 Oh, you're the only use the mic. Okay. Folks on zoom, can you hear me? Yeah, I'm already a minute. Oh, you only use the mic. Okay. Okay. Um, folks on zoom, can you hear me? Can you, can you give a thumbs up or can we turn off the mic? Turn it off. Turn it off. Because I don't know. I'm getting. Feedback. Okay. Folks on zoom, can you hear me? Uh, meeting is now streaming. Uh, folks on zoom, can you hear me? Hey, anybody on zoom? I'll be able to go on zoom and check it. I don't know if there's, I don't know if there's anybody's out there. I'll go outside and see. Here you can. Anybody on zoom? Can you hear me? You can hear it. It's working. Okay. But I don't think we have any participants. Oh, maybe there's just nobody there. All right. So, okay. Good. Uh, Andy, great. Thank you for raising your hand. Um, for those of you on the zoom, I'm sorry. And for everybody in the room. Um, I'm sorry that we're delayed and getting started. We're having, we're having a little bit of technical difficulty tonight. So I hope you can just bear with us. Um, Thanks everybody for joining us after our summer break. I'm Nancy Harkins. I'm going to be. Leading the meeting tonight. Um, Uh, just for the sake of expediency, I'm going to let you know that our other. Um, steering committee members. Uh, I need to repone. To the Reagan and. Delizaria are with us in the room. Um, Mills for me. Is not able to join us because he's expecting the imminent birth of his child. And Nelson Martell. Um, It's also not able to join us, but. Tonight was going to be his last meeting. As a steering committee member. And we want to definitely take an opportunity to thank Nelson for all his hard work on the, um, steering committee. Over. Um, The last couple of years. Um, We're going to do something a little bit out of order. We have our state rep. We have our state rep. Um, We're going to do something a little bit out of order. We have our state reps here tonight. They're going to be first on the agenda after we get through the announcements. But, um, I didn't want to pull the participants to see if there were any key priorities or concerns that you would like to hear from our state representatives about tonight so they can try and talk about that in when they do their remarks in a few minutes. Any. For the, for the state representatives. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, right now. Yeah. Right now, um, the certain members of the legislature and part of public service and, uh, Others are reviewing the renewable energy standard. Um, Uh, there's a legislative working group now reviewing a renewal of energy standard. And if and when this comes before you, I'd like to have you consider that, uh, Like our neighboring states, Massachusetts and New York, we need to, um, Come up with a system of plan for, uh, 100% carbon free electricity in the state. New York has a plan to accomplish that within the next 10 years. Massachusetts is working on, there's no reason for you to be able to. Okay. All right. Um, and I'm sure that they'll be happy to hear, uh, hear any other questions you have when they get to their, we get to them in the agenda, but we just wanted to get a heads up on any burning issues that people wanted to hear about. Um, The other, um, Announcement I wanted to make is we had talked about this in the spring that the MPAs were working together on a community outreach. Basically a comic. It's like the brochure or, uh, A poster and that has been finalized. We don't have hard copies of it tonight or a digital copy, but we will have that in our next meeting. So the purpose of that is really to make everyone raise awareness about the MPAs in general in Burlington and, um, encourage people to attend the meetings and participate. Are there any other, um, Announcements. Okay. Um, and magically we're back on schedule. Okay. So I'm going to turn it over to, uh, our state representatives. Thank you so much. Well, thank you very much. Um, uh, my name is Tiff Blumlee. Um, and I represent Chittenden 13, uh, with Gabrielle Stebbins. I know Gabrielle's on the line. I was going to be on the line because my kid is leaving for college tomorrow and we're having a family dinner. So I, if it was your permission, well, I'm actually not going to seek your permission. I am going to go and have dinner with them, but I wanted to be here, um, since zoom wasn't really working. Um, and I sit on the appropriations committee, um, which is, uh, one of the, the two money committees, ways of means is about inflow. We're about outflow. Um, and, um, we don't, um, while we say we don't consider policy issues, any decision you make about funding is a policy decision, um, because it reflects priorities. So, um, when we last met in June, I guess, um, we were talking about, um, housing and, um, the challenge, um, that we had in the legislature over, um, the housing bill and the Senate had stripped out money for, that we had put in the house, um, bill budget, um, for emergency housing and we were able to accomplish, you know, arrive at a, um, compromise, um, with the Senate and we were able to then override the governor's veto of the budget, um, which then enabled us to activate all the money that could address the emergency housing issue. Um, we also had $25 million in surplus this year that, um, we were able to commit to, um, emergency housing, um, and we've expanded the eligibility of those who can be served by the emergency housing program. And then finally, um, one of the requirements that we passed in the amendment to the budget was, um, that we have a, uh, that the agency of human services, um, or the governor, um, put in a plan for, well before April 1st about how we're going to address this particular housing issue. Um, there are a number of people in the house working on that issue now. I'm working with a small committee that is actually, that is trying to, um, develop the guts of a bill that would relate to housing, um, for consideration by the caucus, um, and, um, and any housing bill was going to have to have kind of, there are going to be, have probably three different housing bills, one related to zoning and making zoning for housing, um, easier in places where it's not. Um, secondly, we're going to have to appropriate money to provide services for supportive housing. Um, because many of the folks who are, um, unhoused right now need mental health, substance use, um, or, uh, services, or they are disabled and need assistance, um, to address, you know, their safety, um, in, and living. Um, in the budget, we put in 99 million dollars to raise the rates for people who, for agencies that are billing Medicaid, um, for, uh, services that they provide to folks. And that was an investment in the workforce, essentially, which, I mean, you've heard a lot about probably the, um, ways in which the workforce has been dramatically reduced, um, by salaries, um, that are, and I think working conditions. Um, we put in 20 million dollars to expand opioid treatment, um, plus another 8 million dollars, um, of an initial, um, additional investment to support mobile, um, crisis units that would address both mental health and, um, substance use issues as they arise. Um, we are working on, as I said, a housing bill, um, and it is involved, um, about five of us in a number of conversations with, um, people all over the state. Um, some of them kind of the, you know, the Champlain Housing Trusts and the Vermont Conservation, um, Housing Conservation Board, but also folks who are, um, uh, the smaller, um, service providers who, um, uh, who we often forget to include in conversation about something like, what should the housing bill look like? Uh, and yes. Yeah. Yeah. You also addressing the short term rental issue on the state level. Well, it, it is possible that the housing bill will include something like that. Um, because I know you were working on it like two or three years. Yes. It's a very, I think probably for about a decade. Um, but over the last three years in particular, um, as, as that has become a quarter share of the rental market. Um, and I, you know, I, so I think that any housing bill is, is going to have, is really going to be three different bills, one related to zoning, one related to the services and the other related to building infrastructure. Um, here are the challenges that I see right now. Um, and I, AHS has lost key members of its staff who are housing experts who have been running the programs. Um, and for, for whom I have a great deal of respect, that is going to be a big challenge. If we're expecting AHS to come up with a solution to the housing crisis. Um, and, um, the emergency housing, you know, that piece of the, the issue. And I think that many state agencies are really stretched, uh, beyond their capacity to address what is a growing number of, um, people who are, I mean, it's been in the paper, you know, the, the folks who have been waiting on us for six hours on the phone to get somebody to, on the, online so they can recertify, um, that yes, I live here. This is my income. Um, and get another 28 days. Um, so at any rate, I think the flood has compounded the issue, um, in all the ways that we can imagine. Um, I think it's going to be very important. This is my plea to the public that we hold the governor accountable. This is not just a legislative, we cannot solve this problem. We work four and a half months of the year. I mean, we are paid to work four and a half months in session. And we have a whole lot of things to do during that session. The, this, the administration has a responsibility for executing, um, the work that it has pledged to do, or that we have asked it to do through legislation. And so, uh, what that six hour waiting period, um, the people are experiencing, that's a problem. And we can, we can bring it to light. And we can hold the governor's feet to the fire as best we can through our various committees, but that is not anyway. So I, I think that this is, these are issues to watch. And, um, as we develop caucus priorities, um, and as our idea is about housing, legislation, et cetera, evolve, we'll be communicating with you, um, as we're working on the report form that just, there hasn't been enough to really report, um, to you in the last couple of months, um, since the veto session, but, um, but at any rate, I figured that that's what I could contribute because those are the pieces that I'm working on. Um, and the things that I am particularly concerned about, um, as they relate to the coming session. And because I talked about this the last time, I just wanted to close that loop. Okay. Hi, I'm Mary Catherine Stone. I'm one of two reps for Chittenden 14. I serve with Barbara Rachelson. Used to be a one seat district in this year, it's two. So I'm the newest seat in the house quite literally because it was created last Friday. So I serve as a clerk for the house committee on education but I wanted to give an update about a bill that's actually didn't come out of my committee. It went through the house healthcare committee and then the house judiciary committee and it's the suicide prevention bill. And the reason I feel it's really important to share this bill is because almost every single person I spoke with when I was running for office said, public safety was a concern and gun violence was a concern. And so this issue gets to the heart of that. The purpose of the bill though is to prevent death by suicide by reducing access to legal means, specifically firearms. I'm just gonna share some information that really brought to light why this is such an important bill. Vermont's rate of suicide is 50% higher than the national average. In each year, nearly 60% of suicides are completed with a firearm. All other methods combined have a completion rate of approximately 4%. So it's extremely rare for someone to survive a suicide attempt in which a firearm is used. And that is why this bill specifically focused on this particular means of harm reduction. The bill number is H230, suicide prevention bill. You can look it up on the Vermont led website if you really want to get into the weeds and learn more about what it does. But I'm just gonna give a brief overview. Secure firearm storage is a part of it. A person must securely store firearms in circumstances where a child or a prohibited person is likely to gain access. The firearm must be kept separate from ammunition and in a locked container equipped with a tamper resistant lock. There are exceptions for that and penalties, if you want, I can talk about that, but I'm gonna go on. Secure firearm storage sign requirements at any licensed dealer location where firearms are sold or transferred, a sign containing the information on the secure firearm storage I just talked about must be displayed and posted. Petition for extreme risk protection order, ERPO, an extreme risk protection order is a civil order that would temporarily prohibit an individual who poses a danger to injure themselves or others from purchasing, possessing or receiving any dangerous weapon, including firearms. Under the current law or the old law only a state's attorney or the office of the attorney general could issue an ERPO. And so you can guess that oftentimes that took a lot of time for that to happen. So H230 allows a family or a household member to initiate that process for obtaining an ERPO by directly petitioning the court for an order. And then last but not least, it puts forward a 72 hour waiting period for firearms transfers. It adds a requirement that a person shall not transfer a firearm to another person until 72 hours after the licensed dealer is provided with an NICS transfer identification number. I wanted to share a message that I received just this week that was sent to a member of the House Tradiciary Committee about how important this bill is that just passed this year. This message says, hey, the three day waiting period you worked on just kept a guy in the midst of a mental health crisis from purchasing a firearm yesterday. His wife took the firearms that he had and walked them up. He tried to buy another but got frustrated with the waiting period. He went home and started trying to build one. He posted that on Facebook and the BSP are using that combined with a variety of unhinged behaviors to issue an extreme risk protection order and get him banned from any further legal purchases that work. So pretty powerful that this bill is already saving people's lives. So I wanted to share about that and then Gabrielle sent me a message to remind you in the House Committee of Education where I serve, we talked about school construction, PCB testing. There's a school construction task force that is meeting this summer to look at that topic, school construction. But while we were digging into that issue of PCBs and school construction, we were able to secure $16 million for Burlington High School. So that was a huge win. The work is not done. There's a task force talking about it as we sit here and live and breathe. But a win for us for Burlington is we secured $16 million and everyone on the committee, Republican, Democrat, rural did not matter. We got the money. And so that was a really huge win. And Mary Cass is gonna work really, really hard on that. So thank you. So those are my updates. And then there's Gabrielle. And there's Gabrielle who, I don't know how she'll be speaking to us, but she's on to us. Can you hear me? Do you wanna try saying something, Gabrielle? And we'll see if we can hear you. Store, hello, good evening. No. I don't know if she, I can hear you. Can you hear us? Yes. Okay. She can hear us. I'll call her, I'll see her. Okay. I don't know if I can hear you saying this one. Can you hear us? Thank you for your patience. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Yes. Mary can I run to it? If I screen it today, it's gonna be beautiful. But I know I'm not. So thank you for inviting us. Gabrielle, I think I have a question. We have to have your mic. Team. And I'm gonna touch briefly. I serve a clerk of the House Environment and Energy Committee. I'm also co-chair of the Climate Solutions Caucus. And so I'm politically involved in the budget and sort of all things related to environment, climate, workforce related to, you know, trade, that sort of thing. I'll touch very briefly on the things that we did accomplish last year and some of the things that I'm expecting us to look on this coming year. We were able to match 9.8 million in state match so that we could harness infrastructure investment and jobs money from the federal level for drinking water and clean water, state-revolving funds. Another 8 million was set aside for ground fields. You know, here we've had so much cyanobacteria this year and we have ground fields, redevelopment discussions occurring. So not necessarily that those funds will come here directly yet because obviously it goes through the state budget and then filters through that process but opportunities there, hopefully for Burlington. We passed not actually yet explain the standard but the Affordable Peat Act, which over the next year and a half is going through the design and the regulatory process and all of the review and analysis that is needed to basically require any businesses, Vermont gas, any fuel delivered companies to offer other services to customers if they want to use them. It's similar to what we have right now in our electric industry, all of our utilities have to participate in something called a renewable portfolio standard and this is similar to that in the sense that it's a market computation based policy that requires all these companies to actually do these actions and if they don't then they pay a penalty. We were able to also pass a biodiversity bill which is pretty huge when you think about climate change and what that means and with some of the folks who might be moving here from other places that have tires or droughts or whatnot. Looking forward, we're definitely looking at a variety of climate resilience and mitigation issues. Burlington was spared with the flooding but that is not to say that we probably will not see, I mean really we will most certainly see more storms and they will be more frequent and they will be more extreme. So how do we prepare for that? How do we pay for that? How do we make sure we have the governments in place for that so that if we have a 201 phone number that you can call if you lose power or whatnot or you're completely flooded out and it's volunteer run, maybe that works for all but the two days of the year that is needed. So looking at governance, how do we prepare for these events that are only going to occur more frequently and be more spring and then lastly, specifically the infrastructure side of things, how do we identify where are, where are challenges? Are there treatment plants, water purification plants? Where are there perhaps community resilience homes in case an area does lose power for a number of days because of a storm? Where can the monsters go to be safe to have access to groundwater? So those are some of the conversations that we're having to prepare for January. We're also likely to see a discussion about whatever removal energy standard should look like. We first passed a renewable energy standard in 2015 and it hasn't been modified since then. So there's currently a working group to discuss that and look into it. It includes utilities, various stakeholders and environmental nonprofits, a slew of industry members to try and look at where, what do we do in 2015? What's working? What's not? So expecting to see some discussion of that in January and also at 250, the housing bill that Tiff mentioned, S100, which got some press this summer, the Homes bill, that also came through my committee as well from the other committees. And that, definitely that conversation really, it's very much to how do we want to plan? How do we want to develop? How do we want them to look 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now when we're already facing housing shortages? But we also know that we have this very clear balancing act between working with our natural resources and a landscape so that we aren't as impacted if we're lost or we're at a source. And what is that balance between humans and our natural resources? So expecting a lot of discussion on that at 250 side of things as well. And I could go on and on because we've had a lot of bills but that's a little bit of looking back and looking forward. Thank you. Go to the one on the top that was. Gabrielle Stevens. Okay. It's district name. Yeah. Clerk of the House of Intermediate and Environment Committee. And chair of the largest caucus in the state house the climate caucus. Yes. So Stephen Hammond, I have two unrelated questions. Number one, on the 72 hour bill on guns, what do we have for enforcement? I don't know if you've ever been to a gun show about more guns, walk out of a gun show than you can ever imagine. And how is there enforcement in this? I'm just gonna read straight from it because this came out of judiciary and helps us to read from here. This section adds requirement that a person shall not transfer a firearm to another person 72 hours after the license dealer is provided with an NICS transfer ID number or seven business days have passed the dealer contacted an ICS to initiate the background check, whichever occurs first. This new requirement does not apply to firearms transfers at a gun show, but the gun show exception shall be repealed by the July 1, 2024. Between now and July 1, 2024, the judiciary committee will consider a bill that would establish a method to determine that a person already owns a firearm, a firearm owner ID. The committee will also consider whether a person who has such a proof of firearm ownership and can pass the background check should be subject to the 72 hour waiting period. So it sounds like your head's over, your head is out and then we're working on it in July 1, 2024. I don't know where you're basically where they can do whatever. Things will change. The second question is very quick. The governor just released $10 million in our performance infrastructure. Is that money that the fed just decided to give us or is it something that he sold to somebody else? No, it's money that has been in the, it has been granted, but it had to go through a whole process where the feds would approve of the purpose of the allocation. And so it then became available for appropriation. So it is ARPA money that we have had, but has been waiting to be appropriated. Any other? All right. Joan is not here, right? Joan, Shannon, no. No, no, she's not here. I don't, is she on? She's supposed to be here. She's supposed to be here in person. Yeah, she's not here. Okay. I have a question. This is, I'm Will Anderson from South Union Street. I was wondering regarding the construction oriented housing bill in your vision. And maybe you could project the will of the house at large for what it's worth. To what extent would that construction contain public or social housing or other strategies to keep new units affordable, considering the even greater shortage for affordable apartments in the state? Thank you. Sure. I mean, I think that almost all of the housing, well, any housing that is subsidized with the public money has to serve a public purpose. And it, the projects vary in terms of how, how many units are, whether the entire project is subsidized for low income folks or if it's mixed income housing. It just depends on the community tax credit, tax credits that are available. But I think that there is a strong house commitment to making sure that if we're gonna spend public dollars on housing construction, that it has to have a public discernible public benefit. I think that there are variations. I mean, there, you can express that in a number of different ways. We have put money towards you having apartments that have been offline. So if you owned that apartment that was out of code, you'd be able to rehab it up to $50,000 and then put it back online. And you would have to give priority to somebody who is on house, according to the program as it exists right now. If you cannot find somebody and you are working, I mean, the law requires that you work with people who are in the community, the community organizations that actually are working directly with unhoused remars. If you and the organizations can't find somebody, then you have to, you will offer to somebody else. But it has to be somebody who's below 80% median income. I mean, I've heard the question differently. I heard the questions asked in the S100 bill, how much of that would allow for increased affordable housing? They're shaking their head now. They're shaking their head now. I think about a future bill, Gabrielle. So no. Yeah. Nancy, just so you know, Jim Shannon is here, present on Zoom. Oh, okay, great. Oh. Yes, and she even has her hand raised, but I mean, so thank you for that, Gabrielle. We will be getting right to Joan. So- Can I answer your question? Yes. It was very general. And yet it's, we have not as a small group and certainly not as a caucus who really fleshed out the parameters of a bill we would want to support that, but that is the general best consensus of folks who are responsible for housing in one way or another. And if anyone's interested about the history of J housing, I did a very big deep dive earlier this summer and I have it on my Instagram, which is Stone River Mont and it's in the highlights reel and it talks about the history of housing in Vermont and how we got to where we are today. So if you're interested, there are charts, graphs, links to joint fiscal, it's all there, maybe learn it out and look with that. I try to do that with big topics. I have one on ledge pay, one on housing, a few others. So if you're interested, I try to break those down into digestible parts on a pretty regular basis on my Facebook and my Instagram. Right. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Thank you as always for your work and Gabrielle as well. And thank you for being here and working through our technical difficulties. Enjoy your evening. One quick thing because we did talk so much about the gun safety bill. I have some materials here from Vermont, mom's demand action on gun safety and we'll send those out with the other materials after the meeting. So Joan, you are on, I apologize for missing you. We're a little bit limited tonight with our technology. I apologize for that, but no problem. We're looking forward to hearing from you. Can you hear me okay? Can you hear me? Is Joan still muted? She had permission to talk. Joan, you should have permission to talk. I am talking. Can you hear me? Oh, Joan. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oops. Hold on, I can just hang with us. Sorry, I'm like driving. Can't see us, can't see us, can't see us. Joan, you can try again. Can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, good. I apologize. I was planning on being there with you, but I am home here with a dog in hospice who needs some tending to. You had asked, you had asked me to present on, I think general city council, but had a couple areas of interest as well. One was memorial auditorium. I don't have really much of an update on that. We had, there was a bond put forward and it had trying to think of the numbers. It was, we had quite a bit of money in that bond for memorial auditorium, but that bond did not pass. We passed the second bond that really had a minimum of money for memorial, really just for stabilization. And that's where we are now. We did pass some money to fence memorial so that no passers-by would get hit with bricks, et cetera. But that's kind of the extent on memorial at the moment, awaiting a new plan. YMCA, there is a plan that is before the development review board to create housing there. It would preserve the existing historic building in front, take the pool down and I believe put six stories of housing in that area where the pool is as well as a couple of stories of underground parking. So that is currently in review. If it doesn't get appealed, it could start construction relatively soon, but that's always a fairly big if. You may have read recently about Airbnb's, a lack of enforcement as well as the fact that the city is being sued by Airbnb owners claiming that our regulation is not legal. So I am not really sure. One of the reasons that there hasn't been enforcement of the Airbnb regulation is that there was a grace period to allow people to become compliant because we didn't wanna create a situation where, people had booked somebody for their wedding sometime in advance and then because of changed regulations, they can no longer service that person. So we really gave people a pretty long lead on enforcement. Then once enforcement starts happening, everybody is allowed to rent their place for 14 days. And it's only when you exceed that that you start running into this regulatory requirement. So it's just as both of those things are kind of coming to an end that we now have this challenge from the Airbnb owners, which I don't know that that means that we won't enforce the regulation. I think there are a lot of questions at the moment. What the lawsuit, according to what I read, what the lawsuit entails is saying that because we have always regulated bed and breakfast. They were a specific use in our zoning code and you had to meet specific criteria. We stopped enforcing that ordinance for several years while we created something new. It wasn't that we couldn't enforce it. We just didn't. So while we were creating something new, we moved it, the new thing that was adopted, moved it from zoning into the housing code. And so the bed and breakfast owners are saying, this is simply housing and you cannot tell us how long our lease can be. That's the argument as I understand it. We also recently had a well-publicized meeting about a financial review we did of the racial equity, inclusion, and belonging department because of some... Because of the director moving to Minneapolis, the folks in Minneapolis identifying some concerning circumstances that also existed here and Minneapolis decided to do an audit and we followed suit doing a similar type of... We call it an audit. It's actually, audit is a very, very specific term. It's really more of a financial review, which is the same as what Minneapolis did. At the meeting, we unfortunately never got to have any kind of presentation on what was in that report because there were people protesting that we did the report. But I think that when you have an event that's budgeted for $100,000 and spends over $400,000, it is not unreasonable to do a financial review. And when you pay tens of thousands of dollars for that financial review, the public should know what is in it. So I can kind of open it up to... I don't have a lot of time and started a little late. So just want to open it up if people have questions. I'm not seeing any questions. Yeah, I have some questions. Hi, Joan. This is Ulta Wagan. Sorry, Joan. We've got some static. That's better. Okay. So the last information that I was familiar with is that a journalist had no problem finding these people with short-term rentals that were doing all these things under the moon and yet the city would haven't hired somebody to do that, couldn't find them. Can you explain why that would be? I don't know if that's the case. I know that we have identified people. We haven't find anybody for the reasons that I stated. There was a grace period. There was then, we have to prove that they've been renting for 14 days. And then that followed by this lawsuit and waiting for some legal advice on that, I think is where we are. So they still stand at this point, you're not doing anything. As I said, I think that where we are is waiting for legal advice. And this is a relatively new situation. The council has not been updated on this. That happened in June, right? The lawsuit? All that information that I have is from June, from an article in seven days. What I was told was the holdup from the period of time when we could start enforcing to getting actual enforcement action is proving the 14 days of rental beyond what was the grace period. But all I can tell you is I am fully supportive of enforcing our regulation, which I think is too weak. I think that taking it out of zoning was a mistake because you no longer need a permit. You only need to register it. But so, I mean, I think that one of the options if we're concerned about this lawsuit and I don't know if we are, is we can put it back in the zoning code because that worked for decades. That worked for decades, for decades, for decades. Joan, I have a question. Do you find a hundred dollar fine appropriate if somebody makes $10,000 a week? The hundred dollar, the fines are usually per day. So, the fines, I often find the fines. $6,000. The fines are often, it depends. Sometimes the fines can be adequate when you have this daily rate that accumulates. Sometimes they're not, but they're set in statute by this state usually. So, you're considering bringing about into the ordinance. Is that what you're understanding? The state limits us on what we can find. No. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for Joan? Joan, Joan, Joan. I'll just add one other quick thing that I just came from. Public safety, I think is a very big concern for most constituents at this point. There was just a public safety meeting and a counselor, Paul, who represents all of board six had brought forward a resolution to the public safety committee meeting. And right before the meeting, a new resolution was posted that the original resolution was really declaring a public safety emergency and that got changed into a public health emergency. For myself, I think that a lot of the strength of the original resolution has been taken away and refocused on what is genuinely a public health emergency and has been declared so as far back as Peter Schumann state of the state address. I'm not sure of the year, but pre-pandemic as I judge time. So that's kind of been our situation for a while, but what is of increasing concern to our community is public safety. And so there's going to be further discussion in the public safety committee about what actions we'll be taking. And it's my hope that I'm not saying that we have to take a hard line approach on people suffering from substance use disorder, but I do think that we need to have an expectation in our community regarding behavior and to assure our community's safety, which I think a lot of people feel is currently very much in jeopardy, as well as the security of people's property and retail theft. These have real consequences on people's lives. Car theft and bike theft affect our neighbor's ability to get to work. So I'd say keep an eye out for what's coming there. Thank you, Joan. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I appreciate your flexibility with us tonight. Well, I'm sorry I'm not there with you. Shouldn't be, it's hard to hear that. Okay. All right. So next we have our update on, from public work. Yeah. Well, we'll be seeing it. Did I just take the mic? Yeah. Okay. Hi, I'm Robbie. I am a transportation planner with the Department of Public Works. Uttar invited me here to talk about the Shelburne Street roundabout. My scope in public works is pretty limited. So I'll do my best to answer all your questions. So I'll first talk about the roundabout where we are with the valuation and monitoring. And then I'll talk a little bit about some of the planning projects that we're thinking about and then address any questions that you might have. So we've done, so I think all of you are familiar with our monitoring and evaluation plan. I think that that's been discussed at the previous meetings. Regardless, I can do a brief overview of it. So as part of looking at the roundabout to making sure that it is functioning accordingly and that it's meeting the needs of the community, we do have a pretty robust monitoring and evaluation plan in place. We are specifically looking at traffic data, crash data and public input with traffic data. We've collected data during the summer with help from Jenin County Regional Planning Commission, CCRBC. I think some of you might have noticed the tubes while you were driving during the summer. And I know I did up on Willard. So we were collecting speed data, volumes and how and queuing. So how long you're waiting to go into the circle if you are waiting to go into the circle. First talking about speeds, we've found that with most of the streets with exception to Willard and Ledge, the most drivers, 85% of all drivers are driving the speed limit. We are aware of the speeding issues on Ledge. We've just checked it. And- Go in and voice out Willard. Oh yeah. So yeah, so South Willard, we're aware of the speeding issues on South Willard. We're especially aware of the issues on Ledge and Locust. We've received requests for traffic coming from both streets. So our engineering team is looking into evaluating those. Our traffic calming list is quite lengthy. And so it takes some time for our engineering team to go through it and then go back into the community and to figure out some strategies and designs to improve the streets. But we're hoping to tackle it one by one as quickly as possible. Right now, I think we're at like 25 requests for traffic calming. And we have a very thoughtable step of responding to each request one by one, going into the street, measuring the speeds, measuring the traffic data, measuring truck volume data, and then coming back to the community and working with them to work on strategies to lower speeds if it meets our thresholds per our traffic calming manual. So that's what's coming up next with Ledge and for Locust at least is going through that rigorous process and working with all of you to see what can be done about this meeting. But yes. Are you monitoring the sound difference at all? So, indirectly. So we are looking at high truck volume. So we're looking at how many heavy truck volume. So we're looking at how many heavy trucks are going through the street, if any, and whether that meets our thresholds or not. Because that's usually the sounds, right? But it's the heavy trucks. So there's motorcycles. And the entire, what I've experienced is, seeing people start on Shelton Street, they start being there, and they just step on beeping and sort of go around. And this turn going south, it's more straight than all the rest. So then they go through and they can't wait to go really fast. And they blink the whole time. I mean, just sort of warning people. I'm coming, I gotta go through. When you say beeping, what do you mean? The horn. Oh, they're beeping the horn? Because they don't want to, you know, have to be out of their way and keep on going. So people come up, approach it with different speeds, and some people are more afraid. So there's some people that think they have to stop, and they aren't looking. They don't have to. Can you use the microphone? I just wanted to know, how are you documenting and reviewing the volume change from before to now? Did you have any way of putting the baseline down? Yeah, typically we don't actually look at sounds and noises within the roadways. I mean, that essentially falls into like other camps, like with sometimes with permitting and inspections or with zoning or with like land use itself, looking at what are the noise impacts of ongoing uses, nearby use, things like that. We're mainly looking at like safety and the sense of speeds bicyclists and pedestrians, whether they're able to access the road and making sure pedestrian crossings are safer, not necessarily the sound itself. I just wanted to add that because I think that's an important part of limiting this representative section. And living practically right on the, on it, it's about the noise here. Because people are more than used to me. Yes, I do think they're 38 years. Well, I do too, I mean. Well, you're not living as close as I am to your people, we'd be growing in and out. And we can be really impatient with somebody who is being cautious. Even with different age levels of people going through, I know I don't go out as fast as I used to. So there's people out there on my age when they're going through fast and going up Lens Road and going down south and when you're seven, it's the same thing. I don't want to run around like that. So I just wanted to say that you should consider the south because that's what was eventual. Thank you very much. Yeah, Julie noted. Yeah, I'll take a look at that. Thanks. Yeah, so where was I? So talking about traffic data, yeah, I was in the area, I had like a hole in my dick. But that's okay. With us, we'll see with Willard we recorded at 85% of all drivers going in 35 miles per hour on that approach at ledge. It was 31, at Locust is 25. On the north side of Shelburne, north of that approach, it was 31. And then coming in, that was actually under 25. So the C limit on this side of Shelburne is 30. Everywhere else is 25. And then through the residential roads, like Legend of Locust, our goal is to have drivers go as close as 20. So with South Willard, instead of the one with the most speed? Yes. That's the one. Yeah, for data. Yeah, 35 is time. So that's 85% of all drivers. It could be a good range, but that's the best potential that we look at. Yeah. So yeah, so we're aware of the speeding and yeah, it's in our system, we're slowly getting to and we'll be able to work with all of you on addressing the speed issues. Have that been any activities? Yes, that's my next thing. So with traffic data, to wrap it up, we are collecting traffic data annually over the next five years with after the completion of the roundabout. So around every summer until 2027, we'll be collecting traffic data like that. With crash data, we are in the process of getting more data. I just did a quick search on the agency of transportation website and it looks like there have been about five crashes near the roundabout since November of 2022. All of them have been personally damaged only, so no injuries. So it's hard to say about trans-injury directories just because in previous five year periods, we were looking at more injuries like one or two between I think 2011 and 2016 and then prior to that, 2001, 2006, one or two, but 50, 53 crashes in both of those five year periods each, so I think only time will tell and I would think that over time as people get accustomed to driving through the roundabout, those crashes would decrease. And of course, with any sort of state communication that we consider that would possibly help to pledge road. We will be looking into crash data comprehensively every year for the next five years after completion, but there's more to come with that because all I did was a very rough search on the on the trans-injury website. And then lastly, public input. So I think did all of you see the surveys that went around? Yeah, I think yes. Okay, cool. Thanks for filling out the survey, if you saw that. We received about, I would say 156 respondents to that survey. Most were overwhelmingly positive. How about, I think, I would say 105 respondents that were felt that the roundabout made driving more comfortable through that intersection. Positive responses for walkers and bicyclists, but of course some unusual response for progressions and bicyclists too, because roundabouts aren't theoretically geared towards bicyclists and pedestrians. It is more forward oriented, so that is something that at least in all the planning side, we would expect. That is something that we will be doing every six months as we did in April, 18 months from now, so you're from now around April, you'll get a number survey from our office. And then 30 months from now, so in November, 2024, you'll also get another survey from us to see how you feel about the roundabout, very similar to the one that you filled out. So we can measure over time, not only your information and your comfort levels to the roundabout, but also hopefully match that up with the traffic data and the speed data to see how the roundabout is functioning for you and for the wider community. Yeah, so that's what I have for the roundabout. Yeah, it's not, the roundabout too is not actually my real house, it's been. It's something that actually. I've walked it into it. Yeah, it's something that actually has been educated by my engineering colleagues. So if you want to know more information about that, I'll try to answer some of your questions, but if you want to know more, definitely reach out to the board's engineer, Olivia Duris. She's one of the project managers for the Shelton Street Roundabout Project. I noticed the most, yeah, no more lines. Mm-hmm, yes. Traffic does just flow. I mean, maybe one or two or three cars, but not 10 all the way up to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's really possible. Yeah, and our data to the delays were not, were pretty low in our records when we measured it over the summer. Like, I think the most that I saw was like a 12 car, cute and under one observation. That's it on the north, on the north side entering south from the St. Paul Bridge. Other than that, it would be arranged between three and six. For maximum observations. For the most part, traffic was going pretty smoothly into the roundabout based on our data that we collected over the summer. Yeah, I think, let's take a break here. Do you have any questions about the roundabout for any other subjects? No, but we know what you did. You did a good job. Thank you. Thanks. Again, you've rolled it up over the coming years about the roundabout performance too. Other projects that at least the planning division is doing right now. I think some of you might have heard about the Battery Street study that we are doing. We're looking at Battery Street comprehensively to see how it could work better for everyone, pretty much. We know the barrier for pedestrians, for bicyclists, for young, for older community members. So we're in a planning process to talk to the community, to get some very early designs on what the street could look like. And we are still in that planning process. There is going to be a meeting, a public meeting, in the coming months, just in the next month or in November, to show some designs to the community to get some feedback. So you'll definitely hear something more about that project in the coming months. And I encourage all of you to attend it. If you can't attend, send us an email, I'll let us know what you think about those alternatives. The more information that we get from you, the better that bunch is going to look. And then. When is the opening for the highway to the 86? When do you have any idea when the opening starts? I got that outside of my face. So for that project, I'll have to defer to our public information officer from Golding or to the project manager according to them about that. Yeah, I don't want to misspeak. So I'll defer to them for any questions about that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, so that's all that's going on at least on the planning side. I'll open up for questions within that. Thank you. Ravi, thank you very much. Yeah. OK, so our next topic, I just want to regroup because I think both of our speakers were planning on using slides. And we're not going to have, we're not going to be able to use slides today. So what's going on? Why don't you come sit right over here? Yeah. So we're starting to need slides. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. The slides are not that. Are they just on the computer then? We keep them on one of these screens. Yeah, right. No. I see. OK. Where are we going? Right here. Right here. Right here. Right here. OK. No. I'll sit. I'll sit. That's good. OK. I don't think those are mine. Do we have the other slides? Can you share the other slides? So these are online, but not in the room, basically. Right. OK. Right. All right. Well, great. Hello, everybody. I'm Darren Springer of Burlington Electric Department, General Manager. I'm joined by my colleague, Jen Green, who's our sustainability director. Thanks for spending a few minutes with us to talk about District Heat. A long-standing project that's been discussed really since the McNeil plant was originally permitted. And now we're at a point where we've taken it from concept to something more real. And it's a good time to get together and talk about it. Just a quick background for those who may not be familiar with Burlington Electric. We are our municipal utility, over 100 years old, serving the city of Burlington. So we are run by the city. We're a city department. We have about 118 employees. We have over 21,000 customers. And we've been 100% renewable since 2014 for city and the nation to achieve that accomplishment. And the part of the subject we're talking about tonight, the McNeil plant, the largest power producer in the state of Vermont since the Vermont Yankee closed back in 2014. And I wanted to reference that for folks who are listening online or folks in the room, www.burlingtonelectric.com slash McNeil. We have a number of different resources, question and answer, different reports that you can check out on that website. So what we're showing on the screen here is from our Net Zero Energy 2022 data update. So back in 2019, we issued a Net Zero Energy Roadmap that was put together by an organization called Synapse Energy Economics working with Burlington Electric in the city. And it laid out a pathway for how do we reduce and eventually eliminate fossil fuel use in the thermal transportation sector, ground transportation and thermal. So buildings, cars, vehicles, and there were four pillars essentially of that roadmap, one of which was to pursue the district heat system. What we've seen with the roadmap updates is we made some progress relative to the transportation sector. We're actually slightly ahead of pace in terms of the emissions reductions that we're trying to see in the ground transportation sector. On the other hand, with our thermal sector, particularly commercial sector natural gas use, we saw a bit of a drop and then post-pandemic we've seen it spiking backwards in the wrong direction. So that's part of the impetus for us in looking at this project. I think we can go to the next slide. Just looks at the emissions. Let's go down one more. So this slide that we're looking at now is talking about climate and forestry and there are a couple points that are important to make about the McNeill plant. So the first is we have four licensed professional foresters who work with us at McNeill to ensure that we are managing sustainably in terms of getting our supply for wood. We had third-party analysis looking at our wood chips supply and it actually has one of the most favorable components from a carbon hayback standpoint that you can have in that we're primarily using wood residues that are left over from other logging operations that are going to happen for higher value products and taking tops and limbs that we left over to decompose in the woods and emit carbon we're able to utilize those for energy. We also get mill residues, so residues left over from sawmill operations for example. 1.6% of our fuel in 2022 comes from the waste wood yard so clean untreated wood that would otherwise potentially go to landfill. We're able to recapture and use for energy at McNeill. Less than half a percent, 0.3% from round wood which is essentially low value wood that was utilized that's not otherwise saleable. The only reason we keep any of it on site is things like mud disease and we have inability to potentially get into the woods and get fuel supplies so we keep it on site for fuel security. I live in the New North then when I was driving down McNeill was running. I checked out my ISO New England app that shows what the prices were while it was running today. We're at $130 in McNeill one hour. Typical prices are closer to $30 in McNeill one hour because that means that it's running and helping to offset what would be higher cost fuel for Burlington. And the marginal fuel, the fuel that would be used if McNeill wasn't running was natural gas which is true 92 to 98% of the time that McNeill is running the marginal fuel is natural gas. In terms of the way that we talk about McNeill and emissions is important. It's all about life cycle emissions. If you talk about emissions as a stack and compare that to fossil fuel you're missing a big part of the story. When we look at life cycle emissions looking at upstream emissions from all different types of fuels but also looking at the downstream carbon sequestration as we re-go trees that's how you get an accurate accounting an apples to apples accounting with McNeill and emissions. And one of the things that I just want to say is there are various analyses I've got some citations in the PowerPoint slides one of which is from the National Renewable Energy Lab for the Department of Energy that looked at a harmonization of 3,000 different life cycle studies and came up with median emissions values for different types of fuels. I believe slides a little small for me to see but I believe it was in grams per kilowatt hour grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour. And if my memory serves biomass was around 52 a median. Natural gas and coal were up in the hundreds I think coal may have been over a thousand in terms of grams per kilowatt hour. Oil was around 840. So if we look at fossil fuels on a life cycle compared to McNeill, McNeill has a better emissions profile. The forestry component also gives us a better emissions profile. Even studies that are not particularly favorable towards biomass. Because biomass can be done in all different ways. One of which was the manumet study in Massachusetts said very clearly that if you're using the type of wood that you use, the tops and limbs, the residues, biomass electric is favorable from a carbon payback standpoint compared to natural gas compared to other fossil fuels. So there's different ways to look at it. You can also look at the land use. We have data that shows that in the lands where we harvest they've added over 24 million times of net CO2 between 2007 and 2020. So they're regrowing trees. They're adding CO2. That's if you look at it in the land use sector they're sequestering more carbon on a net basis. We're here to talk about district energy though. There's just a primer on McNeil a little bit. But district energy is not about whether or not McNeil is a good idea per se. It's about whether or not we want to improve McNeil, improve its efficiency, utilize waste heat and thermal renewable energy from McNeil to help offset natural gas use in the city. So I've got a map here on the slides when you have a chance to look at it. It shows the route basically from the plant up to the hospital. And it also looks at the different benefits of the system. Essentially we would reduce natural gas use by 225,000 MBTU annually with district heat which is equivalent to 16% of our natural gas use in the commercial sector. The sector where the emissions curve has been going in the wrong direction. That's a primary reason that we're looking at this as the single biggest step we can take for our net zero energy roadmap. Now in terms of district heat we did with Vermont Gas who's been a partner on the project with a third party analysis company called First Environment. They looked at it using what's called the GREET model which is spelled out in the state affordable heat act as the preferred model. They found an over 95% emissions reduction for McNeil based district heat compared to natural gas. Life cycle basis. So really I wanted to leave you with some of that information. I want to encourage you to visit our website burlingtonelectric.com I can't in the limited time we have every single detail but I'd love to answer questions if you have them and I hope this is a start of a good and productive conversation that's obviously where we can talk about. But why don't I leave it there for a moment? I do want to say we'll send your slides to everybody afterwards because I'm sorry we couldn't present them today. No problem. I tried to follow them here online. Do you want to do questions now or would you like me to wait? Can you explain to me I'm just impressed how you just put up all this stuff and I'm confused. Is it positive to have McNeil or is it not positive to have McNeil? We view it as very positive to have McNeil. From a climate standpoint from reliability in terms of our power supply and from an economic standpoint we believe it's positive on all of those accounts. Fantastic. So for the switchers do you want to switch places? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Mike Gordon, resident of South Prospect Street and I'm here to present a different opinion about McNeil and the district energy system. McNeil is also the largest emitter greenhouse gas in Vermont. In 2021 it emitted over 453,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The largest greenhouse gas that's causing our climate crisis. The IPCC the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change their very first pathway indicates that we need to scale back on biomass energy we need to reduce emissions and we need to increase the uptake of residual CO2 in our atmosphere. The most efficient, most effective cheapest way of capturing CO2 in our atmosphere are forests and our forests are diminishing over time. By 2050 Vermont forests are going to be net emitters of CO2 unless we do something about it. The burning of wood on a life cycle basis is three times more polluting than natural gas. So if we are switching from a district energy system from natural gas and switching it to using more wood and that's what the system industry would be doing, it uses some waste wood, 60% of the heat that the Medical Center needs will be generated from waste heat and the rest will come from burning more wood and that is three times more polluting than natural gas. There are alternatives. Mr. Springer suggested that I and others don't consider carbon life cycle analysis. That's completely untrue. The McNeil and BED considers that there are two carbon life cycles. One strictly for biogenic CO2 and one for fossil fuels and that is not true. There's really only a single carbon life cycle or carbon loop. Our trees absorb both the CO2 from fossil fuels and from the burning of the trees and we have to cut down we have to reduce all of those. So you see the fiction of the closed loop and then the reality is that when we degrade our forests when we cut down trees and burn them because we have more degraded forests that can absorb less CO2 and then we're emitting the carbon that's stored naturally back up into the atmosphere. So Mr. Springer mentioned a couple of reports that BED commissioned. One of them is a BEIC memo and it's not hard to see but it in black you'll see the amounts of CO2 that the BEIC calculated counted and in red you'll see the amount of CO2 that they ignored. So an accurate life cycle analysis is going to include all atmospheric CO2. The BED life cycle analysis say we're not going to count the emissions from the stack. So in this instance 324,000 328 metric tons of CO2 was not counted in this analysis. It's not counted in any of the other analysis as they do either. So when you look at the red you'll see again that burning wood is three times dirtier than a natural gas. The next slide shows that same information in a graph form. I'm sorry about the colors there but the light brown that huge amount this is from 2021 453,000 tons of CO2 is not counted and then down below that little black line that's the 16,993 tons that they do count. Of course you're not counting most of the emissions anything that is going to look bad in comparison. We talked about our BED we hear about sustainable forestry practices and I don't dispute that they are logging in a sustainable manner. That sustainable manner was developed in the 60s and 70s and 80s and it hasn't been updated. It is not the type of logging we need if we are going to increase forest CO2 it doesn't help get us out of this climate crisis. Again, if we continue on the path we on with sustainable forestry Vermont forests are going to be eliminated in 25 years and that's not what we're going for. This graph shows if we look at reforestation the difference between 150 year old tree and 10 year old trees. You need 465 10 year old trees to equal the amount of carbon stored in a 150 year old tree. So we heard Gabrielle Stebbins talk about very briefly renewable portfolio standards. We have some information about three other renewable RPSs from different locations. Massachusetts requires 60% higher efficiency Washington DC requires 65% and the Federal Clean Futures Act introduced in 2021 requires greater than 60% on a year-round basis. Vermont's energy is going to increase McNeill's efficiency from 26 to 29% where by any standards it's an inefficient ineffective dirty polluting system and extending and increasing it is just going to perpetuate this. So again I said earlier the waste is only about 16% of what they need to all the heat that they need to increase the university. It's going to increase the amount of wood burned and energy future group analysis indicated that it's going to increase about a million tons of CO2 over 20 years. All our neighboring states are facing out biomass. We're the outlier at this point in time and we're fighting at the state level to see that that's changed as well. Bill McKibbin responded to a tweet from another local Burlingtonian Burlington Wood for Electricity is a bad idea. The science has changed a lot since Burlington started doing it decades ago and it makes sense to phase it out and not incentivize it. Bill McKibbin and I and others used to be biomass proponents until we started looking at the science where the science started showing us the real harm involved in it. Just a few years ago I thought McKibbin was a great idea until I started seeing that they're not really counting all the emissions. This last slide I have is a quote from a Hawaii Supreme Court decision that shot down a almost completed biomass plant in Hawaii and I thought it was good and I think it's appropriate for anywhere. The reality that yesterday is good enough has become today's unacceptable. The PUC was under no obligation to evaluate an energy project conceived up in 2012 or 1984 in the same way in 2022. Indeed, doing so would have been created as constitutional duty. This idea as Mr. Springer said was conceived in 1984. We have to start thinking into the future and not think about plants that were concocted in 1984. I have a lot more information I'm probably running over. I apologize but I'm going to send out a sheet. If you want more information, sign up and I can get it out to you. Thank you. That's great. I have a question for you. Okay. Thank you so much. I also have we've been working hard to bring the science to Wellington and it's been very difficult to get in of re-washing but we have a wonderful brief here from the two scientists who presented at the biomass symposium in June before the two committee and I've got copies of that over there. I've got a few here. This is the sheet that Pike mentioned where you can provide your name and email address in the sciences on this issue and we're happy to share it. If folks have questions, I can try and answer them. I do. Why are you so different and I have to say this is all a little bit above my understanding but I do like trees and as I learned from this gentleman they only use crafts off what is not the trees but what comes off the trees. Is that correct? I have reviewed the dozens of contracts from the loggers a whole tree chip contracts. I've compared that with the logging harvest data that Vermont provides and I dispute that they are just using cops in them and I will show anyone the contracts and the logging plans that are submitted to the agency and I think this is a fish in the wildlife. You're welcome to provide your contact information if you can say that. We're unfortunately we're kind of running out of time and I don't want to respond to that. We don't provide a microphone. I just say we don't pay an adequate value for the fuel that we procure to make it worthwhile for loggers to go into the woods and cut down trees nor do we want them to for the purpose of making energy. What we provide a value for is if there is a logging operation that's happening we come in we work with the foresters we're doing the logging operation we make sure there's a sustainable forestry plan that goes right over and that helps keep working lands as working lands. There's a reference to the fact that we're losing forest land it's being converted to development. It's not being lost because we're using the waste wood for energy we've been doing that for 40 years that's not causing us to lose forest land we're providing an value to keep forest land as forest land. So our data is available on our website and again we don't have enough time to go into what they can get for higher value wood and see to provide wood for energy they're going to give us the residues that are left over. So we this is a big topic obviously and we're not we don't have enough time to go into this it's probably the depth that it requires so I really would encourage everybody to look at these other resources and assuming we're going to have more dialogue about this going forward. Can we share our website as well? Sure. That would be wonderful. So I'll have an address if you're interested in looking at the science and the data that you might be interested in is stop btb bymas.org Could you say that again please? Stop. btbbymas.org There's also a way to sign up to receive additional information as well. Okay great. So I want to thank everybody who hung out with us till the end and appreciate everyone's flexibility and I want to thank Farley and Scott for their flexibility and supporting us tonight. So with that we're going to adjourn for