 So we're going to start by going around and introducing ourselves and so that people on the recording can hear. We want to use the microphones. There's a number of them around the room. And we're going to start right back here with Sharon. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I always forget to do this. My name is Tom Darenthal. I always forget to introduce myself. And I need a microphone. And I live on Nash Place. I'm part of the steering committee. And I'm very happy to be here. Hi, I'm Sharon Busher. And I live on East Avenue. Hi, I'm Dave Colley. I live on Nash Place, part of the old East End. Richard Hilliard, High Grove Court, Ward 1. Chris Haisley, Ward 3, candidate for mayor. I will be brief. I'll just simply say that for the first time in over 40 years, Burlington has returned to a two-party system. And we've seen where that's gotten us. There's been a lot of division here. As an observer on the outside, I've seen a lot of good ideas come from both progressives and the Democrats. And I think one of the reasons that an independent would be well is because we can reach across the aisle and really try to bring out the best of both sides. That's my goal. I won't sit here and take up any more time. I think most of you know who I am and know where to find me. But I'd like to try to focus on bringing the city together, because I think it's long overdue. Thank you. Hi, my name is Will. I used to live in Ward 1 on Sam and Run. I actually did an interview down there today with a gentleman named Merjahn Amir. And we were talking about water infrastructure. That's next. OK, my name is William Emmons, candidate for mayor. Willforbtv.com. Yeah, thank you for having me. Jason Stuffle, Colchester Ave. I'm part of the Old East End Neighborhood Coalition. And I'm also the Burlington Walkbite Council rep for the Winooski Bridge project. So any questions about that? Feel free to reach out to me. Sorry, I'm enjoying this amazing lasagna. Reluctant to give it up. I'm Tim Doherty. I live in the bright blue house on Colonial Square that used to have chickens. I'm Sam, and I live with Tim. He's my dad. Michael Long, I live in Henry Street. Karen Long, Henry Street. I'm going to stay for a speaker and then Run. But I just left. There's a sheet that the city's distributing for resources on who to call for different public safety questions. I think we've been trying to get that out to folks. So just left it on the front there. Kathy Owell, I live on North Prospect Street. I'm Angie Chaposokal. I also live on North Prospect Street. Hello, I'm Julian. I also live on North Prospect Street. I'm going to avoid the column here. Jeff Hand, I live on Henry Street. I'm also running for city council here in Ward 1. Thank you. Julia Lyman, and I live on North Street. Hi, I'm Carol Livingston. I live on Calarco Court. I'm also on the steering committee, along with Sam and Jonathan and Carter and Tom. I also just would urge people, if you haven't had a chance, to sign in if you could do that for us. That would be great. Thank you. I'm Fletcher Pratt, and I live on Riverside Ave, down by the car wash. Sidney Wolk, and I live on Brooks Ave. Sidney Monk, I live on Grove Street. Erhard Monk at Grove Street. Nice to see everybody. Gary Golden, I'm the school board commissioner for East District, and I'm over on Calarco Court. So I got points tonight. Hi, I'm Troy Hedrick. I live on Bility Court. I'm also one of the reps for Chinden 15, which includes all of Ward 1. I'm Catherine Vermann. I live on North Street. Peter Likowski, I live in Burlington Co. Housing on East Avenue. Cheryl Green, Burlington Co. Housing, East Avenue. Aaron Likowski, I'm just visiting them at Co. Housing. Jean Keller, Billidow Parkway. Got it? I get two. Oh, yeah. Joel Colada, 20 Chase Street. We have the Planet Earth Flag. I'm with the Vermont State Walking College. Samantha Ayat on Chase Street, part of the Steering Committee, and also part of the Old East End. I'm Jonathan Chappell Sokol. I'm on the Steering Committee. I live on North Prospect Street. And that's it. Oscar, we got people online. Can we see their names? Sophie. Sophie, you want to introduce yourself? Sophie, do you want to introduce yourself? Jean. I'm also at Burlington Co. Housing on East Avenue. OK, and Deb? Hi, Deb. OK, and I can't read all of them. I think there's a Lisa. Lisa? OK. Did we get Lynn? I don't know. Milo? I'm so sad I'm not there for the lasagna tonight. I'll send you leftovers. And Sarah? I need to speak. Yeah, so part of World War I of East Avenue Particle Housing. OK, well, thank you all for coming. And we've got a jam-packed agenda tonight. But we're going to shift gears quickly and go to Speak Out. And I thought I had something written down here. You have some Speak Out stuff. I have announcements. You have announcements. Are we doing announcements? Announcements and Speak Out. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I'm Jonathan Chappell-Solaker. I'm on the steering committee. But you know that because I just told you before. A little louder, please. Oh, crap. We're going to have to do circles. I have three things, and I'm going to forget the third. And Tom's going to remind me. The first is we vote. These are all procedural, OK? We vote on steering committee in March. So there are currently five members of the steering committee. And I know that at least four of us would like to continue to be on the steering committee. One of us may not be allowed to be on the steering committee, depending on the outcome of the election. That's harder. There are, according to our bylaws, we can have up to seven members of the steering committee. We would love to have seven members in the steering committee. So assume that there will be a slate that will come next month that will have at least four of us on it, same four as now. And anybody else who's interested, we'd love to hear from you. You can nominate yourself on the floor. Somebody else can nominate you, or you can join the slate, or however you want to do it. But we'd love participation. That's one. Two. Major questions. Major questions. Yes. The city, the NPA and city agree. No. Resolutions. So we've talked about a resolution, an NPA resolution that we want to bring to the city council, asking the city council to write a resolution that will work on developing a clear relationship between the NPAs and the city council, and a process by which the city council decides what issues are the most important that need to be referred to an NPA to get public input before it gets voted on. Part of this is a result you may recall that a few months ago, we asked for 45 days on the MOU that we wanted to make sure the MOU was not voted on until everybody had a chance to talk about it at an NPA. So that's the beginning of it. But we will vote on this next month. We'll talk about it and vote on it. We did post it in front porch form about a month ago. So everybody should have seen it at least once. We'll post it again. That's two. Three is? Five lines. Bylaws. So we have a set of bylaws. We passed them a couple of years ago. The city would like us to add a certain number of mandatory items that are basically a standard across all NPAs, that we all have certain things that are required to be in our bylaws. We don't want to bother the NPA until we know exactly what they are. There's a link to them on a city page. And we can describe them so that it's absolutely clear and everybody has the same information. We're not going to talk about bylaws until CEDAW comes back with some very clear things. And the things are good stuff. It's a grievance process. It's making sure we have clear nondiscrimination policy. So it's good stuff. We just want to make sure that it's absolutely clear what it is before we put mandatory things into our bylaws. That's it, right? That's it. Thank you. So what are the responsibilities of a steering committee? What do they do if they can evolve from the steering committee? What do we do? Basically, most important is to plan agendas. We have gotten permission in the past to spend money. And typically, we spend money. This NPA spends almost all their money right here in this room. It's either on food, rental, really basics. But that's what we're doing. As a matter of fact, maybe next month we'll talk about instead of bringing disposable plastic bottles of water, maybe we should buy a thermos or two so that we can recycle everything. That's largely what it is. It would be a good idea to post what our bylaws say exactly. But it's to meet regularly and plan agendas. Yeah, and I'll just add just with the help of CEDO and FOSCA, we are able to reach out to other organizations throughout the city and city counselors and mayoral candidates and other people and have them come here for our NPA meetings. So we have a lot of time spent with networking and connecting with other people and other organizations within the city as well. I wanted to add, which I haven't talked to you about this or not, I had gone to CEDO held a non-discrimination and conflict resolution training. And I just wanted to give some feedback to everybody and just also make it clear that this is a place that is welcoming to everybody. And if anybody does feel unsafe to please let us know, we try to make this as welcoming as possible. And hopefully we do a pretty good job. And yeah, that's it. Just hope everybody feels safe and welcome. OK, thanks. We have other people that would like to speak. Will. Hi, can everybody hear me? Hi, my name is. Only for the people that are not here. OK. So you've got to speak loudly. OK, OK. My name is Will. And I used to live in Ward 1. I was in Sam and Run. And I actually went down there. Today I was knocking on doors in Ward 1, asking for votes. And I bumped into a person named Merjan Amir. And he's part of the Somali Vantu Association of Vermont. And we were talking about something that happened when I was a kid. I went and worked on a horse farm in Maryland. And just wanted to talk about water infrastructure for a minute. You see, this guy's name was Ken Wood. And he was actually featured on The Today Show. And they did a longer documentary that I put on my website, which is willforbtv.com. And he found out that there was people dying of contamination in Africa. Specifically, I believe Uganda and Tanzania. So he took his well-drilling company over there. And this is one man with a team of people on his own dime, if I'm not mistaken, and started drilling wells. And they drilled over 1,100 wells. And in the end, I think it's actually much more than that. But I don't want to quote that. But in any case, it saved over 100,000 lives. And I think the point that I'm making is that if one person can do this to build that much infrastructure and save that many lives, I think that Burlington has a lot to be desired with our water infrastructure. And I'm constantly hearing that it's not possible to fix this. I think living in salmon run, you smell the updrift from the sewage plant. And I think that it's something that can be fixed. I think that our water infrastructure could be much better. And I think that we don't need to be the biggest polluters of the lake. And I also think that if you dream, it's all possible. And to work towards that goal, I think it's time for change in Burlington. I know Chris said that earlier. I'm going house to house asking for votes. I think me and Chris are both locked out of tomorrow night's debates. And I would like to see the citizens of Burlington really vote for change in this election. You owe nobody your vote. And as a longtime union representative, I've done a lot of work on behalf of people. And I know Chris is passionate as well. So thank you guys for your time. And thank you for having us here. Thanks. Other speaker? I'm just going to say there's a couple of people who entered the room after introduction if they wanted to. I do know. But you've got the floor. OK. How much time do I have? Not much. Well, I'll leave some copies then. I'm here to talk about the UVMMC-MOU. Is it? Medical Center. Yeah. That's actually on the agenda. That's on the agenda. Q&A time at that point. So would it make sense to have it in the context of the conversation? Well, actually, I've been to meetings. I've read it. I don't have any more questions about it. I want to give a message about what I would like people to be looking for when they hear the message from UVM. The first thing is the dismantling of the old parking garage on Colchester Avenue isn't merely because it's falling down. It's because they want that land to build something larger and taller. Instead, a multi-story garage will be built on top of some of the existing surface parking elsewhere. But keep an eye on the vacant space that's opened up by getting rid of that parking garage. Second, they're requesting an increased height limit on the existing overlay regulating the current main body of the hospital. In other words, when you look up at the hill, they're asking for a height overlay to go an additional 40 feet up, which means that those buildings would be taller than the water tower. That's what they told us. They also intend to tear down Patrick and Shepardson North. This frees up a large block of land, some of it now open, abutting the main campus. And the drawings show they intend to build this tower right up to the Mary Fletcher Drive. In other words, they will fill that space with another building 580 feet high. They're also requesting that the campus overlay be extended to cover the area freed up by the removal of the parking garage, which is not now in the campus overlay. So the area between Mary Fletcher Drive, which is the one that wraps around and comes to the entrance, the side entrance, from that space, from the north end of that to Colchester Avenue, they want that under the overlay, which is also 580 feet above sea level. And they want to build into the buffer zone that now goes all the way around the campus. They want to build this new building over where the parking garage was right up to the sidewalk, 580 feet high. So facing Colchester Avenue? Right on that sidewalk on Colchester Avenue, yeah. Because they're taking the parking garage out, and they're going to build a building that'll go from Mary Fletcher Drive down to Colchester Avenue. And they say that the current MOU allows them to intrude into the buffer zone without exceeding the limit. And I think that's a very important thing. If we don't get the limit changed in the new MOU, they would be allowed to intrude into the buffer zone that much under the current MOU. Finally, and this is, I think, a very, the parking thing is, I can't even get in. There's no time to get into that. They're going to add 800 new parking spaces. And these aren't spaces, just 800 cars. These are people coming in and out all day to 800 spaces. How any of us are going to get out around on East Avenue is just unfathomable to me. And finally, for those like Sharon, who worked so hard for the neighborhood amenities, there is a line in here that says if they don't get their zoning approvals by date certain, the whole MOU is null and void as far as they're concerned. The whole thing, not just the zoning stuff they're asking for. And finally, what is in this MOU for us? Why is this being rushed? The council members and citizens are in the throes of elections. And this is our last chance for leverage to make sure the document is fair handed. There are a lot of trap doors in this thing, a lot of trap doors. And it needs more attention than we're being given the time for, just like the UVM, just like the F-35s. It would be wonderful if this could be put off. It's not going to expire until the end of 2024. So part of your message is really listen carefully to what we're going to hear later. Read between the lines, read under the lines, read around the lines. They are not going to tell you what's really happening. I've been fighting them since 1984. Thank you. You're gay. Thank you. Here's some copies. Jean Keller, Billidow Parkway. Billidow Parkway, off of East. On a similar project, Memorial Auditorium, letter of intent very clearly states that it is binding and that it basically gives one developer sole exclusive access to talk about the gateway block. And we had a public process, I think it was 2018, to talk specifically about Memorial Auditorium. But I'm not sure it makes sense from a process point of view to move down the path without soliciting alternate proposals for the gateway block. And I'm not sure why we're trying to push everything through in the coming to the end of the current mayor's term. But I think that this is another area that needs to be looked at very seriously. And maybe put the brakes on this one, too. It's not a very transparent process. And I think we need to have more transparency. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to do two things. One, I know we're going to discuss a bunch of really important stuff. I do need to head out because I haven't been home yet. And it's Valentine's Day. And I promised Sophia we'd have dinner. So I swear I will watch this meeting. I sent along a list of questions. And I also forwarded Paul Bierman over on Brooks Ave, wrote an op-ed in VT Digger about neighborhood code. And I know that we're going to discuss that tonight. But I sent those questions around and concerns around that I heard from folks at the door, to my fellow steering committee members, and to Megan as well. So I'm hoping that those questions are answered. And I'm happy to share that out with folks if folks are curious. But I'm hoping that some of those are addressed mainly one, why, at least as I perceive it, particular areas of the city are being upzoned. Well, wealthier parts of the city are not being upzoned, for example, the Hill section. And just mainly wanting to make sure that we're taking into account and understanding the impacts on built infrastructure. And also having more public process because we're in the middle of an election cycle. And we ought to have more time because it's clear when I go around that folks aren't fully comfortable with all the details and want to have more conversation before we move forward. But sorry to jet out. Sharon. Hi. So never in my, I've lived here since the mid-60s. I came here to go to UVM. And I lived on campus, one of those rare students, that did for four years. But anyways, and then came and worked at the hospital for 50 years and have always lived, except when I was on campus in Ward 6, I've always lived in Ward 1. Either as a renter or a homeowner. And never in my experience have I seen so many really critical, important issues try to move through the city council in such a short period of time. And I feel that this is detrimental to the residents of Burlington and detrimental to each item that is trying to be rushed through. Each one of them is deserving of more attention and more time, more attention and time by staff that are divided and have to work simultaneously on really key issues for the city. And certainly for residents who are doing their best to try to give constructive and positive or critical input about what's good and what isn't good. I don't feel, I mean, I feel that the administration is ultimately responsible, and if they're not, that they should set that record straight. But I am frustrated, just like so many in this room, feeling like we are doing the best we can to respond and give feedback to the people that represent us now and the, and those who might represent us in the future. And I want this to stop. I want everyone to take a breath and really do what's right for Burlington because Burlington's gonna get screwed out of this and the residents who choose to remain. Hi everyone, I'm Fosca and the NPA Pulling Engagement Specialist with CEDO. So I'm at all these meetings. I'm here tonight to just share a quick announcement on behalf of some colleagues who work on housing. If you haven't heard, there is the Consolidated Plan survey that's going out. So basically every five years, the city of Burlington creates a plan for housing and community development priorities. The plan will direct how the city uses federal funds it receives from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The plan includes information about Burlington's demographics, housing, economy, strengths and needs. So basically there's a survey that they're trying to pass around to understand what Burlington residents think are the city's greatest challenges and where to apply that funding. So there is a QR code on here. I'll pass around a few copies if you'd like to scan it to do it online. If not, I also have some paper copies. Thank you Charlie. And basically you get six dots and you can put them wherever you think the city should prioritize resources. You could put six on one topic or divide them out. It's pretty quick, so I'll leave these around too if people would like to fill it out. Thanks. Thanks. Can I do my speak out Tom? In a second. You're gonna queue up some pictures for us? Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna queue up some pictures. Okay. But right now, Jake's a good at. Thank you. How does that speak out? Sharon, I texted your landline so you didn't get it on Monday night, but. During your comments at city council meeting, I was going like this. Because I wholeheartedly agree and Fosca, I appreciate what you just said. But we, the people of Burlington are so used to those things and we are so used to these inclusive processes and put in dots. I remember Murrow's first public meeting after he became mayor 12 years ago where he did dots on paper and I'm just so disenchanted with that process because I associate it with Murrow not listening to people after asking for their opinions. So I hope that that's a different process and I hope people engage with it. Yeah. I'm not speaking against that. It just was a little triggering for me. So what I wanted to talk about and speak out tonight is my little public service announcement. We haven't had a new mayor in 12 years. This is a really transformative time for Burlington. I've been involved in some city council campaigns, one mayoral campaign, a lot of citizen led campaigns for other things. And I've talked to a lot of people who tell me why they like Joan, why they like Emma, why they don't like Joan, why they don't like Emma. And a lot of people are giving me reasons that are factually incorrect. So what I just wanna say as my PSA is please, please go into this election cycle with an open heart and mind and learn all you can about all the candidates on the ballot for every single race and make a very informed decision. I think that there's a lot of, who is it? Franklin, I think one of the framers had had some quotes about a well-informed electorate is the bedrock of democracy, something to that extent. Also, remember our voters oath. We have a voters oath in Vermont, which is very unique. And it really just drives home the point that you cannot go into that booth as an individualist. You really gotta consider what is the best thing for the whole community, not what is the best thing for you. So please learn and don't vote along party lines because we're above that around here. Thanks. All right. We have got, any other speak out issues? We'll have one quick thing to add to, we'll share an increase. With the gateway block, what came up at the last city council meeting was that the agreement that I guess the counselors signed in November is, it was a no bid contract and in the state of Vermont. And with this, we were supposed to get bids for Memorial Auditorium. The whole gateway block. So this is something I'm not sure if it's gonna be on hold now. That's what it seems like we need to look into that. But that's what the noise was about at the city council meeting from my understanding that we instead entered an agreement with two developers, two local developers. We'll be housing in a hotel. We are gonna have two hotels now at city place. So I don't, you know, anyway, that's what that's about. Okay. Thanks. Jason, you have got some pictures of wildlife you took. Yeah. Yeah. Near your house or in Centennial Woods? No, these are directly on my own property. Okay. Yep. And so this is, you can show them what I'm talking, these are related to the neighborhood code. I looked at the map and I was a little surprised to find our neighborhood on Colchester Ave, which is residential low being changed to corridor, which is essentially the highest density with unlimited units, 80% lot coverage. We already have commercial in the neighborhood. I'm not opposed to commercial, but right below us you have Salmon Hole in the intervail. And right on the other side, you have Greenmount Cemetery, Shmanska and Centennial Woods and behind Baybury you have Valley Ridge. And this is a very rich wildlife corridor. I put up a game cam in my backyard a couple years ago because of proposed development on Riverside Ave, which it would have drastically changed how animals could move through there. Even building four units just down the road for me in 2015 really, really changed the way wildlife moves through there. And so we're lucky as people in our neighborhood to have such amazing green space to have that wildlife corridor. And I feel upzoning to this maximum density would severely impact the ability of wildlife to move through the area. And as you can see there are coyotes, there are bobcats, mink, fisher, lots of deer, raccoons, all sorts of stuff that makes use of that area. And this is directly in my backyard. And so I have other concerns, the steep slopes and other things, but I'll wait till we get to the neighborhood code to see what's presented and then provide some more feedback. But very, very surprised. I don't know if anywhere else in the neighborhood was from lowest to highest density in the city. That's kind of my main point, and just to highlight all the things that do use this area of the wildlife. What is the area again? So I live basically directly across from Greenmount Cemetery, and then my backyard goes down the hill to Riverside Ave. And that's basically where the entrance to Salmon Hole is there. But they do make use of from all the way at like Ozie Synagogue, all the way through there is a green space that connects all the way through there as well. Where the locust forest is, and it butts the old Sisters of Mercy property back in there. Yeah, that directly connects to my backyard. Huge amount. Yeah, through green space. All those ravines go down. Yep. And those deer feed our produce every spring. They're all three of them. They're all three of them. But anyhow. Yeah, Ash, please. Yeah, thank you. I think I raccoonate all our chickens. His name's Bruce. We know him. All right, we are going to, is there any other items for speak up? I got a quick one. Yes. Lately having trouble getting to sleep and sleeping until I want, because the sound of motor vehicles is just outrageous lately. That's it. OK. All right, we're going to move ahead. And just so you know, we have four pretty substantial items. There's the school commissioners update. And school taxes are a big deal this year. We have ballot items from our city counselors and neighborhood code and the UVMMOU. So please ask good questions. So we're going to start with, actually, we're going to go back to introductions. Because Zariah, you are here. Hi. Zariah Heytower, she, her pronouns, ward one city counselor. Nick Vaden, he, him, Hiltry Drive. Did we miss anybody from introductions people are? No. Or Jake. Jake introduced himself. Oh. All right. My name's Lexi Kraft. I live on Colonial Square. OK. Then we're moving ahead with the school commissioner update by Gary Golden. Good evening. This is a buckle up. A lot of information I'll be throwing at you. But please, please, please contact me if you have questions. I will do another post tomorrow on the front porch forum with some of the video links that have happened since my last post. So you could dig in a little deeper with our commissioners and our superintendent. So one quick one. Ward one has an open commissioner position. And a young man by the name of Rita Corey is the only person running. He is a 2018 Burlington High School graduate in the same class as our daughter. Jolynn knows him and his twin really well. He is just finishing up a four year degree at Central Connecticut State University, where he played Division I soccer. And he graduated with a 4.0. So pretty commendable. There have been questions about the process. Our board president, Claire Wool, talked with the PTO, I think she said four different parents about running, two other Ward One community members about running, and they all said no. Corey stepped up and said, I want to help my community because it's been so good to me. He is a Sudanese global majority former student of ours. So he'll keep that tradition of having some global majority graduates on the board. We have three at the moment. We'll be down to two with him. So that's my comment section. So let me start my 15 minutes. I did this in 20 on a town meeting Monday night. So I'll try to get through. Why don't you go ahead and go to the second slide? And these are the three things that are really the main components of the budget. We have our fixed cost navigations. It's roughly a 5% increase annually for wages. For example, this is also sort of a perfect storm for the district. We were forced out of our high school because of PCB contamination forced to come forward with a bond, $160 million construction starting from scratch at the point that the plans are drawn up. None of the buildings passed the regulations that were in place at that point. Those regulations were changed mid-process. We've been able to salvage a couple of buildings, but it was too late. We'd already passed the bond. We were already committed. And then the common level appraisal, which we have no control over. So those are the three main components of the budget process that was begun back in October. So these are the three main components of those fixed costs and obligations. Wages and health care benefits, rent facilities, and other costs. And this is a breakdown of those. So I'm trying to be really sequential with you, but also you have access to these articles. Please read up and ask me any questions you have. So when we talk about the wages, as I said, 5% negotiated costs, pretty much all of our youth. We have three main unions that represent our staff. All of them have settled at around a 5% range, which puts us clearly in the middle of the county. We don't have the resources of an ex-exjunction or the CVU district that are the highest paying. But we definitely did not want to lose out staff to other schools that middle was good. That's what we can do. But the benefit hit from the health care rate increases what killed us on this section. 18%. Last year was, well, I think I tried to count that probably within the last 10 years of rate increases were at 80% during that time frame. So can we say one payer? I mean, just it's crazy that this is an annual hit in all efforts. We've renegotiated where we have a statewide health care package that's offered to every teacher in the state, sort of a moderate range of benefits. That was supposed to fix this. That was when I was still working five years ago. It didn't. So those are one we've negotiated, one is out of our control. Then we have fairly large rent and facility costs. We are paying rent downtown at Macy's a million and a half a year to rent that space. We rent space for the tech center at the airport, a set of buildings on Williston Road, the old health club that was behind the old borders just down the street from Macy's. Those are all new costs to us over the last couple of years. We also are renovating a space out at Rock Point for our alternative programs on top and horizons. I've worked with them in my past. They really need a standalone space, but with access to the high school, Rock Point was available. We're breaking ground and renovating that space as we speak. And then next year, IAA is having HVAC renovations done, and we need to house those students somewhere. We're closing the whole building. Most of the students will be at St. Mark's. The younger two grades will be at Sarah Holbrook. And so we've got to pay rent, pay renovations at all those places. That money has come for the renovation and also for some of those other costs. Some of those are going to be federal money left over from the COVID funds. But there's still a hit in there for us. And then all of our other costs, food services and transportation, all at least 5% inflation. So that's what we had control over. That's good. The next step was Act 127. 5% cap went away, maybe starting today. First vote at the house. Troy was telling me beforehand, so that will affect us. I'll talk more in a moment, but we're only going to have to raise our budget a percent and a half. Our administration came with some cuts after some of us on the board asked them to. And it was fortuitous. Were we really benefit as a weighted student formula? That's the other part of Act 127. We asked for this 20 years ago when I was in the district when the huge wave of our Somali Bantu students arrived. Every school had to create a separate classroom with two full-time teachers. All of it uncompensated by the state. We came through, not it approvingly, but did nothing to help us with that weighted student formula finally does. The problem is the districts who benefited from not taking on those families and students now have a hit on their budgets. And that was part of what the 5% cap was to address. So it's still a mess in the making. We're trying to work our way through it. But this is a combination. So with our, the other part of the kind of perfect storm is the COVID money ran out both locally. It's called the ESSER funds, elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds that came out of COVID expire this September. State level also a lot of same sort of funding expiring. So that's part of the perfect storm. But with our offsets, we did not. There were almost matching numbers for things that we kept from the ESSER funds and things that we dropped, either that had been made available or not. The administration came up at that point with a minus 2% tax rate. So we did our part. And the weighted student helped a lot. It means that we get almost twice the amount per student from the state that a non-weighted student gets. And it's based on your population. That's that one you'll have to look at. I did links in the Front Porch Forum article that I did. Please dig if you want. Call me. Email. So the bond hits as well. Just to be clear, this was not of our doing. But we've made adjustments to the building as we've gone along, trying to keep it within budget and we have. We're looking at starting the school year 2026 to move in. We were late. We were delayed getting started because of the different lawsuits. And then they found PCBs underneath the concrete foundation and they're going, no one ever does that. So that cost us a month this summer pretty prime demolition time. So we're just punting and saying, we'll use a summer. That's summer to move in. But we've used $130 million of the bond. So we've got to start paying the interest, the bond servicing on that. This year, that's $9.5 million. And that's our first hit. So that's an increase of 8.7% to the tax rate. So now we're at a 6% tax rate, which is really pretty amazing when you're talking about building $160 million building. So this is where the good news sort of ends. So go ahead. So a little primer on CLA. So as an outgrowth of local control, the decision has been for probably a century and a half that local funding is how you're going to fund schools. And property tax is your local fund. If we were just property, we'd still be suffering. Carter left before I could ask him. I believe he said something around 50% to 60% of Burlington property is non-taxable, whether it's the walking trails at the country club or it's UVM hospital, Champlain, et cetera. So our choice or the state has chosen to do it through the appraisals set by towns. Well, that's great. Ours is recent, 2021. But our property sales have gone through the roof. And that's necessitated in the judgment. Because their goal is really to balance out what the actual cost is of property across the state to make the taxation fair. And I'm going over. Shoot. So go ahead for one more. Ours means that we're down to 87.46% rate, which is them saying your current assessment is only covering 87.5% of the actual value of your home. The CLA adjusts to 100%. Trust me, we're not the worst. Stowe has not done a reassessment in 12 years. And they're at, like, 68%. So imagine the hit they're getting. There was some talk, I found an article a couple years ago. They started a reappraisal. But there's no, it didn't end. They realized, oh, crap. Politically, it's not the thing you want to go through casually, I guess. So we're in better shape for that, but it's still a huge hit, again, out of our control. So as of today, this is our tax rate. And it's regrettable that we're here. I've watched a couple of our administrators and people and some of my colleagues from the board kind of making boogeymen of the process of the richer schools who have really taken advantage of that 5% cap idea. The reality is we all was the second lowest quality of building in the country, as far as our school stock. Every board out there is scrambling for money. And if they abuse the 5% cap to get there, it's a little understandable. So there are no bad guys, but there are realities. The COVID money going away on both fronts is probably a large part of this. And our properties being bought up from out of towners is another big part with the CLA. So if Act 127 does, if the cap goes away, we're looking at a percent and a half increase on top of this. It's another $74. Why don't you go ahead and do one more? So this is sort of encapsulating all the new costs that have gotten us here. One more, and then I'll start taking some questions. So this is the impact as of today. If you're a $370K house homestead, looking at $749, if you add the percent and a half, you're at about $850. If you're an income taxpayer, you're going to go with $50K income, you're going from $134 to around $170. I'm not going to revise these until it's official, because who the hell knows what's going to happen next couple of days. The reality is we were going to get hit somewhere. I was teasing somebody earlier that if it was Tim, that the CLA could have hit the town, and then you're paying taxes there. It's just by being property-based taxation, it's the schools. And that's just the reality. And there's no bad people in this. It's just expensive proposition to run a school in this time when you need to build a new building. The seven of that is the school, the bond. So I hope you'll support us. I hope you'll vote. I'm asking for your vote. That's the old Tip O'Neill comment. You can't expect the vote if you don't ask for the vote, and we're asking. Now, ask away. I'm beyond maybe a couple minutes of questions. Good question, yes. Has there been any lack or has there been any discussion of alternative taxing? I know it wouldn't probably take effect by the time all of the school voting came around, but has there been any talk of land value tax or alternative tax styles? It's a state question, and it's one of those, again, pitting wealthier districts in towns with not wealthy. We fought this fight in the 90s with the Brigham decision, which was family in a poor town in southern Vermont sued the state because their kids weren't getting the education that Vernon across the state was getting, having Vermont Yankee next door with almost a zero tax rate for their schools. So this is just an ongoing process of how do you pay for one of the most expensive things, the only expensive thing you vote directly on as a citizen in Vermont? Massachusetts has a 1% sales tax that's dedicated just to school construction, and that's what we're going to start advocating for here. Does that pit us yet again against the New Hampshire neighbors, our businesses that have to compete with New Hampshire has no sales tax? Yeah, but it's where else? Other than the feds. And the feds, as long as one house is Republican, they are not going to support. Public education is the biggest unions in the country now, that they sort of dismantled the post office some. And I grew up in the South with desegregation and the first thing that went up were every church started a private school. And that became the other alternative school district. When I was growing up, there was a black part and a white part of our school district, and they didn't meet until high school. We just split again, white and rich, white, black, poor, and black. So anyway, that's where we're headed. Quick follow up. Have you heard anything of land value tax or alternative tax styles coming around? The only thing I've heard Ways and Means talking about is the wealth tax. There's two forms of wealth tax that are currently still on the wall. Taxing income, folks who have income or assets greater than $10 million, and then a capital gains. They haven't at all talked about where that would be earmarked for. I do know Ways and Means is, and to be fair, they've spent all their time over the past two weeks on H850, which is the bill that's going to repeal the 5% cap. I can talk more about that for anybody who wants to hear it. And Ways and Means, they are committed to finding any levers they can pull, but nothing permanent about how we're going to fund education at this point. The conversation in the House today was all about this is a clear indication of how broken things are, and we've got to figure this out. Eric? Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Gary. This is listening. So maybe could you talk a little bit more about income sensitivity? Last I knew approximately 70% of Burlington homestead taxpayers were income sensitized. I saw that you had a little graphic there about what somebody at $50,000 household income level, what their increase would be. It might be nice to tell folks a little bit more who may not know about income sensitivity. My recollection is that it's a sliding scale, but that you can receive some form of income sensitivity, potentially up to about $128,000 worth of household income. I don't know if you've got a chart or something that shows what people's increases might be if they're income sensitized at different levels. Regretfully, that's not info that's been given to us in any form. But anyone that I ask you to suggest to Carter, and I'll say to Jeff as well, having those kind of workshops available, I think the political parties need to step up to help. Well, I think at least community organizations to help people, we will do that. Not to be argumentative, but I think in the past, the superintendent has prepared charts like that. And I think that would be helpful for voters to make an informed decision. The other follow-up question is, has there been any estimate on the impact this is going to have on rents and renters? Because as renters aren't paying property taxes for education directly, but they do pay it through their rent, and we have a split homestead tax rate as well as a non-homestead tax rate, which includes all commercial properties, including residential, commercial rental. And so if they're going to see a large increase, I would think a potential for more increased rents in Burlington and statewide. Yeah, I've tried to make that clear during some of our finance meetings that no one's going to get a pass on this when the renters will suffer as well. Not suffer. They'll be affected as well, try to be accurate. Just a comment. We do have a renter tax credit. I was actually doing tax returns this morning and filling out renter tax credit forms. I actually worked on it. So what I'll do is I'll nudge the administration tomorrow to do that chart. I'll put that out in a separate post on Front Porch Forum. And I don't know how far they're going to be able to broadcast or project down for what rent, house rent, is going to be affected, but we sort of can do a percentage. And I can just do a call to see what he's going to do. He's an old North End person. So Rich, maybe one or two more. Go ahead. You tell me when you're done. Who has the question? I just want to. Not Rich, I'm sorry. I just want to ask if there had been any analysis of the impact of TIF financing on the Ed Fund since TIF financing sucks money out of the Ed Fund statewide. Yeah, that one's out of my pay grade. I will say, and it's sort of the legislature has made some really important decisions over the last couple of years around free lunch, et cetera. Those have come out of the Ed Fund. And so we can't be surprised. At that point, I wasn't aboard yet. I'm going to the trickle down effect for this. Basically, all the social needs for our students are all met through the school budget. It's free lunches, health care, mental health. There is no state mechanism to reimburse us for any of that. And COVID just exacerbated all that. I did work with students with behavior issues when I was a special educator. I can imagine doing that field now, because it's just everyone is just hurting across the board. So no, we haven't gotten there yet. Thank you. We're going to move on. Can I ask a question? We're going to be shy of time. Well, let me say real quick, Jeff. I'm going to set up a zoom. He has a question. No, I'd like to ask a question if I could. No, it's up to him. It's got to be a short question. It will be short, I think. I think, Gary, I appreciate the presentation. I'm not sure you touch on the most important thing about asking for our vote, which is what happens if we vote no. So we have kids in the school. The kids have really suffered the last several years. A lot of kids in our neighborhood that go to IAA are going to be displaced for more than a year. Can you tell us about what the school board can do? We'll have to do if we vote no. Well, the reality is they would take, I'm going to change a little bit of how it's been presented to us. It would, to get us below now 11% tax rate, would be riffing 50 teachers, I will say, 70 combination of teachers and administration. I think I'm going to call them on it. That's sort of a scare tactic. I really want to be honest. We make those kind of cuts. They are across the board. So you really are talking 40 teachers and 20 to 30 staff. And only to get a couple of, it's not only. We're very fortunate that this tax hit is not hard on us as retirees. So we really try to be cognizant of it. That's the only thing we have control over. We've got to spend this IAA money, or it's going to go away. This is expiring. So that's there. The school is not our idea to, honestly, we were looking at a $60 to $70 million rehab of the high school to make it ADA compliant and energy efficient. So we were going to get a hit. We just weren't looking at $182 million. $200 million, sorry. So yeah, we know. We know this is awful. My hunch is my suggestion will be we resubmit for a vote on the same amount. We don't even know if we're voting on town meeting day. We may be voting in April. I have not. Troy has mechanisms that you've seen in Vermont Digger and the articles. We're close enough that maybe we, no, I don't think we can do it. It's a ballot. It's the mail out ballot that's the problem. So we're probably looking at a standalone vote already. And then we would just roll it over and vote on that amount again, just telling people we don't have, there's nowhere we can cut other than staff. Thank you, though. This is a good question. We've got to move forward. Thank you very much. Sure. And I think we're, us, steering committee members, are going to have to work hard to make sure we have a good summary of what's been discussed in our minutes, which we're going to publish on front porch form. You're looking at me? I'm just looking at our steering committee. Oh, my god. So I don't know how Tim feels. But I know we've got seven minutes until neighborhood code. There's two things on the ballot other than the school budget. We can just tell you what those two things are. And then I don't know if we want to switch to, I just don't want to give the substantive discussions less time. If I feel the same way. OK, good. So there's two other things. The school budget, obviously, we just had a long presentation on. There's two other things on the budget. One of them is the public safety tax. And the other one is BED's financial, in our financial handleings. So the public safety tax is not that it's a misn- oh, I'll admit. But it's like, I'll just say my piece, and then Tim might have a longer piece. Partially it's just like, it is a public safety tax. All of the money that would go be raised for the public safety tax would obviously go to public safety. This is, to some extent, a way to just raise our taxes for our general budget. So we're seeing a shortfall in the general budget. We're not 100% sure yet what the public safety tax would be spent on, but it is a way to increase our overall budget is what I will, is my summary of it. And then BED's is pretty, it's just, I don't actually 100% remember what we voted on, but it's something about them being able to use loans or borrow money in different ways. And they're a separate entity from the rest of the city. So any money that they make or lose is kind of contained as an enterprise fund within BED. So it doesn't affect the rest of the city's finances largely, Tim. I'm so relieved you said that about BED, because I'm like panicking. I'm like, hey, there's been a, we've had a lot going on. So many of us. Our meeting on Monday clocked in at a brisk seven hours. The document that I was just sharing with Zariah is the memo that we got after our work session on January 22nd on the budget that gives some of the details about this 4% public safety tax increase. I think we can answer some questions about that, but it's important for everybody to understand that that is going to be, in addition to the school, tax increase. So it is a cumulative tax increase. And that is, as Zariah said, to make up for essentially shortcomings in the general fund. But this money will be devoted to public safety issues. The administration has done other things to sort of close the budgetary gap. There's increase in the tax on hotel rooms, which is going to raise about a million dollars in revenue. They are planning $3 million, $4 million, $3 million, $3 million in cuts. There is some leftover ARPA money that was set aside for things that haven't been used. That's another $100, something $1,000. So bits and pieces are coming together. And so that's where we are on the budget. I think we're all concerned. I'm concerned that any tax increase in addition to what the schools are asking for is going to complicate the vote on the schools. Having said that, I think this is necessary. So it's a challenging budgetary season. Questions? Thank you. Is it reasonable to say that the public safety tax increase is being called that to increase the likelihood that it might pass, whereas it's really just about a tax increase? I mean, all of the money raised from the public safety tax will go towards public safety. So it'll go towards the fire and police department. But yes, I think that. As it is making up for general budget shortfall, I think that's partially to guarantee, to help motivate. Yeah. There's detailed information out there and can share it or direct you to where it is about what they expect the money to be spent on, respect who are, police department or fire department. And there is actually, I will say there's two reasons. So I think that's one reason. The second reason is I don't remember if you remember a couple of years ago, a couple of years ago last year, years are going together. The city did do a general ask that all of the departments do a 2% cut. I know the police department was exempt from that. And I think the fire department may have been as well. And so to some extent, it's like, yes, it is a general budget shortfall. And the public safety is one area of growth, whereas we've tried to shrink the rest of the services in the city. So it's not just by name. It's also that is where our cost increases have been, where we spent the most money to increase that, to increase the general budget. So two reasons. Sharon? So let me just think about what you just said. So my understanding is that the question is, is the force sense on public safety? But it authorizes the council to call that up, but it's not a fate of complete. Correct. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, because this is a dedicated tax, if indeed you ended up calling that up, you would then be able to reduce the amount of general fund dollars that you give to police and fire so that you would be able to spread that around. Is that correct? Am I correct in that? That is correct. That is not the plan. So the plan is to continue to do cuts across the rest of the city in order to fund increases largely in public safety, not exclusively, but largely. OK. All right. Well, anyways, but the point is that the city would not necessarily call up force sense. I still don't like it, but I understand that it could be less than that. It could be less than that, and it will be up to the next administration how much that order wouldn't be. Richard. Yeah, Milo has a mic. Thanks. This is going to be a bit contorted. Soraya, so along the lines, the mayor's message in the North Avenue News said, without these tax revenues, I do not believe it will be possible to balance the budget without cuts to the police department budget, which you've echoing what you said, but that's a sort of form of blackmail, isn't it? And I don't understand why it's being framed in that way. Obviously, people understand that public safety is a very, very hot button. But this is basically saying, we screwed up getting revenue for the last 12 years. Now you're going to have to pay for it, otherwise you're going to lose policemen. Far be it for me to defend the mayor, but I will say that. I do think that because we have made cuts to other city departments, I think the next logical place would be public safety. And so I think cuts in other places would be more painful, because we've already asked them to cut. And so say it again. You're trying to build up public safety. Yes, correct. So we have. I'm Sarah Patten. Yes. So that is the, I mean, again, that would be completely up to the administration. This administration doesn't have a lot of say over what exactly that would. End up doing, I guess they'd need the support of the council. But I thought that we were way down on policemen in the force right now. So we haven't been paying them. Why is there all sudden a need to put more money into that budget when for the past two years, they've been saving on personnel? So I'm going to grab the mic for this one. So right now there are increases. So we have a lot of new positions. We have the CSOs, the CSLs. We have. I don't know what CSOs. Sorry, yes. Community support officers, service officers. I forget what the new formal service officers and community service liaisons. So those are folks who provide, in some cases, more proactive services, or in other cases, some of the same services. And then we're also trying to stand up a new model of which we're calling CARES, which is more an alternative response system that doesn't just involve police officers. So that is what is the expense cost going forward. What happened to the last few years and why we had no reduction in costs before we put in the increased salaries for officers before we had the CSOs and the CSLs? I don't know why there were no reductions in other years to the budgets. But I do think that now with a more robust system and assuming that our officer count continues to increase, we have added services to our public safety response. But those people that you've added, the CSOs and the CSLs, are for sure not making the same income as a police officer. They are not. Not even close. And so in some ways, you're still really not spending that money. And the original, the goal of the whole original reduction was to pay for those things with that. And I have not received a clear answer on why that hasn't happened or wasn't budgeted that way in the last four years. We've got a question online. Milo? Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I've just been taking some notes. Let me start with some of the questions that were just asked. So the CARES unit will be Burlington's COHOOTS model. COHOOTS is a very community-driven response. A lot of people in our community, including stakeholders who work with the Howard Center, work with the street team, who work dealing with people with mental health issues. This was a very successful program out in Eugene, Oregon. And a lot of people really wanted to see a front here. And we're getting closer and closer to that. The budget, in regards to the police department, in order to deal with the continued issues around the labor shortage for policing, they caused people to continue to leave policing. There are labor shortages not only of Burlington, but the state of Vermont, including the Vermont State Police, all across this country. So we have sign-on bonuses. We have retention bonuses. And that has been the source of some of the money as well. The police department is going to need current updated models of tasers. The tasers that they have right now are actually no longer being made. And they're kind of going through them, including going through the batteries. So they need to have updates in that equipment. As we all know, tasers are better than using guns. And the newer models are safer for the people that use them and for the people that are used on. There is also an issue with, haven't gotten a response as to exactly how much we're going to use. So there's an issue with the company that provides the software for body cam footage. So where it rears to them right now. Part of the reason is that we've had to dramatically increase the amount of storage costs. And how long the videos are retained. And that is because of the different types of crimes that we have been seeing that have been support. So that's increased that cause. We're trying to get more information on that. With regards to that valid item, essentially, state-assisted valid item would allow them to increase their credit rating with having the additional line of credit. Not that they're planning right now on using it, but just gets them in a better credit. This is the credit stand. And I will just finally say that what is happening right now is extremely demoralizing. We are in really serious financial state. The deficit is millions and millions of dollars. So there's a lot of things in process right now that Zariah already reviewed. And hopefully some of this will pull money from other areas. But whatever happens, it's going to hurt. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. We're going to move forward. I apologize if we don't have more time for questions. We're going to move into the Neighborhood Code discussion. Megan, you're on. You have a presentation? Sure, you can go right here. Oh, yeah. That's the hot seat. Yeah. And you're already up on the screen. So I came in right after the introductions, but I think I know many of you. I'm Megan Tuttle. I'm the planning director at the city. And this is Sarah Morgan. She's a planner in our office. Given that our time tonight is limited and you have another big item, we're going to move through just a couple pieces of a presentation. We'll share this with the steering committee to post for all of you later. Some of you have seen other presentations we've given about the Neighborhood Code. And many of the members of your steering committee and neighbors have shared questions with us since we were here last. So tonight, we're going to focus mostly on answering a couple of the questions that we have already received in advance of tonight. And hopefully, we'll have some time for a few more tonight as well. So I'm going to skip ahead here. I think many of you know what we're looking at in terms of the Neighborhood Code, enabling more neighborhood scale housing types citywide. One of the questions that we've heard a number of times is actually about, why are we doing this instead of trying to promote development on undeveloped lots or bigger lots in other parts of the city? And so we wanted to share this just as a very simplified way of showing that there are other parts of the city, particularly these areas in gold, that are downtown. They are the south end, the new area where the council approved a new zoning framework called the South End Innovation District. These are areas where we have large sites that might be good candidates for new buildings, increased density, mixed use development that includes homes and places where we can see businesses. But that's actually a fairly constrained part of the city. It's a pretty small area of the city. And while that is a small area of the city, we have been doing a lot of work. I know I have been here at a lot of these meetings over the last several years talking with many of you about lots of different types of changes that we've been trying to make to our zoning rules that will actually help facilitate implementation of new development on those sites too, and primarily. So this is definitely the Neighborhood Code is following almost a decade of work that we've been trying to do to help make those sites more possible to build on as one of the solutions to help us create more housing in the city. So I want to share that just as important context for what we're talking about. And then somebody mentioned earlier during the school budget presentation about the amount of the city's land area or lots in the city that are tax exempt. You know, we certainly talked about institutions. But I think what this map also shows is that all of the areas in green are also not only exempt, but off limits for development because of our values as a community around conservation of open spaces, of important natural systems. These are places like the intervail and parks that we want to protect and preserve for all of our quality of life and for the natural environment's quality. So that brings us to this sort of blue area which are the residential neighborhoods in the city and the areas of the city that are in our residential zoning districts and really illustrates why the neighborhood code is an important compliment in terms of the, not only the places in the city where we could see new homes, but the scale and type of homes that we could see. We've shown, I think, versions of this before in terms of the types of housing that we're really talking about, trying to help support. And the fact that in many of the residential areas of the city, most of them are not allowed. And the neighborhood code is really aiming to get us to a place where more of these can be allowed. We're doing this through a combination of making some changes to the zoning rules for the zoning districts and making some changes to the zoning map. So I wanna actually skip ahead to talking about the map because that's something we've heard a lot of questions about. When you have a chance to look at these, I think on a different screen, you'll be able to see the colors a little bit better, but the map on the left is the map of our current zoning districts and the map on the right is the map of the proposed zoning districts under the neighborhood code. And one thing that we've heard a lot of questions about, particularly from this neighborhood, is just about why is this area proposed to be changed from RL to RM, but nowhere else in the city is. So I wanna just share really quickly that this area, particularly between Mansfield and Willard Street, is one of five small areas in the city that are currently zoned RL that the neighborhood code recommends rezoning to RM. An area kind of south of downtown, centering on South Union Street, the Five Sisters neighborhood, the Lakeside neighborhood, and also the streets that are off of Shelburne Road, like Hoover Climber, that area, are also proposed to be changed from RL to RM. This recommendation was something that a joint committee, including Councilor Hightower and the Planning Commission, other counselors, spent quite a bit of time talking about in terms of when we dig into the details, I think some folks heard me say at the council meeting that some of this stuff is a little bit wonky, but really, I think when we dig into the details of what it means for us to actually see new homes created in different neighborhoods across the city, we know that there are very big differences in terms of the lot sizes, the shapes of buildings on lots, where the buildings are placed on a lot in terms of how close they are to a street or how far away they might be. And so we looked at a couple of really kind of central issues when thinking about whether or not the neighborhood code would be able to be implemented in every neighborhood. And realized that things like the existing lot coverage in neighborhoods and the size of lots in neighborhoods were going to be really important considerations for whether or not new homes could be created within whether they're in an RL zoning district or in an RM zoning district. So using information about the size of lots and the amount of lot coverage, the committee was able to look citywide at all of the residential zoning districts and use these two kind of key criteria to determine whether or not our zoning standards could really, these neighborhood code standards could actually be applicable or be implemented. And that is really what then informed the decision about those five areas that were recommended to be changed from RL to RM. So I think I'm gonna go back here to just kind of show a little bit more about what we mean. And this also relates to questions that we've been getting about, what would the impact of these changes be in terms of stormwater? So this is again, this area between Willard and Mansfield. And this is looking just at the existing amount of lot coverage that properties in this area have today. And for those of you who may not know what I mean by lot coverage, I mean basically the size of your property and the amount of it that's covered by a building or a parking area, your driveway, things where stormwater can't penetrate the ground ultimately. And we know under our existing zoning standards all the way on the left that many of the properties in this neighborhood are already built more intensely than the lot coverage limits that exist in our zoning today. And as we looked at the changes that we're proposing to the RL district, we saw that more than half of the properties would still be over the existing, the lot coverage limits that were proposed as part of RL. And why this is important is for us, it helps us understand how the neighborhood code could be applied. Particularly when we think about creating new homes on lots, this could be a limitation, but even for folks that might wanna create an addition on their home, they might need to expand a portion of their home for a family member or to make their home more accessible, to make modifications to their home. This can be a major factor that could limit the expansion of how housing homes in these neighborhoods could be used today. So we felt like this was a really important thing for us to look more closely at in terms of thinking about whether this neighborhood would be part of the new RL, which is this map in the middle or part of the new RM zone, which is the map on the right, sorry. And really found that a lot of those constraints could be addressed in the RM district. We've also heard, well, I'll also say too, sorry, back on this one, this relates again, as I said before, to the stormwater question. And I think folks have been asking about how these changes could, how they would impact stormwater management in this area in particular. And I think again, this just helps us understand that as the neighborhood code may be implemented, because of the amount of impervious coverage in this neighborhood today, we would likely see small expansions on some lots where there's room for that to happen. But if we were to see new homes and additions, it would actually probably be through the replacement of existing impervious areas, like a building in a backyard being renovated or a building being built on top of an existing parking area, for example. So this area I don't think would have as much of a major change in terms of the overall lot coverage in the neighborhood, if buildings were to be built as a result. So another issue that we've heard a lot of questions about then is about what is happening in the rest of the city? If this area of the city is being recommended to be RM, why not RM in the rest of the city? And this is something that we have shared in presentations before, that just kind of help us understand a range of options for how new homes could be added in different neighborhoods across the city. And what you might notice from these two graphics, one representing RL on the kind of top left, and the other representing RM or residential medium on the bottom right, is that both of these districts will allow new options for how homes could be added in existing neighborhoods. So I think that's a really important point that some of the stuff that I just described about lot sizes and lot coverage and where new buildings could maybe be added has to do with some of the really specific dynamics of each individual neighborhood. But the neighborhood code kind of at the higher level is about how every neighborhood is also having opportunities to add new homes as well. And this just kind of illustrates how both the neighborhoods that would be in RM and neighborhoods that would be remaining in RL will have very similar opportunities for how those new homes could be added. We have been looking a lot at what these new standards could mean in different parts of the city and we've been hearing more questions about more specifically what could this mean. And so we have looked at a couple more examples of how the neighborhood code could maybe be implemented particularly in this area again between Willard and Mansfield. Knowing kind of what's a common lot size. If someone were to try to add more units to a property and add some parking and meet all of the standards that the neighborhood code would still require. This is a kind of graphic example of that. But we also have a couple examples of real buildings that are in this neighborhood that are similar I think to what we might expect. And so there's two things that we can say about these real world examples. One is that when we're talking about the neighborhood code and we're talking about density we've tried to intentionally reframe the way that our zoning would look at homes away from a sort of density standard and more to a more specific kind of building size and things like lot coverage that would provide some flexibility for how many homes could be in that building but would help give us a more consistent sense of how big those buildings might be able to be. And so I think these can help illustrate kind of what we mean by that. I think these are also really helpful examples to just show what does a four unit building on a lot with 60% lot coverage look like. Again these are real examples from this neighborhood. And when we start to think about how could this lots like these maybe evolve, I think again we've heard some questions about you know why more than one building how would that actually get implemented. I think these are really good examples that just show that when we look at all of the standards together we're not likely to see many lots that actually have multiple buildings because of the dynamics of fitting it all onto a lot. Providing some parking, leaving open space for stormwater management and that it would likely look like on the property on the right maybe that garage in the backyard gets converted into a unit but it's not significantly expanding the amount of built area that's already on a property. So these are just a couple examples that we wanted to provide in response to some of the questions that we've heard. There's a lot more information I know many of you have been looking at our website. I'll also say that we are hosting a longer format question and answer session next Tuesday, the 20th at the library at Fletcher room at Fletcher Free Library. And we will have both an opportunity to attend in person and online. And if you go to our website to find information about that there's also a link where you can submit questions and so we're doing our best to try to pull together more information that we'll be posting in conjunction with that meeting that answers a lot of the other questions that we're getting but these are some of the things that we heard from your steering committee for tonight. Sorry and I'm gonna jump in with one more comment just on process cause I do just wanna say that like we set this for public hearing Tim actually voted no on that because he wasn't supportive of like how fast this has gone and I did vote yes on this and I am supportive of this proposal but I also think there's a lot that we didn't get right, right like the wildlife. We only looked at it from a planning perspective not from a scientific perspective on some of the things like wildlife. So I think that we shouldn't take this as this is the final proposal. We should set take this as this has been set for public hearing for the exact purpose of getting folks feedback and making changes and I do think we didn't get it 100% right. So I'm very open to hearing what changes folks want and whether that is in this administration or in the next administration which then I won't be responsible for but of getting those changes across the finish line. So I just wanted to add that as where we're at. Thank you, I should have said that. We've got three questions and then we're gonna move on. So what strikes me is that if you look at the actual document and some of the charts kind of bring that through there there's a sort of extremism in the neighborhood code that doesn't necessarily come through clearly in the presentation which seems much more reasonable and moderate in terms of this isn't likely to happen and this might not be likely to happen but what the neighborhood code provides for in the case of an area like this which is proposed to be up zoned kind of twice in changing from RL to RM would be a lot coverage increase of 70% from what we have at 35% now to go to 60 and really 60 is actually 70 because there's an additional 10% that you can have for driveways and decks and so forth. So it's an extreme increase in lot coverage and the other thing is the number of units that can be put on a lot. So any lot in an RM zone, there are no limits as far as I can see on how large the lot has to be. Any lot can have a six unit building and a four unit building for a total of 10 units on a single lot. Again, that strikes me as an extreme thing to allow in the code even if you don't think it's gonna happen too often, it might be necessary to kind of bulldoze whole blocks to really make that possible and feasible but that's what the code is saying would be permitted, not even conditional uses, these are permitted uses so could you respond to that sense of extremism versus what appears to be kind of moderate and reasonable but there's an underlying extremism I see there. Just making sure that Councilor Hightower, we're kind of sharing the microphone here. So yeah, I appreciate the question about allowing multiple buildings on a lot and this is something that we have heard some questions about too. Ultimately, the reason that the code recommends this is that we do know that in some parts of the city, lots could be large enough that you just might physically be able to have room to fit multiple buildings and maintain open space and have parking that there could be some lots in the city that could do that but they would need to be much larger than the typical lot in this neighborhood in particular. The reason that we allow that flexibility though is to make sure that we're not foreclosing opportunities for how homes could be added in different areas in the city. One of the things that we heard somebody say for example in one of our engagement sessions was, I would love to put more homes in my backyard. I wanna keep my single family home that's at the front of my lot already but it would be great to be able to have a building in the back of my home that has a couple of units in it as a way to contribute more homes to the city and kind of do it in a way that respects the patterns of a neighborhood rather than just having one home on a lot that might be incentivized to be converted for example. So the goal was really to allow for some flexibility in terms of how new homes could be realized across the city and yes in some cases there could be lots that are big enough to have more than one building. But our lot, excuse me, our lot is 50 by 115 and we have figured it out. We could put 10 units and 50 by 115 is pretty small. I mean I just think and you just said a couple you heard somebody who'd like to put a couple and honestly I've seen this presentation please next time let everybody ask questions because we've seen it, we've read it and we have like three people get to ask questions but that's what we need to know. Why would the city ever imagine that in this neighborhood with these small, I have a small Victorian house, it's what? 25 feet wider, I don't know what it is. Why would you ever think it'd be a good idea for me to put four or six units in that home and four in my backyard and have 30% grass? I'll have no trees, I'll have no garden, I'll have nothing for stormwater. I mean it's an outrageously, it's not a minor a couple units, you are allowing 10 units in RM and you need to say that. Right, I think we are saying that the code would allow multiple buildings with multiple units in it but we've been asked many times and we've been working closely with folks who have, we've been working really carefully to try to understand how this might be implemented and I do respect and understand the dynamics of living in a neighborhood near campus can have different influences on how the neighborhood code could be implemented but in general what we have recognized is that this will be much more incremental. I think in a lot of cases being able to actually fit eight to 10 units on a lot would be incredibly challenging for many lots in the city. So respectfully, I just would like you to look at the fact that the state says we have to have, a parcel has to be able to accommodate four units for whatever. So my point is that in RL, two structures, yes, we already have that for ADU but why not limit it to four units? Okay, that's still a lot. In an RM, not my world but RM I would say maybe six units. I'm asking for reasonableness because it grew disproportionately as you talked. The more you talked, the more units got added and I'm not, it's not the staff, it was the group collectively being inspired and wanting to create more housing. It wasn't malicious, it just happened. My point is also that the pressures here from investors is very different and that needs to be factored in by planning. It's not one size fits all. And so the thought that you will incentivize more people to come in, investors and developers to buy single family homes and then put the maximum number of units in it. That is reality and that is harmful and I want the planning department and the city council to really think long and hard because zoning should not end up being harmful. I'm gonna go hopefully kind of quick. I feel pretty passionately as I know a lot of people do but first I'd like to say thank you to both of you for all that you guys have done and as well as the city councilors for taking on such a difficult project especially in an area that is currently facing as well as a lot of places in the US and around the world a really difficult housing crisis. I just wanted to add a couple things just to give a different perspective to a couple to the people in the room. Burning the shoulder of this as a community I think is more important than allowing sprawl to happen further. More horizontal sprawl equals more road infrastructure and other infrastructure that needs to be built outside of Burlington. So that means that tax dollars then leave Burlington and I think that if we continue to create more sprawl outward then that's gonna, it's just gonna keep driving people out trying to find more lower priced housing, lower priced rentals, we already see it happening and just a couple of different points. 70% of microplastics in the water are from cars and specifically car tires. So again having more sprawl is just is more harmful and creating that infrastructure is more harmful in the case of any like lot coverage difference. Like the adding of infrastructure to if we don't have this type of housing will be more harmful than the runoff troubles that would happen with lot increase. And also we currently are building our roads at 11 to 11 and a half feet, which again is so astronomically large the minimum size that Vermont actually has put in is nine feet and that's a pretty good agreeable size that it should be. So if there's potential for us to have this new development, maybe we can reclaim some of this wasted infrastructure space and put that into green use, that could be some sorts of chicane rain gardens and that can help with the storm water runoff. I also just wanna add that this is an iterative process. These neighborhood codes are iterative processes. This doesn't mean it's one stop shop, we're gonna do this. We've had four different codes in Burlington starting from the 40s and this is a really strong way and adding housing is potentially one of the only ways that people like myself and Joel and other people of younger age demographics are going to be able to purchase a home, I don't see that happening for a lot of people unless we have more housing to essentially disperse the burden among the community. And I think it's, again, it's this idea of having this as a community shoulder instead of worrying about like the individual, thank you. This is gonna be our last question, we're gonna move on after this. You didn't put it in the New North end where they have the big yards, okay Karen? Yeah, I have noticed. Can we ask someone to ask you a question here please? We don't have sexy tires either. Go ahead. The New North end, I was very surprised to see the map that was up there because it was all blue. There were no yellow spots on the New North end and yet the New North end, there are many streets. I was on one recently that had relatively small houses often rather modest and the sort of thing that wouldn't be a great loss if it were replaced by it. But huge backyards, in fact one street with very large backyards and another street backing it with the very big backyards. There's room for an awful lot of housing there which wouldn't really, there's lots of space and the fact that of course it's not close to downtown but I mean if you put in a lot of housing and there'll be businesses will be coming up quick and you can always add bus lines to make things easier to get around. So why is the New North end being just left out of this? Why don't we start looking at it? That's a far easier place to start filling in. There's so much more space there. Yeah, so the New North end is being included in this and I think this has been something that's been kind of hard to communicate because we have been talking and answering a lot of questions about why there are changes to the map itself but in all of the areas of the city that are currently zoned for low density and would continue to be zoned for low density there are changes to what would be allowed in those neighborhoods too. So allowing multiple units on a lot, allowing for buildings in backyards, all of the same things that we've been talking about in terms of what could happen over here would also be possible up there. There are some differences in terms of what the code currently recommends could happen out in places like the New North end in terms of lot coverage. One, you've kind of hit on the exact reason. Lots are generally bigger, they're generally less built on already. So we don't need to kind of change the rules as much by allowing multiple buildings and allowing multiple units in those buildings. There's a lot more flexibility that's created in those neighborhoods than what would ever be allowed today. And so I think that's just something that's really important as we've been getting questions about what are other parts of the city doing that there would definitely be a lot of opportunity for that as well. I'm gonna chime in here too, because we did talk about getting rid of RL and just doing the whole city as RM, I think was the proposal. We were split on that, so it wasn't a proposal that was moved forward. I think what I'm hearing based on the feedback is, I don't know if that's gonna pass, but I think at least getting RL, like the gap between RL and RM a little closer to each other, so allowing maybe a little bit more density on RL, a little bit less density on RM might be a compromise to move forward so that it is more spread out across the city. Obviously don't know if that'll pass, but I think that that might be something that Tim and I can work on. I don't know what Tim's at. I'm just looking. I would let that I can work on putting forward. Okay. I think we are out of time. I apologize. I have one really quick thing. No. You've got to cover it. We'll try it. I appreciate everyone's questions and I apologize for a lot more time, but. Can I put in one last plug? Again, just, I know, Tom, I'm so sorry. The people want to ask questions. On next, again, next Tuesday night, we're gonna have another Q and A session and as Councilor Hightower noted, on February 26th, the Council will be having a public hearing as well, which is also an opportunity for them to hear input on this, so. All right, thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. You're welcome. Nice to have you. All right. Next up is the UVM Medical Center. Cameron, would you like to stand with me? Thank you. Awesome. All right. Thank you. And you've got slides. Yes, and the planning team is letting me use their computer. Okay. All right. Have a. Thank you. Oh, that's great. That's great. How you doing? Good. There's a couple seats back there. Can you use the right one for this? Yes. Okay. I'm gonna give it up. All right. Dave, do you want me to drive and you sit here? Okay. Sure, but just finish. Are we in the way? Yeah. Which one? Yeah, I'm just gonna push this there. Okay. All right. Good evening, everybody. I'm Karen Vastine. I work in the office of government and community relations for the UVM Health Network and I'm joined here by my colleague, Dave Kilty, who is the vice president of something really important, planning and development. Facilities planning and development. Facilities planning and development for the UVM Health Network. And first of all, happy Valentine's Day. And also thank you for having us here. We'll be quick. And just as Megan was quick to share with you all at the beginning of her presentation, other opportunities for question and answer, just wanted to assure you, because we're gonna go through this quickly, that there will be many other opportunities for us to engage with you. And we'll be having a Q&A session actually on March 7th. So I'll be sure to note that for you all again. So in case anybody's wondering if you'll get to ask your questions, that will be another opportunity. So we're here to talk about our land use MOU. So this has been an existence since 1999. Thank you to Sharon Busher and many of you in this room who actually worked on this at the time. And what this sets out is a set of parameters for how we do our development on the campus. But it also sets what I would call rules of engagement for how we interact with and support the residents who are closest to the UVM Medical Center campus. So the current MOU includes several parameters around building density, height restrictions, and then also agreements that we have with the neighborhood residents right around us. For instance, access to the community garden that we will not develop the sliding hill and that we offer parking at the state lab building, the former state lab building for many different types of opportunities. So I think we're in an interesting point. We're actually at an interest, we're almost identically in the same place as we were in 1999 in terms of UVM Medical Center's bed capacity is not keeping up with both what our community needs as well as our region. And so in order for us to keep up with that, we have a projected expansion of 242 inpatient beds. We cannot expand inpatient beds without also expanding the services that support patients. Dr. Leffler, our president and CEO likes to say that we have the largest restaurant in all of Vermont, serving the most people and still it would not adequately serve 242 additional inpatient beds and we can't do this without having accountability with you all. So just so that you all have the big picture here because that's what we can do in the short amount of time we have, we are working with the city planning office right now on the MOU itself. And we hope to have a red line version of that to share with you in the coming weeks. You will see that there will be no change regarding parking, no change regarding access for the community gardeners gardeners or buildings on the sliding hill, UVM Medical Center properties on East Avenue, remaining residential. We would maintain our 150 foot transitional buffer which Dave will explain when we get to some diagrams and the density and height continues to be focused in the campus core. The key changes that we're seeking are adjusting the height overlay boundary, which will show you a diagram that really brings that to life and increasing our maximum allowable height. And this is above sea level. So all of you should have the water tower in your mind. It's not that we're gonna build a building that's 580 feet tall, I promise, because I think that's 50, I just checked, that's 50 stories. That would be really massive for Vermont. It's that we would be looking to go from 540 feet, which is the same level as the water tower to up to 580 feet above sea level. And then this is important, this is an estimate, but in order for us to be able to serve that many more inpatient beds, we would also need to expand our parking. This is both for families of patients and patients, as well as some of our staff. So the estimate here is up to about 2,900, but we are actually still in the process of studying this. So please note, that's an estimate. And then finally, looking to increase our lock coverage from 60%, which is what it is currently, to what I would call a range of 65 to 70%. So Dave's gonna tell you and explain these very exciting diagrams. Yeah, thank you, Karen. So essentially, this is a diagram of the existing campus. And you can see that the left-hand side is to the north, Colchester Avenue. Top of the diagram is East Avenue. The areas on the right-hand side are really the UVM campus. We are approximately, I would say 97% built out on the campus, and that's not impervious area or lock coverage. Just our basic capacity. We have no ability to add any more score footage currently. Our utility plan is at 100%. We're not able, and we're not anticipating expanding that, by the way, but we are limited in terms of the amount of infrastructure we have on the campus. The campus, of course, was established in 1879. The community grew up, it was, I don't know if it was a little in this area, but it was out in the country. It's grown up since then, obviously. The building development pattern is pretty consistent with what you see with hospitals in New England. The first building was built in 1879, and then eventually over time, you got it to the sprawling type of topography. The different colors that you see on the diagram, Karen mentioned the 150-foot transitional buffer area. That is bounded on, by East Avenue and Colchester. Those are areas where we wanna limit the amount of density in building, and maintain it, currently it's no more than 40% lock coverage. We're gonna continue that. The darker green area is really the main center of the campus, and you can see that there's some other green spaces there. For example, the sledding hill that's in front of the Mary Fletcher building, those are all protected areas. So the plan that we want to be able to develop is how do we increase the 242 additional inpatient beds? We know we can't add out and make the building a larger footprint. Our only ability to add the score footage capacity that we need is by going up. And we'll talk a little bit about that in the next few slides. Okay. You see the colored patterns here really represent areas that we're looking at to see if we could create building envelopes to be able to support our inpatient beds. They're not necessarily a building design. These are areas that we think we could develop into future buildings that would support our inpatient needs. And just to sort the colors out for you, on the far right-hand side, you see the two blue rectangles. The lighter blue rectangle is a footprint for a garage that would replace the McClure garage that currently is on Colchester Avenue. The darker footprint is additional parking that would be added over time to support the development that we just described. The orange radius area at the bottom of the diagram, that represents the Miller building. We're able, currently, through the current zoning and the work that we did to plan for that building, add additional floors on that building. And we would intend to go back and do that at some point in the future. The brighter red portion on the Colchester Avenue is pretty much in the area of where the McClure garage is currently. And if that garage is no longer there, we have the ability, potentially, to develop a building in that site. The inner part of the campus, we have a little brighter, I guess, orange there. That would be a new inpatient building which would actually end up housing the most of our inpatient beds in the future. Now, what we're faced with is that we cannot add on to the buildings. We basically have to tear something down to be able to create a replacement building, but to do that at a higher elevation to give us the floor capacity that we need. So the other way we can expand on this campus is by tearing something down and building in the existing footprint of that area. We're gonna get into the height overlay discussion. And Karen mentioned this in her part of the presentation. We have, the current zoning allows us to have a build up to the top of the water tower of 540 feet, and that's a confusing number. That really is the plane of what that water tower that sits on the fire right here inside the drawing, if you extend that plane out over our campus, that's what we use as a reference point. It wasn't really our idea, that's what's in the zoning regulations currently. And we promised we'd work with Megan Shoppe to figure out a better way to describe that. But the lighter blue area is the current core overlay. We're allowed to build up to that 540 foot level. And that was actually implemented at the time that we did the zoning change for the Miller building that enabled us to build the Miller building. What we'd be proposing, not in the memorandum understanding, but through a zoning ordinance change, would be to add that bright yellow area, which would take that core overlay out and extend it to Mary Fletcher Drive. And there we wanna add another 40 feet to be able to go up beyond the height of the water tower, up to I think it's 580 feet. The area that's bounded on the red area that's bounded there on Colchester Avenue, we're not going to be asking for any additional height beyond what's already described in the current zoning regulations. So if we're able to do that, then we're able to develop, we believe all of our inpatient beds on the Medical Center campus, which is a major priority for us. We are really trying to avoid creating another campus location outside of Burlington. So we need to develop strategies that would enable us to build on the campus, maximize our development capacity there so we can keep our beds in Burlington, which we wanna do. Okay, last slide with the nice pictures. Through, we've been in dialogue with our neighbors. And one of the areas of concern is to make sure that we provide enough protection for the Mary Fletcher building. And what we're gonna be proposing in the memorandum understanding is pretty much protecting that building into perpetuity, in terms of its historical characteristics of building materials, and so on to leave that intact and actually ensure that the view corridors that we have the benefit of now from Colchester Avenue up to that building are maintained. So we are going to be quite sensitive in terms of how close we would build to that building. And here's one illustration of what we're planning to basically make sure that we keep a sufficient buffer away from the building, allow the building to frame itself and make sure there's still a view corridor benefit for the city and everybody that drives by. Okay, so we thought this might be helpful for you as well. And I noted some of these things already. So this is our tentative timeline for updating the MOU. So we're here with you all tonight by mid, this is mid February. So let's just say mid to late February. So in the next week or so that we would share our detailed markups of the MOU. So our attorneys have been working with the city attorney's office on this. So as soon as we have a version of that that we can share with you, we will do that. In late February, we will be doing at the council meeting on the 26th, we will be doing a public presentation on our planning and the draft MOU. Then as I announced earlier, we're gonna be holding a Q and A session on March 7th. And I just confirmed the location for that. And that was before I had made the slide. So we're gonna be doing that actually at the hospital, at the Mary Fletcher meeting room. And then finally, we're anticipating possible council action on the MOU in late March. So here's what you can expect. There's gonna be some perfunctory updates. We've had two amendments to the MOU. So those are gonna get put into the same document. We will be restating our commitment to keep the city departments informed and coordinating on long-range planning, which I think may tie into some of the other conversations that you all have been having. We will continue to respect and protect the Mary Fletcher building. And we will be recognizing the long-range planning goals of accommodating all of UVM Medical Center's acute care beds on this campus. And also we would have language that provides for our ability to cooperate with developers if employee housing opportunities were to arise in Burlington and the adjacent towns. And then of course we'll have some very technical language in there that I have to trust Dave and the attorneys for with respect to what we were describing, height overlay, campus density, and increased parking. And so again, just so that you all know with the land use MOU, this sort of in some ways is like where we clear the path. But there are so many other opportunities to provide public input. What we showed you this evening was a conceptual rendering of what we might do. As things develop, you can bet that there will be, we'd be asking for zoning change requests. There would be changes to the GIPFMIT, as I like to say, the Joint Institutional Parking Management Plan, Act 250 hearings, and then of course city permitting. All of these are opportunities for residents to raise their hand, ask questions, share concerns, and that type of thing. So the MOU does not supersede any of those, but it's an important way for us to set the tone on how we work with you on our planning. And so that's it. Questions here at nine, oh wait, sorry. Joel? Sure. So Burlington has a goal to reduce single car occupancy usage and vehicle miles traveled. We've actually made some bad progress. We've gone backwards in the past few years. COVID really set a number of things back. And so we were making progress for a while and we've currently lost progress. Curious if you've got any plans to help Burlington meet this car usage goal. I think the building of parking spaces will induce more car usage as a Vermont State Walking College member. We went through a large history of walking and how to build good cities. In addition to reading books, Walkable City Rules and Cities for People by Jan Gall, as well as like YouTube channels of City Nerd, not just bikes, city beautiful strong towns. Building parking is just about the worst thing you can do to a town. And I know that we are in America and we're trapped in this cycle. It's very vicious. But I urge you to be creative and be tough on the parking because we gotta get rid of the cars being driven everywhere. Automobiles are the second leading cause of death for Americans, non-medical causes of death. Right behind guns, go us. We gotta get the cars off the roads. It's they're finding 80% of people tested have microplastics in their blood. 70% of the microplastics found in water is car tires. So as a health center, I think you'd be really interested in being as safe as you can and promoting a good, healthy environment. So I appreciate your work bringing jobs to the region, taking care of our sick folks. I'm gonna get sick someday and need your help. Absolutely. But please consider the car usage as almost counterproductive to our goals as a region, as a species too. Well, thank you. Thank you. Well, that'll be a very robust analysis of looking at all the transportation options that are available. The challenge that we're facing is trying to find the right balance. I mean, some of our patients come from 200 miles away. They're not served by mass transit. And I think part of the work that has to be done and we look forward to working with the city and our regional partners, how do we make a much more robust transportation system that the underserved areas currently, people can get to work and come to work and not rely on a single passenger automobile. The tricky part with that is patients coming from as far away as Lake Ontario. How do they get here? We gotta make sure that the patients that are gonna be accessing our inpatient and Q care beds have access. And we're hoping that over time, technology and just the ability to develop robust transportation systems are gonna ameliorate the single occupancy vehicle. So we really respect your opinion on that and we'll be working to figure out how we balance correctly. This is your best. Thank you. Question of, why is this now all coming? And it has to be done by March. And this is, I'm seeing a pattern here and it's not just the hospital, it's the university, it's other things in this city, but all this stuff is coming together at one time and it makes me very leery about why it's coming to us and with such short notice. I appreciate that point and I think part of what we're trying to take advantage of is that the MOU expires late this year. We actually have been slowly but surely meeting with neighbors. We have held two parking and traffic task force meetings with the neighbors who are close to the area and I've put that on front porch for them. So we actually have, this has not been our first opportunity to talk to neighbors. It has been our first opportunity to come to the NPA but I do appreciate your point. There is a lot going on right now as we head towards a major transition for our city. So I actually, for you, there's a person who has her hand raised. Hold on, we got, you've got a question, right? Okay, yes, thank you. I was just gonna call out that question. She didn't answer the question, but. Do you want to answer the question? Okay, are we gonna wait for the answer to that question? No, I can, I think Karen responded to the process today. The, in terms of the timing for this, we've been working on trying to understand and forecast our inpatient bed needs for the past couple of years. As you may know, and I think we all know, is the UVM Medical Center is now the UVM Health Network's principal acute care hospitals, the teaching hospital. It serves a wide geographic area. We are experiencing greater patient volumes, more than what was originally anticipated as, as early as the 2000 census. When we constructed the Miller building, we expected there would be a leveling off, potentially a decrease in overall acute care inpatient beds. But in terms of what we've been learning through the 2020 census and since then, that's not what happened. The best forecasters that were in existence at that time failed to recognize the growth patterns that were occurring in Vermont. So we found ourselves identifying a couple of years ago that our need for inpatient beds were greatly outstripping our current capacity to handle those beds. So we're putting together a plan to be able to develop the needs to meet our inpatient care requirements as soon as we can. A key component of that is figuring out how do we take a look at the Medical Center campus and can we develop that in a way to host those beds? When we first started out, we said, not sure we can do this. We began looking at potential sites outside of Burlington for expanding inpatient beds. The message that we got from the city and others was, no, if you can, we want you to stay in Burlington to build this in Burlington. Can you figure out how to come back with a plan that would enable that? And that's the work that we've been doing for the last couple of years. And we started the conversations with our local neighbors a few months ago about what that might look like. And coinciding with that was the status of our Memorandum of Understanding, which was expiring. And we felt we had an obligation to update that document and to be able to develop with the city and the neighbors some parameters by which we could develop on the Medical Center campus to meet our inpatient needs. So that's kind of the general timeframe and how this came upon us up to this point. And I don't know if that's responsive to your question, but that's the best way I can answer at this point. I still, I mean, my husband works up there. I know that place. I used to work up there years ago. And we just built that Miller Center. How long ago did that open three years ago? And you're saying that you can add other, if you knew this, why wouldn't you build a tire at the time? Why now, three years later, it'll be all of a sudden having to have all these, we all knew a lot of people knew that that wasn't enough, but we're building up there. And you put huge rooms in there that could have been a bit smaller and not single patient rooms in there to fit more people's pain. I also want to know, where have we added beds? Have we done something about mental health up in that building? Because I think we cut way back, back. Maybe eight years ago or something. And we're now having a huge need and there's never beds for any place when someone is really in acute need of spaces up there. Well, thank you. Sounds like we need to do a much better job going forward to explain the rationale behind the plan that we're doing and allow for public dialogue and opportunity to people to ask questions with a dedicated right amount of time to provide good answers to that. So we do welcome that. I got a question. Wait, wait, wait, wait, I was next. I want to follow on the question, hold on. Are you the right people to talk about the things that Kathy brought up? The use of, how the use of the hospital will evolve over time? Or are you the guy who's saying if I have to add 240 beds, here's how I can do it? Both of those. It's not me alone, obviously. We will have involving a number of folks internally and externally will be able to provide that. So yes, we just will need to expand our team to provide more comprehensive answers. Okay, Kathy. Catherine. Sorry, Kathy. That's okay. Okay, so I just want to say one thing and then I have a question. So as a resident of this area, I am in total overwhelm right now with all of the things going on and all of the requests is overwhelming. And my biggest worry is that we're gonna do things that we're gonna regret, that we're gonna build up and build out that we're gonna regret and it's gonna cause more serious problems down the road. You know, we're trying to address the housing problem. I get that. I totally get that. I don't know. I just have this nagging feeling that we're going about this in such a rush. And I'm not saying don't do it at all. I'm just saying do it in a way where you're not shoving the problem someplace else that the next generation is going to really suffer from. And the other thing that along these lines is what are you gonna do with all of the new staff that are gonna come into the hospital? Workforce planning. What's the housing? What's that, say more about that then, please. We have a workforce planning that we're gonna be deeply involved in as the plan begins to unfold. We are working right now to develop employee housing. We are actually building some of that in South Burlington. Right. And we'd like to have that same type of philosophy and arrangement in Burlington. And that's what our Meta Moreno of Understanding wants to reflect some of that. So we wanna build with developers more employee housing. Would you consider not building for the patients? And can you do those simultaneously? Can you take into consideration staff housing along with patient rooms? Not within the current campus currently if we were to build, develop, and some of it. You mean concurrently planning both. Yes, exactly. Concurrently planning for both. Yes, we are, actually. That's in progress. And Dave, I always think it's helpful for you to explain how many years out we're talking. I wanted to try to take us back from the precipice of urgency here. The plan that Karen laid out is multi years. If you take a look at what the next steps are, the Memorand of Understanding provides for a broad parameters of the development. However, there are very significant and more elaborate planning processes and presentations that we'll be going forward with. The city zoning request changes, for example. We'll start with a much more granular description of what we're talking about. There'll be several public hearings that'll be related to that. Our Joint Institutional Parking Management Plan, which we have to update, will describe in greater detail the transportation management initiatives that we're going to include in terms of assumptions of going forward. We have the city permitting process, the Development Review Board and the Design Review Board hearings, which will be public processes, which will get into very great detail and granularity of what we're talking about. So there's going to be over the next few years, many venues, which we'll be talking about what our plans are and moving forward to seek approval for that. In terms of the next 30 days or something, that information is not going to be available at this point. What we're trying to do is come up with a basic framework that we can continue our planning and really determine whether it's even possible to do our inpatient bed planning in Burlington. It may not be. And that's what we're going to discover as we go through this process. Who asked you, when you said before, that the city asked you to keep the beds in Burlington? Yes. They did. Who? The city administration asked us if we could figure out a way to keep the beds in Burlington. And what was the reasoning behind that? It benefits Burlington to have the beds concentrated here. Honestly, if we were to move to another location, that would mean that we would be maintaining two hospitals which increase patient costs. I would say this goes back to almost the Saunders administration. When we were thinking about moving and developing another campus location in Williston, it was a great deal of concern about that and the city was opposed to that plan. And all the recent iterations of discussions we've had with them, and not ever recent, but over the time was the city has recognized the importance of maintaining the medical center in Burlington. Yeah, Richard. I hear you though, Richard. Thanks. Thanks for the presentation. Dave's good to see you again. Nice to see you. Can I put some of this in a slightly frame some of the same concerns in a different way? Over the past, I think three or four months, and obviously it's accelerated recently. We've heard about the changes to the McNeil plant and the possibility of sending hot steam to heat the hospital right through Ward 1. Now, that may not happen, but it's in place to happen. We've got the memorandum of understanding with the university. For some reason, that also has to be signed off by the end of this mayor's administration. That is going to affect Ward 1. About 90% of it will be in Ward 1. Meghan gave a great presentation about the changes to zoning. That affects Ward 1 significantly. That has to be signed off, as I understand it, in this mayor's administration. Now, some of these may not happen because that's what you tell us, but everything has to be signed. So I suggest that the thing that shouldn't happen is any of these things should be signed off. Everything should go out to a new administration. The reason for the urgency is because this mayor has been a catastrophic failure. He hasn't generated the revenues to sustain the city and we're in deep, deep trouble and nothing should be signed off in this administration. Thank you. Thank you. Kick all the cans. Hi. Yeah, so Kathy, I really appreciate you bringing up the palatial nature of the Miller wing. I was there for some surgery. It was really magnificent and I was in a single room and I was walking basically into my own apartment for a couple of evenings and there was a separate bed for Peter to be able to be in it. I mean, I'm just, as you speak, remembering it and at the time I felt, wow, look what's available to us and I was very comfortable, very good service. So now I'm thinking, is there a way that you can look, for example, at that wing? And I don't know if it could happen with modular walls. I mean, we're not obviously gonna totally renovate the thing, but it is palatial and it's wonderful on the one hand, but compared to the impact on our neighborhood and particularly appreciate the traffic mention, what are those possibilities? Have you considered that? The Miller inpatient building, patient rooms are built to a current contemporary standard that's currently being used across the nation. The goals and objectives of the Miller building patient rooms were to be able to treat very highly acute patients and to be able to accommodate their families, many of which are traveling far away. The other thing that the goal was to do was to create enough room in the space in the room to for physical therapy to come for them to bring treatment and diagnostic equipment into the room. So they're doing radiology studies. There are a number of other treatment modalities that are happening within the room. We tried to build the inpatient rooms to a uniform standard. They are built to meet the current code requirements. Dual occupancy rooms or semi-private rooms are not permitted in the code. You can't do that, you need to build single rooms. So we think the Miller building represents the best practice in terms of creating an environment that's conducive to healing, but enables providers and caregivers the room and the space they need to bring the care around the patient for the most part as opposed to the patient having to be moved around to different areas within the hospital. We have a very high degree of satisfaction of patients utilizing the Miller building. And that's a model that we would like to continue to pursue if we build new inpatient beds. So thank you for that. And all of that was true and mine was an acute emergency situation. And all of those services were received. But what's happening for me this evening is thinking about all the people who are on-house, looking for housing. You know, it could have been four people sharing that as an apartment. I mean, I really felt that way if we added a kitchen in there. So on the one hand, I really tremendously appreciate it. And on the other hand, I have a new set of questions in my head. 140 square feet, each of those rooms from the website. Do we have other, do we have somebody online? Who do we have? Sophie? Yes, are you planning to take the doctor's offices and send them all to Tilly Drive or somewhere else? The campus has basically a finite amount of space even in we're talking development. As outpatient services grow, we don't have the capacity to house them all on the Medical Center campus. Most recently, we've developed a building at Tilly Drive to host our dermatology and ophthalmology clinical practices, some of which are within on the Medical Center campus and in other locations. So yes, we're not planning on growing or expanding additional ambulatory services on the Medical Center campuses. Those, there's just not enough room for that. So as those volumes and patient care needs increase, we'll likely have to develop other sites for those to occur. Okay, Sophie? Thank you. All right, and Jean? Yes, I wrote the question in the Q&A, but it's concerning that you don't have to answer this tonight, but I'm just wondering if you thought about putting the helicopter pad on top of the new building. I'm always concerned about an emergency with the patient having to be transported from the helicopter pad up to the hospital. Yes, we've discussed that and we're looking at ways to integrate that into the planning. And, Sarah? Yes, actually, Jean just spoke my mind. I was just gonna, I believe I've mentioned to Karen before the possibility of using the beta technologies and the electric helicopters, if they might land on the Notre Dame and sounds like the new construction what Dave just said, you're looking into it and it might be a possibility in five or 10 years. I'm not, from an aviation perspective, I'm uncertain about the electric helicopter, but we would want to integrate helicopter landing capability in our plan. Yeah, so beta has a, I don't recall that they're at all, they can shift the motor to make it essentially like a helicopter that goes straight up and across, but yeah, I think it would be great to have the beta which is such a new, close at home industry integrated with the hospital in terms of the new helicopter. Thanks for listening. I've got just a quick question. Are you working with the university and are you familiar with their building plans? Yes, we coordinate with the university in terms of not all of their building plans. Because they have some plans that could impinge on where the helicopters land now. We're aware of those. Okay. Just a quickly underscore CERL's point. I, in a former job, had the privilege of taking a little test flight with beta. And one of the things that they're doing is they are really working on organ transporting, replacement and other medical supplies. So I really just want to underscore what CERL's saying. Y'all ought to talk to beta because they're the wave of the future. And their whole design is that they can land in the same area that a helicopter can land basically. And they're looking to serve rural communities all over the country. Do you have the information of this or like pictures of the size of you? You're talking about the height of stuff. Do you have any illustrations we can look up? Not yet. We're going to be working on those. We go forward with our zoning changes and stuff. Okay. I think if there's no other questions, there's one more question. I think one more. That line is the hand that says if you don't get the zoning by a date certain that the whole MOU goes away is a poison pill. And it's like taking hostages. I'd like you to make a commitment as soon as possible that you can take that out because it also says you don't trust the city to be a partner and get this done in time. There's a whole slide here of all the wonderful opportunities that are in the MOU that are embedded. Right. And Jeannie. Yeah, and just to be clear, we would keep those agreements in there. That was referring to the building development. Am I saying that correctly? So I agree with you, Jeannie. That was an error in our last PowerPoint that we're correcting. And yes, and we'll address. All right. Thank you. Our meeting is over. Thank you very much.