 on the agenda is the agenda, what for motion? That's right, that was a second. Any discussion on the agenda? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda first. The next item on the agenda is the public forum. Is there any member of the public that does not hear of anyone in person? Is there anyone, I'm not sure we're still, have we checked that up? Yes. Is there any person who is online or would like to speak remotely? You may use the raise hand function. If so, please use the raise hand function on the way. Thank you. Yeah, because you stopped talking. So we will close the public forum and move to the agenda, which is essentially approval of minutes for November meetings. Are we ready for motion to adopt the agenda? To adopt the agenda. Excellent. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Second. Second. President Tracey, thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Now we are at part of the rest of the lengthy agenda, agenda, most of the rest of the agenda is in the section to the recommendation of approval, approval and recommendation to the city council. First is 4.01, the quest for authorization to execute a contract with and make payment to your winner for the pleasure of relibrating your model project that's for the schematic design phase. You have Mary Yanko here to speak to this. Thank you. Remind Councillors of the year's discussions around this specific approval. Thank you. Maybe I'll just start with a little romantic pieces. I was leaving the library today and I found the 1904 lecture free library that from within with the stained glass showing beautifully. And then you've got a 1981 edition, which is beautiful as well, shining through. And now we're talking about remodeling the library to bring it into the 21st century. And that's what this project is about. And it has been, it came out of the strategic design, strategic plan that happened even before me and the community told us we need that library to do more for us physically. And so we've been working towards that a few years ago before the pandemic, we engaged Odin's L.O. to do a visionary look at the building and that went very well. And since then, we've also, the Friends of the Fletcher Free Library have engaged with a private fundraising firm who did a feasibility study. That's been going very well. And so now we're at this stage to get to schematic design, we'll get those plans to even moving a little bit more forward. And part of that, I do wanna exercise is that we will be going back to the public again and getting their feedback as we move forward because it is a little bit different now that work has COVID and there's different things that we're looking at. And one thing that when we did go through this last process is climate, the climate emergency is at the top of our list and this building will not only be about addressing that but we also hope that it's a demonstration building for the community to show what a good building can look like and be remodeled to be energy efficient and really address climate emergency. Thank you Mary. Floor is open for discussion. I have a question, could there be more first aid fish out in there? Which is just what, I'm not sure if the timeline is for this potential construction that's what I kind of plays in with kind of the overall financial plan given. I think it's a fair question, Councilor Hightower. The reassessor, capital needs are in the wake of last week's five-year-old test scores. I would say that is clear. We are planning to do as the capital committee led by Martha Keenan, a presentation to this group next Monday about the implications of the bond not passing. But I don't think that should hold up this good work. I think we'll need to do that in conjunction. One of the things we've seen for a lot of the money coming up, that sort of, I was going to say on offer, but that sort of out there with the infrastructure bill and maybe build back better, in fact we need to have designs ready. And so that is a big part of what we're trying to get to now. I think this fits very well with that, in light of all of those goals and changing both circumstances. Thanks. So the bid for the project is $183,000, and I'm just hoping mostly for the others, you know, for anyone just listening, if you could explain what those funding sources are, why they're being broken up separately and how much of the, for example, the unrestricted donations and how much of those are being spent on this, the trust unrestricted donations. Sure. So we do have funds in the city that are donated funds. They're unrestricted, so we can use them for projects applied. So we've got a trust unrestricted, which is $43,662. And then we've got a donations and rebates fund, which is $12,709. And then the library also benefits from impact fee funds. And this is city attorney to side office. This is a proper use of those funds as well. And that's $126,660. So what, okay, thanks. What I was hoping to find out is of the trust unrestricted, is this all that is in that account? Oh, what is the balance? I don't have that with me. I've been bringing it by there. I have to double check on that. It might be the entirety of this fund. So that means that, you know, and so it's a great plan. That's correct. And it's probably a good time to point out that the library has the parents of the Fletcher Free Library and he did sign an MOU with them two years ago. And so now they are primary fiscal agent for our donated funds. So we're doing an annual appeal again this year. They will pay. Do you have a false idea at this point of the cost that you're doing? I don't want to surprise you with what you're doing. I don't have any idea where you are. When we did the visionary document with escalation, we were thinking this is going to come at $22 million, but it's been a very, very volatile market right now. But I think CAO's chat point is really something that we are focused on because a lot of the money that is out there and will, I think it's going to be out there, will not be available to us unless we're at construction level. Yeah, so we're very optimistic. That's a follow-up. Do you have any further questions or are we ready for a motion? I move to approve and take their recommended actions. That's all right. That's a second. I'll take a second. I'll take a seat. Further discussion? All those in favor, motion please say aye. All right, the opposed. There is no. Thank you very much. 4.02, this is a request for approval of $8 million, $15,505 budget mutual amendment to the budget. We're going to speak to this. I want to give us a little quick overview of the question. Absolutely. Thank you very much. So this is periodically we'll bring these budget amendments to shift both expenditures and revenues around at the airport. We've laid out those specific expenditures and revenues. Some of the larger ones are associated with a grant that we have not yet received yet but are expected to receive it any day now, which is the first time that you've approved this early in federal fiscal year and the first time that the report has been able to be used to prepare for construction season as soon as spring. That is that 600,000, 540,000 associated revenue chart on the third page there. Some of these other items are associated with additional lease negotiations and contract negotiations with rent-declared agencies, airline negotiation, which we are taking off right now to look at another five-year extension of our contract with the airlines. Those are under professional legal and some runway taxiway repairs as well as a real estate savings that we received this year because of a lower than expected re-appraisal cost for the city itself. That's generally the high level of those particular items and I can answer your questions. Questions or motion from the board? All right, Councilor Hatcher. I move to approve and recommend the city council for the budget of mutual benefit on LN. We do that in the back of the college that this year 22 VA budget includes an amount that's described in that. That's a second. Any discussion? All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. The reading, which is an authorization for reimbursement from revenue boards for our flagship department, capital improvements. The item, welcome to our manager, transparent. Good evening. I'm Emily Steppens-Willock and we'd like to thank the community and the board and the council for their support of the revenue bond. Based on the advice from bond council in order to move forward with expenditures prior to the issuance of the bond, we need an official intent adoption, which is in the resolution this evening that says that we intend to reimburse the expenditure of capital projects between now and the likely issuance, which is in the spring of 2022, our electric commission adopted the resolution and recommended it to you by a five-nothing vote on Wednesday evening of last week. And that's why we're here this evening. So quickly honestly, congratulations to all of you for your support of the revenue bonds. Councilor Fawkes. I reckon I think we should recommend that the city council have your resolution. Seconded by Councilor Chang. Discussion? Questions? We're going to move both. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. You both finished. Thank you. 4.05. This is the use of $1.5 million for our funds to balance that 2022 capital budget for the council budget for 2020. I think we're so happy to do that, but I think it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. This is just overly enthusiastic, I'm crossing up. Okay, so 4.05. Conversation to accept your department of housing and our environment for our grant. See you. There's Brian Pines here. Okay, Todd. Todd's going to speak to this. Okay, great. Welcome. Todd, you want to kick us off this to short overview of the site? Sure. We're requesting a permission to accept $1.5 million grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development of home ARP funding to assist the city's efforts to reduce homelessness in Burlington. The funding is considerably more flexible than the typical home funding that you all may be familiar with through the action planning process and gives the city the ability to fund not only new rental housing, but services as well as non-congregate shelter. The process involves once this is accepted, the city will have funding to pay for a planning process, which is required by Todd. The first part of that planning process is working with our stakeholders and listening to what we understand the greatest needs and the greatest opportunity for impact with respect to homelessness of using this funding. Following that process, we will prepare a draft plan followed by a public hearing where we will again solicit input from the public and our partners on that plan and ultimately it will go to city council and board of finance for approval. The, an unusual feature of this grant is that there's actually a fairly long period of performance. The, we have over eight years to spend this funding. So it gives us some perhaps unique opportunities to look at medium and long-term impacts of the funding. Thank you, Todd. I'm interested. So recognizing that it is flexible. I'm wondering if there is, if you have examples of how other communities might have used this funding in creative ways to address homelessness. Yeah, it's a great question. It's brand new. This is brand new funding. And frankly, I'm not sure whether or not any of any communities have completed their process here. I know that a lot of communities are, have tended to what I hear is that they are proposing new permanently affordable housing in their communities to for folks who are either homeless or at risk of homelessness. Okay. Thank you for that. And then the other question was just, I know there's a couple of whereas clauses referencing for the process steps. Do you have any, an idea of like a rough timeline for when that might take place? Yeah, we'd really like to be through with. We'd really like to have a draft plan by the middle of January. And our target is, although it's a, can be a tough time to do outreach with respect to schedules. I've been scheduling a whole, whole bunch of meetings this week and the last week of this year. We'd like to wrap up our, our outreach process, or at least the initial stage of it by the end of the calendar year, get a draft plan by the middle of January, followed by there needs to be a public comment period, including the public hearing. And by early or mid February, I would hope to be able to bring it to board of finance and city council. Great. Thank you. That's all right there. I have some questions, especially. President Tracy's first question. And I think this isn't a long turnaround time. I'm having a plan by mid January. My final item. Of course, not a question for stakeholder. And tight. So I guess my question is. Yeah. Yes. Especially because it's a long term. Because it's a flexible. How this fits in with other things. And I think I'm just reiterating. President Tracy's questions. But maybe with a note that even if we're looking at grants. Like to not just look at other communities who have done this grant. I've done a process around it, but just if we're looking at other communities who have done. You know, who have been creative and. Addressing their house. Problems as opposed to looking at. You know, who have been creative. And addressing their house. Problems as opposed to looking at communities who have. Received this grant. And address. I understand your. Point counselor. I can. Tell you that. We agree with that. Administration. Does. Think. There are systemic. It's going. Support. Almost that. It should be made. We take steps in the right direction. Decades. It's right here. Not satisfied. State of the systems. Absolutely. Comfort. The council. Very soon. In that system. We have not fully. How this new funding source intersects with. The areas of opportunity that we identified. But. We're very focused on this issue. So. We do think there are things. I can't work. These are. I can't get too much for detail on this. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. This grant is only for the city. It's also. But it's just the city's manager. This funding is specific to the city of Burlington. As other home funding is it's really. Primarily designed to be. Funding projects within the Burlington city limits. However. We have confirmed with HUD that we do have the flexibility to fund. Projects. Within Chittenden County. Certainly the, our continuum of care. The primary non-governmental entity that, that really. Owns homelessness in. In the area. Does have a Chittenden wide County. Scope. And we understand homelessness to be a region. Regional issue. So in the event that, for instance, VHCB, who's also receiving home, home funding. Home ARP funding. We do have the flexibility to. Combine our home ARP funds on a project outside of Burlington. If we choose. I don't have any indication that that's something that. That there's necessarily. An appetite for at this point. But it is possible. Lastly, once you have a plan about how this study will be utilized, will you come back to the city council or CDM. Yeah. Great question. At this point, I think we're thinking that. That we'll do our public hearing at CDNR as we have done for our caper presentations and action plan presentations. We felt like those were really good. That's been a really good forum. For, for these conversations and getting a. A lot of folks involved in the conversation. Further questions for discussion. I think we still need to. On this. After. Motion. That's wrong. Make a motion to recommend the council. That's wrong. That's wrong. Second. Tracey. For discussion. I'm sorry. I'm actually sad. The post. First, the team for. This brings us to. No. Yes. Okay. Okay. Use the $1.5 million ARPA funds. To balance F22 capital budget. Can you just. Yeah. I know that it is probably frustrated that he's coming to meeting after meeting. And I said I was going to try and wrap them up. But this is like the EED and the traffic. That were approved by the body recently. These are decisions that were made. As we were passing the budget in June. But the auditor would like to see. Pass this again and memo format as we did the other two. Just to be very clear. I'm not saying that this was already included as we balanced the budget. Did not as a result of any, like what did, or didn't happen with the bonds. This was coming to you anyway. We were counting on this money. To take care of some of the projects that I've listed here, including traffic calming, accessibility projects, regional dispatch. Some pretty important priorities. And I am confirming that. This is not changed the $15 million balance of ARPA that we've been talking to the public about. Based off of that, when are we going to come back to, to make those allocations? With the public. Yeah. With based on survey information. The basic plan at this point. We are going through the huge amount of public. We are. Working on assembling that. The public with the results. And making the next step of the public. We are going to have a meeting in January to discuss sort of how we're interpreting this and what we're proposing. In February, we'll be based having benefited from the survey and. We would then start on. About this. February is when. Okay. That said. Is I will share. I think it's been said publicly already. That. I think it's been said publicly already. And I think it's been said publicly already. And I think it's been said publicly already. Strong support for almost. Yes. And how is the advancements. Survey. Given the attention. Especially right now. I. That sort of. There'll be some discussion about that separate from. May still get approved on the same timeline, but there will be some additional conversation about that. Okay. Okay. So. So maybe you can repeat. $15 million. $15 million is intact. I will say clearly for every one. $15 million. Please say yes to this. And you will keep. And. The results of. The city. Taking. The survey that people responded to. The eligibility of infrastructure investments. It's limited to water. It's limited to water resources investments. I believe there was a lot of confidence as our code was being passed. So. Thus, there was sort of. I can't. I can't say. I understand. Water is the only thing. Directly be funded as well. Use. I think they're particularly focused on. Issues. Issues other cities. Water sources. That. So. However. The bipartisan infrastructure. We are. We're still figuring this out ourselves. It's a huge certain bill. Get your arms around. As soon as. We have. An understanding. That is. The start of our station. We'll do that. Yeah, I think. More. We understand that quickly. What is the possibility. Very serious infrastructure. Very serious infrastructure. When does the money start arriving from the infrastructure deal? Yeah. So. See. We are looking. I don't. I don't. I don't know. My notes. All right. And that is. The latest information we have is there'll be some things that we could apply for. Starting in January. Those will take three to six months to award. All of those programs will be topping up existing programs. And so those will require a match. We don't have any money for that. So that might be difficult because we don't. We didn't get the box. The new programs they will create. That our programs that won't require a match are being designed now. And we won't expect to see those until probably. March or April. So it's a little bit of a later timeline. And I say, we don't have any money. It's, you know, Of course I made a big flip. We have no money, but the capital committee. Is worried that starting in January, there may be. Programs that have money and we may be struggling to meet the 10 of 20% match. And that's what we'll come back to talk to you about a little bit. I have a request. Appreciate that. I'm trying to get out of there. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm trying to get out of here. A lot more. Sure. And our. Are we. More probably. Are we, have we discussed enough though this focus. I think we're going to go back to the discussions. We're ready for a motion. So. It's our second. Our discussion. All those favor the motion. Please say aye. All right. Opposed. Okay. 4.0. Sex is. Impact fees to purchase five vehicles for. Inspired. Support liaisons. Service officers. And. to speak to it. One exciting element, I think there's at least two exciting elements. One is that we have these new capacities that we are starting to resource. So we can be there jobs effectively. Secondly, I believe these are all electric vehicles, right? So hopefully that that's that's great. But before it's open, would you want to add anything to that? Well, that was very well done. I have a more general question, which is just what happens with the equals that EPD had that was for the higher office, if it's retired, or if we just have excess vehicles, we do not have any. So the police department has had 45 vehicles for the last 15 years, and they are used 24 seven. So those vehicles are still being used because of the shift changes. So they actually it goes from one shift to the next. So they're still filling all their 24 hour shifts. So the vehicles are being used 24 seven. This is actually increasing the number of vehicles by five. How are these vehicles going to be marked? Are they going to have like sirens and sort of typical police markings or is it going to be kind of a different outlet? I think that it's different. In my mind, I think it's a very different role and I think we're trying to take a very different thing. They're not going to be white. Okay. And with and I don't think there's going to be any markings on the outside of them or I don't have those final details, but these are straight vehicles without radios. Okay. Thank you. So compared to the past couple of years, can you compare the number of impact? Tremendously down. So normally the police department would get somewhere in the range of $6,200,000 a year. I believe last year they got $20,000 in the impact. So the impact feeds across the city are down. So this is 70% 70% of the impact. That's a change of the motion. That's great. To approve and recommend the city council, please stand by. Thank you, Councilor Jay. Is there a second? That's a follow-up. Further discussion? All those there, would you please say aye? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I'm very happy to answer. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. 4.07, opposition make a terrible donation. Find, move the pilot program. Since Council Paul has been championing this, kick off this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, so we're pretty excited to be here tonight. Actually, that's for some reason that we're fairly honest. It's actually asking for authorization to make a charitable donation. That's the simple story, you know, a charitable donation. More complicated stories, how we're going to do it, how we're trying to kill two birds with one stone process. As you're aware, I presented to you a Scott memo a couple of months ago about Scott reform. Changed a lot of things around Scott making it more fair and equitable. That will come into effect in February 1st. However, when it goes to effect, it's going to expose a lot of people to Scott. It's going to expose another larger people to Scott very shortly if they get another ticket. But most importantly, 60% of the people that are owed tickets owe less than $200, which is a grand scheme of what people owe tickets is sort of an approachable, achievable, not money to pay off if you're going to pay off. So we're looking for a way to soften the entry into the scoff enforcement app and collect back that money. And this is where it dovetails nicely with the fines for food crooks. So what we're proposed to do is incentivize people to pay off their parking tickets and we'll take half of the rent we generate from delinquent tickets and donate it to a food security charity this year. We've been discussing with eating shit and very excited to get such a donation. And it's good. I don't want to get people excited, but right now there's $850,000. So there's a big upside potentially. You can only get 5% participation. That's very, very sizable. And so it's a pilot program. We don't know if people are going to react to this. They do, right? If they don't, we'll predict, we'll adjust. But the goal here is to reduce exposure to scoff and at the same time. And as an aside, we do have very good compliance. Over the past 15, 20 years, we have about 90% of our tickets. So $850,000 sounds like a big improvement in the grand scheme of over time. It's a small percentage. You know, even though it's past three years, there's some expenses, but it's suspended for at least 5%. Yes, sorry. Conclusion. I just want to thank everyone. It's Councilor Paul's idea 2019, they were 2020, it was three years ago that started this concept and really dovetailed very well with the revisions that we were planning. And I want to apologize to Councilor Paul that it took this long to get here, but we're pleased that the policy potential of scoffery entry and minimizing implements and addressing food insecurity kind of fit together well as a package. So thank you. Well, thanks so much for the 80 amount of time that you've all invested in. Thank you. This is proof of that. And it does, you know, I think we're hopefully solving two things at the same time. One is using scoffer people, giving them a reason to deal with their tickets, their past tickets. The other thing also, just so others know when this may be a question for some, is how are we, how do you start a pilot program, get the word out quickly enough that people respond and, you know, greatly to DPW's credit, greatly to these two gentlemen's credit, they have a plan. And I think it would be valuable to others to know what you intend to do in order to get this word out so that hopefully you have this incredibly wonderful donation. Well, firstly, we have a draft press release sitting on my desk waiting for this approval of my first meeting and that should be going out tomorrow. But secondarily, we, because these are all overdue tickets, we run plates. We've already sent them one, at least one or two letters saying you owe us money. So we're going to do a direct mail to all 7,000 people that owe money. So everybody will get, everybody that owes money can't possibly directly participate because it's going to be reached out personally, too. And then beyond that, this is the normal channel, so getting it out on Twitter. Socials are hacked. And then hopefully, you know, I think this is a good news story that we're hoping to get some pretty good. An awful lot of effort has been put into it. I also think this would like to acknowledge that this idea came out of the food pickups that were done in the South Bend. And there were a couple of people who came forward with the, what was then called the Food for Fines, which is now very conveniently called Fines for Food, very brilliant today. And that was really brought forward to a large degree by several neighbors that showed up at these food pickups, as well as on Patrick Mulligan, who has been a huge supporter of the Food for Fines program in Lexington. And I'm glad that eating Chittenden is thrilled with this approach. And this will result in a significant donation to the community. So thank you. Thanks very much for your leadership and focus on this. Would you like to make the motion? Sure. I'm happy to make a motion to firmly recommend that the city council operate the director of the Department of Public Works to make a charitable foundation to eating Chittenden in an amount equal to one half of the revenues we received from Delinquent Park and Tickets during the period of December 15, 2021 through January 15, 2022. Second by Councilor Kajar. Just a discussion. That's a joke. Personally, I think this is not a good idea. I think, you know, with revenues related to parking and some of the favor, some type of donations should also go back. Basically, people are straddling this, having bigger ties. Some of them cannot expect that part. I think the idea of having to make that connection and for those who want mobility issues. You know, so try to tie the talk about Chittenden, feeding Chittenden. They are actually concerned by the fact that we are going to take back them and those who need their services. They quite are. All of those efforts are about this. But now the question that I have specifically to 7,000 people all the city money of those 7,000, what is the percent of this whole money this year? In 2020, what hold it was a bit, how long was it? Most of the tickets, like I said, 60% of them are under $200. They're relatively young. Young tickets, they have to be escalated and there are people that don't have multiple tickets. Actually, I should have brought the chart. But I have a chart with five. I think it's basically this diagram where I broke it down into zero to 200, 200 to 300, 300, 400, 400, 500, and 0 to 200 bars this big. And there are people that owe $5,000, but they're bars this big. So I feel like we can have a greater impact on more people and bring more people into compliance with other levels than people that are willfully not. Yes, then I think also, you know, that in shooting them at least, the issue here is that the issue is making sure that people have access to it. And one of the, this class population, which is an issue we've done with shooting in the country, it's not about the abundance of tickets, especially the people that have access to it. I would have more of this problem, but I did to be quick. I'll be supporting it. And we also want to see an update on how it's going because that's wrong. Thanks. On, you know, the, I certainly, there's no question that there are many ways that this response can be used on people. We had discussed also this that on February 1st. And I had said, you know, after January 15th, by February 1st, we should meet and assess. And again, greatly to their credit after I press send, got a meeting invite for a meeting on February 1st. So we will talk about that. And quite honestly, it would be wonderful if next year, this could be to other causes. We're not at all committed to doing this annually, to feeding Chittenden. If there is a greater need to do this for transportation issues or whatever it may be, and we should have that conversation on an annual basis. I think it's the best way to go over there. We kind of have motion on the second and a further discussion. Not before. All those in favor, go to the staff. Thank you very much. So 4.08 is a request for approval to exit. For fire alarm system upgrades to the north east wastewater treatment plants. Very good. If you guys like the summary that start. It's a pretty boring, but pretty necessary projects. The fire alarms at me at north and east were put in in 1992. So they're 30 years old and they have reached their useful service life. Need to be replaced for the safety of those facilities as well as the safety of the people. Hi, Elliot. So we have funds in capital and wish to proceed so we can get this important work done. The contractor that the loan contractor who put in the bid is the one who did the fire alarm upgrade for water and we were very happy with their work. And they also have good references. All right. I'll make a motion to take recommended action. Second by Jeng for the discussion. All those in favor of motion, please say hi. You post motion unanimously. Thank you, Megan. Thank you. Thank you. 4.09 is some weeks of space and 4.20 on the street. So this is some weeks of space. To the director, wait, it's here and Melissa is here to get your questions. Any other questions? Or can we get quite a few items so we can get to you first? So other questions on this? I know we're in for a motion. I'm choosing. I'll make a motion for the recommendation of letting 2.19 at the old learn center. Vermont don't learn to utilize classroom and clinic space on the terms for by the in and substantially performance with the attached sub lease and to authorize the for a wine burger to execute the sub lease and any related documents need to carry out the sub lease agreement subject to the city. Second by Council, Jeng discussion. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Opposed. Excellent. Thank you. You don't want to work in there. You can watch the next one because I think you're a key for the next one. Oh, right here. So the next one is this security part. Sure. These paths and huge, probably close to her home. So it's easier to speak to our questions. Talk about this here. These path before says design. Design. Contract to the board with it. Ready for a motion? Yeah. There's questions. Councilor Chen. I would like to make a motion to apply for the rise of the so many parts. Comprehensive planning to visit the consultant. All in need tenant and associate hint. In an amount of $51,306 and avoid the contingency of $5,000. Subject to them by the city. So let's take your second. My Councilor Paul. Discussion. We know a little bit of both. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are you opposed? It's a motion to vary unanimously. It's actually so key. Thank you. I forgot to request authorization to amend the contract. For condo and associates. Pink for PIC on call of professional services. It's an airport item. That's right. That's for me. The racist amount. That's $61. Are you ready for a motion here or are there questions? Offer the directives. You should take the hearing and amendment to the passenger facility charge on call of professional services test offer to come to the contract for $60 plus a 2% contingency. Raising the amount to $61.50 and $3.00. Subject to recommend. Oh, thank you. Councilor, I cover. Is there a second? Second by Councilor Paul. Discussion. To evoke a problem in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are you opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay, the next item is the hands and holiday that are for schoolers. I move to approve a $1,000 donation to hands to Daniel Holiday, different seniors. Thank you. There's a tracing. Is there a second? Second. That's a discussion. That's a tracing item. I just want to appreciate that this is on our agenda, but there's a one. It looks like this last year it was a success. It's continued to grow and their challenges have been pulling. It's been around. But it's going to grow into folks who have been organizing it, especially making it free. So just really want to appreciate that and looking forward to seeing what they're going to do with this. Great. Any further discussion? All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are you opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And the last item for our budget discussion is 5.04 coming to the FY 21 update and FY 22 CFA 23 budget request coming to the. We've got a new page from us. We've got a new mission coming to us to democracy and work with our municipal partners. 86% of the budget we get from down being taken from cable subscribers. In 2019, we started doing projections and seeing the cable coming down. Come to our municipal partners out from the district support. I assume there's three asks. One is the municipal support. 105% increase. 158 support for the annual production and support. So that's us providing. Support and coverage that we did for years using volunteers. And that became untenable. And then the third is the production services. So the baseline contract gives Burlington six meetings a month. And as you see right now, Burlington opted to pay more to add production service. And that demand has grown. I think we can all agree with that. I think based in demand for access to meetings, hybrid access to meetings and health. Transparency. Having those meetings available. Having agenda items. Slice training. And so that is the difference. It's a new number that 20,000 has been almost been on level funded. That's the last 10 or more years. Thank you. Thank you for your work. We do hope to work with folks in the city that these numbers are actually actually the cost of what it takes to do this work. And in order to pay for that, we need to be able to replace that funding and provide the service and maybe more service as demand for it. So just the Burlington police commission meetings. That's an example on the line of 34 meetings. Just probably to make sure. Thank you, Megan. Can you remind us when is your, so this is for the, is it for our 5.23? Put on the 23 budget. Okay, so this is sort of informational at this point. Yeah, I think we've come to you at some point. And this is when I'm coming to you. So what you have here is our FY 21 report. What we did in FY 21, September 2020, September 2021. This is our FY 22 budget. Which has built in an expectation that you passed this in FY 2020 budget. Any questions about this proposal? No questions. I just want to state my full support for this. I think it's super important. And I just want to thank you, Megan, for all your work. You've been an incredible collaborator today. The hybrid meetings have been running upstairs, as well as other team members. I mean, it's just incredible. But since it collaborated with the flexibility and the health that folks have provided in the years, the council president has provided this. It's been just fantastic. And just really thank you for that. Because it could have gone a lot of different ways. And I think it's been pretty smooth, honestly. And I contribute that to really you and the folks that are also working on this. So thank you so much. So I just wanted to basically go with what President Tracy had said in terms of my involvement as the city's representative. And I believe actually it was Council President before I did. That there are 20 people who work harder than you do, I think. And you do an amazing job. You really do. And I knew when we had to go to the hybrid system that we had the right person for the job. And so you would you would guess that you're so on. Thank you. Thanks very much. We greatly appreciate it. And thank you. And again, I appreciate you. So the partnership throughout the pandemic was awesome. I'm going to follow up on some of the details in terms of the partnership I think. Coverage of the briefings. Okay, with that, we have concluded. Are we accepting? All right, there is a motion. You have one remaining item, which is important. It's an important item. And I think if you see either of us, whether we should limit the five minutes or maybe make an extra five minutes, you want to start the conversation about the FY23 what the process is based on the time here where we can at least start to lay out the process going forward, see if Shad is going to do that. So we'll use at least the five minutes. Yeah, why don't we just use the five minutes and then if we need more potentially put this on. So again, it's going to be a competition. I would just like to see if some folks know that they are about 45 minutes. So yeah, that's fine. I'm prepared to be very brief. We've had six months off from the budget. Time to get back to the budget. I am not going to spend very much time on page one as this calendar should look pretty familiar to you. In terms of it's the same thing. We'll be presenting more details to you in January and then many more details in April and May and you'll have some budget in you. That's what this first page says essentially. The second page is where the meat is and the really important piece to note here is essentially it's not cut off here on our screen. This is budgeted revenue. And this, thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. And the budgeted revenue for FY23 at this point is $4 million below what it was this past year. You will note that that should not be a huge shock to people because last year we used six and a half million dollars of one time or unsustainable revenue including $5 million part five. I bring this to your attention because this $4 million pool is without any steps or COLA increases. If you have turned on the news or read your phone, you know that inflation is incredibly high. And there are additional expenses, just two of which I've listed here including regional dispatch and more money for security that we know about. I've also talked about some of our uncertain revenue sources. We made some assumptions about gross revenue and local option tax going back up this year. So far, those look good. I'm budgeting them at the same level tentatively for FY23. Same for parking fines and waterfront revenues, which we're starting to see return to normal. But those are assumptions I want you to be aware of. And probably everyone knows UVM in lieu of property taxes makes a voluntary payment to the city. And that payment is up for renegotiation. Again, I've built this budget at the beginnings of it assuming that they will pay a similar amount. There are just a few places that we can cut expenses or increase revenues. There's no reason why this one isn't bulleted. It should be bulleted like the other ones. It's not more important. There are some places where we have ideas, especially for CEDO, to increase sustainability and reduce the draw on the general fund. As people have talked about, we are expecting additional grant money through more money coming out from our infrastructure bill, things like that. And I have to put the last two bullets on there. There are things that people like to talk about raising taxes or cutting services. But when we're facing a potentially large bull, those are things we need to talk about. We have two minutes left. We're taking questions. I'll take 30 seconds to search for them. The only question that I would have is just simply the very beginning of page two where you talk about this formula. You know, with bulls without additional etc. Going up a little bit farther where it starts with a step of coal increases. I'm not really sure. It seems as though, you know, I don't know how coal works in terms of the contracts, in terms of when that inflation adjustment is made. You know, and yes, we all know that inflation is actually very high on sustainability with very high right now. Those two bullet items, it would seem as though that we really should be counting those as best we can, that the revenue or the additional expenses, we should be counting those already. As far as reasonable dispatch, I am not aware, I'm not up to speed on how close we are to even getting there. And then as far as the security contract, if that's something that we've already agreed to, then we need to factor that in. And you can tell me if that's not the case. I just feel like we should just be realistic from the get-go. You know, if we're going to have this conversation in a week, then we should really have those numbers. Sure. And just not, you know, just, yeah. I want to tell whatever it is that is really, we know is already out there. That's all. That makes sense to me. Kola increases because we are up for negotiation with the Americans. You know, we are running projections on that, but we don't know where exactly that will land. It's not the plug-and-play that it is when we're just working with contracts which are already established for us. So that is something based on assumptions and looking at inflation, I'm happy to talk to you about next week or in January whenever we get to it of, you know, if we looked at 3% Poland, it means that we looked at 5% Poland, it means this. But yeah, we're looking at all of those ranges because we don't know where it will land. No, I understand that. And that's, and it is a hard number to put on you to do the story, but yeah, whatever, I think you just should start talking about that for the get-go. That's what's great. That's all we can wait till next week. Okay. Thank you. Council meeting at 624. Our first item on the agenda for this evening. Before we get into our work session is the agenda. Councillor Stromberg may please have a motion on the agenda. Amend the agenda to remove item 6.02 and then adopt the rest of it as is. Thank you very much. We have a motion on the agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor McGee. Any further discussion? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of adopting our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us into our work session for this evening. I want to welcome our presenters for this evening. We have Rachel Jolly, who is CEDO assistant director. Jennifer Hill, who is pre-trial services coordinator, as well as Barbara Shaw-Dorsow, who is a victim services manager. So welcome. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Really appreciate it. Really excited to hear more and learn more about what the incredible work that you all do. Thanks so much. So 10 minutes past seven since we're starting a little bit later. Sure. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry about that. That's okay. And I understand. And if you could just please maybe pull the mics in just so that they get picked up. Is that better? Yeah, that's definitely a little bit better. Do you just need to really stay on the mics as you're presenting, just so that we can hear it in the room, but also so that the town meeting TV picks it up for folks who are listening at home. Great. And I understand I need maybe Amy to make me a panelist so that I can share my screen. I should be able to do that as well. Let me just find you. Actually, I'm not a co-host at this point. Well, I just got the invitation to join the panelist. Oh, okay. All right. Hopefully it's working now. And could we also please, I see Councillor Shannon is also in the attendees. If you could also just please promote Councillor Shannon. Host disabled participants screen sharing. So maybe we still have work to be done behind the scenes. Okay, let me. Okay, you should be co-host now so you should be able to do it. Thank you so much for having us. I'm Rachel Jolly. I use she, her pronouns and director at the Burlington CJC. Or so I'm the victim services manager at the Burlington Community Justice Center. I use she, her pronouns. I use she, her pronouns on the pre-trial service coordinator with the Burlington CJC. What show? Here we go. We'd like to take a minute to invite you all to ground yourselves in your seat right now. And we'd like to begin today's presentation with the land acknowledgement. Because every community, those is existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will. Some were drawn to leave their distant homes in hopes of a better life. And some have lived on this land for more generations than can be counted. Truth and acknowledgement are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth. And with this, we acknowledge that we are an abinaculant community justice center. Justice name says we are centered around justice. Justice is a constant source of inquiry at the Burlington Community Justice Center. Aspiration and exploration. Restorative justice practices inform our ideas, our feelings, discernment as we define justice when wrongdoing happens in our community. So just to get us into this spirit of thinking more about justice, I have an exercise that I hope you'll enjoy doing and it'll involve getting up and answering a couple of questions, standing in a where you think you fit from completely disagreeing as I ask some questions. Everybody feeling okay with doing that? Great. So again, on a scale of one to five or completely disagree, completely agree, what do you think of this question? A person who commits a serious crime must have some kind of punishment in addition to whatever they do. This is disagree? Disagree is over there though, right? Disagree is over there. No, I mean agree is way over there. Right. Way over there is agree. You're going to say, is that what you're going to share? I just don't have enough, I mean it depends on the context I think and I don't have enough information so I don't disagree or agree. I need more information. Agree. Where's agree? Agree is to the right. I can be agree. I would need to know. You would think that we could follow directions, wouldn't you? What if I had a one-time? He said it's to the question. Why the first one has serious crime and this one is just crime. What's the difference? Yeah. That's the question. It's just, I mean is there a difference because there are differences in kinds of crimes. So this is one is just getting the public's your reactions to when someone commits a criminal offense, serious or not. Vagueness is on poor press. It's okay. Just take a stand and we'll like want to hear from you more about your reasoning. So I disagree because of the absolute language always. I don't agree always. There are, you know, so I could steal a pack of gum from the store. I'm not, that's a crime. I'm not sure how the community is harmed by always that. Are we all members of the community and we're all in that web of interaction? So what one does? Don't see the world through the same lens? No. I appreciate where you're. I mean, I can think of financial crime. I mean, there are things that I don't, I don't understand how the impact is well beyond the effective individual business. Another reasoning that I think it's just hard to commit to something when you're saying, when you see the word always, I mean, some criminal offenses do affect our entire community, but some, some don't, you know, when it depends on how serious it is. I mean, it's just a, as you said, it's a, it's a vague statement and it's hard to really commit one way or the other completely always experiment. It's an idea of getting at a system. The systemic answer often does want kind of simplistic answers to complicated questions. But this is also just where the first part of this presentation is to give you a foundation and restorative practices. Some of you might be really familiar with this term, some less so. We're going to start with a little video and then also get into some details. About how the restorative practices fits into the criminal justice system. Our world is changing at a breathtaking pace. Social patterns that have long characterized human life are changing dramatically around the globe, diminishing social bonds within families, schools, workplaces and communities. But humans are hardwired to connect. Just as we need food, shelter and clothing, we also need strong and meaningful relationships to thrive. With all this in mind, what is restorative practices? Restorative practices is an emerging social science that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals and within communities. When put into practice, the effects are profound. In schools, students experience greater safety and sense of belonging, resulting in improved behavior, less bullying and less violence. In workplaces, leaders facilitate direct communication among staff and address conflict as it arises. The result is higher performance, greater accountability and effective collaboration. In criminal justice, new options allow victims and offenders, friends and family, to repair the emotional harm caused by crime. Throughout our neighborhoods, restorative practices give regular people more voice in the issues that matter most. In a nutshell, restorative practices is the science of relationships and community. Your individual daily interactions have a big impact on the world around you, at your job, with young people and throughout your community. How we relate matters. This video was brought to you by the International Institute for Restorative Practices. To learn more, attend our flagship event, Basic Restorative Practices. Rachel mentioned that video really covered the larger umbrella of restorative practices. And today, what we're going to focus on for this presentation is more the concept of restorative justice and the reactive processes that we use at the CJC and in collaboration with the criminal legal system here in Burlington. Restorative practices are not new. Indigenous communities across the world have been using these for thousands of years. Next, when we talk about restorative justice, kind of like us to try and reimagine what that means to us. Restorative justice is not something someone does. It's not something someone completes, but rather it is a change of mindset. Restorative justice is a way of existing that allows us to respond relationally when harm or conflict occurs in our communities, in our worlds. And we're able to do this by utilizing Howard's Earth's three restorative principles, engagement, responsibility, and restoration. Interesting, and I think a good way of thinking about restorative justice to think about the traditional criminal legal system. In the traditional criminal legal system, the main focus is on the offender. As you can see, there are three separate circles there. The offender, and as we speak about that person, we call the responsible party. So it is their job when they're going through the traditional legal system to minimize, to justify their actions in order to lessen their responsibility. By minimizing capability, culpability, they hope to get as light a punishment as possible. In the traditional criminal system, the goals are as varied as retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, restitution, and everything in between. The offense is against the state, and the state reacts by asking these questions. What laws have been broken? Who did it? And what do they deserve? Thinking more in a restorative way, you can see with the Venn diagram how community, responsible party, and affected party are all emerging in the Venn diagram. We, in restorative practices, ask the responsible party, the offender, to take responsibility for harms so that things can be prepared for themselves, for the community, and for directly affected parties who are victims. But it's not just the responsible party, the offender. As you see in the Venn diagram again, it shows the overlap that we all have interests and responsibilities to repair harm. The questions that restorative practices ask are who has been harmed, what are the needs, and whose obligations are these to repair the harm. Better for mention, this paradigm, restorative paradigm, is not just a program that you're following, it's a mindset, it's an approach that is based on some principles. So such as engagement, that we really, you're not, it's not a matter of holding somebody accountable, it's about the engagement of all the parties so that they can, we're creating conditions where people can hold themselves accountable. And that is, in terms of responsibility, that's a key thing. You engage, you have to have the engaged parties present, or in some, their voice is present in some way, so that those conditions can be created. So responsibility, and then restoration. Knowing that a key outcome for many is repair. Sometimes true restoration in terms of before the conflict or the crime is never possible, but some kind of repair or mediation around restoring the community, the affected party, the responsible party, and the ripple effects that occur when any crime happens. Restorative justice and criminal, it sticks out to me the most here, is the recidivism rates, or the likelihood of re-offense. So if you are going, if you are in Vermont and you are going through adult, or just, sorry, not adult, all criminal court, you have a 52.5% chance of recidivism. If you are in Vermont and you have completed a restorative justice diversion program, that drops between 17 to 27.4% recidivism. I think this is really important to note when we are talking about allocations of funds and public safety that we take statistics like this into consideration. Another theme that we have when it comes to RJ and criminal cases is better victim satisfaction. This is because what Barb mentioned, victims play a key role in restorative processes. And this, you know, all restorative justice processes allow for direct repair of harm, involving the person who caused harm, the person who experienced harm, and the community to work together collaboratively to heal and repair that harm. This differs drastically from our current criminal legal system that hyper-focuses on the offender or the person who caused harm, and often puts them in a place in their punishment. And their punishment is also often a place of isolation away from the community where the harm occurred, leaving little room for healing. So I have been the victim liaison at the community justice center for about 13 years now. I reach out to affected parties, victims, to let them know that they have rights and to help them explore the needs that they might have to get past this incident. In statute, victims affected parties are guaranteed choice, information, being able to tell their story, validation, security, and restitution. So as I reach out to folks in the community and we reach out to everyone, I hear people say things like, wow, you are really the first person who's actually said that their story just happened. And I so appreciate that. Or they'll say something like, thank you so much for just listening to me. I haven't been able to really fully tell my story and to kind of process it for myself. And thank you. I love it that our community cares and that there's somebody working in our community backed by our community to do this. We have this blanket term of restorative processes sometimes in the community justice centers. There's 17 community justice centers in the state of Vermont. Thank you. And there's also 12 court diversion agencies, so agencies that offer AGO funded programming. So about two dozen state funded restorative justice agencies in the state of Vermont, four of which are ancient and county. And all of us have restorative processes of some kind. A very common program name that you might hear about are panels or board, reparative boards. You can see in this in the diagram on the lower right of the circle. That's one kind of restorative process. They're called peer boards, panels. There's also different models that use restorative principles called family group conferencing, circles. You might have heard them as peacemaking circles, victim offender dialogues. So just the idea that the criminal justice system as we know it is kind of a blunt instrument that delivers generally kind of a systemic response, usually a punitive response to a number of different crimes that are on a huge spectrum. Restorative processes are not a one size fits all either, but they're less blunt. We're not saying that they should be the only option available for various forms of crime and conflict, but they're a selection of tools that can be nuanced depending on the crime and depending on the parties involved. Some of the things that you see on the outer part of the circle are potential outcomes of these restorative processes. Depending on what the affected party is asking for and what the responsible party also is feeling called to do and the community is asking for around repair. These can look very varied and it's not a blanket template approach of 20 X number of hours of community service or you need to write this letter of apology. It's really dependent on the players around the table and what they're asking for. We wanted to give you this idea of restorative processes and restorative justice and now we're going to head more into the community justice center of Burlington that you are supporting. We're part of the community and economic development office of Burlington, so we're part of CEDO and obviously our mission and vision relate to the CEDO vision around a healthy and equitable community, but I wanted you to get a sense. We're the oldest community justice center out of those 17 in the state. We started in the late 90s and always part of CEDO. Our mission has been pretty similar in our 23 years, but it's about addressing the roots of impacts of crime and conflict. So it is I feel like a hidden jewel of Burlington, a lot of people don't know that we exist. I think that's probably because most of our services have been in the reactionary end at the crime end. What is changing over time as we get older and more I think diversified in our funding is that we have the opportunity to go further upstream and to being more based in the community. I wanted to give an example of an outcome or sometimes what we occasionally help, we often help individuals, but we also help businesses when they're affected. Yep, so a restorative justice panel story. The whole thing started as a young person in our community started just parking wherever they wanted to for as long as they wanted to. And of course you can imagine they started getting tickets, they started having their car towed away from time to time, and at some point they were referred to the community justice center. The incident really was centered around them wanting to get their car back one time when it was towed away. So this person, we'll call her Sally Smith, went to the location of her car, Superior Garage, they wanted their car and they wanted it right away. So they got in their car even as it was behind other cars, even as there was a gate up so they couldn't get the car out supposedly. They bumped into equipment that was at the Superior Garage. It was like an action movie that you can't even imagine what was going through this person's head. And so came to Community Justice Center. There was an affected party, a victim, which was the Superior Garage. There was a responsible party, Sally, and there was community. Community represented by the impact that this person had had on the community and represented by actual members of the community who wanted to talk more about how did this get to where it got. As we sat in the panel groups, we found that there were many issues, substance abuse issues, and other mental health issues that were going on with this person. They at first were adamant, they really didn't want to take part in this. They were feeling detached. What was this going to do for them? They participated for probably three meetings. Things were said. Great questions were asked. Sharing. Building trust. And at some point, the responsible party decided they needed some help. Meanwhile, the affected party, Superior Garage, was really interested in getting some money back for these thousands of dollars that had been damaged to their garage. But you know, most of all, what they wanted to know was why. Why did this happen? They wanted to support Sally, make it so that she in some way was better off after the process. So, the outcome of this particular panel was that Sally went away for a couple of months, went to some recovery, had some treatment. When she came back, we had more discussions. We had restitution that was paid. Interaction between the garage and Sally, the owner of the garage, the community of course, was served. That's our success story. I don't even know how to say the biggest success, but it just seemed like the needs of everyone were served. And it isn't a common occurrence. Certainly, the amount of restitution was extraordinary and the needs of some of the parties. It's a great story of the promise of restorative practice. It is a comprehensive list of all the programs we offer at the Wellington CJC. I guess the two main things I would know about them is that some utilize restorative practice more than others. In addition to that, most of them are utilizing a reactive restorative practice like Rachel was speaking about, but our work in the schools is more preventative, and that's where we hope to move towards in the future is more preventative and less reactive. We also wanted to give you a sense of the diversification of our revenue streams over time. Five years ago, when I started, we had three revenue sources and a total budget of about $600,000. Now we're looking at $1.3 million, and as you can see, many different sources of revenue. So the city of Burlington does pay in in terms of general fund dollars at about 9% of our budget, but we are mostly based through contracts with different state departments as well as with the Burlington School District. And then lastly, I just thought I would talk about our changing homes over the years. In those 23 years, we've had five different homes. So that has been a series of places that have met our needs, especially when we were smaller. When I started, we had seven staff, six staff actually employed by the CJC and one embedded staff from Weber. And now we're up to 14 staff and we will be 15 probably by the end of January. So the short story here is we're busting at our scenes, we're in a space, we're actually in three spaces. We're in 200 Church Street, the pick in the Burlington Telecom building one block away. We're also in the courthouse, we have three staff in the courthouse and we have one staff at Burlington Police Department. So we're in conversations now with Champlain Housing Trust about the Veterans for Foreign War rebuild and are hoping to be an anchor tenant there. It would be an ideal location, staying central and walkable is still obviously really key. But having adequate space that is soundproof, which is, we can't say for our current space, and that allows confidential and restorative spaces. There is, you know, it's an adjective around the space in terms of how accessible and inclusive and welcoming it feels. So we're looking, we'd be very excited to actually have a space that feels like it was designed with the CJC's needs in mind and programming and the participants that we serve. So that's the idea of a little bit of a snapshot of the story of our community justice center and we wanted to make sure that we had time to answer any questions you might have had. Great. Well, thank you so much for that presentation and for the exercise that you started out with. Really appreciate kind of mixing it up a little bit. So let's open the floor up. Who has questions? Councillor Stromberg to be followed by Councillor Hanson. Thank you so much. This was really nice and I feel like a lot of different angles of addressing a lot of things that we've seen in our community. I was just curious is, so the 9% contribution from the city, has it always been 9%? Has it been lower? Has it been higher? Well, in terms of our total budget, it would be higher, but it was never a, this is the highest dollar amount it's ever been. As far as I know, mostly it was made up of matching requirements for some of the grants, namely Department of Corrections Grant and the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services. They had requirements of a percentage of matching, but then also this past year, we added, two years ago, we added the court diversion contract which added six staff and we brought them from limited service to regular. So the city increased their contribution by 30,000 this past year as a way of making that additional cost. So in short, it has been a higher percentage before because of our, you know, a smaller budget, but it's the highest dollar amount now. Right. Okay. Thank you. Great. I have Councillor Hanson to be followed by Councillor Barlow. Great. Thanks so much for the presentation. What was that top funder, AGO? Yeah, the Attorney General's Office. So they support the, there's five court diversion and pretrial service programs that are offered in every county of Vermont. And two years ago, we became the deliverer for Chittenden County court diversion program. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Hanson. Councillor Barlow? Councillor Hanson took my question, but I do have an additional question. I'm familiar with your work because we, when I was on the school board, had a strategic initiative of implementing restorative practice in Burlington School District and I was wondering if you could just speak briefly on how that effort is going. Yeah, great. I really appreciate that question. I feel like the Burlington School District has come a long way, even the five years I've been involved, but really the CJC has been involved for over 10 years in some capacity, mostly in a technical advisory role and doing some trainings and coming in to react to what we call Tier 2. Tier 1 is that restorative practice's biggest umbrella. It's where 85% of their efforts should be going. And then Tier 2 is reactive when crime or conflict, mostly conflict does happen and the CJC was coming in that way. Over time, especially in the last, I would say, five years, the district made more of a commitment to a whole school initiative, a restorative practice's initiative. And I would say especially with the current superintendent, Tom Flanagan, who's really making a commitment to the equity portion of what restorative practices are about and knowing that in every school is a diverse community, the 11 schools, depending on how you think about the schools versus the programs on top and horizons, I would say now they've built up their internal capacity a lot more. They have restorative, they have it in the equity department. They have several restorative practitioners and staff. So it's still in its early stages, I would say, because at the heart, and even if we were to talk about becoming a restorative city, it's really about culture change and moving towards this relationship-based model that takes years. So I'd say they're still in their first two or three years of maybe five to six-year culture change, but there's some really promising things going on and a lot more internal knowledge so that our contract work is less with them, but we do have a staff member who's embedded at the two middle schools and they're currently hiring for restorative practices at all six elementary schools. So it's come a long way in the last few years especially. Thank you. Councillor Jay. Thank you for being here, for the presentation and for all you do. I was surprised actually to learn that restorative practice is not a new concept. It's been here since the late 90s, back in the city of Burlington. Now, I want to get into the technicalities of things. Yes. It seems in order to do a restorative circle, you need the victim, the perpetrator and maybe a community representative. Have you come across cases where victims do not want to participate and would you still call this as a restorative justice? That's a thrill and well done. Thank you. So as I mentioned before, I do outreach in every case where there is an identified affected party or victim. Sometimes people will call me back. Sometimes they won't. I will reach out to them a couple more times, either on the phone or texting, email, whatever kind of contact information I have. Right now my percentage of actually connecting with affected parties victims runs between 75 and 80%. So that means 75 to 80% of all of the affected parties will have some kind of communication with me. Now, some of these, some of this communication will be two minutes. Some will be two hours, literally. Some will want to participate in person at the actual panel, and some won't. So that's my function to be their liaison, to get information from them and identify how they have been so individually and personally impacted by whatever happened to them to bring their story back if they don't want to. So I think that's a pretty good percentage of folk to have a voice and choice in the panel process. And then if I might say anecdotally, I feel like more people are making a choice to appear or come in person to participate in the panels in person so that now I thought I had hit the ceiling for years. It was like about 15% would actually come in person. Now I'd say it was closer to 20, maybe a little bit more. And you know, you just sort of get a feeling for as this mindset gets ripples out into the community, I think more people are wanting to be engaged in making that systemic change. And if I could just add, I really appreciate that question too, is it restorative if the impacted party's voice is not there? But one of the pieces is community often is impacted in ways that are unseen or unfelt by the responsible party. There might be like known, there's car vandalism on one street. It ripple effects through the front porch forums, people's sense of safety. Obviously it can affect, if retail theft can affect prices in ways that where somebody is going to protect their bottom line. So the community volunteers are also there to represent the community impact even if they're responsible, the impacted party's voice isn't directly there. But again, 70 to 85% of the time we have some form through the victim liaison of being able to represent that. I also want to just note that in terms of a statewide conversation, I think a misnomer or misconception of restorative practices is that it's best for low level crimes or misdemeanors or kind of, you know, these minor offenses, which of course I'm putting in air quotes because it is a subjective term. But that conversation is changing as restorative practices examples from other countries and even other parts of our country are shown to have the most impact in very violent crimes or crimes where there's a high victim impact. So that's why sexual violence and domestic violence are being opened up again in Vermont as a potential or at least we're looking to do that. There is statute currently that prohibiting those kinds of crimes are coming to us. But we have great examples in this country and other countries that's where restorative practices can be most impactful. Last question. Thank you for all you do. I participated in some, I organized some with you, and I also know that you are pursuing a grant in order to bring restorative practices to families, to adults, parents. Since then, we haven't heard. Have you, were you successful? Thank you. Yeah, so there is a couple of different grants that you might be referring to. One is through Department of Children and Families, the Balanced and Restorative Justice. It's kind of a long-winded answer, but the short story is we are not the grand holders for this fiscal year, but we are fully operating contract. We are being subcontract through Spectrum, and then we expect an RFP to come out in February or March from DCF so that we can apply and hopefully get that full contract. So that's absolutely a reason that we are redesigning our youth programs to involve family group conferencing a lot more than just panels. Again, part of the mindset of the American criminal justice system is putting all the weight and all the responsibility on that individual person, no matter what their age, for making the decision that they did that caused whatever crime. But really, there's always ripple effects, and as we know, responsible parties often hold the dual identity of being victims in their life. It's very, if you are going to any Vermont prison, the majority of people incarcerated there have also been victims, and sometimes chronically so. So the family group conferencing model helps to kind of look at the ripple effects of not just the individual responsibility, but where is societal responsibility, where is kind of the people who touch responsible parties, and how can they also join in the repair, as well as the accountability of prevention for the future. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you, Councillor Chang. I have Councillor Shannon to be followed by Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Tracy, and thank you all for the presentation. I haven't seen a lot, there's been some data, but not really very much data in this presentation, and wondered how you measure victim satisfaction or community satisfaction with the process, or what is the measure of success. And if you're looking at extending this to violent crimes such as sexual assault and rape, and you only have a 15 to 20 percent participation rate, how would that work? Great questions. I really appreciate the data. In terms of your just your last point, I have to disagree that we only have a 15 percent participation rate, because the 70 to 85 percent of engagement is really important, because some people, if you think about being victim-centered, and you're thinking of taking their direction about what they need or want, oftentimes they do not want to be in the same room with the responsible party. They want to engage somehow with their victim liaison, and use her voice in our case about what their needs are, but sometimes being victim-centered means not having them in the room. Back to your question about data, I will say it's really hard to have a few outcomes that talk to all of our diverse programming. If you remember that list, we have 10 different programs, each with their own funders, and each with their own different requirements. So measuring success in a general way has been a challenge, but it's not to say that I think we haven't come far enough, we're not where we want to be about being data-driven. And the challenge that I find myself in is operating as a single CJC, when really we're part of a network of court diversion agencies and DOC-funded community justice centers that have their own requirements. So we actually did apply for a federal earmark this past year through Leahy's office as a network of CJCs and court diversion agencies as all state-funded restorative justice agencies to look at our data and use some professionals in the field about what kind of outcomes would be more meaningful. Right now, I could tell you some of our stats about how many panels we do or how many circles of support and accountability programs we have and what percentage of those successfully closed. And I wouldn't say that that's meaningless. If you're interested in those, I'd be happy to email through max and get the word out to all of you about those stats, knowing that it won't be one number. It will be for DOC-funded programs, for AGO-funded programs, because they're very different. But what I'm looking to for, as you brought up, Councillor Shan, thank you, around victim satisfaction, that would be a meaningful outcome. That is something that all of our agencies are struggling to get to when, if we're asking for a survey, even with our parallel justice program. Sometimes victims have kind of felt beat up by the system and they've put in a lot of physical and emotional financial labor on their part. So serving them is our first priority. Asking them to complete a survey sometimes does fall like lower on their priority list and we don't have a great response rate. But all that to say is that we're not where we want to be around data and we'd like to do better. And I'm hoping with this earmark, we're keeping our fingers crossed for the next few months that we'll hear some good news and have more to report. Is there any measure of victim satisfaction? I have heard that I've often heard this program toted as, you know, being satisfactory to victims. But I just wonder, do you survey at all? I can understand why people, you know, wouldn't always want to fill them out. But is there any surveying process or any way to measure? Yeah, there is a survey process required through the Attorney General's office programming, the court diversion and pretrial service programming. It's just that the response rate is really low. So it comes across as anecdotal when we want to give it back in terms of the percentages that are very satisfied, satisfied, etc. As well as parallel justice for victims of crime, also surveys. Again, like the response rate is better because there's more of a longer term sometimes relationship with them. But I don't have a number to quote you. But I would be happy to get back to you about the numbers that we do have and what that looks like if you'd be interested. Sure. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor. Shannon, I have Councillor McGee. Thank you. Thank you all for the presentation and the work that you do. You mentioned areas that you hope to expand into for more proactive and preventative programming. And I'm just curious what some of those areas are and what the barriers currently are for that and what the funding might be needed for. Thank you for the question. One of the things we're proud of is getting seed funding from the Justice, the Department of Justice for Justice Assistance Grants or JAG to start a community mediation program. So Barbara's and a new staff member on the early stages of creating that that would be looking at where kind of hot spots are in different neighborhoods or different residential like Burlington Housing Authority Housing or Champlain Housing Trust to use restorative practices in a conflict mediation way or de-escalation way. So that certainly would be one example that we only have a couple of years of seed funding and we'd hope to see depending on how it goes see further funding for that. But I think more importantly is a statewide conversation that I think is really timely right now given all the attention on public safety given the questioning of the less than satisfactory outcomes of our current criminal legal system is that at a statewide level we are starting to know that we need more stakeholders. Municipalities including you know all these CJCs are summer non-profits summer and municipal funded or municipally housed. Agency of Education is starting to get more involved in terms of restorative practices in the schools. I think what we are missing is a champion for those statewide conversations. Right now we have DCF, DOC and the AGO as committed funders but we're missing really the governor or Susanna Davis in terms of the Office of Equity saying where's the Department of Restorative Justice or restorative practices under which maybe DOC falls but to really broaden the conversation of how can we get community funding in this because right now it would be town by town or if you're a non-profit which we are not having applying for various grants but in a coordinated way I would love to start seeing some champions to have that conversation of how can we get more embedded in the community. I feel like that's the main barrier. That's great. Thank you so much. Thank you. So don't have anyone else in the queue? All set? Okay. I want to thank you again for being here and sharing all this wonderful information as well as for all the work that you do for our community and just really appreciate it. If you did have follow-up information to share you can share it by just city council at burlingtonbt.gov. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you so much. Yep absolutely. Appreciate it. So Councillors let's take a we don't have the mayor with us so I'm not going to go into committee reports we do have a relatively short agenda so I will have us just take a break until 730 at which point we'll get into back into our agenda starting with public forum. If you are a member of the public who is interested in participating in public forum we have a couple different options for you so if you are here in the room and would like to speak in person the sheets are in the at the table over here in the corner please fill out the sheets and then hand them to the city clerk they'll get them to me. If you're interested in commenting remotely you may do you may sign up to speak remotely by going to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum which will take you to an online forum that you'll fill out and then we'll that I'll then be able to read from one thing I will note is that we do prioritize burlington residents so we start with burlington residents in person then we go to people who have on that online forum affirmatively indicated that they are a burlington resident then we'll switch to non-burlington residents who are in the room and then we'll go back to non-burlington residents who are out of the room and we do have two hours set aside for public comment and we'll have two minutes per person so if that helps to think about what you're going to say and plan it out you will have about two minutes at which point you'll be asked to complete your your statement so we'll take a break until 7 30 and come right back so thanks folks start off with our agenda which is item number three public forum we have a public forum we set aside two hours for the public forum for this evening again for members of the public in terms of signups if you are interested in speaking at the public forum and you're in this room right now you may do so by signing up at the table over there and then handing it to the city clerk and that form will then get to me the other way is if you are participating remotely to then sign up using the going to the link burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum and then we will feed into that in terms and then I'll see that I get that get those signups as well so the way we do it in terms of the order of operations is that we have the folks who are who have affirmatively indicated that they are burlington residents on the public forum sheets in the room speak first then we go to the burlington residents who are not here and who have said that they have who have affirmatively responded that they are burlington residents in that online form will then go to non-burlington residents who are in the room final to be followed by non-burlington residents who are remote participating remotely this evening in terms of our forum in terms of our forum this evening I would just ask a couple different things of folks so we will be I'll give we do have a quite a few folks signed up for the public forum this evening so we will have two minutes in terms of the time limit for folks who are participating in the room you'll have a clock back here and then there's also a little clock that's right in front of you as well as a light system with green yellow and red lights it also buzzes when you have when your time is is up and I will ask you to to finish at that point please keep to two minutes it's really important to help us to get to as many people as possible that folks follow that time that that time guideline so please stick to that time guideline the other piece is also for folks to in the room to help us move through a lot of speakers if you can hold applause or reactions either after a speaker or during a speaker as well as any other reactions that you might have to the speaker it's really important that that person is able to stay focused while they're there at the table offering their remarks so please by all means just stay silent allow them to listen whether you agree or disagree with what they're saying please by all means just respect what they what they're saying in much the same vein please also stick to focusing on issues and not individuals or personal attacks it's really much more helpful for us as as policymakers to hear your feedback specifically on issues and what you'd like to see with regards to the issues as opposed to personal attacks and I'll ask you to refrain from those as well as from using profanity in this I've heard from a number of from parents that they you know want to watch this with their kids sometimes and they don't feel comfortable doing so if there's going to be if there's profanity used so please just please refrain from that as well with all of that having been said I'll get our public forum started with the furlington folks who are in the room so we'll get started with selena colburn to be followed by tera grag I'm representative selena colburn and I'm here to speak in favor of repealing the sexist and classes language in burlington's charter regarding so-called houses of ill-repeat and common prostitutes I support the full decriminalization of sex work along with ACLU amnesty international the human rights campaign the world health organization I have known and spoken with many consensual sex workers over my lifetime and believe this is a matter of health safety and civil liberty that said I'm really here to help clarify the impacts of this repeal if you take this language off the books in burlington little will change in burlington's legal landscape they'll join the majority of vermont municipalities in leaving the matter to state law it's my understanding that the current and previous chitin in county state's attorneys have declined to prosecute these charges and that is unlikely to change the conversations on the relationship between sex work and the justice system are moving at a slow and deliberative pace in the state legislature where any action is likely to be further studied that pulls together a large group of stakeholders with varying positions I also want you to know that serious work is happening in the state of vermont to support trafficking survivors this includes a significant federal grant to build statewide infrastructure for survivors with extended funding leading to pilot projects with health care providers around the state we also have a statewide task force on this issue that is coordinating the expansion of services in recent years we've passed legislation to protect trafficking survivors from criminal penalties and to allow them to be resentenced advocates are also working on innovative proposals around housing and shelter I've heard some pretty wild projections that just simply aren't true about what will happen if you repeal this language so I hope this information is helpful and please feel free to reach out to me with any questions if I can provide further thank you our next speaker is Tara Grag to be followed by Andrew Simon good evening everyone and thank you Selina for those comments that was very enlightening I'm here tonight just to talk about what I consider to be this state of affairs recently I heard something from Bernie Sanders talking about the rise of authoritarianism in this country and what I'm seeing here in Burlington recently is shocking and appalling for someone like me because this city around the world is known as a gold standard in democracy human rights it's something to be proud of not ashamed of not considered something that is a blight those kids out there that are doing that work when I was at Sears Lane I saw students from UVM on their day off on a Saturday in the cold building houses for the homeless how many people can you say do that and really cared these weren't these they weren't doing this for extra credit they weren't doing this for political power they were doing this because this is important to them and to see that you want to squash that or you consider that to be a negative I just want to cry I can't believe I'm here tonight you know wow haven't we had enough of real estate developers and politics with all due respect particularly those that are not very good at it we're done done here those kids have more heart you have independent journalists in the city that have just taken the psychoticness out of what you consider to be mainstream media and give honest reporting and hard work people like the rake people like Charles Winkleman people like Johnny ones are these are bright these are talented kids these are smart people and these represent the dying light of what was Bernie Sanders in democracy in this country democracy doesn't die in the darkness it dies right on television with you watching it and bulldozers demolishing homeless people's houses two weeks before christmas that's where it dies thank you our next speaker is we can hold the applause and just use this our next speaker is Andrew Simon to be followed by Fareed I came to talk to you about the pine street barge canal something that I don't think has been discussed here very much in the council I want to present you a petition that currently as of tonight has 391 people who signed it um and I'll read it to you and then just discuss it a little bit we asked that the city of Burlington work immediately toward conserving in the public domain for the welfare of human and non-human residents the land at 453 and 501 pine street the entire barge canal site should become a park accessible to all in a laboratory for nature-based solutions to toxic post industrial pollution we don't have time I don't have time in one minute to talk about this but I hope to talk to you individually over the next few weeks about it and when we do let's talk about the history of the pine street barge canal site let's talk about industrial pollution there caused by the manufactured gas plant let's talk about the 56 contaminants of concern that EPA has identified on that land let's talk about different ways to do development in this climate emergency let's talk about the history of citizen involvement at the barge canal when the citizens of Burlington shut down the EPA remedy for the barge canal in 1992 let's talk about remediation and regeneration of the ecosystem using different means like micro remediation to phyto remediation bio remediation and let's talk about how this site could be a laboratory for that I think a win-win-win situation a win for the people a win for the landowner and a win for the earth is possible thank you thank you our next speaker is if you could hold the applause please our next speaker is Farid M to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker thousand dollar bonus that we gave to each Burlington police officer could pay for a tiny home for Burlington homeless people with what we paid and bonus the cops themselves did not appreciate we could have just housed everybody in a tiny home in Burlington I went back to St. Yerslane after the last time I had a public comment here and I've been serving food there daily and that night it was two hours two hours and a half later than usual and I noticed something that I've never seen before having served thousands of people in Burlington is that hungry people were refusing food and when I asked about it they said because it was too late it was the weather was in 20 degrees weather and if they ate now then they might have to go to the bathroom and the city had just taken away the toilet that people have been using there it's hungry people like refusing to eat food because they can't time when they have to poop we must be able to do better than that even if even if like there's drugs there and other other alleged issues we don't we don't do collective punishment that's that's not what a democratic society does it is undemocratic not to mention it's highly ironic considering people who've been pushing for this uh guild by association and collective punishment are the same people who justify police brutality as the action of a few bad apples our next speaker is christopher erin felker to be followed by michelle moran christopher erin felker i'm the chairman of the burlington republican party civic engagement is the cornerstone to our democracy and every resident has the right to petition to address their grievances however in the past few weeks we have all witnessed truly shocking degradation of civility in this chamber i personally have witnessed incidents of individuals launching their personal attacks laden with obscenities directed at the administration and elected officials we've seen an uptick of instances of individuals harassing members of the public who wish to speak during public forum and those who are simply in the audience getting attacked let me be clear this type of behavior is unacceptable and must stop now while multiple counselors are right to express outrage and concerns over the egregious behavior it's important to recognize that these offensive behaviors exhibited here in this chamber are not one-sided in recent history we have seen unfair and preferential treatment being rendered to those who hold sympathetic views to the council's plurality party while the public must do their part to restore civility to our city hall it is even more important that our elected officials set a better example public forum comments used to be limited to three minutes and only reduced to two when multiple participants were in the queue however in what many believed to be a concerted effort to suppress dissenting opinions this council continuously kept the speaking time reduced to two minutes when only a handful of public wishing to contribute i encourage this council to restore the public forum to limits to three minutes per speaker we've also seen counselors who consistently refused to physically attend these meetings many who are distracted on their cell phones during public forum and civility and respect are often a two-way street if you wish to encourage positive behaviors you should engage in them yourself counselors are advised to immediately stop pushing unnecessary divisive issues that only serve to harm and divide our community furthermore city counselors must stop enabling encouraging endorsing and even engaging in blatant harassment of other public officials the example you said your tone that you will receive so your time is up thank you please refrain from making comments please allow speakers to finish i'll submit the rest of this statement to the clerk please thank you our next speaker is michelle moran to be followed by miguel figueroa i'm speaking about the prostitution issue and we'll be reading from a statement provided by the national center on sexual exploitation in the words of deca charleston she says i'm actually suing the state of nevada its governor and legislature to end legalized prostitution this is really important to me because i was trafficked through the legal system of prostitution in nevada and i know exactly what it felt like being inside those dusty dirty disgusting hallways having to meet men and turn as many customers as you can because the house took 50 off the top and then my pimp took the other 50 so it was never enough for either of them i always had to show up at every single bell and keep going no matter what my body was telling me i think there's a lot of well-meaning people out there that have somehow confused this issue and somehow it's become about women's choice and autonomy over their own bodies and that somehow and that somehow by fully decriminalizing prostitution essentially legalizing it that we're empowering women that prostitution is a viable choice that they should make when it's anything but prostitution is about the power and control men have over women's bodies that women are a commodity to be bought and sold and i think once you've lived a single day in the life once you've had a single act of prostitution you know that is not true you tell yourself those lies to get up every day and look at yourself in the mirror and get ready for work again that night but once you're out of it you can't help but look and see the destruction the waste of your life that no little girl ever wakes up one day and says mommy i want to be a prostitute someday that doesn't happen in my words it is not possible to end sex trafficking while protecting prostitution if you don't like the ordinance language then amend it don't strike it thank you thank you our next speaker is miguel figaroa to be followed by andrew chronic veld so i don't think that we can move on from uh what's been happening recently so i thought i read this so i woke up the other day to watch the sears lane and camp and get destroyed unfortunately the rest of the day i felt really disconnected the image of a bulldozer lifting tents into a dumpster stuck in my head uh seeing a church a garden a kitchen a treehouse tents and belongings thrown into a dumpster to be destroyed was horrifying say the least me and all the advocates and especially by a long shot more so the former residents are exhausted from ironically having to clean up the mess that you guys created by sterilizing the camp of all the poor people there all of us here and the police officers who guarded the gate and the city works employees who drove the dozers and especially the business owners and the residential area residents adjacent the former encampment are all a few bad months from becoming unhoused ourselves now i see clearly that the leadership of the city is more concerned with making the lives of homeless people miserable in the pursuit of business deals excuse me in private downstairs meetings with landowners and propaganda for the police to justify a higher budget the city is now taking a look at a proposal that would decriminalize sex work i wish i could say that i have hope for this proposal like homelessness administrators want sex work to be out of sight and out of mind politicians would prefer to ignore and repress the situation from the public's eye instead of decriminalizing and legislating it to make it safer i know sex workers they experience violence and mistreatment because the government would rather ask the cops to make the poor people go away and then pave their graveyards to build their national guard runways and expensive sunglass stores i'll tell you that the city would be a materially better place if you support the charter change and move towards decriminalizing sex work you may or may not do it but i'll make my voice heard here anyway and someone always will and when it comes to sears lane i hope that you're all goddamn ashamed of yourselves you could please just hold your applause and then also please don't use profanity our next speaker is andrew chronic fell to be followed by lee morrigan i just wanted to speak about sears lane i've been thinking a lot about what happened and basically the city waged war against the residents of sears lane what do you do in a war propaganda there was a meth lab a man had less than a half a gram of drugs on him he's already off on the charges but we didn't see that printed on the front page what else do you do in a war cut off the toilets oh they're crapping all over the place well you took away their their only option now they have to walk down the street to take a dump what else can we do garbage a resident of sears lane himself paid for a dumpster and the city said no way it's it's a violations blocky stuff and the city put a dumpster and wouldn't empty it make them feel like they have to live in garbage and that's the best that the city of berlington could do for the residents of sears lane and that's sad to me and uh makes me wonder why my taxes have gone up and it makes me wonder why i live here thank you our next speaker is lee morrigan morrigan um to be followed by shara m i believe it starts with a b i'm sorry i can't i can't read it um so lee go ahead thanks my name is lee morrigan uh first of all i do want to address my behavior um the last time i spoke here uh those emotions were what were alive in me at the time i've been under a lot of stress uh regarding sears lane um i have been emailing uh everybody at the table including you folks um uh addressing that if i haven't gotten to you already uh i will um yeah i think i i want to touch on i want to speak on what i have experience with and i want to talk about why motel programs don't work um i'm a drug addict and an alcoholic i've been in recovery for 13 years i've also been formerly unhoused i can tell you that uh this perception of people choosing to be homeless not accepting help is a false narrative but i also have to understand that if you don't have that lived experience and if you're not willing to listen to that you wouldn't understand that i think everybody everybody anywhere including you folks uh every day we all do the best we can with the tools we have and sometimes when you are an active drug addict and alcoholic especially when you're houseless and especially when you know you're trying to do better for yourself and trying to get clean and sober sometimes the best thing is to be in an encampment in my own experience uh you know part of my sobriety was uh was being unhoused um and i achieved sobriety while being unhoused and a big part of that was having the autonomy to be away from people that might be triggering living in a tent i support people who have to live at places like sears lane they are doing the best they can you took that away it you're going to kill these people uh you have eight people that are currently unhoused please fix it in the next 24 hours thank you thank you our next speaker is sharyl um budalier if you could just please please correct me on your name and come up here our next speaker to be uh after sharyl is um julie mesuga i just want to say i've lived in burlington a very long time and seen a lot of things change for the better a lot haven't been done that could have been done i feel and the homeless do need housing i'll admit that the great need for affordable housing a lot of affordable housing isn't affordable for some most people in burlington a lot of people matter of students whatever and then you've got issues where you've got these i don't the man dates for these masks and stuff that's fine i believe in the mask but i don't believe when i go to a restaurant and it says show the idea the proof of your vaccinations in order to come in as a door i feel that's a little much i've noticed a lot of places lately have but that on the door i see a lot of places i don't they just say wear a mask which most people will do i don't care for that i think that's wrong to not let people in establishment because they don't show proof of vaccination i don't feel that's right i don't think that should be stuck on the doors that i've seen and i've seen a lot of streets i need paving badly in burlington don't get done for some reason i don't know what's holed up is if it's funds or what it is i don't know then i see garbage on the streets i asked some guy today why is there garbage i'm waiting for a bus up on main street the whole place is covered with pumpkins and garbage all kinds of garbage i don't understand why the street department doesn't pick up a lot of that around burlington you have a lot of tourists that come here and enjoy the state i included i've been a lot other states i don't see garbage everywhere homeless your time is up great thanks thank you all all right our next speaker is julie mesuga to be followed by sam i think it says sundell please correct me if i mispronounced it uh about personal attacks how does campaign manager try to dox me but anyway that's please just anyways come before the administration to beg for people's lives i wasn't sure who the f-35s might kill or who bpd was going to brutalize next those times it seemed kind of obscure i wasn't sure who was going to get killed by the f-35 i wasn't sure who was going to get killed by the police we know the people who are going to get killed by the actions at sears lane uh this administration has essentially sentenced them to death cops and bulldozers arrested my friends at gunpoint the mayor's office meanwhile refused to respond to calls from city counselors until almost all of the sanctuary at sears lane had been bulldozed cboe didn't know this was happening counselors were told it was was not going to happen last week and now we have nothing left to do but desperately track down dumpsters full of people's destroyed belongings there's nothing left to say to the administration and in particular mayor weinberger and councillor shannon stay focused on the on the issue you have sentenced people to die and i would like to use the rest of my time to just give you an opportunity to think and please stay focused on yet you have sentenced people to die folks can just please refrain from personal attacks let's be focused on issues um our next speaker is sam i believe sundell um and then has been to be followed by astin uh ovary or uvery again my name is sam sundell and i'm relatively new to the area you could just please speak into the microphone or speak up i'm relatively new to the area and it's been hard getting into this community but one thing that's really shown just how great the community of burlington could be was what was happening at sears lane now many people have painted them as nothing but criminals as like as this whole area as some overrun drug dead full of garbage but that could be further from the truth i believe that a lot of the residents are of greater morality than most people who sit on this who sit on this council built nothing they have built something amazing out of nothing out of less than nothing out of being persecuted for so long by the city and the city goes and destroys it they voted you guys voted for this based on if i recall it was some arbitrary 1800s law about how you should not vote on the same thing twice you're willing to put human lives at risk because you think that decorum is more important decorum isn't a measure of one's politic of one's political decorum isn't a measure of someone's morality caring for human lives is and a lot of you who voted to have this place destroyed have done a lot more than saying some bad words can do so i just want to say good night and i hope that to everybody who voted no for this i hope your time is up please move on to the next speaker so our final burlington in-person speaker is aspen ovary can you just let me know how to pronounce your name i apologize my name is aspen ovary okay thank you so i don't know what to say now sirzlain has already been destroyed and so i'd like to take a second to talk about what was lost because the city allowed this city allowed people to live here for years and years and in response and said here have this corner this empty parking lot we just we'll just try and keep everyone there and in response these people did what people and what humans always do we they took that they they took the opportunity and they did amazing things to build to make their lives better i talked to a guy named joseph there he he worked on a house that had a whole loft and it had a heating it was it was by main standards a home and he built it in a few months with with the tools that his that the community provided and with his own ingenuity and that house was destroyed on friday morning for no good reason maybe to help developers to construct some empty meaningless thing to benefit tech pros instead of anything that would meaningfully improve this community and i think it's just such a it's such a fucking shame that what you have done here and shame on all and shame on this entire city for for destroying the thing these the amazing things people have created for no good reason thank you thank you so we're going to transition to burlington residents who are participating remotely and for that list i'll read off a couple so i have john callow to be followed by sophie erinson abbey german patricia mires erica reddick leaf leif toronto liam noble and those are the that's the burlington folks and again if folks for this i'm prioritizing burlington residents who affirmatively indicated that they their their status as such we have the two-minute timer up there for folks participating remotely through the screen share so john callow i'm going to enable your microphone uh good evening uh just a quick note to follow up on um sears lane and in particular the closing of of and clearing of the site um hold on a second please just give me a second there we go all right i'm back um just want to acknowledge the clearing of the homeless encampments on sears lane in action in my opinion was long overdue my observation over the past several years is that the unsupervised nature of of 68 sears lane resulted in a general level of lawlessness and anti-social behavior by campers and visitors which ultimately just characterized the encampment as a result the city made the difficult but i think correct decision to vacate and clear the site i i do not uh agree that that the clearing of the the site represents a lack of support or a war on the homeless i think we as a community can do better my hope is that the clearing of the site marks the beginning of a more thoughtful community based response to homelessness both here in burlington and throughout vermont thank you thank you next speaker is sophie erenson sophie i wasn't able to locate you and again if folks are participating please if you could just name yourselves in zoom as the name that you signed up as so that i can easily find you um not being able to locate sophie i'm going to go to abby german and abby will be followed by patricia meyers and erica reddick abby i've enabled your microphone great my name is abby german my pronouns are they them and i'm a resident of ward two i'm here tonight to voice my support for the charter change on sex work first of all sex work should not be confused with sex trafficking when a person takes part in the sale of sex regret abduction or other means of coercion all commercial sexual activity with a minor even without force fraud or coercion is also considered trafficking conflating consensual sex work to sex trafficking is dangerous and furthermore disrespect and disempowers the experiences of both survivors and workers the city charger needs to change not only because the language is sexist and archaic but also because criminalizing sex work between consenting adults is indirect conflict with the human right to personal autonomy and privacy according to the human rights watch in a report published in 2020 they have consistently found in research across various countries setting criminalized contexts sex workers are more vulnerable to violence including rape assault and murder by attackers who see sex workers as easy targets because they are stigmatized and unlikely to receive help from the police criminalization may also force sex workers to work in unsafe locations to avoid the police and undermine sex workers ability to seek justice for crimes committed against them furthermore due to brillington police's limited time and resources prosecuting sex work is illogical and irresponsible these charter change this charter change should pass to create a community in berlington where sex workers are protected legally their work is destigmatized seen as legitimately seen as legitimate and respected by the public and their civil liberties are upheld thank you oh yeah thank you our next our next speaker will be patty meyers to be or to be followed by erica reddick leaf toronto and liam noble so patty i have enabled your microphone patty it looks like you're muted on your end patty or patricia meyers are you able to unmute and silencing you muted okay we can maybe try again a little bit if you have time time permitting i will go to erica reddick next erica i've located you and have enabled your microphone thank you counselor tracy i appreciate the opportunity to come speak in front of the council and the mayor and my neighbors i am here to speak about the decriminalization of prostitution as well and you know i'm sure that you've somebody has already shared with you the stats about the rise in drugs and and other crimes that happen in areas that decriminalized prostitution but um i want i'm coming to you to share a story from a very dear friend of mine who is a is a is a current sex worker and was a porn star and and in and in the industry and she will tell you because she has told me that um almost everyone that she knew from back in her days has either died of a drug overdose or committed suicide um i do not believe that this is a profession that should be legitimized as it dehumanizes people and it commodifies people in a way that really destroys them and the evidence by and large shows that it destroys people while there may be a rare few who who who can have sex without there being some kind of a thing that happens uh those are a rare person and any of you counselors that have had an intimate relationship with someone i'm sure can understand that that is the case so i am asking that you uh do the right thing by the women and men in our community that feel the need to sell their bodies and commodify themselves uh in a way that will destroy their souls i'm asking you to please not do that thank you thank you our next speaker is leaf toronto leaf i've enabled your microphone hello can you hear me yes i can go ahead hello i'm leaf um i'm here and i would like to speak in support of the sex work decriminalization measure i have friends who are sex workers and also friends who have experienced sexual violence and trafficking i wanted to tell you that decriminalization is really important to protect consensual sex workers and um protect them from police brutality and it's also important so that survivors of trafficking and violence can be safe to come forward and receive help and support uh so that's about that i also am aware of the development plans for the south end and i know that some of them include makerspaces and art studios so i thought i'd tell you about my favorite makerspace my favorite makerspace includes an amazing woodworking shop where a friend of mine makes tables it also includes glass blowing there's a metal repair shop there and a painting studio next door and an alternative architecture workshop down the street and where is this wonderful makerspace it is crushed into a brick at the coventry landfill along with car keys and people's entire houses and that's because of all of you i want to caution you when you hear folks praising the destruction of sears lane that several of those folks are directly tied to the developers who want to gentrify that land and don't actually care about preserving the makerspaces and communities that have already been built there as you move forward i hope that you listen to the residents about what they need and to the people that beg you week after week to give a shit there's been a lot of talk about civility tonight and i wanted to say there's nothing civil about coming with a bulldozer and holding people at gunpoint there's nothing civil about leaving people out in the cold taking away toilets and dumpsters destroying with homes with pets inside and sending them directly to landfill there's nothing civil about giving people five minutes to leave and charging them with felonies to protect homes i really hope you all will just get your shit together and keep people from dying and if people could please refrain from using profanity leif toront um our next speaker is liam noble and then we'll transition back to uh non-berlington folks who are here in the room uh liam i've enabled your microphone all right thank you can you hear me yes all right good evening everyone my name is liam noble uh some of veteran of the us navy and i live in board three and i want to speak tonight because of the historical work i do in town uh research in the history of the land has led me some insights i think are valuable uh in reference to sears lane i think the incorrect assumption that we make is that we are free people but this is not true of the residents of sears lane who are not free uh they were pushed out of bodily safety and warmth by the uh armed forces of the burlington police under the direction of the city i think this is an abdication this is an abdication of the city and the mayor's legitimacy it was a abdication of morality and politics and going forward we know that the city has lost claim to these things the mannerism and lifestyle being all that's needed to call for a state project of eradication which lasted for many weeks in spite of their efforts shows a very clear emptiness of values the city could not gain the support of the neighborhoods who are outraged so it laid waste to sears lane and a dawn raid under the protection of the militarized police who are eager to be uh sits like dogs and our fellow neighbors burlington is not a political city but based in violence and i'm just clear to all except who are willfully ignorant i think and the city has on her own neighbors committed a terrible crime and caused a deep wound and this is unforgivable uh the principle of self-defense means that the community will take back what was stoned from it and with effort this will happen uh burlington was only settled in the 18th century did not recognize the abbenaki inhabitants of the land the abbenaki who are people of this land suffered in a strikingly similar way to the residents of sears lane who are being driven from it in violent encounters uh essentially assimilate or die the gun claim which was i think the formal excuse for clearing the community is not new the abbenaki living in their own communities were jailed and raided for the same reasons which is undeniable only 50 years ago we had a project of eugenics to to eradicate the people and the ideological instincts behind the american eugenics is alive and well in burlington your time is up all right all right we're going to transition back to folks who are uh here in the room um but who are not burlington residents i have matthew stone to be followed by meggy curran matthew stone in the room okay not seeing matthew i will go to meggy care uh curran or caron thank you so i'm here on behalf of new englanders against sexual exploitation i'm the vermont chair for that organization i'm just going to read a few things and i'll stop at two minutes i'm reading for felicia ingram can't move it up my glass so she says my name is felicia ingram i'm an assistant director of operations for prevention works joint task force and coalition i reside in connecticut i have spoken to survivors in connecticut and across the united states that can tell you from conversations that i have had with survivors prostitution is dangerous the violence which occurs on behalf of buyers and traffickers is substantial in places such as rote island in los vegas cases of sex trafficking increased more attention is needed for support services mental health skills to find better jobs housing for those who want to get out of the life also excerpts from an article it's called prostitution is the choice of the choiceless it preys on vulnerable populations prostitution is a lack of choice and typically is the last resort for those with the fewest options a survey of those in prostitution found that 89 percent wanted to leave prostitution but felt likely they had no viable alternative in a world where so many homeless persons sexual abuse victims foster care children immigrant indigenous women refugees persons of color learning disabled and transgender person already suffer from lives of political social and economic marginalization it is a travesty of justice to criminalize those who take pleasure in literally profit from their sexual exploitation the legalization and full decriminalization of prostitution a sense to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of marginalized persons further to the extent that prostitution is ever truly a choice and for most of the people it is not it is a choice filled with inherent dangers thank you your time is up thank you our next speaker in person is ryan alan ryan alan here i want you all to see me because oh take down um because while i get to sit at the table of white supremacy with other white males in this country i am not fully abled i was born with club feet i was unable to walk i was never supposed to walk and so i got to grow up different um i have to to further the example i have to use a catheter every single time i need to urinate it's a foot long and i have an incredibly small penis so you can only imagine how long it must be for every other male that would have to catheterize and so when i do mutual aid when i volunteer down here i see the people who are just forgotten who are just treated like trash i could be helping i could be doing a wellness check with someone with a woman who was pushed out of her apartment because her partner was bludgeoned on the head not once but twice and so she lost her home and she's been on the streets for months she was lucky enough to have a motel recently but it's hard i come to burlington and there's no peace or no justice from any of you or not any of you from most of you when you gaslight your allies fucking pisses me off please don't use profanity please don't use violence against united states of american citizens you wake them up with guns pointing to them and you don't want us to swear i want you to use violence anymore i want you to heal i want you to bring hope mr max tracy you do not bring hope to us your time is up no more using violence against bull you're bullying people it's terrorist tactics so your time is up it's not cool man let's just please hold the applause we're going to transition back to folks who are participating remotely who are not from burlington um or who did not affirmatively indicate that they were from burlington so i'm going to go to trisha grant to be followed by robin miller alisa bernard sharyl um ciskey um um savannah sly jocelyn bell and eric gray to name a few um trisha grant i've located you and have enabled your microphone trisha it looks like you are muted on your side if you could unmute trisha grant trisha grant uh yes i'm so sorry i can hear you just fine go ahead okay great um thank you so much for for hearing me first off and um i just want to start out by telling you that um i am a survivor of trafficking um i was trafficked here in main and throughout new england including vermont um at 15 years old and um i it took me 16 years to even know that there was a name for what happened to me and that was sex trafficking and it took me another year and a half to bring my case to homeland security and to truly start my healing journey that's the story that i hear over and over and over now from other survivors is that this is not a victimless crime sex trafficking happens in every state in our country and if we start to legalize it even in this seemingly small situation here like you're talking about in vermont this is the start of a fire and um if i can say anything and leave anything with you it's that you do have a voice in this and you can stop this from happening to other people um it again it might seem like a small thing right now and that you don't have a voice in this what you do this is the beginning of a fire it's a small fire right now that you guys have the option to either put out or to sit and watch grow um i work with hundreds of survivors now who have experienced trafficking in vermont and we need to stop this we need to stop it before it continues to grow um i i know i along with so many other survivors and so many other people who are on this call with you are willing to have further conversations with anybody who would just like to hear another side to this and understand that this is not a victimless crime and you guys have a voice in stopping us so i'm grateful for the opportunity to share with you and i am more than willing to to continue this conversation with anybody thank you thank you our next speaker is robin miller to be followed by alisa bernard robin i've located you and have enabled your microphone hello yes hi my name is robin miller i'm a adult survivor of commercial sexual exploitation through systems of prostitution um i would have told you at one point when i was in the life that i had full agency and autonomy over my choices um however i didn't i had a pamp um and i didn't always have a pamp and when i didn't have a pamp i always had a buyer and i experienced a level of assault that i would wish on nobody i was raped strangled beaten jumped out of cars frequently i was also you know abused by my trafficker which most people would assume um in that case the full decrim measure that you are proposing to um like empower in your community will only uh create a demand so high that uh you know it sounds like you have a lot of problems in your city right now that many places across the country are experiencing and you should just be ready for more um i'm an ally with an ally for the folks who are in the life and choose this as a profession i support um what is called the equality model which decriminalizes the person who is being bought or sold but it still holds um uh criminalization to the buyer and the trafficker or the brothel owner um i think that is the way that you should at least take a look at at what that could do um i would never uh implore upon somebody to get out of a situation that they weren't ready to do but i will implore you to really uh take a look at what um what could happen in your community it's it's a death sentence it's a sentence to most people this is a inherently racist and oppressive system and i just i will be watching to see what you all do thank you thank you so i am unable to locate a lisa bernard cheryl siskie savannah sly or jocelyn bell i'm gonna keep going and look for eric gray folks can just please uh name themselves uh in zoom um under the name that um you signed up for public forum that will help me to locate folks um not able to locate eric gray i'm gonna keep going i'll go to christine rego next can you hear me all right yes thank you good evening i'm a dressing the council regarding agenda item 6.03 as a member of the ishtar collective a local nonprofit dedicated to sex work advocacy harm reduction and anti-trafficking my views expressed here tonight do not necessarily reflect the views of my organization or my employer international human rights and public health organizations including but not limited to the aclu amnesty international world health organization un aides and human rights watch support the full decriminalization of sex work i have included within my written statement links to the aclu's full research brief amnesty international's official policy on state obligations to respect protect and fulfill the human rights of sex workers and Yale law school's global health justice partnerships letter in support of amnesty international and the decriminalization of sex work it would behoove every city council member to absorb these documents for their own education and informed decision making henceforth research based evidence and data proves unequivocally that full decriminalization increases health and safety and decrease his trafficking when resources are used to revile and criminalize working adults they're actively being misappropriated from actual victims that might have been helped thank you for prudently considering this charter change to expire archaic and oppressive governmental powers it would be misguided and myopic to sympathize with fear mongering and moralistic belief systems against the surmounting readily available and factual evidence supporting decriminalization my colleagues and i look forward to working more closely with our policy makers and officials at the state and local levels and extend our expertise whenever appropriate thank you thank you i'm still not able to locate um elisa bernard cheryl sysky uh savannah sly jocelyn bell or eric gray and again if you are um on uh participating but uh participating under a different name please just sign up please rename yourself our next speaker will be henry june banks to be followed by mary spetta and elisa johnson i am locate able to locate you henry and i've enabled your microphone can you hear me okay yes i can go ahead all right my name is henry june banks june banks i am the co-director of a vermont based advocacy collective called the history collective a network comprised of sex workers both active and retired trafficking survivors and allies living in vermont i'm also a second generation sex worker tonight i want to talk about what it feels like to have your demographic spoken of as though you're not in the room as though you don't have a stake in the decision-making process as it refers to decriminalizing sex work so i feel in these spaces i'm often being told that i'm a prostituted person or victim someone who might use better judgment with my body if i were not impoverished coerced by drugs money or violence i feel like my power is stripped when these sweeping statements occur i realize my working experience is in the sex industry does not speak to that of others but that is exactly my point it suits none of us to co-op the truths of others to meet our own interests i am an addict in recovery whose experience with addiction was in college writing finals for upper middle class students that i studied with i've since been clean for four years while an active sex worker i have no pimp telling me to be here i have no hidden agenda to evangelize my work only to make my community safe so we can work with dignity out of the shadows it's hard to feel like someone's acting on my best interests when i have to fight to be heard when my truth doesn't seem to fit the agenda of other people it makes me feel gaslit and other the work my collective has done from fee food distribution to emergency care for trafficking survivors is not an act of salesmanship the interviews we have undertaken with harvard university and the time we take here with you today is all in action from the heart as vermonters who live and work amongst you we are your neighbors and your friends if you'd like but we need you to listen to us thank you thank you so i was able to locate savannah sly so savannah i'm going to enable your microphone and then after savannah i'll go to mary spetta and elisa johnson savannah i've enabled your microphone hi there can you hear me yes great thank you so much hi my name is savannah sly and i'm a sex worker i'm 37 i've been a sex worker since i was 18 i grew up in white river junction vermont i spent half my time living in white river junction vermont and also seattle i've worked in burlington a lot and i'm here to speak in support of the changes to the burlington city council charter that would remove outdated and harmful language regarding sex workers it's my understanding that this proposal would not decriminalize sex work but would make changes to sexist and archaic language i support these language changes i have been a sex worker since i was 18 and i'm no stranger to stigmatizing language that dehumanizes people in my line of work stigma is a social tool that makes discrimination and violence against a specific class of people permissible in removing stigmatizing language from the city charter burlington takes a big step towards meaningfully addressing the safety needs rights and dignity of sex workers as someone who has experienced both coercion and independence in the sex trade i feel firmly that changes such as the one being considered today are imperative for having real conversations about safety and bodily autonomy thank you so much for your time today thank you our next speaker is mary spetta to be followed by elisa johnson laura ramirez we also have jbanky grace file nicole bell and christian edwardo just so that folks know who's coming up i'm going to go to mary spetta now and mary i have enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes hi my name is mary spetta i'm a researcher a leader and a survivor of the commercial sex trade and i'm also the chief impact officer of amira we are one of the largest providers of exit and aftercare services for women exiting the commercial sex trade in new england i'm speaking regarding the resolution on sex worker the sex worker charter in our 10 years of work we've served more than 400 women exiting prostitution 61 percent of the women we have served in our residential program were sold for sex in vermont at some point during their time in the sex trade we've learned through these women's stories that the commercial sex trade is particularly active in burlington and is directly connected to gang activity those who survived the vermont sex trade experienced brutalization from gangs hospitalizations for broken pelvises needing complete jaw replacements severe beatings electrocutans and and shootings they experienced physical humiliations such as having their head shaved their family members were targeted by sex buyers and they have an inability to go back to areas out of fear for their lives most of this violence was experienced at the hands of sex buyers this is particularly significant as the sex trade follows the basic economic laws of supply and demand when demand increases prices decrease rapidly we know from our colleagues and other parts of the world where the sex trade has been fully decriminalized that the price of sex is lower and when the purchase of sex is no longer illegal demand increases significantly when demand increases the violence i just described also increases we recognize that some people choose to participate in the sex trade but they are in the minority the data show that as many as 89 percent of people in prostitution want to wait out of the sex trade and many are there without a trafficker because they have no other way to survive the problem with full decriminalization is not the decriminalization of those sold for sex but the decriminalization of sex buyers symbolic or not this resolution does not make people sold for sex safer i urge you to reconsider this resolution and be in conversation with those of us actively working in this field to explore other solutions that have been shown to actually benefit those in prostitution thank you our next speaker is um polisa johnson to be followed by laura ramirez polisa i've enabled your microphone hello can you hear me yes all right hi there my name is alisa johnson i'm the local director for new Hampshire traffic free coalition i'm also a member of new englanders against sexual exploitation and a foster mom to an at-risk youth and i'm calling in today to ask that you not decriminalize the sex trade in burlington those who choose to work within the sex trade by their own volition do not justify the massive amounts of harm that happens to those who are vulnerable to exploitation within a trade that is inherently racist sexist traumatic and violent there's no way to make the system of prostitution safe for vulnerable people it's an act in which someone who wants to have sex uses money as a coercive force to coerce someone who doesn't want to have sex to have sex with them it commodifies consent because when consent is truly present when two people want to have sex with one another nothing of value needs to be exchanged and growing this system only exploits vulnerabilities fires who purchase sex do not know and often do not care whether the people who's consent they are purchasing have made any sort of willing choice to be there they do not make a distinction between sex trafficking victims and consenting sex workers sex work and sex trafficking happens within the same system there's not trafficking happening in one place and then consensual sex work taking place in another it's all happening within the same system and so we need to be working to shrink the system of prostitution rather than growing it i advocate for partial decriminalization or the equality model where pimps and abusers and exploiters are held accountable but those who are selling sex are provided with the support and services and de-stigmatization that they need to be safe i asked that you would listen to survivors of the sex trade and choose not to decriminalize it and again just on behalf of new hampshire traffic free coalition new englanders against sexual exploitation i'm asking that you not decriminalize the sex trade in berlington thank you so much for your time thank you um laura ramirez i'm not able to locate you so i'm gonna go to jay benke jay i've enabled your microphone hi my name is jay benke and i am a survivor of human trafficking and i lived experience um expert and consultant as well as one of the founding members of the northwest survivor alliance and i'm here today um to discuss the decriminalization of prostitution i would like to amplify the voice of michael shively with mikosi he's a senior advisor on research and policy um who has proposed an amendment to the language that the city shall have the power to prohibit and punish her prostitution and this is more in a line with the equality model which gives sex workers what they want and that they will not be criminalized or stigmatized and that the stigma will go where it belongs which is with the buyer and the traffickers and the brothels um i personally have identified longer as a prostitute longer than i have i have been able to identify as a human trafficking survivor because it is not something that you can really identify as while you are trapped in that sort of light there is the notion that legalizing prostitution somehow creates safety um this has no meat behind it i personally in um just one year of my trafficking experience was sexually assaulted and or raped by over 24 500 men none of this was consensual there was no way for them to verify this was consensual and it didn't care um also there is no way to screen for safety i personally now live as a permanently disabled person who has lost organs and had multiple surgeries and um tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills as a result of the inherent violence that was inflicted upon me including suffocation and beatings i asked that you please do not get rid of the language amend it thank you thank you our next speaker is um i'm still not able to locate laura ramirez i'm going to go to grace file grace i've enabled your microphone hi um i'm here not to share my own words but more importantly these words verbatim from carol carol's home at sears lane was destroyed on friday and she's in a lot of distress but she wants to be heard i was wondering what gives you the right to kick somebody when they're down to take everything from somebody and destroy it when they politely ask if you could hold it because they had a place to go but couldn't get it moved until this weekend what gives you the right to take everything from somebody and destroy everything they worked so hard to get would you like if somebody did the same thing to you would you be happy that if someone took everything you ever made in your life and just threw it away like it was trash all the stuff for my kids all the shit that i worked so hard to earn to make sure we can make a living and have a life so we can make it back up grow to build some people are not handed everything in life and you just go you just have them go and destroy that's what you did you told them to destroy it and that's what they did they destroyed everything that everybody had they took my tools that i struggled to get that i had to pay for that i worked my ass off to get so i could make a living i was trying to make our place in the world but no because you think we are garbage and we are nothing and that you have all the right to treat us like this we're people we might not have what you have we might not have money but we are still people we deserve the right the fucking respect that your parents taught you how to do it give to people that's what my parents taught me how to respect people and you apparently don't know how to do that and you don't know how to fucking have nothing because honey i think you sold your soul and i believe you sold your soul into somebody because you lost the respect and kindness that you should have for people the day you did that you've lost it you've lost every respect that i've ever had for somebody that i thought might have been doing good for this town but apparently i was wrong because like i said i think you sold your soul that you ran for office sold your soul you lost all the passion and the kindness for people so you lost it and i don't know what you can do but i need and i want to know why you did that and just took my life and destroyed it because you took everything from me and i have nothing i asked them and i asked if we could put it off to the side because i had it all set up to move and now you gave them permission to take my tools and destroy my everything and you you are the reason you are the person that gave them the right and you are the person who should be taking the blame your time is up i cannot believe that you gave them five minutes to leave and you will not listen to her words for five minutes our next speaker is i do not i cannot locate christian edwardo um or nicole bell so i'm going to go to michael chivelli michael i've enabled your microphone okay can you hear me now yes okay the charter changed regarding prostitution is not only symbolic the proposal to remove the charter language without replacing it with better language will have consequences particularly if supporters of decriminalization succeed in repealing the state prostitution laws um under full decriminalization prostitution may occur at literally any location in the city including parks schools homes hotels if it's not illegal there is no limit to where it can happen prostitution ordinances will allow the city to prohibit it from occurring where it is a problem although the city council voted already to remove these ordinances the city charter would authorize the city to create new ordinances as needed if it becomes a problem um it's kind of hard to understand why it's so critical to remove these uh uh the charter language without replacing it um one argument is that it's inconsequential and it's you know still illegal so it's not a big deal at all but then again why bother if it's not you know worth doing uh removing it from the charter um entirely positions the city to be unable to regulate the behavior under full decriminalization um the language mentioned by one of the prior speakers um is not my language it's from rutlin vermont the charter for rutlin vermont says simply that the city shall have the power to prohibit and punish for prostitution period simple direct free from sexism racism archaic language but it still retains the city's ability to create ordinances to regulate prostitution where and when it proves to be problematic and it will uh we don't have to speculate about what will happen every place it has been decriminalized it's gone badly um these uh proposed oh i'll stop thank you very much time is up in the next so i was not able to locate um marisa for nones um so i'm going to go to asparanza fonceca asparanza i've enabled your microphone hello my name is asparanza fonceca i am a survivor of prostitution i'm also a member of the organization affirm we are a transnational feminist organization made up of women of color across the country including in vermont um i wanted to speak to you today to urge you to strongly reconsider uh changing the language on prostitution while i think that we all agree that that language needs to be updated uh the reality is is that this is step one in a much larger plan to decriminalize pimping brothel owning and sex fine um first of all i know that amnesty international was mentioned earlier by another speaker you should know that their policy was written in part by a pimp additionally the so-called sex worker organizations that they cite as supporting it one of them their vice president was jailed 15 years for sex trafficking her crimes were so severe um i also would encourage you to look at the experiment in rhod island where prostitution was fully decriminalized and all it did was increase violence and exploitation i strongly urge you to please retain the ability for the city to hold our exploiters accountable that is the pimps the brothel owners and the sex buyers an expanded sex industry means that it will be the young girls today who are the targets of the pimps and the traffickers tomorrow thank you thank you our next not able to locate anybody else um who had already signed up um but who i wasn't able to locate um before um let me just make sure again laura ramirez i am able to locate you so i'm going to come to you right now i've enabled your microphone laura ramirez it looks like you're on mute i have enabled your microphone laura you'll need to unmute yourself laura ramirez okay not hearing anything from laura i'm not able to find just one more time okay i have not found any other other individuals so i'll go ahead and close that section we did have one other person sign up in person um carol um from sears lane just signed up so carol please join us don't have any others who have signed up for public forum this evening so we'll go ahead and close the public forum um oh i do see one other person who has signed up online um ivan so ivan i will recognize ivan i've enabled you hi uh can everybody hear me yes go ahead okay so my name is ivan i have been helping defend the public land that is and will always be the sears lane community like so many of the colonists that came before the city council the names we give places remain just like the names our country had before becoming sears lane also still exist and should be spoken turtle island before continuing important to note that the toe who will for now remain unnamed because apparently directing comments that people's unwarranted since we're all children and incapable of taking criticism is contracted to help developers of sears lane once it is cleared and also the firm he works for is run by someone who donated some sears money to myro's reelection campaign so concerned citizen about the nature of homelessness in burlington was cute but not accurate second point that the housing the folks of sears lane were guaranteed are currently being turned out from under them just today a comrade sat with me to tell me that she rushed to move someone out of the motel who had been kicked out because her time was up so guaranteed housing might ask in the spirit of my grandfather whose family developed an asylum of abuse that came with trying to assimilate in this country i'm going to put a curse on the members of city council and those who are listening right now the first frozen body we find as a result of your atrocities i hope you think of this moment of the moments that preceded at the pleading voices of the cries and the tears of the people being held at gunpoint the ones at gunpoint a few days ago the others a few centuries ago the blood that soaks the soil the bones that feed our plants we do not own this land you have no right to kick people off of it let alone send their belongings to a landfill including priceless family heirlooms and medications i expect i'll be getting calls to treat the people for the latter in the coming days i expect my limited medical knowledge i won't be able to do much but it's more than scratching my nonexistent balls like land developers like rascally count their money and talk about putting buildings on land with skeletons underneath i hope you're ashamed i hope your dreams are haunted by the ghosts of the people who died of finding this land from invaders and not just the ones of sears lane thank you conclude our public forum for this evening and we'll move into our deliberative agenda so we'll continue with item number four which is climate emergency reports do any counselors have any climate emergency reports to offer okay seeing none we'll go to the next item which is the consent agenda may please have a motion on the consent agenda councilor stromberg i would move to approve the consent agenda okay we have a motion is there a second second by councilor any discussion hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously brings us into our deliberative agenda itself beginning with item number uh with 6.01 um which is a communication regarding brillington and musky uh city councils regarding people waiting factors report councillor shannon thank you sorry thank you president tracy i moved to endorse and adopt this letter and authorize the city council president and mayor to sign the letter on the behalf of the city council and the administration of the city of brillington asked for the floor back after a second okay we have a motion is there a second seconded by councillor hightower you have the floor councillor shannon um thank you president tracy i um hope that councillor barlow will speak um after me because he actually has more history with this than i do going back to his days on on the school board um but uh just to summarize an issue that has come before us before we have learned through a 2019 report that the legislature commissioned that the um the city of brillington as well as the city of wnuski and many other communities throughout vermont have been short changed on education funding through the education funding mechanism called um per people spending and that per people spending was uh was established 20 years ago with x 60 um through no particular scientific method and for that reason they had asked for they had commissioned this report to come up with a more scientific way of determining what per people spending should be and how to categorize uh different types of students um and different situations so after the report was submitted it went to the legislature the problems were identified but of course this is these are difficult political decisions to make i'm sure that there is not a community in this state that feels like it's overfunded but in order for some of us to be underfunded that would be the corollary so it's difficult for the legislatures nonetheless to achieve equity which the legislators are committed to the the new weights the scientific weights must be implemented and to that end they um uh last year established a task force to figure out how the weights would be implemented unfortunately that's not really what has happened in the task force there's much much debate about the weights and a lot of conversation about alternatives to the weights um so what with this letter what we're really asking is again for our legislators um and for the legislature leadership to give us what we need to achieve equity that we all agree on and that is to implement the weights that were derived scientifically by unbiased uh researchers who um who really have have have done something that politicians can't do so uh i am asking again for this council's report support in signing on to this letter along with the city of wnuski who already has has uh passed and and endorsed this letter thank you thank you councillor shannon i have councillor barlow sure thank you president tracy um yeah when i was on the school board um we recognized that many of the supports and services we need to educate our english english language learners on cost a lot more than what was accounted for in the um equalized pupil formula so we had advocated even back in 2015 2016 that this be addressed um in a typical a typical mechanism in the legislature if they don't want to decide on something as to send it to a study committee which they eventually did and the study committee uh came up with recommendations um in the um pupil weighting factors report of 2019 i was off off the board then um and although i won't pretend to understand all of the recommendations i have spoken with at least three of the uh current school board members who um all say that the the recommendations by this uh this report the recommendations in this report are the the best ways to ensure that we have the um the resources that we need to educate our english language learners so um i i agree with councillor shannon that we should um ask our legislative delegation to sort of refocus the solution on the recommendations in the report and not to allow the implementation task force to sort of find a political decision that might be more convenient than what the research has uh yielded so i will support this as well thank you anyone else council carpenter um i i'm obviously going to support this and this is just sort of a editorial comment i was having a conversation today with the legislature legislator and um she reminded me the political issue is they give more to brillington they might have to take away from another town and we both agreed that was the wrong way to be looking at it you may be able to hold some towns harmless but to not give to us and the other dozen or more towns that are affected by the waiting study is not the way to look at it so i'm offering that as a comment thank you anyone else okay hearing seeing and hearing none i will go to we'll go to a vote all those in favor of endorsing and adopting this letter and then authorizing the council president and mayor to sign the letter on behalf of the city council and the administration of brillington please say aye aye any opposed hearing none that carries unanimously uh item 6.02 was removed from the agenda so we will go to item 6.03 um a resolution regarding a charter change on sex workers uh councilor freeman yep i'd like to move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and i um would take the floor back after a second motion from council freeman is there a second seconded by councilor magie go ahead council freeman yeah thank you so much um for the opportunity to speak on this um i introduced it um quite a bit ago for um referral to the charter change committee um that came up from um as i mentioned at the time um the um sort of mass shooting in Atlanta um which took place in um our targeted sex workers um you know prompted me i think to look at um what we have on the books in Burlington um and to refer this to the charter change committee um i want to say also um that i've been excited to see um you know since um bringing it forward that time and and since that there's been um unanimous or near unanimous support um for this shift in our city's language that's been really exciting um to see um and i also want to thank everyone who's come tonight to speak about their um to speak about person experience um either as a sex worker um but also other topics like sexual violence um trafficking and um domestic violence these are issues that i think are so often um created in a in a culture of silence and um our push to the shadows and um speaking about that issue regardless of um what they're advocating anyone is advocating for on a policy level is um i think really important and so i just wanted to thank folks for for coming in speaking towards their experience um i did want to address some of the testimony that we heard about um trafficking you know i want to say of of course um you know adamantly um you know i oppose trafficking um i support um policies and um you know and things that we can do cultural shifts and you know sort of all the the the myriad of ways that we can address trafficking um i do want to say that um and i think um one of the speakers said this i say that that sex trafficking and sexual and um sex work and sexual sex work are just two separate issues and um this is something that i brought up um in charter change committee when um there was a question about should we just instead of striking this language and repealing it um should we instead include language here um that you know about trafficking or um you know there was also um someone tonight i think mentioned um support for the equality model um which is separate has to do with um sex work policy um there are policies specifically around sex work um and i think um specifically around trafficking um and also just like in in the sense of whether we should just repeal this um i i really don't think that um it makes sense to conflate um trafficking um here in this charter change um i think um the strike all makes the most sense to me um the the language is antiquated um and i think um it was Representative Colburn who said that um the state is really um really equipped to sort of address this on a larger level and and look at all um the sort of sources and um to hear um perspective on this going forward um i do also want to note that um one of the um because because it was a majority or there was a large amount of folks who came from the national center of sexual exploitation to speak against us um i did want to um note that um when i looked into the organization i did find that their um their president Patrick Truman is um was the former director of government affairs for the american family association um this association is a southern poverty law center hate group um because of its anti-lgbt stance um it's considered a far-right conservative group um and i think that um i just wanted to note that um while i do understand concerns about trafficking um that if um and the the former um the former um sorry the former title of um the that this group the national center of sexual exploitation um is morality and media um and i think that um though i do um want to um see you know anti-trafficking work um in the state um and and nationally of course in everywhere um that um using that as an argument um when it um is so much more um it's a it's a much more successful argument in my opinion um then um then saying we don't believe in the morality of sex work or we don't believe in in the morality of folks who do sex work um and so i i do feel like um to me that was a red flag um sort of in when i looked at the background of that group and i think that they have many of the speakers um that spoke were affiliated with that group and i just wanted to make note of that so folks were aware um so um you know lastly i think that um you know as we've discussed this does not um in any way formally decriminalize sex work um we still have state statute um i do think that if the state addresses this and we're to decriminalize which i've spoken that i personally support decriminalization um to me like the fact that um the world health organization the aclq and with the international humans right watch um these really reputable um groups that have done a lot of research into into why that is such a um move for um the safety and health of folks who do sex work um and you know just people in our community overall um is a really good um it makes me feel um a lot more confident that um if that were to happen that that would be um that that would be a good shift and it's it's very far down the road and i think the state would you know do a lot of research and there would be a lot of opportunity for folks to weigh in on that but um you know if that were to happen i i do want to note that um as many have said you know there are organizations that um i think many of us respect and um are very renowned that um for ample reason and ample evidence um support that shift um so yeah so lastly just wanted to say that um the vote tonight just to reiterate for folks does not actually um decriminalize sex work it takes this um archaic you know antiquated um an outdated language um that is frankly quite offensive off of our books um the state will be responsible for um you know for further sort of statute on this and um i really hope that um you know the majority of us can support this um i think it's the right move um for our community so thank you so much and um again thank you to to everyone who came um there was a lot of testimony and um thank you for like to the city for for deliberating on this issue i appreciate it thank you councilor freeman i don't have anyone in the queue councilor barlow um thank you president tracy um you know we've heard a lot about how if we strike this tonight um we'll either decriminalize or we'll be on the road to legalization and although the sponsor of the original resolution um is supportive of decriminalization our council vote up or down tonight will won't make decriminalization anymore or less likely it's it's my view that decriminalization decisions will never be made at the city level and it's inconceivable inconceivable to me that the state would allow burlington to have a different set of rules with regard to sex work than the rest of the state and i'll point to our charter changes on common sense gun laws that remain bottled up in the legislature to this day a patchwork of different municipal laws on the issue wouldn't be helpful to advancing the necessary protections for and supports for those that are exploited or victimized either i support the charter change but not because i support decriminalization of sex work in the city our current our current charter language should be updated to remove the archaic language just like the archaic and sexist ordinance language we already voted to remove the strike all being recommended would simply remove language whose intent is consistent with current vermont law in bsa 13 section 2632 that has the same prohibitions on sex work many communities who do not have municipal charters rely on this state law and once we remove it we will as well thank you thank you councillor barlow don't have anyone else in the queue councillor strongberg thank you um i just want to thank everybody who spoke um and told very personal stories this evening um i think that that takes a lot of bravery and i just really appreciate that um i'm proudly going to support this tonight one because um it it simply is to me just a change of language um and the current language is honestly just severely disgusting and sexist and i can't believe it's still in there honestly so i think that that's a very obvious overdue thing um and yeah we are not decriminalizing sex work here tonight and in some ways i'm kind of sad that that's not true but also definitely think that this is the step in the right direction and it's getting us talking about this very important thing that's that is prominent in our community we just don't talk about it with each other very often so i am just going to leave it there thank you thank you don't have anyone else in the queue ready to vote on this councillor mickey thank you i just uh when i echo what councillor strongberg just said um thanking everyone who spoke tonight and also saying that the importance of our vote here tonight isn't the act of decriminalizing sex work it's the fact that we're having this conversation in a public space in a way that removes stigma and moves us in a direction of pursuing harm reduction um in our city policy and advocating for that on a state level and a federal level um you know the more that we continue to have these conversations uh about policies that have criminalized uh poverty um and other other crimes that are um uh antiquated um the more that we can continue to advocate for these changes on a larger scale um you know we can acknowledge that our system here in vermont doesn't allow us to make these changes on a municipal level very easily but um just the fact that we're having this conversation is important so i just want to make that statement thank you thank you councillor mickey anyone else okay seeing none ready to vote all those in favour please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously completes our deliberative agenda for this evening bringing us to item number seven committee reports are there any committee chairs wishing to offer report council high tower uh just want to let folks know that the joint committee of the public safety committee and the police commission has officially closed our business and everything going forward will be handed by the public safety committee in conjunction with um two liaisons from the police commission and one from the fire board thank you councillor high tower any other committee chairs councillor paul uh speaking of the public safety committee uh we will be meeting on wednesday december 15th a couple of days um and i believe that's at 5 30 and uh is will be if it isn't on the city calendar i think it was posted to the city calendar today um we'll be talking about the cna report moving forward with those recommendations and a couple of other items um and uh that's it thanks thank you any other committee chairs councillor shannon thank you president tracy your pack committee painstakingly reviewed many many qualified applicants for the dog task force and um sadly couldn't appoint all of them because they were really an excellent group that stepped forward but the dog task force um uh was appointed and is now working on organizing their first meeting i don't think i've heard one that's going to be but it is in the process thank you thank you councillor shannon councillor hanson the transportation energy and utilities committee normally meets on the fourth tuesday but uh we won't have the staff support available for tuesday to 28th so we're going to reschedule our december meeting um we're looking at early january and i'll update folks when we have a date for that thanks thank you any other committee chairs council carpenter um just to tell you that um cdr cd and ours meeting this week and several agenda items including our some concerns about state support for some addiction programs that we need to get updated on um and just preemptively let the um well the committee know and do i talk to director pine about maybe using our january meeting for the hearing for the the um homeless money that we just talked about today at finance committee so um there's a lot of interest in how those might roll out and that might be um a good time to do it thank you councillor carpenter anyone else any other committee chairs okay seeing none we'll go to city council general affairs i don't want to offer anything regarding city council general affairs council high tower um just want to let council high tower speak please council high tower yeah just want to speak to the sears lane um situation i wasn't here the week that we decided not to vote on that again but as someone who has been houseless twice in her previous history i just think it's so incredibly stressful to be in that situation and to put people into not only have people in that situation but then increase their trauma with uncertainty in terms of what their future holds increase their trauma in terms of evictions um or removing them with um like in very traumatic situations i think i think we made the wrong decision i hope that i and one i hope that we as at least as a city council can do more to move forward to make sure that the way that we do this forward going forward looks very different or radically different council high tower to speak and um yeah so i hope that we can at least move if we can't enact anything as a city council in terms of when we get to this point doing it differently then i hope we can at least set a different agenda going forward i also think that despite you know we're saying we're going to do all of these things going forward with supporting the house's community i think it's not great to first remove people and then say that we'll do something that sounds like the wrong order to me and i'm very disappointed in us as a body and as a city that this continues to be how we decide to handle um our neighbors being houseless please please allow the council please allow the council to continue does anyone else have any does anyone else have any general affairs councillor stromberg yes thank you um i swear there's going to be a point to this but it is a general affair um i do so when i was younger and skateboarding in my house and i broke a vase or something like that i would get yelled at and my mom or my dad would be like oh my gosh like what did you do that why were you so careless and i'm like well it's just a vase you can go buy another one and i'm like no like there's meaning to that vase wherever they got it if it was a grandmother that passed it down or whatever and so as a young person i learned early on that you can't place value on things that are other peoples and you don't get to decide what's valuable to other people and so to kind of hear that things were being tracked down two hour plus away at the you know the uh coventry landfill um and just kind of reliving what we already went through and like redoing this conversation getting the calls that i already got getting the messages i already got um about this is just very disappointing one of the main talking points last time we're all here except for you um was that we we wanted more collaboration and communication as you know in in terms of the plan here and and a little bit of a heads up more more than um a memo or something put out a little bit beforehand but like an actual like what are we gonna do now you know as it gets colder out and so i am just really kind of disgusted at this kind of heartless action that was done as we know it's getting colder out and there's no there just isn't really a plan and a lot of the community partners that um we say we're working with um we're not really heavily involved with that at all um and kind of brought into it afterwards and i just don't understand why that was the case and i don't know why i as a counselor just didn't know that this was going to happen like really i just i i understand a lot of things on both sides and i don't know how to convey that clearly without just saying that the way i just did but that's not this isn't this is just a very inhumane situation and we're causing it we're literally causing that so um i i just thank you for telling your story uh counselor high tower and i just i really hope that moving forward we really actually do provide people housing through the winter at whatever cost i really that doesn't that shouldn't matter um when it's life and death it really just doesn't and we we do need to come up with a plan and we do need to collaborate and communicate so i just i just really want to leave off on that i guess thank you thank you councillor strongberg i have councillor hanson thanks i also wanted to speak on what happened on friday which i think is really appalling and we should all be ashamed that this happened in our community community which is the city um destroying people's only home and and disposing of people's only belongings without warning um and without even coordinating with with partners that um you know have been involved down at sears lane trying to connect people with resources um you know people lived at sears lane and people continue to live at other encampments throughout burlington because they don't have other options um which is a reflection of the fact that we we have more work to do as as a government as a city government as a society to create systems that give give people options but we haven't done that yet and so now people you know seek out shelter where they can find it and sears lane was one example of that and there's others throughout the city um so now i think we have to continue that that work and and provide those options but also we have to ensure housing specifically for the people that the city displaced on friday and we need to hear from the administration how these people are being supported and how they're being housed because the city just removed the only shelter that they have on friday i think the council also needs to change policy and and we'll be working on that hopefully as soon as a week from today um or as soon as we can where we need to ensure that that nothing like this is able to to happen going forward and that's on us and that's our responsibility to change city ordinance and not give the administration the power to take an action like this thank you thank you councillor hanson and councillor mickey thank you president tracy a week ago i was invited to a meeting to get an update on the actions the city's planning to take to support houseless folks in our community in the pretty near future and in the longer term i've said from since i got elected to this body that i would show up for a conversation as long as a table was offered for it and that i'd keep an open mind and i did that it was offered last monday and i left that meeting feeling optimistic that we were moving in the right direction after weeks of pretty egregious actions taken against our houseless neighbors here in burlington particularly at sears lane and friday morning i woke up to several messages from residents that were living in sears lane from folks that had moved into sears lane after we had kicked most of the people out of there after we had offered housing to relocate folks um i went down there and i watched as the police department and public works took violent action to destroy the only shelter that we at least eight people that we know of had on two of the coldest nights that we have seen this winter and so that shows to me that this city hasn't learned any lessons from the conversations that we've had over the last four weeks that we aren't serious about pursuing harm reduction or trauma informed practice when it comes to addressing houselessness or the mental health crisis or the substance use crisis that we continue to rely on state violence through the police department as a end date of a solution to the many crises that we face in our community for years we've over resourced our police department in hopes that we might solve society's problems for decades and that hasn't happened and we continue to under resource mental health care access to treatment for substance use i'm hopeful that we're going to have a positive conversation next week about safe use sites i'm hopeful that we're going to be able to make progress in many of these areas but friday's action was indirect contradiction to all of those efforts and i'm pretty ashamed to be a member of this body that has failed to take action to protect the most vulnerable members of our community so i just hope that we can learn some kind of lesson out of these meetings and i will continue to show up as long as there are a table there is a table for us to have a conversation at and i will continue to push this city to pursue harm reduction and trauma informed practice when we're having conversations about these these crises that we face and i just want to say that i'm grateful for the work that many city departments including the cjc have done to make progress in a system that hasn't prioritized this this change so that's all i have thank you thank you council mickey any other councillors councillor shannon thank you president tracy i have a different view than others who have commented on this and i've had that view for a whole lot longer than anybody else at this table and i've had it on a daily basis um sears lane is continually painted as some kind of utopia or lifesaving winter housing option it was a death trap that's what our fire chief told us someone was certain to die there this winter if it continued it wasn't safe for first responders to go in thankfully the mayor assured that everyone living there was offered safe housing before shutting it down i want to again bring focus to the reality of what was going on at this city-owned site a hospital worker going to their car had a deadly arrow shot at them a neighbor found a crossbow arrow in their garage on its way to their backyard a passerby had a firecracker thrown at them in broad daylight followed by three men laughing at her reaction businesses were vandalized regularly neighbors were confronted and threatened to say there were a few bad apples does not properly characterize life there people were enjoying living above the law and creating a space where law enforcement and social accountability that exists in other living situations around the city probably your neighborhoods were impossible no housing organization was willing to step up and manage this site because that would be impossible some say the site should be self-managed it was self-managed and it was a disaster while this council voted 11 to 1 against smokeless fire pits due to potential negative impacts on neighbors sears lane neighbors and occupants were subject to regular bond fire size toxic burns directly adjacent to gas cans and other explosive items because it's unsafe for for the burlington fire department to go into the encampment these fires saw no enforcement unlike your neighbor's family campfire a camper vehicle was blown up a campsite was torched along with all the individual's belongings when this person was unwelcome by other campers campers were victimized by campers there were many loud and lengthy fights night after night to portray this as a place for peaceful independent habitation fails to look at the reality of life in this encampment vigilantism another word for self-managed was the only form of law drug dealing was a daily business and so was theft piles of stolen bicycles and other stolen property not everyone in the encampment was a criminal many were victims and some were there simply as a lifestyle choice people were offered housing which could well save their lives one very young camper came here and told us that spending last winter in the encampment led to her hands becoming so frozen she suffered permanent nerve damage she was offered housing having housing allows people to start rebuilding their lives housing is the humane response allowing the hazards and squalor at sears lane to continue is not humane there was well more than 30 days warning it was plastered with no trespassing signs for everyone to see i thank the mayor the police department the social workers and every city worker who have worked diligently with the campers to meet their needs and restored this publicly owned parcel of land making it safe for neighbors passers-by and the occupants who are now being housed thanks to a great deal of hard work thank you council shannon i don't have anyone else in the queue thank you president tracy i mean i think we need to ask ourselves you know are we elected leaders and call to work with the mayor or are we activists which one sometimes i get confused which one are we uh Wednesday i was at sears lane Wednesday evening night afterward i went and just to assess the situation and six people were there and when i asked how many they told me these are the six people but sometimes it fluctuates sometimes other people come what we were told in terms of of the storage unit the people who are experiencing homeless express also that this is not enough this is too small like may you guys all of you have been given housing why can't you go take these hotels some express that you know they were they got kicked out although express because of their belonging their cats their animals they can't be there right it was very honest with them this cannot continue i never knew about sears lane until august and when i found out max tracy can attest what i'm saying people of cd are not it was clear to me something needed to be done and fast and we got reassurance that if we do not pay attention take action something even tragic will happen as sears lane two resolution came forward here and i said no to both of them because to from my perspective the city was very clear let's find an organization that can manage that site i think that's where we needed to step up and just say all of these organizations that are here in the city food no bomb and i don't know what and what are the organizations that can run this site nobody want to step up and when there is a problem everybody wants now become an activist i'm not an activist i'm here to do what's right i'm here also to listen the businesses the taxpayers the residents what are their concerns also and try to balance everything sears lane could come back but not this but from my perspective what is interesting is what we need to hear from is from the mayor but what is his plan about homelessness affordable housing in general other than that i think if you have extra room share it with somebody else that you would you you you you you i want everybody to be safe and uh but i am really in agreement that yes there could have been a better management coordination we see we are you about the dismantlement there could have been done not at least there could also have been some communication from the administration to the council this is what we're doing even this is two hours three hours this is going to happen at least we know just like you uh councillor maggi text messages and google i don't know how do you call it messengers also were coming because it was abrupt and from my way to better coordination and also communication can give us can bring us a long way thank you thank you councillor jane anyone else okay seeing none we'll move on um city council president council updates one thing that i did just want to note for folks is that the reappraisal committee applications are due on the 15th so we got a cup one one more two more days so i believe it's by close of business on the 15th so please get those get if you know of folks who were interested please let them know so that we have those applications to consider and we'll be looking to make those those appointments soon thereafter if councillors are interested in serving again um if you haven't already let me know that you're interested in serving please do so um and that's all i had for this evening turn it over to mayor one burger thank you president tracy um i'd like to um address first update there was a written communication on this earlier in the day but i want to reiterate um several points about the city's coveted response the we are now testing on a weekly basis for the omicron variant the first tests were made from samples um from december 5th and 6th and the results came in showing no detection of the omicron variant or mutations associated with the omicron variant at the end of last week we will be testing again on a weekly basis going forward um it's good news that uh there is not indications that omicron is here yet although of course we're still like the world waiting and watching as scientists try to figure out the significance of the omicron variant one of the first things that has become clear is that boosting uh of your vaccinations um uh if people's vaccines are older than uh certainly older than six months i think there's starting to be some indication of even shorter than that um with the omicron variant offer significant additional protection from an infection so um uh that is something we're strongly encouraging that everyone consider doing if they have not gotten a boost yet other precautions to consider as burlingtonians prepare to enjoy the holidays this year is that uh which we do encourage but we we do um uh as people are enjoying the holidays encourage people to um vaccinate young children if they have not yet mask when in public and use testing facilities both the uh ongoing free testing facilities on pine street and other parts of the city as well as increasingly available and effective rapid tests um the i do want to share with the council that um it is the administration's plan to given that from our perspective very little has changed since we put in place the the mass mandate um a couple weeks ago other than the fact that the role of out of this policy has been widely adopted and seemingly uh largely uh relatively few um uh complications with it uh it is uh our recommendation that the council next it is meeting next week take action to extend the mass mandate through the month of january essentially uh with very few changes from the original um policy we will be offering language by thursday um on some very minor changes but otherwise we're recommending that the council uh vote next monday to extend it for a month there's not another regularly scheduled meeting um before the policy would lapse and so this is uh we're working to make it possible for the council to take that action um next week uh if situation improves considerably over the month of january of course um which is possible there has been some uh you know some sometimes uh transmissions have reduced steeply and um if that would happen over the course of january there are provisions in place where um the ordinance would no longer uh could could be suspended um if the conditions were to significantly improve we'll have more conversation on that next week but did want to give everyone a heads up that that was was coming um one other uh point i'll probably say this next week as well but um we it is i think important for everyone to know that highlight is on again for this year there will be both in-person and virtual uh uh events um and um we appreciate bca and our partners that are are leading this effort once again and encourage brolin tonians uh to make plans and to come out and enjoy new year's eve with us um share a few thoughts um uh and updates with respect to sears lane and um i appreciate that councillor shannon um has uh spoken at length and i will try not to be repetitive of the many inaccuracies um that uh have been stated uh by colleagues at table about the um about the the situation at sears lane and the administration's actions um president tracy i i do um feel a need to state that the statement put out by progressives on saturday and then some of what we've heard again tonight are hollow inaccurate comments by councillors who in the face of serious public safety and public health challenge apparently believe that we should do nothing at all the building hazards were so severe that the fire chief came and predicted deaths at sears lane this winter if the city did not take urgent action the threats to neighbors and first responders were acute as well as we've just had recounted far from creating harm has been as has been asserted again and again uh by our colleagues the administration or our partner has worked hard for months to secure better safer housing options and succeeded in that for over 30 of the former sears lane campers we continue to do that work last week um as the encampment as of friday morning offering assistance to all campers still on site and we have confirmed that three of the six campers who are on the site that morning have found alternative housing of the other three one is camping elsewhere and two have not returned our outreach calls there's no doubt that the actions the administration took also ensured the safety of neighbors and the safety of our first responders who had been threatened and prior responses to medical calls at sears lane in contrast inaction would have created harm not prevented it and president tracy inaction doing nothing is all the counselors who are attacking the administration now offered as an alternative counselors made no alternative proposals in the two months since our plan to end the encampment were announced and made very clear to everyone and we're also not offered in the year that we work to try to create a low barrier facility at sears lane or manage campground at sears lane or in the two years since we negotiated a policy regarding sheltering on public lands agreed to by the aclu i welcome that now uh our colleagues want to work on these issues now is the time to turn our attention to addressing the systemic issues that cause homelessness in burlington and commit ourselves to truly ending chronic homelessness that is what the administration has long been working on and is intensely working on now and i hope the council will join as these efforts join us as these efforts to expand investment in chronic homelessness so that in future our neighbors do not need to resort to unsafe makeshift sheds and tents our neighbors deserve better and we can deliver it thank you personal truth thank you mayor that brings us to the final item of this evening which is a communication from city attorney richardson on a likely executive session as well city attorney richardson sure if i may offer his way of background and this is the portion that was made public in the statement about this the parameters are that the state of vermont through the attorney general's office has negotiated this part of a multi-state settlement a multi-billion dollar deal with five of the companies that were involved in the opioid production and distribution they are roughly two settlements there is a distributor settlement that involves three of the distributors including two of the main distributors here in vermont and then a settlement with two of the manufacturers johnson and johnson and janson this is a complicated settlement both of them this rivals in some ways the tobacco litigation in the nineties that produce similar types of settlements in that it has incentives it has filters it has breakdowns of how the money comes i offered this as an executive session in part to give you some of my legal advice as to the nature of it some of the speculations to what i think the city is likely to receive from these settlements but ultimately the question before the city council is will the city join these two settlements so the way in which it works is the state of vermont has settled as part of a number of states that have settled in this multi-district litigation the state of vermont was a party but as part of the settlement agreement all of the major subdivisions of the state and i'll get into how those are defined in a little bit are in fact made potential parties to this and in fact incentives as to how much money is to be paid depends on how many of these subdivisions sign on to this and burlington plays a particularly important role in this in that we are you know the only city in vermont above 30 000 which is one of the triggers for one of at least one of the settlements for whether or not they meet their bonus goals and so for right now i'm just strictly off of the draft executive summary that the attorney general has passed around what has happened is it's a 20 so johnson i mean sorry the distributors have settled for 21 billion dollars nationally don't think about that because vermont will never see any of that money except for about one percent a little less we get more out of johnson and johnson the five billion dollar settlement in our share is is much higher but you know because of the smaller overall settlement it looks very much like the other pieces of the settlement these are payments that are going to be made over the course of 18 years in the in the circumstances of the distributor they're going to be made over a period 10 years in regards to johnson and johnson the jansen settlement out of those settlements out of that money that that pot of money that comes to vermont it's then broken down into three different pots there's a 15 percent of it goes to subdivisions which means municipalities 15 percent of it goes to the state and 70 percent of it goes to an abatement fund so anything that goes to the subdivisions we're assigned a percentage of that which is roughly 10 percent which is far above any other municipality in vermont but it is not going to make for a very large pot of money on on our part we're probably talking about 65 thousand dollars per year for the city of burlington combined with both with both agreements so as you can see most of the money is actually going to go to this abatement fund which will be available to both city and states or towns and states and actually that 70 percent is likely to grow because my understanding is that the attorney general is trying to convince the counties because we have this i the situation unlike most states where county government is actually you know a service provider here in vermont they generally do not tend to provide as many social services as say um any anything west of the uh ohio river um will and certainly far west like in washington state for example county government is is really the building block of local government and uh that's where a lot of the power sits so in our case the assigned population centers of counties will probably go into the 70 percent that's going to be determined by a committee that is being formed right now at the state level between the governor's office and the legislature they're trying to negotiate what that's going to look like the abatement fund will be able to be handed out to city and state projects under what's known as a sort of list of approved abatement projects a lot of them have to do with what you would expect these type of of things that prevention treatment recovery um in some ways you know if there was proof of economic damage that you would have to a community some of the funds could be used to economic development so those type of projects would be what the money would be would be going for um uh so taking a step back this is what makes this very much like the tobacco litigation is in the tobacco litigation in the 90s the tobacco companies that settled gave the states a big chunk of money but they said there were some strings attached to this money you have to go after other tobacco companies and if you go after other tobacco companies and enforce certain rules against them we'll give you more money and having professional acquaintance who ran Vermont's tobacco settlement for the attorney general's office I can tell you that the results were very mixed and very complicated in this case the the push in the settlement is to get subdivisions to agree so in each of these cases there's a percentage of the money that's going to be given to the state and to the subdivisions about 45 percent or 55 percent depending on the settlement and then the remainder is done through what they call bonuses or incentives and those pieces are uh pieces of uh where subdivisions either sign on to the settlement agreement or don't sue for a certain period of time and if those things are met then the state and the subdivisions get a hundred percent of the money that they were promised in the settlement agreement I'd be happy to dive in any deeper if any point in time anybody has a question trying to keep it at sort of a uh readable level because I will tell you going through these settlement agreements which were very dense um and you know everyone presumably that worked on it contributed some clause or something um these were not you know a lot of it was very uh much geared towards creating these incentives as well as punishments for states that choose to participate I'd be happy to talk also in executive session about what our legal options are um if we choose not to join this settlement agreement um and I will be happy to talk about you know the other legal consequences and potentials involved in that the deadline for us joining this uh agreement to make sure that we get the full share of the money that the city is entitled to under these agreements is January 2nd and the way we do that is if the council approves the the city then executes what's attached to the documents is exhibit k it's essentially we sign on to this agreement and we agree not to sue these distributors to be clear it's only against these five distributors it does not uh concern other opioid manufacturers other opioid distributors other opioid uh you know pharmacies or other in companies or actors in the opioid um field who we or others may feel we have some liability against or you know some right to recover from um I will say that if this is successful it is likely to be a model for how other companies will come to the table and settle and it's different however than the Purdue pharma that you may have heard of which has caused a lot of I think rightfully so consternation and and grief amongst states and individuals that's driven by a bankruptcy court process this is very much a civil litigation a multi-district and an attempted a settlement um and effectively you know the Burlington has an important role to play but to be clear the way this is structured there is no incentives to us to join other than receiving these payments um it's not as if we can leverage with either the pharmaceutical companies or the distributors to say well if we join we want 12 percent or we we can't really renegotiate with the state um in in part because that is what every state that signs up to this has to divide their uh their pots into and a lot of this is driven by the national litigation um so our choices in sort of trying to leverage within are somewhat limited um I don't want to go too much farther outside of executive session so I'm I'm happy to if if anyone has any questions about this um I'm also happy to to move into executive session if you wish to talk about some of the legal ramifications of this um and as I indicated in the way this was warned um this would be something that the council would go into executive session if it chose to consider this and then it would come back out if it chose to um and make a decision on this or table it into another meeting okay so to be clear there's a deadline that comes before our next council meeting no it it comes after your next council meeting it's january 2nd is when this has to be has to be filed so if you wanted to continue this to another meeting to next monday's meeting you could but that would leave next monday's meeting as the meeting you'd have to either decide or you know one way or the other right okay thank you you're welcome okay are there questions for council barlow I have a question I don't believe it's executive session related so um just could you clarify the abatement allocation that you mentioned and who gets that and what is it used for sure so the abatement fund is represents roughly 70 but as I indicated it's likely to grow because it's likely that municipalities their shares not being specifically assigned will um the attorney general is advocating for those to be turned into the abatement fund so the abatement fund could be as large as you know um 75 to 80 percent of the funds those funds are going to be administered by what they're calling an advisory committee the settlement agreement is silent as to how that committee is to work the only thing it says is it has to be evenly divided between state and local government representatives and so those and those funds will be used for um opioid relief or abatement type programs so for example if you have a treatment program or if you have a safe injection site idea I believe it would be covered under this program or if you wanted to create say like an opioid czar to do management of statistics and public you know communication and education it would be covered by this and as I indicated there's some language that would seem to even indicate if you could tie certain economic decline to specific types of of you know opioid dependency you would be able to um I think push in some economic development of course it's all subject to the committee's approval and you're competing and and I'll I guess I'll add and this is just one observation and and you know part of this agreement is that it puts the states at odds with its subdivisions we're all competing for the same pot of money it also is going to put us as a larger municipality in competition with smaller rural areas that may have programs and needs that look like are suiting smaller populations but having equal costs because of the need the greater expense in rural outreach so there's definitely going to be um I think some political considerations as to how the abatement fund actually functions and I think a lot of that has not yet been worked out Councilor Barlow you all set? Yeah, Councilor, Councilor jane um I was just wondering if you can maybe remind us based on the details you've provided if we go to executive session what are we going to talk about well what I would talk about is I think the legal ramifications if you choose not to sign up for the settlement agreement you know what are our options and and I will just I think it's it's fair to say in public session that there are certain pieces you know you can look to other communities that have opted not to the state of Washington for example has opted not to join in this settlement agreement but has taken individuals to court so did the state of Oklahoma unfortunately they were just reversed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court at least on the Johnson and Johnson the trial court had awarded the state of Oklahoma like something like $465 million the Oklahoma Supreme Court had reversed it so I mean we can talk about how we fit into some of those pieces number of communities in Indiana have also opted out of this agreement but a number of communities and states have opted in and what that looks like Councilor jane, from my understanding this this this has been you know from the state attorney general's office yes okay so okay thank you let's just go okay councilor mason thank you um I'm guessing I know the answer to this but have there are there examples of municipalities of 40-ish thousand people electing to go at it alone I mean your your states of india or Oklahoma Washington are much larger institutions I have a cost concern about so I'm wondering if there are other little cities like us that have said we're going to go out alone I have not found a little city going alone that definition a great city but a wonderful city okay thank you a giant amongst cities but with similar populations I have not found but I haven't done a further study on the Indiana communities and forgive me if you feel this is encroaching into executive session but the logical question is one of cost I mean without getting it just we are this is not executive like going at it alone requires an expenditure of funds there's I'm just concerned without going into I mean I'm not going to ask you to give a number but based on the anecdotal evidence you've provided I think doesn't take a genius to figure out going out alone is a herculean task involving material amount of money so as much as I may get lost in the specific details of what you've presented as I think anyone would I'm not sure there's a plan B from a cost efficiency perspective so I'm happy to go into executive session to learn that but I'm not sure I necessarily need to is where I'm going okay I think that's a fair statement that um litigation comes with great cost and peril and uncertain and uncertain right okay any further questions or okay so I have a procedural question do we have to provide direction and is the hope or need that we do we need to go into executive session in order to provide that is that are you no that's not my understanding counselor mason that would be to just under to get additional information that attorney Richardson is suggesting to us to not that that would not be advisable to share in open session before taking action so depending on how counselors feel coming out of executive session we could take action tonight if we so chose what I'm also what I've also heard from city attorney Richardson is that if folks wanted an additional week to think about it we could take action at our next city council meeting as well so we have a couple of different options or we could take no action at either meeting and so we have a couple of different options available to us but we do have the motions laid out for going into executive session to receive that information as well as the motion for if if counselors do decide or would like to come out of executive session and take action this evening we could also do that so for my personal view I do not feel the need to go into executive session to get additional questions asked I would defer to the will of the body whether it wants to take a week to ask further questions or get further clarification but based on what's been presented to me I'm also prepared to move ahead this evening if that's the will of the body councillor jane I'm in complete agreement with conservation yes which is okay councillor carpenter just from what I'm understanding we're not going to have a lot of control as one city over the abatement fund which will have the bulk of the money that will be a some combined advisory group of state and municipal officials is that accurate that is accurate yeah and and just this is more of an observation that albeit we don't have county government all of our drug abuse programs are offered on regional basis with designated agencies and it's just going to seem to me that that's where the action is going to be and it's going to be the abatement fund funding them so I obviously want us as a city to get as much money as we can control but the real action is going to be at the abatement fund level and we're not we're just going to have to be party to that but not controlling it I think that's right I mean I think regional um affiliation is going to be the most potent um in in wielding influence on how the abatement fund is allocated um so it will certainly encourage and you know part of it is this is the structure I wanted to be very clear with the council and that's why I offered the executive session as well as the opportunity to consider this ask questions going beyond simply the you know what are our options beyond simply accepting this because you know if you do accept it you are sort of adhering to the rules of this very specific type of game that they have established also council carpenter council hanson great so I was wondering for the city attorney so if we go into executive session are you is there information that you're planning to provide us or you're just making yourself available for questions I do have a little bit of information along the lines of what councilor mason was indicating as to your options if you and I'm happy to lay out that I've prepared to to lay out some of it is in the confidential memo that I've prepared um but you know I expected to be a fairly short executive session okay I'm gonna I think we should hear that so I'm gonna make the motion if I can sure go ahead I'll move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning the legal advice of the city attorney in regards to the legal components and ramifications of the Vermont opioid settlements would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage we have a motion on the finding is there a second second seconded by councilor strongberg any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote will the city clerk please call the roll councillor barlow yes councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor freeman councillor freeman councillor freeman councillor freeman okay we're not able to locate councillor freeman can you hear me yes okay now I can you hear me now yes what's your vote oh you can hear me no yes oh wait but now I can barely hear you but anyway my vote was yes sorry my audio wasn't working okay thank you so much or it is yes apologies okay thank you mm-hmm yes councillor mcgee yes councillor shannon yeah councillor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes bye zero nays that carries now are you prepared to offer the yes motion to go into executive session based on the finding councillor hanson based on that finding I moved that the council go and do executive this session to a receive confidential attorney client communications pursuant to one vs a 313 a1f and to to discuss a pending or probable civil litigation matter one vs a 313 a1e thank you and who is included in your motion to go into executive session city attorney anyone else council council city attorney and your staff chief of staff right now thank you everybody is everybody is everybody clear okay we have a motion is there a second second seconded by councillor strongberg any discussion of the motion to go into executive session okay hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we'll head into executive session um so for uh folks who are watching at home please hold tight we may have as we heard we may have action coming out of executive session on this so we may come back up into this room on what we'll do so that folks can just stay in this room and so we don't have to have any so that folks can stay in this room will stay on this on this zoom so we'll stay on this zoom we'll have uh councillor freeman will send you a new link for the executive session you'll eventually rejoin this to reconvene um this meeting um or to reconvene uh when we come out of executive session councillors will go down to the the uh the busher conference room for the executive session itself and again uh councillor freeman just keep um an eye on your inbox for a link um to um for the executive session itself so again there may be action coming out we're not sure based on the discussion so um but we will come back um up here to let you know one way or the other um and to adjourn this meeting thank you the motion offered is someone prepared to offer a motion the consideration of the item itself um a motion in the second from councillor ving is there for the discussion councillor hanson just point of order is that do we need to make a motion to extend no because we're no this is it this is it we're so close any further discussion on the motion to table this until the 20th the hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously now motion to adjourn is in order so moved second moved by councillor stromberg second for mason all those in favor please say aye aye we are adjourned at 10 34 good night everyone night everyone