 We're all going to be on the screen, which is exciting. Generally, we would go through and say hi to everyone, but I feel like we just did that. And I will be able to have a lot more participation in the meeting. So first thing is announced. Throughout this meeting, begin to think about what you would want to see from the NPA. We really want to get input from all of you of what presentations you're interested in seeing, what groups you want us to bring in. Every single month, the steering committee, we meet together and decide on an agenda. Some individuals and groups reach out to us and ask to come and visit. And we generally allow them to do that. But if you want us to reach out to people, let us know. Shoot us an email. All of our information is on the agendas. And we'll have a longer conversation about that at the end of this meeting, but just begin to have those thoughts throughout the meeting and maybe write it down. I mean, if you have to leave early again, just send us an email. And now we can kind of move into speak out. So just raise your hand. Can I jump in, Hannah? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. This is part of the announcements. I just wanted to thank our NPAs, Ward 1 and 8, for their support of the voting project that Adnan Haji and I worked on with a variety of people, including Pet, people from other people from CEDAW, as well as the family room. We held two voting sessions on two Friday nights. And we had maybe 20 to 25 people who attended totally. And they represented the languages of language groups of Swahili, Nepali, Mai Mai, and Arabic. We also had French offered and Vietnamese, but no attendees for those. So I think I was heartened to see on the city council, maybe Jack can speak to this, that the city council talked about translators and the importance of interpreters in just making all of our lives in the city accessible. So that was certainly an outcome of this meeting is recognizing how many people really want to be part of participation and certainly voting, but also understanding what's going on and how the city works. So trying to figure out as NPAs how to reach out in a regular way to folks of different language groups. So thank you again, Ward 1 and 8, for your financial support for those two evenings. I have an announcement as well. The old East End group is working on a planning for a winter carnival on February 27th, which will be it's a Saturday and a full moon. So we're looking to do outdoor snow sculptures and frisbee golf and all kinds of other stuff, sugar on snow, just in the beginning of the planning stages. So if you're interested, please let me know. We'd love to have you join us in the planning of this festival. So I want it to be sort of like an East Coast winter burning man kind of a thing. But I'm not sure we're going to quite get there this year. Great. Thank you. Does anyone else have any announcements or comments for speak out you can indicate by raising your hand or just really unmuting yourself because of the size of the group? Hi, I'm Laura Wilson. And I'm new to this group. And I just wanted to say hi, I'm listening. And my role is I work for Estee Ireland properties and some listening to the eviction portion. But I also am the vice president of the board of CVOO. And so I have two sets of interests that I'm listening for. So thank you for having this meeting tonight. Great. Thank you for being here, Laura. I'm welcome. Any other comments? Just one quick one. Cynthia, what was the date for the carnival? 27th, February 27. And I saw Jack, you had your hand raised. Yeah, hey, everyone, I'll be talking again during the councilor updates and recap. But just during speak out, I wanted to announce to you all that I am going to be running again for reelection for East District City Councilor. I've really, I feel like I've learned a lot and grown a lot in this first term and in this last year and a half. And it's definitely a role that you can't really do it unless you love it because it's a lot of work and a lot of pressure, but I really do love it. And I really love to be able to work with you all and just work in community to try to build better systems and better policies and move our community forward and work through a lot of these really intense challenges that we're facing right now. So yeah, I'm sure I'll be reaching out to many of you during the campaign and feel free to always reach out to me with thoughts or feedback or if you're interested in getting involved in the campaign. But yeah, just thank you all for electing me and working with me in this role and I'd be honored to have your support again. So thank you all. Any more comments? I would just like to reply in response to Jack, to say Jack, I really appreciate the time you take to give us a rundown of what happened at the meeting. Otherwise, I wouldn't know. And I guess I'd have to plow through the Burlington City page to find the minutes, but I appreciate your take on it and it's quick in it and it just comes to me. I don't have to go looking for it. And so I just wanna say thank you for doing that. Yep. Absolutely, happy to do it. I think the idea came from a conversation with someone at an NPA meeting. So yeah, happy to do it and thanks for the feedback. Jonathan, yes? I just wanna pass on a conversation I had with Jared Wood earlier today. And he is anxious about the re-onset of COVID and he's a little concerned that the community is kind of psychologically unprepared for what might be looming ahead. He used the expression, up to now we've been whistling past a graveyard, but the things could change very dramatically and very rapidly and he's concerned that maybe we're not maintaining our focus on it the way we need to. So I'm really just passing on his words for that. Okay, great. Any last comments? Yeah. I wanted to second the appreciation for Jack and his work. I'm decided you're running again. My main speak out is more of a question and if anybody has information at all about this postcard we received in the mail from the DRB about the Joint Institutional Parking Management Plan. I went online and looked at partially a 40 page thing that the institutions are. I don't know if anybody got any information plus or minus or any controversy about this meeting. It's gonna be held a week from, well, Tuesday night, coming up Tuesday. Does anybody know anything about the, it's looks like a five year plan that UVM and Medical Center and I think Champlain are putting forward five year plan. Anybody know anything about it that they can share? Yeah, I know a bit about it that I can share during maybe the council updates. Okay, great, that sounds fine. Yeah, if other folks want to respond now they can but I'll speak to it in the council updates. Any last comments before we go into the council updates and then maybe Jack can touch on that like right away? Any more takers? Okay, so now we're gonna go into the council updates. Jack and Jane I see you're on. So like whatever feels comfortable of you of order that you wanna go, feel free to get started. Yeah, I could kick us off a little bit. Yeah, so I sit on the Charter Change Committee which is a very active committee if any of you attended or read about it but we've been working every single week for many hours and taking a lot of public input on the police oversight models and how we're kind of trying to build this separate body of oversight and it's been a lot. We've been learning a lot. We've been working with the city attorney and the ACLU, sorry, it's been a long day, a lot of acronyms and so it's just been, it's been dense but we are really picking up momentum in terms of having a draft for what we wanna see in terms of this body. So if you are interested at all, we are having another meeting tomorrow at 5.30, I believe five or 5.30 and it will probably end around 7.30 but it should be, we're going through word for word, the current draft that's the sole purpose of tomorrow's meeting, the current draft that we're working on to actually design this body. So that's been a lot. And then we've also, last week just passed Just Cause Eviction out of committee and back, it's going back to the council or did go back to the council but so that's kind of, we're trying to figure out what process we need to take with that to get it onto the March ballot. So there's a lot of kind of things happening toward the end of the year that I think folks should really pay attention to and I'm gonna post about it in more thorough detail a little bit later tonight because there's just like a lot of parts to it, a lot of different timelines we're working with. So that's kind of been taking up most of my time as a counselor other than the meetings but I guess to recap, I believe we had two meetings. We had, we talked about overdose prevention sites and the hurdles that it's gonna to entail I guess for having that actually be a thing in Burlington. There's kind of this like general federal hindrance if you will, that's kind of delaying that process and then we have to work around that if we want to have a site like that which we do the council voted to have that and it was a really a shared positive vote. So that's, yeah, I'm trying to think of we granted some tax abatements and things on Monday and a few other, yeah, I can fill in some more gaps too if you want to take over Jack but those are the main things that are kind of on my mind right now and pretty big projects. Yeah, thank you. No, y'all have been working super hard and started to change committee and yeah, for people who don't know, that's the city charter is basically the city's constitution more or less and that committee works through any potential charter changes and if they pass with them and then the full council passes them, those items always then go to you all and they go to the voters on the March ballot. So all these things that they're looking at in that committee, if they make it through will come to you all as well. So yeah, I'm on the ordinance committee with Soraya and I think I mentioned last meeting that we were gonna be taking up and finalizing this item about residential parking regulations and Karen Long had brought up at the last meeting and has often raised this issue of rental properties and maybe it's unclear where the parking is allowed or people are parking on grass and compacting soil or damaging plants and leading to additional runoff or parking, just parking challenges in general in some of our neighborhoods. So Councillor Busher, former Councillor Busher and I had been working for a really long time on a policy to try to get at these issues and address it and that policy has finally passed out of the ordinance committee, not happened since our last meeting together. So now that item is going to the full council a week from Monday and I think it'll make it a lot more clear, a lot easier and it'll hold landlords much more accountable to ensure that tenants know where to park. It's in the lease, it's posted to the city, it's clear, it follows our zoning regulations and a lot coverage issues. It's clearly posted in the building and it'll just make enforcement so much easier and make it easier for tenants to know where they should be parking. So I'm glad that we finally got that one out of the committee after a long time. And then two other policies that I've talked about here. Can I ask a question, Jack? Oh yeah. Because we just live on a street with a lot of rental property and there doesn't seem to be any limit to the number of cars that a particular unit might have. And I guess with the new, that's part of the new regulations that may be coming around parking, right? Is that there's some kind of limitation but with older houses, it just seems the more the merrier. There just lots of cars on the street and in the driveways and on the, you know, lawns, et cetera. So there's nothing we can do obviously to control the number limit, regulate the number of cars per household or per renter. Yes and no. This is a big issue for me and it relates to the other question about the joint institutional parking management plan from Speak Out. The regulations we passed that you were talking about, Carol, with new developments, that isn't a regulation around the amount of cars that are allowed. It's just a regulation around the amount of parking spaces that are built with new developments. For decades, we've been actually forcing developers to build more parking than they would even necessarily like to, which is really just increased, not only lot coverage and the amount of resources going towards parking but also it really incentivizes more people to have cars in Burlington when there's this overabundance of parking. So we eliminated that. And so we're not gonna force people to build a certain amount of parking. We also lowered the maximum amount of parking that people can build. So we're hoping that these things will, they'll not only bring down housing costs but they'll also create less incentive and make it a little bit less convenient for every single person in every single unit to have a car, which was kind of the way we had been approaching it previously. But, and then we also, in addition to that, require that new developments also support tenants to use other forms of transportation too because we wanna not only disincentivize driving but actually make it easier to use alternatives. So they have to give free transit passes and discounted car share memberships and a number of things to support tenants. So, but yeah, that's for new development. We're working on sort of a overall transportation demand management system that would address existing as well. Cause I think that's really critical. What this policy could do to help what you're talking about, Carol, is it prohibits landlords from sort of overselling to tenants what the parking situation is cause that'll often happen. Like you've got college students maybe moving off campus for the first time and they are literally deciding whether or not to bring a car to Burlington. And many do and many don't. And that decision is often based on what they think, what their expectations are. And the landlord will often say, oh yeah, there's plenty of parking on street right out front of the building. Like they kind of sell that out, people bring the car and it, and everyone does that and it leads to this crunch. But now you have to, you can't like claim any on street parking and you have to be very specific about, okay, there's three units in this building and there's only four parking spaces. Like the landlord has to really make that extremely clear in the lease and post it and everything. So I think it will change people's decision, particularly with students who are making that choice semester by semester. So it starts to get at it Carol but we need much more comprehensive robust which we're working on. And the UVM thing ties in a lot with that because yeah, they do these five year plans around transportation and I haven't been able to dig in as much into it as I would have liked so far this cycle, but I definitely want to. It's interesting. I think there is a lot of, there is a decent chunk of UVM employees and affiliates who are just parking on street which isn't great. So I think we need to push UVM I think harder on transportation demand management. For a number of years it was really declining. The number of people that were driving single occupancy via close to campus. But it's really crept back up a lot if you look at the data over the last 20 years. It had shrunk down all the way to like, I think close to 50%. Now it's like above 60% of UVM employees who are driving alone to work. So we've really lost a lot of ground which is really discouraging and I want to see a doubling down from UVM on going back in that direction because we know it's possible. They've already done it before. So I think, yeah, it is a 40 page plan. I haven't had time to super thoroughly dig in but that's the main thing that I want to bring into that conversation. It seems like they do have enough parking on campus which is one of the big questions of that plan is do you actually have enough parking? I think they do if they really push on this TDM, Transportation and Man Management work. Otherwise there's a hidden sort of segment that's parking sort of on street. So I mean, yeah, I think that's how I would want to push UVM. Some people would say they should build more parking on campus but I think that just digs us deeper into the whole. All right, I've been going on and on and Zariah is here now. Just really quickly the two things I did wanna hit on and I've mentioned them before so I don't need to dive in too deep but ordinance committee meeting next Thursday we're looking at mandatory weatherization for rental units, which I campaigned on my first time and have been working on since I got elected. And I'm excited that it's coming back and moving forward and then for new buildings basically banning fossil fuel hookups for new construction is the other policies. So we're looking at both of those on the same night next Thursday at 5.30. Sorry for a long one tonight, but thank you. Thank you. I also have just a quick just to wrap back around really fast. We did extend the limitations for gathering sizes up through March that was brought forth by the administration. So I just wanted to make sure folks are kind of aware of that and that UVM students are gonna be leaving in what, two weeks, two and a half weeks and pretty much permanently through the new year. So some changes, I don't know if they're for the best or not, there's some traveling there but just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Zariah, if you wanna make any comments, feel free. Sure, I don't know what's been covered so I'm not gonna, I'm gonna assume most of it has the, just cause of fiction, I think I'll talk about a little bit later on in the schedule. So I won't touch on that. So in terms of racial justice, I think folks have seen that the reparations task force has kicked off or is kicking off this week. We as the Joint Committee, the Public Safety and the Police Commission Joint Committee just selected a consultancy to help us do a community visioning process. So that'll start, I assume it'll be, I hope it'll be approved by the council end of November so that we can get started with that in December and definitely look forward to any recommendations that you all have in terms of getting folks involved and being part of that process. And then the second RFP, which is an assessment of the Burlington Police Department and alternatives, we just finished the RFP for and it's now posted on the city website. So really glad that those two processes are moving along. And then there was one more thing. Oh, and I haven't even talked to the other counselors about this, so apologies that this is new to you as well as I have been talking to City Clerk Bovee for a little bit cause I had complaints from two folks who are in wheelchairs about getting into polling places which started during the primary. And just because of the way that the school has been set up, especially during COVID and the entrance that they're using it wasn't wheelchair friendly and it doesn't seem like there's good alternatives for us but I'm at least having that conversation with City Clerk Bovee. So if folks have suggestions on alternatives and any thoughts, do let me know. And that's it for me. Okay, so we have a couple more minutes. Our next presenter is not here yet. So I wanna give them time to show up because they're not scheduled until 7.40. So if anyone has any more questions for the counselors I feel like this would be a good time to do that. So you can just unmute yourself if you have a question because of the size of the group. Can I just clarify something that I had said, Hannah? When I say transportation demand management probably a lot of you do know what that means but a lot maybe don't know what it means. What I mean is basically like incentivizing alternatives to driving alone, which UVM has a lot of that in place but I think could push it even harder and double down even more. But like free bus access and carpool incentives and discounts on bike share and car sharing options just different ways. And then a lot of like education and outreach and matching people to carpool or educating people about bus stops and times and having flexible work time allowing people to work from home which has obviously happened a lot during COVID but just all these things that can alleviate not only the parking pressures but also from a bigger picture address the climate crisis at the same time. So that's kind of what I mean when I say TDM or transportation demand management and it's something that UVM and the institutions have done work on and should do more work on as well as the city itself I'm thinking and hoping and pushing for on a trajectory for the city to have city-wide TDM programs in place. And we've now at least required new developments to have those programs in place. And then actually, Jack, I have a question and this is actually for all the counselors. Do you know like what education goes into like letting students know about the bus routes and all of that? Cause I feel like when I was the first year one of the big reasons why my friends were like, oh, we can't wait until like sophomore and junior year to like get a car up here because like no one ever told us how like the bus routes work. And I know like just like the culture and like my friend group was we would just like learn it so that way we wouldn't need to have a car here but I know that's not really the case for a lot of individuals. So like I like, do you know what goes into that? And if UVM has expanded education surrounding the busing system? Yeah, actually, yeah. So my other work outside of council, I interact with this a decent amount because I work out of UVM with sustainable transportation in Vermont and we partner and talk a lot with UVM. And there's transportation and parking services at UVM that Jim Barr heads up. And so yeah, I don't know exactly what their regimen is for outreach and education for new students, especially during COVID because I know they would do a lot of like tabling with Katma to try to reach people and probably email blasts and things like that. But I don't know how it's shifted over time or if it's increasing. One thing I do know though that they added that I thought was really cool. They added this last year is anyone who wants to apply for a parking permit, whether it's a student or an employee, they have to basically take this whole test about all the other options and all the incentives and learn about what all the alternatives are before they can actually apply for that permit, which I think is a great system because maybe that will make people think twice about that. So that's one thing that they have added but otherwise I don't know to what extent they've like made it more robust than it already is or not. Okay, thank you. Yeah, any other questions? Feel free to just jump in. So I wanna press, I guess Jack again about his knowledge about this upcoming meeting Tuesday, the Joint Institutional Parking Management Plan. The reason I'm pressing is this card comes out for people that are butters. And so state law requires it. So it says that because a development project is being planned or an appeal is being filed and your property abuts the affected property. So I'm wondering if they're talking about, or maybe I don't know, I just need to dig into the 40 pages. I don't think it's Centennial Court. That's the only thing we directly abut, but maybe it's the new parking lot where the wind generator used to be. Is that right? It's a new parking lot there that's being constructed right now. I don't know about that. I didn't know about a new parking lot being constructed back. Well, you know where the wind generator was? Yeah, kind of in the large parking lot behind Jeffords and everything. Yeah, so that wind generator came down at least a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't functioning anyway. It was kind of a symbol that was anyway. So I asked a neighbor if they knew what was being built there and I'm embarrassed, I don't even know. He seemed sure it was a parking lot, you know, but... I actually don't know. I've been communicating with some people about this plan and I haven't heard that come up. Okay, well, I'll look into that. Okay, I'll look further into those 40 pages. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to follow up with you. It's really important. It's, I mean, UVM is a behemoth and it's the largest employer and the biggest source of commuters and everything. So if we can push there, it has a big impact on overall transportation system in Burlington. Okay, well, I'm hoping by attending the meeting that there is something controversial that's being built or planned on being built, I'll find out then. I'm glad you got a card about it. Everybody on our street did, as far as I know, East Avenue co-housing. But okay, great, thanks, Jack. Yeah, if anyone else knows about that, I haven't heard about the new parking lot back there. Any other questions for the counselors? This Dave Colley, just on this last parking management discussion we had, where can you obtain this 40 page study? I just went online and I wasn't able to find anything of recent vintage. Who's got the study and where will the meeting be held next Tuesday? So the city website, city website, DRB, it was kind of a little while to get there, but so you go to DPW, DRB agendas. And I believe that'll take it. View the final agenda at Burlington, Vermont.gov. Who actually says DPI, what apartment planning? Oh, okay, DRB agendas. Or and somewhere in there is something called postcard notices, but between agendas and postcard notices, and you can call the zoning office too, but that's where I found it. I can dig it up and post it in the chat too. I'll link to that. And where will the meeting be held next week? It's virtual. Okay. Yeah, Carol. So this reminds me of something else we've talked to as an NPA steering committee, is knowing that the DRB is really an important body that gets, that we'd like to hear more information about as steering and as an NPA, but they're not many of us. So we're sort of looking for anyone who might be interested and who goes to those meetings fairly regularly, might be willing to take that one on and as a way of just sort of reporting out to the NPA about what's happening sort of on a regular basis at those meetings, because we know they're very important in terms of the development that happens in our wards. So let us know if you're interested in, and maybe email one of us when you're able to go to one of the meetings so we can be sure to save time for you on our NARA agenda. Yeah, and Emily Lee is an expert on this because she's on the planning commission and she knows a lot more about this current plan than I do, because they've reviewed it and have deliberated on it. And she was the one in part who kind of was getting me up to speed on it a week or two ago. This is Emily. Emily Lee, she lives in Morday and she's on the planning commission. Great, okay, thank you. Okay, so does anyone have any final questions? Okay, so we're running into kind of the same issue as last time where one of our, or really two of our presenters aren't here yet. So I feel like it, like Zariah, if you're okay with it, would you wanna give your presentation now? Just so if you don't want to, that's fine. We can go to the school commissioners, but whatever you wanna do. Hey, Hannah, before we do that, could I interrupt? I do have one other question that maybe can take a couple of minutes, but there's been some talk about city, is it a city place downtown, that there's some new partners and do any of the city councilors know what's going on there? Are we gonna move forward on that or is it, or what's happening? Yeah, I'm happy to take this. Right now it's still, because we're in, it's a little bit confusing because we sued the developers and so to some extent they have to figure out who the developers are and get straight on that before new partners can come in. And so we've basically asked them for more information and to get their story straight before we say that there are new partners or there's not new partners that are approved or unapproved might take away from that. I don't know if Jack and Jane have something to add. Yeah, and they've submitted a new design and drawing, they've submitted it to the city and they presented at awards two and three. And the design itself, my perspective is somewhat, I like it, I mean, it's a lot more housing. I think they got rid of a lot of the hotel from the previous design. I think they lowered the height a little bit. So the design itself, but yeah, to Zariah's point, we haven't still gotten some of the financial information and we do have the mayor just scheduled, I think yesterday, an executive session, a meeting on Monday to really dive in because we need to decide, the city needs to decide if we're gonna essentially play ball with this new team that includes, it includes like Scott Ireland and it includes a few like local builders and developers, Dave Barrington and the AFL-CIO, I think would potentially finance it, which means it would be using union labor. So there's a lot of aspects that are really appealing about it, but there's still obviously a huge trust issue with Johnson X especially, given how things have unfolded so far. So I think that's a lot of what we're weighing, but I think the administration knows more than we do and they're gonna share that with us on Monday night, at six on Monday night. So hopefully we learn more on Monday and hopefully we're able to share some of that. Okay. Okay, Aden, do you wanna just go with your update? I know Kathy's not on, so I didn't wanna jump into that if you weren't comfortable, but I'm fine with you or Zariah kind of going, whatever makes sense to you both. I can wait for Kathy. I'll text her and let her know how long that she'll take. She said that she'll be able to jump off of the other meeting and come to this one around eight o'clock. So, or before a little eight o'clock, so I'll check in with her and then I'll wait a little bit. Okay, Zariah, if you are fine going, that would be great. If not, we can figure something out. Yeah, no, I'm happy to go. The caveat that I'll have is that I'm not 100% prepared for this and somebody else made my PowerPoint. And so I won't actually go through the PowerPoint one because it's not mine, but I do wanna give the update and I know for a timing sake it makes more. We don't have a chat function, do we? We don't, but if you have a presentation, we always like to link things on our minutes and in the agenda so we can get information out to individuals if that's okay. Great, then do folks mind me just going through it verbally and having the presentation at the end because I don't really wanna go side by side. Okay, that's great. So I will share my screen for just a second to show folks the current. So I guess background information right now just because eviction is proposed as a charter change, which means that it would go to November and what we hope would be, would go to voters and what we hope would be the March ballot and then would go through the state process of actually changing our charter. And the probably two years after that. So it's a little bit of a slow process, but the charter and I'll show you the exact charter change language and then I'll talk a little bit about what that means. And so the exact language is shall the charter of the city of Burlington numbers as amended be further amended by adopting and adding a new section to read as follows. To provide by ordinance protections for residential tenants from eviction without just cause, where just cause may include but is not limited to, A, a material breach of a written rental agreement, B, violation of state statutes, regulating tenant obligations and residential rental agreements, C, non-payment of rent while just cause may, non-payment of rent, I guess that should be period, while just cause may exclude expiration of rental agreements and personal disagreements. The ordinance may also set a maximum rent increase with the purpose of preventing de facto evictions. The ordinance may require that landlords provide notice of just cause and other legal requirements as part of the rental agreement. And I'll share that with folks at the end and tell me to share it again if you wanna see it again. But so that was the original language that has been discussed by CDNR and now also by the Charter Change Committee. And there's a really good memo, which I'll also include in the materials afterwards from Legal Aid that justifies some of the reasons for just cause eviction, which the first is being that an eviction can just have a tremendous impact on people's ability to ever get housing again. And so obviously we wanna reduce that period, but then too, the ability to have a no cause eviction so to evict someone without cause can also have a kind of, has a detrimental impact without even needing to justify it in any legal way other than just saying this is a no cause eviction. And so Legal Aid gave us this presentation on what just cause eviction looked like and what it would mean. And that's how we came up with this language. It's especially important in Burlington I think because we have such a low vacancy rate and fairly high costs and a pretty high student population and just cause really helps research has shown to have more stability in housing. So to have people stay in their housing longer and also even has a downward pull on rents because landlords are just less likely to have high increases in rents when somebody stays as opposed to when there is a high turnover. And so there's a lot of reasons for just cause eviction including discriminatory when people find out and this has been proven in Vermont as well as across the nation when people find out about sexual preferences and new family status and things like that they're more likely to get evicted even though those are not legal reasons for folks to get evicted. So those are all the reasons for just cause eviction. Then the reason folks like no cause eviction so being able to just put on that eviction form that there's no reason and that still be valid is it allows landlords to get rid of problematic tenants whose behavior maybe is hard to prove or that doesn't rise to the level of breach of lease or and to be totally honest some of the cases where landlords called it and said, well, I wanted to pick someone for this reason also for legal reasons and for legal that you can't actually evict someone for. It gives you flexibility. It also allows you to terminate at the end of the rental period in order to renovate the units. If you wanna do that. And the reason, so we moved forward with at least recommending just cause eviction to charter change and it was just moved out of charter change so the full council will vote on it I believe at the end of November and some of the things that we're still discussing is especially the thing that's been, I think hard for landlords to swallow is the lease termination. So are you allowed to say at the end of the lease you have to move out? Legal aid made a pretty strong argument that that was something that you needed in order to really have just cause evictions only because most no cause evictions tend to happen at the end of the lease. And if you really want that stability in all of the positive effects of just cause only allow and just cause evictions they made a pretty strong case that that was necessary. It wasn't something that I had known that much about or thought about before I heard about it but given kind of the information on it they made a pretty compelling case. Now there's been a few exceptions that have been talked about on who should be exempt and what circumstances should be exempt. And in particular those proposed by counselor Carpenter are to exempt owner occupied buildings, to exempt, so to allow evictions for or non-lease renewal for substantial repairs of renovations, any properties being withdrawn from the market, properties in which a family member is moving in and to not have it exempt or to not have it apply to the first year of tenancy. So after the first year of tenancy I can still say it's the end of the lease so you have to move out and then it holds. I've been, I and I am and then some of I've gotten some of the Burlington Tenancy Union and Rights and Democracy and others on board with the exception around owner occupied buildings. I think it also really applies to our wards that generally there's been a frustration with landlords who buy up a lot of land and then don't take care of their properties and we don't see quite the same problem with that with owner occupied buildings. So while I haven't agreed with the reasons that owner occupied property owners have called in and said they should be exempt, I do think at a policy level it makes sense for us to regulate owner occupied buildings less in order to encourage more of them and to have more of a housing stock be either owned or owner occupied rentals. And so I've agreed or I've agreed that that is the exception that I'd be fine with even in the charter change level in order to move just cause forward. The other exceptions, so the evictions for substantial repairs or renovations folks wanna see just because that's one reason to move tenants out. I personally am not in favor of this. It kind of makes logical sense, but if the purpose is to have long-term tenancies then it's, I mean, I own my apartment now and I've made substantial renovations since I've moved in and if you really want long-term tenants and you can, if somebody's lived there for three or four years, you can work with them to make those just like I continue to live in my home as renovations were being made. That doesn't include of course really substantial repairs and renovations need to be made. So if it's really, really large, but I think putting it in the charter change without defining it as problematic because then we'd have to go back to the voters and back to the state if we wanna change it. And really that's gonna be my argument for against most of the exemptions. It's not that they shouldn't be exemptions, it's that we know they're gonna be used as loopholes and if we don't have the ability to be flexible and we need a two-year process to change it again, those loopholes are gonna be, we're gonna be behind every time in terms of closing the loopholes. So same thing with properties in which a family member is moving in. I understand that some folks are like, I live like this is my property, I eventually want my child or whatever it is to move in. I think that we live in a city where there's three families who own a very large percentage of the rental units in Burlington and so it doesn't make sense to me to have that as part of the charter change when we know it's gonna be used as a loophole and we can't, if we put that into the charter change, can we close those loopholes without going back to the voters, going back to the state. And then the last one is the ordinance will not apply for the first year of tenancy. This is the one I'm most strongly opposed to both in an ordinance and in charter change just because a lot of tenants are starting to see 360 day because Burlington is such on such a tight timeline, everybody moves out the same week, landlords give themselves somewhere between one and seven days to do the changeover. And so a lot of tenants, especially students get 360 day leases. And so I think having something that says it doesn't apply to the first year of tenancy will actually encourage landlords to say, oh, if you have to leave after the first year because after that, I may not have the ability to evict you. And so I don't think, I think it'll, one, encourage people to, not that this will apply to everyone, I wanna say. I think there's lots of property owners who won't even think of doing this, but especially those who rent to students and who do like to see the turnover in increasing prices. I think it'll encourage them to only rent to students who can move out after a year, which is I think the opposite of what we wanna see in a lot of our housing. Because I think even for students, we wanna see them stay for two or three years once they move off campus and not move from apartment to apartment. So that's kind of the, the substantive part that was agreed on was the beginning. And then I'm letting you know some of the exceptions just cause I think that's what will be argued at city council at the end of this month and the next city council. And I'm happy to take any questions on that. I'm sorry, that was a lot of information to take in without seeing it, but go ahead, Tom. Yeah, thank you for that information, Zariah. Tom, you can go and then everyone just raise your hand or unmute yourself if you wanna speak after, Tom. Yeah, Zariah, just a couple of background questions. Do you know how many rental units there are in Burlington and how many problematic evictions there are annually? So, yes, this is such a good question. I should know this. I'd have to look up the number of rental units again. It's escaping me at the moment. I don't know the number of evictions. It might be in that memo. The debate that just happened, sorry to interrupt, Brian Pine said 10,000 rental units. I see nodding, so. Okay. He's been studying this for a while. So I would just count so fine on that. Yeah, he's the anything that I've heard, he would have heard and taken very careful notes on. And according to legal aid, about 20% of eviction cases are for no cause. But how many evictions happen annually? Do all 10,000 units turn over in a typical year? No, so one, I don't know what the turnover is because the city doesn't have that information. I think there's some estimates that have been made. I don't have those in front of me. The, there's been over the last five years, 1,839 evictions in Chittenden County. So I'm not sure what that means for Burlington, but I would say probably a bulk of those are in Burlington. So maybe a few hundred a year, if that. He said 1,089 in eight years. 1,839 in five years. Oh, okay. All right, thanks. Any other comments or questions? I will say like just talking to friends and obviously like Burlington is interesting where like all the students we like rush to sign leases kind of like the first two months of school, which you don't necessarily see that often in other places. I'm really lucky where like my landlord just owns this one property. And so he's really great. And like we're just going to stay here next year. But I know like this past kind of rental season, I have a lot of friends where their landlords didn't even reach out and offer for them to sign a lease again. It was kind of just like, oh, we're showing the house to this group of people, like make sure the house is clean. Like it wasn't really an option or a conversation where I feel like in past years a lot of my older friends were like, oh, you know, like they reached out in August or so on and wanted to have a conversation to see if they were planning on renting again. So that was definitely like a different, like a switch that I heard in like personal conversations, which I feel like has been kind of unique to our current like pandemic situation I think. But I don't know the truth in that on like a more widespread space. No, I think, I mean, to your point, my, the last property owner that I had, I was absolutely the most amazing landlord that I've ever had or could hope to have. And I wish that everybody could have that experience, just such a kind soul. But he had even like, and was super apologetic about it, but was like, I don't know what's happening to the Burlington rental market. And he made, I think he asked for like February or something like that. He's just like, if I don't ask you by February, if you can re-sign your lease, there will be no one left to like once to lease because there was such a housing rush. And so I think it's not just that Burlington has a housing problem, but that like every year it gets earlier and earlier on when people are expected to renew leases or like, I think, yeah, to the point where now it's like, oh, you're just, we're not gonna ask you because you're gonna think it's incredulous that you've moved in a month ago and we're asking you if you wanna renew the lease. So you'll say no. So we'll just go ahead and show it. Hi, this is Laura Wilson. And I'm new to the market rate housing world, but for everyone's benefit I've spent about the last 20 years in affordable housing. And I never operated whether I'm in the market rate or affordable, no cause eviction never came up. We never want to evict anybody. I don't care who you are. At least I think if you have quality landlords, they take care of their residents no matter. So it definitely feels punitive. And I'm curious about the piece where if your lease has expired, do what's the remedy on the landlord side for having someone resign. So there is a legal agreement between the two parties. Yeah, so the first thing is all of the like Champlain Housing Trust, any of the subsidized housing has anything that takes federal subsidies basically has the requirement of no cause evictions. No, I realize that. Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to make clarify it. Yeah, no, I know that. But I mean the mentality, at least my perspective is most people, at least from my experience in housing and over the two communities, it's almost 1600 units around the Burlington area. We don't look to evict people. Right, it costs money, it's stressful, it's labor intensive, turn over the unit. You don't want bad relationships with your residents. Right, and so the, sorry, your second question was right around the lease expiration. I know you have a component in there around not being able to evict if someone's lease expires, if they're unwilling, what happens when they're unwilling to sign a new lease? And so therefore you have no current contract with the person? Yeah, so the one that's I think very easy. So to some extent, I do want to emphasize this doesn't come, like this does to leave a lot of power in the hands of the landlords because a breach of lease is a reason for eviction and so landlords can very easily put anything into the lease. And I think a very standard clause if this gets passed will be like non, like you at the end of your lease year, they're have to sign a new lease or you'll be like out of compliance with your lease. And so I think one, that'll be standard. And then two, of course, if you end up not signing a lease and they go to month to month, you'll still have or property owners will still have all of the same kind of recourses in terms of pursuing adjust cause eviction. So it just means they'll have to specify the reason and provide evidence that it is a real reason for eviction. Yeah, that banter, at least in the people that I'm talking with, it seems like a lot more revenue for attorneys too. Cause then you're just digging up, you know more reasons for engaging legal. Yes, that's true, but also, and then I think this is actually part of the problem with eviction and having no cause eviction is, you know in 75% of eviction cases, the tenant is not represented by anyone and most of the time they end up just having to move out just because they lack kind of the legal means to even fight an eviction. And so I think more like in part of legal aids reasoning and what they talked about in their stories is so often just the threat of eviction is enough to make somebody move out that just the stability of having like saying I don't, like I know that it's at least the burden of proof is on you to prove that I did something wrong. So I'm not gonna move out just because, you know you don't like me or I retaliated and said that this was broken in the apartment or something like that. So I do think, yes, maybe it's more legal things but I think placing the burden of proof that on the landlord will be is a good thing. Yeah, I think that's like, I hear that quite a bit too. Like in my neighborhood of like, I think with students because there is such a lack of education and like a lack of knowledge on for like a multitude of reasons but you hear a lot about landlords or big property owners that will be like, oh, so-and-so said that you were really loud like these three nights you can get evicted for that or like we will evict you for that or we heard that, you know, you hit this mailbox or like you damaged this thing. So like you can get evicted for that. And I think it creates such a like a toxic culture for a tenant and a landlord or a property owner that like a lot of the time, like if you don't feel comfortable in where you live or like with the people that are your landlord you immediately begin to think like, oh, every landlord is bad or like this neighborhood is toxic or like the people around me aren't like supporting me and like that's why I feel like we do have a lot of like neighborhood issues and like with student housing. And so I mean, I think we just need better education of like how like what actually can lead to eviction and like what can students, not even just students like young people or like new renters or renters of any age like how do you handle situations like that? Cause I probably wouldn't even know what I would do if like my landlord was like, oh, like we can evict you for that. So I think we just need to do better probably as a community and maybe like think about how to handle those conversations. But yeah, I don't, I don't really know how to tackle that. Yeah. So to some extent, like I said, landlords will actually still retain a lot of the power so they could easily say, and you know, you getting three noise complaints would be cause for eviction. And I think would probably hold in a court not being an eviction lawyer, but, and the other thing that I will say is, yeah, absolutely. Like I've definitely, I've had a friend is maybe the worst case and this wasn't an R word. This was in Ward three, but who rented a property or rented an apartment and then when it started raining, they put down buckets because they realized that it rained into the house. And they were like, well, we can't like, our landlord clearly doesn't want to put any money into this and we can't say anything because they, we won't have a home. Like they'll just be like, well then leave, which is right now something that they can absolutely do. So. And do you know anything about like, I know UVM's office of student and community relations like during the summer and like with noise complaints, they send out letters to students or to like rental properties, like warning them about it. And I didn't get a chance to talk to Gail about it, but she had mentioned that they were like, they were calling landlords and telling them about these noise complaints. And I like personally just think that's really problematic for like an outside entity to be calling a landlord. Cause I know not, especially after one noise complaint, like I just think that's really unfair and then creates a lot of like issues. But have you heard anything about that? I guess I'm not a hundred percent aware having kind of come into council during COVID. I know that during COVID it's been so much stricter in terms of how much UVM has been cracking down on things just cause of the propensity to spread with large crowds. So I don't know, I don't know what the policy was before or what it will return to if there is such a thing as post COVID. So I don't know if Jack or Jane or anybody else on this call knows more about that. Did you just say the question again, Hannah? It's about UVM notifying landlords about noise issues? Yeah, so it was like in the middle of the summer maybe towards the end. I had like heard from Gail about the letters that they were sending to students notifying them about like noise complaints in the neighborhood. And I know a few of my neighbors got that. I live on Bradley Street which tends to be a louder neighborhood but they were sending letters but then along with that I had heard that Gail and other groups were calling the landlords of the properties and notifying them of the noise complaints. And I need to follow up with her about it but I didn't know if any of you had heard if that was happening or if it still is happening or why that is allowed. Right, yeah. I know that at the beginning it was a lot to do with social gatherings during COVID and trying to sort of crack down on that which I understand and I guess the good thing at that time early on is there was sort of a de facto a de facto freeze on evictions at that time so I wouldn't think that it would result in an eviction but yeah, that's a good question of are they still doing that now? Because I hear what you're saying about the fear or the threat that that could lead to potentially the tenants. It strikes me that it's not necessarily a bad thing if landlords want to have good community relationships. It's helpful for them to know what's happening in their properties if it's not an owner-occupied property. So most landlords are good people and if they're aware of what's happening in their property they can work with people to try to resolve things. So it seems like this whole tenor of this conversation is that landlords are bad people and they're not, you know, most of them. So I would like to see this be a little bit more balanced in terms of thinking about tenants responsibilities as well as landlords. Yeah, and that was something we talked about a lot. And like I said, like the last I've had one really bad landlord in Burlington and one that was literally the best, like just as a person, the best person that I've ever met. And so I do think that there is a balancing. I think the reason the conversation ends up becoming de facto about this is this really will more affect the bad landlords. And so this isn't, like when I think to, you know my last, the last apartment that I lived in I just don't imagine that this will affect him at all. And so I do think it ends up being about that. And also I think a lot of the resistance is also kind of coming from the like on it. Like if you go back and listen to the seating in our meetings like the things that people said were kind they were shocking to me in terms of being like well, somebody was gonna get a therapy dog and I would have wanted to evict them but I couldn't have like it's which is illegal. And so, so Well, I hope you know that's not the norm. That is not the norm. And I don't think we're, I don't think we're so yeah, I think my point is we're not trying to address like the property owners who are doing a good job. Like that's not what this is for. This is for the property owners who will who's, you know, like suddenly mentioned retaliation if people complain about things. It's really, it's directed to the bad landlords and I don't think it'll affect the ones who are really- You have to respect Sarah Carpenter and her tenure of her whole career was spent in affordable housing to put forward for strong, you know, exemptions to this. Oh, definitely. And I don't think, I mean, like, I like I've said I'm not opposed to the exemptions themselves. I think it's hard to put them in. And we've had just, I mean we've had discussions on this in CDNR. Like Brian who's also spent Brian Pine who spent- Yeah, I know Brian. He spent a lot of time in housing. We both, and I think, you know Earhart's raising his hands so I'll let him- I see Earhart down there. Like I think we're all worried about putting this into a charter change where we don't have that flexibility of shifting when we are trying to address that whatever percentage of bad landlords that we're talking about. And sorry Earhart, I didn't mean to never give you the chance. And you're on mute. Thanks, Soraya. Just quickly, and hi Laura, I didn't realize you'd moved into our ward. That's, or maybe you've lived here all along and I didn't know it. Just quickly to the question that came up and I think Jack mentioned something about a moratorium. So just wanted to clarify there currently is a moratorium, a statewide moratorium on evictions. And that applies to everybody. Whether, you know, yeah, it's a moratorium so that everybody can stay safe at home because if you don't have a home, you can't be safe during COVID. So we don't wanna have anyone evicted and potentially become homeless. And that right now, that moratorium lasts until December 15th, because it builds on the governor's emergency order which right now expires on November 15th. If the governor actually extends the emergency, his emergency order then since the moratorium lasts for 30 days, after the expiration of the emergency order, it would automatically increase. It would extend rather for another 30 days. But right now it lasts till December 15th. So just wanted to clarify that that we currently evictions are currently not being processed though landlords can file for evictions, but unless they're real emergencies or they deal with extreme health and safety issues or police or violence issues, the courts are not acting on them. They simply filed them in their state. So just wanted to clarify that since it came up earlier. No, thank you, Erhard, for clarifying that. And if I missed any, I know there was some questions on exact numbers or percentages and if I got anything wrong, you're hard, feel free to jump in and correct me. Yeah, actually I think we, I think Jack mentioned Brian saying there's 10,000. I think we're getting closer to 11,000 at this point, 10,000, that figure's been around for quite a while, but it's probably, oops, sorry for the dog. It's probably a little higher than 10,000 at this point in terms of the overall rental numbers. I can't speak, I haven't looked at legal age materials in a while, so I can't speak to the, their estimated number of no cause evictions. But it certainly is, I think you've pointed out well, Zariah is, for folks who are abiding by their lease, they, and are paying the rent, are not damaging the property, they should not be subject to eviction just for no apparent reason, and no reason that is justifiable under state statute. So it's really, in this town, really pretty much anywhere in the state, if you lose your housing, you're, you can potentially become homeless because it's so hard to find affordable housing. And that's one reason why so many housing advocates are supporting this. Yeah, thank you for that information, Earhard, and everyone else that contributed to the conversation. And thank you, Zariah, for starting it. So I think we will move on and let Mark with the Racial Justice Alliance now give us an update and a presentation if you're ready, Mark, and then we'll move on to the school commissioners. Yep, I'm here. Thank you. So good evening, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Yes. I don't know why I can't see myself. And if I have cookie crumbs on my face, it's just because I was trying to get rid of that last little bit right before I came on. So shout out to the counselors, Stromberg, Hightower, Hanson, and also over on the school board. I didn't, it was good to see you, buddy. And so I just wanted to give you an update. Oh, I wanted to also acknowledge Tom, Carol, Jonathan, Hannah, what up? And I see you, Cynthia Cook, looking forward to hanging out with you at some point in the future and learning some stuff from you. I'm gonna talk to you just a little bit about Operation Phoenix Rise. It was translated into a resolution on June 29th that was sponsored by a number of the counselors in past, I believe, unanimously. And it translates into some pretty good citywide policy that is currently in implementation. And I know you've probably heard some stuff about it, but you probably didn't know that you were hearing it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you an overview from our position at the Racial Justice Alliance. Just share with you what's going on. I'm going to, I'm gonna ask you, hold your questions. When I get finished with that, if you'd like to go ahead and throw a couple of questions at me, it's getting late, I'm tired, but I'll answer your questions. So if you wanna throw a couple at me, that's fine. And I'll leave you with some ways you can contact me. So that way, yeah, I think that pretty much does it. So yeah, let's go over, let me just grab this slide deck. I'm only having maybe about three or four slides. So tell you a little bit about what we're calling Operation Phoenix Rise and share with you about just some of the updates there. So when we started this work, it was somewhere around late April, early May timeframe. And this work is really a continuation of some of the work that we've already done with the city. The creation of the Racial Equity Executive Director, our fingerprints are on that. The Racial Equity, that's the Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Director, my apologies. As well as the committee, that associated committee, some of the work that's been done in the Police Commission, which you know I'm a former commissioner, the Police Commission, some of that work, particularly as it pertains to race data collection on use of force. So yeah, so we've already, had already began doing some work in the city. And this came as we started to see the racial disparities, the pre-existing racial disparities across all systems and local government being laid bare by COVID-19. And this is basically a pivot from our state work, statewide work, a lot of policy there, we won't talk about that tonight. But we pivoted back to the city and we sent the mayor a letter and we began to start asking him about certain initiatives that we thought would be pretty cool to move forward in light of what we were experiencing. And through our outreach, our advocacy, our nonviolent civil disobedience and other tactics with some of our partners, we were able to at least get folks' attention long enough to have a conversation about it. And we also began to get the support of the council as well. So when you hear people say rise, operation Phoenix rise, this is synonymous to, in this resolution, by the way, it was the primary sponsor on this is Constantine Hightower. And so thanks for that, right? And when you hear this terminology rise, what we're talking about is this synonymous to that June 29th resolution, restructuring public safety, implementing cultural empowerment. You can read the rest. So what were we trying to do there? And what are we doing right now is just transforming the lives of brown and black folks to make sure that we're investing in their lives and that we're holding space for their culture, providing them an opportunity and also ensuring the equity they deserve to thrive. And in conjunction with the work that we're doing here, it's important to understand that we also created an approach towards a reparations task force, which we'll talk about just for a minute here before we flip slides and also the declaration of racism as a public health crisis, which is in full swing right now as well. So back to that reparations task force, the first city in the United States to bring in a process whereby we've established a reparations task force to go in and talk about this thing, do some serious deep dive into what it really means, this whole thing about shallow slavery, the relationship between that, the impacts that it has had on folks of color and even some of those current day impacts. So they're in full swing. In fact, their first meeting was tonight. They met at 5 p.m. Again, this is historic. No other city in the nation has ever done this before. You will see some research, some reporting out on Asheville, North Carolina, but they did it differently. What they did is they made certain assumptions when they went into this whole idea about reparations. We're not really making any assumptions. What we're doing is we're asking folks to come in and do some work and do some digging and figure out where we are and if anything, what we need to do about it. Regarding our declaration of racism as a public health crisis, upwards of 30 organizations across the city, upwards of 30 organizations and agencies across the city to include public health, University of Vermont Medical Center, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and the list goes on and on and on, committed to an anti-racist approach to their operations as well as a contribution to this initiative, whereby what we will do is come together and identify some key determinants that we'd want to track in order to identify performance indicators and move ourselves as a county towards anti-racism. So that's some of the work. Again, it's in play, it's underway. So what I came to tell you was not just that this exists, but I wanted to update you that this work is in full swing and it is ongoing and I just thought it was important because I know a lot of folks are just getting little bits and pieces about the things that are happening and maybe sometimes more some than the other, which brings me to restructure and public safety. A lot of talk, a lot of talk about restructure and public safety. Folks get nervous, a lot of information going around that is not necessarily well founded, but I think a lot of times people have a lot to say about what we're talking about so little and they have very little to say about what we're talking about so much. And I think that what we're doing is very important is this is a unified plan. This plan involves, yes, restructuring public safety, but what this is all about is making sure that the community from a community health services perspective, also from a public safety perspective that the community is receiving the proper services from the appropriate sources. We know, now let's not get it twisted where we're coming from is is this is a conversation about systemic racism. However, there's other stuff to talk about here. In terms of how folks in disability communities are receiving services and so forth. Are those services appropriately placed within our city government and so forth? So this is all about robust community engagement as well as a complete soup to nuts analysis assessment of the department and how do they inform one another so we can reimagine how we're doing this in our community, hard stop. So that's all I'm gonna say about that because there's a lot of folks that are talking about it. Well, in all fairness, I should say that there's a couple of pieces of work that are coming out of that. And again, this goes back to Constable Hightower who chairs this joint committee that's doing this work that's a combination of public safety as well as the police commission. So what that looks like is again, right back to those two categories of work, the assessment or the analysis of the department and the public engagement. So those are two separate pieces of work that are happening that will again, like I said, they're very symbiotic in nature and they'll be informing one another and that final product will come out of that. So that kind of looks to the next piece is implementing a cultural empowerment. The cultural empowerment piece is very, very important to understand a lot of black and slave descendants is what we were targeted on when we started having these conversations generationally. I know my wife's father came here 40 some years ago, her, she has children, they have children and others. So where is the culture in the community? How is that being empowered? How are we informing our children of who they are, where they come from, what they represent, what is their, what is their heritage, their contribution, about their resilience and so forth. So a lot of this work is pending because what we wanted to do is we wanted to try to combine it with the rest of the work that's happening. You can just note here where we were envisioning not just community centers and youth activity centers but also centers of excellence and also programming within that facility that would offer various adult basic education, people development, STEM development. Because again, it's not enough just to get a law enforcement's knee off one's neck. It's also very important that we're doing the work in such a way that we're providing opportunity and that we're lifting up communities as well. So that whole empowerment piece, I'll tell you that it is not moving forward right now because we wanted to put something in front of it because what it's gonna require is a feasibility study. But before we do that feasibility study, we wanna take a look at this third piece which is secure and equal opportunity. So for those folks of color who are employees of the city wanna make sure that there's an appropriate complaint management, a minority owned business procurement process in place. Amongst other programming, likely intersecting, lifting up or in some ways supplanting certain areas within the CETO office. So that analysis is currently underway. So there is a contractor that we have in here right now who's already kicked this work off and this work will inform the feasibility study for the 40 or four mentioned category. So just to let you know that it is in full swing, we have key players like Luke McGowan at the table, definitely Tysha Green is the mastermind behind all of this. We definitely have Kyle Dotson's at the table and having these conversations myself, the mayor attended the kickoff meeting. So all of this stuff just to let you know we're meeting on a weekly basis, driving all of these initiatives collectively. I'll end with expanding racial equity and I should say inclusion and belonging and what we decided to do is expand upon that office's ability rather than deliver training. So we've already signed off on this has already gone through finance as well as the council on a platform or a technology platform to support Tysha's efforts in delivering training citywide. There are two staff members that are in place now, they've budgeted higher process over start date 16, done. A lot of the work that's gonna be done towards policy analysis, data analysis, all of that work now, the capacity exists to get that work done. I'm going to stop there and I'm gonna just right now just take a step back and just let you know again, what we're doing here is this is a combined effort. There's a lot of stakeholders that are at the table, there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of stuff going on. I'll come back and update you, going around to various NPAs across time, just letting folks know, hey, this is what's going on because you're gonna hear a lot of other stuff, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. At the end of the day, this work is as we all know, with our current climate as it is today, not just here within the state, but also within this city, but across the state and the nation, this work, it's important, needs to be done, we're getting it done and I didn't come with an ask or anything like that, just should have told you to top more informational than anything, I'm glad right now to take your questions if you have any. Yeah, if anyone has any questions, you can just unmute yourself and ask. Thank you so much, Mark, for that information and for coming in and updating us all, but yeah, any questions from the group? You guys grilled Zariah, nobody got a question for me, huh? I got a question for you, I've got a question, a quick question, what's, who is that? This is Tom, what is the timeline for all these things? There's a whole bunch of things that you talked about, when will, say the lion share of these be dealt with? So the question is, what's the timeline, when's the lion share gonna be done? I didn't come prepared with that answer. I think what I can do the next time I come back to you or else I can also send over a note when we start looking at, for example, there's a whole piece that those folks with the committee on the restructuring of public safety is doing. I don't know what those timelines are. I'm not, I really haven't taken a deep dive into what those timelines look like as of yet. And then there are other moving parts. So in a very short answer, I don't know the answer to that question. I will be glad to try to get back with you on that. Okay. All right, thanks again for the presentation. It was great hearing about the work that's been going on with the racial justice alliance. And I was just wondering for folks that wanna get involved, what would be the best way to do so? And who would they have to contact? And what would that process look like? Sure. So you can go up to, I apologize for that. And as good catch, you caught me. So there is another slide I think I may have had and it looks like this. So you can reach out to me directly. You can go out to the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance website. There's a place out there on Vermont Racial Justice Alliance's website. And it's a VT racial, it's called VT Racial Justice Alliance. VT Racial Justice Alliance. And I think we're using WordPress right now. We're just getting ready. We got that domain but we haven't swung it over yet. So you're gonna have to go.wordpress.com or you can obviously just send me an email or something like that. But out there on the website, you should know that there's a place that you can sign up for to be a partner as an individual or an organization. Does that help? I didn't, it's been far too long. I don't know what's going on. You'd think there's a pandemic out here or something. It's good to see you. Yeah, yeah, it's good to see you too. Any other questions? Okay, great. Thank you so much, Mark. We'll make sure that we have all that contact information on in our minute. So if people wanna get involved, they'll know who to reach out to. Yeah, thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mark, so much. Wasn't a question. No, I just wanted to thank you so much, Mark. Not only for just your tireless work on this and your diligent work on this for years, but also for the fact that you communicated. So while, and you make an effort to always make sure that people are kept up to date on all the work that is taking place and have a way to get involved with that work. So I really appreciate it. Thanks for that, Jack. And just so everybody knows, I was the first one to nominate Jack for his, for a very first person to nominate him. For those who are in the room, if you remember. That is true. I was the very, very first one. I love you, man. Tom Carroll, Jonathan Hanna, thank you so much for your time. Consulers, add in all of you. You guys are amazing. You guys Rock 1-8 is the best in the whole damn town. I'm a proud North member of the eight territory, or one territory rather. So God bless you all and stay safe. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Thank you. We'll have to commend Tom right quick for always being the first one to jump in with questions. It's a feat. Okay, so now we can go to the school commissioners. So Kathy and Auden, whoever wants to kick it off. Thank you for being patient on the time. I know we've been all over the place tonight, but thank you to everyone for being patient as well. It's no problem at all. I actually have a presentation slide I'll be going through. So is this set up so I'll be able to share my screen? Yes, it should be. So this is the best I can do with it, but can folks see the screen? Yes. Okay, great. So Commissioner Orwell is also here with me too. And I'm just gonna go through this presentation really quickly. It's available to the public on board docs from October 20th. And it's the update for BTC and BHS situation that's been going on. So that was just a quick agenda that they wrote out for that day. And so, so far BHS is offering significant academic programs and social and emotional support for students during this time, which is important to highlight because when the reopening started, there was a lot of stress and questions and concerns from community members as well as students. So that social emotional support is really important and students are working closely with their guidance counselors as well as support networks within the schools virtual and in person. So these are, I'm not gonna go through all of them but these are some of the things that are in full swing for the school districts. So again, I'll be sharing this presentation. I'll be able to send it out so folks can read through it more thoroughly. Primarily tonight we wanna give an update on what's happening with BHS and the relocation as well as where we're gonna be moving forward with that. So, and in-person learning has been something that's been crucial to a lot of community members because as we know, virtual learning is not always the best for students and it depends on what resources and tools that students have within the house to be able to be successful in virtual learning and also some students that are experiencing the lack of social connection with their teachers as well as other students. So we are hoping to get back to in-person learning and I'm sure that a lot of folks know about the situation with BHS and how F building has been tested to have like bad air quality regarding PCBs and the next couple of slides are gonna explain more about the situation and just where we are in terms of that. So in terms of the PCB testing, we found out that in September, the campus had PCBs and air in the air significantly above the Vermont Department of Health screening value and this was a great concern to a lot of teachers, community members, as well as DOH and this created a situation where in consolation with DOH and EPA, we were able to get like the superintendent decided to shut down the campus overall and look for in-person opportunity, look for alternative places to do in-person learning for students because of the air quality. So as we talked about the DOH and the EPA recommended that we do not return students back into the buildings until further testing and remediation was conducted. And the recommendation that they gave us was to move to a remote learning and continue to test and remediate the site as well as seek alternative sites for in-person instruction in the second semester as well as continue with the plan BTC-BHS re-envisioning project. So right now, so I'll just go to the next part which talks about the challenging situation that we have. This slide talks about remote learning being really challenging to students as we were discussing earlier. And there's parents out there that said that they wanted to return, that they wanted to return to the buildings, except for the DOH where it's firm and saying that we weren't allowed to return to the building because of the situation. So we were offered three options and option one was to return to BHS while remediation occurs and the re-envisioning project continues as planned. And option two moved to an alternate location for two to three years while remediation and the re-envisioning occurs at the BHS site and then moved back into BHS after the construction is finished. And then option three moved to an alternative location for two to three years while building a new high school and tech center at our current site or in a new location. So again, I'll be able to send out this presentation so folks can have a more in-depth review. But in the nutshell, these are the strength and weaknesses for option one. And so I'll just give a second for folks to review. And then these are the strength and weaknesses that were presented for option two. And then lastly, this was the strength and weaknesses to option three, which is the most costly option as they told us. And now that was back in October 20th. So fast forward to today, we've had conversations around short-term alternatives and places that we're gonna be looking at in terms of alternative location for long-term. And right now the two options that we have presented to us for long-term is for Macy's and for trailers on the BHS campus. So again, there's pros and cons to both of those and I'll be able to send more information if folks have any questions about the two options. I'll be able to connect them with respective members. So, and for the short-term, we're looking into having students back and either admins or at UVM. So right now we're waiting on the superintendent to give us an update if the UVM is a possibility for a short-term. And for the short-term options, we already know that we'll be able to get students into admins, but we also wanted to have the possibility to use one of the spaces at UVM and either way, whatever happens, we're gonna be going from that short-term location to the long-term that we're gonna be making the decision on. So, I think that's all I have for now on my end and I'll let Commissioner Caldwell explain more if she has anything else. No, the only thing I just wanted to say is that the short-term is only for the 23rd and 24th of November at admins. And should we get UVM, then that would only be the only time we're at admins. If we get UVM, we would be at UVM from the beginning of December through, I don't know when it is, I think it's somewhere around the 15th or the beginning of January. So it's only six weeks that we would be at UVM while the students are gone. So then we would go, after that, the hope is that we could either get into Macy's which would take less time than if we had to go into these trailers that they have to fit up with water and it's a lot more work. And in that interim, the BHS students would be back going to admins every Wednesday all day. So, and then just to say something about, you asked about PCB testing, that testing is going on now and will probably intensify. And as far as we've been told, that testing won't even be finished until this summer, if we're lucky and it could be into the fall before the testing for the PCBs has finished. And that's not to say that they haven't mitigated them. Then you also asked a question, I think I'm supposed to do this go on on these questions. You also asked a question about BTC and where would the different programs housed? And so they're all over the city and then some. Human services, the preschool is that the North Alliance Church, auto body and automotive sciences are at a garage, I think in South Burlington, I can't remember exactly. Aviation is at the airport, digital media lab and design and illustration and design technical foundations are all at Cambrian rise. Culinary is at St. Mark's criminal justices at the police department. Welding and metal fabrication. That one I don't know where that one is, but I know it has a home. I'm just not sure where it is. And then the other one, the other one that's together with it is advanced manufacturing for sustainable future. And they are both at a metals fabrication company, but I can't remember the name of the company. So that's where they have that. And they are all fully functioning and at these different places all over. The city. So our biggest problem right now is to find general education space for our high school. And just a quick note. We also started our. SRO tax force. So it's an, it's a tax force that was charged with reviewing the memory of the city. And the police department. And to figure out. If we need them in the schools or not. And figure out alternative. Restorative practices models. Or moving forward with the, with the MOU. So that tax force is. Active now. I'm, I'm most. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also active now. I'm also on that tax force as well as. A counselor. High tower. So we're in our third week. Now and. We're hoping to. Work together to figure out how to best move forward. With that, with the tax force. Great. Thank you so much for all of that information. If anyone else has any brief questions, be ready to jump in after this, but Karen, feel free to speak. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, thanks, yeah, it's always hard to tell. So thank you, school commissioners. As a grandmother, I'm super frustrated because I have two kids, two grandkids in the system. And the high school seems to be the weakest link, and it was bad ever since COVID started last March or February when they stopped school. But I don't know, it just seems to be taking so long and I don't feel my granddaughters getting great, you know, online help. She basically has nothing every single day. And it's been going on, you know, it was like that last spring, I figured they just had trouble getting it together, but it's like that now. And it's, what are we, two and a half months into the semester? I mean, she's a senior. This is really, really tough. And she is in the graphic design program and she really does like that teacher. They've had a few meetings and they are supposed to start up at Cambrian Rise, but they have not yet. So it's the only tech program that doesn't have a home yet or hasn't started. I understand that one of the delays was zoning permits, which in a city like this, that should just be fast forwarded because these kids, I mean, really it's super bad. And I did have a question. I understand, I don't understand why the testing takes so long to get results, but I thought there was talk that in the F building, it's horrendous, but there were other buildings that were really within the range of relatively safe and that there was talk of maybe using those buildings, but I'm not hearing that anymore. So could you please explain that? Well, the testing will be ongoing and we'll take a very long time because the PCBs are not just in the air. The reason they're in the air is because they are in the building materials that the building is made of. And so they need to go into the building materials to test how much PCBs there are in the material itself. They have to go into the floors and test them. So that's, I mean, we just did preliminary testing and now we have a new company that's coming in that's doing very serious testing to figure out where the PCBs are. Are they, are we going to be able to eliminate them and how we can eliminate them to make the building safe? So I know that people, I mean, I understand your frustration but trying to find a home for a thousand kids is not easy and it's not that we haven't been doing anything. And I want you to understand the school district has been working over time trying to figure out a place. It's just not an easy fit. And we're down to two options but those are still in negotiations because both of them are going to be very costly for the taxpayers. And until those negotiations are over we can't give you one way or the other. But I know, I feel for kids, I mean, that's what I've done for 30 years is find kids places to be so that they can be together. And I know how problematic it is trying to learn online but I, going back into that building is not an option. And I say this from lived experience. I lived for four years in St. Louis, Missouri at the time when time speech which was a small town that was totally covered with dioxin which is a byproduct of these PCBs. And Monsanto, the company that produced it as well as the EPA at the time covered that up for 10 years. People fought, they had to end up taking all the earth and incinerating everything in that town. That town doesn't exist today. So having seen that I am one of those people that absolutely do not want our kids in that building. These things are cumulative. And I really stand behind the Department of Health who they may be conservative but this is the same Department of Health that has kept us healthy through this COVID. And I totally support the toxicologist that is there and I would rather see some would be conservative and keep us healthy and safe than to use higher levels that may not do that. So I know it's very hard and it's really hard to ask you all to have patience but that's the only thing I can ask you right now it's not for lack of trying that we haven't gotten 1,000 children into a school yet and we all know what we're up against. Thank you. No, I know you are. I guess I'm frustrated with the particular, you know, maybe one-on-one situations that I have heard about. I don't know, virtual learning, people have to work really hard and I'm not sure that, you know, we and our family was lucky enough to get people who are working really hard at it, you know, and it's tough and you don't wanna lose a year. You don't want your- No, it's your grandkids to lose a year. So yeah, anyway, thank you, no, Kathy. I know that you are working hard at this but it's good to get the information. I really hadn't heard any more about that and maybe I'm just not reading the right things but it's not in the newspaper. It's not in the free press at least. So anyway, thank you. Okay, as long as nobody has any final questions on that I think we'll move on to our final presentation. So we're joined by Pathways Vermont. So any representatives that are speaking on behalf of them feel free to unmute or turn your cameras on and thank you for being here with us and being patient with the timing. Yeah, thanks, Hannah. I'm Casey Carpenter. I'm the outreach associate for the Pathways Vermont support line and we also have Abby Levinson who's the employment and outreach team lead at Pathways and I'm just gonna share my screen. I have a brief, I promise presentation. I know we're right at the end of the meeting. Okay, can you all see that? Okay, great. So we're here tonight just to spread the word to you all about the support line as a resource that's available for anyone 18 and up statewide in Vermont. And our goal is for every Vermont are to know that the support line exists especially in this time of hardship and isolation which is why we're here. So the support line offers free confidential support and connection via phone and texts and we operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we're what's called a warm line as opposed to a hotline. So the operators are all local peers who've been through challenging situations themselves and they're available primarily to listen and to offer non-judgmental support. So we focus on supporting callers to reach out for a whole host of reasons from anger over a frustrating day to feeling alone, wanting support for substance use or just wanting to chat. So I'm just gonna briefly run through a little more info about the support line and how it differs from other services like crisis hotlines. And then we'll maybe have a chance for questions but if we don't have time, that's okay. So the philosophy of the support line is based in the intentional peer support or IPS model which is rooted in connecting from a place of shared experience and without judgment or advice giving. So many of our operators, like I said, have been through challenging experiences themselves. So they're really able to meet callers from a place of having been there as well. And one of the guiding principles of the support line is a belief in the healing power of connection of simply having someone to listen to and validate your experience. And our philosophy is also based in the belief that individuals have the capacity to grow and change and that they are the experts on themselves. So people often wonder how the support line is different from a crisis hotline. So Vermont has 10 designated mental health agencies, each one with their own crisis hotline. So ours here in Chittenden is the Howard Center which operates first call, that's their crisis hotline. And the pathway support line tries to serve a complimentary role to these crisis lines. So whereas the support line is staffed by peers with lived experience, crisis hotlines tend to be staffed by operators with formal educational experience who provide a more clinical mental health support. And also a primary service that crisis hotlines offer is to screen callers for the need for higher level services. Whereas this is not a primary service that the support line offers. That said, support line operators are trained to refer callers to crisis or emergency services if necessary. And lastly, crisis hotlines do offer counseling to callers but may not always have the capacity to, for example, talk with a caller about their favorite TV show for a half an hour every day, whereas the support line's primary purpose is to offer a listening ear for any identified need, whether that's a crisis or not. So in this way, we hope to both reduce the strain on crisis services as well as to offer an option to callers who might not feel like they need crisis level services. While we're not a crisis hotline, many callers do report being in crisis when they call and we do have protocols in place, like I mentioned, for callers who are at imminent risk to themselves or others. And our operators are also well-versed in all the different resources that are available to callers. But our operators are also trained and comfortable speaking with callers about suicidality, substance use, and other urgent needs if a caller identifies this as helpful. And we really feel that when someone's in a dark place, simply forming a non-judgmental connection can really be a lifeline. And in the best cases, these calls can prevent a crisis from escalating to an emergency. So our number's pretty easy to remember. It's 833-VT-TALKS. That's 833-888-2557. And that's a toll-free number. So please feel free to write this summer down for yourself or to share it with friends and family that you think could use it. And if you work or live somewhere where you can hang up flyers or display pamphlets, or if you wanna share about the support line on social media, we have digital materials, we can send you, we'd love to send you any of those. So just shoot me an email at kcatpathlaysvermott.org. And you can also find some more info about the support line and some testimonials on our website, which is pathlaysvermott.org. And with that, I wanna thank you all so much for your time. And I know we're right at the end, but we can answer questions if there's time for that. Yeah, definitely. Does anyone have any questions? Okay, I'm not seeing any. Thank you so much for that presentation. We'll make sure that in our minutes we include all of the contact information and the number of course. But yeah, thank you so much for coming. Yeah, thank you. And I guess the final thing that we wanted to cover in the next couple of minutes of the NPA is, as I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, we really want feedback from all of you of what presentations or groups or even just general topics that we can explore for the NPA. If you don't have any thoughts right now, again, feel free to reach out over email with any of the steering committee members. But if anyone has any initial thoughts, we'd love to hear them now. Yeah, Jack. Yeah, I thought tonight was really great. Like it felt like we weren't as rushed and it felt like people had more time to engage and it felt like just a really good mix and range of topics. So I thought, yeah, I thought tonight was awesome. I didn't know about this support line, for example. I thought that was a really good resource to learn about and a quick presentation at the end. Yeah, it just felt good to get a few different key things from different aspects of the community and have time to engage with each of them. Yeah, I definitely agree. I feel like tonight was, dare I say, the most normal NPA we've had, like conversation-wise. And I think like talking about housing and then pathways, that's obviously incredibly important in Mark's update. So like I know personally, I think the steering committee will work more towards like diversifying the agenda, but also making sure that the presentations, that we allow time for conversation, because we haven't always had that. But does anyone else have any thoughts or comments? Even just like how the NPA should be run, we'd love to hear that as well. Yeah, feel free to just jump in. I just wanted a quick note of appreciation. Since I know I've been absent for months, it feels like many months. I don't know. Anyway, so this is my first NPA and it just feels great to be reconnected and it sounds like I picked a good night to come back. So thank you. Good to see you, Sarah. I, yeah, I just real quick, this is not really productive input for our next NPA, but I do wanna just kind of name some appreciation for Hanna for facilitating this and organizing this and putting the time in. Really, it's not easy to be on top of it every month and I really appreciate you keeping us on task. So thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. I know everyone on the steering committee works really hard to make sure that the meetings, and I know that like at each of our steering committee meeting, like the number one thing, and this is a shout out to Cindy as well because she was the one to bring it up. As like making sure that we're engaging with the community. So like whatever feedback you all have of, I know tonight we had a smaller group, which made sure like we were able to have you all on the screen with us. And just in the past, we haven't been because the larger the group, the more like security issues that we have, but yeah, any feedback on how to engage you more and how to make sure that you feel as though you're a part of the process, that's like the number one concern, of course. But if nobody else has any input, again, reach out over email, I think most of our phone numbers are out there as well. So you can always call me and I'll pick up. So yeah, thank you all so much for coming tonight and we'll see you next month. Thanks a lot.