 And if the wards two and three steering committee members could please raise their hands. If you see a hand raised, if you have any questions about what's on the agenda or anything like that, feel free to ask someone with their hand raised. Oh, man, I'm getting in the way now. All right, so we're gonna do some announcements first and then we'll get into public forum. So first off, we are looking for a representative from Ward two. So these are our new wards. If you are North of North Street, you are in Ward two to be on the North Winooski app transportation demand management plan. It is a mouthful. If you have any questions about that or if you are interested, please contact a steering committee member, raise your hands again steering committee. All right, so if you are interested in that, just go to someone who's hands raised or come find me when I'm taking a breath and nod on the mic. The other thing very important for today's subject, the annual city meeting or town meeting day is March 5th, that is almost one month from today. You are getting mailed a ballot for the city election. So that is the mayor's raise, city council, school board, ballot initiatives. You are not, not automatically getting mailed a presidential primary ballot. If you would like to vote by mail for the presidential primary, you must request it. And I recommend doing that as soon as possible because if you're mailing it, that takes a long time. We know the mail system. Also on the note of elections, if anyone is interested in volunteering on election day, the board for the registration of voters is looking for volunteers to help out. And I'm sure there may be other volunteer opportunities. So please come talk to me if you are interested in helping out on election day. All right, moving along, we are in public forum. If anyone has anything to share for public forum, please, I'm gonna take a pause again. All right, everyone raise your hand if you can hear me. This should be everyone, okay. Just taking a pause. Yeah, yeah. If you are not participating in the meeting and you're having a conversation that's great, we would just really, really appreciate it if you could take it outside or in the hallway. So all people who would like to participate can hear. And if you can't hear, there's lots of seats close to me and I yell pretty loud. So you might be able to hear me if you get a little closer as well. All right, so for public forum, please state your name. And we are eliminating it to two minutes per person. So would anyone like to share anything for public forum? I won't exclude you, just yell at me if I start. I see public forum over here, go ahead. Slide it up, yep. Am I, good. My name is Solvei Overby and I'm an inspector of election award two. And I wanted to just make sure that obviously you've given the information about the election, but I wanted to explain the issue of the ranked choice voting because we did it once but we're doing it for mayor race this year. And how that works is that you're going, I actually have materials on that if anybody wants to see how it works. Number one, how you vote. Number two, how we as inspectors do the actual process at the end of the day. But you just need to know that you're gonna see all the names, you're gonna see first choice, second choice, third choice, fourth choice, fifth choice if you wanna write somebody in. And it's, you do not have to vote for more than one person if you just only want one person, you don't have to vote for all of them and say I want first, second, third. But you do wanna just put them in the order that if your first choice did not win 50%, if nobody gets 50% of their first choices they will then drop out the people that got the least, the last person. And their second choices will then become their first choice. So you do not lose your vote if you have the, if you take the time to actually put in your first choice, your second choice, maybe that's all you want. You don't, maybe you don't want more than that. So just, just keep that in mind. I want you to know that. And I'm gonna say that, you know, I really wanna say there's a, I'm really happy we're having the ranked choice and that we have four interesting candidates. I have to say that I am partial to two of them, Emma and Chris. And that I'm just probably gonna have to decide which is gonna be one and two. And, but I think you all should really read everybody's statements and see what you can, what they're all having to say with their, their position. So next person, whoever is next. Okay, so sorry everybody, but our meeting has started. So I'd like all the conversations in the room to drop down. So all the conversations in the room should drop down because we're having our meeting now. Okay. Still hearing way too many voices. The Valentine's table is exempted. Okay. All right, thank you. And Will, you can go ahead. You wanna turn it. Can everybody hear me? Hi, my name is Will. And I wanted to say hello. I used to live right on Blodgett Street. So this is my neighborhood. I used to coach basketball at what? Boys and Girls Club. Brian Pine knows me pretty well. And I'm running, I'm running for mayor because I believe that there's a lot to be desired in the city of Burlington. And I actually didn't come here to, to give a campaign type speech today. I just wanted to let everybody in this room know that as a long time union representative, I mean, over 10 years I fought for workers' rights and so many other things on the streets of Burlington. And democracy and anti-competitive monopolies is something that we're seeing a lot of in the city of Burlington. And it takes away from our children. You know, and as a former basketball baseball coach, I mean, I was coaching on Bernie Sanders' grandson's baseball team in 2018. And, you know, I think that a lot of parents should be aware that if there's a situation where you're becoming successful, let's say, as a coach and somebody's trying to take away from that, it's actually taken away from the kids in the process. And that's a big no-no. And I think that Burlington Athletic Department, along with our academics, could be up there with Brooklyn and the Bronx and Whister Mass, as far as talent goes. I think that that talent exists in Burlington, Vermont. And I hate to see anybody shake their head at that. But I also wanted to say, on behalf of myself and Chris, that we've been locked out of a couple debates now. Like I said, anti-competitive monopolies taken away from our citizenship. And, you know, one of the problems is the Champlain, Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce debate that we were locked out of. Joan's campaign manager is Hannah King. And she sits on the board of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, whether she stepped down or not. That's the reason that Chris and I got locked out of that debate. And I wanted you guys all to know, when you're voting this time around, just vote for change, OK? Whether you like us a campaign person or not, or everything that's on their campaign or not, vote for change, OK? Thank you. God bless. Thank you, Elle. All right. Any other public forum? All right. Chris, do you want to go ahead? First of all, I just want to say thanks to everybody. I've had some microphone issues, if you hadn't noticed. So yeah, thanks to everyone who came out and signed the petition. I was giving in the ballot. I'm very grateful for that effort. I got into this race not to get involved with personal attacks, but because I wanted to compete in the marketplace of ideas. And I felt that there were a number of serious issues that just simply weren't getting the kind of attention that I think we deserve here. When we look at the current state of affairs in the city, our proverbial credit card or bonding capacity is maxed out. We were looking at a pretty significant deficit, all while demand for services were increasing and businesses are leaving. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. I'm concerned that our infrastructure is aging. Memorial Auditorium has been shuttered now for several years. We have a number of aged school buildings, in addition to what happened to the high school. And we also have some issues with the marketplace garage, for example, that's reached the end of its 50-year life. It's got a $20 million price tag in today's dollars, probably closer to $30 by the time we get around to fixing it. And because the proverbial credit card is maxed out, we don't really have the resources for that. So when I came here 25 years ago, the vacancy rate was about 0.5%. And at the time, I had a one-bedroom apartment over on Bewell Street that cost me $500. Those days are long gone. But what hasn't changed is the vacancy rate. It's still about 0.5% these days. But the number of renters has increased pretty significantly, from about 50%, 25 years ago, to about, I think, somewhere between 60% and 70%, depending on the source. So I've always felt that single-family home ownership is something that we need to prioritize. Creating generational wealth is a tried-and-true strategy for bringing people out of poverty and owning a home is one way to create generational wealth. So that's important to me. And as the only renter in the race, I understand that higher taxes equal higher rents. We don't have the benefit of income sensitivity like the homeowners. We do have the renter rebate, but that's not till the end of the year when we file taxes. So at any rate, I appreciate the opportunity to speak. And if you have anything, hit me up while we're chilling out here at the NPA. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Real quick before I ask for one more public forum, where did Jeannie go? We are passing around. If you enjoyed our lovely dinner tonight, we do have a donation jar. Jess mentioned it when she spoke briefly about 30 minutes ago. But please consider leaving a donation if you are able because the food was amazing, as we all know. All right. Hello. My name is Charlie. Charlie Messing. I live at Pine and College. Way down, way over there. And we're part of your district. And there is those of us who think that the downtown is so separate, why it should be a separate ward. But that doesn't even bring an echo. I mean, nobody cares about that. I am on the Council on Aging. I tried in vain to get a change to the Council of Elders. But the Council on Aging, and we try to make things better for the old people because there's gonna be more and more old people, they say, this is a city, we advise the Council. And I say, they say, what's good to do first? What will affect the old people the most that will be the first thing we should do? I said, fix the sidewalks. Thank you. The response to this was not positive. It was number one, it was like, that's not 30 words. How do we fit it into a document like this? They want an initiative. Then you implement the initiative as part of your action plan. And I don't speak that language. So I just said, fix the sidewalks. Anything you do for the old people, they are not gonna even see it because they can't look up. As they're going along, they're staring at the ground and they're gonna continue to stare at the ground. At any rate, I'm trying to do something to help the generations reunite because social media has decreed that we are different target audiences. And that you, well, the youth should feel that the old people have nothing to offer. And the old people should feel that the youth are a great annoyance. And I assume there's a lot of money in that because it has dominated what they call social media. And I really think we should do something about getting people together. It's a community. Even the youngest people who want the future the best and the most, they're surrounded by all the stuff that has been done. Burlington was built a long time ago and they're always gonna be surrounded by the past. And they shouldn't hate the past. And they shouldn't hate old people. And I am the only one in my building of 65 people who even wants to come out and talk to people at this hour, they're in bed. So I've been doing stuff with the, yeah, wrap it up. I'm going to wrap it up in a neat little, well, actually a sloppy little package. I'm very bad at packing things and wrapping them. But I've been doing things at the comedy club and trying to talk to people a third my age and make them laugh. So I think anything we can do to unite the generations. And I told the Flynn, I said a community of generations, that's my idea for a class. Wrapping it up, bang, bang. Thank you. I love that idea. Thank you. Great, so we are going to move on to our, if you can make it super quick, we have like one minute. Hi. Really quick, we need to vote. Like we need to vote, we need to vote. Our district, words two and three, our turnout is pathetic, which is why the powers that be don't care about us. You need to vote. That is a perfect thing to un-public forum on. Thank you, Milo. All right, so we are going to move on to our next agenda item, where we will be voting on a new steering committee member for Ward 3. So raise your hand if you live south of North Street and or live in Ward 3. Raise your hand. All right, we have lots of you here. Just need to make sure. All right, well, I will let Jesse introduce herself and then we will do the vote. Can you hear me? Yeah. My name is Jessica Robbins. Most people call me Jesse. I'm a Ward 3 resident on Grant Street. Prior to that, I was on Ward 1 and then prior to that, I was a UK resident, if you couldn't tell my voice. But yeah, so I came to Wellington just over a year ago. I married an American, we met farming and then I moved to Ward 3 sort of halfway through last year. My day job, I work for the state, I work for the Department of Health and my role is community coalition coordinator and I'm always admired by the work that my grantees do with their municipal policy work and a lot of that is giving them technical assistance. And so I really wanted to get involved on a community level in a personal realm. And so that's why I'm asking you tonight to vote me on to your steering committee. I think it's so important to connect to your community political level because things can feel so much more tangible and measurable. We can sit and discuss community issues together and it's so important because I think on the federal level, the international level, things can feel so out of reach. And yeah, that's me, I hope you'll vote me tonight. Thank you. So I'm gonna introduce Charlie Messing from Ward 3 as well from downtown. He's expressed some interest in serving so I'll let you have your spiel here. What do you want me to say? I would like to be on the council. I would like to be on the council. I have plenty to say and so I can add things, sometimes a thing too many, but I can add stuff and I have the answers to all kinds of things that they can't find the answers to, but it's not my job, it's their job. Hi, Brian. Anything else? And I'm with Chris here. Chris has brought me and I'm with him. Motion to elect Jesse and Charlie to Ward 3 Steering Committee. Can a Ward 3 member motion make that motion? We need a second. Can we have a second from someone in Ward 3? Thank you. All right, so we will do each of these separately. So let us start with Jesse. If you are a Ward 3 member only, so Ward 2, you are sitting out this vote and you are in favor of voting Jesse into the Steering Committee for Ward 3, please raise your hand. And if you are a Ward 3 member and you are opposed, please raise your hand. All right, welcome Jesse to the Ward 3 Steering Committee. And now we will do the same for Charlie. If you are a Ward 3 member and you would like to vote Charlie onto the Steering Committee for Ward 3, please raise your hand. And if you are a Ward 3 citizen and you are opposed to Charlie being on the Steering Committee, please raise your hand. All right, and welcome to our two new Steering Committee members for Ward 3. Thank you. All right, the next agenda item is a presentation from CEDO on their consolidated plan. Fosca, are you doing the talking? Hi everyone, I'm Fosca and the NPA Public Engagement Specialist with CEDO. I'm here on behalf of some folks who are working on the Consolidated Plan for Burlington. So on your tables, there's a sheet with a QR code, but basically every five years, the city of Burlington creates a plan for housing and community development priorities. The plan will direct how the city uses federal funds or receipts from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The plan includes information about Burlington's demographics, housing, economy, strengths and needs. So basically it's a very short survey they're asking if you can just fill it out and say what you think the city of Burlington's greatest challenges are and where we need to prioritize these funds. I also have some paper copies. I will leave on some of the tables and there's some dots and you can just assign them to the survey questions. It's a very brief survey though. Online on the link here or QR code and then in paper copy as well. If you do fill out a paper copy of the survey, please just leave it here at the front of the room by the end of the meeting. Thank you everyone. Thank you Fosca. Any questions before she hides? And we'll include, if you don't want to do it tonight, we'll also include the link in our meeting minutes so you can access it once you get home or at a later date. All right, so now we're a little bit ahead of schedule but because we have such a package agenda we're gonna keep rolling as long as our representatives are here. So for this part of the meeting we will be going over, we're gonna start with ballot initiatives then we'll go over our uncontested races and finally we're going to end with a Ward 3 city council forum. I do want to make a note here for all people that are presenting. We are sticking very strictly to time limits so you'll see Erica over here, if you're standing facing the crowd like I am, she's off to the left. She has some lovely minute cards and that also applies if you're asking questions. We just want to make sure everyone, we have a chance for everyone to speak if they're interested and hear from anyone that is interested. We also have note cards on tables if you do not feel comfortable asking your question in front of the crowd. So just find Roxanne once you write your question and we will, I will ask it on your behalf or Roxanne will ask it on your behalf. So with that said, let us get started. So the first item we have is for the fiscal year 25, Burlington School District budget is Russ in the room. Russ, okay, great. I cede the floor to you. Do you have a mic? On my way up here, someone, I overheard someone say this will be fun. I'm, you have a twisted sense of fun but I will try to make it as painless as possible. How about that? So my name is Russ Ellick. I'm the communication specialist for Burlington School District. Superintendent Flanagan wanted to be here tonight. He is at a PTO meeting at Champlain Elementary answering some questions parents had. We recently got, as you know, the state is doing statewide PCB testing of all schools and there were some samples at Champlain that came back a little bit high. Don't worry, we're not gonna have to tear down another school building. Just, they were too high in the gymnasium for preschool students. So we've been able to create a plan to work through that but he's still there answering questions from families and staff who are in that building. So he sends his regards and we wanna thank you for your time today. I only have three minutes so I'm gonna try to go really fast. I want you to know that this year we developed the budget knowing a few key things. The first is that there was, we knew that wages were gonna be a big thing for us. All of our bargaining units were about in the 5% and wage increase range but also the health insurance which is now negotiated on a state level was gonna be going up by 16.4%. So we had major cost issues with wages and benefits and then we also knew that this is the first year that we're gonna begin feeling the impact for the bond that Burlington overwhelmingly voted to approve for a new high school and technical center. So part of this year's budget includes $9.5 million in debt service payments for that school. So we knew going in that this was gonna be a big bump for our budget, that that was really going to impact us. So what we did is we tried, we also know that we have a five year strategic plan and that we didn't just wanna throw that in the trash and so that we wanted to try to make some investments but at the same time not overwhelm taxpayers to any extent possible. So what we ended up doing is that we put about $100,000 of investments into our budget but then we offset that, or sorry, it's about a million. It's about a million dollars of investments but we offset that with a million dollars of reductions. So we could continue to make some of those small investments in our strategic plan but not at the cost of throwing everything at you on town meeting day. You'll see a little chart on the back of the sheet on the tables and this is a pie chart that shows the proportion of increased spending and I have one minute left, holy crap. So that big red thing is a bond. That's the huge reason that the budget is gonna go up. The other thing that you need to know is that when we developed it, we thought we were gonna be eligible for a tax on our spending portion for a cap on that tax of 5% and that's thanks to the weighted pupil law that your school board helped pass in the last year. That 5% cap is gonna go away, what is what we've learned or they're gonna try really hard. The good news is we tried to develop a budget that we were cognizant of the year over year impact of it. So there you'll see a lot of school districts put millions and millions and millions of dollars into their budgets thinking that they were gonna get a 5% break. We didn't do that. We knew that we were gonna have to pay for this in five years. If that cap does go away, the tax impact for our spending is only gonna go from 5% to about 6.5%. The major portion of our budget this year is gonna be due to the CLA and the CLA is causing a, I have to stop. It's causing a 9% tax impact itself. So together our budget this year is about 15.6%. Again, 9% of that is cause of the CLA and I think I have three minutes for questions. You do. And just so everybody knows, you mentioned that you printed these out, so thank you. We'll also link to that in our meeting minutes as well so you can feel free to take it with you or if you didn't, someone snatched it before you, it will be available online. All right. There are questions maybe about like how much this might cost someone who pays on the value of their home? Russ, if you could just explain CLA, I don't think everybody knows what that means. Great, so the CLA adjustment is the common level of appraisal adjustment. So essentially the way that our system works is that every year you pay taxes based on the amount of your home. If you're a renter, you're not paying this but if you pay taxes based on the amount that your home is worth. However, every year the state comes in and looks at all of the property values in the cities and says actually we're gonna need to charge you a different amount. Even though your house hasn't officially been appraised for more money, we know that it's worth more. We've seen how much the houses have gone up and up in the last two years, right? So every year the state tries to put an adjustment there that helps you pay what they would consider to be your fair share of property taxes. Unfortunately, they do that adjustment at the same time we do our school budget. So when we present our school budget, it appears as if we are driving all of that tax rate but again, 9% of the tax increase is due, there's nothing we could have done in terms of our spending to reduce that and in fact, because of the CLA, our numbers show that to get us under a 10% tax impact, we would have had to cut 12% of our staff. Russ, can you tell us next year how much of the bond are we gonna be paying off? My understanding is this is the tough hit. This is the tough hit in terms of the tax impact. So we'll continue to see $9.5 million built into the budget in future years but it's not going to be the driver of your taxes going up next year. We've borrowed about $130 million of the bond at this point and if we, again, we are trying to do everything we can to save money on this project so we don't have to use all the bond. If we do it, it's like another 2% tax impact next year and then the year after that. But again, we're gonna try not to borrow all that money. Hello, Liz Curry. Long time no see. I'm coming from behind you with a mic list. In the bill, in the legislature, there's a bill to postpone school budget votes. Can you just talk about what that would mean, please? Sure. So in Burlington, because we didn't throw everything except the kitchen sink into the budget, we are not, if that passes, we're not planning to go back to the drawing board at this time. We feel like putting forward a modest budget of really six and a half percent of a tax impact except for the CLA and the vast majority of that six and a half percent is due to the bond that Burlington supported. So at this point, we're not considering going back and revisiting the entire budget process. We think we have a budget that responds to the pressures of the CLA, continues to make strategic investments in our school district and has offsetting things. What's the implication statewide if the other districts do postpone the vote? Will that have any ramifications for Burlington in terms of the state education formula? Well, one thing I can tell you is that thus far, none of this is written, none of this has actually gone and been voted on and been approved by the governor. So this is all in theory, but if, well, the governor has to say yes also after, maybe not, okay. Anyway, right now they're saying they're gonna use the general fund, the state's general fund to run a special election for those. So each of these different communities will not have to, if they do choose to do a special election. And the people that, the districts that will need to do that are the ones that Russ said they threw a bunch of millions into their budget and then found out, no, we are not allowing you to get that 5% cap. So they have to go back to the drawing board. We do not have to go back to the drawing board because people at BSD were super pragmatic with their choices. So the 5% cap was really put in place of Act 127. The 5% tax was intended to be an off ramp for the districts that inadvertently got ample funding. While many districts like Winnieski and Burlington were under, well, we like to use the term underfunded, but that's not a very nice politically nice term. We went without. While these other districts had quite a cushion. So of course, if somebody gives you a bunch of money, you're gonna spend it. So they have multiple positions. They have maybe more than one librarian. They have different programs that eventually they have to scale back. But hopefully they'll do that more through attrition than cuts, right? So over the course of five years, they were given the opportunity to access this cap, 5% cap. But some district were like, wait up, let's get a new gym, why not? Then we'll hit that threshold and we'll be able to access that 5% cap. I don't exactly know what happened. That was me being a tad bit snarky probably. Yeah, it was designed to be an off ramp for districts who were gonna feel the pain of receiving less money for weighted people. And in Burlington, we're actually receiving more money to educate students who are in poverty or who go to small schools or who speak English as a second language. And that's because of the work that the school board did. So they tried to prevent an off ramp and they said, everybody, we will tax the education spending portion of your tax bill. We're gonna cap that at 5%. And a lot of school districts saw that as an opportunity to just put everything in their budget. Oh, we do need a new gym or we do need this or we do need that. Remember, schools also lost ESSER funding this year. So this was our last year of ESSER funding. So there's a lot of school districts out there who tried to pad their budget, take advantage of that 5% tax cap and then say, I'm gonna figure this out over the next five years. But what that caused is someone has to pay for that. And there's not money for anyone to pay for that. The thing that was designed for communities, everyone took. It was just designed for a few people, but everyone took it and now there's no money. So they have to figure this out. All right, thank you Russ and thank you everyone for the questions. We will be including Russ's email in the meeting minutes if you have any follow-up questions. I know we're operating on a really tight schedule today. So please reach out to Russ or us or your school commissioners if you have any questions. Thank you so much. All right, so next up, we have the Burlington Electric Department's credit limit increase. Is there a representative from bed here? There you are. This is just for a second. Because I have people who have questions. Where's one of you? None! You can stay with us. What do you mean? What's one of you? Okay, thanks. Good evening everybody. My name is Emily Stebbins Wheelock. I'm here from the Burlington Electric Department. I'm our CFO. Why am I here? I'm here to explain a ballot item you will see on the town meeting day ballot on March 5th. The ballot item will ask voters to improve an increase in Burlington Electric's line of credit limit from $5 million to $10 million. So what does that mean? A line of credit is basically a preset borrowing limit where we have an arrangement with a bank that says if we run short of money to cover payroll or expenses and we need short-term cash immediately immediately we are ready to go with the bank to draw down up to $5 million in case we need it. The line of credit was established back in 2007 at this $5 million limit. Back then that represented about 50 days of cash for us. As inflation has happened to all of us, including BED, the line of credit now represents only about 32 days of cash. So it provides less value for us in terms of being reserved that's there to tap if we need it. We have not drawn down the line of credit since 2013. We have no immediate plans to do so. It's really an emergency thing. It also helps our Moody's credit rating because Moody's can say, okay you have this much liquidity cash in the bank but then we know that you have access to this much additional liquidity if you were to need it. So we're asking the voters to approve an increase in the line of credit from five to 10 million essentially to sort of bring the level of the line of credit up to par with our operating expenses. Thank you. Why does this need voter approval? If we were ever to draw on the line of credit it would be considered debt and all debt issuances or borrowings have to be voter approved either by bringing you a specific bond item to approve or in this case, if you authorize it in the city charter then it's there, it's kind of set and forget it unless we ask for another change and you approve the change. I think that's the major stuff I wanted to cover. Sir, you had your hand up, did you have a question? So the electric company is having struggles every year on trying to keep everything going. No, no, we're not asking for this approval because we're struggling. We're asking because raising the limit is a relatively low cost way to help our credit rating and it is prudent to have the extra money sort of to have that on par, more on par with the limit as it was originally set back in 2007. We don't have any kind of financial exigency or financial emergency at the electric department. Thank you, yes, I am happy for that too. You mentioned that this is mostly an emergency fund. I'm just kind of curious with this line of credit during BED's annual operating year, does BED draw from this line of credit during their typical calendar year at all or? No, we haven't drawn on it since 2013 and we hope not to have to in the future, yes. In the back. Can I just ask, does this impact the tax, are we going to be paying for this in any way? Yeah, great question. So what is the rate impact on your electric bills? So all things equal, this should have no impact and in theory it should reduce rate pressure, like it'll reduce pressure on us to raise rates. Why would I say that? I would say that because to maintain a strong credit rating, we want to have decent liquidity and so there's a couple different ways that you could show you have cash. One is actual cash in the bank, the line of credit is another kind of corollary to that. So if we had to sort of come up with the same level of liquidity without the line of credit, the only source we would have for that is rates, right? But the line of credit, we pay a little bit for it to just keep it there unused, but to provide that amount of cash without going to rate payers is an overall benefit. Yes. What was the circumstance in 2013 that you drew it? Ooh, I was not at the Burlington Electric Department in 2013. I am not sure, I'm sorry, I can't answer that. Any other questions for Emily? Are there any questions online? I don't think I've acknowledged. We do, okay, thanks Vaska. If you are online and listening, you can ask questions. Well, thank you so much. You're very welcome. All right, and for our last valid initiative, we will have two, Gene and Milo will be talking about the public safety tax. Great, you wanna start out? There we go. Okay, public safety has been an issue now for several years. And one of the things that we have done over the last couple of years is fund a number of initiatives, recruitment, increased officers, the community service officers and the community service support liaisons. These are non-uniformed civil enforcement and social workers attached to the community. We have done a host of other things that have cost, including the new union contract that cost serious money. And there is a commitment that I believe this community, and a consensus has made to try to do an all-inclusive way of public safety, and that includes really spending the money on the police department and the fire department. There is also a new rapid response team out of the fire department, which has been very, very successful in reducing the number of overdoses and deaths as a result of that. Well, lots of this has been paid for by federal ARPRA money. And as we know, that money is drying out. There is austerity on the national level, and we have to decide whether we can, how we're gonna continue to pay for these things that we have committed to do. And the proposal has been made by the administration and has been supported by the council to put on the ballot an increase in the special tax that we have the property tax for police and fire services of up to three cents. And this would not mandate that the taxes would go up three cents, but it would set that cap and allow us to do other things to try to keep it down. And do you wanna, Phil? Yes, so I voted to have it put on the ballot. I don't have warm and fuzzy feelings about it just because we just all heard about the school budget, right? There are things that are happening right now to address the very significant deficit we're gonna have for FY25. So this may be something we have to use. The city is looking at other things. We're examining, for example, fees that we charge for various things. Hotel, increase in the hotel tax. So there's other things being looked at. This is a way to buy us more time to see what else we can do to address that significant deficit that's coming up. The reason I voted to put it on the ballot is because if we do need it, we need to have it on the ballot because if we find out later that we need it and it's not on this upcoming ballot, we'd have to run a special election. And we do not want to spend the money with all the shortages of money to spend extra money for a special election is just not prudent. So what are we doing to save our church street from falling apart? The businesses are leaving. It's dangerous to go out there at certain times. So what are we doing to save our church street from becoming a desert? We have had businesses that have left. There are businesses that are moving in. I think that we continue to support the added positions such as the community service officers who are adding to patrols. The patrols were increased during the holiday season. I think having the community response team from the fire department has been really excellent because it's made them more nimble in terms of responding to some of the overdoses that we've been seeing. I think we need to be supporting harm reduction. We've done a great deal with regards to the police department, but we need to address the issues regarding the demand for drugs. We can't just lawn order our way out. I mean, you guys have heard me say that over and over again. We must address the supply side. If we can't reduce that, we will never have people coming into our community. People are coming into our community to sell because there's a market here. And that is the reality of the situation. So the department is, they have the new number. It's going very slow. We only have one person entering the February Academy. We had a lateral transfer who after just a few months left. So right now we're stalling out again. But the money is there. The police department is well-funded. We just can't control when people apply. Will they be eligible? If they go to the academy, will they make it through the academy and then will they stay? There's all these other vectors that we can't apply but the money, the contract, the funding is all there. We need now to be concentrating on trying to get an overdose prevention center in the city. We need to, down at the legislator, they're working on some of the laws because we have stuff happening that Vermont laws can't even handle right now. So there's some other things but we are out of time with that. 30 seconds. So David, the thing about it is that if we don't have the money to continue all this stuff that we're building, then we got a big problem, right? So that is why we need the authorization that we're asking to do with the hope that we can find alternative means of raising the funds, cuts, and we can do a better job of standing stuff up. So yeah, that's the... I'm sorry. Can you explain the three cents? Like is that on an assessed value? I mean, can you explain where that money's coming from? Three cents on the, is it $100 valuation? On the $100 valuation. It's gonna raise about, it raises about $600,000 per penny. So we're looking at a $9 million gap overall. This is intended to pay, although I guess I'm wrong because I thought it was, we were gonna be $3 million. So I guess it pays about a million bucks a pop, a penny. So we've, in order for us to do what I just said to David, we've got to come up with two thirds, other, the other two thirds of this, but it will, I don't have off the top of my head exactly what it will translate to in your property tax. There was something, and I think we did provide at least a link for that information. So the NPA will has that information about what it will cost tax payers who own houses of various income, of various valuations. Yeah, it's gonna be really important. If you're not following the city council meetings, if you're not following the board of finance meetings, you've at least go to Civic Clerk on the city's website. You can click on the calendar, look through for the meetings you wanna look at, and at least look at the presentations because there's a lot of talk right now about FY25. We're like talking about it early, even though it won't be voted on until the next council. Thank you. Thank you both. And as counselor Bergman mentioned, we have linked, if you go on the QR code, you should be able to access that link. Otherwise you can access it tomorrow, but thank you, counselors, for speaking to that. We will be now moving, this is the closing of the ballot items. We are now moving into our uncontested races and since counselor Bergman's already up here, you can take the floor again. Okay, don't start the clock, right? Don't start it yet. So I timed this out as very close to two minutes. So I generally like to look at people, but I have to talk faster than my wife says I talk. So I'm gonna read it, and we'll try to look up at the same time. So apologies asked for early. Hi, I'm Gene Bergman, and I'm running for reelection in Ward 2 and would love your support. Why? The progress that I've made has been far too limited under the current administration and council majority. Affordable housing is the biggest issue I hear door to door. We passed some reforms that may increase the availability of apartments and are looking at others, but none are going to make a big difference for a while. This is why people are calling on me to support rent stabilization. This is why people are asking for changes to the property tax system to make taxes on residents affordable, things like income sensitizing the municipal tax rate and creating a real renter rebate program, updating the non-property tax revenue sources that Bernie pioneered, adopting an anti-speculation tax and other measures to put a break on the gobbling up of properties by investors. I would just pause to say, if you look at page 67 in this week's Vanguard, or seven days, I'm dating myself, that you will see an ad for two apartments on Elmwood Avenue that are outrageous and that are, it's unbelievable. You look at that ad and you tell me that we don't have a housing crisis and this is also why we have to make UVM shrink the housing deficit caused by its over-enrollment in under-housing of its students and that includes graduate students. The proposed MOU doesn't cut it. I have been arguing for a lot of climate change stuff and I just wanna say that all of the things from the F-35s to McNeil to the North Unuski Avenue, they all have to be watchdogged. We all have to do more. It's significant that the Democratic majority just blocked us from asking you, the voters, whether we should close a big loophole in the carbon fee ordinance and they're opposed to block another resolution of mine seeking voter approval to expand the reach of the ordinance. I just need to be re-elected to do this work. I wish I had time, but I don't to go into public safety more, but did you know that the Democratic majority blocked a modest police oversight, charter change codifying and slightly expanding the commission's powers from even coming to the voters? So there's a lot more I could do. Go to my website, genebergmanforcitycouncil.org or call me or email me at genebergman, gbergmanatberlingtonvt.gov. Thanks, I only went over probably a minute. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We can give like 30 seconds if anyone has a quick question. I see no hands. I'm just trying to get you to dance. That's all. All right, thank you so much. So the other two uncontested elections are for the ward school commissioners. So we are joined by our ward two school ward two. Are you currently, you're still, I know you are two, I wasn't sure if you, you were ward three, yeah. But before I pass the floor to Polly, I just want to note that the commissioner that is running for ward three, Saja, she is unable to make it today, but I have provided their email address in the meeting minutes. So if you'd like to reach out, please feel free to do so. Otherwise, Polly, the floor is yours if you wanna come up here or I can bring a mic back to you. Hi, my name is Polly Vanderputten. For the past four years, almost exactly, I've been the school commissioner representing ward three. Because of the district change that happened that was voted in last March, I am now running for school commissioners for ward two. Ward two kind of moved west and swallowed up where I live. So why am I running for a third term as school commissioner? Why did I run in the first place? I grew up in this area, not in Burlington, but next door. I went to public schools. I was a free and reduced lunch kid my entire life. I'm a big believer in the importance of providing high quality public education to all students. And I am also a public school teacher. I've been teaching in public high schools since 2008. So I see this fight for pennies when it comes to something that I see as essential to our community and our democracy. And I can't solve all the problems by serving as school commissioner, but I can bring my insight from being a public school teacher, from being a mother. I have a daughter who is in middle school now in Burlington public schools. From being somebody who benefited from public school education. And I feel really passionately that I want to represent the voices of the community, especially those for whom public education is the way to get a better life. So I'm not gonna talk about the budget again. There was a presentation, but it's really critical that we vote to approve this budget in order to continue funding education the way it needs to be for our students this year. And I'm happy to respond to any emails in the future. Thank you. Thank you. We can give another quick 30 seconds if anyone has a quick question. All right, otherwise your email is always provided in our meeting minutes anyway, as are currently elected officials. So feel free to reach out with any questions. Thank you. You can leave that on the front table. All right, so now we are going to move into the last portion of our agenda, which is a Ward 3 city council forum. So we have allotted 60 minutes to this because there are three candidates running for the Ward 3 city council seat. And I invite those candidates to come up while I kind of set the ground rules for the questions. So we, as Roxanne has been passing out, there are note cards on the table if you don't feel comfortable asking the question on the mic. We can ask it on your behalf. We ask that all questions are brief and to the points that they are directed at all candidates and that they are issue-based. So that is what we ask of you as the question-askers. And we've also given the candidates time allotments as well just for visibility. I watched the debate last night, so they shared it there, so I'll share it here. The candidates will have two minutes to give an introductory statement. For each question, they'll have a two-minute answer. They each have a two-minute answer with an option for a one-minute rebuttal if they are named. And finally, they'll have a two-minute closing. So that allots us time for about seven to eight questions with the hour that we have left. So I just want to highlight that. So think about your questions and feel free. Roxanne is right over here. If you have a note card that you'd like to pass off, I'll also be sitting and maybe do a loop if you want to pass that off to me as well. Otherwise, I will pass the floor to our candidates who, do you have enough mics? That's important that you guys have mics. Hello? Okay. Good evening, everyone. It's nice to be here at an NPA. I really appreciate the community engagement in the city. The city punches way above its weight for a city of like 40,000 people. It's incredible living here and seeing just the vibrancy. Seven days, community newspaper, a co-op, a bunch of climate organizations, organizations that advocate for infrastructure improvements like for monitors for people-oriented places, peace groups, groups that do good work on anti-colonial struggle. I am engaged in this community. I'm also rooted in this community. I have two sisters living here in Burlington. I live with my grandma on North Ave. I actually bumped into one of my sisters and my niece at the waterfront today while I was out on a jog. So I'm rooted in this community. I'm involved in the community. I've been involved in writing letters for seven days that appear at the front in response to articles. I've been involved in giving public comment at city council meetings. I was engaged in a campaign to collect signatures for an advisory ballot item that didn't make it under the ballot for this March by way of background. I am an economist. I teach economics and statistics courses. I also work for the government, calculating the unemployment rate. I have done research. I've published research and have taught courses on healthcare, environmental, housing, and labor policy. And I have a lot of ideas, basically the same ideas that Emma Mulvaney-Stanek our progressive mayoral candidate has for making the city more affordable. We have renters whose rents are going up by seven, eight, $900 who can't plan their lives. We need rent stabilization. The incumbent counselor who is endorsing me, Joe McGee is not running partially because he's not sure he can continue to live in the ward. We need tax reform. We need democratic process reform. And I'll get into all that moving forward, but I see I'm out of time. It's nice to be here. Thank you, Joe. All right. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Malik Mines and I am running as a Democrat air in Ward three. I'm also running as a right-in candidate. So if you like what I have to say at the end of this, please write my name in on March 5th and we receive your ballot in the mail. A little history about myself is I come from Philadelphia. I lived there for 18 years. I came to Burlington looking to attend college at Champlain and when I first got here, those four years, I thought that I would leave. It was then when I started a job as a preschool teacher that I truly knew that Burlington was the place where I was gonna stay. All of the families that I've worked for and all the community partners that I've made and worked with truly made me feel like this was my home. There's a lot of families. So I still three students of this day who was kids I've had since they were two years old. They're probably maybe in fifth grade now and I still get phone calls and messages about Mr. Malik and how they wanna reconnect. So yeah, I love working for nonprofits. I've put my life behind civic engagement with communities and just working with people. The reason I chose to run was because I truly care for the children that I worked for. I almost brought me to tears when a kid had asked me to walk them home for the bus stop for a pair of safety at five o'clock at night and walking past needles, stolen goods and drug paraphernalia and then getting to the bus stops and not knowing whether or not they'd be harassed. That was not a part of my job that I signed up for when I worked for the Burlington School District. I also care a lot about housing and the housing crisis. My rent just went up. I found out the other day and our taxes are also going up and if we don't do anything to fix that currently we are going to tax people out of their homes who are Burlingtonians and who deserve to live here and they'll deserve to not have their money just go to waste and so again, out of time but thank you. Are you guys okay with two mics? I can give you mine. You're good? Okay. Good evening. My name is Christopher Aaron Felker. I am the Republican candidate for city council here in Ward three. I've been a Ward three resident for about 12 years now. My husband and I came up here from Pennsylvania and there was something really magical about Battery Park to us, the view of Lake Champlain and the charm of the neighborhood. Maybe this is a familiar story. Maybe you can remember it. We never left. We came up for vacation. We stayed and had our stuff shipped to us. That's how much we love Burlington and I love the democratic process and I really elections are really all about coming together and having diverse conversations together about the future of our city and our vision for how we want our community to be. Currently, our city seems to be in trouble. We are facing multiple problems. We have public safety issues, an affordability crisis, horrible lack of housing and an unrelenting drug crisis. Our leadership can do better, it must do better. I'm here today to say that we have a vision to try and restore these things and fix our housing market. My campaign is about communicating, the building relationships, connecting communities and addressing the concerns that our neighbors have. I ask you to join me in this fight. Go to www.felker for Ward three.com. Follow along, sign up for emails. Feel free to donate if you'd like and yeah, we'll talk a little bit more in just a few minutes. Thank you. All right, thank you. So now we will open the floor to questions. So Roxanne is walking around with Mike and I see one. So as a reminder, the candidates have two minutes each to respond to each question. So this is addressed to Christopher. If you could keep your questions directed towards all candidates specifically, thank you. Is there a way that we can increase the safety of the transit station for being less violent? Of course, we can make sure that, first of all, we can make sure that the cameras are connected and that we're recording there. The cameras do operate as a deterrent to crime in many reasons because people don't want to be identified and then arrested after the fact that's a good start. Once we can increase our officer levels, we can increase foot patrols, we can increase the foot patrols that go up to the church street marketplace and bump them in more of a cloverly fashion. So that way we are including these areas that members of our community feel are more at risk. Yeah, no, I agree with increase police foot presence as well too, but we also need to get to the root cause of a lot of the issues that encapsulates a lot of that too. A lot of that has to do with the drug crisis that's going on. So we need to also have services that are down there close by the bus station where a lot of people need to use and utilize in order to get places. We also need to get to the root cause of housing too because a lot of people are out there tend to camp by the bus station as well too because they have a lack of housing. So if we don't see this as just one single issue, we need to see it as a bigger issue too that Burlington needs to address. And once we do that, I think the bus station will start feeling more safe. So I agree that we need to increase foot patrols downtown. We are making every effort we can to restaff the police department. We could go further, a little bit further by increasing hiring incentives for the non-traditional unsworn officers. So the community service officers and community support liaisons to try to increase staffing and maybe increase the caps for those positions. In terms of non law enforcement strategies, I appreciate that Malik mentioned root causes. I'm a progressive and progressives focus on root causes. Progressives have vision for taking bold action in terms of a public health response. So street outreach programs, expanding those for instance, an overdose prevention center and other sorts of modern responses to the public health crisis we see. And then in terms of folks hanging around there who are houseless, we could take more creative, bolder action on houselessness, Portland main. Earlier this week actually took a couple hundred thousand dollars from its housing trust fund to put towards establishing permanent housing for houseless individuals who hang around in public spaces which is not appreciated by the public and contributes to a lack of perceived safety. Thank you. I see another question. Roxanne's getting her workout in today. Thanks. Can you all talk about how you will work to promote a respectful and welcoming community and civil rights for our transgendered kids, neighbors, friends, family? We can go in reverse order this time. Okay, I appreciate the question. I know that in this city, there's been a lot of work done to lead the way on inclusivity for decades. In fact, I think there's a plaque on Prospect, I think North Prospect. It says something to the effect of Peter Likowski. The Ward 3 city councilor from the 1980s led the way on inclusivity measures. Peter Likowski is endorsing me and working on my campaign. And the Progressive Party really has taken leadership on this issue for decades. So I would take cues from ML Mulvaney Stanek, other candidates who do good work on this issue including Lee Morgan. I appreciate that the NPAs have received guidance on this issue. I appreciate that the city council, I believe last March, passed a resolution condemning transphobia. So I'm aware that there's been significant work done and that the city has shown leadership and I would continue to make sure that the city shows leadership on this issue moving forward. Hi. So as a former Burlington School District employee, I just want to get a shout out to all the work that the Burlington School District has had done in order to make sure that children can be themselves and that people recognize people for who they are. I was a really strong supporter of the UBU group at Burlington School District, specifically in the middle school. And it was an affinity space for people of all kind to come together and talk about issues at such a young age. You would not believe how passionate and how strong of a leaders that these children are. And I was lucky to be there and to help support them. I also do believe that we also need to have city council put more people in leadership who are of different backgrounds and different identities. The more we can do that, the more people can actually see themselves in these roles and these powers and then the city can truly reflect who we are as a community. Yes. So regarding civil liberties, absolutely. I am a civil liberties advocate. I'm a staunch First Amendment absolutist and I believe that civil liberties are the rights that we all are enjoined with. I defend them no matter. I defend the rights of individuals to say what they wish even if I absolutely disagree with them because that is what standing up for civil liberties means. I'm a 45 year old married gay man then gave my entire adult life. And while I don't relate with the transgender experience, I can only get up every morning and try to be a good honest person and try to lead by example. And that's the example I will continue to do every single day. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna pass the mic to Roxanne to ask one of our submitted questions. So this question was emailed to us from award three resident. The question is how will you inform and more importantly listen to your constituents so you're not just promoting your personal or party's agenda prior to voting on projects or issues that directly affect our quality of life? Chris Paran if you wanna start? Sure. I think many of you do know me. I never go away no matter how much some people would like. I'm always around, I'm always listening. I think that even the people in this room that might not have the most favorable opinion of me know that I will always sit down and listen to their opinions and truly listen to understand. I am about building relationships even if they're difficult. So thank you. Sorry can I just ask for the question one more time? How will you inform and more importantly listen to your constituents so you're not just promoting your personal or party's agenda prior to voting on issues and projects that directly affect your constituents quality of life? Thank you. As I embarked on this campaign and got the chance to door knock and knock on doors, I got to talk to a lot of the constituents and understand truly what they cared about and allow that aligned with who I am as a person and the things that I write on my campaign and the things that I would fight for. I have no single ideology besides the fact that Brownton is a welcoming and safe place and if that's the ideology that I stand on then I'm gonna keep carrying it forward. I'm not backed by any sort of super group or whatever people think of when it comes to politics. This is my first run at it. So as a working class citizen who makes well under the mark of what he probably should be at his job. Yeah, I do what I do for the community and again you can look around and you can find my signs next to Joan signs, you can find my signs next to Emma signs. People truly like what I have to say and what I stand for. So I'm glad Malik brought up who he's backed by. I think this is a question that does relate to campaign finance. So I would like to see campaign finance reform where we have publicly funded elections in Portland, Maine which I already referenced earlier. If you collect $55 donations, so $250 in donations, you unlock $4,000 in public funds. To run your campaign it makes it much easier to run for office. If we paid counselors more the position would also be more accessible and so that would reduce the likelihood that somebody is getting pressure full emails and calls from people who funded their campaign, that sort of thing. In terms of respecting and listening to constituents, I've very much enjoyed my conversations on the doors. I've followed up with long email chains with individuals who do and do not hold the same beliefs as I do. I would do anything I could to support the NPAs. I appreciate that the counselors come and give updates at NPAs. I also appreciate receiving updates from counselors on Front Porch Forum. I've seen my counselor Joe McGee do that a number of times. I am pretty critical of the mayoral administration in this city, but I really do appreciate that the Weinberger administration has set aside time weekly to meet with constituents who wanna talk with him at the coffee in Bagel. I think it's Wednesday mornings. I do admire that and I would look to mirror that in my public service. Thank you. Any questions from the room? We'll get a mic to you. Roxanne's coming from behind. The city's climate policy, the net zero energy roadmap focuses on reducing fossil fuel use and it doesn't address dealing with non-fossil fuel sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Would you support extending the policy to deal with non-fossil fuel sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including dealing with the McNeil power plant? And Malik, we'll start with you. I haven't been fairly distributing, so I apologize. No, that's okay, thank you. I actually just had this conversation recently too where we are in the midst of a climate crisis and I think that a lot of leaders actually need to take a look at who is disproportionately affected by the climate crisis and that includes climate refugees and people who move to Vermont and states where they need to get away from the disasters that are happening. With that, a lot of the policy changes that we're making also needs to take into account those climate refugees as well as the people who will be disproportionately affected. So what's the McNeil plan? I do believe that shutting it down completely will affect a lot of people disproportionately and we don't see the bigger picture there. The city itself does need to recognize that we have to reach that net zero goal at some point and that we need to find alternatives and we can do both at the same time while also making sure that an impact does not disproportionately affect people. Joe, if you wanna go next, I think that falls. Sure. I'm gonna try and follow in order now. Okay, I appreciate the question. Yeah, I think this is a topic where there's pretty good daylight between the parties. Progressives take this issue very seriously. I would like to see the net zero goals rewritten with greenhouse gas emissions in mind. I'd also like to see the management of it moved out of the Burlington Electric Department to an independent management for setting our climate goals. I would like to see McNeil phased out as well but I'm very aware that that is not something that's feasible right now. Not feasible in an environment where we can't move to network geothermal very quickly because that's very expensive infrastructure where maybe the GMP home battery program extension would help to some extent but isn't a solution in the short run. We are currently selling our renewable energy credits to neighboring states and then taking the hydropower from Quebec in a way that disincentivizes the green development in neighboring states. We're not taking this issue seriously. I noticed that both mayoral candidates, one of whom I believe is in this room put climate on their platform but make no mistake. Progressives would act much more boldly on climate restricting fossil fuel infrastructure looking to partner with Vermont gas on a network geothermal infrastructure pilot which is something that Eversource is doing in Framingham, Massachusetts. We need to act boldly. I'm endorsed by run on climate. I'm endorsed by sunrise, Champlain Valley and this is something that I would really take time to focus on if I was on council. Thank you. I am not a fan of the net zero 2030 policy by any stretch. I do support and I really do like energy efficient natural gas. This is Vermont, we have cold winters and as I said last night, I think that Vermonters should be able to affordably heat their homes and feed the people who live in their homes at the same time. So I would pump the brakes personally on trying to force residential conversions and I would like to maintain right now the use of natural gas as a home heating supply. Regarding McNeil, I just have to say that I personally have learned in these rooms from a very intelligent woman that the fuel used in McNeil is wood slack that comes from when trees are cut down and that slack is usually burned on site. However, we are not going to stop the burning of that slack until we stop using wood to build homes and since we are in a housing crisis and need to build a whole lot of homes, there's going to be slack and we should pick it up and use this fuel to make energy for our people in town so we can have affordable energy in town. Otherwise, it's just going to get burned on site and pollute the environment anyway. At least we can try and capture that and turn it into a power here because we need homes and it's going to happen. I understand it might not be the most ideal. Trust me, remember I already said I'd like natural gas but we've got this wood chip plant. So it is what it is and I'm just going to live another day. Thank you. We're going to do another pre-asked question. So this was from someone who either was still is here on a note card. If elected, what is your biggest, most important idea you want to work on? It's actually a two-part question. The part two is what's your favorite flower? The flower can be outside of the two minutes. We'll break the rules for that one. I think Christopher and you are first for this one. Right on. Okay. I think a lot of our problems, I think the root of a lot of our problems stems from our housing issues. When people are public safety issues can root back to housing, the housing crisis, addiction issues can root back to housing issues as well. So I think that from where my vantage point is if I can only pick one issue out of public safety addiction and housing, I would have to focus on housing as the most important. Plus our housing market is upside down. A healthy market is supposed to be a 60-40 split of homeowners' renters and we're completely upside down. We're 65% renters in this town. People move from one unit to another. The turnover rate is so frequent sometimes we don't even get to meet some of our neighbors. This is really troublesome and there leads to the housing insecurity. So we really need to make some efforts here to reform. These might not be super popular, but we'll go through them anyway. Residential medium density should be mandated for at least 80% of the city. Auxiliary dwelling units, ADUs. Currently in residential medium, they're only allotted for 900 square feet. In residential low, they're allotted for 1100 square feet. That's a 200 square foot difference. That's a living room or as politicians might call it, a housing opportunity. We need to fix that. That is a mistake. We should repeal the condo conversion penalty for residential property buildings that are greater than 60 years of age. This is a throw out to you nimbies in town, okay? Like if you wanna care about preserving your neighborhood, the character of your neighborhood, let's turn those old Victorians into real homes for people that will reinvest in them and preserve them for the next 100 years. Now, here we go. I think we really need to take a hard look at repealing and reforming, repealing inclusionary zoning in town. Okay, the world didn't end. Cool, we can move from there. As long as we can start the conversation, that's, I'm happy with it. And from there, we can build, and we can build homes for everybody in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Malik? What's that? Yeah, you know what? We have a hibiscus in our bedroom that's beautiful and blooms four times a year, but I have to say that the white lily at Easter time is always my favorite. Thank you. And thank you everyone for reminding on the important question. Thank you. Malik, go ahead. Yeah, obviously housing, but an initiative that's even closer to me and closer to a lot of Burlington businesses too, I do think that we need to figure out a way to bring back downtown a former's market to pump up a lot of those business losses that we were facing after COVID. By no means means that we need to get rid of the south end of former's market, but also finding one that supplements to downtown former's market as well. Businesses took a big hit during that and it was a lot of small coffee shops, a lot of small boutiques. I saw a lot of foot traffic because of that former's market as well. As well as any other issues that you guys have found on my website as well too, a lot of them do surround children and families and finding things for them to do in the wintertime. The former's market is really important to a vibrant downtown community. I love seeing people walk around and shop and walk around with flowers as we speak of that and baked goods and coffees and, you know, so again, anything that brings hope and revitalization down to downtown. My favorite flower is a daisy. Very nice, thank you. And Joe? Yeah, I think the flower question is harder than the question about what we're most excited about to do on council. Yeah, for the flower question, I'll say sunflower. Now for the question that I think is more pressing in terms of city policy, I'm inclined to go with democratic process. I really believe in democratic process reform, paying counselors more, public campaign finance, policy reforms to the way we conduct meetings, public comment, the way we handle ballot initiatives. I think there are a lot of democratic process issues in this city that impede our ability to actually enact policy on the environment, on housing, on all sorts of things that people care about. But the specific policy that I'll talk about is tax policy. So we talk about housing. You know, Malik was just talking about housing. It is a crisis. We are working on this neighborhood code process, the second phase of which will be before council this summer or fall. Christopher Aaron touched on the neighborhood code process as well. And that is important, zoning is important, but the tax system also significantly affects our housing stock in a way that people sometimes don't see in a way that isn't as obvious. So we disincentivize development by taxing land and structures the same. So if you do an extension, if you add an accessory dwelling unit, your tax bill goes up. We could tax the land which goes up in value when the community is doing better. We could tax the land more than the structure, the state of Pennsylvania allows localities to do that. The city of Detroit recently passed that. I would also like to see a vacancy tax. I would like to see taxes tied to occupancy. The state funds the education program tying the state education tax to occupancy and income. We don't do that at the municipal level, which leads to us not recovering income tax savings that snowbirds who live in Florida for 181 days, right? And save five, 10, $15,000 on income tax. We just leave that money on the table and don't tax it back and then end up with more empty residential dwellings in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? I see a question in the room as I start to ask. Hi, I have a probably simple, easy question. I'm fairly young but not in college and I wanna play basketball outside. There's no, I grew up in central Vermont and my town of 2,000 people had lights on their basketball courts. Why do we not have things you can do outdoors with lights? Thank you. Malik, you're first, I think, right? Thank you. Yeah, no, that's one of the initiatives that I was talking about when we need to provide people things to do, not just in the summertime, but also the wintertime. And this speaks a lot to what's happening with Memorial Auditorium and things that we should do with the Memorial Auditorium and I think that Memorial Auditorium should be used as a rec space for people and it should go back to its roots of just having to serve the community. Not only that though, the waterfront is a huge missed opportunity for economic growth and development within the city. I know that the frame is planning on building an outside skating rink, hopefully at some point. I love ice skating and playing hockey in the wintertime but not a lot of people see that. But I do think, again, having easy affordable access to activities to do, renovating and keeping Memorial Auditorium within Burlington Public Reach and Control is something that we should do to allow for that. So thank you. Thank you. I think Joe's next. I can't confuse myself too much by going opposite directions. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate the question. There are a lot of issues on the expenditure side, a lot of things that people would like to see that we're not currently spending money on. I think that's a worthy cause. And I'm probably on council gonna be more focused on the revenue side. We can collect much more in terms of tax revenue. It would be a charter change to do so. But also the way we collect revenue leaves people with huge rent increases, leaves homeowners with tax bills that go up significantly. We had a reappraisal process that pushed more of the tax burden onto homeowners. We don't have a vacancy tax. We have a lot of issues with the way we conduct the way we collect revenues in the city. And that leads to hard conversations. And we're gonna have even harder conversations over the next couple of years because we're facing a budget shortfall. And so there are gonna be folks pushing for austerity for cutting programs. We're not even gonna be talking about new things. We're gonna be talking about which things should we save. And if we don't start to talk about revenues, how we collect revenues, find new ways to collect revenue that are more equitable. If we don't start having those conversations now, then your question is never gonna be heard at the city council level. Okay, so I really like this question actually because there's a lot that we could talk about with this. So at nighttime having lights on in the parks so that way they can be utilized, great in concept. And what we can do is we start off by bringing this up at like a parks committee meeting and then we have a little conversation about it. Let me come back the next time we bring it up again. Ultimately, you're going to have somebody who's a neighbor who's complaining that the light is beaming right directly into their bedroom, that's fine. But again, parks committee meeting, we'll talk about putting one of those screens on it so that way it really focuses the light down, right? Because the city has a monopoly on the electric company so it's not like the bill is gonna be super expensive. So we can provide these things but there's a process to it and it's kind of fun to engage in it that way. When it comes to more activities, I love what Malik was talking about and the point here is we do need to be able to, as a city, raise more revenue in our general funds and we are known as like a touristy town during the summer season and that's great. But how do we become a touristy town during the winter season? I.e. have more things to do at night during the winter months, bring more tourists into town, have them in the hotel room so that way they're eating in our restaurants, they're tipping our friends, they're going out at night. We can do these things together as a community. Sadly, Memorial Auditorium, in order to do anything in there anymore, we don't have the money to do it. The city's general obligation bond capacity is maxed out until 2030 and that building is gonna fall on its own in like the next two or three years. So we've got to raise it down to the ground and the best option truly is a long-term lease to a developer so that way the city still owns the land. We don't know what we wanna do with that asset in a hundred years but we'll still own it. Large skyscrapers are done this way, like the Empire State Building is built on lease land. By the way, that was built in 410 days and is still standing and in 10 years we haven't built City Place yet. Okay. Thank you. I do wanna give an opportunity if anyone online has any questions. We haven't gotten any yet but just in case. There's a few people online. And for those, well, for everybody I guess we probably have time for about two, maybe three more questions. I'm gonna guess probably two. Anything else go? Okay. Are there any questions in the room then? So my question is, are we gonna give tax incentives for businesses to go on Church Street so they can at least survive so they can hire security so they won't get robbed? Thank you. I think Joe you're first or did you go first last? You guys probably are keeping as well of a track as I am. I think you're first Joe. Thanks. I appreciate the question. I am concerned about our downtown. And I think the state of our downtown though is overblown. There have been shops that have moved in that are doing well, always full market. Just opened a new location right off Church Street which a lot of my friends are really excited about. I'm really excited about. I think it's a huge problem that businesses on Church Street feel the need to hire private security. It's very expensive. In addition to the right off from theft to have to hire private security is a huge disadvantage for downtown businesses. And we're already doing everything we can to restaff our police department and to put more foot patrols on Church Street. I would like to see patrols on Church Street every day. I would like to see CSOs and CSLs there right now. On a good day we have four officers for the city center area. So I think controlling what we can control just getting more patrols out on Church Street as soon as we can is the best way to help downtown businesses. I wouldn't support going beyond that I think. But yeah, I don't know. Can you remind me what the question was? The tax incentives. Yeah, I mean, well, this actually reminds me of, yeah, I mean, there was a reappraisal process in 2021 which businesses actually got off easy because they were able to claim lower revenues during COVID. So it was like your revenues as of 2021 impacted the assessed value which led to lower tax bills. So the golf course, for instance, got a 40% tax cut and will continue to get a 40% tax cut until the city takes the initiative to do another reappraisal. So I think in terms of taxes, businesses are actually have it relatively good right now to the detriment of homeowners and the tax bill that homeowners are paying. Thank you, Chris Farron. So I'm all about tax cuts and making things more affordable but I'm not so certain, my friend, that I'm 100% on board with offering a tax rebate or an incentive to businesses on Church Street but I am absolutely open to a collaborative partnership between the Church Street Marketplace Committee and the Burlington Business Association to see how we can find ways to make it so that way people, there's more like an escort program like they had in the past. The perception of feeling safe leads people to want to come back and we can work on that. There are other things that we can talk about, specifically safety in city garages. If we want to talk about bringing more people into town, which is what's going to keep our businesses on Church Street afloat and operating and thriving, contributing to our general funds. There are ways to do this. I know there are people in Chittenden County that don't like coming in anymore because their cars were broken into in the parking garage. Well, maybe we can change the way we operate our parking garages. Okay, if you ever lived in another city that when you pull up to the parking garage it's valet service. Not super fancy, it's valet service. They come in, they put a tag on your windshield, they put a tag on your key and they hand you one and you get out. You don't drive your car through the parking garage. This reduces liability coverage. They can pack more cars in there and you don't have people overdosing or breaking into anything. It all around better option. You're creating jobs in the city jobs so they'd be union jobs. So these would actually be great because then more people will want to come in from Williston to shop at the Church Street Marketplace and more frequently. You know, of course, feeling safe, the ability to easily get into Burlington and get out unscathed with happy memories. That's what's gonna keep Burlington's Church Street Marketplace afloat. I worked at and managed a store on Church Street for about 10 years while working at a preschool, while also leaving that preschool at night and then working as a bouncer and actors and then also working as a pizza chef at Mr. Mike's. I did a lot of work in Burlington. Perceive safety is something that is going on in our community right now and the best thing that we can do to make sure that people wanna come and visit our businesses and shop at our businesses is A, bringing businesses that people wanna shop at, whether or not they're local or whether or not they're providing like what's with the times and also making sure that people feel safe by seeing involved foot traffic of police officers, CSOs and CSLs. The more safety people feel in downtown Burlington, the more likely that we will have booming businesses once again. And again, back to the point of like on weekends, we need something in the summertime and the wintertime that incentivizes people that way to come and shop whether than giving tax breaks to businesses. Thank you. We have time for one more question, maybe two. Definitely one. Do you have any thoughts on economic inequality because none of my friends, none of the families that I work with that the public schools can afford to shop on Church Street? I work at a public school, I'm not shopping on Church Street because I can't afford it. And that's just like a huge thing with the housing crisis, everything. Just so many people have master's degrees and they can't really afford to live here. So how do you, what are some of your focuses on economic inequality in Burlington? So that we're not just focusing on bringing people who can afford to enjoy Burlington here from other places. Thank you, Christopher, I want to hear first. So the best way to affect affordability. The best way to affect affordability in town for everybody is truly to build more housing. We are in the depths of a supply and demand crisis. Prices are high because vacancy is tremendously low. I know it's depressing, I'm a grown adult and we're still renting because I look around at the Zillow listings in Burlington and it is heartbreaking to see what $450,000 could buy you in this town. It's like a 120 year old home with sloped ceilings and asbestos in it. Why would I want to job at the opportunity to dive into a money pit like that, a remediation trap that seems like of my world worst nightmare? We have to build more housing. Then we can start to stabilize the supply and demand effect at which point people will start to migrate back and where it will start to reach an equilibrium which will bring prices down. And again, if we're able to turn older buildings into condo opportunities, home ownership opportunities, then we're sharing the burden and we're reinvesting in our community and protecting the beauty that is Burlington. That way we don't just live in glass and steel shoeboxes everywhere around, right? They have no character. Let's reinvest in the character of Burlington. The only way, we know, it takes 10 years to build anything in this state because of all of our ridiculously onerous regulations. The only way we can open up immediate housing opportunities for the entry level, 250 to 375,000, is through this condo conversion. The only way we can open up that ownership opportunity in six months, you can be a homeowner in this city. We've got to do something, right? We can't just keep paying rent. The rents are too damn high. Thank you, Malik. I'm gonna be honest with you. My answer may not be the answer that you're looking for. As a person who grew up in extreme poverty and came to Burlington as a way to escape that through a college education and struggled with that for almost five years and weighed a lot of my mental health as well, the only way for me personally to have gotten out of it was by working my way up through college and finding solutions within my community. And it was so difficult to do that that I would never want anyone to go through that process of putting so much on our mental stress just to make a buck. We need to have more economic opportunities to help people out of poverty so that way they can afford things because I can't manipulate prices of items as much as I want, like $500 easy shoes. I don't have the budget for that. And I wish that back home, we had those opportunities in my community to work our way out of economic situations that we faced. But here in Burlington, we have those resources and we can definitely put more money towards those resources to helping people out of poverty as quick as possible, whether it's through home ownership or whether it's through business loans, we're first time business owners as well too. So this may not be the answer again, but I come from a different perspective of what it means to earn a dollar and how people can get a dollar. Again, a lot of doors closed in my faces and a lot of doors closed in my sisters and my brother's faces. So I'm sorry if that's not the answer. Thank you. Thank you. And Joe. So progressives take this issue very seriously. They have been for decades back in the 80s. The Progressive Party and the Sanders administration fought to protect the tenants at Northgate, who had a difficult landlord, managed to actually help the tenants come to own the complex. Progressives established CEDO, established the NPAs, established Champlain Housing Trust to do work to help Burlington remain affordable for working class folks. And voting progressive this town meeting day will continue that sort of work. So for instance, rent stabilization. Right now, rents go up by hundreds and hundreds of dollars. There's somebody on a fixed income who's in his 80s, who lives on Converse Court, who, yeah, one of the wealthy families bought the house and is increasing his rent to the point where he's in serious trouble. I've heard stories, I hear stories every day when I'm knocking doors. Rent stabilization would go a long way to help. And then the largest source of revenue for the general fund is property taxes. And we currently have a flat property tax system. So wealthy folks, they go, like I said, and save the state income tax, living in Florida half the year. And then we just tax them the same as you or I would be taxed if we own the home, living here, doing work in the community. So implementing a progressive structure to the property tax system, rent stabilization, those would go a long way to making sure that working-class folks can continue to stay in the city, that the city continues to look and feel like the city that we love. Thank you. All right, we have time for one more question. Just keeping an eye on time. Any questions in the room? All right, I saw a hand. Oh, oh, oh, you two. Name one historical figure for whom you derive admiration or inspiration. Ooh, that's a good one to handle. Malik, I think you're first. Seeing as it is Black History Month, Malcolm Max has always been a person who I try to admire and go after. If anyone knows me personally, know that I am a door kicker in her. If I can't get the answer that I want, I will go to the person's door and I will knock and I would try to get that answer. This is something that I do at work. We people tend to send emails. I tend to go to your door and knock and say, hey, can I talk? Yeah, I hear a lot about activism. And again, by birth, I am an activist and I fight for rights that I did not have and that people in my community do not have. And that's just something that I would always stand for. I do believe in being a pacifist, but at the same time, I do believe that there is a time to take action and to get out on the streets and to march and then do things. So shout out to Martin Luther King, but also shout out to Malcolm Max, man. Thank you, Joe. That's a great question. I am an economic historian and so I, so many names come to mind. I mean, we're here because, you know, folks put their bodies on the line to get the 40 day work week. We were working like 70 hour weeks around the time of the Civil War. You know, now we have time to engage in community, which is wonderful. The figure I'll mention is Tommy Douglas, who did work in Canada in Saskatchewan. Yeah, I mean, you're a hockey guy. Yeah, so you're probably familiar. So yeah, in Saskatchewan, you know, they held the line. I mean, they have a parliamentary, they have a different governmental system and they held the line on health care, universal health care until the point when the Liberal Party and national politics needed a little bit of support in the early 60s and ended up making a deal to look into a universal system and it became Canada's universal health care program, which is something that is near and dear to my heart. I've done research on Medicare for all. I've done research on universal basic income. You know, these sorts of things and the folks who did the work to bring these policies to other places, yeah, are my heroes. Thank you. And last but not least. Historical figure. This is rough. I mean, I don't look... Historical figures will often disappoint. Once you really start reading their biographies, they tend to shatter the illusion of what you had imagined. There are plenty of different presidents and historical figures that have many inspirational quotes out there. I always harken back to that fantastic quote from Ronald Wilson Reagan. This is my most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. So always be cautious of what your government can do for you and try to engage as a community because your community is really the ties that keep us together. It's your community that's going to be there for you when your house floods. It's your neighbors that are gonna be there for you when somebody goes wrong. The government's not going to save everything. The cops aren't always here to protect you. We have to protect each other. So let's stick together. All right. So now we will go into the closing statements. So you each have two minutes and you're looking at me because I'm probably supposed to guide you of who's going first. Joe, did you go first for opening? So we'll do Christopher Aaron if you want to go first for closing and then Link and Joe. Thank you. Thank you for having, for this wonderful conversation together tonight. Again, I am Christopher Aaron Felker, the Republican nominee for city council here on ward three. City council is a collection of 12 individuals representing our city. We're all coming together, applying different life experiences to the problems in front of that horseshoe table. It's important that we have, that we each represent different vantage points, different communities because not each one of us has a piece, just a piece of the answer. And it's when we come together and put these pieces together, we can see the full picture and the real solution. My opponents are great guys but progressives and Democrats are already strongly represented on council. And while I know this isn't exactly a Republican enclave, there is more that unites us than that divides us and we can come together and talk about these things and solve our problems together because that's what community is and if we work together, we can rise together. And I'd love the opportunity to help solve our community's problems with your guidance. Thank you. I ask for your vote on town meeting day and for those of you who have the financial ability please reach out www.felker4ward3.com and donate because that's how this machine works. That's how we get our message in mailboxes and that's how we spread the word. So thank you so much. Thank you. Closing statements. I came here tonight not knowing necessarily what was gonna go on and I walked into a beautiful meal being had by neighbors from all around and it made this small city to me feel big and connected and I'm happy that you guys invited me in here in order to experience that even though I live right across the street but my busy schedule does not allow for me all the time to come across. In my experience with the Burlington School District my experience serving on the board of a preschool and working at a preschool for six plus years, working in their finance committee, managing a budget that I'd never thought that I'd have the opportunity to manage giving where I came from. I do think makes me a pretty good candidate for you guys and to serve for you all. I do think that campaigning and getting the chance to walk around and knock on each other's doors made me realize that I don't have all the answers but everyone has a chance to come to one person that they trust in this community to speak for them and I'm a person who listens and I take time to take in what everyone has to say and think about what they're saying and then I can speak for what they have to say during city council meetings. I do think that we're reaching a turning point within our community that comes to public safety and housing and that someone who has experienced both of those personally that I do have that experience to then go back out there and hopefully make change and bring resolutions to the table that will affect us positively. So once again, thank you for inviting me in here. I am a writing candidate. So please, if you do like what I'm saying, write me in, go to my website, malikminds.com, donate and yeah, I'll see you guys on tell meeting day on the fifth, thank you. Thanks Malik and Christopher Aaron. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you all for being here and engaging in the community. I mean, that's what makes Burlington so special, the level of community engagement that we have. I'm asking for your vote because I admire the work of the Progressive Party in this city. We have a real third party that does tremendous work on affordable housing, on tax policy, on renter support, on environmental policy. I think we have a unique opportunity in this city where there is some infrastructure, where there is a movement that already exists that is doing values-based work and wants to get money out of politics and change the way politics is done. Politics is very frustrating, right? The two candidates who just gave their closing statements both asked you for money. We should not have a system where candidates making their closing arguments at a debate are asking people for money. We should have a system where the money is set aside by the taxpayer, where people can focus on policy, they can focus on their platform. I'm an economics professor. I have significant background doing research and teaching. I have precise policy ideas. I have a clear vision for what I wanna do and this is a two-year term on council and I think I could come in on day one with the readiness just to put forth meaningful agenda items that would be felt in people's lives in this city. Thank you. Thank you to the candidates for their great insights. Thank you to you, the question-askers. We can. So this was our last agenda item. I just want to echo a lot of the sentiment of what they said. Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 5th. It is coming up soon. Please, please vote. Also, please make sure you know where you're going to vote because for a lot of you it has probably changed. The city did send postcards with that information and last but not least, we are pulling the raffle winner. Charlie, pick a name. So actually, I wanna mention a couple of things. First of all, for the first time since the pre-pand, since before the pandemic, we served over 200 people tonight at the community dinner. So we're back to pre-pandemic levels at the community dinner. The other thing is, if people could help, like pick up all the chairs and tables before you leave, I'm about to bring out the carts. So maybe all the chairs first and then the, so we got, so we're gonna see who's here for the, we have two door prizes. The first one is Liz Curry, but I think she just left about five minutes ago. The second one is Sydney. Is there a Sydney in the room? I can't read the last name, it starts with a D. No Sydney? Nate, is there a Nate in the room? You really got a state till the end. Amy, I know Amy's in the room. I just, where did Amy go? Amy, you won one. We have one winner. All right, there are.