 So I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of April 1st, 2019, that's no joke. And our first item is Pledge of Allegiance. David? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, one God, indivisible, and liberty and justice are all. Our second item is instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency.anne? Excellent, so in the event of an emergency in the room tonight, I ask you to go out one of these two doors here and meet out in the side parking lot. If for some reason, these doors are blocked, we'd go out these back doors, and out the main entrance that you came into tonight and still go across and meet out on the side parking lot here and I'll make sure to sweep the bath bathrooms and make sure there's nobody left inside. Thank you. Our third item, consider entering executive session to discuss matters related to the purchase or conservation of land. I'd like to move that the council enter into executive sessions for the purpose of discussing the negotiation of or securing of real estate options. In the first session, we'll be talking about conservation lands. We'd like to invite in Tom Humbert, Andrew Bullduck, Paul Conner, John Benhammer from the Nature Conservancy. And in the second session, we'd like to discuss the community center parcel also inviting Tom Humbert, Andrew Bullduck and Alana Blanchard. There's a motion in the second. All in favor say aye. Aye. We don't need anything else. No. Okay. So we will retired upstairs and we're hoping that this will only be half an hour. So I'd like to call back into session the South Burlington City Council meeting of April 1st 2019 and take up item number four agenda review. I would like to add make two additions to the other business. And one is to discuss and have a potential amendment or proposal for a future council meeting regarding a land purchase. And then secondly, a discussion and a request to have a joint steering committee with the school board to discuss the market community center development issues. Are there any other additions, deletions or changes in order of the business? Okay. Moving on to number five, are there comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda? Sure. Roseanne, then I can't remember your name. We've got two in them. My name is Roseanne Gresham, I'm a resident of South Burlington. Hello. I wanted to share with the council the experience I had over the weekend. And I know you can't respond back, but I would hope that you might consider these things important. It might take up and ask for perhaps some enforcement in the future. So even though green update is a month away last Saturday, my husband and I did some litter picking upping along Nolan Farm Road. And most of what we found looks like they're blown out of recycling bins and trash bins. But I got to tell you, there must have been, I didn't count, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cigarette butts. That's not unusual. I hadn't been out there in a while. But I know we have an ordinance. I talked to Andrew earlier today that there is a state ordinance against littering. And while I think here in South Burlington, we don't have a rash of people just throwing trash out of their car. I think it's people don't consider cigarette butts perhaps litter just because of the number of them along the road sides. And you think it into what they will into our water supply and our ground soils and stuff. You know, they obviously will have an impact on the quality of water and what we ingest and what the animals eat and stuff. So I don't know if we've ever, if the council has ever done anything about littering or saying, you know, it is against the law, you know, and there are fines, I think Andrew said, up to $800 or something, just to maybe most people want to do obey the law. Maybe they just need to be reminded that, you know, throwing out your cigarette butts is also littering. So okay, well, maybe on conjunction with green up day with sort of an educational, yeah, that's what I was hoping to bring his people. I find along Heinzburg Road, lots and lots of lots of lots of stuff, but a lot of cigarette butts. Yeah, I don't think I don't think that I guess they don't want their ashtrays in their car dirty. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes. Well, I mean, but anyway, you know, that nicotine that gets into the ground water and the ground soil is unhealthy. The other thing too, though, as I was out there picking this stuff up. And I know the chief is here. Is that Nolan Farm Road is many of you know is a one mile cut through or connecting streak between spear and dorset that is increasingly being used as a high speed roadway. I walk there a lot, picking up litter, I had some close calls. But people routinely speed it's a 25 mile an hour stretch. But because the road is so wide, it sort of invites. Well, I was invite speeding. But I swear, some of these cars are going 60 70 miles an hour. They're going that fast. So, you know, maybe we could just, you know, have had some patrols out there or sometimes you used to have those monitors. So we still have a couple of them. Yeah. Yeah, just to cut cut back on on that because there's a bike path there. There are people walking, there are people biking. You don't want any accidents to happen because of the, the, the, you know, the speed. So that's my two cents. So thank you. Thank you very much. Serving as our city council. Okay, in the back, yeah. Go ahead. I'll get to you Linus, but he mentioned his interests before the meeting began. Roger. Hi. My name is Mitch Sypes. I'm with the Dorset Farms Homeowner Association Board. I'm here representing the board and like, I'll say 14 years ago, the Dorset Farms Community. I'm going to just say I'm a little disappointed that I'm here. There's an agreement that seems to have been forgotten. And but seeing how the Midland Avenue connector has been pushing forward. I felt it was important that I actually come here and speak to you. And I just also want you to understand there's a little bit of anxiety because the city council back then, a number of years ago, didn't really treat our community very, very nicely. As I understand, this is a much better, humane city council. So anyway, with that said, I want to remind you that a condition of the Environmental Court decision that approved South Village set aside $20,000 for traffic calming on Midland Avenue, and which should actually have at this point about 13 years worth of interest. And it required the city to have a meeting with the Dorset Farms Homeowner Association and to complete the traffic improvement, traffic calming improvements, which were far this set aside for this front prior to the opening of the connector road. I'll just say that these type of community outreach and such is is typical for such projects. And I'll just also want to add that the median islands that I proposed 14 years ago and I don't know is any of the city council members back from that particular 20 years ago, 13, 14 years ago, 2008, 2008. So just before me, just before you. So like I said, I know it's a different council. And I'm appreciative of the fact that it is a different council. But I proposed median islands at that at that time. The idea being that if you and these were going to be on each side of the two crosswalks, so four of them, which would basically allow say a child to mistakenly goes into the road to go 12 feet to safety instead of 32 feet to safety. And interestingly enough, they happen to build those in South Village, same type of thing. So I almost get the feeling that a lot of this, this, this requirement from the Environmental Court might be new to the council. So I wanted to make sure that you were aware of it and and to make sure that the council is committed to meeting with the Dorset Farms community and doing the traffic improvements per the $20,000 plus interest that happens to be set there. That's that's already an account for this. So excuse me to interrupt, I'm sorry, just to clarify, so the agreement was that the council Well, wasn't specifically it was just it was the city was going to set up a meeting with the community. Okay, to agree upon traffic calming measures have like a hearing a public discussion, a public hearing with the with the association. I just wanted to be clear who we were supposed to set the meeting up. Yeah, I mean, yes, it's supposed to be that type of meeting. And I'm here, providing this reminder, asking what the schedule what your schedule happens to be. Were you aware of this particular requirement? I certainly wasn't looking at Tom. Paul, you're familiar with it. Is I am familiar with the $20,000. The board Development Review Board's 2017 approval of phase three reiterated that there is a condition that there be $20,000 provided to the city for traffic calming take place. I'm happy to follow up with public works and get a potential and council Would you please that would be great just to find out if we need to have a public discussion or at least have a meeting and a follow through. It was basically just it didn't necessarily have to be specifically the city council but it was supposed to be somebody that you know probably that would have had a council member, maybe the planning and zoning department. Paul's predecessor was not exactly too kind to that type of public improvement. Public comment. She cursed me out in active 50 hearing. Like I said, there's a lot of interesting history with this fortunate all those do that. Yeah. So can I make a point here? Yeah. So Ireland is actually doing some construction now right and getting ready. That's what kind of necessitated right. So it'd be great if the traffic calming was designed before they built the street and the money was spent. Yeah, and not have to be an afterthought that we install later on with another dump of asphalt for a speed hump somewhere. But you know, so it would it would be a good idea to get in earlier than later. And actually, I mean, it should really be done. I mean, this traffic calming was set up because it was going to create this connection between Spears, Shelburne, Shelburne Road, Allen Road. I know that I'm not gonna at the time I actually went into a lot of detail on this, which I'll spell you for now. But basically, if you look at the going from the intersection of Shelburne Road and Allen Road, and you wanted to get to actually the intersection out here, Dorset Street and Kennedy Drive. After this connector is act is actually built, you can go the 10 traffic lights up Shelburne Road and come across I 89 or with a right on red two lights and two stop signs get to the same place a lot of turn turn turn turn turn turn turn little small circle traffic circle, right? And it's not as many turns as you actually think. But basically, the real issue is it does become the direct, the direct path for a lot of people. And Midland Avenue was built as the 1980s forgiving roadway, as opposed to the more traffic calm roadways that you see in a lot of developments. And because of that coming from traffic calm South Village to Midland Avenue becomes it opens it up and people increase their speeds quite a bit. And that was kind of the impetus for why the environmental court put in these type of requirements. So I mean, that's I mean, I can go on in a lot of detail is a lot of information that I have found out since actually those hearings 1413 14 years ago. But basically, the money is there, hopefully with some interest. And and just since it's there for traffic calming and well, it should be used for that. So I think we will follow up. Right. It should be done before you'll make sure that Kevin. So we will figure out where that is. And I think Tim's comment of doing it before the before it's built certainly makes sense. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Great. Yes. Well, no, no. Connected. Yeah. And then then you're it. Blindness. You'll be next. Good evening. I'm John Barrows. I live at 192 cat can drive right at the end of Midland. So I'm probably the most affected person. So it's a little bit of a one of those backyard issues, you know, that he's also on there. How most of such a word. Yeah. One of the direct members of the board of directors and is we have a little almost a little village here we have I would say between six and 700 people live in Gorsuch farms. And I think they all vote that's what I heard. So I'm I'm here to emphasize what Mitch was saying that I'd like to see the city get involved. I spoke with Paul Connor in December and January. And quite frankly, didn't seem to be very interested in pursuing that subject. And I expressed my concern of like when they're going to be a meeting and when are we going to get this moving? And there's not just a little construction going on there. There's a lot of construction. They're going gun hoe. And I spoke with the manager of South Village and they said the road will be finished in the spring and we can drive through it. And there's been a lot of obviously a lot of traffic going through there in the last three, four months already. And that intersection is currently no stop signs or anything. So that's something that probably needs to be done sooner sooner than later. So I'm here to ask for some coordination with the city and our association. And if you want to give Mitch or I call where we want to do committee traffic calming committee. And we put that out to our members of dorset farms and we've already got seven members. Well, that's a lot of interest and a lot of concern already is about kids crossing the road and people speeding down the road. And you've heard all that story before, but but Midland is a wide, very extremely wide road and people do drive fast on Midland. And dorset farms, there's lots of kids enough more than one school bus load of kids actually, there's actually two in the community. So yes. Question, when you said the traffic islands, those are the little islands that go between lanes going one way and lanes going the other where the streets meet or just the whole way? What are you? Yeah, they're actually median islands. That that's actually what is it's between what you have is they will they it's a bit of curb and grass that happens to be between travel aids. So the only will be put in the middle of the road like at the beginning of pheasant way. Well, that's why I why I asked because I knew something was one beginning of pheasant way. I don't know how many times it's been repaired. I've watched the delivery trucks go over a zillion times. It gets run over. There's no flowers in it. It's all weeds. And the curb's been it's been chipped, cracked, broken. All I'm saying is if they're going to be traffic islands, they have to they're not going to work if they're the typical ones that you try and print grass in the middle, the turn radius is too small for delivery trucks and things like that, or the garbage trucks. And all you have is something that looks awful. It may serve a purpose, but it'll look awful. So if we're going to do that, we got to make sure that there are traffic islands that are actually going to function and be able to make to look respectable is all I'm suggesting. What they should be is they should and we already have as built plans. We don't want to design this in a strange way, but I'll keep going. I just mentioned it absolutely can be. But we can put you on the traffic coming committee. So just one question. Who would be the point of contact? Who should I call for questions? I think you could contact Paul Connor. Is that okay, Paul? Or should you go through Kevin? Would you prefer that perfectly fine? And we'll both communicate with John and Mitch and back to council at your next meeting. Paul doesn't call me back for a week or two. Can I call somebody else? I think he'll hold you back. I've got it. I've got it. He is just want to make sure. Thank you. Thank you. Linus. Thank you. Your patience. Linus Levens, longtime resident of South Burlington. I'll keep this brief. Over a year ago, I came to a meeting where the Burlington Airport and Payne Jones were here giving a PowerPoint presentation. At every process offered. They required an navigation easement be granted to the airport. Whether you accepted sound insulation or they helped you sell your house or whether the house was purchased outright. They were unable to offer their actual navigation easement wording. There are three versions on the BTV website right now as well as two versions that were proffered at a meeting, I think in November or December. They've sold 250 houses. I would assume that people have signed navigation easements with them and that they do have some wording. I can't imagine that they would use FAA money given the wording of the FAA template that's readily available if you Google FAA navigation easement online. The wording states that the exchange is in perpetuity and that once you accept funds you are unable to ask for additional funds for loss of value, property value, a loss of use or any other reason as long as the airport is there and that could be a thousand years or longer in perpetuity. So a caveat emptor municipalities, municipal owned property like schools and city buildings are covered in the same legal franchise that residential property is that is if our schools accept sound insulation money from the FAA and my concern is that David Young is going on the record as saying he's talking with the airport and the FAA about Chamberlain School, about accepting FAA money for sound mitigation that we could be in a position where we accept $60,000 for sound insulation and we could be out of $10 million school and that would be a rather huge mistake for the city to make. And so I just wanted to present a short caveat emptor about the reality of the FAA, their money, their contracts and what an navigation easement really reflects. Have you shared this with the school board? I'll be there Wednesday too. Oh, okay, that's good. I mean we certainly are going through or continue to go through. It's been a year. The process for trying to find that language. And I agree with you, the navigation easement issue is very frustrating. It's highly improbable that the airport would have purchased 250 houses and not had people sign contracts. I find that I'm incredulous about that. There have to be contracts that people signed. So you're saying, but many of those have already been torn down. Right. I don't know if an easement comes with that. So I don't know if an easement comes with that. Oh, yeah. You think so? Yeah. Well, follow up with that. Well, the Payne-Jones presentation PowerPoint a year ago at every step, including when the airport purchases your house and navigation easement is granted to the airport at every step in that PowerPoint. Well, but I guess it's kind of moot if the house is torn down. They can buy the navigation easement outright with cash or you have to accept one if you accept sound insulation, windows insulation, or if they help you sell your house or if they buy your house outright. That was all in the Payne-Jones presentation. Well, subsequent meeting. So I do. I mean, we shouldn't get into a discussion. But I just wanted to give the city a caveat and tour and a warning to all the residents in the city of that about this. And I find it's been a year. And I find it highly improbable that there isn't a navigation easement that exists out there. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments or questions from the public? All righty. So we'll move right along to announcements in the city management report. We have any announcements? Tom? I'll be really quick because we're running late. I went to the city center performing arts and Saturday night event. That was fabulous. Pat Leduc does a great job. I went to the SB legislators meeting. And a resident who's actually here tonight raised a concern that's come up before, which is we don't have currently enforcement of energy efficiency building codes. And I just raised that. The legislators sort of looked at me being a city counselor. And if we were looking at a municipal level of possibly exploring that, I raised the notion that it's come up a couple of times in the context of a rental registry. And that might be a funding source to pay for additional individuals that might be able to go out and inspect new housing to see if it's meeting the energy stretch code that's part of our building code. I didn't commit to anything, but I just said that I just wanted to relay to this council that there was interest at that body since the state isn't really looking at enforcement of those rules, but looking at a municipal level for those things. Happy to talk more about it. Yeah, every new single family residence that's sold has to meet the stretch code, has to submit an RBS form as part of their deed. Do we go out and visit the site and inspect it? No, I don't think so. So I mean, I see your point, but they have to furnish this document that details the measurements that they made. If they do a blow door test, and which is required now, two blow door tests, right? Paul? Required, but it is the legal responsibility is on the builder to have certified that it's met that That's the same with underground. But you're correct that there's not an inspection associated with it. So it might be a good, I'm not saying we need a rental registry, but I think that's how Burlington funds some of that, because that's a standard set of pool of money that comes in to pay for those billboards to go out to sites and look at things. Another conversation, I went to the school master visioning presentation, there were eight options. I just want to say for the record that I was not convinced with the three options with temporary trailer classrooms. They just was not economically attractive, nor could I see any parent getting behind it. So they should really just cut that down to five options. I'll just say that. And then the last thing I want to say, this Thursday, 5 p.m., I'm hoping the other paper puts it so that people read it before 5 p.m. on Thursday that at the police station, there is a GMT public hearing on the service changes that we're making. Great time to be heard. You can also send your comments about the bus changes to feedback at ridegmt.com. But if you want to hear and talk to people that know what's happening with the bus service this Thursday, 5 p.m. at the police station. And there should be a great article about these changes as well in the paper this week. All right, thank you. Megan? Yeah, I went to the school board's master planning and visioning meeting as well. I didn't see you there, maybe we crossed. Did you see me there? I saw you there for the last 15 minutes. I left at 7.45. Okay, okay, yeah. I stay until the nine o'clock. And I think it's an interesting discussion. I was expecting to see more members of the public there. And so I do encourage the public to really participate in this process. And I thought too that there were pros and cons to the different drawings, but I'd really like to hear from the members of the public. And I'm perfectly willing to discuss my feedback, which I shared that night at the end. I also went to the airport master planning on Wednesday. Or is that Wednesday? I think it was Wednesday. Is it Wednesday? Yeah. No, there was one. It was me Wednesday. It was Wednesday. Oh yeah, Wednesday. I think one was the attack group. Yeah, and I thought that was very well done. I thought the consultant did a great job explaining the needs of the airport with regard to the FAA's new regulations, with regard to various things. I also went with Helen to Montpelier on Friday to discuss current bills that concern the airport. With regard to a study for governance as well as another bill that is asking for charter changes for South Burlington and Winooski to have more input on noise mitigation plans that the airport applies for. We also heard good news about the charter change that the voters passed this past March. That is moving on to the Ways and Means Committee. So that is good news. We also discussed what I think we'll be discussing more under other business with Martin Lalonde, who's a legislator, but I also remember the school board. On a personal and individual counselor note, I wanted to remedy a situation that was brought to my attention. And Councillor Chittenden might discuss this further and that is fine. After our meeting in Montpelier, I felt moved to respond to a letter that we had received from the chair of the school board. She forwarded a letter written by another school board member and I found that there wasn't enough follow up that I had been requesting a steering committee meeting that we will again discuss under other business since January, since we had a steering committee meeting in January and where school board members expressed a level of dissatisfaction with the just the plans and the relationship that they have with this board. And I asked that they meet with us more regularly so that we could work out the differences as well as the areas of distrust. And we did not hear back from them until we got this letter. And we also got a follow up letter on Sunday after already hearing from our city manager that they are disputing the plans for the community center building. And in light of that, I wrote a letter and I completely agree that it was inappropriate of me to reply all and I take full responsibility of that but I want it to be known that I fully intended to say this in a public meeting and I wish to remedy it immediately. So I am going to read aloud the letter that I addressed to the school board and to the members of this board as well as to the senior staff at the school and the city. Dear colleagues, on both the school and city boards and staff, I am writing as a sole counselor in response to the email forwarded by Elizabeth Below and on the heels of an update on the school board's decision not to allow the city to implement the engineer's recommendations. In the plural, since the second engineering firm hired by the school board confirmed the recommendation of the engineering firm hired by the school and the city. Since the forwarded email has opened up a badly needed conversation, I feel that the time has come for me and others to respond. First, I wish to express my disappointment. Disappointment over the decision taken by the school board this week, and that was last week, to disregard the engineer's concurrence on the stormwater mitigation plan as the best option that would align the school's parcel with a new state mandate and solve what has been a longstanding and critical environmental issue in that area. The wetlands surrounding the school and Market Street have been caused by the impervious surfaces on school property and the commercial properties on Williston Road, among others for decades, and the level of pollution in our lake has reached a crisis point. We are responsible to act in order to remedy the current unacceptable levels of pollution in the lake due to our stormwater. Disappointment that there has not been better communication between the two boards and that when our chair suggests in an email to a school board member steps that we might take in order to correct miscommunication, we receive the letter below in reply. The letter does not solve the issue, only compounds it, especially because it is full of misconceptions, inaccuracies, and misplaced priorities. Now is not the time to go through our laundry lists of grievances, although we could all probably produce one. I am saddened by it, frankly, because it is stark proof of the poor level of communication and understanding between the leaders of this great city, which deserves only the best, well-informed, and forward-looking leadership with vision. Second, I wish to clarify some of the misconceptions and inaccuracies. I will not get at them all, but hopefully some of them. The library move. We did not move the library out of a self-centered interest without regard for the impact on the schools. We moved the library based on the recommendation of our city manager who had met with library staff after four days of lockdowns, in which not only students and teachers were locked in small, dark rooms with buckets, but also librarians, moms with young children, and elderly folks who happened to be in the public library at the time. Our manager explained to us the anguish and distress that these folks had been under, and his determination not to let his staff, nor the public users of a library be subjected to this kind of lockdown experience, necessary for school safety, we understand, but inappropriate for a public library. This is the reason we decided to move the library when the opportunity presented itself. Did you hear us publicly make a plea to keep our staff and library users out of the school for this reason? No, why? Because, and I'm speaking personally, it would have scared our traumatized public and stigmatized our school system even more. We chose to show restraint when making the case to the public by focusing on the positive angle that Jennifer Murray was focused on. The move, as difficult as it was, could make the later transition to a new freestanding building easier. The arena. We did not bring the idea of an arena into public discussion out of the blue, and certainly not with a clear consensus on the city council, nor the expectation that the schools were secondary to our city center interests. The idea was raised only within the context of the school master planning and visioning when the configuration of our three elementary schools was actively being discussed by an at least 12 member board for 18 months. The school board had received a ludicrous offer of $7 million for the Rick Marcotte central school property, and discussions had ensued about consolidation, the Eusevo Creek, the closing of Chamberlain, et cetera. Because the elementary school properties were being discussed and because visioning included ideas of possible land swaps, et cetera, the city contributed to the cost of the school's consultants, and we imagined what might be possible. We also had UVM's goals for a new arena and the uncertain future of the U-Mall property in the mix, as we were considering what might be possible, in addition to Market Street and Garden Street, which had already undergone a visioning process in our city center plans. Discussion of the arena got no further than a, what if, and I would have perhaps entertained the idea of it being located at U-Mall if UVM and the public were behind it. It never got to the public. Yes, there was a video put together by architects that showed the arena in the location of or near Marcotte, but this video had not been endorsed by the city council. Indeed, I was very much opposed to the closure of the school and spoke up about it at meetings. Tim Barrett first ran on the position of his opposition and was elected to the council. Helen was opposed and I'll let Tom speak for himself, although I gathered he shared this opinion. Dave was not yet on the council. We had never seriously discussed it. It was all part of the ancillary discussion of the school's master planning and visioning and we never voted on it, let alone reached a consensus. I can say without a doubt that we were all prepared to defer to the school board. And I cannot think of one occasion when a counselor publicly claimed that our schools are too expensive. Please fill this in because I only recall spending evenings at school board meetings at the middle school and writing letters to the local papers and defense of the schools and in support of the school budget and of the value of the education our children are receiving. Ideas and especially within a visioning exercise should not be taboo. Indeed, the use of the underwood property for a new high school came up during the charrette's exercise at the middle school cafeteria. That was the first I had heard of it as an idea and did not take offense as a sitting city counselor. This is what visioning is about. If the public had leapt at this idea, the council in my view should have taken it under serious consideration. As a board, we do not have dominion over these land parcels. We are only stewards of what belongs to the public. Same for dollars. When the expansion of schools out after school and summer programs drained our youth recreation programs of users, the council did not accuse the school of quote unquote dipping into our resources and at least a $35,000 drop in city revenues of being quote unquote manipulative or of dismissing the importance of the public recreation programming. The staff did not write accusatory, scolding columns in the other paper as one of our most respected school administrators did following the council's decision to move the library. We saw that the public's needs were being tended to and collectively moved on with an eye for adapting to the new situation by developing new programming. In hindsight, more discussion on these and other topics was clearly necessary. I am willing to accept that people jumped to assumptions based on the limited information they had. However, the problem is as I see it and which I see as necessary to see as a problem that needs to be fixed is that people did not have enough information in order to jump to a good and well-informed assumption. We as board members have traditionally relied on our staff and on our chairs to keep the information flow regular and accurate. This may not, it seems, be enough and especially not at a time when the asks we are asking are high as we move the community forward. I attended the visioning meeting at the middle school last Tuesday and saw the dollar signs attached to the eight plans and very few members of the public. You need us and we need you but not as a way to get votes from reluctant members of the voting public. Rather, we can help one another expand and inform the public discussion as ideas are vetted. I welcomed David Young's appearance before the council in order to inform the council about the Black Lives Matter flag being flown at the high school. We need to know these things and understand the reasons in order to be able to speak informally of them with the public. We're a team and need to act like a team and forming one another as we vet ideas publicly and working for the benefit and for the future prosperity of the city. Counselors want the schools to thrive. I would think that the schools want more affordable housing and more economic growth in the city and perhaps other benefits that we bring to the school on the city side like plowing and roads and stormwater. We all benefit from the success of each board's projects in pursuit of a combined mission to make the city the best it can be. This letter is longer than I had initially intended and although I have probably missed some of the points in Bridget's letter, I will save them for a meeting when we can all talk about them together and if needed, hash them out. Our residents are counting on us and it is imperative that we do so. Thank you for your hard work and service to this wonderful city. Sincerely yours, Megan. I have, I did have two other reply alls. Shall I read those for the public? I'm happy to do so. This was in response to Elizabeth's discussion of the reasons why the school board was denying us use of point four acres for stormwater improvements on the school property. And I'm happy to read those also to the public. So in response to her letter, I wrote, Dear chairs Fitzgerald and Rhealy, I respectfully request that we hold a joint public hearing in order to understand the public's view on this conundrum. I do not believe that the public has been adequately informed or consulted in light of the new state mandate and its impacts on the publicly sanctioned policy vote of November, 2018. Thank you for your consideration, Megan. And then I wrote because I saw that the school board members were not copied and I was responding to what I had understood to be a lack of communication and I acknowledge that this is not something I should do. I wrote FYI now copying the school board members and Tom Hubbard. I'm writing to ensure smooth communication by forwarding my response to our acting city manager, Tom Hubbard, since Kevin is away this week and the other school board members. To remind everyone, our city clerk was quoted in the local paper stating that the November 6th, 2018 voter turnout was, and I quote, at the level of a presidential election. It was 64.3% in record breaking for a midterm election. City article one for the city center building project passed 6,379 votes to 2,500. It passed 72%. City article two on the terms of the lease purchase of 575 Dorset to the school district passed 6,940 votes to 1,899 votes. It passed by 78.5%. School article one on the conveyance of three easements at Rick Markott to use for parking, utilities and access passed 6,697 votes to 2,045 votes or 76.6%. School article two regarding the option to lease or buy 575 Dorset passed 6,852 votes to 1,886 votes or it's by 78.4%. It's important to keep in the forefront of our minds the voters wishes. They must be informed and consulted with regard to the new state mandate and the resulting impact on school property and community center building plans and with regard to the impact of the school board's decision and email to counselors does not suffice. Sincerely yours, Megan. Thank you. Thank you. David. Well, I'm not going to read anything as lengthy as Megan. No, I was away for a week. Well, I've done last week is catch up. So I have nothing else. I did meet with Kevin last Monday, last Tuesday, Wednesday, somewhere along there just to get caught up on everything. Be sure I wasn't behind. Okay. That's that. Tim? I attended the TDR meeting last week and I also attended the BIA master plan at the airport and discovered that there are a dozen Tesla charging stations in the garage of the airport now, six of which are for Teslas and six of which are for normal non-Tesla cars, right? And there's no charge for them at this time. Of course, if you pull in and your Tesla and plug in and leave for two weeks, yeah, that parking space has taken up. I also spent two nights in Boston visiting my son who passed his PQE in his PhD program, which was really great. It's two out of the five years through. But as part of that, we went for a hike in the Blue Hills Reservation outside about South, South, Southwest of Boston, maybe about 10 miles out. It's near where 95 hits 128. And, you know, when you talk about appreciation, appreciating open space in South Burlington, right? And you talk about a very densely populated place like Boston and you go visit the Blue Hills Reservation, you understand what a real jewel it is to have a place that has no development or whatsoever. It just has trees and paths and rocks and mountain and an observation deck on top, which is. And the last thing I'll say is that there's this monument that's at the top next to the meteorological weather station that has printed on it the highs and lows since 1885 in Boston up till 1984. And it has August 2nd, 1975 as 101 degrees, which was the second hottest read, the second day of the hottest reading over that time period. And I clearly remember that it was a Friday. And I was working in a kitchen in the summertime. And it's known in New England meteorological history as Hot Friday. So just so you know, little piece of trivia. That's what I did. Thanks. I went to the South Burlington Business Association meeting and sat at the tax table, which was kind of interesting. I liked the way they set it up. And I thought it was very effective. Tom was there with me at that table. And as Megan mentioned, we went to the legislature together and we have plans to continue that work. Advocating, we met with Mary Sullivan, Representative Mary Sullivan from Burlington today. So we're trying to move along the two airport bills and get some traction on those. And then just to pick up on Tim's concept, I was in Florida visiting my sister and had the pleasure of going on one of those really fast little boats on the Everglades. There were just four of us and we went way out. And we got sort of to the middle and the guy stopped the engine so we could talk. And you could look 360 degrees and see nothing. It's a million acres, which is huge. And it was fabulous. I could have spent hours there. And I just would pick up on or underscore that having open space available to people is so good for the soul and so good for your health and your mind. And this is Florida, where everything is so overdeveloped. You get off the, out of the Everglades and it's, but how lucky they are to have one place where you can go. And it's really just wildlife and there's nothing there except the sawgrass and alligators and fantastic birds and flowers. It was really pretty amazing. So I'm glad that we have both an open space fund and that we really dedicate money in our efforts to maintaining some of that for our residents. Okay. Any reports? Yeah, I'll just say, I'm glad to be back. I'm recovering from an illness and some minor surgery and it's good to be back doing what I like to do. Be able to wear my glasses again. I can actually see and say, and just a reminder that Kevin's away for the week, but I think y'all get the memos on that. They'll be back on Monday. And those were good memos, that was helpful. Okay, any item seven, any city council committee assignment reports? I commented on the airport commission meeting and I did mention those plug-in at the airport and had raised the same concern. So does it just take like 10 minutes and then you park somewhere else, but no, you got the spot and you're, I guess, revving up the whole time. So are there any? Yes. Open Space IZ committee. We met two weeks ago Wednesday and we were looking at the matrix that a subcommittee prepared in order to evaluate different parcels for conservation and I will be following up on that along with everyone else tomorrow night. We went through kind of a practice exercise looking at one of the parcels together so we could see how we would test our numbering system and we're all gonna be reporting back tomorrow night on different parcels. Oh, nice. So we're moving quite a lot. Great, excellent, thank you. Okay, the consent agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with how many, two, four, six items of? So moved. Second. I'm gonna make just one comment on item D that while you can go ahead and give a head nod to your thought process on that, it actually has to be done as an official motion on the 15th, which is the warning for the public, the continuance of that public hearing. On the 15th? Right. Oh, okay. So you can continue it again at that meeting, but I just wanted to clarify that that will still be on the agenda for the 15th. I actually did find one, and I apologize for not sending it to you, Tim. I guess on March 7th, which was the town meeting, was that, or was that the fourth? The fourth, yeah. So that would be the fourth, okay. One of the paragraphs identified Martin Lalonde as talking about the smoking, and it was actually Alex McHenry. I'm sorry I didn't. If you'll make that correction, please. And I meant to send it to you, and I forgot, I apologize. So do we have a motion to approve these? And a second? And a second? Any discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay, those pass. So item nine is the council review and discussion of the crime and arrest statistics, and Chief Sean Burke, I'm sorry, we've kept you waiting so long, but. Happy to be here. Yeah, all right. That's the worst time it's in my career. Yeah, I suppose so. Okay, thank you. I can share, I'm the girl scout. And so the public might better understand why we've asked Chief Burke to come. He started sharing with the council, I think it's weekly, or biweekly? Weekly. Weekly reports on arrests and criminal activity in the community to give us a sense of what's happening. And while it's kind of interesting to read, and I personally have noted some repetitive homes or unfortunately, incidences with some people, we thought it would make sense to have a better understanding of what you're really trying to convey and share with us those findings. So he was invited to make this presentation. So I thank you. Thanks for having me. So I wasn't 1,000% sure on what 7-1 meters to cover, so what I handed out here is actually a murder of two projects. The PowerPoint slides were redacted out of the presentation that I gave at our department meeting in January, which focused a lot on different data points. And then the pages that are attached are just near the screens reported to the media on arrests and our general call log. So that, unless it's an objection, I just wanted to go through the first couple of pages here to speak more about crime trends or police data trends. So on your page two is a synopsis of the data that we analyzed beginning November 1st, 2016 through a similar date in 2018. I chose two years simply because I wanted a large enough sample size. So if there was anything of significance that we could say so in the context of policing South Burlington. And in that time we had just shy of 29,000 incidents. Incidents have been fairly static at about 14,000 a year, so there's really nothing shocking there. As a result of those total incidents, we've made 1,360 criminal arrests and we'll get into kind of the granular detail on those arrests in a subsequent slide. Time of day and day of week, prevalence was also examined and not shocking given the service nature of the community that a majority of our activity is Monday through Friday between the hours of eight and morning and six in the evening. And of kind of an interesting side note, we've also looked at hot spots, if you will, in policing and I will say that the University Mall property represents about 5% of these total responses. So I did find that somewhat interesting. The arrests by time of day, we did a breakdown there, there was really nothing shocking or insightful in that data. On page three in your packet, it kind of breaks down our top calls for service. So it was reaffirming I guess or affirming to hear the traffic concerns here earlier this evening because the top incident category for the city police is traffic stops, 6,373 total stops in that two year window. And that includes accident, right? No. Oh no, those aren't accidents. That's just speeding or going through a stop light and that kind of stuff? That's correct. So accident data, I believe it's on here on property damage. Oh that's right. There are about 1,000 a year and that's been fairly consistent as reflected in this data set. The next highest or the second most frequent call for services agency assist, that can be anything from serving a subpoena for the district court to assisting the fire department somewhere. It's a really or checking on a family that's vulnerable or working with departmental children and family services. So it's kind of a really wide array but it does drive a lot of our call volume. Third is alarm response. Fourth, suspicious events. This could be anything from the wind blows and a trash can knocks over. Someone hears that. We're happy to respond out and check that out. Another example, a popular or a common example of suspicious event. Someone in the IDX parking lot late at night, the officers check on that. It's documented as a suspicious event. Just kind of examples of what goes into that work. Public assist, this could be anything from someone that's been served a court order and we're going over to retrieve property with them, pursuant to a family court order, things of that nature, and then accidents. What I'm trying to highlight here though is that there's not a lot of crime in city policing and that's universal, there's a lot of service work. So again, with the University Mall property, I found it interesting that over this time period that our number is creeping up from about 5% to just over 6% of our total call volume. Again, the end's not huge. We're talking about 729 incidents in 17 and then just slightly over 900 incidents in 2018. What is kind of notable, we have a trip through retirement, a number of staff. A lot of this work is being done with about 18 officers in patrol supervised by six sergeants and one lieutenant. Is the 9-11 hang up those numbers? I was kind of surprised to see it on here, but is that typical that people call up and hang up? It's super typical when you have a large commercial density population and to dial out on a trunk line, it's nine. So anytime that someone picks up a line and they go to make a call out of service area, they dial nine, one, and then whatever the area code is. So each time someone mistakenly hits 9-11, it goes to one of the public safety dispatch centers which triggers a response. I was thinking, man, are people just trying to joke it? Who picked that nine? The first nine is the button to push. I don't know, got a little long. My PM has been like that since 1970. Well that clarifies it, thank you. Tom? I have opined on this council that I would be supportive of raising the rooms and meals taxed to the same as Burlington because that would be taxing those that eat in our city as well as stay in our city and the people that are eating and staying in our city aren't necessarily paying property taxes, so I would want them to pay their fair share for policing. Do you think the data that you're presenting here bears that out, that the places that provide meals, as well as our rooms or hotels, use a disproportionate amount of our policing services thus justifying to bring the rooms and meals tax in parity with Burlington to 12% or whatever it is? I would really need to drill down on that because when I think about the radio runs that we're doing at the U-Mall, they're generally not centered around the food service industry nor alcohol and in fact I would say that our increased level of activity there now is the news stores that have professional loss prevention and they're actually reporting the incidents of retail theft, the incidents of trespass that are leading the retail theft, so but it would be an interesting set to look at, hotels, restaurants, bars, I will tell you anecdotally that we don't have the alcohol-based incidents that our neighboring community does, having lived in both, it's just different when you have an active, vibrant nightlife that everyone exits at two in the morning and there's just unique challenges that go into that and luckily we don't have that here. We go to bed early here. Lights out, if you ever drive around at 2 a.m., it's pretty dark. I support development in any way that it needs to go but I will tell you that it's not bad. Not having that 2 a.m. Good night sleep, it's good. Okay so your page four, this isn't a great visual but it was in the presentation but what this illustrates is our top arrest counts and no shocker here, retail theft is the number one arrest count followed by driving with a suspended license and then DUI and what's why I bring that up is when you look at a PD, our police department that's doing 6,000 traffic stops, obviously they're detecting people that are under the influence and driving on suspended licenses and then the fourth count down being violation and condition of release followed by unlawful trespass. A lot of times those particular cases are directly tied into the top count of retail theft where someone is continually stealing or going back to a place where they've stolen from and then they're subsequently charged with a violation of the condition of release or being on a premise that they're prohibited from being. So nothing shocking there and if you look at policing in our neighboring community the top counts are very, very similar. The only difference really being is Barrowington's top arrest count is historically disorderly conduct. That's a question. What is the green 72%? That's everything else. Everything else. Yeah, so and again. But smaller than 4% each? Yes. The categories? Yes. And on that note, what I'm most proud of right now is our officers are making really, really good and that's an area that I want to focus on not because that I see it as a huge percentile of the crime that we're responding to but I do see it as a crime that's very, very serious that has lethality implications. And when we're called to these incidents our cops now through training and better policy are understanding that it's not about the call that you're at, it's about all the family dynamics that have led up to that call and to look at that this is an opportunity to kind of do an autopsy of what's been going on and the officers have been doing a really great job of unearthing some historical domestic violence cases, some stalking cases and some like violation of abuse prevention order in order to kind of shift that power dynamic and to get the victim empowered in a better place. So that's something that. That's great. Yeah, I don't. Has the mental health outreach helped with that? So, you know, they help immensely but we'd have to look at the calls for service that are, you know, mental health related or a lot of those fall into suspicious, some of them fall into trespassing but generally those complaints, those incidents aren't rising to the level of arrest and that's the goal. Oh, I see, yeah. And these are arrests, right, naturally. Ultimately, we want to get the community outreach intervention much earlier so there isn't a referral to a criminal court because that's just not the place where those individuals tend to need to be. A year ago we were discussing having, you know, some kind of event. We hadn't yet exactly determined what kind. I had come forward with a proposal to have an informational event similar to what was held before you were on board but with regard to the opioid crisis and we had both state and local officials present to really fill in the members of the public on the different dangers of these drugs that were out there, the risk that our own EMT and emergency personnel were being exposed to and I thought that it might be useful to the community to have some kind of educational event with regard to domestic violence. This was, of course, following the very sad incident that occurred in our community and last a year ago, May, I believe. And we haven't followed up on that. I think there was some discussion whether it should be more of a restorative process that we have, you know, we have the very capable, that it misses, what's her first name, Bedinger? Lisa. Lisa, thank you. Lisa Bedinger would direct some kind of discussion to help us heal through that so that was a different conception. I'm just reaching out here since you're discussing this kind of case. Should we be, again, revisiting this? At the moment that when we were talking about it, the thought was maybe let things kind of settle and then we could come back and revisit it again. Do you see that as something that would be useful? Yeah, I think it's an excellent opportunity to talk about it because out of all the things that the police can do really, really well, there's no way that we can actually, through a simple campaign, address domestic violence, it's something that, you know, it's almost frustrating to the police. By the time we get involved, it seems a little too late. So I believe that maybe in concert with Domestic Violence Awareness Month with some resourcing from the CJC team and Lisa, that that could have a lot of meaning for the community. So I can make a note of that and follow up with Lisa and see if we can maybe examine what other communities have done or haven't done and see what might fit for South Burlington. I think it would be good for the public to know the, I guess, improved or focus, different focus that the police are taking around domestic violence because that clearly, well, not clearly, but it seems to me that approaching it the way you described would prevent some. So you have less incidences of maybe a murder or something and really you're trying to get at the core and then you have the outreach team that can follow up effectively with families and in a less volatile situation. Yeah, no, absolutely. So it'd be good to know. Don't steal my thunder from my annual report, though. Oh, okay, well, that. No, but I mean, I think those things, it's good for the public to understand what our new police chief is doing and what the force is doing more effectively. I think that's different, though, from what Lisa was proposing. She was proposing those healing circles. Right, so maybe both. I thought you were proposing more educational outreach. Educational outreach, just what, yeah. So maybe both would be appropriate. I think so. I saw it as two different. You okay, good. Yes, I am. I just wanna echo what Councilor Emery's saying. I was involved in some of these conversations last year as well after the tragedy and I just think having an open panel event where you have experts that can talk about domestic violence, things to watch for, things that you can do and also as a support event for those that might be in those circumstances because it's happening in our community. So we need to, I think, draw a flashlight or highlight it with a big spotlight and I'd love that that's a focus for you. So a panel discussion would be very meaningful. Well, that could be an excellent collaboration with the Education Department or the School Board. When is the month of domestic violence awareness? October. So we have a lot planned for it. Yes. Thank you. I'm glad you reminded us. And then, so now I'm to page five in your packet, which is the weekly arrest report. So really what the arrest report in the ensuing media report serve as is, it's an effort in transparency and police operations, but it's also something that police departments do on a regular basis in order to provide the media with a record of what we have been doing in the community who's been arrested in the community. And a lot of times we do independent media releases on high profile incidents or arrests of note, but that's not to say that an enterprising reporter isn't working on some type of crime trend story or perhaps a neighborhood has a concern that they've talked to the media about. And this is a way of just front loading that process. And then we've actually changed the interface on our records portion of the police department website, whereas if a member of the media or the public has an inquiry about a certain incident, they can just go ahead and fill out an online submission form and pursuant to the public records act. We'll turn that around in three days and get it back, sometimes with some redactions, other times without. So again, this was just trying to get ahead of inquiries and to front load the media with what the South Royington police has been up to. And I'm quite proud as the chief that the work that the police department is doing. And I think this highlights, the arrests can be a little misleading. And if I can just draw your attention to page five in the packet. First of all, you'll note that there is a column in the center that's completely redacted. So the Sunday morning dispatcher actually physically has to do this. We generate this report. They go in and redact the date of birth and age of the arrestee. And it's really, really important when there's a juvenile arrested. So we don't compromise the identity of a juvenile. And I don't have the specific example in this week's report, but when a juvenile is actually arrested, instead of the name, it just prints juvenile in all caps. But it was super critical that we got the date of birth and the age out because given the numeric address, it would be really, really easy to identify an arrested juvenile. Another thing to note on this particular report is that you'll see, and I'll use the name that's two thirds of the way down the page, Daniel Culver. So that's one incident with four charges. So sometimes people might glance over that and say, wow, that guy was arrested four times. That's not the case. It was just that his criminality included four offenses. And then the other thing that's at the top of this page, there's the two graphics. That's really artifact of Valkor, our records management system, where it gives you a breakdown of which shift is primarily responsible for these arrests. And then the one on the right is what area of the city the arrests were made in. What is T? Can you help me find? The gray on the top, on the right under area, is that T7.1%? Oh, maybe. I found that hard to read, but. Yeah, I'm sorry, this is super granular, or super grainy. Okay, that's okay. I couldn't make it big enough on the screen, and then it got more granular. Yeah, it is a number, that's right, yeah, okay. Okay. And then just about the media log itself, by default it actually produces without the actual numeric street address, and that is to not disclose the identity of any crime victims. And the incidents, they kind of are what they are. I did wanna just talk about a couple of the ones that are really, really generic and are prevalent, one being directed patrol. So you'll notice that there's a lot of directed patrol on Shelburne Road, and a lot of directed patrol on San Remo Drive. That's in direct response to a project or a concern that we're working on, San Remo Drive. There is a certain level of disorder that goes on when there's 675 folks with opioid use disorder seeking their treatment there that we're working with, with the business community over there. So every day that one of the day shift patrol cars is assigned to go over there, spend some time looking at the ancillary parking lots and make sure that there isn't any criminal behavior. But we wanna document that and make sure that we're doing it every day. So that's why you'll see directed patrol there. In a similar fashion, we've had some complaints about drug activity at a certain location on Shelburne Road. So in order to document that and keep track of our efforts there, those directed patrols on Shelburne Road are directly related to those efforts. And suspicious events, I kind of talked about that earlier. That's kind of a wide open category for a lot of different police responses or basic investigations that go on. A lot of proactivity with officers looking around, particularly on the night shift in closed commercial parking lots for people that are at a place, maybe casing a place for a burglary, maybe they're passed out drunk behind the wheel or using drugs. But every time that an officer actually has contact with a citizen, one of these incidents is generated to document that. And as you can see, week to week, there's about 290 or so published incidents which results in the 14,000 or so annual incidents that the police department is investigating. Aside from that, I wanna leave some time if you had specific questions about this project or in general, what police department has going on. It's hard for me to see trends when I read through the arrest reports that we've received. So I appreciate you giving us kind of the overview. So I'll just make that as a, I mean it's always hard to read this kind of data. Well, and I noted I was specifically looking for mental health issues, because I was just curious and there were a couple streets that had every couple days and I'm assuming it was the same family that you really knew what was going on and potentially it was being directed to a source that would help them. So that made me sort of feel better rather than just going back and going back and going back and really not having any options. Yeah, I mean what the community outreach team provides is really, really remarkable. And I wouldn't want to try to police without it given the mental health crisis that we're faced with. And unfortunately it does take several responses sometimes for people to be in the right spot to make their decision that now is the time to access help or to deal with whatever they're facing. But I will tell you, as far as resilient employees, the police are there but right side by side are those community outreach workers and their ability to follow up even when they're not on duty, when our night shift officers are going to the same addresses but the resources isn't immediately available, all our officers have to do is send the community outreach team an email. Will you please follow up with this family or this person the next day and they are right there on it. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. For all that you do. Item 10, council review and discussion related to the proposed formation of a multi-community conservation district and a review of a possible accord to form the district. So Ashley, welcome. I'm Ashley Parker. I am a project manager for the city. I'm excited to actually see you guys tonight to talk to you about the initiative that we've been working very hard on. I'm gonna provide you with an update and a quick overview of the regional conservation partnership. Recently we've been working with the towns of Williston, Shelburne, Hinesburg, St. George and more recently, Charlotte has joined the PAC, so how many of that, that's one, two, three, four, that's six of us. So it's a nice number to form a regional conservation partnership. And originally this idea came up when folks recognized the amount of land of conserved land in the vicinity of South Burlington, Williston, and Shelburne boundaries and recognized the opportunity for connectivity of conserved land and also the idea that natural resources cross town boundaries and really need to be managed more at a landscape scale. So in general regional conservation partnerships are not a new idea. You guys may be aware of the one just south of us, that is the Chittenden County-Uplands regional conservation partnership. They generally form to increase the pace and the scale of land protection. They also involve a large network of public, or partnerships, a network of people including private and public organizations and agencies. And we're all working together to develop and implement the shared long-term conservation vision that can be just across town boundaries, state boundaries, and sometimes even international boundaries. You should have received, I think, Kevin included the draft Accord language that we've been working on. So as specified in that draft, some of the goals that we've listed already include to increase the amount of connected conserved lands, and I'm just gonna throw in there also stewardship of that land, improving water quality, protecting agriculture, and preventing the fragmentation of wildlife habitat and riparian corridors. To date we've met three times, starting in February, and we've been really discussing that draft language for the Accord document. Currently you'll notice in that Accord document we are identifying ourselves as a Southwest Chittenden County Conservation Partnership, but I think that certainly could change as the group continues to work to identify the conservation priorities that it has. We originally started as a Muddy Brook Conservation Partnership, but as we've expanded it doesn't really fit within that watershed. We also recently started working with the CCRPC to start putting together a map of the region, initially to help identify conserved lands within each municipality so that we know where those are that can help us identify conservation gaps or priority areas. But it's still in very much a draft form, we just looked at it at our last meeting, and so we need to still refine that, and some of that is looking at how to better identify parcels in terms of conservation. So that's something that I hope to share with you very soon. And also I wanted to just put it. I would think the IZ Committee would be very interested in that as well. I think that was mentioned actually at our last meeting, yeah. So hopefully we can get that, our next meeting is in a couple weeks, so yeah. We did just invite Natural Resource Committee and Conservation Commission representatives as well as local land trust representatives to join our last meeting. Eventually I envisioned this group expanding to include other partners and other land trusts and other groups that are interested in conservation, but we're still trying to figure out who we are and what we are, so. But yeah, so the goal right now is to really work and finalize the accord that we've shared with you, including and incorporating any feedback that folks are getting from their councils or their select boards. And then eventually, like I said, inviting the other local partners to the table to discuss this, discussing our priorities, getting those nailed down, and getting this map lined up is what we're looking at, so. Questions, Tom? Two things, I love it. I love regionalization. I love seeing towns work together and you mentioned Blue Hills earlier. I know Blue Hills very well. My in-laws are from that area and so I just keep thinking of that region of our metropolitan areas like the Blue Hills of the Boston area, so I love that it's coming together. Any other comments or thoughts? I loved all your goals. I don't know how many more I would add or could think to add. What are the next steps? I was assuming to see some kind of money attached to this. Yeah, we haven't, we have not talked money yet, but I think down the road, yes, it may involve financial contributions or, I mean, I know for me, there's, I've been in the grant world where stewardship, magic land and purchasing land becomes a lot easier when you have a lot of people at the table grants really like partnerships, so I think that'll be really helpful for a lot of things that we would like to do, especially crossing the boundaries, so. Do most of the membership at this point have open space funds or conservation funds, whether it's a little general fund contribution or attacks like we have? It's kind of a mixed bag. I think we probably had the most contribution, but for example, the one that's just sticking out, I think, is Shelburne. They have to kind of go and ask for it every time as to go back on the ballot, so they don't have something that's there. The Sherlock has one, don't they? I believe so. They have a land bank? Do they have one? I haven't met them yet. I was just curious. That could be one of the strategies to find some funding is for some of the other partners to go back to their community and say, you know, you don't have to raise it all, but if I need to contribute. That's great. So you need a motion to. Authorize you to sign. To authorize me to sign that. Oh, we're not signing yet. Oh, no. Oh, okay. So this is just, we don't have to vote on this. We just have to say what we're going to sign. I was looking for comments. If you loved it, hated it. That was great. We love it. It's excellent. I just want to keep South Burlington and wildlife in South Burlington. How do we keep it from crossing over to other towns? Because I don't want it mixing with the Willison Wildlife because I've heard things about them. And I'm really concerned. I don't know that I can help you with that. Trouble maker bunnies. Yeah. I was just curious and it probably, it isn't really land conservation, but I was just curious about view corridors and that kind of aspect of open space. And was that brought up at all? It may not really lend itself to that, but some of the view corridors cross a couple of towns. Sure. It has come out of our conversations. There's a lot of views that are left. But that might be, I mean, you could bring it up. I won't not sign it or something if it didn't have that. We have a couple of questions from the audience. Roseanne? Yeah, how do the individuals who are sympathetic to what you're doing get involved? So right now, we're just, we've gotten the municipalities together. And the South Burlington Land Trust has been participating. Right. And the NRC, National Resource Committee has been participating. But I would, you can always reach out to me. We haven't really opened it up to anybody else yet because we just wanted to find who we are first before we kind of get too big. Don? Yeah, I just wondered. Would you, I should have asked Roseanne to, identify yourself for the record, please. I'm Donna Laban and I was involved with the conservation easement for the Wheeler major part. And I just wondered what would be the possible connection and what's the standing right now on the conservation easement at Wheeler? Just a sec. Let's see. Kevin was asked that question and he responded. And I remember exactly what the response was. And I can't, but I can look it up. I can email you his response. I just can't remember. Yeah, I just wondered. Yeah, but I don't know the connection. I mean, exactly where that easement conversation or discussion is, I don't, I can't recall. But in terms of that conserved land within this and that easement, is there a connection? I mean, it's probably identified. The focus on this is more where boundaries intersect with each other across town lines. And I think that's more the focus of your group, right? Yeah, I think we'll support each other. If there's a project that's important, I think the group will be supportive to help make a project happen that may not even be in their municipality. So I don't really, I'm not super familiar with the Wheeler project, the easement project, but eventually it could perhaps help it if it's funding, maybe it could help the idea that being there could help acquire funding. But yeah, I'm not familiar with the status of that, so. We'll keep our South Burlington bunnies over in Wheeler. Oh, no, the bunnies can't go. Can I ship the ones in my yard over? We have an owl who likes them though. Who sits on our back deck and just looks around. But you don't need a signature yet. No, not now. Just feedback and comments. Well, good. Well, we look forward to as you make progress and update, because I think this is, I think it's a very exciting partnership and has, really makes a lot of sense. So thank you very much for your leadership. Next action. Okay, now we get to the little sparkling lights over there. This is a presentation on the use of electric scooters in South Burlington and a potential one year pilot. Did you get to demo that in the room? Yeah, did we get to use it? Welcome. Yeah, I wrote the scooter and the bike, yeah. Now I'm thinking about getting a bike. An electric bike? Yeah, check it out. I would like to, Ted's. Conversion jets too. Like four bikes. So we do have a quick little presentation prepared for you guys. Just to introduce myself, my name is Bob Dale. I am the community manager for Green Ride Bike Share here in Chittenden County. For those unaware, gotcha, we are the developers and the operators of the current Green Ride Bike Share system here in Chittenden County. And we're here to talk about some possible expansion for the spring and our proposal for the possibility of a e-scooter pilot system, pilot program for this summer, plus a discussion about the conversion of our current bike fleet to electric bikes as well. So just to run through a few things really quick, I'd like to just give you guys a quick rundown on our current electric fleet assets that we have with gotcha that we are proposing to introduce to Chittenden County this year. So the current discussion right now as a natural sort of evolution of the current bike share system is talking about converting our current 105, excuse me, seven speed bikes to our new electric bikes. These are 100% electric e-bikes. These are pedal assist e-bikes. So for those unaware, there's two different styles of electric bikes out there. There is a pedal assist where the motor of the bike is actually driven by the pedals, as well as throttle style electric assist that have an actual throttle, just like our e-scooter here. Our bikes are a pedal assist. So the electric assist of the bike is based off of the torque of the pedals. They are GPS enabled just like our current bikes. They have an IoT computer system inside the bike itself to allow users to unlock both the bikes and the scooters utilizing our own gotcha app. We're now streamlining everything to date we currently use social bicycles app for the current bikes out there in the bike share system. We now have our own gotcha app which will allow users just to download the one app to utilize any of our assets that we implement in our markets. Some more details on the bike. So this is the design of our new bike here. Like we said, it's got a 350 watt electric motor in there, a front motor and brand new basket, front and rear lights cup holder in the basket. That's our great new feature this year. Unlike the current bikes where the brain of the bike is in the back behind the seat, all of the brains of the bike now live up in the handlebar area, users just scan a QR code or they can utilize an RFID card to unlock bikes which is paired to an account. If that person does not have a smartphone or would just like to use the RFID card. Great new seats and easy up style seats. So as opposed to the old school style sort of crank seat, it's just got a little handle that automatically is under compression, just lifts the seat. It has a belt drive system, so no chain, so these things are able to live outside year round. Completely rust proof on all of the features as well as a solid tire, which kind of cuts down on any punctures or anything like that. So this is our new bike. We have the ability to do some sponsor branding on the basket, but all of the bikes will be swapping over to the Gotcha teal green coloration. So we're still in talks with Ben and Jerry's and seven generations who are the current title sponsors about our relationship going forward and some sponsorship and branding opportunities for the new bike. To give you guys a little bit of details on e-bikes in current markets out there, it really revolutionizes how bike share systems are used, especially other markets that have similar topographies here in Chintending County, sort of hilly areas. The ESS style bike really revolutionizes how users use the bikes. It really, really helps users have a actual alternative mean of transportation, which is our real goal with a bike share system here in Chintending County is to have a viable option for round trip transportation. A lot of the barriers to use in areas like this is it's very easy to take a bike downhill. You end up down at the bottom of a big hill. You turn around and say, oh, I may take the bus. In downtown Burlington, for example, it's very easy to ride the bike straight down to the waterfront and then just hop on the free college street, shuttle back up. You really see the e-bikes completely revolutionizing how users utilize the bike share system, self balancing a lot more. Right now we partner with Old Spokes Home, who does a lot of our mechanic work, but a big majority of their time is spent actually going around and physically moving the bikes to have a balanced system. With the swap over to e-bikes, the increase in the number of hubs and the increase in the number of bikes, we really see this expansion in the spring being a lot more self balancing and a lot more healthy round trip style transport system. We'll get into the details on kind of the numbers of bikes and hubs in just a second here. What are they way? They're surprisingly light. The current e-bike right now is just a little over 50 pounds. The current bikes in the system are right around 42, 43, I believe for our current seven seed bikes. You just mentioned the college street shuttle. There's a chance that's no longer gonna be free in about three or four months. Benefit you, you have less people, drunk ditching the bike and then taking the free shuttle? It very well could. But yeah, like we said, swapping over to the electric assist style bikes really makes it a really viable option, especially for those users who feel a little uncomfortable riding a seven speed bike. There's a huge increase in new ridership in bike share systems that have electric assist style bikes as well, which is a really interesting statistic. There's a lot of people who either see themselves as incapable of actually getting around on the seven speed bike so they don't even wanna try it. Then when they find out it's an e-assist style bike, there's actually a lot of statistics behind first time new users actually getting into biking and having it as a transportation option, which is really cool. So the big discussion is about scooters. So we have one of our new gotcha scooters right in front of you guys here. So what we are proposing for this upcoming summer season is to run a pilot program with these new e-scooters to implement them into the current bike share system to give a little bit of a rundown on these scooters. Again, similar to the bikes as a 350 watt motor, front and rear lights, very wide stable base plate. It's a very, very sturdy scooter. We did a lot of testing as we were building the scooter. It's proprietary to gotcha. We are the only company out there that has this particular style of scooter. It is a very, very rugged scooter. There's a lot of issues with other companies out there with the actual construction of the scooters running into issues, gun and potholes, the handlebars snapping off, et cetera, et cetera. This is actually a surprisingly sturdy scooter. We did a lot, a lot of testing. I've been riding it around for the past few days going pothole hunting with it. It holds up. As you can see, it's still- You don't have to go far, do you? Yes, just don't worry. Yeah, that is true. And as you can see, it's still staying here. At least they're good for something. Yeah. You don't have to pay for roads. Yeah, right. That's the area. Well, that's another big argument for getting a lot of the stuff out there. There's more vocal voices out there just for more bike and bike infrastructure. Just like the bike, all of the brains of the scooter are right near the handlebars. It has a QR code scanner to unlock the scooters as well as RFID capability. The RFID cards are a great way. We currently use them in markets for low income and non-banked users, non-smartphone users who can go to one of our facilities. We're gonna foresee our continual partnership with old spokes and possibly some other businesses where someone can go in and almost prepay, add into their account, and then they're issued an RFID card so then they can go out into the system without a smartphone and utilize the bikes or the scooters. So from a user standpoint, like I said, we now have our own Gotcha app through that Gotcha app from both a user and an administrative standpoint. We have a lot of flexibility with our systems now. Our whole tech team are based down in Charleston, South Carolina, so all this tech is in-house now, so any issues, I'm on the phone immediately now with our tech guys as opposed to outsourcing any of this tech in the bikes or the scooters. From a user standpoint, it's a very easy signup process. We will still keep a similar payment structure. There's the pay-as-you-go option where you do not actually have to be a member of the system or you can pay into a monthly or annual membership. Unlike the current system, it will now sort of be a per minute charge, which kind of encourages a little bit more of their shorter trips, which we really foresee these things being first and last mile transport options. So it will be a per minute charge with a very small fee to just unlock either the bikes or the scooters. Once the user has downloaded the app, they will be able to see where all the bikes and scooters are in the entire system area. It will automatically sort of zoom into where that user is. It will tell them exactly how far they are from any of the hubs that have either bikes or scooters. It will tell them how many bikes or how many scooters are at that hub and the electrical charge on each of those bikes and scooters. We are really expanding our operations fleet team this summer as well to be on top of things throughout the day, obviously converting everything to electric. There's a little bit more operation intensive side to make sure that all the assets out in the field are at a certain level of electrical capacity, so no one's hopping on and having the scooter or bike die half a mile from where they started. But back to the user standpoint, like I said, it can tell them exactly how far they are from any hubs. It can give them walking directions to that hub. Once they're there, they can then either unlock the bike or the scooter while they're out riding. All right, one thing I should mention, before that user unlocks a bike or scooter, there's a lot of educational pieces that we put through on the app for users. It forces them to scroll through a couple of pages, especially that can be especially catered to any of the markets we're in. So one of our big ones we're currently down in Fort Lauderdale where we don't allow any scooters on the sidewalk. So the first thing that pops up when someone is unlocking a scooter, big capital letters, no fine print on this one says, you are not allowed to ride on sidewalks. So they're with the cars, they're on their streets. So yeah, they are in bike paths and out in the streets, yes, yes. Bike lanes. Bike lanes, yes. There is some user hazard if it's sometimes first time users not knowing exactly what they're doing, sort of weaving in and out a little bit. There definitely is that component, a fair bit, but having these things live out in the areas just like bicycles currently do, it's really become a great option for people to go on these short little, you know, first and last mile style trips, which is really what we foresee the scooters being utilized as. Just one person on it, you can't have your child stand in front of you? No, no. Good, cause that's how they get around in Paris. I know, I know. They take their children to school on those scooters. Yeah, so right on the front, it's kind of hard to see for you guys, but we have some information right on the front base of the scooter right there. It says always wear a helmet. You must be 18 years or older. That's another thing. It's 18 and up for both the bikes and the scooters. So there's an age verification that they have to go through while signing up where they actually have to take a photo of an 18 year old or ID, but it also says one user at a time. Tom, your question about helmets, that's a big question. Every bike, every sharing, you know, mobility company out there in the world is still yet to find a great answer to getting helmets out on that sort of daily basis to users. What we really try and do is, especially at the launch of any of these systems, we're very, very intensive about having a huge bank of helmets where if users sign up at any sign up events, we issue a free helmet. We foresee partnering with local businesses so that users can either go in and purchase a helmet or the possibility of having a few localities where users can actually go in and get a free helmet. There's a few companies out there who have tried sort of having banks of helmets living out there in some of the hub areas. That doesn't work. You know, there's... You mentioned ARFID tags to unlock the bike. You should attach those securely to helmets so they have to carry a helmet around to unlock their bike. It's not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. From the user's standpoint, from the app side, just to wrap up this slide here, once that user has unlocked their bike or their scooter, like we said, we can utilize this app to send any kind of notifications to that rider on the charge of their asset. Another great thing that we can do from an admin side is we can geofence areas for a number of things. We can geofence no ride zones. So if there are certain areas where we do not want bikes or scooters to go to, it will actually cut out the motor. Obviously, with the bikes, the rider can still use it as a regular bike, but with the scooters, they are sort of heavy enough so that once the motor cuts out, it's not a great option for someone to continue scooting their way along. So we're able to set up no ride zones. We are able to geofence speeds and govern the speeds on both the bikes and the scooters. So from the motor standpoint, the max speed on the bike is 20 miles per hour. The max speed on the scooters is 15. We have the ability to govern that for the entire fleet to where we are allowed to, we are able to govern that speed in certain geofenced areas. So there's a lot of flexibility from an operations standpoint on figuring out areas that we do not want to allow the bikes or scooters, governing the speeds in certain areas, et cetera, et cetera. Once that person finishes up their ride, they can let us know how their ride was. It will give them all of their information on how long their ride was, how far they went, and how much they were charged. Right through that app as well, it's got direct lines to our customer service if they ever have any issues while they're out there. We have 24-7 customer service that they can call. It goes straight to us. If there's any issues while they're out there on a bike or scooter, we can be to them depending on where they are with them in a matter of 20 minutes throughout Chittenden County, which is great. So very, very smooth from the user standpoint, and like we said, streamlining it all through our own app now really helps combine all of the assets we have out there. So I just wanted to keep that kind of short. To talk about the hubs, what we currently do for hubs, I know one of the big points of concerns from municipality standpoints for the scooters is a lot of the companies out there that have a completely free-flowing style for their scooter share systems is the clutter of scooters. Scooters lying out in the sidewalk, scooters being propped up in front of businesses, scooters lying in front of entryways. We utilize a hub style system for our scooters. So just like a bike share system, these scooters need to come back to an organized area. So we foresee partnering these scooter hubs with the current bike hubs we have in the system as well as being able to put around some more of these, some scooter hub areas that can be separate from the bike areas as well. But we do utilize a hub style system, keeps the system a lot cleaner, rarely cuts out the issues of the scooters just being ditched all over the place. And it really helps from an operation standpoint to know where our scooters are living so that we can be right on top of fixing any issues with the scooters, making sure that the system is clean, aesthetically pleasing, and that we can make sure that all of our scooters are meeting that threshold of charge so that they're from an operating. So you're gonna collect them every night and kind of get them back to the hubs? Yep, so the current plan which we do in our other markets is all of the scooters are brought in every night down in Fort Lauderdale. I believe they do that right at around 10 p.m. So that's another conversation to have is figuring out times of when we want all of the scooters brought in in the evening. They're charged in our facility brought back out and Fort Lauderdale we have them back out at 7 a.m. Throughout the day we have an entire fleet team on throughout the day that's sort of monitoring the system. They can see if scooters are being left outside of hub areas and then they'll be dispatched to bring those scooters back to hub areas, making sure that the scooters out there in the system throughout the day are properly charged. So yeah, the hub based system definitely from an operations and from a user standpoint makes it a lot more organized style of a system. So what we're currently working on right now, we sort of see the conversion to the e-bikes as sort of a natural progression of the current bike share system that we have out in Chittenden County at the moment. We're talking about expanding the number of bikes to 200 e-bikes, so swapping over the entire current fleet to e-bikes and bringing that number up to 200 from the current 105 and going up to probably at least 25 hubs from the current 17 hubs that we have out there with the possibility of bringing scooters in this summer as a pilot program to give it a shot and sort of see how things run. The great thing about having a pilot program for the scooters is having them out there for four months of the summer. That's another thing to talk about is that we only propose having these out during the warm months or during the beginning of winter, all of the scooters are brought in. The bikes will live outside 365. Yeah, so that is all I got. What was the bike usage this winter? It wasn't as high as we had hoped. There was still a lot of usage on the university campuses. Obviously, students still need to get the class all winter long. And we had actually quite a bit of a majority of our trips during the winter, which was really good to see is that a lot of our trips during the winter months were actual round trip sort of transportation style trips. So a bike leaving Winooski Circle going into Burlington and actually returning to Winooski towards the end of the day, which was a great thing to see that there actually are locals out there during the winter months utilizing this as a transportation option. So Bob, how long have you been doing this? I came on board with Gotcha in October. So the bike share launched April, 2018. I came in October, 2018. I was working for a company, Wind & Waves, down in the south. Oh yeah, you graduated in what? 2013? 2014. I was a student of Dave's, by the way, everyone. Parks and Rec and Tourism. I assumed so, since he was asking personal questions. Not interviewing you for a job, but. We also have Brian Davis here from the CCRPCs, one of our partners. So with Gotcha, we partner with. This is going to be done in probably between four and eight weeks. So it's happening pretty quickly. If you look on the back of it, we'd want to know what people think about the current system and what they would like to see. So there is a short online survey open right now. There's also a crowdsource map where people can go in and drop pins. You know, I would write, I would like a station here for these reasons or I don't want a station here or this is a biking barrier. And when you open that map, you'll probably see 50 or 75 little pins on maps right now, which is great. So people are accessing it and that'll be open for another week. The survey hit front porch forum today. Great. I'm glad. Do we have it on our website? I'll make sure that we do. Because, you know, in the next week I won't be trying it out. So I wouldn't be able to fill out the survey. But, you know, I would like to get it out to whomever in Selberlington has tried it to give you some good feedback. I haven't. So I wanted to share sort of the RPC planning side of things in addition to, you know, how it plays out with the proposal here as well. So. Paul? Just a couple of quick notes to add to what Brian and Bob had to say. One is that we've been pretty excited to be a partner with this whole project for the last three years. As Bob was saying, this really has the potential, we think to be a game changer in the way transportation starts to take place in Chippin County. So oftentimes when we start talking about, say the scooter share, it starts to pop into how could somebody who say, I'm not gonna say necessarily this one location will have one, but let's say somebody lives in Old Orchard Park over by Lowe's and they work in Montpelier. Well, right now it's an obstacle to get over to Shaw's to then hop in the link bus. So now they could just pop over there with a bike or a scooter or something like that and make that trip that much easier or somebody who lives on Kennedy Drive and wants to go up to Price Chopper or Trader Joe's, it's a little bit far of a walk to do on a regular basis, but if it was a fact quick and available, it's that quick short trip that could be a really neat opportunity in our community. So that's one thing I wanna mention too is that this has been a really thank Brian for a lot of effort in coordinating not just Katma EVM Champlain College, but also three municipalities in Winooski, Burlington or ourselves and trying to keep us sort of all thinking in the same areas, been very helpful. And then lastly, just a quick note on the finances because we didn't talk about this a year ago when you last heard about this, there was a request to the council for, I think it was $10,000 last year. Correct me if I'm saying anything incorrectly here Bob, but the whole universe of how these things are funded has changed in the last year. From when two years ago, we were looking at potentially $10,000 per hub as a contribution to $10,000 total last year to where it's going the other way around now. And part of the proposal includes a contribution from Gotchia to Katna to help with to help with making transportation improvements due to a different model of user fees, sponsorships, and I presume work in the data world and all that. So there is no ask of the city council in terms of funding for this this year. What you would like is some guidance from us to direct you to. One and two. On the scooter side, it is something new. It's a proposed one year pilot. If the council were so interested, there is about a 90 day time for Gotchia to actually get the bikes built. And so an indication from council that you're interested would also give us the time to update any ordinances that are necessary and work on some of the programmatic elements that Bob and Brian had spoken around, around speeds and areas and that kind of thing. Well, let's do it. No reason why not do it. No. Yes or no? So I second Dave's comment that I've been in Venice in Santa Monica in between bird and lime bikes and scooters, right? I saw a lot of people using the scooters and the bikes in Santa Monica and in Venice on the bike paths. I also saw scooters trashed all over the place on the sides of the streets and in corners and intersections and in garbage cans and in dumpsters and just strone out in the sand on the beach. So some of those communities, I don't know what the status is there now, but this will be a small experiment and so I support that. But I just, I know that there are some horror stories out there with communities that have just had a littering of scooters all over the place and it's not a pretty scene. And to touch on that quickly, one of the differentiators, one of the big differentiators with Gotcha is that's unlike some of those larger companies out there that have the capital who companies, so there are some other companies out there that put a one month lifespan on their scooters that they put in certain markets. And once those scooters are beyond that one month lifespan, they honestly aren't, they don't care what happens to it. Which leads to, which leads to a lot of these scooters. There are landfills full of scooters and other municipalities and markets. That is not how we operate as a company. All each one of these things in our markets are our babies so we are out there maintaining these things and it's a guarantee that none of these things are gonna be ever left out in a municipality after they break down the streets. We're not gonna be leaving you guys with landfills full of scooters or bikes. We can guarantee you that. Doesn't somebody have to pay with a credit card and if they don't return or do what they're supposed to, they get charged for it, right? Yeah, so even though users are paying for those trips, if that scooter is gone beyond whatever that company deems as it's lifespan, sometimes they'll decommission them from their back end and just leave them out in the wild to do as they be. Well, I think it's worth a trial and a pilot to figure out if in fact it can be utilized here to the extent that it's a business model that works. I mean, there's that part of it that you're testing too. A comment from Kathy? We spent a lot of time talking about this and everybody was a little bit skeptical of the scooters to start with just because of all the stories we've heard and seen and but we came down with the in the end thinking this, there are gonna be scooters and e-bikes on our streets that are privately owned eventually and this is a good opportunity to test it under conditions that can be controlled really well like getting the scooters back to a hub at night rather than somewhere on the street and controlling the speed because you can decide what speed we want on our streets or our sidewalks or our bike paths and that sort of things and it gives us the opportunity to be part of the experiment and part of the design and have input. So, bike path was in favor of this pretty unanimously as long as we can straighten out the laws that need to be in place. One, we thought for example, South Burlington shouldn't allow scooters on sidewalks. E-bikes are not allowed on sidewalks all of the bikes by state law are but there's certain things like that and then other signage that would probably be needed to remind people on the bike path what's allowed and what isn't in that sort of thing. As long as those things can be accommodated we thought it was a great idea and if you haven't tried one they're really fun. So, I have a question for Paul. Yeah. Before we activate a pilot program do we need to change some ordinances to allow that? There are two ordinances that our city attorney, Andrew has been taking an initial look at. It's also part of the work that the Chitton County Regional Planning Commission is doing is helping all three municipalities to take a look but there's our parks ordinance which covers the red path and our highway transportation ordinance. Both of them may need some minor adjustments to them and it gives us the opportunity to think about some of the things that Kathy has mentioned. So, Andrew would be able to prepare that prior to this launch. Right. And the 90 days gives us that time to do that as well. And the, is it tool design that's doing some of this work? Right. The consultant is tool design doing this study and that was one of the first tasks that we wanted them to do. Let's look at the state language, look at the three municipalities, their language. So, that's already been underway in anticipation so that if the council were to say yes that we're not caught behind. Well, that sounds good. Are there other comments or questions? David? How big has gotcha? So, we have a few different branches of our company, the mobility side. We're based in South Carolina. We also do some advertising as well. So, from the mobility side, we have currently 50, a little over 50 systems nationwide. About 50 systems? You mean cities where these are located? Correct. So, this would be one system? Cities, university, campuses, yeah. Three towns but one system. Okay. UVMs on board with us, they're doing these things. The conversation around the scooters with the universities is ongoing, especially trying to figure out areas on the campuses of where to allow, where to not allow. Not in the halls, you may not drive these up the stairs and down your dormitory hall. The biggest challenges are, well, seasonality's gotta be a challenge. Whether you can make the numbers work, given our seasonality, and that our road system wasn't built to accommodate bicycles and scooters. That's right, our road system's a big deal. So, I would hope from a safety perspective that we don't see, you know, you got more people riding bikes and scooters and too many people texting while they're driving and the two don't go very well together. And I guess we'll find out. I've seen both texting while biking, texting while scooting and texting while riding. No way. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Well, by the way, my goodness. You know, it's second nature. The right hand is glued, you know. Go to Europe. All right, let's keep focused, guys. So, you have a question, I'm sorry. Quick question, sorry. So, if you're using a cell phone, right, so you have to have some data to do the activation. When it reads the QR code, does the app decode the QR code or send the image and then your back server decodes it? Do you know? So, once the IoT system inside the scooters and bikes decode and unlock the assets right then and there? Yeah. If you hit your phone and you take a picture of the QR code, it's got to go through the cell network back to your server. So, are you sending the picture that the person took or is the app decoding the QR code and sending the digits of the serial number of the, you don't know? That, I do not know a specific answer to that. The point I'm trying to make here, which is that. Yes, what is the point? The point is that cell phones are becoming, well they're already ubiquitous, right? And they're becoming more and more important for municipal infrastructure communication, right? And not everybody can afford a data plan. Some cell phone plans are really, really expensive and some are less expensive. But the point is there's a lot of data that needs to be shipped around to do really tiny little things. Like, in order to activate that thing, I mean it's an infinitesimally small amount of data that has to go somewhere over a cell network, right? Along with probably using your shout, ride shout or whatever it is, your app, right? Yeah, so the point is that there are all these little tiny little apps that don't use very much data and it's almost like the regulatory policy should be that for people that are using those types of things where not much data is passing, it should be free. Or it should be subsidized by something in our governance system so that anybody that has a cell phone that needs to be able to use transportation that's provided by county infrastructure or regional infrastructure or anything having to do with not watching videos of the NCAA basketball but necessary things for you to live your life, right? That are about transportation, health, things like that. And if they transmit small amounts of data, it should be free. You shouldn't even need a data plan for it, you know? But, okay, I'm off. You talked to some of the presidential candidates. That sounds like a federal issue. I don't want to say. FCC, these things have data plans, right? So can you activate it with a credit card directly on the device or you need a smart phone or a password? No, so unlike the current bikes where, you know, well, even with the current bikes, you know, you still need to go through either on a computer or on your phone and put in your information. Except for the RFID tag you were talking about. Except with the prepay RFID option. Which they do, all of these do have, yeah. So for those without a phone, they could get those RFID things and that could give them access to this device. Well, we'll probably cross that bridge when it becomes really popular and we need to. Donna, you have a final comment? Yeah, just a final comment. This is something the city really does have to consider. And that is the real significant importance when you have both bikes and scooters on roadways to have the fog lines and the center lines as early in the year as possible because a lot of the roads are perfectly capable. I mean, we have 30 foot roadways, a lot of them are 30 feet wide. It is perfectly possible to have a 10 foot drive lane and a five foot bike lane on those roadways. And that helps define where people are gonna feel comfortable using an e-bike or a scooter on a road, whereas other places where you may only have like a 24 foot wide road, if you don't have a fog line there, you're not gonna feel comfortable necessarily taking a bike on that road. I'm glad Donna brought that up. Point of point, well taken. Because I actually meant to state at the outset of the meeting that the Williston Road where we have that jog to the right before we cross the interstate that there should be arrows right at that curve to have the drivers follow those arrows. It's especially when we're considering having even more worn out this time of year. Right, and I don't think there ever were arrows right there. So I think we really need to steer people because we have a lot of out of towners right there at that intersection all the time. There's a limited number of companies that do it. So we have to get in there a lot earlier and maybe it's gonna cost a little more money to get it done soon, but better to get as much as we can done rather than wait until September or October has been happening or last year some of it didn't happen at all. That's tough. Thank you. Do you have what you need, Paul? We have what we need. Okay. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good to see you both. I'm gonna have Paul just for a very brief break so Sue can get warmed up, I guess, and because we just really have two quick items, so. Can I'd like to call back into session the South Burlington City Council meeting of April 1st, 2019, and we'll take up item 12, which is convening as a South Burlington liquor control commission. I move to convene as the South Burlington liquor control board. Second. All in favor? Aye. So we have quite a list. I'm not gonna read them all off. There's just a bunch of, are there any questions? Let's screw them all up and turn it down. I actually had one question. And that was, if you recall, or at least, one of the things that I always look at to see if they've had their licenses suspended or got caught for DUI or whatever, it's one of the check marks, you have to. And in the past, the valleys, you know, Skip Valley, who owns. Gas stations. Gas stations. A few. In the past, they've always checked that yes, and then you go to the list and there's a whole list of them. It goes back quite a few years, but there have been some in, you know, recent, mostly speeding, but I don't know, it just is a character kind of thing, I guess. And this year, they didn't check off yes, they checked off no. Let's pull those. Well, I'm just curious if there's a like a statute of limitations, so if they haven't been arrested for anything, you know, for five years. Is it the same signature or is the same person who was applying? I believe so. Is that Jollies? There's like five people on that. No, it's not Jollies, it's, what is it called? Maplefields. Maplefields. Maplefields. You know, I just raised that as just a point of interest because that was a difference. And then my other question is you have to be convicted of something before you check that off, right? Because there is an issue. I would think so. With the rotisserie. Yeah. But that hasn't gone to court yet, I don't think, unless someone is aware of that. So I won't flag them, but I mean, I think. You can pull it, have it investigated. That's our job, yeah. Well, I mean, I just want to make it, have a check, sure. Yeah, I was just curious. We want to honestly fill that application, right? You have the steel trap of the memory, like no one else. One of those things that I always look at. Which one are we pulling out? Maplefields. Maplefields. But I didn't see anything else that, oh, I know. The other one, Club 35. Now that's the one that's on the Vermont National Guard. It's the club that's on National Guard Drive. I just was curious. Is that the one? I mean, everyone can go to it, right? It's not a. Was it the officers' club? I don't know. It was just a question I had. And I didn't know the answer. Was there application in there? Yes. Did it have an address? It did. Is that the Army National Guard club? It's on NCD. And so I think that's the, I don't know what that stands for. But then you read through it, and it was, it's the one on the base or close to it or something. What page in our packets, Helen? How far down is that, you know? You know, I don't know. I'll have to find it. You really can search on that? Did you raise a concern with it? Just with what was in the press is where you're coming from? No, the concern I would raise is there were apparently two places where they, and one didn't allow women, at least that's what it allegedly hasn't allowed women. You know, it was just for the officers, I guess. And I mean, I just, I didn't know if that was the one. There was the viper next to it. Somewhat of a concern of mine, you know, we're gonna give them a liquor license that should be sort of open to everyone on the base, I would think. Right? There was a club in town that didn't allow women, I'd probably be interested, yeah. The liquor license I think is really only for the ability, for their ability to purchase liquor at wholesale prices from the state. I don't think it's really, because they don't serve. Well, that was my question. I mean, I just didn't know which one this was. So it's not the first set, because it's something, club 35. It's the first class license list, okay. Oh, vtclub35 at hotmail.com. First class means they serve. First class means they serve, they pour. They pour mixed drinks, yeah. It's not just beer and wine. This has club 35 directors, Brasov, Goodrich, the Clare. What page is that, do you know? What page of the PDF are you on there, Tim? It's hard to tell, go to page 158, or 157. 105 NCO drive. I just raised that as a question. I don't know exactly, I don't know where 105 NCO drive is. But it does say first class club located in a single story wooden building located on the Air National Guard Base. On the Air National Guard Base? Yeah, oh yeah. That's what it says, description of the premises. And the Les Sores, the city of Burlington. You know, in that VT Digger article, there were references to some intoxication that occurred on the base, or there were either rumors or stories about it. I don't know if they were substantiated or not, but that calls into a really good question, is that if there was an indication that something would happen, how could it be investigated because you can't get on the base, right? Right, a point. Do our police and fire chiefs walk through these facilities as part of the application process for a first class? They do, yep. So they have to. Do you know what they have, walk through club 35? That should be on their sheet. It says, it's signed, wait, there's a signature in there, hold on, right? I don't see the email. Okay, right, Edward Spooner signed off on. Let's pull it. Sure. Well there's, so there's a signature by Ed Spooner, but not Chief Burke, so just Edward Spooner. Right, and there's no email about it either, so. So it just raises a really good question, right? And I hate to discriminate like this, but we have alcohol regulations for a purpose, right? And if our alcohol regulations have no effect on an Air National Guard base, then why are they even applying for an alcohol license in the first place? That's, I just don't understand. And if they are, then we should be allowed to inspect the premises, right? And if we can't inspect the premises, then we can't meet the qualifications or criteria for giving the license, why are we giving the license in the first place? So, it's just a thought. It's a good thought. So why don't we. Well, shall we pull that one and get some more information? Okay. I mean, there's no reason why not, and these are new, and I think May 1st you said, Tom, right? So we've got another meeting between you and me. Yeah. And May 1st. Okay. Well my question stands, and I think I heard you say yes, Tom, but when they signed this document, Edward Spoon signs this document, did he inspect it this year? Yeah, he physically walked through. Physical inspection once a year. Yeah. Let's hear about that. I want to know for a fact that that happened. Yeah, okay. Well, I would like to know if this is open to all the people who work on the base, or if it's the one that seems, at least it's been reported that it has a limited membership, shall we say. Well, they could feel free to come in and... Wasn't it for the officers too, and not for... Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I think there are typically officers clubs, you know, but again, why do they need our liquor license? I mean, I guess we make a little money on it. Guess what I just said. I just, I recall there were two on the base, and there was one that was, I don't remember the names from these articles. The other one's Maplefields. Yes. But we're going to have to learn a little bit more how the process is working. We have to sign these things, so we should provide oversight for questions. Okay, so I would entertain a motion to approve all of the second class liquor licenses and all of the first class licenses with the exception of club 35 for the first class. And Maplefields for the second class license. A move. Second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. I move to come out of the South Burlington Liquor Control Board. Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, we are back into our regular session. We are now on to other business. So the first item is... We need to make a motion. I guess I can move that the city of South Burlington agreed to contribute... Well, agreed to have a hearing. Do we have to have a... No, we don't have to have a hearing, but we have to warn a discussion, right? Right. So we need to have a... For ratification. For ratification of an expenditure of $20,000 to support the viewing project purchase through Nature Conservancy and Shelburne. The $20,000 would be out of the Open Space Fund. Right. And we would, we're sort of warning it. And one-fifth of the property is in South Burlington. That's Shelburne Pond. Yeah. Right near Shelburne Pond. So we're warning this for action at our... For hearing. Yeah, I guess it's a... Is it a hearing? It's just an agenda item. Official agenda item. Official agenda item. April 15th. April 15th. We really need a vote. That's us from us to do this, but yeah. Second, the motion I heard. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, then the second item, we certainly had some, not discussion, but several letters that Megan wrote involving our relationship and some of the challenges with the school board and their concerns with how we have gone about making decisions and working with them. And I would, I agree with Councilor Emery that it would be really helpful to have a steering committee meeting with the school board and the full council, as well as the senior leadership in both the school and the city of South Burlington, because some of the communication is between them as well, to really discuss this and come to hopefully some better understanding of our relationship and how we can better communicate beyond the kind of steps that Bridget and I talked about. We can talk about those and see how to articulate that better and really get past this seemingly long, endless emails of, well, this is how I feel and this is how you feel and get to the bottom because it's really important for city center and the help of this community. Understanding the timeline pressures I support if it can come together this week, but I know we were talking about next week as well, but I would just say as soon as the better. Yes. Well, I will. And more than an hour, it should be at least three hours. Oh, I think it needs to be a couple hours. With food. With food, yeah. Yeah, it can make it a potluck. Yeah. So I will make that invitation, extend that invitation to Elizabeth and David and find out if they can come up, if they agree in what dates might work. Some of you can follow up with the dates, but I'll send, I'll CC you on the email. Well, we need it in a timely way as well, so I would hope they would as well. Okay, any other new business or other business? I am out of the 17th, so the next meeting I won't be here. I want to say one thing. This is not warning, it's just something on my mind. Carol McIlion called me from Common Roots and she said the Wheeler property is like ready to start hosting events, and I would love, and I might just start doing this if counselors want to get on board and help me with this, but I would love to do appreciation event for the DPW. This was a hard winter. I'd love to give them just a barbecue right before a bikes and bites at the Wheeler property one time, so just invite the Department of Public Works, all the employees, I'll serve up the burgers and cook it for them right before a bikes and bites just so that they know that we appreciate everything they did this winter and also that they do all year long. I'm glad you brought that up, because we had talked about that instead of doing it at the holiday time to do it in the spring, and then we wanted to have all the contracts finished, and they are, are they not? We have a tentative agreement. We have a tentative agreement, so. And I actually like your idea of doing the baseball game too, not that I'm a big baseball fan, but that's another way to, to show our appreciation. And to support the Lake Monsters. Right. All right, well, let's not forget that. Let's plan that. Can we put that on the agenda? Yeah, yeah, that would be good. We could have that as an agenda item next time. Okay, great, thank you, Tom. All right. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Thank you very much, King.