 welcome to this special edition of Generally Irritable. I want to we're gonna wait just a minute before we get started somebody in the chat do me a favor and let me know that you can hear us well and that and that there's no echo or anything okay we gotta see this is what I was told you gotta wait a minute see Benjamin told me not to start the episodes right away because he said I need to wait until people get on and start watching before I start getting into the meat of it so so yes if you are here with us this evening just give me a quick shout out in the in the comments and let me know that you can hear us okay and that the sound is good I'm super excited to have my guest here with me this evening instead of online and so I'm a little bit nervous about the the audio being okay so just make sure you can hear us good and that we're cool sound is fine okay thank you Sherry Lynn thank you for that I appreciate it okay so you guys know normally the show is on Sunday evenings at 7 and you might be thinking to yourself self why is Erica coming to me randomly on a Thursday evening well there's a reason and it's because channel 17 our local news channel actually carries my program and they have a cutoff for political programming so tomorrow except for their debates that they're hosting you can't post any new political content related to the ballots or the candidates which you know I don't want to hate on them so this isn't a hate this is just a suggestion Jordan you put this in the suggestion box that maybe it should be allowed a little bit later right so that we have like at least a couple of weeks into February to really wrap our heads around these ballot items to really get to know our candidates and to get that information out there so totally totally glad you take my stuff just wish that you took it a little bit longer so I wanted to get some time in this evening with Christopher Aaron Felker who is running for war three city council he told me to be serious I was supposed to be serious and I'm already being goofy I'm sorry I'm sorry the Republican Party also oh yes okay so Christopher Aaron Felker city council candidate GOP Burlington GOP chair and communications chair for the county oh yeah that's true am I forgetting anything else no I mean there's a lot I'm a good cook to oh I'm a good cook too but really I don't put it on the resume wait isn't here just for my friends isn't your husband to cook yes isn't he a chef yes he is so you a chef married a chef well he's a professional chef and I'm a home chef so do you cook for him does he like everybody all day and then he comes home and just like every professional chef who cooks up for work they don't wash dishes at home they have a staff and a dishwasher at work who do their dishes for them and so at home I don't ask my husband to cook me dinner because I don't want to wash his dishes because he uses as many pots and pans as you would if you worked in a professional kitchen and when you cook at home you cook differently yeah you try not to make a huge mess yep so I try not to make a huge mess and as such I'm like don't worry honey you rest I will make dinner I feel like this is a very similar argument to Benjamin and I so we have a deal that I do the grocery shopping and the cooking because he won't he just won't he will cook himself a steak and then get a bag of salad like that is the extent you know and put some rice in the rice cooker so I'm like okay I'll cook and I'll do the grocery shopping and everything you just have to do the dishes and he literally every night even when I try to reuse dishes he still says why did you have to use every dish in the house oh there you go and I do you know the kite you know the type married life hashtag married life yeah thank you Sherri Lynn she says we look amazing oh thank you Sherri you're the best do I look dewy I'm a little bit hot no you look great I'm sweating no need a blot who anyway speaking of hot City Council race this year I'm pretty excited about so let's let's let's dive into it a little bit it's gonna be a big shake-up this year you think so well of course we've got Max Tracy leaving Jane Stromberg leaving oh wait they're up for reelection this year all the ward seats are up for reelection this year that means wards one through eight the only seats that are open next year are the district seats and that's only if we keep districts after our district so yep the the currently we employ currently we employ an eight ward and four district model and the four district model was just nobody really likes it they considered it a flawed experiment or a failed experiment okay there it was essentially like small little at-large war double wards leave together okay and people all throughout the city really just didn't care for that type of representation they felt they had one and a half counselors and not two correct and so we found when during redistricting committee meetings and the hearings that they held the public forum hearings that many people all throughout the city really do want to go back to a two counselor per ward system and I think that's a great idea to be quite frank I do I yeah yeah well yeah people complain well council be less likely to get things done that's a good thing hopefully that's a good thing please stop doing what you're doing you know I've got a coolage quotes that say it's better to kill bad bills than to get good ones past that is come on now let's let's get some more people in here and let's have a real conversation well you know Calvin coolage is my favorite president he is he's the only one that the national debt did not grow under okay yep okay only one only one only one and he happens to be from Vermont oh yeah he is a big from honor so I try to use the quotes when I can I like it I'm into it yeah wait Perry Freeman is leaving too no Perry Freeman's the central district city counselor she's up for reelection next year but undetermined whether or not she'll run okay Sherry the oh so Sherry thought Perry was going to be so yeah max is leaving and not running again and Jane Stromberg is leaving and not running again Chip Mason is leaving and not running again wow and so we have a lot of contested races and two out of the eight ward races are uncontested that's going to be counselor carpenter and ward four yep and incumbent Karen Paul down in ward six I should have ran for city council instead of school board no you're an excellent candidate for school board I know I just I want I wish people would run for stuff I you know what I really don't want to run for all of it let's be real I like most people would like to have my simple fun life you know people see my pictures and they're like what are you doing Erica and you know I've been really fortunate my husband has a really a fun job a great career and we are able to travel for his work and to you know he's a filmmaker and so we get to really explore and have a lot of fun we get to go to film festivals and dress up and ridiculous costumes and and so it's right so why would I want to go sit in city council committee and meetings and school board meetings when I can just go have a fun life well you told me you wanted to be a more anchor to Vermont to be around family and to put down roots and actually get involved in town and so this is the great the greatest way to do that well and that's what I just wish more people were into self-governance like me we're gonna we're gonna keep talking about that in the GOP how do we get people activated how do we get them connected and plugged in to run for those school board seats to sit in those commissions well doing this is a big part of that because what we've been doing is going out and making sure that we're connecting in our neighborhoods and and we have been building this party and that's how we grow in the next generation to run yep and build that bench and help educate our neighbors about why it's so important to to be paying attention and to not just assume that you know people are doing their job right and it's important to the whole process that all political parties are represented when we are left with a battle and a struggle between just democrats and progressives that leaves a whole swath of independently minded people and conservatives and libertarians all out in the cold so if not you then who we have to be part of the conversation it's important to the whole process of democracy this is i i love that you said that we it's it really is that we all need to participate and i think there are so many people who are disaffected uh residents who feel like who represents me you know they don't think of themselves as republicans like we do right and and they they just think of themselves as centrists or moderates or independence or whatever it is and and so they don't know really well what does a republican mean what does a democrat mean and and more to the point how are they represented and how do they show up in my local government in local city government county government state government you know you may not think of yourself as a republican but if you think of yourself as fiscally responsible if you think the taxes are too high if you're what is what was that guy if the rent is too damn high party in new york city i'm i'm in the rent is too damn high party and i'm a landlord okay i do not want to have to charge as much as i do but we're i'm sorry you know what christopher we're digressing and talking about politics in general and what we really should be doing is focusing on your campaign for city council fair enough okay okay okay so i i'll go on a total tangent and that's fine pontificating about everything so okay so the big thing i want to get to focus on tonight is oh sherry says um she thought for sure perry said she won't be running maybe she said she doesn't think she'll be running next year i do know a bunch of them said that they felt like or max tracy specifically said he didn't feel like they got compensated enough for the amount of work um that city council is and to me my answer is correct because y'all are doing too much which we covered a little earlier covered that a little bit earlier but you know what i was actually in the um the uh sorry the charter change committee meetings when they were discussing putting forward a charter change to increase their pay their but yeah i was floored by some of the things that they were putting out there truly doubling their base pay wanting and you know i walked in there in in the mood to compromise in the in the spirit of unity i was willing to offer some concessions and some um some movement yeah you know i feel that and we did we did because we want to honor the people we want to tear down barriers to service which was what the resolution that they tried to manipulate into their own pay raise but you know the truth is if we came up with the idea that yes if you are a parent who has young children and needs uh child care um when city council meetings go on maybe we could figure out a way to provide child care during these meetings for you so you don't have to worry about that we know what let's get single mothers involved if they want to be you know and um we talked about health care they wanted to be put on the city health care plan and i said whoa let's pump the brakes on that how about if you maybe potentially get a small stipend to put towards your health care and then you go on vermont health connect and get health care just like the rest of the people in vermont have to there's no reason why you should be on the city health care plan when you're not a city employee well and i i i i had this complaint recently where i said you know i'm just a little bit disturbed that the people who who work at city hall and other places make more than the average vermonter this idea that they tax the people that they work for so that they can make more than the people paying their salaries is very strange to me um and oh it was in my conversation uh with with alex stiff actually um and he said well you know we want to keep people who are talented and competent and all that and i said yes however those people can make more money in the private sector and if they and if they would like to they should go to the private sector um yes we want to keep people who are talented and competent and all of those things but do we do it at the cost of affordability do we do we do that's the whole key i'm totally vine with compensating people appropriately that are city employees right i would prefer if we can tighten our belts a little bit more and trim some of our bloated government bureaucracy and hopefully save millions of dollars well and wasn't it so there was some of the cares sorry about that oh um tough finding brian says tough finding reasonably priced apartments in burlington thus it's tough going up there um however did check out the ward openings the other night they are considerable that's really heavy heavy we'll talk about it offline i'm really curious about who's running for all the other candidates yeah we'll talk about that that is very but you're right ryan it is difficult to find reasonably priced apartments in burlington it's even difficult to find a market rate apartment in burlington truly um i'm a renter i've been a renter now in burlington for nine years um our building turns over june first and we have to renew we get offered to renew our leases by the end of october or early november we are resigning for the next year yes they lock in early and well yeah because it's uh we have less than one percent vacancy rate in this city we are in a housing crisis and not only do we have a less than one percent vacancy rate but our housing market is upside down most cities have 60 home owners 40 renters we are 60 renters 40 home owners so there is a a severe deficiency in supply and a high high demand for housing and that is basic economics as to why our market rate has skyrocketed up and almost doubled in the last 10 years sorry or 15 years so so what do you think about now okay so let me back up so you tell tell our tell my our viewers my viewers our viewers this evening tell them what your three priorities are for the campaign like what's your campaign pitch sure so we're continuing to um to campaign on a positive policing policy for the city of burlington that includes it's adding to the police department in three folds the first is adding more officers we raise the officer cap but we need to get them hired now we need to get them on board yes it's adding funding so that way our officers are properly trained and properly equipped and it's adding more social workers and mental health workers to take the burden off of the uniformed officers from having to engage in policing that they don't need to be engaging in it could be handled by other people and it absolutely should because we have had a rise in crime while the statistics are often muddied the truth is in the last year we've seen a rise in priority one calls those are the ones that you really need the cops to show up for folks what is what is prior you know what hold on i'm gonna make our you should pull up the bpd website would you do that hey you guys i'm gonna just i'm gonna make our frame a little bit wider so we don't have to like be on top of each other not that i mean you smell good and thank you handsome but you're too kind all right let's see did i get it nope that's their twitter account no okay okay but oh y'all go to the city website yeah so um so priority one calls have been higher than before and these are the ones that we need here i'll move this over here yeah i mean because with the um with the cuts to the police department here i'm gonna scoot you over like this the chief had to roll out a system where they prioritize all calls that were coming in in levels of um severity and necessity for officers to get there to be able to dole out resources appropriately since they're now rationed due to the drastic cuts in the burlington police okay so basically priority one is like somebody's getting hit bleeding yep it's an emergency that means it's an absolute emergency i would imagine and then there's so you said there's five levels okay there's uh three three levels all right do you know let's see you know it doesn't matter yeah we don't need to get that deep into it i i was sometimes i'm like scotty and priority response yeah there we go okay here yeah let me let me do this and then you can take it oh no stop using oh sorry okay i'm gonna share my screen how come this isn't working all right you guys we're having some technical difficulties okay it does this occasionally i need my man travis jones to do an update on my computer anybody listening especially if y'all are in the new north end travis jones is one of our neighbors and he's an it tech guru guy and he fixes my computers and he's awesome and he's delightful okay so here we go now we're gonna share the screen okay here we go okay so priority response okay now you can yeah let's click on priority response and it'll it should show you the chart okay here we go so oh wow priority ones are the dark blues okay light blues are priority two and white are priority three so we're talking nine on one hang up you have to investigate that because you have no idea how severe that could be oh for real arson aggravated assault simple assault bomb threats uh crash with fatalities crash with an injured person cruelty to a child domestic assault felonies overdose okay yeah so these are emergency some yeah it could matter of life and death in a lot of places robberies also larcenies um okay missing persons so so these are ones that we really need actual police officers to show up to not just uh not just social workers right right okay and so but there and we also need sometimes we do need social workers to show up like per for here a cruelty to a child you're gonna have social workers available for that sexual assaults you'll need to have somebody stalking yep um and even missing person yeah you need to have teams you need to have a lot of resources to handle the problems and not just crime that takes place in our city so do you think there's anybody who's actually arguing that like as an example do you think there's anybody arguing that we don't need more social workers and we don't need more like a balance of mental health things is there anybody actually arguing against that no i haven't heard anybody are against that i think i think everyone agrees to some one degree or another everybody's kind of on board with this plan and it has to make sense right and so but at the same time we have to make sure that social workers or different kinds of response people are protected and safe when they show up right yes like we're not just going to send a social worker who has no ability to protect themselves show up to a possible kidnapping right we also need can't just cut their the police department budget and reallocate those funds elsewhere because the police department needs to be properly and well trained at the same time yep yeah well so if you can't just walk in there with a cleaver this has to be we have if you're going in there to tweak you have to make sure that you're balancing the equation like an algebra you know you can't just take off of one side otherwise right well i think um alec and i were talking about this the other night and we said you can't you never want to cut off one process to implement the new one you have to run them concurrently you know so for a little while the budget really should have gone way up right so that we could start recruiting and hiring these social work type people and doing these other kinds of trainings with the police officers and running the programs concurrently or at the same time we needed to have a plan in place and meaning in place and active before we could actually start making any kind of augmentation to the officer level but that's not what burlington city council did last year yeah they decided to cut by 30 percent they had a problem with just three officers out of a hundred now but yet they cut the police department 30 by attrition and they act surprised oh this is an unintended consequence we we weren't expecting officers to leave this quickly why weren't you we stood here and warned you that it was happening that it's going to happen you were not psychic with come on we're not psychics we just knew this was going to happen because this is what this is how people respond when you treat them like the garbage that you treated them well and it makes me wonder you know some of our city counselors have mentioned that people are not necessarily kind or polite to them or understand or appreciate the value that they bring to the city and all that they do and i so it's interesting to me that they actually treat their employees the same way that they don't want to be treated yeah and i think that that's too bad it is too bad it's a real shame we we want to work on rebuilding the connections between the police department and the neighborhoods and the only way you do that is by having enough officers to get them out of the cars and start beginning patrol patrols again we need to build relationships by having officers that are regularly stationed in our neighborhoods that walk around that get to know us to go back to community policing yep thank you that's how we rebuild and that's how we will create the best public safety team in this state well the exemplar for police departments really and we we really already had that in in burlington police department and in a lot of ways are the sro program um you know i heard story after story of young people who were who felt saved by their relationship with their sro that they were in trouble or they were a troubled kid and and you know they got in trouble and this and their school resource officer um took an interest in them and actually showed up and cared um you know other stories of kids who felt safer with the school resource officer there because you know people don't want to talk about it or admit it but there is crime and other stuff happening in our schools particularly bhs and not to be really dark but we've seen crises happen all around this country when it comes to tragedies taking place in schools in the state of the lot having an officer on the premises uh will greatly reduce any response time to anything that happens so having resource officers there is to me common sense in addition to hardening the buildings so that way since kids have id cards we need to make it so that way those doors can lock and we can trap any intruder in any corridor before they can actually run freely through school yep and we and we've seen examples of that we won't get into it tonight but there's a example after example we had a school shooter in vermont um there has been other things planned school shooter thank you uh and so and and it was school resource officers and the student relationship with those sros that that thwarted the uh would be shooter and um so i just think that that is so important um and i and i love our burlington police department i love how hard they work uh chief murad uh is is an awesome dude uh you know we don't always agree you know we don't always agree on everything but he is a good man that cares he is a kind caring man who genuinely listens and he is well educated he's well trained he's patient and he's kind and he's truly over qualified for the position here and he wants to stay here because he's originally from from vermont yep and i don't blame him like it's beautiful here and he wants to he wants to serve yeah and and i want him to serve i think that he's fantastic i think everybody does i'm i hope maybe with a new city council uh we'll be able to make some different decisions well we'll see the mayor just nom just formally nominated chief murad earlier this afternoon and the vote on council the progressive party which is a six members out of the 12 member body they've already released a statement in a unified no yep and so clearly the mayor doesn't have the votes to advance chief murad's nomination at this point so hopefully he'll just continue serving in an acting capacity and then a new city council come march can actually get murad chief murad you guys know how we can get chief murad confirmed vote for this guy yeah vote for this guy because that that is one of the progressive uh council members is in your district absolutely um i'm challenging one of those six progressive city counselors uh who's vehemently anti police he is yes he is an abolition he wants to abolish the police oh oh he in no un yeah absolutely those terms he wants to abolish the police i envision a future without police came right out of his mouth and my jaw dropped to the ground i find that so fascinating oh it's just an example of his immaturity he's just a young idealistic man who doesn't understand the unintended consequences of his yeah ignorance well and it's you know it's it's i i love the um the want for people like i admired that there's a belief that we might get to a place or that we could get to a place um but i've been the victim of enough crimes and the perpetrator of enough crimes um which i've been open about on this channel and i'm grateful i got arrested i'm grateful i got in trouble because it got me out of the life that i had gotten into and so just like i i do not want their version of mercy right uh i do not want it the beauty of chief mirad is the fact that he is not he is a very progressive or forward-leaning forward thinking police officer he is not opposed to advancing and and augmenting policing to best suit the city of burlington he's just not the cherry picked ideal candidate for the progressive party that doesn't make him bad candidate he is an exemplary leader yeah and the rank and file police department they absolutely love him they love him it is important they appreciate him they feel supported by him okay this didn't this wasn't meant to turn into a raw raw chief mirad yeah right but um but so okay so policing is a big one what did you how did you say it what was the community friendly policing or how did you say it you're oh you're community policing community policing okay so we're gonna get to that um let's see uh people can oh so sherry lin said jose is on the record saying he had a vision of burlington with no police they can find it in one of the debates from last year yeah that is true right there in the debate that is true and you can also see my jaw drop when you said it and then brian said burlington could staff a crisis response team those are good tax dollars agreed um agreed we do have the urv the emergency response vehicle but we just need to make sure we had the officers to staff it because currently our officers are down to like 63 and i think we've got more leaving dropping us down into dangerous territory well and there was already only a few of them that even knew how to use that vehicle to its capacity like a win a bail i can't try something legit like i want one um excuse i just sneezed my head off and i gotta blow my nose you guys hold on so talk to them say something smart so yeah we talked about policing but we could also talk about affordability in burlington we've already touched base upon how we have or in the midst of a housing crisis now this housing crisis didn't just occur right it didn't it's not morose fault this has been a failure in leadership for now 30 years decades in the making decades in the making but the truth is you can't regulate your way out of a housing crisis that's caused by regulations all that's good you can only get out by relaxing regulations responsibly and sensibly that is such a smart way to put that christopher it's so true it's absolutely true uh you mean regulations like if it takes you more than 60 days to renovate your property you have to remove it you know i feel this is strangely specific subject but you know yet yes i've heard a burlingtonian tell me complain about how yes that if that your regulations booted you from um being able to have your uh room into your uh your other apartment yeah inspected and this is now that we're done with court i can talk about it all i want which is why i've been talking about it all the time but it literally is it is it is the dumbest ordinance it the or the burlington city ordinance says that if you if your unit is vacant for more than 60 days you lose your special use permit and so we have a triplex in a low density residential area which is only allowed to have duplexes but you can get permission for triplexes and apartments from the city right so my grandparents did that in 1963 when they built it well my mom and my aunt renovated renovated one of the units several years ago new floors new bathroom new kitchen new everything it was vacant for more than 60 days because that's how long a day anybody who's ever tried to renovate anything and now the city of burlington has had us in court for three years to make us remove an apartment and we now are going to have to evict our tenants so that we can do the construction which hopefully won't take more than 60 days that's absolutely ludicrous and i can tell you truly like one of the things that we talk about when we talk about relaxing regulations is just that number one relaxing the regulations that allow for multiple units on a property not just zone for duplexes triplex and that also opens the door to auxiliary dwelling units i'm sure you know what those are those yep little tiny homes whatever you'd like yeah we need to make it so that way you can build anywhere that it's feasible that you can build it's called infill development and it's the best way to get this taken care of that will resolve your problem it'll alleviate a lot of other problems going on out there where people have issues relaxing these zoning we have hyper specific zoning in the city that is strangling our housing market strangling our housing market to the point where you can't you can only use certain sized shingles on your building if you have a slate roof you have to put a slate roof back on are you kidding me why some of these homes that have that were built that had now have slate roofs when they were originally built they didn't have slate roofs on them they were like mulch and thatch that were on there because somebody 80 years ago put a slate roof on there now you got to keep putting a slate roof on your house ludicrous so absolutely ludicrous so yeah we talk about those historic zoning regulations that just pervert the reality of what you have to can be able to do with your home it's absolutely there you can't change the thought you gotta do the slate roofs you can't do this you can't do that it's ludicrous and people really don't understand that those 60 percent of burlington residents who rent really do not understand what we have to go through as landlords and this nonsense that we do and i'm wondering if even like what i would love to see christopher is for the city council ordinance committee or the city council to sit down and look at the the voluminous volumes of ordinances and make sure that they're actually having the desired effect it's always about reflecting and reevaluating to see if you are having the desired effect you know right now the city just started rolling out their their mandatory weatherization for rental properties we were just speaking about this earlier today that is a costly upgrade costly and when a landlord and property owner absorbs that without a doubt we should have energy efficient units absolutely but we have to keep in mind every action has an equal and opposite reaction if it's a really expensive upgrade for the landlords to take on we just increased the cost of living in that building those rents are going to be going up so when we had the reappraisal and our property taxes went up 25 percent that's money i now can't reinvest in my building that i can't reinvest to make it nicer and more comfortable for my tenants the more that they take and the more of these things the longer we have to fight in court over stupid stuff the less we have to provide good affordable housing and most landlords in burlington are like me they're small and they only own a couple of properties yeah and so it's just you know it's it's ludicrous that morose administration took you to court over that because he's argued for augmenting the zoning to allow for triplexes for at least the last year so why would he continue with your case that's there's and there's literally a well you know i've had my what do we have here i have i've speculated i've speculated but in all but really you know it's crazy and you know brian asked uh why not fight these regulations as unconstitutional i did we went to court made it all the way to the supreme court and argued i mean there's this is such a long story there's going to be a documentary coming out about it soon but the we went to all the way to the supreme court and and literally i'm not being hyperbolic in the opinion uh the judge said we recognize this ordinance is illegal that burlington did not does not have the authority uh because they never passed this they never brought it to the legislature to be because the city has to put all ordinance changes yeah charter changes have to go through yeah through right so uh the supreme court judge literally said yeah we recognize this this is an illegal ordinance and too bad so that is your legal system here in the state of remodeled ladies and gentlemen um okay so we hit on two campaign okay so tax is affordability well the police department and affordability and taxes you actually called it uh that is the that is the big three right there i i told ward three residents and all of burlingtonians uh last august and i continue to we'll continue every day to fight for holding the line on taxes just to make burlington more affordable we need to work on our fiscal responsibility we need to tighten our belts and trim some of our blow to government bureaucracy we need to go through the city budget and make sure that we are not not paying consultants like legacy consultants annually and just keeping people on the payroll we are wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions if not millions and that's what i mean how many times have we had to pay architects for stuff to redesign and redesign and redesign at the tune of a million you yeah hey you know what i've got a client that it's is an architect they need to get light they need to register in vermont because you could make a bajillion zillion dollars off of the government who likes to have projects that they just redo and redo and redo yeah there's well i don't want to go off on a tangent yeah we're going off on a tangent because i mean yeah um we all know that when it comes to construction and stuff like that that shady money gets slipped around left and right we're not making any accusations no personal accusations levied at anybody but you know the history we can we can talk about eb5 and and the many many problems our state has seen with people ripping it off the system isn't that oh good lord okay we're i'm getting all fired up okay so what okay so tax is affordability and and our police department those are my top three but you know i always have two more in my back pocket and that's always we can talk about um infrastructure yep and trying to make sure that we are supporting our communities by having um upgraded and maintained sidewalk infrastructure it's to me it's absolutely important comparative that our community be linked down to the churchry marketplace and be able to get back and forth if you want to have a city where can people can live work and play and not have to necessarily drive around in the car then you need to have the sidewalks there to accommodate them sidewalks are a really big deal for me they connect our city together and they are there to help people with mobility challenges get around our city they have every right to live their lives with dignity at the americans with disabilities acts guaranteed that well and i you know when you oh i just got goosebumps thinking about it when you shared your personal story about your dad and his mobility issues and and there were things that you know i never considered uh people's ability to be able to get around right because i'm an able-bodied person so i just run around wherever yeah and so then as my mom got older and and now she has some stability issues and and i thought but my mom's able-bodied she can walk around would it what do you mean mom that you are uncomfortable on uneven on sidewalks and it was it was a surprise to me well the truth is once you hit 50 if you fall hard on a sidewalk whether on ice or just on a fall day you know you run the risk of breaking something serious and maybe never being able to be physically active the same way again which is so scary and you're so your dad had ms is that right no my father had a form of muscular dystrophy it ate away at his body for 10 12 years muscular just really difficult and so this is one of the things where i think it's so funny people think republicans are the party of no right that we don't care about people that we're not compassionate and my thing is no i want infrastructure i want to build i want there to be sidewalks for my neighbors to get i'm gonna get emotional i want people to be able to get around and and have access to all of the things that they need and and i'm fine paying taxes for that i am fine putting in money all my libertarian friends are probably horrified at me right now saying i'm okay but paying taxes but but really i'm okay contributing for that it's just that i want my money to go to that not all these pet projects and you know public art displays and you know we're look i'm an artist my husband is an artist we benefit from people who want to spend money on art but if we spend money on art instead of sidewalks like which one of those has more of an impact on the residents well um residents use up they use the sidewalks to get down to the marketplace and go to the corner store so they're putting tax dollars into our general fund and they're able to get out and exercise which lowers our health care costs for everybody which we should all want which we should all want absolutely i love it so this is what to me like do me do me one thing before we go for tonight i know we said we were gonna try to keep it tight but let's see i'm you said not to get too heady are we gonna sing we're gonna hold no oh don't get me started you know i will i'll sing all the time no um why make let's let's try to make the case uh brocks says thank you for supporting uh burlington police department you got it brock you bet um we love bpd i do live two blocks from live there for nine nine years now for real yeah i want them close by people ask me one time like i got arrested by burlington police more than once i shouldn't tell that story um but i was treated with way more compassion than i deserved let's just say that um but let's see if we can make the compassionate case for lower taxes is that too heady to close with see this is what you know again as conservatives we get dogged out all the time for wanting to lower taxes and lower regulations and people's come back all the time is oh you well then that means you don't care about poor people you don't care about old people and you don't care about you know whomever you don't care about people and i go i i i that is so confusing to me because i think about it and i go no if you let me keep more of my money than i get to take care of my mom instead of the government right and to me that's more compassionate absolutely is so what what would you say is like a good case or a good example of a compassionate reason to lower taxes you work for it it's yours you deserve to keep it because you know better you know how to spend it better than the government does and they're taking a large percentage of it and you're getting less in return take a look around yeah that is actually a really good point your dollar is going not as far this year as it was last year wouldn't you like to have more of it back and wouldn't you like your government to be a little bit more conservative with how they're spending it yeah i'm not even saying cut all of the all of all of the services right we're not talking about cutting services we're just talking about trimming the fat there's a lot of fat in our government there is i guarantee you we could we could provide all the services we are today and probably cut the budget by at least 25 or 30 percent i think that you can we could keep services and we can trim fat off the budget to the tune of like 13 to 17 for sure no exaggeration like solid like that's a conservative estimate yeah interesting so you think 13 to 17 like without question i think for sure we could trim between 13 to 17 percent that's wild see i'm saying like i want to cut it all i'm probably he's probably being a better estimator than i am we wouldn't have to be able to refund all that we just need to find the fat on there to trim it down and you probably want to reallocate probably about three or four to other services not services but infrastructure upgrades things that we we ignore year after year after year until it's broke and then we have to call to the city for a bond so we need to start budgeting for these things smartly and if we trim our budget the fat from the budget we can start allocating for these things these big ticket items that we actually need to get taken care of to be good stewards to our city and our resources we and your money your city counselors and your mayor are fiduciaries it may not be in their job description but what it means to be a fiduciary is somebody who is responsible for your money so that's why a financial advisor is a fiduciary whatever they do they have to keep your best interest in mind and so if i think our city council and our mayor took a little more responsibility for that and really understood i mean the fact that they're coming with budget increases after the reassessment and after our businesses and our and our jobs have been shut down for two years and you know i i i it is unconscionable to me yeah that they would come with their hat in hand and ask us for more money oh yeah me too i can't believe it we've got another another attempt at the capital bond this time it's for 25 million we've got a tax rate increase that's on the ballot and we've got a tip tip funding zone for great streets yep i'm uncertain about all these even more that's another bond so they're asking for all my understanding is all of the bonds they're requesting is actually going to put us over our debt limit and it's going to uh tank our bond rating well though if we pass the 40 million dollar bond a few months ago which fortunately failed but if we had passed that there was a definite risk of us um tanking our rating which was which is one of the reasons why people wanted to um why they voted that down because we have a school bond issue coming up that's going to be on the ballot by november our school needs to be rebuilt rebuilt and you could probably talk a little bit about that since you are a candidate for a school board but maybe that's the next episode do you want to get that in today no i you know my thing is i'm just really disappointed that city officials whether it's school commission or city council um really look at their taxpayers as if we can all provide them a blank check for their hopes and dreams the the fact that here's here's here's my pitch we could do remediation on the school so let's just keep in mind the budget and the bond and everything that the city is putting forward none of that takes into consideration tearing down the old building and dealing with the pollutants and all that other stuff so they want to spend all these millions and millions of dollars and they're not even going to deal with what is going to mean to have this new bill this old building empty on the property and all of the problems that go along with that so what they could have done which is what any business would have done or any person would have done who has a budget and can do math is they say okay brolington tech center is the worst part we're going to remediate the tech center first we're going to get all of that stuff dealt with we're going to start putting in better air filtration stuff throughout the school so we're going to displace the kids from the tech center and you know whatever but we're going to do that now we put the kids in the tech center back now we take the second worst building and we remediate that and we displace those kids and then we do it in in order to get the worst out first and and take care of those things and now we still have our building we still have the structure we can make some of the accessibility changes and upgrades that we need to make to make it easier to get from building to building which is a legitimate concern okay i am not blind to some of the reasons why people want renovations but i think that we could do it building by building responsibly in a way that does not bankrupt the taxpayer that's that's my pitch i agree but instead we go let's pay architects two million dollars for feasibility and programming and i know all these words because one of my clients is an architect but we're they're doing all this schematic design programming and feasibility literally to the tune of millions of dollars before they've put a shovel in the ground or anything and none of it is done with consideration for what's actually feasible for vermonters and burlington residents to pay and and i think that's really a shame it is a real shame and and and the city of burlington that our city council is is no different um now in case people don't realize this unlike many municipalities in vermont in burlington uh our city council and our school board are separate entities what they do not work together they do not cooperate they don't have the school board doesn't have to ask permission of the city council and vice versa right so um so when morrow uh when mayor windberger takes two million dollars of the cares act to start a new city department that we then need to fund at two million plus dollars a year uh i just have to wonder what he's thinking you know and you're gonna you're gonna create a department that was spoke with money that was supposed to be one time money that now burlington residents have to fund to the tune of two million dollars a year instead of putting two million dollars into our infrastructure fixing our water treatment fixing memorial auditorium etc and so forth right we have a lot that's been neglected in our city a lot of our infrastructure has been neglected for a long long time and you've touched based on memorial auditorium i mean that has been condemned and we are essentially trying to pump in about a million dollars it's part of that capital bond um if if they just to make sure that it doesn't collapse which is crazy to me so we're practically just setting it on fire i don't know why we don't just sell it to some private developer who can turn that people are real nostalgic about it you know they love the memorial auditorium i mean i get it but okay i'm going to show plug this i'm gonna tell our audience that please please visit uh www.felkerforward3.com like follow volunteer and donate if you can um yeah you know how this works uh money is is and donations are how we are able to share our messaging with other voters via uh targeted facebook ads or whether it's a direct mailer and direct mailers i remember when i looked it up for award for it was going to cost me like four grand just for my word you know what i've got really good news from you because i had a wonderful conversation with the wendy wilton this afternoon and she tipped me off about how um their candidates up in milton figured out a strategy where you um print the cards and then you take them to the usps and for like 4,800 mailers it's about $1,300 what i know right doesn't make you want to call her right now but we don't have time so we'll work on that we'll we'll talk to wendy after i told her that i was going to share it with you too i was like i'm going to share this with erica um and what else we got well yeah so we have uh the chris fryer and felker for ward three campaign on youtube which has offers lots of videos about talking about many different issues in burlington why am i a republican sidewalk infrastructures city place if you want to hear about my opinions on the ground oh my god yes and thoughts on air bmb you know uh it's a real shame so real shame that this city council is attempting to pin their failures on and scapegoat air bmbs air bmbs make up like 1.3 of our rentals and they put so much money into our general funds every year that's right there's about 300 short-term rentals out of 20,000 17,000 something like that so really not very many we also have chris fryer and felker for city council facebook page so please like follow and and and be part of the conversation yeah and you guys we're gonna have even more videos posted um that what's that stop sharing is that what i do oh yeah if you want to click sure sure oh look at you there we are be my producer um so we're gonna have even more videos i love you oh my god that was whoever doesn't know that is a star trek reference yes star trek for yes i'm one of the movies yep you okay you are officially my second favorite person behind my husband love it okay oh my i'm seriously geeking out right now okay i don't even remember what i was saying i'm like that distracted me i don't know okay well um okay so we're gonna have even more videos up in the next few weeks so um you know every like and share that you guys provide is going to make a huge difference for christopher's campaign donate what you can click on the link send him a couple bucks it'll help it'll go a really long way and if you are not in burlington right like say you're a resident of of hardwick or colchester or bennington or wherever you are in the world right now and you're thinking to yourself um why would i why would i contribute to a campaign in burlington vermont where all those crazy people live and what what happens in bur like the the saying goes as goes burlington so goes the state of vermont and so a lot of these initiatives that we see that everybody thinks are wild and really kind of outrageous they start here and then they sort of disseminate out to our state legislature because so many of them are from burlington yes uh we're so overrepresented in the state legislature from chinton county just from population wise because of the census we we are numbers have grown and um other areas of vermont have remained um and so so you can actually make difference you can actually help get someone elected to city council in burlington to help stop the bleeding restore some sanity restore some stability to our to our council and to our regulatory environment that's what we really need it's absolutely that is really what we need we need to bring a conservative voice to city council so we can demonstrate that that we can work together to build a better burlington together uh i love it michael alan said heard heard chris on the radio this morning very encouraging yes thank you michael that's fantastic i'm glad you listen yeah we were on the curt right radio show this morning and um it was it was a great it was a great conversation with her and the callers were just absolutely fantastic good good questions you got a lot out of it good questions there was a ward three caller who called in said that they were proud to vote for me last time pro you know got a little caught got a little choked up for a second you know it's fantastic i running for offices and something i ever thought i was going to do before but since doing it um i love getting to know my neighbors i love the fact that people still pull their cars over to tell me that they like what i'm saying they like the way i'm saying it and you know it means something when when the call comes asking you to pick up the mantle and lead that's what i chose to do and that's what we you know we everyone recognized right away as soon as you started coming to meetings and participating everybody was like who's this guy who's this guy in the suit you see and he's really articulate and thoughtful and it's it's really clear that this is not just about um running for office or or having a hobby it's clear that you really care and and i see how honored you are in when people trust you as a candidate and and that that humility that you carry is so cool thank you much appreciate i really appreciate that you know it's it is an honor to um to have the trust of of the republican party and the and the trust of so many people in our community and to have to be able to articulate conservative principles in a respectful way uh to just provide balance and be part of the conversation you know it's it's all of us working together i love it we all play a part you know we really do we all play a part in this community that's the whole point of community so we need to get involved and i encourage you all to get involved yes and you know what to that end um olivia taylor is uh is a candidate in in word seven so she is uh running the new north end she uh she seems to be a progressive although she got the progressive nomination uh but but she's running as an independent though isn't she she is okay and you know what i'm gonna have her on the show in a couple weeks oh great you know i wasn't sure i was going to but she gave a pitch yesterday at the npa talking about tax credits for landlords who choose long-term rentals and it was really interesting to hear a progressive really coming up with some practical solutions to work with people and to try to make it a win win scenario and i think that's what it takes is for all of us to sit down we all come from different backgrounds we have different belief systems um our foundation is different right like my foundation anybody who knows me is that uh you know people are trash and the government cannot be trusted that is why i wrote a book called reasons to trust the government and it's blank okay so um so but if we if we can demonstrate what it looks like to to come to the table and say you know i don't know everything but i'm willing to speak with you and i'm willing to negotiate with you and see what that looks like and really work together i think that is the best thing that we can ask for out of our elected officials uh you know they're not always going to make the best decisions they're not always going to be perfect but if we can recognize that they're trying and that they want what's best for uh burlingtonians then that's all we can really ask for absolutely amen do you want to give one final pitch to our viewers before you head out i'd like to thank everybody for tuning in tonight i was a pleasure being here with erica i encourage you all we do have social media i have a facebook page you can look that up it's my name we've got the youtube page if you want to look into more about where we stand on the issues and we'll be adding more videos to that in the future but you can like and follow and sign up to follow along on on my website and that's www.felker for ward three the number three dot com and i like it it actually when it's all spelled out it also says felker forward yeah it does which i like it's pretty rad isn't it because it's like it's like a double meet in there felker forward yeah forward moving us forward that's what i'm talking about okay so i'm going to close this out for the evening uh oh michael says i'm a resident of ward five but i really but it really lifted my spirits hearing an articulate optimistic level-headed conservative running to save burlington michael that thank you so much if you'd like to get coffee please inbox me i'd love to hear your opinions on how we can work together and build better burlington oh oh somebody made a comment oh wane you're gonna have to send me a private message and tell me what i need to know um apparently i might i might need some more information we'll see um but you guys we're gonna close out um at per usual um we're gonna close out uh with our ridiculous commercial uh benjamin and i my husband and i's book a commercial for our book it is 999 on amazon dot com it is a beautiful coffee table book and it is sure to get a conversation started with your friends and neighbors that come over to visit so uh so i'm gonna close out with the commercial because you know i just like to be as ridiculous as possible so uh so here we go i should have brought my generally irritable cup oh we could it's so cold out it could have cracked us in my hand you know what i mean like it's freezing out there burlington all right good night everybody have a great night this book will give you wings what kind of wings not like icarus wings like eagles wings what about dragon you'll have dragon's blood you'll be able to breathe fire fire like the ultra eagle dragon god this book will make you smarter yes i'm not just talking honor roll smart i'm talking nickel attest let's fly you'll be so good-looking bread pit will be jelly do you want to make money how much money elon musk money there's a lot of money people who think you're elon musk but you're not elon musk but they'll think you're elon musk because you pay taxes like elon musk and you have to argue with elizabeth warren does she think you're elon musk do you want freedom how much freedom all the freedom one to america how much freedom do you want america double america