 All right. Thanks very much everyone for being here. We've got a pretty cool house tonight which is great. My name is Ben Cravers. I started on the award five in the A steering committee and of course one of the reasons we're here tonight is to elect a new steering committee. But as of right now we have seven members in our steering committee. Myself we have Andy Simon here as well, Joe Gary, Jordan Grossman, Muhammad Jafar. We have Alan Bauer as well who will be here momentarily when we take him over the moderator duties. And Bill Keele of course who unfortunately couldn't be here tonight but Bill has been a great servant to Burlington over the years. And he's among a couple of folks on our steering committee who have been serving on it for five years which is the term limit I think. So both Bill and Alec have term limited out but I suspect we'll see Bill around and just be here tonight. But he's been a great service to the city. We'd like to begin the meetings with an open forum of sorts. And of course before we do that if it's all possible we're trying to get better about starting the meetings by just going around quickly and getting everyone sort of an opportunity to introduce themselves, say their name and where they live. We're sort of borderline with the larger crowd here but I think we can do it. So again my name's Ben Cravers. I live on Holm Avenue here in Bordeaux and if we could just start here. Hi, I'm John Callow, I live at the Lakeside neighborhood on Central Avenue. General Bates, I'm the founder of Five Sisters. Austin Drift, Austin Drift. Lisa Nelson, Austin Drift. I'm Victoria Lewis. Are you having a public watch? No, I don't have a public watch. Can you sign them? Go Gary, Curtis and Ashton. Joe Shannon, Lakeside. I'm actually the visiting Austin Drift. Andrew Austin Drift. Shirston Bum, Boundary Road. Garrett Bum, Boundary Road. I'm like eating more space. Elizabeth Binders, October Road. Brian Davis, Henry Street. Dylan Jacobs, Beale Street. Yeah, I'm like on Avenue. Lucia Cambriela, Corner of Pine and Linus. Joe Chalonella, Palamionette. Nancy Schwartz, off towards the Parkway on Alder Lane. Marnshake, August 7, Austin Drive. Julie Misuga, Walnut Street. I'm on board with this one. Welcome. I'm on campus. That's your hands. I'm on Fairland Street. I'll head over to Fairland Street. Joya Grossman, Lynn Avenue. Michelle Anderson, Cherry Lane. Jim Rudd, Cherry Lane, Berkeley. Baham Jafar, Pine Street. B.L. St. George, Hayward Street. Hey Kim, I'm on board 7. Scott Public, St. Paul Street. I'm Jennifer. I live on Mansfield Avenue. All right. And of course we want to welcome our help from CEDO, as well as, I think we're live streaming. Not yet, I think we'll call it. But particularly live streaming would be held with Channel 7. Hopefully we're recording this. One way, again, we have a thumbs up. So one way or another we'll get the video. So I want to turn it over to open forum before. I also want to sort of get some papers out to anyone who wants it for folks who are interested in some of the NPA business we have with you today. We have a great agenda, obviously focused on a climate change and how it's impacting us here in Burlinton, but we also have some NPA business to do tonight. And just a couple things I want to pass out if you didn't grab them earlier. One is, is that we have this draft financing resolution. And we can talk about it more later, but just to folks who want to have in hand and take a look. So I have enough copies for everyone. So if you want to just take one and pass them down or have one to share, that'd be great. The other is that the steering committee, as it's composed of right now, has made some recommended changes to our bylaws. They haven't been dusted off. And the last time we did it was, I don't know, almost 20 years ago, so I'm not mistaken. So people may have picked out a copy of this to help in if you didn't. And we'll go over a summary of it later, but there's a couple additional copies here if anyone wants to take a look and pass them around. And then, as I mentioned earlier, we have our steering committee elections tonight as well. And for that, we put out a voluntary form where folks could submit a statement of interest if they were interested in writing this thing. We were really excited about the level of interest that we got. It was quite no means mandatory, and just because you're not on this list doesn't mean you cannot attend for the steering committee. But we did have this list available and wanted to give folks an opportunity to take a look at. So I'll pass these around as well if you want to take an opportunity to look at that role. Right, so now we'll open up to a whole conform of issues that aren't on the agenda if anyone has any. I belong to the Burlington Garden Club since the 80s, and now they've made me publicity chairman. That means I get to take pictures and do press releases and everything. And every year we do some sort of tour that's part fundraiser and a lot of fun. And this year we're going to go down to Wood Scot and see the mansion that the Rockefellers are the last owners of. And they literally walked out, I think even leaving their toothbrushes. And they were known every table we go to, there's a notepad with two sharp pencils. But anyway, the houses are exciting. There's what they call Belvedere, which is a greenhouse in the pool. And then from there we'll go to Billings Farm Manager's House, which was built in the late 1800s with cutting-edge things like central hot water, central heat, and a roll-top desk. And so we'll be there and we'll have ice cream, and then we'll go over to Cornish New Hampshire, which is a little further south and across the bridge to where St. Godin's is. And he built the Standing Lincoln, which has been copied several times. In 2016 they got enough money together to actually put one at the gardens where we would go. And his house will be there on tour as well as his studio. And it's offered $95 for the day. And that includes all of the bus and all of the tickets and passes. You bring your own lunch. And I have a lot of flyers here that will tell you something about both places. We'd love to have you join us on June 13th and we'll leave at 8 in the morning from Burlington. So I hope you'll come. Burlington Garden Club. It's at Burlington Garden Club. It's bgcbt.org. There's a Facebook page. We've got 300 members and we get sometimes 1,000 gifts. I think we'll love it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Carol. And I've got a lot of these if you want them. Thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else for open lunch? Yeah, Brian Davis. I'm a transportation planner with the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission. And I want to talk about the theater project that we're working on in partnership with City of Burlington on the UC Avenue. We started last fall trying to take a different concept from the UC Avenue. We're studying the whole thing, starting in the north at Riverside Health Center and traveling all the way out to where it ends at our streets and all of the shy guys on the other side. Over the winter, the consult team has been working out different design concepts. We did the public outreach in the fall. We did all that information. We developed these first drafts. Nothing is set in stone. This is just the first attempt at capturing what we heard from the public. Now I want to show this with you tonight. Let me take a look at those. My name, my bureaucratic medical department, my phone number is on there. So take a look at these. It could be a little challenging to decide whether or not I'll be presenting it for four or seven next weeks. And we have a public meeting just the first day, for May 8th. And I'll be in the whole run then in the community room on our street. Lots of ways to participate. I do want to hear from you. I have a number of the concepts here that I believe for you to take. And as well as little close parts here. Some of the themes that we have heard there is no connected way if you want to fight. I'm going to go into this out on the Muskie Avenue as you know, it's residential in the south. It's the bike facilities. Downtown, just boiling in traffic. In the whole run there is varying extents of bike facilities. There's on street parking in some areas which is important for the local businesses. And some of the residents, so we're trying to balance the needs of everyone who wants to use the corridor. And this is your chance to help shape that. So again, this is just draft stuff. What's going to happen is from the next steps we'll take all this back over the next couple of months. Refine these. Come back to late in the summer with some different options that are based on what you like and what you think might work. What you don't like and won't work and we'll take all of that. So I appreciate your time, I appreciate your input. You get involved in this. Tell everyone you know. I also want to let you know another project. First of all, today is the one year anniversary so thanks for your support to be your user. The regional planning station is doing a study of the year one to see how was it. Did it work out? Are stations in the right place? Do we need more towns? Where should they be? As you know, there was a pilot station on Flynn Avenue some over a couple months, which was great. And so to that end there is an online survey very short, you know, survey money. There's also a wiki map online that we can go and drop yes, I would like to see a station here no, I don't think that's a station either identify different biking barriers maybe it's a hill, maybe there's not a facility, so we're keeping that open a little bit longer. This study should wrap up in about another month or so and it will help inform the city's decision on the presenter's proposal. So gotcha bike, it's a fun bike. They have come to the city of Wellington and Muskie at South Berlin at our stations with an opportunity to switch the fleet over to electric assist bikes and possibly introduce electric scooters again, we want the public feedback on the bikes version on the potential to introduce scooters and stations where you'd like to see more stations so that's very exciting for those of us in the transportation field again, all we do see are free to take my name and contact info is on there and I encourage you to be in touch with me thank you very much All right, anyone else for open forum? Okay so then we'll move to our agenda just wanted to thank of course I wanted to thank our South Bishop City Councilor John Shannon for being here thanks for coming to our meeting at the post and the other thing is if you haven't signed in already I'm going to leave the sign-in sheet up here and you get a chance on the way now if you could sign in, that would be great. With that as I mentioned before a great agenda focus on climate change here in Burlington and our first item on our actual agenda here is we're really glad to have Jennifer Green from Burlington Electric to come up and talk about the products and climate action Yeah, thanks Ben I really appreciate being invited thanks to my first campaign I don't, I have to say it's not that the DPW conference room wasn't a treat it's a little nicer to be up here in this space so I haven't actually visited you all it's a guess over years maybe even two but anyway, I appreciate being up here oh thanks and somebody looks like he's actually going to move the power point for me thank you so I think I've only got about 15 minutes and I do apologize that I'm not staying for the panel my contact information is at the end of these eight slides so please don't hesitate to reach out to me through any questions and Councilor Shin, I'm staying out before I forget if I don't mention the 2030 district and the event I made first would you remind me to say something since I promised Jenna I would I'll try you may see everybody else so as Ben mentioned I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of climate planning in Burlington I'm going to tell you about what we know these would be our greenhouse gas emissions and sort of what we anticipate the trajectory to be and where we're going I'm particularly excited to tell you a little bit about our transition to net zero energy in case folks haven't heard about I think kind of the buzz around this new theme and topic for us and I want to talk about the challenges that I think we all need to be well aware of when we talk about GHG reductions greenhouse gas emissions reductions and net zero energy in particular but also not opportunities you know I was thinking about that today I think it's soft but so important it may not be tangible but the fact that we have so much social capital as I'm listening to Ben I'm thinking oh I know Ben from leadership Champlain and I sort of look around the room and you mentioned the fact that Councillor Shannon was here I think we cannot underestimate the impact of the social capital that we share in Burlington that makes anything possible so just quickly our history we're all starting on the same page Burlington was actually the first city in the country to write a climate action plan it was written in 2000 under Peter Clavel at that point there were very few road maps or tools to help with quantifying emissions so if you talk now to the folks that were around and wrote that climate action plan they talk about how it was like pulling stumps out of the ground they had nothing to go on but they did take a stand at it fast forward to 2007 and there are more tools available indeed cities around the country are now starting to talk about emissions and the roles that they play in capturing that data setting targets and then reducing those emissions so Burlington was very early to get on that bandwagon in terms of using the tools that are now really readily available so we collected data in 2007 2010 2013 more recently 2016 so that's where we are from an historic standpoint so now can I tell you a little bit about what we know which is the second slide you don't mind these are not very shattering slides I'm sorry I have Prezi on my list of things to do but hasn't happened yet so our climate action plan essentially talks about 8 key themes that we need to address in the back of the plan you'll see there are 36 strategies that we need to tackle that are organized around these themes and as you can imagine they're focused on transportation both government and community transportation so our own city fleet we have over 270 vehicles in our city fleet and how you and I and all of us were to get around town we talk about the importance of energy efficiency in buildings building to being a fairly significant portion of our greenhouse gas emissions we also talk about sort of organic matter i.e. our urban canopy we think it's important that we maintain and build our urban canopy from a sequestration standpoint and honor sort of our local farms and gardens also from a sequestration standpoint I will mention that waste reduction it seems like you can't have a climate action plan if you're not talking about that but as you'll see from the pie in a minute it's actually quite a small sliver of what our total emissions are so I'm going to pull up with one pie before I do if you imagine this pie chart and how our emissions are our total energy picture is divided up in terms of emissions can you imagine these themes are sort of churning your brain what's the key what's most responsible for our greenhouse gas emissions in Burlington we actually are in the mayor talk about it quite a lot so transportation and it continues to be about the same as much as we can calculate so from about 2007 up until 13 is when we have the best data it continues to be about 210 thousand metric tons of carbon in a year so what would be the second thing after transportation buildings and we think about buildings and again until fairly recently i.e. 2014 the buildings are responsible for electricity of course and then what's our main thermal or heating source in the city natural gas only about 5% of residences use what we refer to as unregulated fuels i.e. oil and propane so most of us heat with natural gas so if you can imagine the pie it's sort of buildings on one side slightly less than 50% which incorporates electricity and natural gas and transportation on the other with a little slice for waste maybe we can look at the next slide so this is kind of interesting this is our former this is the pie that I was talking about transportation boom electricity natural gas i.e. buildings this was from 2014 and I wonder if anybody knows why and what changed in 2014 work for the electric department that's a hint what's that 100% renewable right we are status changed in the city we were the first city in the country to source 100% of our electricity from renewables so this is awesome essentially that means that if this is our total energy or GHG pie this is essentially now neutral bam so what we are going to need to focus on now going forward is the natural gas component and the transportation component and I want to talk a little bit about sort of the challenges and opportunities of those two sectors in particular but before then are there any questions or thoughts or comments on this thus far I guess I just want to question this electric is because we have an electric power plant it is not exactly neutral we the way we describe it is sourcing 100% of our electricity from renewables and I will say from a GHG emission standpoint if you use the tools that other cities are using they tend to consider biomass as carbon neutral so it is it's debatable but what I I just want to comment that biomass is what you are burning we are burning for our electricity and biomass left on the ground and in the trees forms does a lot more in terms of carbon than I just want to mention it's important to bring that up and I will maybe say way to that say that we are not our city, you and me we're not sourcing wood that is strictly being used for burning a McNeil we have contracts with over 80 most of them small family operations they're harvesting trees mostly for high end use furniture etc so the scraps that don't have any market value is what comes into McNeil and is chipped for the biomass plant but I hear you and this does come up on occasion and I guess nothing is carbon neutral and it might be good to mention how many truckloads are burned at the plant every day who can tell me that since I can't right now oh you know this is one of these things when I do the McNeil tour and I often bring students I gotta lock that one in so I apologize but I can get back to folks it's a huge amount that I don't remember either but because you said we're gonna source it and it seems good but when you hear the amount that is actually it takes to provide us with our energy it's it is a tremendous amount of biomass that is being burned every day and I think the segue there or the theme that you're talking about I think is efficiency so anything we do in the city we really need to think about efficiency first efficiency first it's sort of the platform of everything you know particularly when we talk about adding renewables or turning our homes into small micro grids which is all well and good really the first thing you want to do is go low and I think we can have a long conversation about and I think we will actually come up with the opportunities and challenges so let's move on if you don't mind hitting the next slide let's see where we go so as I mentioned our first climate plan actual plan was written in 2010 with 2007 data become carbon or resource 100% of our electricity in 2014 so it was on that platform that the mayor decided we're going to move to the next audacious place which is to transition the city to net zero energy in the thermal and the transportation sectors so essentially hello so now that I'm going to call it clean now that our grid, our electric grid is clean we're saying come to the grid we want now what we're going to do is in theory begin to transition people out of their single combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles we're going to incentivize bikes to the extent that we can and we should also as a team, Brian was just here we should really be thinking about the bike walk master plan and ensuring that other alternative forms of transportation are really well supported that goes for public transit as well and really working with green mountain transit really encouraging the electrification of the bus fleet two electric buses are coming online this summer and we're looking forward to that so that's the start so this is our vision, the vision now now that we're 100% renewable energy status or electricity status we want to invite people back to the grid and in particular transition away from fossil fuels in the transportation sector and the heating sector for the next few minutes about the opportunities does anybody have a challenge or two in mind that they think might make this and I don't want to be pessimistic I'm very optimistic but I think it's also important to sort of recognize what lies ahead in terms of the things that we're going to have to really gather around and move up together to do at least for me landlords and whether they want to put the money into their buildings to have their tenants benefit from it yeah so we have a high I think you have a high rental rate too so it's about 60% in Burlington so a lot of folks are not responsible for their buildings but they pay the bills and because our vacancy rate is so low we really have what's referred to as a split incentive we have property owners who are not incentivized to invest in their buildings because they don't have to because demand is so high and then we have a lot of tenants who are actually on the move we have about a 30% turnover rate in the city every year plus this high demand so this is really like the perfect storm of rental properties that need attention so that's certainly a challenge anything else? kind of along that note I just think about the equity lens we go forward with these really important measures and not make that an extra burden on people that already have burdens placed upon them I'm so glad you brought that up because I don't specifically mention it is and should be a key theme of everything we do not only if you're looking at sort of rental property but you're looking at transportation and really as you're looking at any sort of innovation that we're going to have to adopt sort of the cities now everywhere are saying yeah there's this energy transformation happening and we cannot leave people behind so equity has got to be a principal theme of everything we do I mean this transformation isn't going to work it's just rich people can afford it so this is kind of the ultimate challenge I think but also a fabulous opportunity as well so thank you for bringing that up there's some way that property taxes to reduce if you can ask me to well we can talk about the opportunities maybe that would be an opportunity so hold on to that thought are there any other challenges that come to mind that really we need to I would say like the great capacity in New Burlington if you break cars on or if you're going to a lot of need and loss or whatever just capacity yes absolutely and for those of you that don't know we have an amazing resource planning team at BED so is there really thinking about this all the time if everyone goes out tomorrow and buys an electric vehicle do we have the the poles and wires, the grid to support that so there's a constant sort of balancing act that we anticipate is going to have to happen and that's actually why we recently released this off-peak charging rate for electric vehicles so we're already starting to think about how we can incentivize folks to charge in those off-peak times to help maintain sort of a more consistent demand so that's definitely a challenge maybe just one more yeah well along the equity line but also the things that you've been talking about getting people out of their car and one of the big pieces of that is a more efficient public transportation system when Rachel Kennedy was here several months ago she made it very clear that their plans are no increase in funding for public transportation that seems like a losing proposition if we're trying to get people out of our car and electric buses aside we have to get people to use the public transportation to make it for people especially low-income people who don't have cars make it easier to get those yes so the transportation component is going to be big and the public transportation piece is going to have to be and if we're a part of that and how we get to a place where we need it to be is going to be a heavy and a big lift particularly what you're hearing from from three amounts of transit so maybe we can move on to the next I'm not sure where we are Joanna but I think we're about I know you've got your finance conversation about five minutes so this is our next energy vision and I'll just leave you with this but essentially what we're saying again is we're going to transition off of fossil fuels in the heating sector i.e. natural gas and transportation and we're going to look at our electric grid as an important source to help make that happen so stay tuned for that would you mind flipping a slide if you're able so we covered a a bunch of these both from a transportation and from a housing standpoint this is just sort of a quick brain dump of challenges that I see to your transportation points about 75% of city employees drive alone to work which is a little less but reflects where we are trending in Vermont as you know GHE emissions from transportation are also the biggest piece of the Vermont pie Elise mentioned the challenges with rental and again as I say 60% are rental we've got this 1.7% vacancy rate which the mayor mentioned in the state of the city two weeks ago which leads us to the splits and sensitive issue and the turnover rate we also have old housing stock and that speaks to the challenge of our thermal and the shell of our buildings so almost half of our buildings were built before 1950 and I think we didn't bring this up but this is really going to be something we're going to have to rally around natural gas is cheap and there's a lot of it so again 95% of us use it in our homes very very little commercial propane and oil so they depend on natural gas as well and it's cheap and it makes this transition to heat pumps I don't see one in here but it makes the transition to heat pump technology challenging so we're going to need to figure out programs by which we can help and incentivize a combination of weatherization plus heat pumps and for those of you that haven't seen the technology there's a simple it's a piece of hardware and it's like 98% efficient so it's a fabulous technology they've been using it in Japan for the last 30 years we're just kind of getting on the bandwagon here as you know a lot of our new buildings don't even use gas a lot of our newer buildings are just going right to heat pump and that's all fine and good but again it's our old housing stuff and we've got a lot of it so we're going to have to figure out that one too can I see the last slide please I can't honestly remember so I think yeah so maybe we can end with some things that I think are worth some optimism and it seems so mundane I think in part because we forget being Burlingtonians but we own our electric utility the cities that I work with around the country are just clamoring for energy data and because most of them have investor-owned utilities or IUCs they can't get that data and if you can measure it as they say you know you can't change it so we're really lucky that we sit on fabulous data we know how energy or electricity is being used and fortunately we do have you know we have a good relationship with Ramon Gas so we're sitting on really a plethora of information that's going to be helpful to us BED is also Energy Efficiency Utility as you know one of three in the state and so that that fine item that you have on your bill you know goes into this pool which helps ensure that we can all tap into it as necessary for energy efficiency savings I would argue and this kind of gets back to the rental part is that we do have some good policies on the books I would argue that we maybe want to beef them up for example the time of sale we have a time of sale ordinance in the city it was written in 1998 and it basically says when you sale your rental property if your tenant pays the utility bills you are required either you or the person buying the unit of upgrading it so I mean I think 1998 so what we were saying at the time was you had to invest $1300 or 3% of the sale price so we need to update that time of sale so it reflects the current rate of inflation so we have again we've got some good things on the books we maybe need to beef them up we have a lot to go on and we really just sort of need to pedal the metal and make a lot of this happen now as I mentioned we do have collaboration with Vermont Gas and you know as my colleagues at BED reminded you know we have to play nicely in the sandbox because until we're at a point where hello how are you until we're at a point where our transition is really sort of in full swimming we do depend on natural gas for our meeting one nice example of collaboration that happens with Vermont Gas is the energy chat challenge we're now in phase two which essentially means that if your building uses more than 50,000 BTUs per square foot of finished space then Vermont Gas and BED will go in together they'll pay 50% of the weatherization and or energy upgrade costs to incentivize the property in order to kick it over the line so we've had between 165 and 170 buildings that have taken advantage of this but it's certainly not enough the threshold to get that money is still a little too high wouldn't it be nice if it was 25,000 BTUs and then you get the money but right now you have to use a fair amount of natural gas and then the last thing to end or leave you with in our quest for net zero is the reminder that we have tier 3 body in Burlington as do all the other utilities that distribute energy this is through the state's renewable energy standards which sets sort of the tier 3 limits and to keep it simple because that's about as well as I can describe it BED has funding that allows us to invest in our transition to net zero energy so this is how we have heat pump rebates and this is how we have electric vehicle rebates and this is how we have electric bike rebates and this is how we have a tranche of money that we could invest to purchase these two electric buses so this is really hopeful and we're really fortunate to live in a state that makes that money available to us so thanks very much I really appreciate being able to share my thoughts with you tonight and again I apologize for not staying for the panel but if anybody did want to reach me I think on the last slide is my email which is jgreenatburlingtonelectric.com and I will say first there is a an event at main street landing please join us Burlington has a 2030 district the whole city is actually a 2030 district I encourage you to google it anybody who signs on any commercial property owner this is all really private sector led BED is just hearing the wings to help out but if you're a commercial property owner and you join the district you're pledging to reduce your GHG from transportation you're building GHG and be better with your water usage and it's part of that membership we're partnering with an energy an engineering team we'll come in and essentially draft you up a roadmap for your building it's all free of charge and an awesome service so I leave you with that if you want to learn more please come to the May 1st event so thanks everybody thanks again for inviting me thanks Jen I want to remind people that there are snacks back there thanks Jen I think we're we're really lucky to have those more you're doing really great stuff so as is usually the case we packed a lot into our agenda we're going to hope to get it all done in the meantime as I mentioned we do have some NPA business to turn to we may have been a bit optimistic about being able to get to our elections and our financing resolution and our violence if we have to balance our violence we'll do it in total soon but I want to turn it over to Alec Bauer who's going to moderate this next session but before we do that as I mentioned before of the 74 currently on the steering wheel we have three who have indicated that they're certainly stepping down two of them are stepping down because they've been serving for the last five years and are currently out I mentioned Bill Keough is one of them and so I want to say thank you of course to Bill and Alec for your service Joanna as well has been serving with us for the last couple of years Joanna's been a real force on the steering wheel for driving a lot of really great discussions a lot of important issues here starting to lose her on the steering committee I also just wanted to take an opportunity to acknowledge someone who's been a great service to here in Ward 5 not only here on the steering committee over the years but also as our Ward clerk and that's Elise Nelson Elise Steffoff last year after serving her five years to her amount on the steering committee and for those four folks we have some tokens of appreciation for your service that we'd like to give you so thanks very much for your time Elise's third five year term yes steering committee so I'm just wet behind the ear thank you we're going to try and catch up here again it's been noted I live on Locust Street I've been a Ward 5 resident ever since the last time be easy so it's that time of year we're going to do we've got three things on the agenda that are NPA business related and we're going to give our time for the time of the month we have steering committee elections hopefully those will go quickly we also have a finance resolution for NPA business that is related to an ongoing effort throughout all of the city's NPAs we have five of them three of them are conjoined two NPAs first for NPA for three and then there are two individual for NPA for five here of course and more to say something else so that finance resolution is related to a push to fund NPAs a little bit more than they have been funded in the past many I don't think all yet maybe all but one have already voted as NPAs to send a resolution from the NPA to the city council requesting these additional funds so we'll talk about that in a minute and then if we need to punt on anything it will be bylaws your board of five steering committee over the last month or six weeks I wouldn't say we've written our bylaws bylaws are always available by the way on the city website we have revised them extensively though they were last revised on at least the second five year return on the NPA I promise last time I'll say that so they were 17 years old since they've been revised last so there were some things in there that were either outdated, incorrect or just inappropriate for the way the NPA functions here in Burlington in 2019 looking forward so we've taken great effort to revise those accordingly I'll say handily on behalf of all of us who go to the unanimous steering committee to purport these bylaws there's no great shakes in there they're predominantly the same it's a nip and tuck here and there we cut out some sections we thought were redundant, superfluous but we've already picked up in the NPA Charter oh my gosh we've got no bounds so those are the three things we're going to try and get done in the next we're going to have up until 7.40 so we have 20 minutes let's see what we can do so elections first we have seven openings on the steering committee we have a sheet here with eight folks who are interested who have submitted a statement of interest to the NPA through a website that Ben set up on Google so I think many of you probably had a chance to review this a little bit we're going to give an opportunity for each of the folks out here to give a one minute pitch or somewhere around there so I'm just going to go down the line because this is how they're on the list so oh wait they're alphabetic a little unfair to those I should know about they're alphabetic like first name like first name are there any objections going out on the list alright so any assignments first keep it brief so we can stay on time my name is Amy Simon I served one year on the steering committee and I really believe in NPAs I think that we have a lot of potential as I said in my little write up this is how meeting democracy prevails and I think that we've just begun to explore the real possibilities for NPAs and I am looking forward to continuing this on thank you and Ashley hi I'm Ashley Dunn-Minsky I've been coming to the board for about four years since I moved to the south end I really like what they do I think it's cool that we have kind of the community states that really talks about things that are important specifically to us and also a way to hear about things in the bigger city and bring it home and talk about it I'd like to just kind of help out and help keep it organized and keep it moving Mr. Travis yeah so I'm Ben I'm trying to get up here already I've served on the NPA steering committee for the last couple of years it's been a real honor and privilege to use this opportunity to not only myself stay tuned into our city issues but also provide I think a friendly neutral forum for folks of really all stripes feel comfortable becoming and to hear what folks have to say on the issues of this board as well as the voice of their own opinions I think we've done a lot of good stuff as an NPA over the last couple of years we've moved to this great location we've started live streamer meetings on channel 17 I think what I'd like for us to continue doing is to increase our efforts to broaden these meetings to bigger scope people we've talked about for example trying to have some talking over food type events as they do in some other wards we've talked about perhaps bringing in child care services for some of these meetings so that's what I would like to focus on in addition to what we've been doing here, I'd like to continue doing that so I appreciate your support thanks Jeff Oh Jay I'm toad area incumbent I've been on the steering committee for one year and I'm just excited by the energy that we've seen around a lot of different issues over that time and looking forward to continuing I think we have a little bit of improvement on our technology use and there are a lot of people in the room tonight that's actually really great but we're trying to bring it to more and more people there's probably more hundred people in the room that shouldn't participate either at this time or any time after we're doing them up Thanks Joe, Catherine Do you have a Catherine Regal name? Okay Okay Kristen I'm Kirsten Bone which starts with a K so the pronunciation has been a Kirsten in here in word 5 I've been here for about four years we, my husband and I have found the NPA meeting is really helpful in terms of just understanding community issues getting different perspectives of elections in the past hearing from different candidates and ballot issues I'm at the point in kind of my community engagement where I want to get back and be part of that especially we have two sons four and one and kind of setting that example of that level of engagement for them and I think bringing that perspective adds a woman and a mom to thinking about the agendas that we have here and the expectations that we bring here I think also echoing Ben's statement about wanting to just support increased engagement and the work that the NPA has been doing to engage more families and make the opportunity more accessible to folks and also just wanting to say this is so exciting there's more interest in the fair community than there are seats I think that would be the envy of a lot of people who are proud here tonight Lucia? Lucia? Hi, so I'm Lucia Cambriela I'm a girl to be here tonight and I so appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this and attend elections I view this as an opportunity to more deeply engage in our hyper-local community which is both really exciting and also super important since relocating to Vermont about four years ago now we really built our lives two children are across the street over at Pine Forest Children's Center our older daughter will begin at kindergarten at Champaign Elementary next year our younger daughter will turn two in a couple of months my husband Joe is here and works in town and professionally I'm a fundraiser at an organization that is headquartered in Burlington so really excited about the opportunity to give back to my community and if I were to highlight one skill that I think makes me particularly suited for this role it's my ability to build and maintain a really great relationship so obviously a skill that is required of me in my profession hopefully my husband would attest to this being the second skill in our personal lives and I think a really important skill for both the ability to work with a committee of people as well as individually with community members so really appreciate being here and for you about my life thanks Thank you, Scott Thank you I'm Scott Obak I think I spoke at the last one or the one before, I hope you're not saying from yet because I'm interested in being part of the spirit committee I've only lived in the South End for a little over two and a half years we're in year three now so relatively new compared to some of you but my fiancee and I since coming there have decided to build their life in Burlington but the South End sold us, it was mainly shy guys a lot of but a lot of our neighbors are really great I'm particularly interested in creating connections and conversations promoting community engagement, something that I've done throughout my roles at UBM as a graduate student and employee and during my time in AmeriCorps just the learning about the issues that we face as a city it seems apparent that we really need to be promoting participation widely it seems like we've done quite a good job tonight but I would like to help move that moment forward so thanks anybody else who is not on the sheet I'm I'm Muhammad Jafar I just joined the spirit committee last year so I've been on for the past year I joined because I think it's really really important much like everyone else's kind of echo there aren't many cities in which things like this functions like this happen so that people are able to have these discussions that are really really important so I got involved when someone has come from across the world in Kenya I wanted to get involved and bring whatever perspective that I might have to the table to help kind of mitigate a lot of the issues that we all face so I'm Muhammad and I've been here for a year hope you'll keep me for a year longer thanks Muhammad so again we have nine posters, is there anybody else who's interested who hasn't made a statement of interest okay unless there are objections I think by virtue of having submitted a statement or standing up in front of the room and making a statement of interest I'd like to nominate the nine people who have stated interest already not second alright there are seven seats so there are nine applicants, there are seven seats we do have ballots and we have our word clerk here who's going to help us wait Alec, but one of the people who submitted a statement isn't here so we have eight we kind of vote for someone in absentia if there are folks here who would like to vote for Gaby, is that right Amy? Gaby, that's totally fine we can't proxy vote but they did submit a statement of interest so we have ballots in the back what we're going to do is you write down the seven names that you would like to vote for up to seven you don't have to put all seven down up to seven and our election official is going to help Natalie while we move on to the next hour we have two in addition we have a former steering committee that would vote for five we want my ballot it's a parallel so we thought that putting down names would be better than picking the two that you didn't want or writing but you know why now oh just to remind I'm sorry just to remind our only ward five residents that's right that's right thank you Joanna only ward five residents which is awesome they're stacking the the ballot box I'll take three of those yes you don't have your pen? yes we'll be chairmen we'll be all the way here I'm feeling a little guilty so my I'll hold that what we want here we have I want to know just for that because if I lose by 20 that's fine you can accept it but if it's two that's that I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I have some ideas and it's a real bouncing I mean, when you look at Lake Champlain and that we're in an agreement with the federal government, we have a legal agreement to deal. That onus falls on the state but the work and the solutions on the ground were very dependent on local partners and even like road projects and stuff are coordinated locally by our regional planning commissions. So in the last several years we've been trying to figure out how the state is collecting the money, some of it's federal, some of it's our own tax dollars and trying to push it out into the region for all sorts of projects small and big and we uncovered that there was an organization, I'm going to forget their name, that was writing like hundreds of grants they had a base fund of $100,000 and they were literally, hundreds of grants, tiny grants and they would take that 100 grand of their base funding and through all this grant writing, all to the state get a budget of like $2 million and we were like this cannot be happening so we started the process of a block rate situation so that that group can write one grant or five grants I don't know, but not a hundred grants and so we're trying to and remember the water quality is here and it relates to a lot of these issues because there's a good intersection of the climate and water we recognize this is many decades here so we're in year three maybe of trying to better organize ourselves and make sure that folks on the ground who have plans who know where the best bank for our buck is can get the money, get it efficiently, but the state has to be accountable and so that's tricky and you also have to watch out for you don't want the best grant writers to get the money because actually you want the money to go to where you're going to have the best impact on water quality and that might be a tiny town with, you know, a town manager and a road manager and that's it and they don't have, you know, CEDO has dozens of grant writers so those are some of the balances but there is a strong commitment and understanding that local underground partners are vital to this and we are trying to make that more straightforward, more easy to navigate and predictable and then the last thing I'll say one of the other things that haunts me is, you know, there's an ag sector for water quality there's transportation and then there's land and we worked really hard in the last couple of years to make sure all of those were at least understanding what each other was doing so we can't have the road people fixing a road next summer and then the ag people have that same some kind of fix on the field right there that they're going to get to in five years like that's idiotic when that happens we've got to put that into one and have our work crew there fix it all at once you know what I mean so it's sometimes depressing how straightforward that would seem and how state government is not quite there yet but we are forcing those coordinated efforts as part of the larger work I want to make one pitch on that there's a conference coming up at Norwich University on June 7th and it's the Resilient Vermont Network conference and they do bring together ag energy food energy and water it's probably one of the only kind of conferences where you see that kind of intersection and I think often it's hard to attract people because they only see themselves in the silence so we're hoping that folks from the legislature that would be great the only thing I wanted to add left you and your people and I said that we had a lot of the groups come in from around the state along with regional planning commissions the wealth of activism and knowledge and activity that's going down in the state is unbelievable and there are a lot of projects that are being proposed out there that have been well studied and researched and you know they're kind of ready to go which is why I'm really hoping that we get that really good source of funding to the water and when we talk about water that is so unrelated to the resilience that we need to combat climate because we know with these intense storms that come down are related to climate and they you know just take so much of our soils and whatever with them when they push down so far into the lakes and into the rivers I'm really glad that you mentioned that because I worked for the city of South Burlington and I would do a lot with our storm water utility and I'm excited I know that it's not moving fast but I'm still hoping that the state will do something statewide along those lines this perfect services Joana? Yeah Can I just say I just want to say that I want to thank our panelists a lot for taking the time to come it's really easy to get overwhelmed on climate issues because it's just so urgent and it's so profound we affect all of us but I want to say that one of the things that seems like a bottom line to me on resilience adaptation and taking action together is community that the way we're going to survive or if we do survive but is by building community and that's on a local level as well on a regional level and a national level so I just want to thank you all for coming out tonight because this is part of it for me is getting to know your neighbors being able to talk about issues and being able to depend on each other I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions I hear you there's all these things happening in the state level and the national level and even some in the community level but I want the single household level where I go to my ground I've gotten rid of all my grass and I'm collecting the storm water from my drains and it's going down into the ground but Ruby Perry and Andy Simon have I think contributed the most with the way they plan their house that we need some individual things we can do we can also put in a whole bunch of plants that will help to absorb the water, help the bees help the birds, help the insects in your garden based on the plants that you just put in those are very simple things they don't cost a zillion dollars and like in our neighborhood we have a whole big plant exchange the Burlington Carbon Club that I belong to is 35 dollars a year and lectures that we have are really pretty phenomenal one of them just said leave your garden at the end don't trash it let it sit there for the birds and the bees and the insects all over and I just find that you've got bills so tell me you want me to support those bills but I need individual people all Caroline Street could get together and we could discipline sidewalks so that the water runs off the sidewalks and into the ground and we'd say to our sidewalks and that's something very simple a neighborhood could do and that's the information I want and if you have to redo your driveway we did this a couple of years ago we have a driveway that inflates the water and about an hour after the people left who were building it we had this super flash flood and I was out there just amazed that none of the water was running off they didn't work it's just a super way to do it so what's your point on the carbon things you have information or knowledge what it says to raising the price $15 a ton and then $25 a ton it's going to do less in size in terms of getting rid of it and I hear you 100% my concern is that we had that in a natural form in a price of gas let's say five years ago or something it was up pretty steep for a while but it went up quicker and people had to start to change their way it took a year or so people started buying smaller cars and they turned around like that they immediately responded and I think they've gone farther there are much more big SUVs that some of them have ever had so my question is how do you know the stuff you say you know and how are we going to get people to act or make them longer term well the study that was done was done by the regional and non-modeling and I could share a copy of it I don't, I can't remember them as well but it's a complicated model that they developed and because people do respond to pricing yeah oh the only thing I wanted to add is I've asked a few economists is it true that people respond more to a tax person know them just a cost and the reason they do is because they sure that's permanent but they don't know if the price of the pump is just going to go up and down and the gas tax really has not that basically what it was intended to you know and that's what I designed and so which is like the transportation sector you know they talk about maybe we should try to vehicle miles travel and stuff but it's hard to get people to sign up to say yes even more which is why if you're putting the speed on the registers at the source of production they're the ones paying to be and yes they are going to pass it on through the market through the price of goods and just like you know when gas goes high you know people drive less and it's because it's that say predictable market signal you know it's $10 you know $15 the first year 25 and that's $35 and some economists I read an article and it said that in order to start really seeing like clear effects you got to get at and above $40 per metric ton even with the CCL policy you know year one is 15 it's going to take a couple years to ramp up to that $40 mark but that's when the price change is hard enough that it starts to be active we have been to Carol's point because we are really under drill accidents we aren't really accepting that this is true we're making it happen to all of us not just our car and the truck and it's like there's a hundred minutes more car cost again much more gas cost but when it comes back down and they don't even see that actually applies to their house their electricity, the lights all the different things they all apply the same way hopefully the carbon of course in Burlington wouldn't go up would affect the electric charge right you know you can have like the use of fire and fuel and things just you know because you're for instance the Obama Clean Power plan it was putting that price but it was only affecting the electric side whereas you know with the CCL policy because we're putting it on all fossil fuels as a source it's going to be a lot more and so you're going to see bigger and more significant reductions and you're right you know if we enact the policy it changes and then it gets you know taken away or reduced you're right it's you know you need a stable predictable policy to get the results that you want and the other thing along with the reports I've read showed that carbon pricing not only is a signal to stop using it but also then you have a sector money that you then hopefully use to incentivize programs like electrification, transportation and weatherizing homes and these other things that we need to do you need a small three people so I just want to thank you all I've got it kind of coming off here we're a little over ready I just asked if there was a bill number in the House and is the House supporting it it is I was just pulling it up I'll follow up with you all and also I'll sweep them out and Joey and Louise yes yes and you'll see it thanks to our panelists