 of the computer available. We could walk people, you know, show them the computer. They could fill it out at other types of community events. Going to other community events where we can reach out to some of our other community groups, whether it's maybe an upcoming Nepalese celebration where we can really reach out to people where they are and encourage them to participate in that way. And like I said, tabling in different areas where people will be. Dave suggested at the farmer's market, maybe this Saturday once. And like I said, we're really looking at a variety of opportunities to encourage people. And then we would be working with folks who English is a second language. So trying to find ways to, again, in a less traditional way, reach out to them, looking at how we might need to translate the survey into what language is and then reaching those people again where they are so that they would maybe understand why we're asking for this feedback. I'm sorry, I can hear myself, but I realize I'm not close enough, sorry. Okay, I just appreciate other ways for people. And it's not even people who, English isn't their primary language. It's a variety of people who are silent when we only go one route to get input. So thank you so much. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you. And we also, I think we'll, as part of the contract, the contractor will, we will accept paper surveys if folks want to do it in the old fashioned way. And I believe they'll also, they're also providing a 1-800 number for folks to call in and do it by a phone if they don't have access to online services. So there are a couple other ways we can get there. Great, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bush. You're Councillor Hartnett. Thank you. Great question because it was a big concern at the PAC and I've actually learned more just by that question, which is great. I think it's good. I'm excited about this. The reason I'm excited is that it's not for sale anymore. Right, it's going to be ours. And I think that's the big thing for me. So it's time to move forward and get this done. And I know we heard some concerns about the timeline, but I think it's been well thought out. And I'm hoping that, you know, we have a good robust conversation. And when we have that meeting here in Contoy in mid-August, I believe we're shooting for the 22nd or 23rd and kind of lay out what we've gotten back from, that we'll also keep an open mind at that point of view with the people that are in Contoy that night. I'm expecting a big crowd and it will give them one last chance to kind of, you know, hear some thoughts and get some thoughts from them as well. And so I just hope that, you know, we be mindful of that. But I'm hoping that this goes well. I think the people of Burlington are gonna be excited. I do think there's an appetite to save this building and to have it as ours. I think there's a lot of history in this building. It's part of Burlington. It's who we are. And I am really thrilled that we made the decision that we want part of our history. So I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad you came to the PAC and I look forward to working with you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hartnett. Any other questions from the City Council? Mr. Mayor. Thank you, President Wright. And thanks, Councillor Hartnett, for that support for this direction and the work that's happened at the PAC already and the partnership through the process. I'm excited about this as well. I think, you know, and I wanna be clear. Just, you know, from my perspective, the building never was for sale. We did contemplate a partnership with the University of Vermont where they would be a user of it but where the city would continue to own it or as other possible plans over the years, many years looking into it. But this did, when we had considered going out to an RFP where that would be contemplated along with a continuation of its historic use. And as we were last fall in the process of thinking through how that would work, it struck me this is a much better formulation. I think we should put in front of the people of Burlington a clear, a good plan, a thoughtful plan, both a capital plan and an operating plan that is our best shot at what it will take to, what it will take for us to continue the historic use of this building as a publicly owned public assembly space. And if people of Burlington or the council first but then the people of Burlington choose that they don't want to go in that direction, I think then that opens up other thoughts we would need to consider and look at. But I think this way we really make sure we put forward a full concept for consideration by the public. And I'm excited about the team we have working on this and I think it's gonna go well, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Anyone else? All right, thank you. Thank you for that. I think that was good to at least have the council updated on where we're heading and appreciate that. With that, we will move back to the agenda and move to item number three, the public forum. So we'll open the public forum up a couple of minutes late here, 7.36. And we'll start it off with Rick Carlson and you have three minutes. There's a time system in front of you, lights. When the first light comes off, you're down to about a minute and the red light means you need to conclude your remarks. Mr. Carlson, welcome. Hi, my name is Rick Carlson. I've lived and owned property in Burlington since 1972. I'm here to talk about the trees in City Hall Park. And I don't get it. Burlington was once known for being progressive and transparent. Keep the Park Green gave up their right to appeal with the formation of an ad hoc committee to rule on three separate proposals. They did that in good faith. The proposals were a sham and their energies were dashed. There was supposed to be compromise, but there really wasn't. You took it for granted that they'd fold. There's something going on here that no one else is privy to. Something about this particular design that keeps it set in stone, no matter what. There wasn't the slightest flexibility about destroying the three healthy trees in the Southwest entry point that don't have to go except to save the design. Something's going on here and you know that. It hints of cronyism. That's not the Burlington I know. The park is not your personal playground. It belongs to all of us and we overwhelmingly want trees. When the time comes and you clear cut it for the concrete plaza, keep the Park Green will hold you accountable and your constituents will know how you voted. But now it's not too late. The 11 healthy trees scheduled to die still thrive. Please save some shade. Please save more trees. Please do what's right because you know what that is. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Carlson. Lynn Martin is up next to be followed by Charles Messing. Lynn Martin. Good evening, Ms. Martin, welcome. Good evening. Please be sure to speak right into the microphone. Oh, I will. I realize you're looking for new faces but I have not spoken up about the park for some months now. Instead I've watched yet another round of wearying meetings take place and see what are essentially the same results put forth yet again. We've had a series of reasons given as to why the park's design needs the radical overhaul being proposed. It's to make up accessible, my goodness, I'm having trouble with the sun, I'm photo sensitive, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna look at you, I just spoke away. Okay, it's to make it handicap accessible according to the ADA, something Jimmy Lees has done a masterful job dismantling. And we hear the BCA wants to have entertainment space for concerts and the like, trees not wanted. Then again, we have been told opening up the park as necessary to control bad behaviors. But the public trust is being violated here. The citizenry over and over have made it abundantly clear that having a park mostly in keeping with the current incarnation is important to them. And repeatedly they are being told that the powers in charge of city hall know better. Given what is happening nationally with the GOP and the daily horrors coming out of the White House, I would think keeping a motivated well of interested residents would be of paramount importance. Sometimes I think we're saying to ourselves that what happens in DC cannot happen here. Isn't this meeting evidence we have due process? But our due process is being eroded at every level, Trump light, so to speak. Sometimes I think the city fears letting the residents take this round for fear we will derail their grand design. So I'm pleading with the counselors, please, show you have faith in your constituents, listen to their combined wisdom. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Martin. Charles Messing is up next to be followed by Jean Bergman. Mr. Messing, welcome. I'd just like to mention that it's wonderful to go swimming in the ponds, but the rocks can be slippery, so be careful. So the park, the trees, 10 trees should be saved as far as I know, the council doesn't wanna save them, or somebody doesn't wanna save them. But over 200 people wrote in personal letters and said they wanna save the trees. Well, love that sun. I challenged the city to produce 200 letters saying they want the trees down, and I don't think you can do it. The trees, there's no wiggle room in the plan. When I see the planners, you talk to them about changing the plan and they look scared like the plan is in charge, not the planners. Why so? Actually, they do have the power to make the paths different and not think about an aerial view, but to think about the trees. The ADA is fine now, it'll be fine in the future. I don't believe in the expression going forward because you never go backwards. It's important to save the trees. People are not gonna give up just because the council says, well, we decided we can't save them. We're not gonna give up. Here's a question. Do we work for you, Mr. Mayor? Do we work for you? This is a public comment time if you're not gonna get responses for. You can't respond. That's right. I think I know the expression. I think I know the answer. I mean, do we work for you or do you work for us? Guess what? We wanna save the trees. The plan must change. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Messing. Gene Bergman is up next to be followed by Jamie Williamson. Mr. Bergman, the retiring Gene Bergman. Well, good evening, Council President Wright, good evening, Mayor and City Attorney Blackwood and the rest of you city councilors. I am here tonight in a private capacity for two reasons. The first relates to my retirement from the city this coming Friday after 20 years of being an assistant city attorney and you're a senior assistant city attorney for the last nine years. And I just want to publicly thank you all for the opportunity that you have given me to serve the people of Burlington. Your confidence in me has been humbling and I truly believe that we have done really a lot of really important work together. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. The second relates to what I believe is a struggle for our soul, the struggle by the nurses at the UVM Medical Center for a fair and just contract. Their fight is all of our fight because it's a fight for safe staffing levels and fair and livable wages. And as the seven days story on executive salaries shows, this is also about growing inequality in our midst. CEO Brumsted earned nearly $2.2 million in 2015 while there are 130 vacancies in nursing positions due in large part to low wages that the nurses are paid. Vermont nurses are the 47th out of 50 lowest paid nurses in the nation and the vacancies show that they are not paid competitively on either a local or a national basis. Burlington voters by 77% supported a referendum that called on our elected leaders to reduce the growing disparity of wealth and strengthen social and economic security. The nurses struggle for a fair contract, crystallizes the work that's needed to make this city, this county, this state fair and more equitable. And they need us, they need all of us. They need you elected leaders to stand with them because if we cannot take care of our nurses, the people who care for us when we and our loved ones are sick and vulnerable, then really who can we care for? So I really believe this is a fight for the soul of our city, a fight that will tell us who we are as a people. And I hope I know that you all as elected leaders will stand up with the nurses. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bergman. And thank you for your decades of service to the city of Burlington. Jeannie Williamson is up next. Mr. Williamson, welcome to be followed by Stephen Marshall. Well, not to return to the subject of the first two speakers. I've been in Burlington for 36 of my 59 years, for those 36 years. One of the great things about the park in the summertime, I'll do like Frank Zappa here. One of the great things about the park is the shade, being able to sit there. I mean, you know, this summer it's kind of weird going in there, sitting down and reading and writing and realizing, oh, if things go according to the plan, this will not be available next year or any year after. Looking around the park, there's a lot of people who feel the same way. And I think that if you were to put a vote to the city of Burlington saying, and not to oppose improvements, I'm not opposed to improvements, but I don't call removing all the shade from the park an improvement. If you took a vote and said, we want this plan or a plan that's gonna keep the trees intact or at least the healthy trees intact, it's pretty much very clear. Anybody that doesn't have a vested interest would approve of the tree staying. Yet there's been this tenacious hold as we are going to hold. We are gonna keep the plan the same. We're gonna take the trees down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Which leaves a question why. I've heard dropped any number of times the question of crime. One way that would have a substantial impact on that with or without change in the park is to post a foot patrolman there. And I think with the increase in the policing, what the budget that's going to law enforcement in Burlington, there's no reason why that should be a big deal. But then again, that seems so obvious to me that it doesn't seem like crime itself is so much the problem as the sort of unsavory element that becomes attached in people's minds to crime in the park. And that actually really what the goal is is a little bit more of sort of profile cleansing, I might say. So anyway, I wanted to move on from that to other last things. One is I hear, for example, the word robust being thrown around a lot. I'm an English teacher. That there's been robust community input, that there's been robust discussions, robust this, not the other. And I think of Enigo Montoya to paraphrase. Here is, I think you need to find another word. I don't think that word means what you think it means. You know, trying to follow, I mean, there was no really active attempt to engage the public in the initial stages of the plan. There may have been a side announcement, but there was certainly not an aggressive attempt to inform people about it. Can I? You need to just conclude your last sentence. Okay, so that is not robust. I see a lot of crushing the opposition. And just the last thing I will mention is, well, the trees are gonna die. The trees are all dying. Where did that come from? We get this official attempt to squash the opposition, make them look like crazies and we find out, no, the trees aren't dying. And so I will stop with, what's up with that? And there's a problem. All right, thank you, Mr. Williamson. Stephen Marshall is up next to be followed by Jack Daggett. Mr. Marshall, welcome. Councilors, thank you for providing this opportunity to speak. Two weeks ago at breakfast, Brian Corteau approached me with a disturbing news. His camp had been completely removed. Three tents, fresh food, clothes, and other possessions. Why and by whom? It turns out that the city had workers out cleaning up abandoned campsites and even had a dumpster nearby which a witness had climbed into to see that it was full of camping gear. Apparently mostly from abandoned camps, but also it would seem a not abandoned camp. The evidence suggests that the cleanup of Brian's camp was a routine operation done without thoughtfulness or conscience, where the target was an abandoned camp, but the camp that got cleaned up was an active camp. The abandoned camp was 30 feet away, but not so visible. And remains there to this day, I was told by someone who has been camping in Burlington for years that the city sends out workers twice each summer to clean up abandoned camps. So it seems to be an institutional reflex, an automatic event on the calendar of whichever department it was, out beyond the awareness of an elected administrator. This camp cleanup amounts to a non-worn cleanup against city policy. I have advocated for the city, telling homeless folks that the city won't close camps just without warning. On the grounds that the city has a conscience and does not want to hurt people. So this is damaging to me, as much it is damaging to the city. Someone somewhere needs to be told that the act was unacceptable and must not be repeated. I would like the city to repudiate this unfortunate deviation from city policy and declare that such a thing won't happen again. The simple rule for routine cleanup is if tents are standing, if there are possessions nearby, you cannot take them down. It's a no brainer. Better, the city can have a city outreach worker. I'm willing to be that person to approve the takeout of a camp. Then we won't have this problem, ever. The city government and the community of the city are safer when the city is transparent and brings witnesses into its actions. No more Blitzkrieg cleanups, please. Our shared aspiration is that this administration exercise its authority to get policy control over the city department responsible for this abysmal act. And that the homeless campers can feel safe, that there will be no excuse and no impunity, that unauthorized closure of an occupied camp. Mr. President, I would ask you to ask the mayor to explain what he plans to do about this unfortunate violation of city policy. Thank you, Mr. Marshall. Jack Daggett is up next to be followed by Kristin Cowan Hoven. Mr. Daggett, welcome. I'm Jack Daggett, I live at King and St. Paul and I can look out my front door and see the trees and city hall. Mr. Daggett, you need to speak right into that microphone we're having a little difficulty hearing you. How about this one over here? It's just you gotta pull the microphone right in close. I'm Jack Daggett, I live at King and St. Paul and I can look out my front door and see the trees and city hall park. But there's been a tree cutting binge in Burlington over the past year. The stately deciduous trees around the UVM alumni building have been cut down. The conifers at Cambrian Rise Development, they've been cut down. And now we're talking about cutting down most of the trees in the city hall park. Can you hear this? Not hearing you very well. Okay. You gotta have the microphone right up close to you. Okay. This morning I walked through city hall park like I do every day and it was delightful. People were recreating, there were children in the park, there were adults, there were people sitting on the grass. It looked like a scene from a French impressionist painting. It was beautiful. And I'm worried that when those trees are cut down that atmosphere will be lost. The only problem with city hall park is that it's a small park trying to serve the needs of a very large number of people. And I think it's important that those, I hear people talking about cutting down trees but I don't hear anything about cutting down and replacing. So if that park is, most of the trees are gone, we have a tree city USA designation by the Arbor Day Foundation. And with all this tree cutting, I'm wondering if they couldn't take, wouldn't take a look at that possibly and revoke that. So I think it's important to save those trees. Thank you, Mr. Daggett. It's Kirsten Cowanhaven to be followed by Perry Freeman. Good evening, Ms. Cowanhaven. Not sure if I pronounced your last name right? It's Kirsten Cowan-Hoban. I want to talk to you about something that's dear to my heart, the trees in city park. And specifically the number of trees that are proposed trees that you planted or not replaced and their placement in the park. When I first moved to downtown Burlington over five years ago, the city park was a special place. In my heart, I really enjoy going there and seeing summertime concerts at Burlington City Arts and having a cool place to rest and relax in all seasons. I am concerned that there will not be enough shade for people who come to enjoy outdoor concerts or take their children to the new proposed splash pool in the summer. Furthermore, I'm afraid that the proposed seating of a rock wall around the splash pool won't be comfortable and inviting for people of all ages and abilities. City park is a great place for people to congregate and build community. I think you can approve upon this plan by adding one or more trees, or two trees, in the hardscape area in front of, have you got a difficult taste? In front of Burlington City Arts and around the splash pool. I believe that this would make, improve upon the plan and I realize that it's important to add these features now because it takes a little more planning to make trees, to accommodate for trees in the hardscape. It is imperative to make these changes now to the plan before it is too late. I'm really happy to live in Burlington and hope that you consider the difference trees can make in a public area. These trees are an important asset and natural resource to our city. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathtub and please consider making these changes now so that this plan can benefit all those who will visit the park for future generations. Thank you, Ms. Cowerhaven. Perry Freeman is up next to be followed by Joanne Hunt. Good evening, welcome. Hi, good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Perry Freeman. I'm a resident of Ward 3. I wanted to speak about keeping the park green and about the trees in the city in general. I do fully support, keep the park green has requested that we preserve 12 trees in the park. Should I speak even louder? Sure, that we preserve 12 trees in the park. I would like to see as many of those trees saved as possible. I think that requesting that we preserve those 12 trees is very reasonable. I understand that there are modifications that would need to be made to the redesign plan, but I do think I support those modifications in order to preserve those 12 trees. In regards to the city at large and our tree removal process, I want to support some kind of tree preservation ordinance that involves citizen input and public input. You know, there's, as I understand it now and through the modification of a city hall park, I realize that there isn't really a citizen review process. There isn't a way to appeal or have input from the public and notification, not at least in like a formal sense. And I really think we do need to create that, especially, I mean, in my neighborhood, there have been a lot of trees going down. And it's something I think the public should be part of. And then I wanted to speak towards something else, which I think a few folks have mentioned, that has been part of the conversation, which is specifically about redesigning a public park to try to attempt to cartel or reduce criminal activity. And to me, that really sounds like sweeping a problem under the rug. You know, there are ways to address undesirable behavior in our community. And to me, you know, these are things like, what we're talking about is like poverty and homelessness and mental health issues and substance abuse. And the way that we address those things in our community is by creating a livable wage. So raising the wage here, we need to create a housing first model that provides permanent housing immediately for people who are experiencing chronic homelessness. And you know, it's also about creating and funding public programs that address, you know, help people who are struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse. And this is, I think it's really important because I think we can, you know, I know we all agree that we want to help people and that it's in the public good to help people. And what we don't wanna do is merely displace people who are struggling out of the public view and out of public spaces. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Freeman. Joanne Hunt is up next to be followed by Molly Loomis. I think the microphone on this side's actually working better on your left, but you still have to pull it in close. Good evening, Ms. Hunt. Welcome. Hi, thanks. I had something passed out. I'm here to, first of all, I support saving more trees, but you already know that about me. I'm actually here more to speak about the nurses and the support we need. I really thank Mr. Bergman as in the town hall meeting on Friday night. And when he spoke, it moves me to tears because as nurses, we're not very public about asking for support. What we do is behind closed doors, mostly. And what we do is we're there when you need us, and then we don't need us anymore, you kinda wanna get away from us as much as possible because it's often difficult. We need your support. We have not made any progress in the past week. I don't know how many of you spoke to a nurse in the past week. I also should have asked you to speak to some patients because we all know those all the time. It's incredibly disheartening to be doing the work that we're doing under some of the conditions and to be in this negotiation process that is so frustrating and discouraging. I wanna publicly thank Max Tracey and also Tim Ash for coming to our town hall meeting on Friday. Part of what's really valuable even for me who's been a nurse for a long time is to hear some of the stories that nurses have to tell and I'm aware of how much stress we are under all the time but it just becomes part of what we do. We step up, we step up whether we're getting paid at fair wage or not. We step up whether it's the end of our shift or not. We step up whether we don't have enough staffing or not. And we can't continue to do that under some of the conditions we're working. We need a fair contract, we need more nurses. As a nurse practitioner, we need more support staff. We're deeply exhausted and it's also just really hard not to necessarily be able to do as good a job as we know we can do because we don't have the support and because we often don't feel valued. And again, I would ask you like this coming week are the last two scheduled bargaining sessions. We don't wanna strike. Having said that, I'm not sure we know what to do in order to get what we think is really fair and reasonable. So I really hope that you will step up for us and for the nurses, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hunt. Molly Loomis is up next. Be followed by James Lee, please. Hello, so cool change of topic. I'm Molly Loomis and I've applied for the Library Commission position. And I did reach out to all of you but just to expand a little bit on my interests. I have spent my career working for organizations like museums and libraries that serve as community anchors in connecting community members to lifelong learning experiences. I've done this as an educational researcher into how families learn together. I've done this as an exhibit designer designing innovative learning experiences in museums across the country and as an organizational consultant helping organizations like museums and libraries stay innovative and responsive to community needs. I've also committed my career to equity, diversity and inclusion efforts. And one of those has included working for about five years with library staff, the Fletcher Free Library staff, on the We All Belong initiative to host difficult conversations about race and culture. I also worked with previous director, Ruby Simon, to begin to develop the current strategic plan and particularly to engage diverse communities in that process. And finally, I've worked as an organizational consultant helping organizations internally reform their policies to support inclusive hiring practices and other equity and diversity and inclusion initiatives. Finally, I'd bring an early childhood voice to the commission, which I think I believe is lacking at this point. Not only because I work in early childhood, I work for the Permanent Fund for Vermont's Children, but also because I'm a parent of three young children, 22 year olds and a four year old myself. There isn't a week that goes by that we don't go to the library. And there isn't a story time at night where I don't feel grateful for this community resource and it's sort of changing up our nightly routine. So I really am invested in the mission and the success of the library. And I feel like there's a vision for it to do better. The mission of organizations like this, which seek to serve all community members well and have community members with incredibly diverse and often competing needs. It's an incredibly difficult mission, one that takes thoughtfulness, care, and continued attention. That's the kind of work that I've devoted my career to and would very much like to support the library in continuing to do. So I ask for your support and thank you. Thank you very much. James Lees is up next to be followed by Karen Long. Good evening, Mr. Lees, welcome. Good evening, pleasure to be here. So the full information about ADA compliance was never provided to the ad hoc committee by city officials that had that information because the information was suppressed and concealed, the decision making of the ad hoc committee was deeply flawed and its recommendation to cut 22 trees should not be followed. The committee never saw the map of the park, of the existing park that the city had in its possession showing that city hall park as it currently exists is already ADA compliant. And that although one compliant walkway to program areas is required under the ADA, a visitor can reach all program areas along at least three different compliant walkways from the college street side. Nor did the ad hoc committee see the map showing that the city's proposed redesign does not live up to the hype about that redesign. There's still no compliant walkway from Main Street. The ADA was the only justification given to the ad hoc committee for tearing out walkways from the existing park and cutting down healthy trees to put new walkways that aim at existing trees. Certainly at much lower cost and as a way to save more trees, we could use the existing walkways in the park, perhaps resurface the ones that need resurfacing, not disrupt roots and not cut down trees. So here are my recommendations. Preserve the existing park walkways and the trees. Do not add more cement surface. Stop the policy of purposeful neglect of the park. Arrate the soil and start doing the maintenance to restore health to grass and trees. Stop abusing the ADA to justify the cutting of trees and stop abusing the ADA to justify the three to four million dollar transfer of public money to associates of city officials and maybe even relatives of a city official. Such abuse and corruption could cause a loss of public confidence in the ADA and cause a loss of trust in public officials. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Lees. Karen Long is up next to be followed by our final speakers tonight. Donna Walters and Monique Fordham, welcome as long. Spoken about the trees. And I guess what I'm really astounded with is the wastefulness of it. And I brought this once before, but now I have done a little research. These are the saplings. They're gonna replace the trees that are this big. Okay, this is the trunk and you can look outside and see what the canopy of the trees are. $1,000 and this is like a bargain rate. This is a wholesale price, $1,000 for a sapling. So we're not talking about tree for a tree. So I don't get it. And when you, I've read about this ADA stuff and I hear now that was, our park is already ADA compliant. But if you walk around Burlington on College Street, just even this area like all the way up to the YMCA is, those sidewalks are not ADA compliant. They are a hazard. And I'm not sure why we aren't addressing basic things like that instead of tearing down beautiful trees and replacing them with saplings. I mean, really it is gonna change the whole flavor of our downtown. And I did really enjoy the meeting that I had with the gentleman that was here a few weeks ago, the consultant that was hired by the BBA. And Dave Hartnett asked him a question. Do you remember your question? You said, what's the one thing we could do to improve downtown? And do you know what he said? Do you remember? Clean it up. It's shabby. Our brick marketplace is all bumpy. People are gonna get hurt. The sidewalks are really, really bad. And this is a man that's been trying to vitalize downtowns for 25 years. So we need to take him seriously. He said our park was beautiful. It's very European in nature, but the maintenance is horrible. So we're letting these things go. And then I'm not sure where we get $3 million to do that when we don't have the money to repair our sidewalks. So, and I guess another personal peeve I have with the city and taking care of stuff is at least a year ago, I spoke about our window shades in this grand meeting hall. They've been clipped together with black paper clips. I've talked to a few of my counselors about it. I've met with people in city hall about it. Today you see they've been rolled up. Those shades cost a lot of money. They're motorized cellular shades. I tried to find out how old they are. I was told between four and eight years. They're still like this a year later. And I find it just kind of like city hall park in the sidewalks. We should take pride in this building and be taking care of this. And I've done window treatments for 35 years. So I take a personal interest in it besides this is my city, but they're still like that. And I don't get it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Long. Finish up with Donna Walters and Monique Fordham, our last speaker tonight. Welcome Ms. Walters and Ms. Fordham. So I just want to thank the council for giving us, for creating ad hoc committee and actually letting citizens participate in the decision making. It felt like the work of the committee was cut a little bit short. We didn't really get to cover some of the reasons why the trees that we were proposing to be saved from being cut, why that seemed like it was an impossibility to the designers. So the seven trees in addition to what was actually saved by the committee were none of the things that we proposed were approved. And it was because they would all need some kind of design modification. And I want to just back up a little bit and give you a more of an overview of like in 2016. There were like 70% of the trees that were gonna be cut in the park. And of course there was a public outcry, that's a lot of trees. And so yes, the city did step up and they reduced that to about 60%. But still people weren't happy with that. That's still a lot of trees, 60%. And now after the work, and that was where we were at at the end of the approval process for the DRB. The exact number was 58% of the trees. We called it 60%. And now after the work of the ad hoc committee, it's still almost half the trees that are gonna be cut in the park. And yes, that still is a lot of trees. So the trees that will be, after the five trees that the work of the committee has saved, there still will be 22 trees that need to be cut down. Half of those, 11 of those trees are healthy trees. And we really wanted to save just seven of those 11 healthy trees. And we were not able to do that. Three, there were actually 14 trees that were healthy. And the committee saved three, three healthy trees. So now there's 11 healthy trees that will be left. We wanted to save just some more of those healthy trees. And in order to do that, it absolutely will require some design modifications. So we're hoping that you'll consider that, that I don't know why it's just so stuck and so vehemently not wanting to make any modifications whatsoever. But people are really having a hard time wrapping their head around. You're gonna cut almost a dozen healthy trees. It's hard to justify that. So the only way that you can reduce that number would be to make some design modifications. And we're hoping that you'll be willing to do that. Thank you. I just wanna thank you again for the opportunity to address you, Mr. President, members of the council, Mr. Mayor. I feel like we've been here a million times talking about this issue. And once again, we have people showing up, taking time out to speak out and saying that they wanna protect more trees in the park. And sort of this perpetual question that keeps coming up is what is so sacrosanct about this particular plan that it can't be modified in the face of so much public outcry. And I have to say, really healthy public participation of people who did not have a stake in it, who are not working on it, who didn't have a partner who was involved in it, or wasn't their personal pet project, just regular old people coming out. And we even know that in any issue that comes before the council, that there's a calculation in terms of how much does one email stand for in terms of your constituency? What does it mean when two people from your ward come out to speak? Like any politician, you're doing a calculation in terms of what is the actual feeling out there. And I would strongly suggest considering the over 200 emails and people speaking, that that represents a lot of people. And that fact just isn't gonna go away. I wanna thank all the counselors that expressed concern and reached out to us and thanked us for being so persistent. And coming out again and again and trying to be reasonable and look for a compromise. I don't think I could say that another time. I've said it so many times. We just wanted a compromise and we certainly felt that it was doable. I particularly wanna thank the counselors who worked so hard so that we could have an ad hoc committee process since we don't normally see that here. We really wanted to keep this from being a heavy duty acrimonious fight that went nowhere and look for something that showed that we could work together. So I wanna thank all those people who supported that creation of the ad hoc committee. When we look at the results of the ad hoc committee, I have to say our posts that we put up on our Facebook page, Keep The Park Green. Our report after that ad hoc committee was over had a thousand pairs of eyeballs on that post. So people do care. And I'm grateful for the process but I really think that certainly our constituents, the people that have supported our efforts and allowed us to speak for them, would really hope that we could see a little bit more than just three healthy trees preserved out of this entire process. So I'm hoping that we can make a little bit more progress tonight and come to a result that we can all live with. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Walters. Thank you, Ms. Fordham. And thank you for serving on that ad hoc committee. With that, we will conclude tonight's public forum. And we'll move back to the agenda to item number four, which is the consent agenda. Councilor Nodell. Present. Oh, Councilor Busher, do you have a point of information? Point of information. Are we going to deal with the presentation? Yes, we are, but we're not going to deal with it yet. Okay. Councilor Nodell. President Rod, I move that we adopt the consent agenda as amended and to take the actions indicated. Move, the consent agenda has been moved by Councilor Nodell, second by Councilor Paul. Any discussion? All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, taking the actions indicated, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. That passes unanimously. We have passed the consent agenda. If you don't mind, Councilor Nodell, Councilor Busher, I would like to actually, because there are people waiting, I'd like to go come back to that and unless there's objection from the council and go to the council when mayor presiding because there are people waiting in the audience. So with that, I will recess the regular city council meeting and turn it over to the mayor for city council and mayor presiding. Thank you, President Wright. I will call to order the city council with mayor presiding at 8, 23 p.m. And we'll accept a motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Councilor Roof, seconded by President Wright. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Which brings us to 2.01, which is a motion to amend or adopt the agenda taking the action, the consent agenda, taking the actions indicated. So moved. Thank you, Councilor Dean, seconded by Councilor Shannon. Discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The consent agenda carries unanimously and that brings us to a long list of offices to be filled 3.01 to 3.30, are a variety of boards and commissions to be filled. I believe there's been some work to prepare us for that tonight and there may be a motion to help us through this part of the event. Councilor Mason. Thank you, mayor. I'd like to first start by explaining to the public we created a boards and commission council which consisted of four representatives, Jordan from the mayor's office, Councilor Wright, Councilor Tracy and myself. We met, excuse me, over three meetings. We held interviews with all applicants, I should say all applicants were invited. We did hear from a number of applicants, not everyone was able to attend the in-person meeting but we certainly did receive written submissions. There was also Q&A for those who showed up. Following that, the committee did try to reach consensus on those candidates that wanted to set forth which I will now present to the full council for its consideration. As has been the case, at least since I've been on the council, these were not easy decisions. We continued, I continue to be overwhelmed by the quality of those who are seeking to serve in these volunteer positions and appreciate everyone who puts their name forth for consideration. So with that, Mayor, I would like to advance the following names for consideration by the full council and these are alphabetical. For the airport commission, Bill Keough and Tim George for the Board of Assessors, Diane Weisberg, Cemetery Commission, Melissa Cain, Conservation Board, one vacancy, we will re-advertise, the second is Don Mills, Design Advisory Board, Tom Collins, the Development Review Board, Alternate, Zariah Hightower, the Development Review Board, two permanent seats, A.J. LaRosa and Charles Springer-Harris, the Electric Light Commission, Jim Shagnan, Fire Commission, Jacob Perkinson, my computer catch up, Board of Health, Carolyn Tassey, Library Commission, two seats that we would advance now with one that we will have to take nominations from the floor. At this time, we would advance Patrick Halliday and Amy Mellonkamp, what am I missing? Parks and Recs Commission for the three-year position, Fauna Hurley, there's a second position that was vacant that will be re-advertised. Planning Commission, the five incumbents, Eves Bradley, Harris Rowan, Jennifer Wallace-Brodour and Bruce Baker, Public Works Commission, Chris Gilman, Tiki Archambeau and Brendan Hogan for Retirement Board, David Mount, Patrick Robbins, Board of Tax Appeals, Alan Birkey, Joseph McGee, Vehicle for Hire Board, Adam Roof and Charlie Herrick, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mason, is there a second or the slate, President Wright seconds it. Now, before a vote, I did wanna open up to the public, would anyone like to make any comment on the agenda on the business that we're conducting with the City Council of Mayor Presiding at this time? Certainly this would be an appropriate time if there are candidates in the room that would like to, that have our nominees or potential nominees tonight if you'd like to speak to the body you're invited to do so. Okay, seeing no takers on that, we will return to the business before the Council and is there any discussion of the motion made by Councilor Mason? Okay, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. There are still two seats that I believe we're gonna deliberate on tonight. One is the Police Commission. Sorry, I'll do it in order here. First is the Library Commission for term ending June 30th, 2021 and the floor is open for nominations for this position. Councilor Dean. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. I'd like to place a nomination, Ms. Molly Loomis, who we've already heard from tonight and I would just like to touch on a few of the highlights that she presented to us. She has been the Director of Education at ECHO. She holds a PhD in Educational Research focused on how families learn together. She has been part of the Fletcher Free Library strategic planning team and has been part of the leadership team at the Permanent Fund for Vermont's children. So early educational children are certainly central to her mission and her life. I also would like to touch on one thing that perhaps she did not mention to us is that she has three children who regularly attend Fletcher Free Library. She lives the life of the library every week and I would encourage our support for her on the Library Commission. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Dean. Are there any other nominations? Councilor Tracy. I'd like to nominate Annie Schneider from Ward Two and I'd just like to note that Annie is also in the library on a weekly basis as a mentor to new American children. I had several great ideas about how we can expand access for those populations and is also an educator in the schools and is regularly involved with those populations as well. So I think that the board would be served well by that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Tracy. Are there any further nominations? Any other Councilors would like to make a nomination? Seeing none, we will close the floor for nominations and is there any further discussion about this seat before we go to a vote? Seeing no Councilors who wish to be recognized, we'll go to a vote. We'll have a show of hands for each of the two candidates. All of those who would like to register a vote for Molly Loomis, please raise your hand. Just the clerk of the tally. That's what I see too. I think there's eight. So congratulations, Molly Loomis. You have been appointed by the city council and mayor presiding. We appreciate your service. We also want to thank Annie Schneider for her application and her interest. Very frequently as a Councilor, Mason noted, given the high level of interest in these positions, unfortunately we have to ask people to apply more than once before they are appointed. But we certainly appreciate how strong an applicant pool this was and your interest in serving. We'll now go to the police commission where we are considering a seat that will be filled until June 30th, 2021. And the floor is open for nominations. Councilor Pine. Thank you. I would like to place in nomination the name of Randall Harp. Randall is a Ward 3 resident, has been in Burlington for a little over a decade, is a professor at the University of Vermont and has extensive academic and practical experience in data analysis and using data to drive public policy. And I think one of the most important issues our community can grapple with successfully unlike other places is to grapple with the inherent bias that we all carry with us. And when that bias gets translated over to our police force, it can have very dangerous outcomes. And I hope that our police department will continue to make progress. And I believe that our commission is the place to do that. And I have confidence that Mr. Harp will help the commission in that regard and work well with the department. I believe he'd like to speak as well. Thank you, Councilor Pine. Let's see if there are any other nominations and we'd be happy to invite Mr. Harp up. Are there any other nominations that councilors would like to place before nomination and nomination? Okay, seeing none, we will close the floor for nominations and invite Mr. Harp to join us and share some words. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you, Councilors. I just actually correct one quick, one little thing that Councilor Pine said. My expertise is actually more in behavioral science rather than in data ethics. I've, in data analysis, I've started doing a little bit of work in data analysis recently, in part because I've done some more work in data ethics. My interest in the police commission is primarily because I think that, actually, Burlington has a really good opportunity to do something with its police commission. I think there are several things which speak in favor of Burlington. For one, I think it has a police commissioner, I'm sorry, it has a police chief who's actually very, very interested in having conversations about ways to improve the quality of policing in the city and is receptive, I think, to being engaged with arguments. I've had arguments with him in the past. He's been receptive about many things. I think I've convinced him of some things. He's convinced me of some things. I think that's actually a very good thing to have. I think also the fact that the police commission is trying to decide right now what, let me back up a little bit. I think that the police commission serves three primary roles. One is advisory, so it should be a body that the police chief can turn to when he has questions about how to justify policies. I think that it is also an oversight committee, to some degree, and I think that the extent to which it's an oversight committee, I think right now that that can be shaped in interesting ways. I think there are a lot of discussions happening nationwide about how exactly it is that says an oversight can happen, and there are bodies like the Center for Policing Equity and things like that which tie in very well with the things that we're trying to do here. It also is a liaison body, it should be something which is open to the public in order for them to pass along concerns about policing to someone other than someone who's actually in the police department. So I think those three things that the police commission can do, this is a very good time to do those things, and there's a lot of support both institutionally and also in the community for those things to happen, and I think that I can bring a lot to many of those roles. I would also just say that I probably shouldn't say is I think that the other candidates they understand to be applying for the position, I think I have good confidence in them as well. I think that they would be very good as well. I just think that my interests are in doing the job of the police commissioner well and actually doing something for the city. I think it's a great opportunity to affect the quality and the nature of policing and given the conversations that have been happening nationwide about how policing should happen. I think it's a very good time to have those sorts of conversations. So I'm happy to put my name forward to serve in that role. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Hart. Excellent. So is there any further discussion amongst the counselors before we go to vote? Okay. All those in favor of appointing Mr. Harp to the police commission for the term ending June 30th, 2021, please say aye. Aye. I believe it's unanimous. Thank you, Mr. Harp, for your service in advance and for your interest. And to the other applicants, Lizzie Haskell and Roth Bernstein, repeat what we said earlier just about the strength of this year's applicant pool. And I think the fact that it took until tonight for a decision to be made as a sign of the strength of the applicants and we appreciate your service and interest in serving the city of Burlington. With that, if there's no objection, the city council with mayor presiding is adjourned at 837. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And with that, I will reconvene the regular city council meeting at 837. And we will go back to the agenda. And again, if there are no objections from the city council, before I go back to the presentation, I would like to again, conclude the board and commission appointments. So I'd like to go to item number five on the deliberative agenda and recognize Councillor Mason for items 5.01 through 5.06. Thank you, President Wright. As a continuation, I would like to advance the following names for consideration. Robert Green as the designate to the Chittin and Solid Waste District. Jennifer Green as the alternate to the Chittin and Solid Waste District. Sarah Beale to the Chittin, or excuse me, Church Street Marketplace Commission. Jed Davis also to the Church Street Marketplace Commission. Patrick Murphy to the housing board of review. And finally, Aaron Keach to the Nuski Valley Park District. Thank you. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Dean. Any discussion? All those in favor of the slate presented by Councillor Mason, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Congratulations to everyone that applied. And as Councillor Mason said, that we had great applicants. I know there's a couple in the audience here tonight who applied and did not make it. And I know we'll see you applying again, I'm sure. And certainly encourage you to apply again. But congratulations to those who have been appointed. And also I just want to thank the committee. Thank you, Councillor Mason for chairing this committee. Excellent job. And for Councillor Tracy and Jordan from the mayor's office as well. I think it was a great experience. So with that, thank you for allowing me to bounce around a little bit here. We'll move back to item number 2.01. And that's a presentation from Chief and Spencer and Megan Moir regarding an update on wastewater and stormwater management issues. Good evening, Director Spencer and Megan Moir. Thank you for being here. I appreciate your patience. Thank you. We know you have a busy evening, Chief and Spencer, Director of Public Works. We understand with the recent wastewater events that there is great public concern. And we understand that for that reason the council had asked us to come present tonight. It is not only an opportunity to highlight our quick action but more importantly to highlight our continued cross-generational efforts to protect our treasured water bodies and our continued work into the future. This is a very complex issue. We are gonna hit the wave tops and so there are eight page documents circulating and there'll be links at the end of the presentation. Happy to continue this conversation. Next. So we have made clear progress and yet there is more to do. And we will be unequivocal in saying that one gallon of less than fully treated and fully disinfected discharge is too many. And in that vein in the last generation we have dramatically reduced the untreated non-disinfected discharge into our water bodies. Particularly there was a significant generational investment in 1994 that stopped an estimated 170 million gallons of untreated combined sewer overflow from being discharged into Burlington's water bodies. In addition, we have reduced the number of combined sewer overflow points within the city from over 12 back in the 90s to less than five. And those points have had less frequent discharges. In addition, it is beneficial to look back not so far in the distant past to Blanchard Beach in the early 90s to the mid 2000s. The beach was closed for over 15 years. We are now moving to beach closures that are daily instead of weekly or yearly. And while we acknowledge at this event or these events that we will discuss tonight are unfortunate and unplanned, most of these events comprised a majority of stormwater and were fully treated and partially disinfected. In addition, there is an Act, Act 86 that the state legislature passed in 2016 that really rightfully requires us to be transparent with the public. Both for Unpermitted and CSO Discharge Events. And so we as the public are going to be discussing these incidents rightly so into the future. We have many exciting projects, including the first in the state integrated planning effort and many green infrastructure projects that we'll touch on here in a second next. Our Water Resources Division just quickly comprises three regulated utilities, water, waste water, and stormwater. And you can see a number of our programmatic initiatives overlap these three different regulated utilities. Next. Now I'll pass it over to Assistant Director Megan Moore to walk through the recent wastewater incidents. Thanks for the time. And I just want to express again as a water quality professional, these discharges are very concerning to me and can certainly say that we have been spending many a sleepless night and many a day trying to figure out how we're going to address them now and well into the future. So I wanted to first address what we call the unauthorized wastewater discharges. So we have had three separate sort of events. They are all related to wastewater. They do have three separate root causes which doesn't mean a lot because it still means that wastewater is going into the lake, but when we try to break out how we're going to address them in the future, that is helpful. So the first one, April 16th, where just over 7 million gallons of treated but partially disinfected effluent was released. That was during a wet weather treatment event and we'll speak a little bit more about what that means in a couple of moments. And it was due to actual valve failure. That valve was immediately replaced and that whole valve area has now been placed on the Capital Planning Plan to look at it, make sure it's fully designed for maximum redundancy and make sure that all of these valves are designed in a way that they can be easily and proactively replaced. The way things were upgraded in 94, changing out and replacing valves is a much more difficult process than I as the manager would like it to be so that we can pursue proactive replacements well before anything fails. On May 21st, we had the release of a small amount of wastewater onto the Flynn Ave storm water system as the result of our paving contractor who released some material into our sewer system didn't inform us and then later on caused a sewage backup. We are billing that contractor for the cost of the cleanup and all the monitoring that we had to do and furthermore into the future, we're making it explicit that our paving contractors contact our city inspector anytime anything happens with our subsurface infrastructure so that we can get eyes on it and make a decision as to whether or not we need to clean it or take action. The last series of events, June 2nd and June 4th in which just under two million gallons of treated but partially disinfected wet weather flow happened and this is the one that I'm gonna spend a little bit more time talking about because it's the one that concerns us a little bit more because we do have potential continued vulnerability. So I guess next slide. So the main reason that the issue on June happened is because we have been seeing an increasing and in fact a doubling of what we call our strength of our wastewater, the biological oxygen demand. So this is also representative of the carbon that's coming into our wastewater system. While a lot of our processes, mechanical and chemical are not sensitive to this, the main heart of our plant is the biological system and the biological system acts a lot like a compost pile. You can't just toss a whole bunch of grass in it and expect it to be happy. It needs the right balance of carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen and so in this particular case we have a lot more carbon coming in than we need. If you can flip back a slide. So a number of things are happening as a result of this last event. We're drafting a full written incident report that we're gonna be submitting to DEC. We have adjusted staffing so our biological system is still a little bit stressed and so we wanna make sure when wet weather events happen we have more than enough people on staff and on call. We always have somebody on call but we would be considering having somebody actually staying at the plant and potentially having a second backup person on call to make sure that if anything were to happen we would have all hands on deck. Most importantly getting at that BOD issue we have been working over the past few years with our breweries and our cideries which we know to have high strength waste. It's a known fact across the nation that they produce higher strength waste than your typical residential customer would do. And so we're gonna be accelerating the pollution prevention plans and we've already met with the top three largest dischargers and have had really positive conversations about really near term interim steps that they can take as we continue to work with them on a larger more robust pollution prevention plan. We've also purchased some additional samplers so that we can get some good baseline data and figure out exactly what they're doing. And then on the process side we had been working with a Vermont based wastewater treatment expert and we've actually now bumped it up to work with a national wastewater treatment expert to make sure that as we're dealing with the source issue we're also making sure that there isn't something that we could be doing on the wastewater capital side. The last thing I'll say about this slide is it's come up in a lot of the comments is the role of the storm events in main plant. Main plant is designed and we'll get into that in a second to process storm water and combine sewer and that has great benefits for the city of Burlington. It does present some challenges when our plant is not operating at her tip top condition. If you can go two slides. So we're getting into this. Why is main plant, what's the big deal? Why do these things seem to be happening when storm events occur? Why haven't we figured this out? Next slide. So we have to take you back to 1994 where as Chapin mentioned, we the city had over 12 untreated. So there's no treatment whatsoever combines sewer overflow points, discharging many of them on Lake Champlain shore. And combined sewer, combined sewers are frequent design of cities on the East Coast where they're old cities. They only had one pipe and the wastewater and the storm water went into one. And these relief points are designed to prevent wastewater from backing up into people's homes because if we didn't have these relief points the water would still find a place to go or onto the surface where people would actually have more of an opportunity to come into contact with the highly concentrated sewage. It also in the past protected our plants from sort of getting blown to smithereens. Next slide. So with all of these discharges and we didn't know at that time exactly how many millions of gallons were discharging. We know that now because we monitor that in our wet weather system. But in excess of 150 million gallons we now estimate we're going out on an annual basis sometimes more, sometimes less in Burlington resulting in beach closures and probably general ickiness in the Burlington Bay. So in order to address this issue we did a number of things with the $52 million bond. The first thing was to actually upgrade the treatment plants for the phosphorus removal. But the last bit focused on this wet weather bit. And the first approach was to do CSO elimination and that was through sewer separation. That happened throughout the new north end and a little bit in the old north end. This is unfortunately without treatment. We just simply put a new pipe in, didn't let the stormwater mix with the sewage and it just goes straight to a water body. Obviously you're improving the sewage situation but we didn't know then what we know now which is stormwater pollution can cause long-term chronic impairments of water bodies due to phosphorus, due to bacteria, due to many other pollutants. And so while that was a solution of the past we don't believe that it's a solution moving forward in most situations. Next slide. The other strategy for CSO elimination was to block off all of those or many of those CSO points and get the water to the plant where it can actually receive treatment in a lot of situations and where at a minimum it can be screened in this big sort of washing machine where we get more solids to fall out by swirling the water, it's called the vortex, and by disinfecting it. So the main issue with CSOs is the bacteria, the high bacteria loading that can happen afterwards and so by disinfecting it you're really addressing that water quality problem. And in most situations at the plant when we have a wet weather event we're treating down to less than 10 E. coli colony per 100 milliliters which is a very low amount before it gets released into the lake almost a half mile offshore. Next slide. So as part of that work we were able to eliminate 12 or bring the 12 CSOs down to the five locations that we have now. Interestingly, I think the designers at that point we didn't know about Colchester Ave CSO or Pine Street at Lakeside CSO. Finding those was the direct result of having the storm water program launched in 2009 where we started enhancing our mapping which hadn't been updated since the 80s and unfortunately as part of that mapping found that our job was a little bit tougher than we thought. Next slide. So just for sort of contextual purposes if we look at the 170 million gallons that used to go out annually untreated, undiseffected and we look at just even what has happened year to date yes there has been 250,000 gallons that has gone out via the CSOs in 2018 and there's that almost nine million gallons that was partially treated but sorry, fully treated but partially disinfected. At that same time we've also actually fully treated and fully disinfected 51.5 million gallons and if we get to the end of the year I fully expected if it stays a typical rainfall year to be meeting that 170 million gallon or more mark of fully treated fully disinfected wastewater. Next slide. But our job is certainly not done. We do still have combined sewer overflows. We've had three with a very small short one at Gaiso Ave in this last big storm event. January 12th, April 16th and then most recently on June 18th which was a longer duration and larger volume one. We have been working on the combined sewer issue for some time. We as part of the chapter 2009 stormwater launch have implemented stricter regulations and through our integrated planning efforts we've been installing flow meters at these CSO points and continuing to identify wet weather management projects as well as increasing wastewater and stormwater capital reinvestment throughout the city. The one thing that we are adding as part of this recent event because of the more the public engagement and because we believe it is important based on our last our recent sampling is that we're gonna be enhancing our downstream sampling of waterways during the recreation season. So the law Act 86 doesn't require us to post speeches after a authorized CSO and it doesn't require us to sample but we did make that decision during this last event given the volume and we're prepared to continue with some sort of sampling regime to figure out are the elevated bacteria levels due to the CSO or potentially due to stormwater inputs. The area that we saw the elevated bacteria is actually somewhat equidistant between Inglesby Brook which we also know has had bacteria stormwater driven issues over time as well as the the the outfall point for the Pine Barge canal. So I can't definitively say yet what type what is driving the the bacteria issues but it needs further investigation before we move further. As I said, we've done a lot of we're already on the right path. We still have a lot to do specifically because this has come up in the questions our enhanced regulatory review of new developments. Not only are new projects so if you're on a green field and you're putting pavement down you have to manage that impervious 100% fully. Redevelopment projects whether it's the mall or the Pine Street deli redevelopments those projects at a minimum have to manage 50% of the existing impervious. So they're actually making things better. In the old days we would just let redevelopment happen and assume well you're not actually increasing the flows therefore you don't have to do anything but whenever one of these projects go in they're actually having to do more. Larger projects we actually engage them if they're increasing their wastewater flows substantially even though we have dry weather capacity at the plant we work with them to take off even more stormwater from the combined sewer system. So like a Cambrian rise project in addition to managing 100% of their stormwater they're also going to be managing stormwater on North Ave that currently goes to the combined sewer system. And then we've also been working with all of our other city project managers to embed stormwater management whenever and where we can in any project. Next slide. So because of some of this work we do still have combined sewers. The red there is highlighting Pine Street being our most active combined sewer overflow as terms of frequency but if you look deeper into the data you can see that there have been improvements. Namely for Park Street and North Champlain and GAISO the first three those are ones where we invested $1.2 million of ARRA funding to do stormwater reductions on the combined sewer. And since that time we have seen improvements both in the frequency and the duration. On Colchester Ave we discovered it and then quickly tried to fix it because it discharging right to the Winooski right above the salmon hole fishing area is not something that we were particularly fond of. And so through that we inspected the downstream pipe and found that it had a great deal of material that was restricting the capacity and so we were able to clean that pipe and that CSO has not gone off. Pine Street's a harder one. It doesn't have great soils for infiltration like the other projects. It doesn't have the sandy soils that can soak up stormwater and it's fairly built out. So getting into the fact that the 90s kind of represented not that it was an easy project by any means and for those of you who are around but it was a little bit of the low-hanging fruit and now we're entering the era of the mid-hanging and the top of the tree fruit and we're needing taller ladders and we're having to figure out smarter ways of getting to that fruit. Next slide. The super busy slide but this is representative of what we're calling the integrated planning effort. We're literally going and leaving no stone unturned as far as how we're going to address issues whether it's our separate stormwater water quality impact, whether it's the combined sewer system or whether it's the wastewater treatment plant and they all kind of work together. We're looking at public opportunities, private opportunities, actual infrastructure, programs, large storage facilities, small storage facilities, projects. Next slide. Such as the ones on the next page, green stormwater infrastructure where we're trying to integrate stormwater into all these other projects that are happening. We know that this is probably going to be an expensive endeavor and if we can achieve more of our community benefits while we're also meeting our water quality goals, we think that's the way to go. So again, some examples. Grant Street infiltration system, water leaves the road and actually goes into that depressed area and is able to soak in. If it overflows that, it goes into another structure that's similar to the one that we did on King Street and it actually soaks in underneath the surface of the road. Upper North Street infiltration bumpouts, those are some of the ones that I think are the most beautiful in the city and those also keep water entirely out of the combined sewer system. Whole bunch of other projects that I've listed on the lower right-hand corner including some ones in italics which are ones that are currently under design and a cut sheet of the Great Streets Project. That Great Streets Project, we've worked really closely with the project managers and there's going to be stormwater bumpouts and permeable pavers. We are going to be managing run-off from the roadway in a way that we've never done it before here in Burlington and this is all going to help main plants not be as susceptible to these high peak flows. So looking beyond, there is still a challenge of even once we know what to do. If somebody gave me a list of everything that we needed to do for the next 20 to 30 years, we do still have another challenge which is figuring out how to pay for it. In our budget meetings, we talked about the fact that we're starting to fill in some of the numbers on our existing treatment components. There's stuff that we still need in the ground and it's still at main plant that isn't necessarily going to address our new challenges. We have to keep that running while we figure out what to do additionally. So the number, we're going to be continuing in this conversation but there is going to be likely a substantial additional investment not unlike what we saw in 94 in order to get us over this next hump. Next slide and I think you're there. So here are some of the additional resources available. The eight page document that we handed around this evening is also on our website. You'll see water quality history document. We have the informational releases of the incidents that we just discussed and we've talked about doing some additional public engagement especially around our integrated planning efforts to reach out, engage the public. We understand that they want to be heard and have ideas about how to help. We can help at our homes through managing stormwater at our homes through changing our practices at home but there is also a great effort that we can do together and we look forward to engaging key stakeholders in that effort. Thank you. All right, thank you for that presentation. Questions from the councillor? I know we have Councillor Buscher to start out with. Councillor Buscher. So thank you. You know, I've watched Channel Three, if Channel Five's here, sorry, but I watched Channel Three and their coverage has been disturbing to me because it suggested an ignorance on the city's part. It just didn't seem like it was covered thoroughly and I'm hoping that we can get more of this information out as you're attempting to do it. But as you were explaining to begin with, what were they, unplanned, not, you termed the first events that happened this year. Unpermitted. Unpermitted. Unpermitted, okay. Permit violations you could also call. So it seems like we've had more of them this year but I have no way of knowing whether in the last, since 2010 to now, if they've been these incidents, I know there have been, but I don't know if there are more of them now. And if that's indicative of, as one event, suggested faulty infrastructure with the plants or whether it's other things that are making all of this happen, you touched upon the breweries and the complexity of that. So it really, I'm really, can you just, is that information available, first of all, so that people can see if they're increasing or whether it's just the fact that they're all coming at this point and people are very concerned about it, obviously, as they should be. So is that information available? I don't have a tallade. We did have a issue at the plant, 3.5 million gallons in late March of last year, which was due to a similar biological issue, but not the same biological issue. That was the incident in which our bacteria population actually was killed off by something toxic. So there was a similarity there. I mean, because I'm concerned about the same thing, I'm not seeing a, they don't all have the same root cause. So while there have been this cluster of events, they are not enough related, except by the storm event piece for me to think that there is something larger going on. We are trying to tackle the storm water because it will help us when our plant is having issues for whatever reason, we won't be as susceptible to having our bottle shaken, if you will, which is somewhat what happened in June for us. So I just wanna say that, back in the mid 80s, when there was separation in the new North end, the reality was it was cost prohibitive to do it in the older part or the Hill section of Burlington, it just wasn't possible. And I'm probably, I probably think that's gonna still be the case. So I am concerned about the $8 to $10 million and how we're going to afford that, plus coupled with the $1 million a year for whatever it was, wastewater and the $3 million a year for five years for storm water. Financially, I've got a lot of concerns about the affordability, knowing that we need to do something, but how are we gonna afford to do that? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Busher. We have up Councillor Pine, then Dean and Tracy. Thank you. I wanted to check on the last big infrastructure investment may have been Vermont's largest public works type project, the $52 million project that you spoke about. And I can't recall how we paid for it. I think it was a combination. Still paying for it. We're still paying for it today. But I believe there was some federal and some state resources as well. Is there a statewide progress that has been made on the issue of how to clean up Lake Champlain would we be able to tap into that, you think, is it? Well, things didn't go exactly how I would have liked them to go this year. And I have to say, because of all the other stuff that is happening in water resources, I don't know exactly where things landed. So it's an ongoing conversation about how, largely because Burlington, we have more issues and they're going to be more expensive for us to fix. And so we as Burlington, the city of Burlington are very interested in how the state as a whole might come together both for innovative approaches like water quality trading, but also to be able to raise money across the state so that we may be able to access not just loans, which is what we currently have on the table, but also grants and subsidies. There is not money specifically earmarked for very, very large projects. There are small pots, which we're trying to leverage here and there. And we're quickly trying to get as many projects as shovel-ready as possible so that when some pot of money does appear, whether it's federal or state, that we can go after it very effectively and not be scrambling to try to put packages together. I would just advocate that since we are a regional center for commerce and industry, and I mean really Vermont benefits from having Burlington here. So Burlingtonians ought not to be viewed as the only way to cover the cost of that type of infrastructure. The lake is everyone's. I mean, we are really, you know, we're Vermont's biggest city, but that doesn't mean we have the ability to withstand that kind of cost for sure as one community. Thank you, Councilor Pine. Councilor Dean and then Councilor Tracy. Thank you. I just have two comments to be followed by a quick question. I think first I'll note that Councilor Roof and I were on channel 17 and had a call come in from a constituent asking this specific question about, specific concerns about the combined sewer overflows and had we had the document that you prepared for us tonight with this information, which is primarily good news. I think this is really good news. I think we would have had the ambition to kind of answer that question, at least have a beginnings of it. So thank you very much for that. I also want to note that one of the things that is really new and innovative is the notion of keeping stormwater from reaching the central plant and those green infrastructure and containment that allows it to be treated on site. And that just the note here is that City Hall Park, a central element of that design is that infrastructure that keeps that stormwater from making it to the plant and having to be treated. So it is one of the critical elements of that design. So my final question kind of follows to that. What percentage is there a way for us to look forward and understand what kind of contribution those innovative measures can make in improving and reducing the amount of stormwater that we have to treat at the central plant? Yeah, I mean we are able to quantify and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head. I know that City Hall Park right now doesn't have any stormwater treatment and if you go to the southwest corner you can see the pile of sediment that is there after any rain events. It does have green space, but that green space is highly compacted. So any changes, design changes where you're going to actually be able to maintain permeable surface is a key feature that's your first sort of infantry and stormwater management, but additionally it's gonna have two significantly sized bioretention areas or rain gardens where water is gonna be directed. Some of it will be infiltrated, we don't have great soils here and so a lot of it's just gonna be slowed down and slowly released to the plant. That's gonna be handling the stormwater coming from City Hall Park as well as at least the last design I saw is gonna be capturing some of the water that's coming off of the northbound lane of St. Paul between Maine and college. So projects like that we can quantify by project what the benefit will be. What we're working on and why the integrated plan is taking a little bit longer than we had originally intended is a improved hydraulic and hydrologic model which is gonna be able to kind of tell us what our target is. So if we want things to look like X at the plant, how many acres of impervious, how many gallons of stormwater do we need to go and search for? So we can then line that up with we have currently a giant map of the city with every single stormwater opportunity that we can dream up and we need to go through and prioritize those and figure out which ones are the biggest bang for the buck, get the most community benefits. We don't just wanna put things underground if we can bring them to the surface and have them do other things and then we need to figure out how long it's gonna take us and what the community can afford. One of the critical pieces of the integrated planning process is a financial capability assessment where you're able to total up all of the work that you need to do and look at your community's financial capability and say DC, EPA, we're gonna do it but it's gonna take us 35 years instead of 20 years and therefore we need to stretch it out over longer but we're gonna front load the biggest bang for the buck projects early on so we're getting as far down the field as we can and it's just that last five yards that might take us a little bit more time, the sort of knee of the curve. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Dean. Councillor Tracy and then Councillor Hartnett. Thank you, President Wright and thank you for the presentation. Two questions. The first has to do with trees and the difference between mature trees. So when we talk about something like a city hall park where we're taking out large mature trees and then not replacing them with anything in terms of size that's comparable but then incorporating all these additional features, is there some give and take there? Is it, you're improving the stormwater features but you're also taking away things that slow the fall of that water to the ground and then you're also removing something that sucks up that water under the ground. Is that possible that there's a trade-off there because I feel like we're being presented as this panacea when it feels like it's a trade-off in some ways. There is a trade-off. It's very hard to model the exact impact of trees and certainly trees that are older and healthier and have robust tree canopies will capture and evaporate more stormwater and to some degree will suck it up. I would still say on whole city hall park with the great streets, I don't have the total but I have been told that overall the changes that we're gonna make to our downtown street landscapes but there will be overall more trees and there will be more over more trees over impervious surface. So a tree over grass is great and does a good job but a tree that has healthy soil that we're gonna be providing as part of the great streets effort that allows it to have a huge canopy but it's overhanging in pervious surface is a more beneficial stormwater tree. So if you take the big picture view if we're overall planting more trees particularly in that tree belt area that's an overall positive for the plant. I would still say also that the bio retention that we're putting in the park would likely offset even if you were to try to tabulate the impact of the lost trees that we would still be making a gain on the stormwater side. It is unfortunate that that is part of the design but I think it still makes sense from a stormwater perspective. Okay, thank you and then the other question I had was with regards to the stormwater surcharge that's given to breweries. So that in the mayor's memo that that's been assessed since 2013. I'm wondering if it makes sense to go back and look at that again and think about increasing that, understanding the incredible costs that are in front of us even though the voters have put up a lot of money in the fourth of the capital plan in recent years does it make sense to ask the breweries to do more given the intense impact that they're having? Yes, and that's why we're doing our robust investigation and composite sampling of the discharge from large commercial users so that we can get a sense of the baseline and understand they may be able to improve their discharge through side-streaming of waste sending spent hops or grains to a compost project or to a farm as feed. So depending on what actions they can take prior to discharge, they can help lessen the load that then we have to take and then the surcharge can be tailored accordingly. Okay, thank you. And there are other possible high strength dischargers that we need to sample and analyze and potentially grow our net of who we're regulating in this way. If they're discharging more than domestic wastewater, there is potential that we could be doing something with them. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Tracy. I have Councillor Hartnett, then Councillor Mason and then the mayor, I think we'll be ready to move forward. I just wanna go back to not permitted wastewater treatment. So I just, I was looking at the chart up there and I'm not sure what the penalty was. What did you say? How do you deal with the contractors or the pavers? I mean, to me, they wouldn't do business in Burlington if they did it. That's, it would be cut and dry. I mean, it wouldn't be a fine. It wouldn't be this. If they did this and knowingly did this and I'm sure they are aware of what's going on, to me, they wouldn't, they just wouldn't be invited back to do business in Burlington. I mean, I think it's that serious and I think we need to start thinking that way. I mean, people ask, well, how are we gonna pay for this? We have no option, we have to pay for it because if Lake Champlain becomes a cesspool, who cares what the pause passes look like on the bike path, right? No one's gonna stop and look, right? And so this is the driving economic engine of Vermont. As Councillor Pines said, the water has a great deal to do with that. So whether we start looking at dedicated tax, whether we start looking at different ways that we don't have a choice, we have to pay for it. So I would hope that we crack down on abusers that do business in our city and no one will do that. And then I do have a question. Is it possible or is there any way we know that any other surrounding seizure towns have an impact on our stormwater like Manuski or South Burlington? Are we aware? Could you explain that to me? It's been brought to my attention before that. Do we share? We only share a very small portion with South Burlington. South Burlington currently discharges Hadley Road, discharges to our wastewater plant and there is some stormwater on that system. They're actually in the process of pumping their flow now to them and so it will be removed. We don't receive any flow from Manuski. South Burlington was the only sort of minorly shared community, but we charge them. And minimal impact is what you're saying? Yes, it's a very small portion. I mean, it's mostly Burlington that we need to deal with. Okay, yep, thanks. Thank you, Councilor Hartnick. We have Councilor Mason and then I'll go to the mayor. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you, Megan and Chapin for this presentation. My question relates to the April 16th discharge. I understood, now I understand why it was a faulty valve and I understand the recommended action is we replace that valve in the spot and we're looking as a part of our capital budget, like a greater, I guess my question is sort of, how did we not know about, I mean like, it's 7.1 million gallons, like are not bells going on? I mean, looking at that discharge relative to the others. The bells are going off and the size of, that's what I was trying to say is the size of the discharge in those particular events was due entirely to the size of the storm event that was happening, not due to anything that was happening at the plant. Bells are going off. Unfortunately, while the storm event's happening, all you can do is hold on and in that case, we were trying to deliver as much chlorine as possible and it wasn't going there because this valve had failed. So as soon as we could, we changed it out. I still had the question though and that's what got to the redesign of, it was still an older valve. We know that maybe it would have been corroded but why hadn't we been able to change it out? And that's when we kind of got into the fact that it is not easy to change these out without sort of reconfiguring the whole system. Okay. So I like that answer and of course that fact doesn't come out when the story comes out. It makes it sound like, oh, we've just discharged 7.1 million gallons into the lake and weren't doing anything but understanding that a storm was going on and there was nothing, you know, was a faulty valve. You couldn't do anything about it. We were aware of it and dealt with it as soon as we could. And I would say June 18th. So the plant has been doing better and even though June 18th we had a untreated discharge of I think it was 145,000 gallons, the plant processed successfully, fully treated and disinfected 17.5 million gallons because of that massive volume of rain. Great. So it routinely processes crazy amounts of water and does it well but when things don't go right during a storm event, we are susceptible. Great. And the plant itself, that upgrade was over 20 years ago and we will be paying, there was a balloon payment on that 52 million dollars. We had to refinance 16 and a half million dollars, had to be refinanced just in 2014. We'll be paying that through 2034. So as we're trying to find the affordability approaches to continue to reinvest, we're really gonna be pressed to have to do it wisely because of our other requirements and that's where integrated planning first in the state gives us a way to do it that traditionally they'd put stormwater in one regulated bucket, wastewater in another and tell you what you had to do in each bucket without any correlation. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mason. Mr. Mayor, you have the floor. Thank you, President Wright. I wanna make sure, first of all, that Councilor Busher's question and maybe I misunderstood the question but was being fully addressed of are these events happening more frequently than not and I didn't know if that included the CSO events or was it sort of all events or were you asking about any specific events if I can ask the Chair for clarification? May I respond? You may, Councilor Busher. I was actually looking at all events because it seemed like there were more, thank you. So could we just, I just wanna make sure, to me this is really one of the most significant parts of the presentation. Can we go back to the slide that had the CSO numbers on it just cause I think it is, go forward one. You went past it, so there you go. So I just, to anyone who, I think there is this question out there about these combined sewer overflows. They've been in the news a lot in the last couple of years and I think people think this is a problem that is getting, that is really bad in getting worse whereas as this chart attempts to show the opposite is true. The reason I think the public has the sense that the events are getting worse is because in 2016 there was a new state law passed that mandated reporting every time there was a CSO event. Before that these happen all the time and I think we had certain statutory requirements but they weren't the sort of real time posting of the events that happen now. So up until, you can see up until 2000, certainly before the stormwater utility was created in 2009 which I think was a really significant event, you had the North Champlain, the Park Street and the Gazzo Outflow going off frequently every year. One, supposes one has to assume that the same thing was happening with the Colchester and the Pine Street but we don't have data for that cause we didn't even know they existed. That the existence of those pipes had been sort of lost to history and we weren't aware, no one knew whether or not they were happening. So since the stormwater utility is created you can see just steady progress with all of the known, those four known CSO outflows are down to happening just one or time perhaps a season for the last couple of seasons. Maybe in 2015 we had three on Park Street. The Colchester one was discovered in 2009 and has now been largely addressed. The Pine Street one was just discovered in 2015 and there's a lot of, as you heard, urgent attention going to that. So with respect to the CSOs, I hope the public starts to understand the amount of hard work and investment that is going into improving the situation and knows that their hard earned dollars are being put to good use and we're making progress with that issue. I hope, I also, you know, Councilor Dean said this is mostly a good news presentation. To me, I see substantial good news. In addition, not only here, but also in what is now happening with understanding and making strategic investments in stormwater runoff in general, how that is aligned with the plans that are happening that we are building right now. These green infrastructure projects is gonna make the situation even better and even the one area where we are facing new challenge and one could argue we're going in the wrong direction with this high strength waste, that is in some sense a function of progress and growth within our industrial sector, which is, you know, these are some of our most dynamic, I think publicly appreciated new businesses in town right now that have changed the character of the waste and I think our team is on it and responding to it and I think the urgency of that has been made even clearer by the events so far this year. We have the regulatory authority to address it and we're gonna get it addressed as quickly as we can. So, you know, I appreciate all the work that's gone into in a short order, putting this presentation together by Chip and Megan and your team and we will be trying to amplify the discussion tonight with front porch forum posts and other messaging around this because I think it really, maybe more so than any other area of city life, I feel like I have the sense here that our work is the work of a relay runner where we've inherited this 100 plus year old challenge that major progress was made on in the 50s, major progress was made on the 90s and another very important step was taken with the creation of the stormwater utility in 2009. We're now, it falls to us to do this fine grain detailed difficult work, but it's happening and there's more progress ahead if we stick with it and I hope the council and the public will continue to support these investments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. We appreciate that on fairly short notice. One last thing was mentioned to me by the city councilor. Would it be possible for you to begin to give notifications to the council when there's beach closings? We actually have a meeting tomorrow where we're talking about the whole notification process and if there's other tools like Nixle and some other ways to get the word out because we're not trying to hide anything, we just need to access the message. It would just be good for us to, and have we faced penalties from the state for these issues? I have not for at least under my tenure, I believe maybe it was five years ago where there was an actual disinfection failure caused by an operator error and I do believe we did pay a penalty for that. So we're cooperating with DEC. Yeah, DEC's requested our incident report for the June 2nd and 4th incident. So that one is still outstanding. I would say that DEC's last two unscheduled inspections of our wastewater plants both came back with excellent ratings and we were gonna include the actual excerpts from those reports, but didn't wanna make the report too long tonight. All right, thank you, appreciate that. Thanks for the report, Chapin and Megan. And with that, we are gonna move from stormwater to trees. And that's item 5.07, but I am going to recognize Councilor Nodell for... President Ryan, I'd like to request a recess. All right, Councilor Nodell has requested a recess before and when we come back, we will be getting into the tree issue, or item 5.07. I'm going to grant a goal is to be back in about 10 minutes. So 9.35 or so within a minute or two. Taking off someone? Channel 17 is back. All right, we're back. And Councilor Hartnett, don't leave. Where did Councilor Hartnett? I'm gonna need you to move this. So we're back reconvening from the recess at 10.38, 9.38, excuse me. And we're back in item 5.07, which is a resolution authorization to proceed with planning, design, engineering, and project administration for the reconstruction of City Hall Park. And I'm going to recognize Councilor Hartnett, Councilor Hartnett to move this resolution. Thank you, President Wright. I would ask for a second and then the floor back. Move the, wave the reading and ask for the second. Councilor Hartnett is moving the resolution, waiting for a second, seconded by Councilor Nodell. Councilor Hartnett, you have the floor back. Okay, thank you. It's been quite a process, I will say. I do appreciate all the work that the Ad Hoc Committee did. I have talked to a number of counselors over the last couple of days. I'm not gonna say they're not frustrated, they are. They believe the Ad Hoc Committee had a narrow work space to do and that they've done their, they did their work and they came back with a vote. Okay, and that vote is something, really something that we should be voting on tonight. But the reality is, if there was ever a chance to reconsider, one of those counselors on that committee would be reconsidering and all that Councilor Busher addressed her issues, I'm sure she's gonna speak to it. Okay, feels very differently than she did the night she made that vote. As you see, she's not a co-sponsor of even this resolution. I think it was disappointing, to be honest with you, we spent a lot of time, we did a lot of work. Councilor Busher spent a lot of time in the park and she really came with some very thoughtful presentation of keeping some trees and we kept those trees and I'll be honest with you, I did not vote for, I think I just voted for one Councilor Busher's recommendations. But we spent almost two and a half hours the final night and the original vote came back that we would go with, I think it was the combination of AC out of the three recommendations that they gave us. And since then, we've had some changes of opinions. Not mine, to be honest with you, okay? I'm a fan of this design, we spent a lot of work, I'm ready to go forward as is, but I don't think it's the will of the rest of the Council or at least a percentage of the Council. So I'm not gonna waste any time, I'm gonna offer an amendment to the resolution. Okay. Is that okay if I do it now or do you want me to hold off on that? Well, I think Councilor Nodell is, Councilor Nodell, as we know, has an amendment on the agenda. Councilor Nodell, are you ready with language or do you wanna, Councilor Busher also is going to be, I understand is going to be asking to divide the question here. So I'll recognize Councilor Nodell. Okay. Can I just move it? Sure, you can just move it. Councilor Busher, are you ready to make your motion to divide the question? May make it more cleaner if you're going to do that if we- Right, I need to do that after we have a resolution intact because if there's going to be an additional whereas clause I need to define how I want the question divided. Okay, so you're not ready for that. All right, we'll go back to Councilor Nodell. Okay, I just need like two minutes to make email list to everybody. Okay, that's fine, because I'd like to talk about that at a lot committee councilor. Back to Councilor Hargill, while Councilor Nodell finishes that. I would like to go back, I mean, you know, going back from really stage one of this particular project as I think one of the keep it part green people spoke tonight that we have worked to save numerous trees. And I think we're up to almost 19 trees that we have saved. Okay, so I do think it's unfair, not from all of them, but from some of them to say that this administration, this council hasn't compromised. I think we have compromised from day one on this project. Okay, maybe not to the extent that they would like, but there has been compromise and a lot of hard work. I'll be honest with you, I've heard this from day one as well, that we're building this park to get rid of bad behavior or homeless people. You know, that's offensive to me. Okay, if that was the case, I wouldn't be supportive of this park, right? I'm building this park to be in addition to our downtown, to our church street marketplace, to see activities there. Potentially even our holiday tree at this park, right? Kids playing in water parks, possibly skating on ice skates in the winter time, right? This activity we don't see now at all, okay? And it's interesting, I hear people come back and speak at public forum and they say, oh, I've been in the park a lot lately. It reminds me of Boeves restaurant, right? Our business got to be not great and they decided to close, but then when they made that decision, you couldn't get into a place and there was five mile line every night to get into the place because it was announced it was closed. Now we make some announcement that we want to change City Hall Park and we want to bring some new life to it and bring some excitement to it. And all of a sudden now people are saying, oh, everybody's in the park and we're going to ruin this, we're going to ruin that. And the fact of the matter is that, you know, if we're not changing, then we're falling behind, right? And this is a beautiful park and it is going to be a park for everybody. And I'm excited about it. And so I hope this compromise that we're about to lay out tonight is really the end of that discussion. And I hope we can move forward. And the other reason I'm hoping for a compromise tonight is that I like this process that we just went through. It does engage the public. It brings them in. It saves us from going to court. It saves us money. I think it's a process that I hope we can use down the road. And if we can't compromise now, then we'll never use it again. And I think that will be unfortunate. So I hope Councilor Nodell is now ready with her amendment and we can move forward on this. And I hope everybody can support this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Hartnett. Councilor Nodell with the amendment. Thank you, President Wright. I've now emailed this to the council and the mayor and city attorney and to Ms. Oberg. So I would move as far and so it should be in your inboxes. So the motion to amend is to insert the following language at line 82, be it further resolved that the council expresses its appreciation for the work of the ad hoc committee and seeks to add an additional two trees to the city hall park plan as follows. The retention of one more existing healthy tree to be identified at the discretion of the city hall park design and project management team. And the addition of one more new tree to be located within a hardscape area to be identified at the discretion of the city hall park design and project management team. All right, so we have the amendment. Councilor Second by Councilor Hartnett. So the amendments on the floor, discussion on the amendment. Question from Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. For those of us who have not been as intimately involved with some of the details, I guess my question to the design team is, can this be effectuated without altering the design or delaying this project? Who wants to respond to that question? Mr. Mayor. Thank you, President Nodell. We're going back in time, but that's okay. President Wright and I was wanting to speak to the amendment by Councilor Nodell. And I think the nature of the question is both, there's a sort of a technical answer and then there is the question of the administration's support or not for this and to speak quickly to both. Technically, we believe there will be a way to save, at least want that we will be able to save somehow an additional existing tree if that is what it takes to get the compromise and get a consensus tonight. In terms, so technically it will not happen, probably it can't happen that we see with the existing design short of saving the crab apple trees, which we've given you a lengthy memo as to why we think there is a problem with that. Where we will be able to solve the additional tree is not entirely clear in that if it had been easy to do, it would have been found by the committee or in the months preceding that. But the team is willing to accept this to get this done tonight. And I think there's technically a way possible that will probably involve some form of redesign. The, but it will be modest. In terms of the administration's posture on this compromise, I do just want to make sure that the public and the council sees the history proceeding tonight that is captured in the memo submitted to the council as part of the evolution of tree plan for alternative interim concept for public gathering spaces. As council Hartnett alluded to, that memo shows that prior tonight, despite the suggestions that there has not been compromised, there were six existing trees that were saved in the 2016 public comment. There were additional five trees that were added to the plan. Healthy and existing and new trees that were added during the DRB process. And then in the ad hoc committee process, there were an additional eight trees within the park as well as one that is now outside the boundaries of the park that the city committed to making good faith efforts to support. So that is a history leading up till tonight. It has been one of sustained attempts at finding compromise and finding a way that accomplishes all the goals of this plan. While also recognizing the input of the public is certainly my hope that with this suggested Councilor Nodell amendment, we have finally arrived at something that we can move forward with and get into construction in 2019. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Discussion by the city council on the amendment. Councilor Nodell. I just wanted to speak briefly to it. I appreciate the mayor's support for the amendment and I understand that it will involve some work to come up with some good solutions but I have a lot of confidence in the team. And if this amendment does pass, I will be supporting the overall resolution to move forward with the park. I did need to get more of trees to feel like we arrived at a place that I think in the long run will be a park that will serve the people of Burlington well. I think that it is true that at every stage we have been adding more. I think we need to recognize the role of the keep the park green group that really act focused on that single issue and just kept it in front of us. And I don't think we're going as far as they wouldn't like us to go but that's in the nature of a compromise. That we arrived somewhere that enough of us can feel good about. And so I just, Councilor Roof was working hard today. Several Councilors were working hard today to try to get to this point and I'm excited about, I hope, getting to final closure tonight with a good solution. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you, Councilor Nodell. Any other Councilor which wants to weigh in? Councilor Dean. Thank you, President Wright. I think I would like to just for those people who are looking in tonight, it would seem that adding one additional tree and saving one healthy tree should be an easy, easy compromise. But I think that we've seen through the hours of meetings that happened at the ad hoc committee looking very, very carefully at the plan that this is not easy. In fact, there was two and a half hours of tree by tree debate about how we could save additional trees and we weren't able to find this additional two trees to add. So just to say that it's easy, I think is minimizing the difficulty of the design team faced in balancing all of the needs and the desires for increased use of the park. So I'm not yet sure how I will vote on this amendment. I'll let that happen in the next few minutes, but I do wanna emphasize that this is a difficult task that we're assigning to the design team. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Dean. Any other Councilor who wishes to weigh in? Councilor Hartnett. Thanks, I'll be brief. I just wanna be clear and just adjust Councilor Dean's comments. Nobody is suggesting that this is going to be easy. I think we all know it's gonna be difficult. I think what Councilor Nodal and other Councilors I heard say during our discussion is that they have great confidence in the team that's sitting across from us right here that they'll be able to do this. And I do as well. And I'll say it again, too much work, too many resources, too many years of really making a change at this park. Are we gonna let it slip away at this point? Hell no, right? And that's what compromise is about. And so we're here tonight and we're this close to it and it's not gonna be easy. And I appreciate everybody giving on this and it makes it stronger. That's what city government's all about. It makes it stronger that we can do this. And it shows the people that, we heard tonight, who do you work for? We work for the city of, we work for the people of Burlington, right? That's who we represent. And I think they'll look at this night and they'll say, that's what we expect from city government, okay? Nobody's gonna walk away here totally happy, right? But that's what compromise is all about. And it's not gonna be easy. And I appreciate the time and the effort that that team has put in. We talked about the ad hoc committee. We hardly have mentioned the team that's sitting here with us tonight and the work that they've done. And I appreciate everything that you guys have done. All right, but we're here tonight. We're this close. Let's close the deal. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Hartnett. Councillor Tracy, I'm gonna say a couple of words after that. I think we may be moving, ready to move forward. But Councillor Bush, you're still lurking in the weeds there. And so I'm expecting that she will be- I'm lurking in the trees. She will be lurking in the trees. She's lurking in the crab apples and getting crabby. And we will be ready for Councillor Bush's motion after Councillor Tracy. So I will be supporting the amendment. I wanna thank all those that were working hard to get this forward. I think that it moves forward at least to some degree, what at least a little bit, a slight bit, I think, of what the Keep the Park Green folks wanted. I think it's important to note that they put forward numerous proposals in the context of the ad hoc committee. And I don't think any of them really moved forward in terms of like they put out a proposal and that got voted on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but so I think it's important to recognize that in this. As we're saying, it's a compromise. Well, this is part of that compromise is that they put out a lot of proposals in good faith. They went there. They sacrificed their ability to appeal. And absent, I think this amendment, they kinda walk away empty-handed in the sense that they didn't get their proposals. They get more trees, but at the same time, they don't, their proposals were not really heard or moved forward on. So I think that that's important to note. I think also when we talk about the difficulty of it, I think we made the job a whole lot more difficult when in the initial resolution, we didn't talk about, we took out the clause about the balance between the hard and soft scape. So when you don't change any hard scape, when you resist changes to design, it makes choices like this, like this amendment where we're only saving one more tree that much more difficult because you aren't willing to change design. You aren't willing to change the percentage of hard scape within that design such that it becomes incredibly difficult to save more trees. So that's just a couple points of context that I wanted to add, but I will be supporting the amendment. Thank you, Councilor Tracy. Councilor Roof. Sorry, I'll just take a moment. I just wanna make sure that folks at home and folks on the table understand what's going on. So for anyone who's undecided or thinking what's going on, just for clarity's sake, so I'll be supporting this amendment very much so because I think that with it, we can get to a strong majority of the Council to be, I hope, to a strong majority of the Council to support moving forward because in the absence of this amendment, I fear that we may not get there. And the project in and of itself could be at risk. And so for any of those who are undecided, I just wanna remind you that an act here, an act of compromise can get us to, I hope, a form of a plan that is at least actionable because the alternative I think would be a failure of leadership and a problem because we've worked how long on this? Seven years in the entire process. I think it's time and I appreciate everyone that came together on this last compromise to get it over the finish line. Thank you, Councilor Roof. Compromise clearly is not a dirty word. As the person that chaired the ad hoc committee, just a couple of words, I do think that the committee did work in good faith. I wanna thank everybody that served on the committee, including the citizens, Monique Fordham and Donna Walters. I think that you made good points. You brought a lot to the table and you had tremendous passion on this issue and I appreciate that and I hope that you do at the end feel like it was worthwhile. I know that for me on the committee, I wanted to support to save all the crab apples. I voted for that. I lost four to three but that was my, and I voted for Councilor Busher's amendments but it's about compromise and I was prepared to support Councilor Nodell's original amendment tonight but again, the votes weren't there for that. So I support this slightly scaled back amendment and I hope that again, that you feel like this was a worthwhile exercise. So I think we're prepared to vote but Councilor Busher, do you have an amendment to divide the question? Not yet, this is only voting on the amendment so. Okay, so we're gonna vote on, we'll vote on the amendment. All those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Councilor Dean, was there anyone else in there? No, so the vote is 11 to one in favor of the amendment. The amendment passes 11 to one, the amendment that was changed during the recess. Councilor Busher. Yes, well thank you very much President Wright. First of all, I would like to speak to the resolution because I didn't speak during the amendment time and then I'm going to move to divide the question. I'm gonna take the mystery out of dividing the question. The first two be it further resolve clauses, the first two now therefore be it resolved and the next one be it further resolved, the two dealing with the trees. I would like to have those acted on as one action because that is an action, that's saving trees. The second action is the last be it further resolve clause which talks about committee, I'm sorry I wanna use my mic, which talks about recommence, incurring planning design and recommitting to the design. I really didn't support that design and I'd like not to have to vote against the whole resolution. So that's the rationale for my request. But first let me just speak to the resolution as a whole. I think that I took the limitations of the resolution of the council passed to heart and really tried to work within those constraints and found that next to impossible to do. I really wanna thank the arborist who spent a Monday evening in the park with me going around and looking at all the trees and trying to figure out how to save some of the more of the healthy trees and what came forward were a bunch of as counselor Hartnett recognized a bunch of resolutions or amendments proposals that were either supported or not by the ad hoc committee. And in that laundry list that starts at line 70 and goes through line 81, there's a tree that isn't in stellar health but will last for another 10 or 15 years maybe. And then there is also, most importantly, then I wanted to call attention to the rest of the council, lines 80 and 81, which talks about a tree that is really beautiful, it's an American elm that is in wonderful health. And although there is not a firm commitment to save that tree, there is a commitment, a good faith effort, which I really wanna make sure really does happen to determine whether the park construction can be modified in order to retain if possible the American elm. And I really want, I really hope the counselors go and look at that tree because it really is magnificent and I think it's deserving of staying in our city. So I worked really hard and to try to bring more trees into the, or save more trees or add trees to the plan and this was the best I could do. I wanted more but this is what I got and I do agree that it is about compromise. Tonight I wanted to actually have three more trees, retain two healthy trees and add one, which I call the barren hardscape. It's the area right behind Reras and BCA. I know now that the amendment doesn't really define where you're gonna put that tree, the new tree, but I'm certainly hoping you'll consider that area, which is somewhat devoid of trees when all is said and done. So having said that, I think that the process was a gut-wrenching one for me, actually. One that brought about a resolution that I hope that the council will support and so President Wright with that, I would like to request to divide the question with the separated actions of the two resolve clauses that deal with the saving of the trees as one vote and the second question being the final for the resolve clause that deals with the recommitting to the planning design and engineering. That's not debatable so we, it requires a second. So there's a motion on the table from Councilor Nodell to divide the question as she. Councilor Burscher. Councilor Burscher, excuse me. Is there a second to the motion? Councilor Pine seconds. So we have this, we have the second, it is not debatable. City Attorney Blackwood, this is, we're just, it's just like any other motion, right? To divide the question, we need to vote on this. Yes, I will point out that a motion to divide the question that has to, both parts need to be able to stand on their own. So I have raised that issue and Councilor Burscher feels strongly that her motion, both parts do stand on their own. Councilor Mason. Point of order. I don't understand that. The first question is whether we, we're approving modifications to a plan, which is the first question we're voting with no funding. The funding is the second piece. So how can you have the first piece without any funding behind it? I think that's a point of information. That is my question. Excuse me, point of information. Thank you, Council President Wright. That is my question as well. So with the question not be in order, I'm not sure the appropriate parliamentary question. I think that the chair can rule on whether or not the question is in order, given that the two parts do have to stand on their own. Councilor Mason, could you restate your concern? My understanding of how the questions have been divided. The first seeks our approval of modifications to the plan. The second question, which needs to stand on its own, then is the funding for the modifications that we just approved. So I don't understand how they can be unlinked. There's no funding if the first question passes, but not the second. I think that's a point well taken. And I would not be able to have that go forward that way. Can I speak to this? You can speak to it, Councilor Bushard. So as I see it, the only things that are being added are two trees. There's no other money being associated with this. So I appreciate the fine point. I'm disappointed with the council that is making me vote against something that I worked really hard on. And for the community, I will let you know that, I really am committed to the trees and the park, the park the way it is, not the way it will become. Point of order, President Wright? Yes, Councilor Nodell. What's your point of order? I just want to clarify your earlier remark that did you rule that this motion is not in order? It appears to me, based on what Councilor Mason said, that it does not work the way it is. I mean, Councilor Bushard, could you change it? I can't change the resolution. Okay, so, all right. So I'll call the question. All right, the question has been called. We need a two thirds vote to call the question. All those in favor of calling the question, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Councilor Bushard opposes that. So we have called the question. So all those in favor now of passing the resolution, as amended, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Councilor Bushard is a no vote that passes by an 11 to one vote. And again, thank you to the citizens and your group for all the input. And we, I think we, we didn't get everything you wanted, but we certainly, I think you did achieve something for your group. Back to the agenda and we are on item 5.08 and ordinance regarding housing and suspension of revocation of certificate. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second rating, adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back after a second. Seconded by Councilor Bushard. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. The resolution or amendments before you offer consideration amendment in restate section 18-20, which relates to suspension and revocation of a certificate in its entirety. This section deals with an owner's certificate of compliance issued by the city to rental units that are required to lease or occupy the units. Excuse me, the proposed amendments are the ordinance committee's attempt to implement the terms of the settlement agreement, the city of Burlington sign relating to the civil suit brought by Joseph Montagno in 2016. In the settlement agreement, the parties agreed to revise the ordinance and implement the following principles. First, the city should provide written notice to affected tenants at the time the city communicates with a landlord that remedial action must be taken to avoid the suspension or revocation of the landlord's certificate of compliance. The purpose of the notice would be to inform the affected tenants of the nature of the issues so that tenants may understand and address the issues. Second, there should be a reasonable period of time between the initial notice to tenants in the imposition of a suspension or revocation. Third, if the suspension or revocation is directed to a specific unit, the city should provide written notice to the affected unit. If the suspension or revocation is directed to multiple units, the city should provide written notice to each affected unit or require the landlord to provide such notice. And then finally, the settlement agreement principle asked for any suspension or revocation of a certificate of compliance should be based upon violations that adversely affect other tenants or neighboring properties, use and enjoyment of their property. I believe that the ordinance committee has revised the ordinance to satisfy these principles. As revised, an owner's certificate of compliance can be suspended for one or more units for up to one year for violations of the city's minimum housing standards, non-compliance with fire, health, building, electrical or plumbing code. Those were not changed or controversial. The committee did, however, delve pretty deeply into the provisions permitting suspension for repeated criminal disturbances but added in protections as advocated by the ACLU, Legal Aid and others, requiring that there be three violations in a 12 month period and that those actually have to be adjudicated by a criminal court to finality and that they also involve the disturbance of the right of other residents and neighbors to the use and enjoyment of property. And finally, that the landlord has tried and failed to address the matter on his or her or its own. Committee also changed the provisions for suspension for repeated public nuisances but built in these same protections. I wanna thank, I know Bill Ward is here to answer any questions that the council may have. I wanna thank Bill and city attorney Jean Bergman who unfortunately left for their involvement in this lengthy process. The committee held three hearings, heard from a number of social service agencies including the ACLU and Legal Aid and I think made some very big concessions and strides in order to address the concerns, understanding in the nature of our last vote that it was a balancing and not everything that was asked for was given. So with that, I'll open it up for discussion or questions for Mr. Ward. Thank you, Councilor Busher. So, so councilor Maysson said some of what I wanted to say but in, I think this was probably one of the hardest ordinances that I've ever been involved in discussing and it was a real balancing act between empowering the individual, the resident or the tenant and the landlord and making sure that everyone's rights were protected. So as councilor Maysson said, Jean Bergman and Bill Ward were instrumental. Jay Diaz from ACLU. I don't even know if I'm gonna say this woman's name, I married O'Reilly from Vermont Legal Aid and Kelly Dority were also really incredible in their stating their viewpoints and trying to protect their individuals that they represent. And I also want to, sometimes it works to have an attorney present, sometimes it doesn't but councilor Maysson was instrumental in making this come together. So I want to thank him for his leadership helping us navigate through this really difficult ordinance. So that's it. Thank you, Councilor Busher. What is ready to, Councilor Pine? Well, we just received an email tonight about why the ACLU continues to oppose this. I was a little bit surprised to get it at this hour but I thought maybe committee members could or perhaps Mr. Ward could speak to some of those issues. I'm not sure who to attract this question to but according to Jay Diaz of ACLU, there's a number of outstanding issues in sections four through six regarding civil liberties it looks like and due process and perhaps some other stuff. If you could speak to that, I'd appreciate it. So I'm certainly happy to feel that. Councilor Maysson. Unfortunately that did come in at 750 so I have to confess I haven't had the opportunity to digest but certainly the ACLU was raising a number of concerns particularly relating to those with mental illnesses about additional protections. Those were fully vetted, presented both to code enforcement and to the attorney's office and ultimately the decision was they were putting a lot of onuses on code enforcement for example to diagnose a mental illness or be cognizant that code enforcement simply felt was beyond their capability. I also think there was a recognition that these are very real issues that we as a community are struggling with and it will require the assistance of other social service agencies and shifting that responsibility entirely upon the city did not seem at least I'll speak for myself to be a fair balance, excuse me between competing needs of maintaining some ability to deal with very challenging situations. So that, I don't know, Bill you have something else but that was my assessment of and I will confess I haven't gone through point by point but that's generally the concerns that Mr. Diaz was raising. Thank you Councilor Maysson for that clarification. Other Councillors hearing none. All those in favor of approval we are the action is that we are waiving the second reading and adopting the ordinance. All those in favor of that please say aye. Aye. Aye, any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you for the work on that ordinance committee and Councilor Mason. Item number 5.09 is another ordinance fire protection and prevention. Councilor Mason. Thank you President Wright. I'd like to waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back after a second briefly. Seconded by Councilor Bush or Councilor Mason you have the floor back. Thank you President Wright. This one was far less time consuming and controversial. I know Chief Locke, Mr. Simes are both here if we have questions but the explanation that we were provided when we took this up was in essence it was some updating. There were a number of, there was significant language in the ordinance that was somewhat dated and no longer applicable from a technological perspective. So from that sense it's nearly an update of the ordinance. I know Councilor Nodell also prudently asked like what does this mean to residents if I'm asked and I think the response back was really nothing. This is for the average homeowner or for any homeowner this is, these are updating changes and not going to impact anyone. Thank you. Thank you Councilor Mason. Councilor Busher. So yes, I think that there is little that the general public will need to know about this but it is a rewarding and an updating as Councilor Mason stated it changes the titles to reflect the current structure of the fire department and it increased fees for radio boxes and modified some other fees for permit reviews. And it also did something which I think is important. In the budget we used to transfer general fund dollars from one department to another. We'd charge somebody and we'd move that money from that department to another department. It was just shifting money around and this eliminates that and talks about it and says city-owned properties no fee shall be required for the portion of the estimated cost of any work and construction that is to be owned by a department of the city of Burlington whose primary source of revenue is the general fund. So I thought that was another important update in this ordinance so anyways thank you. Thank you Councilor Busher, others who want to speak to Councilor Dean. Just to thank you President Wright, a question about the radio callbacks technology. Is that something that's consistent with best practices around the country and is this something that will exist in five to 10 years? Yes, yes. I mean it certainly is one of the more communities are switching to it. There's very quick notifications so instead of having a third party monitor the fire alarm, it immediately ranks into the dispatch center which probably cuts about a minute to, you test other centers, a minute off the notifications so yes it is. And it's not something that would be done over data rather than having a separate system. Perhaps sometime in the future but today a radio system is a contemporary system. Thank you. Anyone else? Hearing none, all those in favor of taking action to waive the second reading and adopt the ordinance, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I think probably. That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And again, thank you to the ordinance committee and Chair Mason. Item number 5.10 is in a resolution, approval of residential electric vehicle rate tariff came out of the Board of Finance. Councilor Paul, would you like to move that? I think you do. I'll, thank you so much President Wright. I'll waive the reading and ask the floor back briefly after a second. Seconded by Councilor Nodell. Councilor Paul. Thank you. So this is about the tariff for electric vehicles and we did have a fairly lengthy conversation about this at the Board of Finance. If there are any questions, we have two people here from BED to answer them. Thank you. Councilor Paul. Questions for BED on this issue? President. Councilor Busher. Well, do you want someone to just say what this will offer? It's only one alternative that's gonna be put forward. So just for the public so they know about this. Certainly. That's a good question. General Manager Lenderville, give us a brief. Thank you. I will try to do this in one sentence, one more sentence. The EV charging rate that we're proposing will provide an overnight EV charging rate of 45% less than our current rate. Provided that if a customer elects to opt into this rate, that they charge at no other times during the day. So the period of charging would be between 10 p.m. at night and 12 p.m. noon the next day. So it'd be a 14 hour window where they may charge for what would be the equivalent of about a 8 cent per kilowatt hour charge, which is about 45% less than our standard residential, 14.7% 13.7 cent per kilowatt hour rate. This would be the first of its kind in Vermont. We're very excited to do it. Mr. Mayor. Thank you, President Wright. Just to add a sentence or two, because I think it's important and looks like Digger could have the exclusive here. I think this is big news. What's about to happen here if the council passes this and then the regulators pass this is Berlintonians will, if they choose to buy an electric car or lease an electric car instead of a gasoline car, we'll be able to get around for the equivalent of about 80 cents a gallon, which is so much ink is spilt when small changes in gasoline prices happen. This is huge news that Berlintonians with this rate would be able to really fundamentally change the economics of their transportation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councillor Dean. Just one half sentence that I wanted to confirm. I was able to be at the board of finance and see the presentation that Director Wunderbill did. It's my understanding that the electric cars can actually program the time when they start charging so that a customer does not inadvertently circumvent this and be charged a surcharge. Is that true? The technology, usually with the chargers, the cars themselves, plus there's add-on technology at the car for some reason can't do that. So the technology exists in many forms to allow that to happen. And my staff has actually tested it with the BED-owned electric vehicles and verified that you can program those charging times and that will reliably, you can plug it in and then it delays to start it charging. That's why we've selected a rate where the hours of off-peak time are the same every day of the month, every month of the year, weekend, weekday. We decided that no one wanted to reprogram their cars bi-weekly. Thank you, Councillor Dean. We're down to half sentences now. Councillor Powell. Okay, thank you. This actually is really good news for people who own electric vehicles. I mean, having owned a few of them, most people charge their vehicles at home at night. So there's no effort involved here because people are gonna do it anyway. I assume that it's to a large degree and I'm trying to remember the presentation mostly because of the fact that that's a time of low usage anyway. So it works to your, it works to BED's advantage, it works to the homeowner's advantage. I mean, the person who owns the electric vehicle, it's a win-win for everyone. It is, I'll just say very quickly, we've had a three-part strategy to move electric vehicles in the city. One is improving the convenience, but public charging, two is to lower the upfront cost, which we've done through our rebates and special financing, and three is reducing the ongoing cost which this special EV rate would do. And we think long-term, we will get people out of gasoline-powered vehicles if we make it easy as possible for them to buy an EV, charge it in their home overnight, and use it, using our 100% renewable power here at Brompton Electric. I agree, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Powell. You see, I knew you did want to move that, Councilor Powell. I did. Okay, so. Anyone else, any other? Councilor Zhang. I echo the sentiment of all the Councillors. This is a great and wonderful idea. Thank you, but just a quick question. Why this is not moved by the TUC Committee, but instead the Board of Finance? I'm not sure I'm always as well-versed as I should be on the appropriate channels, but generally we advance economic issues through Board of Finance. We have our, also I would note, our Electric Commission did approve this and asked for your approval of this. We met with them on three different occasions and briefed them out on this as recently as May for the final tariff that's before you tonight. Thank you. All right, I think we're ready to vote. All those in favor of waiving the reading and adopting the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passage unanimously. And we will now go to item number 5.11, implementation of a Market Factor Adjustment for the General Manager of Burlington Electric Department and I will recognize Councilor Paul again. We're not quite there. Councilor Paul. So thank you, President Wright. I'll waive the reading. I don't know if there is someone who's here to speak to this. After a second I wasn't planning on speaking to this so I don't need the floor back. So you don't need the floor back. I don't know if there is. The mayor, I think the mayor can say a few words. Okay. So we have the motion on the table and we have a second from Councilor Nodell. Thank you, Councilor Nodell. And Mr. Mayor, would you like to say a few words about this? Yes, President Wright. Thank you. I'll try to be brief. I think this is another important item before the council. In some sense, this item is overdue. The council will recall that about four years ago or less than four years ago, I think it was closer, three years ago, under general manager Lunderville's direction, the council approved a substantial reorganization of the Burlington Electric Department which eliminated multiple senior executive positions within the organizational chart for the Burlington Electric Department and then we went from, it's been a while since I looked at the ArtChart wordchats but I think three senior executive positions were eliminated totalling annual savings of approximately half a million dollars a year which is a substantial part of the more than a million dollars a year of savings to ratepayers that reorganization achieved. The net impact of eliminating those three positions was to put more responsibility in part upon the general manager to turn that position even more so than it had been before into what some have described as a sort of player manager position. This is a position that requires hard work. And currently it is not the highest paid or even close to the highest paid position within the Burlington Electric Department salary structure. This board of finance unanimously recommended resolution before you would change that would increase the salary for the general manager, the next general manager, not the current general manager but the next general manager to be approximately 15% higher than the next highest employees within BED. It will still in some arguable empirical sense be less compensated than many competitors but we think the combination of what will be I think a very appropriate compensation combined with how outstanding opportunity running the Burlington Electric Department at this point in its history is we are optimistic that this will result in a highly qualified candidate to be the next general manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Do we have Councilor Nodell for a motion to suspend the rules? Yes, President Rod, I moved to suspend the rules to continue my work beyond 1030 and that we complete our agenda which includes the additional executive session. Okay, thank you, Councilor Nodell. Second to that motion, Councilor Hartnett. This requires a two-thirds vote. All those in favor of suspending the rules are completed our work and Councilor City Attorney Blackwood, we actually have to, when we get done with this meeting, we have to actually go back into the work session anyway. So, okay, so. Point of information. Point of information, Councilor Paul. Thank you. Does this include item 6789? Yes, she included, complete our work on the agenda. Okay, thank you. Those should not take a long time. But it's up to the Council. But so this requires a two-thirds vote. So all those in favor of approval of this motion to suspend our rules and complete the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. We've suspended our rules and are there, with that, back to the agenda item that we're on, the general manager issue. Is there any questions for the mayor, for general manager Lunderville or how much for the council? Councilor Jang. Thank you, I have several questions and that'd be great if Neil can come to the floor. General manager Lunderville. Yeah, thank you. And I think, just before this item, you again provided an excellent review of your department that you've been leading for how many years now? Four years. Four years. And also during those four years, I was just wondering if there was any proposal in adjusting the salaries back then and what was your response? Just for the record. Yeah, we've focused over the last four years, the mayor and I have focused on making sure that the structure and the compensation for the employees of Burlington Electric has been at the top of our list. We wanna make sure that we are able to retain top quality employees. Both the mayor and I believed that adjusting the general manager's salary would create a public debate that could detract from the important work of making sure we're taking care of the employees who work so hard for Burlington. And again, I'm sorry. But I was just asking if there was a proposal put forward to you in adjusting your salary while you were at your... The mayor and I talked about it and we both thought that it would be better to focus on our employees instead of focusing on the general manager's salary, which tends to draw more attention and more attention away from where it rightly should be. However, I believe this is the appropriate time to address the compensation for the general manager. Yeah, so me, I mean, personally I do think that it would have been great, wonderful for the city to consider this aspect one year or 12 months after we hire a general manager to continue to do the job because you already laid the foundation. You already laid the vision. You already built a team, a strong team. And on top of all of that, you have at least four managers or more in under your leadership. And we also know that if we bring a new manager, general manager here to Burlington, he will just try to carry the footstep, your footstep, also the vision you already put forward. And I think also it is important for Burlingtonians and also for the city of Burlington to try to attract people here, not based on money, but based on what Burlington has to offer in terms of the lake, in terms of the place to live, to work, to raise kids, to highlight that aspect instead of the number of dollars that you will be getting paid. But for all of those reasons, I do think it is very important, it is very important for us to bring, to try to attract people that have knowledge, that have expertise, and we also know that already with the managers that you currently have under your leadership, the general manager won't be able to have that much of a work to do, that much of the vision to do. Of course he will, but my point is, you already have other managers, one of them is in innovation, one of them is in public service, et cetera. But I wanted to just propose an amendment, maybe to move this resolve clause instead of, and to be the city council, approve the change, compensation range of the position of general manager, Burlington Electric Department from the current range, to the new range of 275 to 229 per year, effective upon 12 months after hiring the general manager. That's just an amendment that I want to put forward. Okay, Councilor Chang, you have offered an amendment, and I actually need you to repeat that amendment. So now be it further resolved that the city council approve to change in compensation range for the position of general manager of the Burlington Electric Department from the current range of 136.189 to 189.483, to the range of 175 to 229 per year, 194 per year, effective upon 12 months after the hiring of the new general manager. So basically not effective right now, effective 12 months after. Okay, Councilor Chang, so Councilor Chang has changed the numbers that have been proposed. Point of information, Councilor Wright. Point of information, Councilor Nodell. May I state my understanding? Sure. That Councilor Chang has not changed the numbers. Under his amendment, the new salary would only become effective. 12 months. 12 months after a new general manager took office. Thank you for that clarification. I knew that he had done that, but I thought he also changed the level. Okay, so Councilor Chang has proposed an amendment to have this not take effect until 12 months after the new general manager takes office, takes his position. We need a second. Is there a second to this motion? Hearing none, that amendment fails for lack of a second. So we are back now on the motion to approve. Is there any other comments from the city council? With that, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Councilor Chang opposes. The vote is 11 to one in favor. And we have passed that reclassification of the GM position for BED. Now we'll move to item 5.12, which was item 4.07. And that was a resolution approval of agreement to transfer ownership of shares in the Highgate interconnection between Burlington Electric Department and Nexra Energy Transmission. Councilor No-Dell. President Wright, I would move adoption, waive the reading and request the floor after a second. Seconded by Councilor Hartnett. Councilor No-Dell, you have the floor back. Thank you. We, as the council knows, the council had some executive session discussion earlier tonight. I think it would be good to have a brief summary of what this action is, and I'll leave that to the gentleman at the table. And then after their presentation, could I just have a few remarks? Certainly. Thank you. So we'll turn it over to the team. Thank you, and thank you for making the time this late in the evening, and I'm glad we can hear each other a little bit better now. Hopefully our answers will be clear. The proposal that is before you tonight is to sell our share of the Highgate converter station, which is a 7.7% share of that piece of equipment to Nexra Energy operating as NEET, NEET. We are proposing to do this because they, without going into the confidential terms of the agreement, they made us a offer that is substantially greater than the net book value of this asset. And we believe that is, because this asset is not core to our central mission, it's not something that we use or really will ever use in the future, that we've largely lost control of the asset from a regulatory point of view that we have increasing administrative burdens. And then finally, very importantly, that we believe the proceeds we put to better use now, we would like the council's approval to proceed with the deal that's been put in front of us. I wanna make a couple other points just to answer questions that came up before. We had some questions about the timing on this sale. We went back and did some research. It is the term sheet, which is a term sheet that was presented to us by Next Era that we signed, but it's not binding in a sense that only the council can bind our action to sell this. But it did have dates in it. The dates included having a finalized purchase and sale on this by June 4th. So that date's already gone by. We would have this going to the regulators by July 30th, and we would have the closing of this by November 30th. So in question to the answer before, we've already kind of moved by one of our dates in that term sheet. We have alerted Next Era that the council is considering this. They're working with us on that. However, if for some reason, they feel like we're not moving forward on that because we've already sort of, we've already moved by one of the dates. They would be within their right to withdraw that term sheet. We don't believe that they're there now because we are obviously working in good faith on this. Another question was regarding what our partner in this, if you will, Stowe is thinking. I did have a chance to speak with Ellen Burt, who is the general manager of Stowe Electric this evening. They are counting on this sale to advance projects in their district. And if we're not moving forward in July, they would advance without us because they need to advance to regulatory filing by July 30th and get the paperwork ready to do so in order to meet their deadlines to finance a project, a facility within their district. I wanted to make just two other final points and clarification of the points we made earlier. We are looking to make an immediate reinvestment of the fund, the proceeds from this sale. Those proceeds, the largest share of those proceeds would go directly into our capital program, which is a $10 million capital program. $2.44 million of that capital program would go to purchasing Velco equity in fiscal 19. So we would be making a substantial investment in Velco equity in fiscal 19. We have consistently made purchases in Velco equity over all four years that I've been here. And certainly I think many, many years before that our proceeds, I believe my rough calculation is that we now have over $40 million in Velco equity. That is, so we take our annual equity stake, we move forward on that. And so this will help us move forward with our annual equity take of Velco if we move forward with the sale of these proceeds, which we think is important. Also important is that we are localizing an investment that's really a far away investment for us now, completely disconnected from our grid. It's something we can't touch, feel, see. All we really get is a financial stream from it, which is important. We believe there is a more lucrative financial stream that will help our customers in here and now. And we believe that way is the long-term revenue stream that we would have. Finally, I wanna point out that as a utility with our power supply, we've always sought to manage our risk very closely. And we've sought to mitigate that risk where possible. Earlier, I shared with you a two-page document that one page had some lines on it. There was a red line that showed where our invest, that would be the sale of the proceeds from the sale of this. That red line represents our no-risk line. We know if we move on the sale of the proceeds, we are not taking any additional risk of owning this or investing in a possible deal with Velco. In the other two scenarios, we could face diminished return through federal regulatory action. We could face increased capital cost by needing to upgrade the high gate converter facility, which is a real thing because we did that as recently as 2012. So from time and again, we have to put money in there. So we believe the red line represents the lowest risk. In fact, sort of a no-risk scenario, we would take the proceeds and we would know what we have in hand without chanceing the future. So I wanted to make those points and happy to answer any other questions that you may have. And thank you for your additional consideration of this. Councilor Nodal. Thank you, President Wright. Appreciate the additional information. I've been, I'm prepared to support this, but I in principle had some reservations because I think that we also always need to think about the next generation of leaders. And when you have an appreciating asset that it is bad form to use them all up today. That we need to make sure that we leave some assets for future generations. But as I get more information, I've concluded that this is not necessarily an appreciating asset that the point at which this becomes a better investment to hang on to it is fairly far in the future and lots of things could happen to change that. So because I trust the team, a lot of my support tonight is because I trust the team that's bringing this to us tonight. So I am prepared to support it. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you, Councilor Nodal. Any other questions? Comments from the Council on this? Councilor Tracey, that, I'm sorry, that's right. Councilor Tracey, you were in the queue. So thank you very much. Thank you for sharing all this information with us. I have a slightly different interpretation while I appreciate all the additional information that has been shared. I have a really hard time on a theoretical and principled level in selling city assets in terms of just the long-term gains. I think that a lot of municipalities that have sold assets look back and say, why did we do that? And while we're in good shape now, I understand that there are these headwinds coming at us in some senses, but I would rather have those conversations when we're actually in a bad place and really in a place of necessity. We're not necessarily in that place right now. We're in a very strong position, both in terms of the position of BED as well as the city's finances. And so I think that we should hold on to city assets until it's absolutely necessary to sell them. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Tracy, Councillor Shannon and then Councillor Bushert. Thank you. I do not wanna wait until the city is in a bad place to sell an asset that we do not need and cannot find a use for in the foreseeable future. I do agree with Councillor Nodell that we need to take seriously selling city assets. This is a wonderful opportunity. I think will be a great benefit to the city to move forward with this. If we wait until we're in a bad place, I don't think that we will have the kind of offers that we have today. So thank you for this opportunity and I will be supporting it. Thank you, Councillor Shannon, Councillor Bushert and then Councillor Jang. Thank you. I was all prepared to vote against this, but your explanation with how you would reinvest some of the funds to bring a greater return, a more secure return really changed my mind completely. So I'm really glad you explained that. If it was there in paper, I didn't pick up on it. So thank you and like Councillor Nodell, I have a lot of confidence in BED and the management structure and the recommendations that they bring forward. So anyways, I'll be supporting those things. Thank you, Councillor Bushert, Councillor Jang. Thank you, President. So just to clarify a couple of things, just for all of us to understand that an asset that's bringing $200,000 a year is a good asset and those $200 a year, we can save it for something else. I think it is imperative. Once it starts, it never stops. And I think also you made it very clear here to us in the memos that the mayor has sent to all of us that utilities, it's a changing field. Things change all the time. And if we have our foot into this asset, like with the other entities, I think we should keep it. I think we should keep it. And I think President Nodell made it very clear not for us, but for the next generation. Everything that we are doing here, it's not for today. It's not for tomorrow, but it's so for the next generation that are coming. Let's think about our grandchildren. For those reasons, I think it is important for me to not give my vote to selling this city asset. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. I think that we are ready to vote. All those in favor of approval of this resolution, please say aye. Those opposed. And that is Councillor Jang and Councillor Tracy. And so the vote is 10 to two in favor of this resolution of sale of the Highgate converter. Thank you. Thank you. And so we obviously we do not need to have that. And we all need to remember that some of this. Point of order. It's not 10 to two. So we have a recusal. I'm sorry. Thank you, Councillor Powell for that point of order. Point of order is well taken. Councillor Mason has recused himself on this issue. So it's nine to two, my mistake. And we need to remember that some of this obviously was in the executive session earlier. We heard what was in the open session. So thank you. Appreciate that. And we will now move forward onto item number six, which is committee reports. Point of order. Councillor Shannon, point of order. I just wanted to clarify that once we voted on this, I'm not completely clear on what was executed. I thought that it was confidential up until we voted, but I just was hoping we could. Well, that's what I was saying, that we had to remember that. It's hard to remember now what was in executive session and what was in open session. We're not, we're finalizing the terms of the sale, the sale price, the sale price and a couple other of the key terms. I'm happy to send all, share with the board of finance the fully unredacted contract, full contract. I'd be happy to share with you any of those terms, but the key price, the sale price is confidential until we can finalize it with. That's the one thing that we share tonight that we wouldn't, we would want to keep confidential. To the finalize. Thank you for the. Point of information. The two sided economic. No, hold on one minute. Councillor Jang, please finish. The two sided economic analysis that was handed out. You can derive the sale price for it. So that document was confidential. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Jang, you had a point of information. Yeah. So why are we putting on an issue knowing that we don't have the, we don't have the sale price yet. Just one, I don't understand. We've already voted on this. They've explained why that sale price is a, that was an executive session and we, that's been explained, but we've already voted on this. So we're not going to go back and redebate it. I'm sorry. Further point of clarification. Councillor, no doubt. Thank you. So under, on our consent agenda under 4.07, there are a number of documents that were posted on board docs. Are those available for the public? Those are, everything on board docs is publicly available. We posted a contract with only the sale price and a couple of the key terms. Thank you. And that's all public. And when we finalize the deal, the numbers will just need to get over the finish line. Thank you. There are points of information. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Those are good clarifications. And so with that, we will move into committee reports. Any committee chair who would like to report to the city council hearing none, we will close out committee reports and go to city council on general city affairs, council Hartnett and then council Nodell. Thanks. I'll be brief one week from tomorrow night. Probably the best night in Burlington. All eyes are on us July 3rd. It's really a great event. And it starts at noon time with activities at the waterfront. I hope everybody that's listening gets down here. You won't need your jackets. We're gonna be pushing 100 degrees on July 3rd. It's gonna be great. So it's gonna be a beautiful night. Come on down, enjoy the fireworks, the food, grab some fried dough. It's just one of the best nights here in the city by far. And I hope everybody will come down and enjoy it. It should be a really great night. So I hope to see everybody. Thanks. Thank you, council Hartnett. Councilor Nodell then council Roof. Thank you, president Wright. My bad on consent agenda item 4.05 I should have recused myself and I failed to. So I'm just requesting that the minutes that I'm stating now my recusal it's on the consolidated plan one year action plan. And I'm hoping that that can be reflected in the minutes and I apologize to the council. Okay, so city clerk's office, councilor Nodell at least have that in the minutes that she recused herself on item 4.05 on the consent agenda. Councilor Roof. Thank you. I'd just like to let members of the council and members of the community know that tomorrow here on con toys at 5.30 we'll be doing, there will be a presentation and an opportunity to provide feedback on the neighborhood projects, which is as many of us know, a project looking at the housing dynamics in near campus neighborhoods. So if you'd like to get an update on that and participate and give feedback, please be here tomorrow con toys at 5.30. Thank you, president Wright. Thank you, councilor Roof. Any other councilor on general city affairs? Hearing none, we will close out general city affairs. Item number eight, item number nine is president updates. I just want to, I know there are counselors who have asked me a number of counselors about the implicit racial bias training for the council and I want to make sure counselors know that I haven't forgotten about that. I'm not going to do that until after the summer's over at this point though, but we will be doing that when summer is over when we move into fall. I also want to just say that I attended the parent university. The councilor Jang invited me to at Flynn theater last week and thank you, councilor Jang for inviting me. Wonderful event. There were 55 refugees, citizens who graduated from parent university. It was a great event, as I said, and I'm honored that I was invited to speak at it. So thank you, councilor Jang for all your hard work on that really valuable program. And lastly, I just say, I know councilor Hartnett is so confident of a weather report that's a week ahead, but I'm guessing that his confidence is based on the fact that the mayor told us that if we passed the budget that he would provide good weather on July 3rd. So I'm guessing that councilor Hartnett has his confidence placed squarely on the mayor and the passage of the budget. Thank you. And with that, we'll close that out and Mr. Mayor will take us home or into executive session at least. All right, excellent present right. It is always fortunate, yes, that the third of July follows in the new fiscal year, when the coffers were replenished for the municipal weather initiative. It's served us well in the past. Let's hope that it continues forward and the record of positive weather on as councilor Hartnett note, it's one of the, it's the marquee event of the year. The one that we see more people down in the Burlington waterfront than everything else holds. It is going to be an exciting night again. Couple of just quick notes from me. I know it's late. Thank you to the counselors. I think it was most counselors who were able to make the special meeting last week with the school board. I thought it was a really helpful discussion in a number of areas. And just want the council to know that we are gonna follow up on the debt policy discussion as quickly as possible given the implications of that on votes as soon as this fall. We do anticipate going back to the board of finance in July and continuing that discussion. Any counselors who have further thoughts or want updates if you weren't part of the conversation, the mayor's office is happy to respond. And then there was an event yesterday down on this block right out here, what we call the BTV Block Party. It was somewhat the first time we've on Church Street had an event like that. It was a little bit like the police department's neighborhood party that they've had the past couple of years but it had all right on Church Street, a number of city vehicles and tabling from most, almost all the city departments and it was a really well attended event and much appreciated by the public. We've gotten lots of positive feedback on that and just want to note that. I think that some are gonna try to do again in future years and note that one of the people that worked hard to make it possible was Katie Vain from the mayor's office along with the Church Street Marketplace team and just wanted to give her a shout out as this will be her, the last city council meeting which Katie is staffing here. And she's been a tremendous part of the mayor's office for two years and we're gonna miss her a lot and we wish her well with all that comes next. She's gonna go write the great American novel and onto other success we're sure and we wish you well, Katie. With that, that's our report. Our loss is California's gain. Katie, we'll miss you. Best of luck. And with that, we will entertain a motion to adjourn because then we have to go back into the special work session. Counselor Nodell. Move the adjournment. Seconded by Councilor Roof. All those in favor of adjourning the regular city council meeting, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, we are adjourned and now I will go back into the special city.