am lucky enough to get on those first two years or at least first year, you're really just learning how everything works, getting adjusted. I do have some experience working on policy development on the council level, but I'm sure there's going to be a whole ton that I have to learn and I'm already learning from talking to many folks in ward one at the doors. Jeff and Carter, I just got a text from someone online. This is that they cannot hear you and ask if you both can speak with the microphone better. I don't know if we can have two microphones, one for the audience and one for the online audience. Thanks, Carter. Yeah, this is an important question. And I guess actually I would say, I think the more important question is whether my wife has a good understanding of the time commitment. No, in all seriousness, it does take a lot of time. It's, as Carter said, it's not just being at the meetings. I know from my work on the DRB that you need to put the time in beforehand to really understand all the materials and be informed and able to use the time in the committee and council meetings productively. So I think putting that time in is critical. From talking to other city counselors, I think many of them think of it as a part-time job and on some weeks it feels more like a full-time job. So I think you need to be prepared for that. I've talked with my family, I think we're all in there. I currently spend a lot of time on other community events and I've talked with the boards I'm on about needing to step back if I do move on to the city council. So it is a switch and the time I have dedicated now, but more. And I think it's an important time for the city and it feels like the right time for me to make that investment. Thank you both. And then our next question is, how are you going to involve your constituents in any decision-making processes that directly affect them? And I'll have Jeff go first this time. Great, okay. Well, I think there are a number of things we can do here and obviously speaking at the NPA, I'll play to the crowd to the NPA. No, having been on the NPA, I really recognize the importance of communicating with this community, with the NPA and hearing from the NPA. The three years that I was on the steering committee, we worked really closely with our city councilors, Sharon, I don't know if Sharon's still here. There she is right there. It was really a great role model in this. She was amazing at being at every meeting, but not just being at the meetings, helping the NPA stay informed of what we should have on our agendas and helping to get people to those meetings who could speak to those issues. So I think working through the NPA is critical. I know this NPA is considering right now a resolution as to what issues should require NPA input before the city council acts. And that's an interesting question to consider. I'd say maybe propose one change in the resolution I've seen at least in drafting. There actually is a requirement in city ordinance right now that major impact projects come to the NPAs before they go to the DRB. And we consider that very important at the DRB. We wanna know that that significant project has had input from the NPA before we consider its compliance under the ordinance. So thinking about other areas where that kind of worldwide impact project or activity should come to the NPA, I think is a good thing to do. But then obviously we need to recognize, and I also saw this on the NPA, although this is a very engaged group, it is not always the most representative of our really sort of wonderful diverse ward. It's hard to be here in the evenings, particularly for people who have kids. And so it's really important that you do more outreach beyond just the NPA. So I think front porch forum, I was thinking back, we actually started using front porch forum when I was on the NPA. I remember Michael Wood Lewis coming and saying, hey, we've got this great new thing called front porch forum. But it's been really critical, I think for getting information out to the community. And then I've seen other counselors effectively use sort of the regular coffee time. There's not, there aren't awesome places in our ward, oddly for those, there are few. But I think being available in those time frames is, a regular timeframe is a good way to communicate. Carter. Finishing one note so I don't forget. Yeah, I agree with much of what Jeff just said. I think the most exciting immediate opportunity is the resolution that Jonathan, I don't see him now, where he went, but, oh, there he is. Jonathan's resolution makes a lot of sense to me to lay out a standard public engagement timeline, essentially, and what key issues need to sort of come before all of us, before the council makes decisions. I also think that that'll increase engagement of the NPAs because one of the things I've heard over and over, I started getting involved in local issues in 2016. One of the first things I heard is particularly from longtime residents at that point, I was a student on campus, was that folks weren't showing up to the NPA because you went there and told your opinion and they were gonna do whatever they wanted to do in the first place anyway. So there needs to be a real building of trust and genuine engagement and sort of give some decision making power back to the NPA. And I think this resolution that Jonathan's considering is the first step in that process. The other thing's just on a personal level that I can commit to, thinking about my capacity with a day job and with a two-year-old. FPF posting prior to every meeting and after every meeting, sort of outlining what is going to be brought up and then sort of the questions I'm wrestling with, asking for feedback. Hopefully, I know that counselors have gotten information like days before a council meeting to try to digest, so as quickly as I can digest it and get it out to folks and hopefully that practice changes in the future, I can do that. The other piece I heard from, I was talking to outgoing counselor Jang about how he's done community engagement in Ward 7 and he essentially has a little short list, email short list, where he says, hey, here's a really tough vote, I'm here from all sides. And it's like all neighborhood folks, he's essentially taken a survey, informal survey, how would you vote, given all these factors and lays out sort of both sides. Obviously, making sure that that list is representative and folks have access to it is important, but I do think that's a really interesting tool because I think, and I'm probably going over time, but yeah, I think some folks think about running for elected office and they're like, okay, I went out, I had these conversations and people are electing me, people are electing the vision I'm presenting to them and then there's a second way of thinking about it, which I think is fair enough. Second way of thinking about it, which is I'm going out, I'm talking to folks, I'm gathering information and really I'm just supposed to represent and reflect back to the council what the neighborhood is saying to me and I think I'm sort of approaching this role in that second piece. Final thing is I'm a community organizer by trade, that's what I've done for my entire professional career in a variety of capacities and so I think just having more informal dinner parties I can commit to once a month doing a community dinner at someone else's house across the neighborhood because we have MPA and everybody can't make it until we get childcare here, that was a scramble tonight. We were like, oh my God, like my partner's on the bargaining team for the nurses union so she has that right now, I have this right now, I was door knocking before, I was getting out of work and thankfully we found childcare, but starting to get childcare at all, public meetings too I think would be helpful. I'll stop ranting there. Thank you very much. We are now going to open up the floor to questions from you all. With the amount of time we have left, I think with our, with Tom's math we have anywhere from eight to 11 questions and that's people in here and then also people online, I know that there were people online at the MOU discussion that didn't get, didn't get their questions picked so I'll try and grab at least two from those online so does anybody have questions for our candidates? Kathy, is that your hand first? This question is for you, Jeff. Recusion are especially necessary to avoid conflicts of interest and even the appearance of impropriety but they also have constituents without representation on important issues. Would you likely need to recruse yourself on matters of involving organizations such as UVM, DGS, BED, UVM MC, Champlain College, Champlain College, City Place, BPD, other large construction projects being proposed or in the pipeline and other entities connected with city affairs? Yeah, thank you Carol for that question. It's obviously an important one. I've practiced law in the city for about 20 years and I've worked on a lot of environmental related projects and larger projects and I take my obligations with respect to those projects very seriously. I think on balance that experience brings a lot of positive to the city council but I will certainly monitor for those situations where I would need to recuse. I've done that for the past eight years on the Development Review Board very religiously. I don't recuse myself a lot but I do recuse myself when matters related to some of my clients come forward. And so there may be situations where that occurs. I don't represent UVM or UVM MC. I work on some city projects and I don't represent BED. Most of my work in those spaces is outside the city. So there will be projects and I'm sure I will have clients I'm not thinking of that might require that. But I don't think they will be very frequent. Thank you. Carter, do you wanna answer just on the broader spectrum of recusal in city council? I was gonna say more broadly it makes me think of one of the concerns that I've heard at the door and that I've been thinking through. We're a small city and everybody knows each other and so when you recuse yourself questions or ethical conflicts for elected officials in city government or the perception, I think are prevalent. But we don't actually, maybe we do, we certainly need to update and have more teeth to and sort of public process around ethics standards for electives like I work at 350 Vermont. 350 Vermont was involved in the McNeil discussion. So my work and I have had a very sort of strict internal firewall between those two things. But that warrants further discussion on my part with folks who know more than me and folks who have more experience in development who have had to maybe face a similar situation. So I do think we need to have some set standards and some clear guidelines for the public sort of, yeah, so the public's clear on that because I think it is an issue of trust and even, I mean any good ethics advocate or good democracy advocate will tell you it's not about intent, it's about perception. So I think that's over the last number of years been an issue that I've heard consistently. Thank you. Before I pick another person, I just wanted to add a little side rule to the attendee questions. Is in order for more people to have a question asked, we're gonna keep it to that specific question like secondary post questions on the first question. I think I first saw Earhard's hand up before. Thanks Sam. And just a quick reminder, folks online probably can't hear if you're holding the microphone too far away from you. So just my question's simple. We have a not just city but statewide affordable housing crisis and I just wanna hear what you guys think you can do as city counselors to help alleviate this intense crisis which has increased homelessness and just made it very difficult for people to find places to live whether they're even middle class. So wanna hear your responses on that. Thanks. Carter, you'll go first. Sure, I've got a list and this is my dream list and I get that this isn't a little bit closer. So I understand that like there's gonna be political realities but I think if we're just talking about what would actually address the problem, Zariah's been working on a ton of up zoning essentially with BTV neighborhood code I believe is the term or the name of it. I'm supportive of that if we can increase density and also allow for more options for first time home buyers. That's how we're gonna build generational wealth which is a good way to combat poverty overall. The other piece, we've actually made decent investments if you look year over year in the housing trust fund. I think the mayor and the council have had some agreement there and they're sort of decent in normal times in my head and so the crisis is sort of out of control in terms of how little housing stock there is for first time home buyers and how expensive it is. So I wanna find ways to get creative with essentially putting as much money as we can as a default into the housing trust fund to build more affordable housing. The other piece again, this is all where do you find the money which goes back to the conversation about taxes which is a longer one but Champlain Housing Trust shared equity program. I almost got in and then my partner and I wouldn't have met just sort of were over the threshold but essentially it's a great way to get working and middle class families into home ownership. CHT will own the land, folks own the house, you can only make a certain amount over time and equity. So that's been really successful, it just needs to be scaled, right? And so yeah, there's a number of other things. I guess there's a ton of really successful programs that if we could continue to scale them, we could see the effectiveness grow but it's a question of money that folks have built out. I also think part of the housing question is code enforcement in city attorney's office. My understanding is of six months ago we had only three attorneys on staff in the city attorney's office for everything the city does. And so that's a problem, right? If we're gonna hold folks accountable to certain basic humane standards for rental units, there's an article in Seven Days, I was quoted in at the end, but article in Seven Days talking about blight and how we've dealt with that and or how we haven't really dealt with that effectively. So I think those are all a number of things. The website again, I'm a little bit of a policy nerd and known to go on rants, but the website really has a more comprehensive list that I might not have time to go through here. Thank you, Jeff. Great, thank you, Samantha. Thank you, Earhart. Really important question. I think it may be after public safety and some of the public health issues we're dealing with, it's related, but in my mind is one of the most important questions we're dealing with. There's not enough housing in Burlington across the board and we're seeing the impact of that everywhere from the homelessness crisis that we have right now to affordability for people trying to buy homes to the quality of the housing stock we have right now and to even things like, I think it was Gary who just spoke about the common level of appraisal. The fact that we don't have enough housing that's driving our housing costs up affects things like the common level of appraisal and then therefore affects our tax increases. So we really need to have a comprehensive policy to deal with that. And the reality is as a municipality most of the challenges right now are driven by building costs, land costs, labor costs. It's very expensive to build things. The places we as a city can make an impact are on trying to manage the other costs that drive development costs higher. And I think that's addressing some of the zoning issues that are being worked on right now is one place we can start. Really up zoning, looking at the neighborhood code and options there for making housing more dense in the appropriate places and just more available overall. There are some good programs to continue to expand. The Housing Trust Fund is a great example. That gets some money from the short-term rental registrations and we could do a lot more to enforce the short-term rental registrations and get more money into the Housing Trust Fund to be used for some of those shared equity efforts. I also think we need to focus very closely on providing housing for those who have no home right now. We've worked on some of the projects around town including the Elmwood pods that are not a solution but they're a start. And so I think looking at what's worked and hasn't worked there and figuring out how we can with our broader Chittenden County municipal partners expand some of that very low barrier to entry housing is critical. So that's an area I would really wanna focus. Thank you both. Brenda, you were next. Thanks, Sam. So my plan was to just sit here and listen but I was at a Burlington hockey game before this Burlington High School and my neighbors on East Ave who couldn't make it said, you need to talk about this. And I'm a professor at the University of Vermont like Troy who I think has left. I love our students. They're one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about our future. Our students are super engaged and every year they want to bring people into my 230 person classroom to talk about local politics and to have counselors run for that. And that causes all kinds of problems as a professor and we want to bring our students along and have them engage and they are really engaged but there's a really serious problem with utilizing the university-armed faculty classes dorm rooms as a campaigning strategy. So my neighbors on East Ave, they were like, you need to ask this. So Carter, I wanted to give you a chance to explain this because they pointed out, I think it was in the seven days when you were campaigning on campus and you said you don't care about the rules. So could you talk about that just to let us know what you meant by that? And that's kind of a comment that I quite like. I don't care about the rules when you're fighting injustice or something but when it's about campaigning, I'm a little worried as somebody who's like in that fulcrum of students like we just want you to hear this one person. So if you could just, that'd be great to address that. Totally fair question for folks who don't know in my younger days as a 19 year old, I also thought it was a good idea to run for city council in Ward 8 and admittedly I was, I've been sober for five years now, so it's good I didn't get on there but pre sobriety, pre a little more emotional intelligence development and appreciation for what it means to be living in the neighborhood. So in many ways on a personal level, I'm glad I didn't win, probably for the city, that's good. I guess I would chalk it up to youthful excitement. Yeah, and just for context, I grew up in a household that Irish Italian immigrants off the boat in 1902, so my Gigi and alcoholism and substance use disorder, mental health challenges, emotional intelligence was not something I grew up inheriting. It's definitely a learned behavior and that certainly had negative impacts on my life but it's also made me what I am today and I'm really proud of where I'm at and the fact that my step son is not gonna grow up in that kind of environment. So I do care about the rules. That was one of the, every time I do anything politically, one of my friends will send me that article as a reminder, joke around. So very fair question though. Is there any rule? I don't know that I really have a response. How do you feel about the rules, Jeff? Well, as a lawyer. No, but I appreciate your comment, Carter, and yeah, I think it's important, speaking in particular about the students, they make up a portion of our ward and communicating with them and making sure we're understanding their concerns. I appreciate Troy's comments. We need to be in tune with that and we represent a really interesting and diverse ward. We have a lot of single families. We have a lot of rental units and we have a lot of students and to me that makes it kind of the most dynamic ward and it makes it a very vibrant ward but we also need to be aware that we're representing a very wide range of interests. I had Richard had a question. I was able to verify that Jeff was on the NPA Steering Committee in 2006 because I checked back at a mayoral debate that he moderated on the Trinity campus which was standing in Ramoney, people sitting in window sales and it was a very, very toxic event which he managed to handle with integrity, grace and good humor. I would like to ask both of the candidates we're talking about city having a deficit. Monroe must go to bed every night, say, honey, I shrunk the city. We need to grow, you can't shrink your way to prosperity which is what the city has done for the last 12 years so what are you doing each candidate to grow the city? Thank you, Richard, I have no recollection of that mayoral debate so maybe it was so controversial I just blanked it out. Yeah, Richard, it's a really important question. I mean, obviously the economic health and vibrancy of our community is key to so many things, not just how we enjoy the community and the relationships we have but the financial health of the community and I think we're at a very difficult point right now but I'm not sure, Richard, I completely agree that the city has been shrinking for 12 years. There has been some good progress in some areas, maybe not as much progress as we all wanna see but I don't, with any mayor over the past 20 years I've been in the city, I agree with some of the things they've done and I disagree with some of the things they've done and that's the case here but I do think on balance we've corrected some very significant financial challenges over the last 10 to 12 years that could have really sunk us even worse financially and I do think there have been some important investments in the community. I'd like to see those really come to fruition. A lot of the housing and development we're seeing downtown I think will really add some vibrancy and needed injection of people right now we need more of that and I'd like to see policies that encourage more dense development throughout downtown to really continue to grow that. It's important for our business community. UVM is a big part of that. We've talked a lot about some of the negatives of UVM housing. I think there are a lot of positives that the university brings and so I really wanna look to them as a partner for succeeding, recognizing there's some places we've got to manage their impact. So I'll leave it there. Yeah, I would say if I understand your question right how do we attract folks to stay here and put down routes in some respect? We heard from Zariah a couple of meetings ago that downtown traffic was up as I understand it but sales taxes for instance were down. That's a problem. Yeah, so I mean a couple of things. I'll say from personal experience it's tight financially right now, so me and my partner were going to walk down Church Street because it's a nice place to walk but we're not buying anything on Church Street. We're going to Williston to big box stores in Costco and because that's a financial necessity of the place we find ourselves in and I think that's true to, I was just outdoor knocking for a couple of hours before I came here. I heard that at the door. I've heard some version of that at the door. We had the parking stores six or eight years ago, sorry. Yeah, yeah, so I mean a couple things. One, when you ask a couple of the big businesses and not necessarily department stores, I'm thinking more recent memory but some of the businesses that have left downtown recently, the number one reason they've given, regardless of the political rhetoric is actually it's too expensive to lease here. It's cheaper and makes more sense for me to go elsewhere. I do think students are a great economic driver. One of the questions I wanted to ask with the MOU and I want to dive deeper with Brian and Brian is, is have they looked at, okay, if we're relying on them to increase enrollment or like increase beds, which of course they're gonna fill that with undergrad students and we're gonna be in the same place where five years ago, what's the livability impact? What's the impact with, and I was a student. I got involved in the community and I always got frustrated when people were like ragging on students but it is just reality. That's the time of life folks are in. Loud parties, folks walking up and down late at night, what are those impacts and have we accounted for that or at least had a conversation about that with the neighborhoods that are going to be impacted. In terms that we grow though, yeah, number one thing is affordability because almost every person I came to college here has left or moved out of town because there's no way, there's no job market to support the housing prices because during COVID especially and it's gotten so much worse, which again, these aren't bad people it makes sense why they would do it. Folks from New York, California, Massachusetts, those are things that the states that I've heard the most anecdotally, they're moving here working a national remote job so their job market and wages are way, way above what our wage market is here and they're buying stuff up for cash because our housing compared to New York City is cheap. So they're sort of having a sweet deal and folks who actually live here or trying to establish roots here from the beginning, it's almost impossible to do that and you have to make huge financial sacrifices meaning like renting into your late 30s with a kid. Like I was really lucky to buy a house but yeah, there was a lot of moments like where it was really tight month to month in my first couple of years of being here or getting out of college and trying to figure out can I even do this but I was involved in the community and I wanted to figure it out but anyway, I'll stop ranting. Brett Bowden, Brooks Avenue. There's been a lot of discussion over the last few years about police and policing and I'm curious about your opinions about what we should be expecting from our police force and how it should be structured and funded. Yeah, so a couple of things. So like I said, I first got involved at UVM and I actually became politically aware because of issues around money in politics, democracy reform and choice voting. So I never thought that public safety would be the piece or the issue that I would work on the most in terms of my local involvement. So I served on the 2019 special committee to review policing practices. So this was, folks can remember back way pre COVID before this became sort of the hot button political issue of the day. And so a couple of things I've observed. One, we have a CNA report that was done two years ago and folks each sort of side that was yelling at each other sort of held it up and said this proves me exactly right. And a lot of those recommendations were never implemented. So in terms of how I would approach decisions around public safety moving forward and I can give more context on the role police and public health, I wanna follow the data. Like neither of us I don't think are experts in how policing should play out from a training curriculum. Like that committee was trying to tackle training curriculum and I was sitting there thinking like we do not know how police should be trained and we're not gonna build that expertise in a few months. So I would just want to, you know, we had a national third party that was outside of sort of the politics of the day and they do it for other municipalities I believe the Naval Institute gave us real data driven recommendations that were some really granular and some big picture. So I would look to that anything that's not out of date I would assume some of it is and some of it isn't because it's two years ago now. I'd wanna follow that. In terms of some good news around recruitment I definitely believe and I'll say unequivocally there's a role for police officers. We need police officers. We need to get up to the current cap I believe of 89 right now. I believe that we need a, you know, properly staffed department for a city our size. I think that's a reasonable request and it's true that, you know, I grew up in a town of 17,000 ish. So grew up with the sergeant and police chief like at family gatherings and knew them, you know, just grew up around cops and it's unreasonable to put every single societal ill and toss it on the police's plate and say go solve this, go respond because no one's gonna be trained in every single situation. That's why we have specialization in every single professional setting on earth. So the CSL CSOs although they were controversial at the start have proven incredibly successful and has gotten buy-in from the mayor, from the council, from the police chief. So we've sort of de-politicized that which I think is good news. It's also acted as a recruitment tool. A number of folks who are CSL CSOs are now in the academy training to become armed officers. So I think that's been a really positive step. You know, the Elmwood Ave Shelter II was part of that sort of infamous package of police reform. That was a really positive step. Like I heard, I think I was listening to Kurt Wright's show and he was interviewing another candidate and he was like would you have voted for that? Would you have voted for that? And it's like well, taking the politics out of it there were specific things that were really good that are pretty much non-controversial at this point and then we can have a debate on the rest. So anyway, and I think it's worth noting again just to sort of call balls and strikes and try to de-politicize this because it's such a basic and critical function of municipal government is that 700 officers left the profession back in 2021. Tens of thousands have left the profession nationwide. And on the 2019 special committee to review policing practices we said in that committee retention or like numbers of police officers is going to be an issue based on who's gonna retire, ability to recruit new folks. So this is a trend that is wider than Burlington we need to just really focus I think on solutions and like there's a, I probably got 30 seconds left. I'll just say there's an impulse I think that I've heard not ascribed to any one person but I've heard versions of it that we just need to go arrest people. We just need to go like I don't wanna see the homeless folks anymore. I'm not saying that's the majority of folks I think it's a small minority in the community but let's play that scenario out. Let's say by some chance they actually make it into a jail cell of some sort. They're there for three months and then thrown exactly back in the same situation that they found themselves in the first place. And we know that jails and prison are about the most expensive option and places like the Elmwood Ave shelter about the most cost effective option and the more humane and we can feel better about it as a community. So yeah, it's about scale. We've done good things. I think the mayor's done good things. And the council has done good things in terms of increasing capacity but the Elmwood Ave shelter for is a great example. It's only increased capacity in the dozens. The problem's increasing in the hundreds year over year. So we need state help. We certainly need to coordinate with regional folks which Tom can attest to is a challenge coordinating with other towns and his experience in other areas. So yeah, it's not an easy problem. Like how do you solve the federal government only paying for two weeks of inpatient rehab? So anyway, stop ranting. Okay, thanks Carter. And thanks for the question. Really important one. When I'm out door knocking, I think the first question I'm getting from almost everyone is about public safety and policing and where our community is right now. I do think it's important to recognize that the difficulties we're going through right now are not just because of choices we made on policing in 2020. There's some real significant national trends that are driving both the substance use disorder issues and explosion and synthetic drugs we're seeing. And the homelessness crisis is driven by totally different factors. But I do think that that choice we made as a community in 2020 to reduce our police force had a significant impact on our ability to respond now and our resiliency as a community to deal with issues and changes in national trends that had impact us very uniquely and locally. And so I do think we really need to be thinking about not assigning blame. There were plenty of people involved in that decision but thinking about how that came about and the mistakes that may have been made and how we avoid those. And one of the things I am really focused on as an attorney, details matter and having a plan matters. And I think we need to be much more careful when we're making significant changes in how we deliver public services about thinking through the consequences and understanding the plan that we have to affect the reform we might all want to see as a community. One, because that just serves the population better but also it's much better for actually supporting the reform. We want the reform to be successful but if we don't have the social services to support the reform, then we're headed in a bad direction. And so what I think about there right now is that we are really understaffed on the police side. That's not gonna solve all our problems but we need to be at a point, I think people in this community should expect when they call 911 that someone's gonna respond and not send them to a web form. But that doesn't mean that police should be responding to all of our issues. There are a lot of issues, mental health driven homelessness that require the kinds of services we're starting to build up. We just didn't build them up fast enough and at the right scale before we made some of those other choices. So I don't want someone in a bulletproof vest to be going to deal with an issue that doesn't require that. I think we as a community want people to respond at the right scale. But I don't think we've got that balance right now. And so my approach and my thinking and what I think I bring to the discussion is a long track record of really working on some of these complex issues and thinking through the consequences and coming up with a good plan to implement that because I want to see us succeed. Like I want Burlington to be the model, not on the news for maybe mischaracterizations, but mischaracterizations, but bad things happening. We should be a model city because we're doing a lot of things really well. It's a wonderful place to live. It's a great community and we need to turn the corner on that so that we can really shine. So I want to make sure we've got people on the council who are thinking through really systematically how we do that kind of stuff. I hope that answers your question. Thanks, Chloe. Perfect, thank you. I just wanted to ask Tom and Carol. Technically we still have six minutes left in our question, answer portion, but I know that we are pushed back on time a little bit because of the MOU, so I just wanted to feel your guys' out. Can we keep going for a little bit? Okay. Fosca, do we have any questions from people online? I wanted to get at least. None from online? Okay. Anybody else have a question? It's Todd again. Is there anything the city council, you as a city councilor can do to help grow good paying jobs in Burlington? I mean, because a lot of this is legislative level and national, but what can city councilors in a city like Burlington to grow good paying jobs for working people? Like actually, I don't mean like raise, like mandate increase wages, that's great, but I'm talking about actually build jobs. Encourage jobs to come. Yeah, thanks Todd. Again, really important question. I mean, we, to be a vibrant community, we need to have all of these components and having a good solid job market is critical. It's been a very funny time right now, as many people may know. There are a lot more job openings in Vermont than there are people to fill those jobs and it is a problem for many employers. So just getting people here and trained to fill those jobs, I think is a critical place to start, but we also wanna grow our local economy and that's at different scales. I mean, I think right now what we've seen, I'm glad to hear from many of the businesses on Church Street that they ended up having a pretty good season in the end and that's a great story, but they need a lot of support still. We've really seen a lot of vitality, I think, get sucked out of our downtown community and I'd like to see the city council look at some policies to support those businesses. And some of that is around the public safety and public health issues and addressing that perception. But then we can also be telling a much better story about what a wonderful community this is to live in, raise a family in and build a career in because we've got a lot of amazing resources here and so I think a lot of that is on the city council is continuing to tell that story, which is a really positive one for Burlington. We've had some amazing businesses start here and grow here, some of them just outside of Burlington, but there are a lot of good stories there to tell. Yeah. I think we're starting to lose our audience so maybe we need to wrap up. Yeah, finish that question. Yeah, Todd, you asked me when I first called you and I worked diligently to get you an answer because you were like, no one ever answers this well. There was one idea that I heard. I mean, everything Jeff said, I think makes a lot of sense. I think there's agreement there. One thing is we used to have a small business like startup revolving loan program and I believe it was operating through CEDO at one point and folks are okay, folks who have more history can tell me. We moved that program over to Church Street Marketplace so CEDO serves the whole city. Church Street Marketplace does not and most small businesses are not operating on Church Street and so moving that back to CEDO, I think the program's ended or we just stopped funding it. It may still be going in some version but it's certainly not being as effective as possible so I think moving that is a really concrete sort of immediate thing that I could get done in the first two years provided that we can have a good working relationship with the mayor's office to support creation of new small businesses. Like you said, there's so many wonderful folks building out new models and doing things differently in Vermont and it's sort of what distinguishes us so supporting that innovation is important. Great, thank you very much. We're gonna move to the final Q and A of you guys asking each other a single question so we'll have Carter since you answered the last question first if you would like to ask Jeff his question. That'd be great. I haven't thought about a question so maybe I could pass it to you first and give me a moment. And this is gonna be an easy one. I think one of the great things about campaigning is just getting to know people and so Carter, you've done a lot of campaigning. I appreciate how involved you've been on a lot of these issues that I think we both care a lot about. I'm sort of just interested in what you do when you're not campaigning. What do you like to do? Well now I'm blushing, that's a great question. Yeah, I for a while was really career focused and at some point I had a two year old at home and that's, my life's gotten a lot smaller it seems like outside of work. I didn't think I would have kids. I thought I was gonna just sort of focus on trying to save the world as I thought about it in college. But mostly spending as much time with Wally as I can which is maybe a corny, what's the word? I'm blanking on it, what everyone would say. But truly that's, it's been so cool that just you went to the bathroom by himself the first time and you're like, oh my God, Blank, you did it. Jumping up and down, it's just, it's been a wonderful experience. Yeah, and I guess I think you've been wonderful so far to run in a race with and I think I'm hoping that, so my question is how can we together, and I think generally as a community decrease the sort of, the last few years has been filled with like angry partisan campaigning it feels like. So I've asked this to Tim and we had a good conversation about it. Zariah, other folks, so wondering your ideas on that. Yeah, Carter, really important and I think what we're doing right here is a good part of that. I appreciate, I think you've been committed to not running any divisive campaigns and really being focused on issues and I think that's what people on the ward want. They wanna hear about how we would approach issues. So I think just having that dialogue and that dialogue's important. I really firmly believe that we will make better decisions if we all just talk about it and it's important particularly in this age of social media where you just get a little clip and you say, oh, they said something wrong and it just blows up. We need to be talking to each other in person as much as we can and really conversing like we are now about how we make change that's better for all of Burlington because even if different parties, I'm not a very political or partisan person. I really think governance is about working with everybody to find the best solution and so I appreciate and look forward to having more of those conversations with you. Thank you all. All right, I think that is a good place to end it and if anybody has any questions, I may be assuming but maybe they can email either two of you if they have any further questions but otherwise, meeting adjourned.