 Good evening and welcome. I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for tonight's Candidate Forum for Mayor of Winnowski to fill a two-year unexpired term. Tonight's show is being aired live on Channel 17 and streamed live on YouTube. We welcome your comments and questions. Please join the conversation at 862-3966. The ground rules for tonight's forum are that the candidates will make opening statements of up to two minutes each, followed by answering prepared questions also for two minutes with a possible one-minute rebuttal. Tonight, I'm joined by the two candidates, Eric Covey and Christine Lott. Thank you both so much for coming out. We appreciate it. Thanks, Diane. We are going to start with opening statements. Eric's going to start us off and tell us, Eric, why you're running and what qualifies you for the position. Well, thank you so much for having us here tonight, Diane. And also a big thanks to all the CCTV folks who are behind the cameras and in the control room. You all do such amazing work promoting access to local democracy and for transparency. So hugely appreciated. I also want to thank my opponent for being here tonight and for your interest in running to serve our city, which we both share. Right now, I think Winooski is at a really pivotal point. The decisions we make now are going to have an impact for five, 10, 25 years and even longer down the road. What I think Winooski really needs in a mayor is somebody who will be a strong voice and an advocate for our city. You know, even if it's something as simple as doing the bridge repair with Burlington or discussions that we're getting in on a regional or statewide basis when the legislature is making decisions that come back and have a huge impact in our community. I'm the candidate who has the experience and the skill set to really get things done for Winooski. Right now, I work as Chief of Staff for Vermont Secretary of State Jim Kondos. And I think that experience that I have in those statewide and regional legislative and policy settings and the network that I've built as a result of those work experiences that I've had make me uniquely qualified to be able to really be a strong advocate for the needs of our city and ensure that the decisions that are being made that impact our quality of life in Winooski are done in a way that is conscious of those needs. So I appreciate the discussion we're going to have tonight and look forward to continued discussion indoors with my Winooski neighbors. Thanks so much. So Christine, tell us what qualifies you for the position of mayor. Thank you. I also feel like this is a really exciting time to be in Winooski. We have a lot of big projects and a lot of work ahead of us. And I think we need leadership that is really going to focus on the implementation while looking at the bigger picture and the long-term impacts. So ensuring that the decisions we make now are financially sustainable, that we have resources available to address needs throughout our community. My participation in council and previously on our housing commission has given me a good understanding of the work that's ahead of us. And my day job as a business analyst at a non-profit organization has prepared me to bring that like systems level focus to this work. I work on project implementation. I look at budgets. I look for a sustainability and efficiency in the work I do and that's the kind of I want to bring to this role. I think we need someone who's really focused on details and also takes a very collaborative approach to the work. We have a lot of great organizations, great residents, great businesses that we need to be talking to throughout all of our decision-making process so that we are making decisions with our residents and not for them. And that process focuses what I want to bring to this role and to our city. Super. Great. Thank you both. You're both quick speakers. You're fast. We're going to get to a lot of questions tonight. This will be great. More content. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. Great. So you both talked about these important decisions that are going to be made in Manuski soon that will impact the future. So tell me what your top three issues are that you're going to work on if you're elected and we're going to start with Christine. Sure. So like I said my focus is really heavily on process and long-term sustainability. We have mainstream and pool replacement projects that voters are expecting action on and particularly with the pool rapidly. So I want to make sure that we start implementation. We get that work underway but that we are also considering throughout the process the impacts on the resources that we have for other needs in the community. Second that we are also considering the impacts on affordability. So affordability is a concern throughout the country, throughout the state and we need to make sure that we keep Manuski affordable for all residents across the entire income spectrum. And the decisions we make with our infrastructure can certainly impact that. The third thing I really want to focus on is the public process in general. Part of our strategic vision is that we will foster relationships within Manuski and we need to do more as the leadership body to do outreach, to do community engagement, to connect with these existing groups, businesses and residents to make sure that they are part of the decision making process and that we're bringing in as many voices as we can. Great. Eric, tell us your top three issues. Great. Well I think the top three issues that I'd be focused on are primarily governance, affordability and sustainability. So when we're diving in and thinking about governance I think it's important people understand what the role of the mayor is and what the role of the council is and that's really as a strategic policy vision setting body. Really there's going to be a lot of attention right now that's paid to the mayor's race but equally important we're going to have a brand new body of, you know there'll be three brand new counselors that are on and with that brings a lot of challenges and I think that's one of the things that I am highly concerned about. A lot of these discussions about implementation and operations I don't think are the appropriate discussions for the mayor or the body to be having. We have a city manager strong form of government for a reason, we have amazing paid professionals that are much greater experts in their issue areas than we are and it's really the job of the mayor and the council to set that higher level strategic policy. We write the destination and it's our staff's job to write the roadmap for how we get there. I think it's also really important that the mayor focus on how the body actually governs and really that needs to be done by ensuring that everybody at the table has the information that they need to be able to move forward confidently and get to a point where they're able to make a decision as a body. So I think governance and how the mayor is actually operating within the council is incredibly important. I think my opponent touched on it a little bit but affordability is the number one issue in our city right now and many of our longtime residents, people who live in our city are starting to feel that pinch point. So I think we need a strong focus on policy that ensures that as we develop we're doing so in a way that preserves affordability for our residents so that we don't go through the process of starting to price people out and then last is sustainability. You know if you look at our infrastructure we have pipes underground that are a hundred years old and we have serious infrastructure investment needs that we're dealing with now and that we'll be dealing with into the future. What we need is a strong plan to address those needs in a sustainable way and to also ensure that we're building out and not underfunding maintenance on projects or continued work on individual projects from on a year to year basis so that we don't end up in this position where then we need to sink a lot of money into extensive repairs because we have underfunded those ongoing operational maintenance needs. Okay thank you. You both talked about affordability so I'm gonna jump ahead to a different question. Let's talk about Winooski's economic development mix because that certainly has an impact on affordability. Would you pursue different policies and you both talked about affordability so I kind of wanted to talk about how we might be able to bring those together and also this somehow fits together in this question and I don't know how you'll tell me. The newly revised municipal plan is it headed in the right direction and I assume that's partly due to the economic development discussion in that plan so I'm sorry I'm not familiar with it but Eric why don't you start us off. Yes so we're absolutely on the right track and I think we made a lot of progress when we're talking about development on our corridors which are those three major roads that lead into our downtown by the circulator so you'll know Mallets Bay Ave Main Street on East Allen and I think we got that form-based code in that zoning ordinance to you know 90-95% there we're almost at the finish line but we need to run those last few yards to get across it and I think what's really missing there is those guardrails to have in place that ensure we have the resources and means to encourage and incentivize affordable housing development within our city. I think we also need to look broader at the city as a whole and what we are actually doing with our zoning policy and how that is either helping develop what type of development that is helping encourage within our neighborhoods and how we can ensure that we are supporting growth within our city without taking away those unique qualities of our city that make it such a special place to live. I do also think that the municipal master plan that will be the first major action that the new body will be taking and that's something that there has been a considerable amount of work that has been put in by local regional partners community volunteers are amazing experts on staff. It is a fantastic document that can really that really sets out the vision for how we can sustainably move towards the Winooski we want to see in the future and it's a fantastic document but I also think as we're looking to do let's say the Main Street Revitalization Project we need to look at accessibility and you know how our members of our community are able to travel our sidewalks and streets. One of the things I would look to do as mayor is to establish an accessibility advisory council or accessibility advisory committee a group of individuals who are directly impacted by mobility issues to be able to talk to us as a city and say what their needs are or what challenges they face when it comes to navigation in our city. Okay. Christine talking about Winooski's economic development mix and your new municipal plan. You know so I would agree with Eric the municipal plan is on it's on the right track. A lot of work has gone into there. A lot of stakeholder voices have gone into developing that plan. When I think about economic development I think about the livability affordability of our community as a whole. You know Eric spoke to needing to be mindful of developing affordable housing. I think that we need to be mindful of the big picture of housing and that we have a diverse housing market that supports everyone who wants to be here. We had a housing needs assessment done for us a while back I think 2015 that said that we needed to focus on maintaining and improving our existing affordable housing. It showed that we actually have a pinch point in housing for middle income folks. So I want to make sure that we don't get so focused on affordable housing for low income that we are ignoring and and progressing that pinch point on middle income and then we have folks who as they're moving up in life they're not able to find a place to stay here. We need to also think about the decisions we're making and how they impact home ownership. That's something we absolutely want to encourage and it's difficult to do in a city where we don't really have space to build new single family homes. I would like to keep that type of mind because an invested and active community is really one of the things that keeps people that makes people want to be in Winooski. I think the municipal plan does a good job at getting at that supportive environment. One thing that I feel is left out is really that we need to collaborate more with our school district. Schools are very important to the people who move to Winooski the people who live here and there's more we can do to work with them to bring up the perception of the schools to make sure that we are supporting each other and the folks have an understanding of what it is. I've heard plenty of concern in the community about young families moving away because of this misperception about the school's performance level and I think that's a critical thing we need to address. Okay great thanks we have two phone calls. Wow. So we're gonna jump to that. Hi there you're on the air. Hello. Welcome. What's your question? Hi. Yes my name is Alice. I'm calling in to ask about the Winooski Pool Committee. They've done a wonderful job fundraising and come up with a beautifully designed pool. And my question is do you support the pool as designed? Okay great thanks so much. Okay so do you support the pool as designed and Christine we'll start with you. Sure so if for anyone who has followed our public process I did not support the original design of the pool. I wanted to see a scaled-back version that was more more in line with what we used to have and really considerate of long-term financing. That said we came to a compromise on the council and through the support of voters to a slightly scaled-back design where the fundraising committee who is working very hard is going to cover some of the the pieces that were removed by council. I absolutely support moving forward with that what was supported by the voters that vision is where we're at. We are already past the halfway point on engineering design. There's really no turning back at this point anyway. The next step of the pool process you know so voters supported that bond vote they supported that design. The next step is them supporting our new fiscal budget that actually funds that and so I look forward to seeing voters reinforce their decision there. This is the design they want they want to fund this. I as mayor would absolutely be supporting moving forward with that work. Okay great Eric the pool design and fundraising committee. Unequivocally yes I think the pool is such a valuable and important resource that's been missing from our community since it's been shut down. I think if you look there's significant data that shows if kids have healthy outdoor recreation opportunities it stems substance use it stems crime in youth and there is a significant need in our community for those types of recreational opportunities and programs for our kids. If you go spend any time at our O'Brien Community Center after school hours or during the course of the weekend there are a number of our community residents and youth that don't have those places to go so providing a pool and providing that safe space for our whole community to congregate would be such an incredible asset for our community. I think scaling back on the pool is a major mistake. I think that if we're going to invest in this significant community resource and spend a lot of money no matter what let's build it and let's build it right and it by scaling back and value engineering down component quality of the pool we might still be spending a lot of money for a municipal owned asset that won't last nearly as long so I'm an incredibly huge supporter of the pool. I look forward to seeing it move forward and believe that it's a significant investment for our community not just in what we're offering to residents but for quality of life for the whole region. I would like a short rebuttal. You can have a short rebuttal please. Your reference to the value engineering when the council came to decision to move forward with value engineering we ensured and confirmed with the engineers that are working on this project that the pieces that were value engineered out did not have an impact on long-term sustainability and operations so I am comfortable with the value engineered version. Do you want to say anything else sir? I don't know. So I think Alice you can be comforted to know that whoever is the next mayor of Winooski they will be supporting the pool. Okay we have another call let's see. Hi there you're on you're on the air. Great this is Hal Colston. Hi Hal. Hi so I serve on the Winooski City Council and also I represent Winooski as a state representative and I know we're in a process to consider and put on the ballot non-citizen voting and I like to hear from both candidates why is this important? Okay is this coming up on town meeting day Hal? No no we're we pushed it out further so we can have more time for the community to weigh in. Okay so probably not till the next the next town meeting would that be like another year? It's not determined exactly it could be possibly another year out but we want to make sure we're doing a thorough process to get input from the community. Alright thanks we will have our candidates answer thanks for calling in. Sure. Okay so we're gonna talk about non-citizen voting and we are gonna start with Eric. Absolutely so I absolutely support what I call all resident voting and I was the one that had initially brought it forward to council for consideration. Right now we have a number of our community members who live in our neighborhoods may own homes pay taxes either through their homeownership or through their rent send their kids to our schools but then have zero say in how their local tax dollars are being spent on their kids education or on the same cracked sidewalks that they and I walk together. I think one really important way we can engage all of our community in these important discussions around the future of our city is making sure that everybody has a seat at the table and sometimes that means growing the table. So I was absolutely in support of moving non-citizen voting forward and putting it on the ballot for Winooski voters to consider because ultimately it's a multi-step process. First voters would need to approve it and that's after the process by which it gets onto the ballot. Once Winooski voters approve it it would go to the legislature and then the legislature would ultimately be able to decide whether or not they approve our charter change that we send to them. So in the discussions we were having as a council when it came there were a group of three of us myself and Christine included that were in support of moving it forward up until the final vote to actually put it to voters so that Winooski voters could one way or another whether they're in support or not could decide whether or not to send that charter change to the legislature and on that final vote it was actually just myself and Representative Colston who we just heard from that supported moving it forward. I think that that's really unfortunate. Montpelier did move forward and pass it on the ballot that they had in front of voters in November so they're in the legislature and as the most diverse community in Vermont I do feel a little bit of shame that as a city we weren't there with them. Okay Christine we're talking about non- citizen voting and putting it on the ballot in a future. Tom, meeting day. Sure and just to make a quick point of clarification for folks watching at home this refers to allowing all residents of the city regardless of citizenship status to vote on municipal local issues not anything at the state or federal level. As Eric mentioned I have supported this I have supported this expansion of voting of having more voices at the table. When we came to the point of deciding whether or not to put it on the ballot what we discovered is that we had not done our due diligence we had not engaged the stakeholders who would be impacted. We didn't speak with new Americans. We didn't speak with nearly enough people in the community to find out what their you know what supports will they need what concerns do they have. I I go back to my point about public process being the most important part of this role that we need to do this right and make sure that decisions are happening with people and we are not doing them to them. As someone sitting on the council making that decision I felt like it was something I was doing to these people without actually engaging them and that's not something I want to be a part of. I absolutely support fostering the committee that we have established to carry that forward so there's a resident driven committee spending the time to do the thorough investigation of what needs are going to arise and doing that outreach to make sure we're engaging all of our communities all of our community members and really understanding how we can implement this in the future. Really quickly to reflect back we heard you know I know of at least six individuals who were non-citizens directly impacted by this non-citizen Winooski residents that either spoke out at our public hearing as we were considering this issue or who reached out to the whole council individually to say I am an individual who is directly impacted by this and I support moving it forward and I think that it's a shame to discount the stories of those individuals who are the people who are directly impacted by this and did reach out and express their concerns and within that process that we would have passed to put it on the November ballot there was a significant public input component of that including multiple public hearings by which the public engaged in this process could shape the final language that ends up on the ballot. Christine do you want to take a minute? Sure I do not discount the stories of those six folks who reached out to us but I want to acknowledge that we didn't reach out to anyone ourselves and that's not the way to go about decision-making as the city council we we can't make big decisions for the city in like a three month time period. The time we spent working on the pool you know that's 2016 I believe when it closed down the time that's gone into form-based code and the Main Street project the fact that we weren't spending the same amount of time and effort and putting the same energy into this very important issue that really touches people in the heart I think is a shame and I'm pleased that we are moving forward in a way that does dedicate the appropriate amount of time and the appropriate amount of public engagement to that decision. Okay well you know let's follow up with that and let's talk a little bit about how the city is supporting new Americans and undocumented residents. So I'm curious to hear you know what are the things you would like to see happen I think you've you've you've referenced some of them already but but let's talk about a little bit more detail. Christine would you like to start? Sure you know so we passed a sanctuary city resolution back in 2016 and have already been kind of guiding some of our policy with that so that we are making decisions we want people to access all residents to access resources in the city without being afraid. We have made some steps on fair and impartial policing policy you know our police department is not going to use their limited resources to enforce immigration law they have other things to do at a local level that are very important. I think that expanding beyond that I would go back to taking a collaborative approach there are local organizations like migrant justice that are already connected to these communities and already understand the needs that are out there those are folks we should be connecting with so that we can make sure we have that understanding and we understand where we can plug in and where we can be of more help so that when we make a decision this is how we want to support this group in our community that we've actually heard from them directly. Eric undocumented residents and how to support them. Yeah so as Christine mentioned our fair and impartial policing policy was actually passed initially based on a model policy the state had put forward and I had noticed and worked with individuals worked with migrant justice and worked with other directly impacted community members and organizations to identify there were still a few areas of vulnerability within that policy opportunities where we wouldn't have been offering the best protections available for our immigrant community members and worked to shore up the vulnerabilities in that policy and I'm really proud that that policy I brought forward to council we were able to pass unanimously and now we have what is one of if not the strongest fair and impartial policing policy or sanctuary city policy in the entire country. I think that that's incredibly important not just for the protections that offers to those community members but also for general public safety because if even though I am a citizen if a non-citizen neighbor of mine notices that somebody's breaking into my house and they're worried that if they call our police department to alert them and act as a witness for that break-in that they might end up being funneled through our police department into immigration control enforcement that there would be retribution on their end so they would might be disincentivized to call and that weakens public safety for all of us living in Winooski so I'm incredibly proud that I brought that policy forward and that we were able to pass that important protection and I think this conversation circles back around to the discussion we were just having on non-citizen voting we need to ensure that people have a voice at the table and you know I think this is a conversation we have been having in our community for years and years and years and was at a point where the members of our community were ready to vote on and move it forward and lastly I think we need to ensure we have appropriate translation services available one of the things I asked at our last council meeting is that we engage the Secretary of State's office in a proactive conversation about translation services at the polls so that those members of our community who are coming to vote who may not be strong English speakers have the resources available to be able to participate in our civic process so I think that's an incredibly important discussion but it also extends to important city communications that we're putting out there we need to work with organizations that will help us appropriately translate documents for residents so that we are communicating information to all members of our community in a way that they can that is accessible for them okay and I believe or not we're almost out of time it always happens like this is so quick so I'd love to give you both a chance to do a closing statement to sort of sum up all things we've talked about today and I think Eric you're actually going to start us off great well I think we have a lot to be proud of in Wenuski our community and our city has really come such a long way and I think that it's important to recognize that vital history and how we've grown and developed to be an incredibly special and amazing community that so many people want to live in and have a strong connection to but I do think that we have some significant challenges ahead of us as we think through a lot of these discussions around long-term sustainability and affordability I am really excited that we're engaged in this discussion that our whole community is so interested in the direction of our city and you see that at our public processes where we're having discussions around Main Street community dinners around the pool wherever it might be I think that as mayor I would bring a significant asset to the community given my professional experience at working as chief of staff for our secretary of state to really be a strong and effective advocate for our city and that comes down to so many different factors whether it's legislation that's being passed that impacts our community in a huge way or ways by which we can grow out go out and seek funding or discussions we're having about incentivizing investment or development within our community so I really look forward to the conversation we're going to have over the next month I want to thank you for being willing to step up it's been a real pleasure to serve with you on the time that you've been on council I hope that regardless of the outcome on March 5th that we still are able to work together hand in hand on the future of our city and with that if folks are interested they can find more information about me and my campaign on www.Covey4Mayor.com excuse me we're in a two-year gap session there www.Covey4Mayor.com there's information about my issues ways to get involved with the campaign a list of the many community leaders and neighbors who have stepped up to support my campaign and I hope that I can count on your vote on March 5th okay thank you Christine closing statement sure um thank you Eric as well for being willing to do this job it's great to see many active engaged folks who who want to step up for the city I came to Winooski 10 years ago I've spent most of the last 10 years here I guess not here over in Winooski I own a home there I have family there I am deeply invested in the future of Winooski it's where my future is going to be and I want to make sure that we have a big picture long-term view on keeping that sustainable keeping it affordable I want to make sure that as mayor we are approaching the decision-making process in a really engaging way where we are making decisions with our residents I I do not bring my own agenda of policy issues to this role I want to work with the rest of the members of council work with additional organizations in the community and residents to find out what the best steps are and the best decisions that we need to make to get to our shared vision I look forward to talking to more residents if I haven't been to your door already you're in the minority um so I hope to see you and if you want to reach out to me I believe my email is being posted on the screen here yes um I would love to hear from everyone out there and I look forward to March 5th as well great super thank you so much both for coming out and uh good luck on town meeting day and I should let everybody know of course to stay tuned for chow 17 because we're going to have more forums presentations on ballot items and municipal budgets so we hope you'll keep checking in on our very busy schedule for the month of february and importantly of course to vote on tuesday march 5th um and also join us in town meeting night because we'll have um live our live results show why don't we just say where folks can vote and what how the times is seven to seven senior center seven to seven if you have any trouble not knowing where that is you can always go to city hall and they'll one two three barlow street easy to remember and voting early is an excellent way to vote I always forget everyone always reminds me of voting early you do not need an excuse or an absentee baller and those kind of things you just go to city hall and they'll take excellent care of you when the during their um open hours so let's hope people will do that as well so great thank you again thanks diane good night