 It is six 30. So I think we should get started. So I think the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And I don't know of any changes that we need to make to the agenda in general. I know there's at least one thing we may have to do with the consent agenda, but I will deal with that when we get there. Otherwise, I don't think there's any reason to change the order or take anything off. Anybody have information to suggest we should. Nope. Okay, great. Also, before we get going, I guess I just, this is my first meeting back after having a baby and I am just thrilled to, to be back and to, to be here with you all and, you know, certainly love being a mom so far, but, you know, it also like sharpens like, yeah, no, these are, there are things that are worth fighting for, for the future. And so it's just sharpened that for me, which is really good. And I guess that's my, my contribution to general business and appearances. So general business appearances, this is a time for any member of the public or the council to address the group on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. And so if you have something to say that is relevant to an agenda item, then you can say that adjacent to that item. But if it's not on the agenda, now is the right time to, to bring something up. And as with other comments that folks may make this evening, if you have something to say, if you would say your name and where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes, that would be very helpful. And then also however you, it would be really helpful if you would change your participation name, your name to whatever you, well, really to what your name is, so that we can have it for the public record. And also so that I can address you properly. So that is, I think I'll have to say about that. And I see we have one hand up already. If you have something to say, you can either use the raise hand icon, which is under reactions down at the bottom of the screen. And, or you can turn your video on and physically just wave, or you can turn your mic or unmute yourself and then just let us know that you would like to say something. So I think that is all I have to say. It's a lot of preamble there. Vicki Elaine, Vicki Elaine, I see you have your hand up. Go ahead. Yes, I just had a question. The water leak or whatever that's down by tractor supply. There's been a lot of discussion about that amongst the various social pages and whatever. Is that how bad is that? I mean, the road is pretty rough down there right now, but how bad is that leak? They've been trying to fix that for a while. Don't have any, don't have info on that, but if Donna or someone can answer that that would be great. If not, we'll get back to you. Okay. I don't have any update as of an error or two ago. It's just been an ongoing situation. And we've also been. Out with multiple other water leaks. So staff has been dispersed across multiple challenges. But I will ask our team in the morning and get that information back to the mayor and to bill. And we can post some clarifications on our social media. Thank you. Thank you, Donna. Okay. Anyone else. Bill, if you are saying something, I muted. We got a note from Steven Whitaker saying he was muted by the host and couldn't speak. No, if you're on a phone, you can hit start. I was muted and was unable to unmute. So I was trying to speak up. Okay. Well, so Jean Leon has his hand up. So we'll go with Jean and then, and then we'll go to you, Steven. Go ahead, Jean. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. So I've had some. Concerns from, from public opinions. This limited public hearing by this virtual platform. Isn't it? I mean, not everyone has the capability. To meet this way. So I'm just wondering why, why isn't the city. Building open at least with a camera or someone can't, can attend or doesn't have the internet does have a phone. Why has this been so restricted and limited to virtual world? It's a question. Thank you. So if anyone from council would like to respond to that. I mean, I can respond generally, but go ahead, Donna. Well, I mean, I'll just respond that when cases of the virus has gone up. And to the point that things are more contagious. That indeed I didn't want to come to the city council meeting live. And it was also very difficult with the mask. And to ask staff to be there if I didn't want to be there. When indeed the legislators voted to allow remote meetings, they themselves are meeting remotely. So it just, it seemed to make sense. Oh, I'm sorry. It doesn't make sense for people who don't have that. Hey, Jean, this is not a time to responses. But thank you. I guess my health and also they were other council members who had issues with mask was really hard to function. And so they were one of those exceptions of health. And I felt it was more important to allow all of us to have more freedom to talk right now. Then then live, we did have all our public hearings live, but that for at least the month of February, we were going to go remote. Assess the data of where the virus was and then make other decisions for March. Okay. Thank you very much. And. Thank you. All right. And Steven, go ahead. Yeah. I want to second the, uh, I don't have zoom access, uh, limited to telephone. I was locked out when I first tried to speak up. Uh, this is not adequate for public participation. The virus counts are falling. Uh, schools are relaxing max mandates, et cetera. So the excuse doesn't fly. Uh, and we even have, uh, the immediately prior council member taking votes by email to shut me out of tomorrow night CVPS a meeting, uh, similarly. And it's just, it's just outrageous. But I want to raise a couple of other things. The water leaks been going on for five days down on East street, uh, flooding that storm brain. Uh, and there's just, you know, people put out cones and then don't move, don't go in there to fix it for several days. Meanwhile, the snow that piled up last Friday has still not been cleared from the very precious parking places on school street. You know, we've got glazed ice sidewalks. We're really, you know, to manage or mismanage the, the snow cleanup while we've asked all of our citizens to do the cleaning. And we're going to do it elsewhere at night so that this clearing could happen and then not do the clearing is really outrageous. You know, it's an exploitation of the power of the city. And you're ripping off the public who's paying for this service. So I want to raise that, but I also want to raise a, uh, significant. I learned that. The city manager. And others have been aware that there's million dollars, millions of dollars in road improvements necessary to use. The new parcel that is being proposed on a bond and that has not been warned. You know, so to ask the city, the city voters for $2 million bond and not disclose that there's an additional millions required to make that property useful by building a new road is I think a gross violation of the state law regarding bond and bond warnings. And I think y'all ought to take it really seriously. Having just learned how expensive litigation can be in delays and in costs. So I just think that this is just another example, which I will speak later in the meeting about city mismanagement. Um, but this one, the council should sit up and take real notice with information known and withheld from the public regarding the cost of developing that property. Thank you. Thank you. Um, go ahead. Bill just for the record, I had no information about the cost of the road. It's a city road. It's used. It's in use. Um, so I don't know where Mr. Whitaker is getting his numbers or where he alleges. I knew something that I don't know. I have zero information about that. And certainly, if we had hard numbers, we would share them. So I have to believe he's making this up. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And is there. Anyone else? Hello. Uh, D'Anthony butternut, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. I'd like just join. What were we talking about? I know. I'm sorry, mayor. I think we're being. I'm so confused, man. All right. I'm just going to leave. I'm sorry. It's a collage. Cameron, do you have the capacity to. Regular city council meeting y'all. Can I, can I get my idea? Can I get my presentation? Um, so Cameron, do you have any questions? I'm working on it. I promise. Okay. Oh, I believe you. I apologize. I think I got everyone. Nope. Not that guy. Okay. I think we might be okay. I will continue to monitor that. Apologize. It's what happens when we try not to put a lot of passwords or make more barriers to get on these meetings. And so sometimes that can happen. I apologize. And I'm glad nothing worse showed up. Okay. Now you should be able to unmute. Thank you. Um, If we see somebody pop in. That we think is going to do that. How can we let you know? He's, um, so. So Vicki, even, even now, so we were just hoping to, for people not to, to talk out of turn. Oh, okay. That's okay. Cause I saw those two people. Yeah. Um, it's a good, it's a good question, but, um, In an attempt to keep like some order, that would be good. Um, uh, I think you should probably just send, um, Cameron an email. Um, Cameron, does that sound all right? That is fine. Thank you. I will be definitely making sure people are behaving on the call. Okay. Great. Thank you. Um, Any one else have a comment they would like to make. Okay. All right. So we are going to move on. Um, I had my hand raised, uh, Mayor. I guess you've already had your. I didn't get to finish cause I was cut off and muted. Okay. So just so you know, Jean, the way we usually run it is that you like, and so that's fine. You can have your, you know, we can go back to you. That's fine. But for the future, um, we usually go with it. So that like, Um, if you have a comment, you say all of your, your questions sort of. And so, so you say all of your questions together and then when you're done, then we'll answer them. Um, so it's not like a back and forth. Um, so just so you know, that's, that's how we generally run this. I'll tell you guys role. And that's why you just got. So go ahead. Now, Has an okay time. Go ahead. Good. So look what just happened. You guys had got hacked some intrusive behavior. Here we go again. I mean, just platforming. Just platforming. So you can have your questions together. And then when you're done, then we'll answer them. Um, so it's not like a back and forth. Um, so just so you know, that's, that's how we generally run this. I'll tell you guys role. And that's why you just got. This virtual. So go ahead. Now's has an okay time. Go ahead. Good. I mean, this platform just doesn't work. For everybody. Something's happening again. Just keep talking. I promise I'm fixing it. Okay. So I just wanted to. Make a note from a. It's kind of a public collective. Request on. Um, and a suggestion and highly. Recommending that the council. Uh, to review the city manager's contract be thoroughly examined. And, and, um, Uh, it's, it's suggested that it be reviewed and examined with an independent attorney. Um, before agreeing or signing to any contract. If it is pertinent to one of our agenda items, then you can make that comment then. Oh, right on. Thank you. No worries. No worries. It's all good. General business and appearances is for, um, comments that are on items that are not related to our agenda. But, but fair, fair. Um, we want to hear what you have to say. I just, I'm not, unfortunately, I have another meeting. Uh, so I just thought I'd say it. I just make such suggestion now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to have interrupted you. Um, uh, since you have to go to another meeting, anything further you want to say about that, I'd go ahead. Yeah. I mean, just, it's, it's. To just thoroughly examine and review, you know, and it's, and it's highly suggested and recommended that it be reviewed with an independent attorney rather, or, you know, at least extending the period of time to, to undergo such review. Um, and that's all I was saying. And it was like kind of a, into a collective public request from, from, uh, you know, people in neighborhoods and in our. Uh, community. Anyway, thank you. Have a great night. Thank you. Okay. All right. So I'm not seeing any other hands at this point. Um, so we are going to move on. Um, to the consent agenda. Is there, um, I know. Yes, Jack, go ahead. Move the consent agenda. Um, before we do that, uh, actually there was a motion. Is there a second? I'll say. Okay. And Jay, go ahead. Uh, yeah, I just want to recuse myself from item E from the consent agenda, um, which is the, um, approval of the proposal for the hover park trail. Um, the company is a client of mine. Um, and there's nothing necessarily in place right now, but it could potentially be that I would do some work for them down the road on this project. So I just want to, I don't know if we need to separate that out from the consent agenda so that I'm not part of it. Um, but that's, um, I just want to make sure I'm recused from that vote. Thanks. So Jack and Connor. Okay. With you. If it's, if you're. If it's a sort of friendly amendment. Okay. Excellent. Uh, okay. So, um, we have a motion and a second. Uh, regarding the consent agenda minus, um, Part E, um, any further discussion on this. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. And, um, Is there a motion regarding item E. Make a motion. That we pass the, uh, I forget the wording off the agenda. That we, that we award the, um, The bid to timberland and stone. To do the ADA transition plan for our trails. Okay. Second. Is there a second? Okay. There's a second. Any further discussion. That's timber and stone. Timber and stone. Timber and stone. I'm sorry. Did I not say that right? I loved all the pictures. It was great to go through this proposal. Okay. Um, there's been a motion and a second. Any further discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So, uh, that. Uh, passes. And so we are up to some appointments. So we have this, um, new committee forming the stormwater, Um, utility committee. Um, and sort of slate of folks, um, To be appointed, um, there, though, to be fair, some of those are, those folks are us. Um, and, uh, I think, Um, I think, um, Um, And so there's members from the, um, Tree board and friends of the new ski. Um, and one, um, at large member of the public. And I don't see Jim condos here with us. Um, I figure we could probably do both of the appointments together. The other appointment is, um, uh, The new committee. Um, so is there. Uh, and I don't see Hanif here. Um, either. So is there. Um, a motion regarding these appointments. Or yeah. Uh, Jack, go ahead. I move that we appoint all of the candidates without going into executive session. Okay. Motion in a second. Any further discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye and opposed. All right. Uh, and so. Thank you. Uh, I know they're not here, but very grateful for, for everybody's participation in these, uh, these committees and these groups. Really important and exciting work. So very grateful. Uh, all right. So now I think we have a. Uh, presentation from the community justice center. Um, and so I see Carol plant here. Um, I don't know if there's anybody else, but Carol, I'll turn it over to you. Awesome. Thank you. Um, yeah, as far as I can tell, I'm the only, the only one here tonight. I invited the staff, but. They were reluctant. Um, so. Um, I first want to say I'm really grateful to be here. I'm really happy to be able to talk about the justice center with you and give you an update. Um, I started right when COVID shut the state down and. Um, it's been a really interesting two years of like learning the job and learning the city, um, because I don't live in Montpelier. So, um, I'm really happy to be able to give you an update on where we're at right now and talk about, um, you know, some things that are pertinent to the justice center right now. Um, I am going to share my presentation. So, um, Cameron, if you can just allow me to share. My presentation. Um, and I know that I need to do something to be able to get it to remove that sidebar. Um, not just a second. Front it as a normal slide show, Carol. So just click slide show. And then from beginning. Okay. I'm, yeah, having trouble finding where slide show is. To the left. On the top banner on the file is. Almost to the, all the way to the right. Yep. Other way. There you go. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. Thank you for that. So I am not, not the most technological person. I will say that. Um, so again, you know, I appreciate being here and, um, I want to start off by just telling you a little bit about our staff. So I'm the director Alfred has been with us for 11 years as the reentry specialist. So he does our, um, Our reentry program and our transitional housing. Erin Anderson was hired in September of 2020. And she, um, replaced me, um, who had replaced Judy as the restorative programs coordinator. So she does all the panels. And then Pat Hoffman, um, had actually started out as a volunteer doing our Cosa program years ago. And then she started doing calls. Um, to help out when calling people who were victims of crime. And, um, Reaching out to them, even if there wasn't going to be, uh, an official charge. Um, so. And that job turned into a 12 hour a week position as our outreach specialist. So we have a 12 member community advisory board. Um, right now, we're meeting once a month because. In this two year transition period, we had a lot of attrition, which I think was really natural. People had a relationship with the bond. And other folks at the justice center. Um, so we've had quite a bit of attrition, but we have a really strong board and we're meeting once, once a month right now, instead of once a quarter as the group, uh, forms and figures out what they, what they, their roles really are and what they want to prioritize, uh, based on our strategic plan. Um, we have one member, um, who is under 21. Um, which is our goal is to have at least two who represent that age group. We have a total of right now 34 panel volunteers. And 30. Um, we have a really close to volunteers. So we have a really robust volunteer group in Montpelier. And, um, one of the things I have to say about that is that people frequently are reaching out to us to, because they want to volunteer. They just. Hear about us. They, they, um, seem to understand that we're doing really good work even before they get to know who we are and, uh, and want to volunteer. So we're not having to do a lot of. We're not having to do a lot of volunteer work. We're not having to do a lot of volunteer work. Um, although. One of the areas that we do want to do some recruitment is to be more diverse and have better representation of our BIPOC. Community. Um, just to give you a little bit about the restorative programs. Um, we do 10 to 12 panels a month. And, um, and in addition to that, we do a one or two youth panels. We have a specific group. And so they mostly see pre, they only see pre-charged cases. And they see just youth, um, youth cases. Um, so that's a really busy program. The outreach to affected parties. It includes work that, um, where there are people in a restorative justice panel case who've been impacted by crime. So Pat does outreach to those people and gives them options for whether and how they want to participate. And it's all about giving them voice and keeping uppermost in our mind. Um, what they want and need. As, as reparations and resolution for what happened to them. And then she does direct outreach to affected parties, like I was saying, where there's no criminal charge. And we do that in partnership with Montpelio police department where we have access to the records, um, in their system and she can make phone calls to folks and, um, and just, and mostly she will tell you that. They just want to be able to tell their story about what happened. Um, and if there's not going to be a charge and there's not going to be any formal restitution or a court case. Um, they just feel like somebody actually heard them, which is really important. And I think that's a really impactful program. Um, for Montpelio police department. Um, the conflict assistance program is basically a mediation, facilitation, um, program and coaching around conflict. And I manage all of those cases. Um, occasionally we'll hire out an outside mediator. Um, if it's just too overwhelming or if I feel like there's any kind of conflict of interest for me, then, then I'll do that. We were pretty busy last year with those cases, not so much this year. But, um, I have a couple of things that I want to share with you. Um, I have a couple of those. I include in that also when I get contacted by. For example. Um, a couple of the schools last year had some staff conflicts. And so I came in and I, uh, did some mediation between staff at the schools. So the reentry program is our circles of support and accountability. And that program. Um, we use three to five volunteers. Um, we have a lot of support. People who are coming out of jail. Who wants some extra support so that they can stay on track with, um, and, and they have a laundry list of. Conditions usually that they need to keep up with. Um, including taking care of themselves, which is finding housing. And getting a job, maybe repairing relationships with family and friends, making reparations in some way. Um, we have people who are on probation who need a little bit extra of extra support. Um, but not necessarily the full cost of team. So Alfred does all of that work. In addition to our transitional housing program. We lease two single occupancy apartments. And we have people generally in there all the time. Um, and they, they stay between. Typically three and six months while they're getting on their property. Um, you know, getting, getting themselves settled as they come out of incarceration. We also provide rental assistance to people. Who come out of jail and maybe have a job right away. And they, but they don't have enough money, for example, for a security deposit. So we help them, may help them find their own apartment and have their own lease and provide some assistance with them as they get going again. We also do community forums and education. Right now we have scheduled insights and insights into conflict to our, I want to have two hour program for the senior center that's going to be coming up in March. Um, and then we do also training and recruitment. So the training, we have standards that we have to meet for the department of corrections for all of our volunteers, except for cab members. And then we do ongoing training as well with our volunteers based on what they want and need for training. So just some of the statistics. Um, and I checked in, I, I didn't include 2019, but I did check on the data today just to see where, where we were at in terms of the numbers. And, and really we're in 2020. We really took a dive and in getting cases, we didn't have a lot of referrals because police were not policing so much when the state was shut down. And then the courts shut down for a long time. So there weren't cases weren't being adjudicated. So people weren't going on to probation. And so we were getting fewer referrals and then it started to pick up. Um, and so we really are not too far behind where we were in 2019. Um, right now in 2020 things are a little bit slower. And this is a typical, I've been, I, this is my 15th year doing this work between being here and in hard work for 13 years. And, and, and the referrals really do ebb and flow. And we, so you can see a year where referrals are fairly low. And then the next year we'll pick back up. So there's not a lot of, um, logic to it necessarily. It's how, how crime might be happening in the community and other circumstances that are way beyond our control. So the affected outreach for the panels, that's a really important figure right there. So, you know, there were 59. I believe that number that's 59 cases where there were people who were affected by crime who were contacted and participated in our program, which is really significant because we want people in the community to feel like they have a way to have a voice in how an incident is resolved. And we know that when they go to court, there may be a victim's advocate that gets assigned to them, but they have very little say over how the case goes. So that's a really important figure. Also the direct outreach that, that Pat did a really significant number. So in 2021, 274 people. So far she's connected with 92 people. And there was a glitch in the over the summer where there was a couple of months where we didn't have access to the system. So she feels like she's probably going to be catching up with that. And then when you look at our volunteer hours, we had about 15 were 655. So we, any, we range anywhere in, in this figure for the panel programs, the reentry program again, steady with our transitional housing, the COSA program, we, we had seven new in 2020, five new in 21. And the figures in parentheses are the total amount that we served this year, 22, we have, we've had fewer referrals. And part of, part of the reason that we have fewer referrals or we're working with fewer people is the one reason is because we don't have housing stock to put people in when they're coming directly out of jail. And then people are having more trouble finding their own apartment because of the issues around housing right now. So hopefully that's going to turn around. We keep an eye on that and we think a lot about that, how we can best serve people. But that's a significant problem too, because we have fewer cases in the transitional housing and everyone in our transitional housing also has a COSA team. So, so the numbers are a little bit lower in terms of the volunteer hours right now, which is a good gauge to base, to base what's happening in that program. So I meant to say this at the beginning too. So if anybody has a question you want to interrupt me, feel free to do that. Otherwise I'm open to any questions at the end. So current projects, I'm resurrecting the parenting with respect class that Yvonne had developed. We're hoping to begin that at the end of the month. And we're working with one of our referring agencies, which is the Department for Children and Families, which is a program that's potentially for financial support. That's a program where we don't charge the participants because we want to make sure it's available to them. Alfred participates in the achieving change through values based behavior. That's another program that Yvonne was involved in. She took that program with her and operates that on her own. And so he's still in Alfred is still involved in that, which is really helpful. So it's a new program where we're doing, it's called graduated sanctions. It's basically to help keep people who are on probation from having a violation of their probation. So it's a restorative process so that they don't have a court, a court hearing around the violation and end up going back to jail. So that's really just a restorative justice panel. It's a little bit modified from our regular panel. We're working with Northfield middle and high school right now. We're working with them for six hours a week and Aaron goes to the school and she is doing case cases with students. And she's also working with their lead person there on systematizing their practices at the school. Excuse me. Could you give an example like of what kind of issue they'd be dealing with at the school? Um, you know, that's, I don't know what she has had recently, but my guess is it is likely it's potentially something like bullying and before it rises to the level of harassment, they will also use it. If somebody has a more serious infraction, they will use it as a way for them to be able to return to school after potentially having a suspension. So there's a couple of different ways that, that it gets used at the schools. That's a good question. I can follow up with Aaron and get some more specifics about those cases. It just makes it more tangible in my mind. Thank you. Sure. Yeah. Um, so we're also also now negotiating with car with union, um, regarding direct referrals. So, so we've had a few meetings with them and they have been sending, they've sent six or eight cases to us in the last several months. And so because they're out of our district, we don't, um, we don't support them for free. So, um, we're working on what that relationship looks like. And so we'll have a little bit of income from processing those cases. We are also contacted by Rory Tebow, um, because he is interested in, in addressing equity issues for the BIPOC community. And he suggested a pilot project that, um, he was kind of unclear about what he wanted, but he, he, he wants a way to make sure that our, our Cosa teams and our restorative panels are more diverse. And so, you know, we're already working on that. And it also cognizant of the fact that we don't want to over stress the people of color in our community by asking them to do too much. Um, so, you know, we've come up with a couple of ideas about, um, acknowledging that there are disparities and then working toward making sure that we can offer people, if we have a person of color coming into our programs, that we will do our best to make it a more, a more appropriate and a more comfortable situation for them in terms of representation on their team. Um, let's see what's next here. Um, so always we're, you know, working with Montpelier police department, we have a great relationship with the police. We get lots of referrals. And we learn from each other all the time. We've had some new, uh, the new officers that are, that have come on. We've had one-on-one meetings with them so we can explain our programs and we really, with all of them, just want to stay up or most in their minds so that they'll be ready to do the direct referrals to our program. So these pre-charge referrals are a real opportunity, especially for first time offenders to not have any, any connection with the criminal legal system. So if the case doesn't even go to the state's attorney's office, it's a really different opportunity than if it goes to the state's attorney where when it goes to court diversion, there actually is a charge. So it's, so diversion is not pre-charge. It's pre-adjudication, but not pre-charge. So we have a relationship with Northfield and Berlin also send us referrals. And so in the last couple of years, Vermont State Police is doing referrals into our program, which is for me was really significant because I tried for several years in my previous job to have a relationship with Vermont State Police because there's a lot of coverage in California and Orleans County where I worked and that didn't go anywhere. So this is great. Strengthening our partnerships with the city departments. We do get referrals from a couple of our other departments. The department occasionally will send referrals to our conflict assistance program, which is fantastic. I've offered to just help people really understand how to, what a sort of conversation could look like so that all of our city staff will feel like they can resolve issues before they get bigger. So that's something that Tanya and I have to do, have a little more conversation about, is important. My goal is that the city be considered a restorative city. The Montpelio-Ruxbury School District and other area schools, like I said before, we, you know, we have contact with them. They've been looking to us to help them with establishing restorative practices. And that's at all different, different places right now for, for different schools and different districts. And we also train youth panel volunteers. We recruit and train youth panel volunteers that they can then take the training that they've learned for our community panels and bring it back to their school. We are always working on our outreach through events and marketing. We are required to do two community forums every year. One of them is going to be the MSAC insights into conflict. We haven't quite decided what the second one is going to be yet, but it'll be something this spring. And then for marketing, one of our ideas is to post on front porch forums, some topics around restorative justice so that people remember what we do and how we do it and why we do it. Because we're in the legislative session right now, there are a few things that are important to us. Right now there is a midpoint probation review that would target early release for probationers. And this could affect our graduated sanctions referral. So we're just keeping an eye on that. We don't have any objection to it. There's also a bill to remove exclusionary language that would then allow community justice centers to process domestic and sexual violence cases. Right now it is in state statute that we cannot do those cases. So we're just keeping an eye on that. So we're just keeping an eye on that. There would need to be a lot of work around training and figuring out the most appropriate process. If we were going to start doing those cases. That being said, sometimes through our process, we do. And our. Rantry folks there. There are oftentimes where we work with sex offenders and we work with people who have committed them. Domestic violence. Outside of that with our panels. So we're just keeping an eye on that. So that would be safe. And so, so there, there's concern around that one going through and not having everything in place. And. And not. We want to make sure that it's safe for the people who've been affected. There's a talk about an overall review of the, all of the organizations that provide restorative services around the state. And from my understanding, a study group has been formed. And then CJC directors, just so you know, we meet once a month, all of us from around the state and talk about what's important to us, how we do our work. We do education together. We provide restorative justice panel training together. And we decided that because we have been level funded. I think my appeal here has been level funded for at least 10 or 12 years with our base grant. We decided as a group, we had consensus that we wanted to ask. For a 5% increase for cost of living expenses. And to support full time benefited positions. Whether or not that'll go anywhere. I don't know. It's really going to be up to appropriations to decide how they're going to fund the DOC and then the DOC is going to decide. What they provide for us. I did hear last week, we're hopeful that we will at least have a level funded for for fiscal year 23. There is a need for updating the statutory language right now. Restorative justice centers are mentioned in a few different. In a few different laws and it is not up to date. So there's some old language in there. The other thing that that is real really important to me. And to some of the other directors is that we need an entity or support structure to represent the CJC. It's not just with the legislature, but in general. And my thinking about that is. You know what this organ, we had this organization for a while. It was called the community justice network of Vermont. Our funding from the department corrections was removed. I think in 2018, 17 or 18. So we haven't had that organizing body. And we had an executive director who was able to. Really organize us and keep us organized and we met regularly. And we really felt like this was an avenue for us to advance restorative practices and how we do it and to bring equity from from one county to the next and one justice center to the next. So I'm, I'm advocating for that. I, but we don't have the funding for it right now. So that's another thing that I have been asking for and have. You know, I think it's really important that we have the funding that we have. I think it's really important that we have the funding that I mentioned to my colleagues. And I know there are others who want that too. We just not sure how that might happen. What could happen if that existed was. We potentially could end up with a statewide database again, bring equity statewide. Could be an avenue for grant seeking. And more volunteer and staff development opportunities. Which would be fantastic. I think that that would be a very important one. But I think that's a, that's a very important one. That's a very important one. Because it's a community based. Community justice centers. There are only a few of us that are left that are based in municipalities. And the reason that this is important and I'm bringing it up is because in, in December of. 2019, before I started in this job. There was a community advisory board meeting. That the department of corrections attended. and the court diversion office in Washington County and the Montpelier Justice Center should get together and figure out a way to become one non-profit that would be the point one point to collect all of the referrals for all of the work all of the money and all of the referrals would go to one place so it does exist in six five in five centers in five counties around the state but otherwise the the programs are are kind of scattered with different agencies so it's it's fairly complex but there are lots of good reasons to maintain the municipally based community justice center what I see in Montpelier in comparison to where I've worked before is that the justice center is so is really truly embedded in the city in city government and in the city I mean people really value and and appreciate what we do they understand what we do and there would be lots of lots of negative consequences I think and in part because most of our work is is actually done by the volunteers who live in the towns that we serve I think we would I think we would lose a lot of the the flavor and the the intent behind what we do which is to to reconnect people in their community and I think that's a really important piece of what we do is to help people really feel like they belong even after they've committed an infraction so that was a lot I know I could say a lot more if if you know me I could talk all day and night about restorative justice but I'm open to any questions that you have all right thank you Carol any comments or questions from council okay go ahead Donna Carol I guess two things one is you use the term panels a lot could you sort of describe what the panel actually does sure it's between three and five community volunteers who they're trained in restorative justice process and they meet with the person who's committed an offense and who has been referred to us and they basically cover four points in a community panel meeting they want to deepen the understanding of the harm they help identify who's been affected and how they've been affected they help a person re-engage with their community and then they also look for ways to have a plan for this person to do something different so that they don't reoffend they come up with an agreement together and that everybody signs off on the agreement and everyone who's in the room gets to participate in creating that agreement including the person who had the offense so it's a it's a pretty egalitarian process everyone gets to contribute it's really transparent and then that person comes back after a couple of months and if all of the tasks on their agreement have completed they complete the process successfully and the others were the initials c-o-s-a cosay yeah cosa that's the circles of support and accountability okay it's an abbreviation thank you yeah uh connor go ahead yeah carol i just want to say i served on a cosa panel pretty recently and uh i want to give a big shout out to alfred on staff there like talk about a guy who like it's more than just a job from like the cell phones always on and he's making a real difference in people's lives and just want to just want to acknowledge that thank you i really appreciate hearing that and i know that um i will say that the people the people that i know who are really into this work we're all really passionate about what we do and and personally i feel like even our volunteers like our volunteers change because of the way that they do the work they really understand that they they need to come to this with an open mind and an open heart and to recognize the people that they're working with as their neighbors and their you know people who live in their community so really the engagement piece and helping people come back to feeling like they belong is uh is a really important component of that and yes alfred is on top of it donna go ahead only if there's nobody else i just have a personal story uh when the car hit me in the crosswalk in uh in monterey in 2016 i was so surprised when someone from your department a pack called me um i was like i mean literally i mean it was you're so alone with dealing with it and to have somebody call you'll be concerned about you as a victim was awesome and we never got the driver to ever meet with me talk to me or anything but that was really very very meaningful and i do wish we could have used your services i think it would have helped me a lot so i'm glad you're there i think that's a that's a pretty typical response of the people who who participate as as someone who's been affected they really appreciate that opportunity you know again in the court system they may or may not have an opportunity to ask the questions the unanswered questions through the court process they want to mostly they want to know why and if it was personal and and they want to have a say in in what this person needs to do to make uh reparations to them okay we also would take comments or questions from the public um any any questions or comments from other folks yes Steve Whitaker go ahead Steven uh i just want to caution uh first off my radar goes up when we think about spending off nonprofits because the transparency goes away when you're not obligated by public records law but i also i've done a lot of work advocacy you know over the Gerton park problem and solution uh which is now worse by the way um and i was assaulted by one of the frequent fliers down there and i was told by the officer who took the report that it was referred to restorative justice but i never heard of peep you know and the guy's still carrying on his name belligerent behavior around town he's one of the chronic problem people you know which might have been healed had he had safe place to stay overnight um but i just want to caution that this you know you hear a lot of you know great stuff but when restorative justice ignores the victim of the crime you know and it's it's uh you know not to put all the history of this town's uh mismanagement and police corruption on the restorative justice center but i really do feel uh that my experience is not uh consistent with what you're hearing yeah i appreciate that i appreciate your comment about that i can't speak to why that might be um there are there are times when we don't get the referral even if even if you were told that it was going to go in that direction if a person is not willing to work with us then we won't get the referral and it and it also you know i mean there are hundreds of cases that hundreds of calls that pat looks at every month and she has to also pick and choose who she can call like i said she works 12 hours a week so there's only so much she can do and this is another request that we had with um with the department of corrections was actually to be able to have a full-time benefited position to do the work that pat does at every justice center and um we doubt that that's going to happen because that was going to be about a million dollars more to um to the justice centers um but if we had a full-time position as opposed to 12 hours a week there'd be more opportunity to make those outreach calls so i'm sorry that that didn't happen for you steve um i i don't know why but no that's a good explanation i appreciate it welcome right anyone else okay all right well uh vicki vicki and lane go ahead i just wanted to um somewhat but not totally um my experience with the community justice center was not all that positive either um but that's the way it was i mean the person was not uh um was not did not respond did not care or did not respond to any of the of the communications from the community justice system um but that's the way it goes sometimes there are definitely people who are not ready to to be accountable and accept responsibility for the decisions that led them to harming someone else so we you know we can't really change that if they if they don't respond and they're not willing to work with us then our hands are tied we can't force them to do that and it wouldn't work if we tried to force force them to do that yeah that makes sense um and i think it's really helpful to know how your processes work and that uh it's sort of in order for some of these processes to even happen it has to kind of be a two-way um street and uh not always the case um i also just want to express my gratitude to you all i think you all do just really wonderful work and um to really appreciate everything that that you and the whole department does so please pass that along to um uh to them for us i will thank you great all right um and so um moving on then um unless there's other questions from from uh council or comments from council okay all right so um moving on to uh the police review committee follow-up and i think i saw alissa on here um oh and and chief peat is on as well great um uh bill go ahead i'm just quickly to tee this up while people are getting on when but when we last had the presentation from the police review committee uh the council had asked and i think the committee had asked that we revisit again in a few months to see where things were and kind of get an update um so that's what this was we scheduled this for february and i think i know the chief has was going to do a run through and i don't know if elissa is planning to do anything or not okay uh well i will turn it over to um either you elissa or uh chief peat oh i think uh yep okay go ahead sorry um a good evening um mayor uh honorable members of the city council and uh city manager and assistant city manager brian peat with the mob peeler police department i can go through the slide presentation and and uh pause any slides uh elissa if you'd like to speak to them or if you'd like to go first or before your call um i think it'd be great if you could go chief peat and i did i have been kind of going through and listing out some questions for you and i wasn't sure how we should deal with that but i'm happy to you know wait till the end and then go why don't i wait till the end so you can talk unless you're at a pause point and then um then i'll jump in sure okay then i'll go ahead and uh share my screen and then move to um uh to start on the powerpoint presentation uh can folks that see everything okay yes okay all right well again my name is brian peat i'm with the uh mob peeler i'm the chief of police for the mob peeler police department and tonight i'm just gonna provide you with a summary update of all of the uh the the action items that the police department has been involved in what this slideshow uh is going to be it's just going to be a regurgitation of the previous slide presentation but the updates will be marked in purple for easy reading and easy discussion so this was the uh the the summer the first introduction slide of all the items that we were going to discuss and then this was the the the second slide for that um what i want to call attention to is everything that was circled in red um were items that uh we had or that we were going to have discussions about but for the next slide uh for right here where it says city does not support when we circle officer misconduct or internal affairs that's it kind of doesn't read too well we do very much support um transparency and accountability uh with uh with misconduct and internal uh affairs but it was more appropriate to move that to talk about the spirit of recommendation and flagging the challenges that uh that come with uh per se a civilian review committee and how that discussion should pan out so that's where we need more direction or more conversation regarding that otherwise everything else is the same so and moving forward um what we uh what we're looking at here on this particular slide is um for for uh anytime that we have a significant incident an officer involved shooting or something where where there's a significant uh a use of force incident that the prc has recommended that we that that there there be some way of putting more information out to the public um and then helping the public um digest the information ask questions and and look at the accountability process and the healing processes as well so the police review committee has agreed to assist us in developing what that protocol might look like um i also wanted to note that the monpular police department is about to implement a chaplain program and what we're reaching out to leaders uh in in our faith-based community to see if they would come aboard and then provide um counseling and comfort to those who may want it when uh when we're responding to to traumatic calls for service or even for the officers staff members and their families when they might need another outlet in regarding to um some of the things they may be struggling with at work the second bullet point there that update is that we have um that our cro uh Corporal Filbrick has completed the IS 29 that's the public information officer's awareness course but he needs a follow-up course and that's the advanced course so we are still moving ahead as far as how we're disseminating and how we're professionalizing the way we disseminate information to the public uh based on best practices and what other agencies are doing and doing well um but as a note um because of our staffing situation uh Corporal Filbrick has not been able to fully devote his time um to the CRO which is quite honestly a full-time job even more than that um so he's dividing his time working the streets and then covering other shifts that we can't cover and then coming in and hanging and handling these administrative lifts or making building these bridges with the community um in between calls so in looking at demilitarization the 10 1033 program uh to update that what our recommendation is and uh is that if we're more than likely not going to look for anything from the 1033 program we have not used it in years I don't foresee us doing it um unless there is something out there the only thing that we may consider might be things like helmets or body worn or body armor but traditionally when those things are offered through the 1033 program they're often expired so they're they're no good for us or when we look at things like storage containers or like connex boxes uh places that we can store some stuff outside because we have limited um room in the in the uh the department and office supplies but again I don't see us doing office supplies because state has a surplus shop uh 10 miles up the road so we don't intend to to purchase any vehicles weapons less than lethal items anything else to that effect but if we did want to seek something out for the 1033 program um we're thinking that it's going to be best proven to reach out to Cameron and Bill let them know which items we'd like to get and then have that brought to the city con uh to the city council for any discussion and looking at street outreach training um we have our annual CPR training that's going to be scheduled in the uh first week of March the first few weeks of March we're going to incorporate the recommended training um regarding de-escalations and and looking at what signs of intoxication may be or you know if someone's drink drank too much or if someone has used uh another intoxicating substance drugs um what those physical signs are what the and how that affects through the body and and uh how it can be treated and though to those things so we're going to incorporate that with our annual CPR training and we'll of course send the invitation out to our outreach partners and the CJC um if they'd like to attend this block which is something that they had requested during uh the uh the PRC process so training with youth and adolescent behavior um the the recommendation from the PRC here was to look at a cognitive development um and how it works in juveniles how it works in children so we've reached out to prevent child abuse for Mont which is right up the hill near the Elks Lodge and uh they're working to develop a specific course for us based on child adolescent brain development they're also going to talk about other topics such as how how that development and how that physical development uh relates to sexuality and children and teens um I do know that there will be a cost the cost is going to be about $500 per class they're not um they're going to be unable to do one class for us and we record it and then all the officers are trained in it it's going to have to be uh paired out uh throughout a variety of days to get day shifts afternoon shift and then the officers who are coming in on on different days so we're going to it's going to take several courses to get that training done my estimation is anywhere between three to four for crowd control so what we're learning as we're talking more about crowd control it's actually crowd management crowd control is when it gets to the point that we can't that the situation is beyond control so we're looking at it more from a proactive standpoint so we're going to end up initially we thought the training was going to possibly run anywhere between 10 to 15 thousand dollars and then we were going to try to get a grant for that um but we found a good training opportunity and we're going to send um Deputy Chief Noren sent in Sergeant Moulton to training in Florida uh which is literally next month I believe and they're going to be trained on crowd management techniques um in preparing for uh no notice things or things that that are our schedule and how we can make sure we we work to de-escalate situations and start um uh compromising situations from occurring in the first place so that training will be uh uh those uh the chief and the sergeant will bring that training back to the department and we will continue that training in-house and that estimated cost is going to be uh three thousand dollars that we'll be taking out of our training budget so for scenario-based training this is the previous slide it's pretty lengthy but you guys are already aware of it um the updates are on the second one so we have gotten the virtual reality training system through a grant from the Department of Homeland Security we're in the process now of talking with uh the state with DPS to deploy this asset to the the training that um cadets are receiving at the police academy so this is something that we want to not just keep with us but it's a good tool that we're going to bring out and we hope to do that with the academy um we are committed to implementing mandatory advanced trainings that that's required and obligated to us by the state but we want to go above and beyond that because we want to be well be good at our jobs um we're also looking at the PRC or implementing all the the training uh requirements or recommendations from the the PRC but just as a note um our current staffing and budgetary shortfalls do present some obstacles for us to do immediate implementation for these types of trainings we're not giving up on them we just have to find uh other ways to find funding and um making sure that our staffing kind of kind of gets a little bit higher before we can move on this is we'd like to move a lot faster than this but we're we're at a point right now at a choke point um and then as we talk about uh again the other part of that is is the increase in the administrative lifts that we have to do um for those uh for those particular instances but and trying to overcome it as we're looking for grand opportunities and trying to increase our staffing we're looking at out of the box thinking such as like looking at a at a reserve officer program where we might bring aboard some folks who can serve or who can work part-time for us and that would free up officers to go to the primary training and then in June 2022 we have several officers that are scheduled for a four-day lesson lethal training certification and and again as as we've let folks know advanced training options in uh Vermont for law enforcement are scarce it's it's it's a combination of many things and and we're definitely not pointing fingers it's just a perfect storm of what's going on so we're trying to again uh to to get these advanced training options and to to strengthen our department to strengthen the services that we provide to the city um we're going to have to go outside of the state which is going to increase the cost of you know more from our training budget the mental health professional funding the update here is that the the new budget allocates an additional $45,000 for that 0.5 position um so washington county mental health services as they're going to connect with members of the the prc to discuss where those funding priorities would probably be the most effective again our position my position is that this is something best left to the experts we're doing these types of things and that the Montpelio police department will will continue to work with our partners we have very strong relationships with folks so we're going to trust their judgments here and then look at how that's going to be implemented and how we're going to best work with that i i really staunchly believe that mental health and law enforcement are they have to be very very close partners but one cannot be embedded in the other it's just uh it's just something that's just it's not a good it's not a best practice only in certain situations when it's actually quite necessary and we don't need that that model here by opinion so for street outreach capacity the update here is that the city is continuing to work with uh good sam all of our outreach partners um on where those funding allocations are going to go and how they're going to be best used with the city with law enforcement and when we do uh mental health response models with human trafficking uh and i apologize i hope i'm not going too fast if i am please let me know um so with with human trafficking we plan to host we've we've already got it on the books uh training between April 4th and April 8th to talk about human trafficking to talk about the dark web so we are bringing in uh Stephanie Stephanie Powell and another expert um from the west coast to bring this information to us we're going to open this up to of course our department the state's attorney's office and other state's attorney offices throughout the state as well as law enforcement agencies across the state there is uh uh funding available that we're only going to have to cover the cost of logistics and flying these folks in but the actual cost to to host the actual training is going to be paid for via other means not by the city when we talk about data transparency this is with our current system with with val core it's it's hard to pull information from the system into decipher it it's not like new technology out nowadays that you you set a system up and then then boom it pops out in more accurate ways um and we don't have that particular skill set in the department and and several of us who can do that uh our time again is being divided in so many different different areas because of uh the staffing situation so we're working to try to use interns so far last year we had our first set of two interns from norwich university now we have two more so this is going on a quarterly basis and we're having to retrain the interns to look at the data to pull it from val core to decipher it for public consumption but of course there are there are obstacles again because of some capabilities with the system as well as having to retrain the interns on a constant basis i prefer to incorporate new technology for this administrative lift and that part of that administrative list for this this new technology was a recommendation set out by the televates uh study that was commissioned by the cvpsa so there's more to come on that for body worn cameras that it was uh it was approved and placed on the budget we're waiting for a decision on uh tile meeting day um and that money was $35,000 that was allotted for body worn cameras pending approval we will work with vendors to make sure that they have the capability and functions that we're looking for and then we'll go ahead and go through the uh the purchasing process and move forward for the body worn camera program the policy is already written and it's pretty much a state mandated policy that we have to work what that's been set up set down by the uh um the criminal justice center at the academy i'm sorry the criminal justice council so and and this slide here there was uh this was the the previous slide that i had given um there was a typo here at the front because i didn't give you the recurrent cost so the actual operational spending is updated uh $35,000 uh was allotted for body worn cameras um and within the operational budget and that there was uh $130,000 for mental health and street outreach purposes and looking over to the side and updating the numbers there we thought it was going to be a $2,000 one-time cost um to provide the training for um human trafficking that's actually three and then right below it as we're looking at crowd control training or crowd management training from two that's actually going to be $3,000 uh to the right column that's uh giving updates officer misconduct and internal affairs that new policy was written that policy was based on um a model policy given to us by the Vermont uh League of Cities and Towns as well as best practice benchmark models from IACP, PERF and other agencies uh and and just and then combine it with what the uh the state law is so that policy is written we also do have IA tracking or internal affairs tracking with through benchmark that should be coming online actually that is online now and then as we're talking about again uh there there is some discussion that may be required or just some approval from the city council regarding how we're doing the reporting for uh internal affairs investigations or complaints to the department and looking at the street outreach capacity it's actually going to be clear if I just say there's $65,000 that was allotted for mental health and another $65,000 for that total for um for street outreach which is where that $130,000 is and then looking at the that final column where city does not support um as we're as we're talking about um as it comes specifically to officer recruitment uh what those minimum standards are uh MPD has brought in a very robust hiring process that's in place and and that does include emotional intelligence-based uh vetting and that comes from a uh a program called critical hire and which folks who are we're looking to bring on as we offer them a conditional offer of employment one of the things in addition to an MMPI in addition to the uh the polygraph test we asked them to take the critical hire test which which gives us a very good view of what their emotional intelligence level is work ethic and things to those points so uh and moving forward as we as we look for the future um to provide updates to the council uh this is where we're standing at um that again we we agree with data transparency but this requires an ongoing discussion because of lack of of personnel and bandwidth and and definitely lack of money that will help us to get to this point that disinformation is at the fingertips uh real time to the council to the public and to the department as well as we do our our comp stat reporting internally officer misconduct and internal affairs that's again it's looking at the any any oversight that will come from the city council and the city manager and the assistant city manager we require some context from the city council at a later date talking about the public drinking ordinance and then more discussions based on the policy for fair and impartial policing looking at what those minimal standards are for for law enforcement as we recruit and then talking about prostitution the legal framework and with that those are that is my presentation and I stand ready for any questions or any comments or any any uh any discussion with Alyssa great thank you um yes Alyssa go ahead hi thanks so much for the presentation and for uh chief p and for the city council for bringing this back and the city for preparing for this this is great it's so nice to actually do work and then have it be followed up on instead of just like go into the abyss and no one ever talks about it again so so appreciate um all of you um in your work moving moving this forward and um also I do want to recognize um the partnership chief p and mpd had with us throughout this process they were they were really um helpful um putting forward all this information obviously are taking this very seriously um I think there's some really great progress that has been made here um the scenario based training body worn cameras some of the youth and adolescent behavior training having to create that um the intoxication and de-escalation training with partners you know a lot of good things to point to um you know and one other positive thing that's really struck me throughout this presentation and did lose chief p here is he's still here oh no there you are okay great my screen these little faces are so small my laptop is too small glad you're still here okay is that um I've appreciated the most even that you are making such an effort to draw from community resources clearly instead of reinventing the wheel like you're trying to pull the community closer and um instead of going out alone so um with that I have I do have a couple questions on some of the things that you um put forward and I'll do this like a couple smaller four or five smaller questions first and then there are a couple bigger questions which make we may or may not want to get into tonight but um I'll pose those last so on the community engagement process uh you know we had wrestled with whether or not um after an officer involved shooting or after a major traumatic uh community event we had wrestled with rather mpd should leave that protocol process or whether the city itself should create the protocol and so um I guess I'm just interested in what your thoughts are after you know thinking a little bit more about that or and in terms of there were a couple members of the former police review committee that were interested in that conversation I think we need to figure out like if you'll drive it or the city will drive it and then whatever next step is there I can definitely also leave that to uh to Cameron and Bill who are also on as well but our initial thoughts um was that to to provide as much information as we can minimum information uh a maximum information minimal delay uh out to the public and then be be there to answer any questions as we look at you know whether it's a first war in person town hall to those to those uh to any type of events but maybe not us facilitating them because there's there's often you know the human response is always going to be defensiveness and and and if and if it's our information our responsibility to get that information out we want to make sure that we're we're there in a capacity that we're serving and providing that information rather than being the primary uh people who are facilitating that discussion so my my off the cuff thought on this one is to have somebody from outside uh facilitate how this goes and then having us there to provide that information and to answer the questions from our community so um given that it might make sense for the city to think about if the city wants to take on the next step here I know Cameron had taken um it was considering whether or not there should be some relationship with like a trauma informed facilitator so that part of the process would be if there was a major event there was someone that was trained with the community dynamics of trauma and creating a space for healing the police would be one constituency a really important one there but wouldn't be the primary one so I just I just offer that to the city to keep thinking about maybe we should come back to that at some other point but um we stand at the ready to or at least um a couple folks um had from the former police review committee stand ready to continue and engage in that conversation and if I could bring up something real quickly before boss jumps in is Carol had also offered to be part of that discussion to part to to lead those facilitations um from the community justice yeah that's basically what I was going to say to um so thank you for flagging that Alyssa we had given this some thought and realized the seriousness of it um and all honesty this report came in in the fall we moved right into budget so we we read straight to kind of focus on those things with budget impact um but knowing this was was coming back we we've talked again and recognized important so we have Carol from CJC has offered to be involved in this whether they would be the lead agency to actually conduct this or just help us think it through but we we will be getting back to some ideas and I think having the the either president or former PRC involved to give us feedback on that would be really helpful great thank you um on the youth and adolescent behavior training I think that that training sounds um you know positive robust and tailored and did you say chief beat that you would be recording it so people could see it on like an ongoing basis like you could do it annually or something or have it be updated to continue to use it for cost saving purposes and because of staffing issues and the the the different shifts that folks come into work that was our initial thought was to get as many people as we could in the room and then record it but uh prevent child abuse Vermont is is that's that's a no-go for them so we're going to they're recommending that we do it in person and reach every member of the staff well that's great and um that that might make pose some challenges as you look to do it in the future uh you know um as well but I think it's great that they're doing it and um too bad you can't record that in terms of the training around crowd management uh do you have a sense if uh the kind of the Madison modern principles that we have talked about where were principles where we want to help people use our space and facilitate that use in the most positive experience possible you have mentioned in the past that npd already deploys a lot of those um practices do you know if this training in Florida will be reinforcing that type of approach because there's a lot of different crowd control um strategies as I'm sure you know very well like uh and there's a real spectrum of approach there yeah so so that's where that's where I wanted to highlight the difference between crowd control and management so the focus here is actually is is based in Madison model it's it's how to prepare and plan to avoid situations from evolving to the point that we cannot contain them there until we have to get to the point that we don't have a cooperation between those who are demonstrating exercising the rights uh to one that's going to be more adversarial and confrontational so so the focus is definitely based on that Madison model of life and safety property seconds um and but but how do we get to the point that we don't even have to have that discussion okay that's great thank you um in terms of the increased mental and professional mental health uh professional funding I know that the police review committee had it requested 1.5 additional FTEs uh allocated to that would be a combination of social work plus peer outreach support uh we see that you know there's 0.5 that was put in the budget of FTE so one FTE total at this point and half that will be split with social worker um response and half appears to be split with the follow-up which is critical and we totally support that in in a lot of our conversations um has the peer outreach angle been lost no it hasn't that's part of as we're looking at like the crisis intervention team model um actually uh Dan is part of that the CIT steering committee and he's advocating and so so the steering committee is actually leaning on him to develop the peer support model what we found is that there is actually no across the board peer support model anywhere in the state of Vermont so this is something that's going to have to be built from scratch where we be more than happy to lead the way in doing that showing uh and being that baseline for the state to work upon so um but that's what we found so even if even if that that funding were to go to peer support model oh you have to get volunteers you have to get training and you have to make sure that training certified how is it vetted how do you know that that's the appropriate training and then there are other questions as what we look at as far as peer support are we talking turning point for like say alcohol and substance abuse or are we talking things like domestic violence peer support or uh schizophrenia or a skis order personality disorder uh peer supports so what does that look like which buckets and how that works but that's not lost that's something we're trying to build up extraordinarily quickly okay um and I have three more three more questions so thank you so much for all of this time um you know hopefully we'll only be doing this once every six months or something uh so uh the on the street outreach worker uh you know that have been through Good Samaritan um I'm wondering if you know we have now allocated halftime FTE that was existing and a halftime FTE that is new in the city budget as I understand it do you know if that position has been filled and is that position working um with you know with folks here yeah so I can jump in on that Alyssa actually there's the halftime position for social worker that had already been filled the one that we were sharing with Barry we also have Don who has been the peer outreach worker that is funded by um Good Samaritan and continues to be funded and is in the budget for next year and then an additional half based on your recommendation that the chief just described so that's total of 1.5 and so still 1.0 short of the additional recommendation that you had which hopefully we'll get next year um thank you I was trying to say the same thing so I'm glad you clarified um my question is has the new resort like has the new FTE the new Don the the new halftime Don been filled yet no okay um but there's every intention to do it and the resources are there it's more just we need to do it for the halftime additional street outreach worker that is focused not on the mental health side but on the um street engagement work around like with the unhoused community yes and that's based off approval from the uh for the uh the city budget so once that budget goes through the new fiscal year starts that's when we can look at the financial that's when we can look at giving that money to Good Sam to uh to look for that position okay um so the the last two questions that I have are one um I think like a big issue here that that is one that both the police review committee and MPD both are interested in addressing but you know the update today doesn't really address it is the data transparency issue you know that was one of the biggest things that we heard and engaging with the public that they want to be able to just go on the website and click and see like how many you know arrests have been made what type of arrest you know what you know the traffic data and have all of that readily accessible and you know we had to compile a lot of that data ourselves through the process I mean MPD gave us like the raw data and then we had to like create spreadsheets and tables and stuff and so um it sounds like you have interns doing that same process now but that really seems unsustainable to just have interns do that constantly for all of time you know so um and you just won't get the public will not get that up you know that current data so um you flagged it as a continuing issue Chief Pete and I guess I'm just wondering like the price tag is big to get one of these systems that give you like a real-time dashboard for police stats um so I'm wondering like have you found any grants or like what is what a one-time investment of money um be a lot but then an ongoing cost be a lot less have you have you looked into this and are there any one-time funds that maybe we could use right now around COVID monies around any of this like I don't know but this seems like a need that we've both identified and it's not being felt oh no if the only things keep me for it is the money so I'm estimating it would to get a truly robust system that has the capability to do an API backdoor to pull from the system so that we're not doing it on a daily basis so we have to overcome the website issues that we have with our current department or with with our current system which is the city is is working diligently on and then we also have to look at what the system's going to look like the estimates the estimation for something like that is probably going to be anywhere between 300 to 400 thousand dollars to get this type of the system because it's also piggybacking on to the televate study that talks about a true computerated dispatch system so if we get a true computerated dispatch system we can add things like online reporting information that it will pull out those types of calls it would even do something like a crime map if you will that you can put in an address and then you can see all throughout the map what types of calls for service happened within any given date range so it's an extraordinarily robust system the one-time cost again is between three to four hundred and then the annual cost you're looking at anywhere between three to five thousand dollars a year to operational funding and that's part of that new technology thing and yes grants I am I I've been I'm looking for money every possibly every possible way I can and that's not by the wayside of me that was that was on my to-do list as first as soon as I got here yeah yeah well this might be one of those topics that the city or the city council want to come back to like every few months to just go like hey are there any resources for this yet because there's there's always going to be a need for the community to see this information like that's never going to go away eventually we'll want to solve this problem I know it's a big price tag but we shouldn't forget about it okay so there's not really nothing we can do about that here I said no one's going to pull three hundred thousand dollars out of a hat so uh and did you have three hundred thousand was that a hand up no that was me being like I wish yeah um okay well the last thing for me and Justin Dreschler is here from the police review committee too and so I just want to give him an opportunity if he had anything further but um is on the internal affairs process that you um put forward I think it there I think it is much improved from um the the last process and um I think some of the particularly positive things in this new process are like the quick the goal of having to be a 30 day investigation time for example that's a real I think a real process and that also you will be using um you know third party repository for the information and there's a check at the city level and that the information around reports also go to the city council um I'm wondering I think there's a there's a couple principles that may have been lost in in you know in translation or maybe you consider them and discount them but you know the city council having the opportunity if I understand this right to review your internal affairs reports the council no disrespect may not have the um experience expertise or profile to maximize um that review process so you know they might not have an hr background they might not have police experience they might not have um legal experience some of the things that we flagged uh in the process uh if if folks remember the internal affairs process one of the aspects of that process that we were hoping to see was that there'd be like an annual audit function of a third party committee that had expertise that would be you know relevant to the review and so um I just wonder if we're missing that step here uh if we're missing the uh an audit function and if we're missing an audit function by people who have that that background that would that would really be valuable here do you have thoughts on that yes so the um so what we've baked into the policy and what you know that the recommended policy so so throughout the most important stage is to make sure that we do have that that that right is while we have to notify the hr manager while we have to notify the assistant city manager the city manager while while I'm involved in it um for the investigative and the law background and then we also um do consultation with the state's attorney's office or the attorney general's office as as necessary the other reporting requirement that backs up on that is that we have to report this to the um based on their act 56 I could personally I could lose my certification if I don't adhere to that the chief of police loses their certification or her certification if they don't adhere to act 56 and act 56 is in essence everything that you're saying that that entire process is followed and it's and it's adhered to so that initial checklist that's in that um in that policy um that has there's an intake form there's an intake form all of that has to be sent to the uh to the criminal justice council that's composed of I think they're all the way up to what 22 people now um in the majority of them are a civilian base board so they do the review of of the complaint that came in where the department acted appropriately whether they investigated it thoroughly and then whether the um and and whether uh and looking at the disposition so as we're looking at things like civil and criminal violations there are outweighs or there are outlets for that um but the other outlet is you can lose certification so even if even if for some reason the city said uh we're going to hold on to this person for XYZ the criminal justice council can say okay that's great but we're pulling that person certification so they can't be a law enforcement officer anywhere in the state of Vermont so there are so many checks and balances but that primary one comes it goes right through the state through the the CJC uh and they would give you feedback or come back to you with trends you believe they would come back and say like hey we just reviewed this complaint we're concerned about XYZ so for for that uh for that trend aspect um not necessarily um I there's not necessarily a mechanism there but there there is knowing the folks who are who are there they would bring that up but uh the significance also is to annually in that policy we have to provide an annual report to the city council and that city council and in the city count and it talks about the trends these majority of the complaints that we're seeing that are coming in here's what the administrative inquiry complaints were or the administrative inquiries we've conducted as well as the internal affairs uh that we've conducted so that the council will be able to look at that and see we have concerns all of the all the ias that you've done they've centered around conduct type of issues what are you doing to fix it but even before we even get to that point the the program that we have benchmark analytics takes into effect uh everything like that it's an early warning system as well as a is a cataloging system uh even down to the point that staff members are putting in their weight and and they're required to update what their weight is and so they've got it down to the science that's going to say like look at me I've gained like 20 pounds already so if i'm putting in there um hey I was 189 um two months ago and I've got three complaints leveled against me and in the last time I did my weight check I came in at 200 um then then there's a boom there's a red flag you need to talk to this person you need to reach out to Sonny Pervoto or or see what types of different things are going on so there are so many systems that are baked into that does the public and this is my last question and Justin doesn't have any questions he texted me and so I don't know if um Councilor McCullough or Hurl have any um you know other other pieces who were really important members of the committee as well but my final question is the report that goes to the city council will that information be public yes everything that we we plan on putting that out in annual reports and updating the websites every time we we uh we pull a report like that okay thank you so much thank you uh Jack go ahead yes thank you uh thank you chief for the report and uh and Alyssa for uh for the great the discussion um I I know a couple of the things that we talked about have to do with the with police department policies and I know just in the last couple of days we've gotten a couple of new policies from the from the department including the internal affairs and citizen complaint policy and the police review commission report talks about taking another look at the uh bias free policing policy and so I'm just wondering and uh I'm not sure who has the answer to this of what the uh relationship is between the policies adopted by the uh by the police department and the authority of the council to to review those policies because um you know for instance thinking about the bias free policing policy I know the city staff has said they're satisfied with the uh policy the way it's written and they don't support a change um the commission said well you know we think there are some issues where it could be made more protective and so how do we how do we get at that to uh to resolve questions that of this nature well I mean you could that is certainly an issue you could put on a council agenda if you wanted to discuss it um you know I mean there are some issues here that I think are appropriate for council follow-up including the ones that we've kind of you know left there at the end um but that is one in fact the current uh policy we have was actually I think either adopted or run past the council um before it was enacted and I think you know not not to preump that conversation some other point you know when we say we think it's fine the way it is it's because it matches exactly the state law and the federal law on that issue and um we'd be happy to talk about that further if necessary okay thanks yeah thank you lots of good um questions um Lauren did I see you had a hand yeah go ahead I did great I think Steven you might be unmuted it's giving me a lot of feedback thanks um yeah thank you uh Chief Peaks uh for all the updates it's really great to see as Melissa said the progress and the diligence and I know you all have been understaffed so taking on a lot of updates and like continuing the really um speedy forward progress on all this particularly in those conditions really grateful to see and the spirit of so many of the recommendations moving forward um and so just appreciate that um really excited for you know keeping informed on things like the recommendation that comes back from the team on the increased staffing for social work and or peer support and all of that um I appreciate the department I know a few of us have been able to check out the new virtual reality headset and training tool and it really reinforced what a challenging job you have and um grateful that you all are doing it um and it's great to see the department just continuing to seek out grants and opportunities to be kind of as cutting edge and and be a resource for our community and also making that available and new training opportunities and stuff for the region and the state so that's that's all great to see um one just very minor thing but I noticed on the side that um I think the training that you all are thinking about um hosted on human trafficking um like the national center on sexual exploitation I'm just flagging like two they have participated in a number of community conversations and are considered I think a pretty controversial group their background is like if you google them it's like they've thought against it's like anti pornography anti comprehensive sex education they've trying to ban certain types of literature and art um so if the department is getting training from them I would at a minimum encourage hearing from other organizations that might have a very different perspective um so just would want to round out whatever information you're getting because I think they're viewed as a like pretty certain perspective that they would bring um so I wanted to note that um but you know overall again I think just you know Alyssa had also but just like the the data and transparency as one of our key things so definitely eager to continue the conversation of how we can build that out both for the internal affairs process that does look like some great improvement and how do we um have transparency and even being able to measure is that approach working and working well for the community as that rolls out um and and you know and I am eager to take up as we get into the coming months um the the full suite of you know there's only a handful left I think that the PRC had put forward um but definitely want to at least bring all of them up to council because the uh the committee spent so much time thinking through and developing those recommendations so I want to give them all their kind of due consideration by council but again thanks and and thanks the team uh thank you the to uh the department please share our gratitude for all the hard work going into it uh thanks Alyssa and the police review committee team and also who had put so much work into all these thoughtful recommendations yes I I agree um I want to certainly thank if you um Alyssa could pass on our gratitude to the the police review committee again to us that would be great and also um thank you chief for your like thoughtful uh you know responses to each of these I mean I think this is um and you know it's an it's an ongoing complex conversation and uh it's it's um I appreciate everybody's uh positivity and engagement in in all of this um other I have some thoughts about moving forward but um I want to hear if there's other comments from folks I want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity um to jump in um just to check Jennifer did I was that a hand or no okay uh all right Connor go ahead I just wanted to piggyback on that mayor I think this had potential to be like an adversarial process but a lot of credit to the department that you know these are some substantive issues thrown your way but you but you're taking very seriously as we're shown today and on the other side you know Alyssa you know a lot of these committees we'll just write a report and say hey job well done um obviously that's not where you're coming from and you're staying on top of this um so I think we have a lot of progress to make but I I just want to uh you know command the uh the process so far I think it's been really enlightening and I love the way everybody's working together here yeah um any other thoughts from council or the public before we discuss um how to move forward uh Steve Whitaker okay Steve go ahead so I want to uh touch on a couple of points I heard uh I think that we should not lose sight of the potential need for a police oversight commission I can see lots of bobbin and weven and dancin to try to prevent that from happening but it's important to note that this police review committee did not it was it was very hammed in to forward-looking uh positive change suggestions it was not looking at the history of abuses and malfeasance which has to be aired and documented if you're gonna you have to acknowledge the failures before you can move forward you can't just dance your way around them so uh the police contract for instance uh Frazier arranged that to just be moved on the on the consent agenda that's where all the you know uh immunity and uh disciplinary actions are moved that was not reviewed really by council it wasn't open to public comment it was pushed on the consent agenda that's freaking outrageous you know uh act 56 is not local we have local problems that have gone on for 30 years in my experience and we need to deal with them locally you can't just wrap it all in a bow and call it you know a statewide oversight um let's see no need to oh currently we have no need to or no process we've got a a ghost committee formed by the contract with the police and capital capital fire that is supposedly several members of capital fire the city manager the fire chief the you know the police chief but this committee has never warned a meeting has never met has never created any minutes and yet we've had errors that resulted in the shooting of mark johnson we've had errors and resulted in 30 minute delays for ambulances these are not reviewed or audited or documented or explained in any way they were all swept under the rug and that this is not covered in the police review committee's report i hope they're still listening i do applaud elissa stick intuitiveness um i have that uh disease too as you all know uh the council should adopt policies the police department are hired guns literally and they need to be held to account and the council and the public should review and approve the policies not the police department itself regarding the outreach worker half time don tells me she's only paid for 12 hours a week so you're talking she's half time and now we're adding another half time so something's not adding up there and this is again a problem with handing the money to nonprofits who are sitting there on the homelessness task force voting appropriations to themselves and no accountability because there's no public records law transparency um there was another person hit by a local hit by walking with a walker in this in hit and knocked down by an automobile and it doesn't make the police report you know that runs in the Times Argus you know similarly the homeless person that was hit two years ago on his way to the shelter uh green mountain transit left the scene was not charged i mean it seems like we've got this underclass of people yeah just hit him hit him knock him out of the way and then the police will sweep it under the rug for you that is just freaking outrageous i've been denied access to the records of who hit when he in the crosswalk and why and whether they were charged and and it's just you know this is the stuff the city council should be doing if you were earning your your your position so we don't need to slow walk this accountability on trends we need accountability now we need to get rid of the bad apples we've got internal affairs is really a joke i've reported to the new chief on his first day on the job he encountered a police officer who used to be the school resource officer who blatantly lied on an affidavit to the court and that's not been raised his internal affairs nobody's investigated that you know that same officer lied on another occasion about what state law is about you know somebody in a parking lot and the the report from val course from the state the cad system says that there's video of the incident but the video went missing you know do you smell corruption here i mean this is just it's just outrageous that y'all can just turn a blind eye to all this i mean i'm gonna you know later on in the meeting talk about having you you have an obligation if you're not going to do the due diligence yourself you need to have an obligation to hire an attorney to validate who's telling the truth and you will find that i've been telling you the truth for years and you've been sweeping it under the rug so we've got problems with the cad system having a report in it that this guy is suicidal wants to jump off the bridge his office meds and he's and he's gonna hurt himself and instead instead of the police dispatch warning the officer that they did warn him that it's mark johnson they didn't say here's what happened two weeks ago they said nothing and the guy put two bullets and killed him okay this this is not been resolved the mayor you mayor you swept this under the rug you offered a public hearing you put it number seven on the next meeting agenda and notified no one that it was gonna happen so this is on you so anyway that's enough for tonight but you understand where i'm coming from this is a bigger problem than you're pretending this is all not you know happy go forward this is like let's account for what's already happened thank you all right thank you anyone else okay so just thinking about how do we move forward um from this conversation um so there are a number of items that uh we uh the council i think probably needs to um to uh to address moving forward and and lauren i know you had said like we should be talking about all of them um at some point i i don't know if you have ones that you think are um uh you know should we should take up sooner rather than later um or if uh alissa you all have opinions about which ones we should be taking up sooner rather than later um i think my only um thought about moving forward is that i think any one of the remaining topics could take up uh substantial time and so i would recommend that we all need uh generally do them sort of you know we should be planning to do them more than um one at a time um and some of these may even take up multiple meetings as we sort of have discussion in here from people and whatnot um so uh you know not knowing how those conversations exactly will go uh so um uh lauren or or jack i mean i know you're on that committee as well um i'm just referencing lauren since she was you know saying yeah we should be putting them all on or or jack i know you you'd mentioned like oh we should be talking about um the fair and impartial policing uh piece of this but um so anyway i'm curious for your thoughts in terms of moving forward um lauren go ahead and then jack if you want to add anything on to that um i'll go to you next yeah thanks i mean my my preferred approach would be to try to follow up because the way we did it on the police review committee was people were kind of spearheading the different um policy recommendation so i would want to just check in with the folks that were the leads on those sections on kind of availability to participate and be kind of available as a resource to counsel to participate and you know share their the research and thinking that had gone into it from the prc so um you know if we want to you know maybe i could plan to come back to the next meeting with a proposal based on input on people's availability and some assessment and i could maybe work with jack and alissa on this as well um but looking at you know because i i think some could take more or less time and for farther or closer from maybe the police department's preferences for example so um how does that approach sound i mean just speaking for myself here that i think makes a lot of sense especially if there are point people um that might want to participate um so that other thoughts on that recommendation i agree with what lauren just said i think uh you know it's like we do with a lot of other things we uh count members of council and staff talk to uh people who who want to bring issues before us and and line up a process and a schedule for that to happen and i think it makes sense and i also agree with you and that it probably makes sense to stage it over a period of time because we have other things that we also have to be dealing with but yeah right yeah okay um other thoughts any or any disagreements any any thoughts that we should have to take on a different approach okay all right so i'm not seeing any um disagreement there so um uh lauren or lauren and jack if you um come up with a sort of a tentative um outline of how you think it would make sense for us to take up those topics um certainly open to those suggestions so um so i assume we'll we'll have we'll bring this back up as a topic um next time you know just in thinking about i guess it makes sense to um to bring back that calendar so to speak uh to the council um and if there are items that people are really passionate about you know moving up or you know putting off indefinitely or whatever it is um that uh that would be an opportunity for folks to to express um those things does that be happy to work with the two council members on drafting something up and either getting the schedule out an upcoming meeting or putting it in the weekly on our schedule that'd be great especially you know coordinating with things that we already know are on the schedule um yeah that would be really helpful so no we're not trying to do like the zoning and also you know uh conversation about prostitution or something you know that that would be that would be a lot um so okay um any other thoughts on this team okay all right well thank you um uh chief and thank you alissa uh and um yeah for all for all of your collective work on this and uh to be continued so yeah we'll uh we'll keep revisiting it all right okay so thank you have a good night um all right so we are uh ready to move on to the city managers um uh review and contract uh jack oh it's 8 30 yes jack go ahead i was gonna say it's 8 30 on the dot time for our break it is it's true okay so um i think we should take a break um so we we will be back at 8 40 and uh oh yes bill go ahead i could offer a suggestion i think i know there's at least one person there may be two that want to comment on this topic okay it might be wise to take the comments we're going to go into executive session anyway take the break then i presume we're going to go into executive session but then not make someone hang around while we take a break just to offer comments that's that seems fair that's good that's a good call uh all right so um yeah so regarding uh city managers review and contracts if um if there are folks that have comments about that now would be an okay time um you can either raise your hand or unmute yourself or turn your video on let us know well i think it's unfair when everybody's expecting a break to expect the uh somebody to rush with their comments on the topic this is very complex this is a multi-year problem you know well i'd rather so you'd prefer to speak after break anyone prefer to speak um before the break okay i'm not seeing any hands um that's fine all right uh so let's take a break it's 831 we'll be back eight oh 832 we'll be back 842 and uh we'll go from there um sound all right everybody go we are we are behind now right okay one two three four five six all right so uh council's all back which is great uh all right so um we're gonna come back from our break here and uh so in terms of comments on the city manager review and contracts uh steven or you want to say something then we'll discuss uh going into executive session all right go ahead steve thank you for accommodating that request to do it afterwards um am i the only person commenting before you go into executive session go ahead make your comments steve okay so i don't know okay um i've probably got five minutes here but i it's well researched and it's thoroughly you a lot of it you've heard before but it's organized around this issue so in considering whether or not to renew the city manager's contract i believe it's important to review the historical record the manager's been employed for 26 28 nearly 30 years and it's not been all roses and chocolate cake the position is now costing us three 138 000 annual plus medical plus dental plus retirement plus travel subscriptions phone fully loaded in 2004 an overpayment to a contractor in the amount of 462 000 occurred on this city manager's watch wasn't discovered for a couple of years and then the funds weren't ever fully recovered but what's worse is the city manager in concert with the council at the time kept this loss a secret from the public for years and hiding it behind some lame rationale of potentially being better able to recover more of it that didn't happen but from the transparency point of view that incident alone was grounds to get rid of the city manager at that time and why he's unemployable elsewhere we're not a home per city mismanagers we simply can't afford it any longer we let's take some other examples the multimodal transit center the city paid three or four times too much for the car lot in its toxicity and yet it's still not finished there's still ADA doors that are not operable motors with wires hanging out locked phone charging the project's been abandoned and yet there's it's still not done we have storm drains along the path that are still blocked years after the building opened the building could have been should have been designed with showers and lockers to enable the folks that need it and it wasn't and there's no good reason for having not nor can the large buses turn around so that's just another example of a bungled project the connected paths for years for decades we've had a planning priority for walkability about our town and the connections of the paths are not to be interrupted in fact they're supposed to be enhanced and improved instead we ended up with the new multi-million dollar bridge with dangerous gaps in each end and poorly maintained bike path and no connection through to the Haney lot with the city leases and through that lot to the bike path which is a common thoroughfare for walkers including the elderly pushing and pulling grocery carts now up mud and ice slopes through the capital plaza lot at one point in the design through a public records i found out the planning showed there was a circular ramp to be attached to the rounded retaining wall to connect those three levels for handicapped accessibility and yet it was removed and apparently there are no public records indicating who removed it and why with what rationale or cost justification this is not the only example of public records disappearing recent requests for public records regarding the body camera proposal which included tasers which included evaluations those emails showing that taser and body cameras were loaned to the city that agreement has not been produced is a violation of public records law which are rampant under the city manager appeals to the head of the agency under law routinely go unanswered or incomplete the partial responses are not in compliance with the law which requires either certifying that the records don't exist or are exempt or production of the records i've brought this to your attention way too many times and you've swept it under the rug this city manager repeatedly flies in the face of that important transparency law and now it's worse he's corrupting our new police chief with the same behaviors he's in effect teaching brian that it's okay way to do business because that's the way bill does it the million dollars you're still trying to raise from the bond to pay off the million dollar debt for the parking garage it still hasn't been fully taken accountability the press has still lied to over that issue and y'all refuse to hire an attorney to get to who's telling the truth that's not rocket science on top of that the city manager was warned that the downtown core master plan should not proceed until the issue of whether the garage is going to be built that cost that plan cost us more than 200 000 and yet it was based on the assumption that the garage would be there i warned the council i warned the manager that it either should be put on hold or should be designed for both scenarios you proceeded with the assumed garage scenario and now we have a wasted and useless quarter million dollar core master plan that will have to be redone and yet it isn't even in the budget this year the transit center restrooms the city manager refuses to enforce the contract with green mountain transit requiring them to be kept open during the full business hours instead he prefers to cater to the transit to the tenant and only a dollar a year rather than take care of the folks who have no other place to use the bathroom the districtee we invested so much in the districtee system and now we're running an eight hundred thousand dollar deficit we had all the streets opened up and somebody failed i'll put it on the city manager failed to arrange to install empty conduits under the street to accommodate fiber optics to get to every building but to have the missed opportunity to put fiber optics under the streets is similarly to cut the conduits when fair when consolidated just cut many streets is a fireball offense in my informed opinion truck access we were tearing down the m&m redemption center assurances were made to parking for drawing board would be restored that year as would truck access to the rear they still have not and now years later the truck access through m&m to the abhishek's rear door is now creating an unsafe hazard where the trucks are blocking the travel lanes and it's only a matter of time till somebody gets hit injured or killed in that scenario these large trucks are arriving more than once a week and need to load safely for abhishek's instead we have them clogging up the traffic we were repaving somebody was repaving that alley and we couldn't arrange to put 20 more feet of pavement down spontaneously in order to make sure the forklift didn't tip and lose the load again i mean again these are all reasons we should not renew the city manager's contract also missing from the public records are the rights of public access to use the city garage i talked to an attorney who grew up in montpellier who lived here and moved away because of the mismanagement and the high cost of taxes and he recalls the city center being promised as a public garage and the bathrooms being available was in the paper recalled by many unfortunately the city manager can't find those records still refuses to say they don't exist and refuses to respond to an appeal to the head of the agency in compliance with law instead he would rather lie to the city council repeatedly and say he's he's he's complied with public records law the city not having an attorney is ill prepared the council is ill prepared to figure out who's telling the truth but i've watched this this manager lie to the council a dozen times at least and he gets away with it so also missing or public records regarding the state the city's decision not to be a public safety answering point now there's money available from the state and we need to revisit that issue and those records have been requested appealed and the manager will not confirm they don't exist because he knows he's likely to get caught in another lie i've repeatedly raised these issues the also missing is the cruiser cam video to catch a lying police officer in the act the valkour's report says the video exists and yet it's missing he's repeatedly lied to the council on whether he complied and whether or not the council has anyway i've already said that part the still fence i'll skip what's what's worse is in the long run the public trust and the extreme cost even if we were to bite the bullet and pay the contract severance the golden parachute that's built into the contract 150 maybe 200 000 to get rid of this city manager we'll still be paying for the deferred maintenance which has only gotten more and more costly during the decades of neglected mismanagement the infrastructure maintenance has been routinely neglected by this city manager while the infrastructure has been grossly neglected appraisals have been skewed in favor of the commercial property owners the multimillionaires the result being that the city has been saddling the unfair tax burden on the residential properties and their rental tenants where we are tens of millions of dollars in debt and we will be paying for this city manager's mismanagement for decades to come so it's time to begin this healing this recovery this rejuvenation of montelior by first finding a new city manager one that can be trusted to tell the truth and not sweep police shootings and mismanagement under the rug not to hide these misallocations of funds even in the millions of dollars the manager is charged with hiring and yet this little city that's so proud of itself has only employed one minority out of 300 employees how on earth does that happen so the city manager hires the lawyer that writes his contract and he approves payment to the lawyer who writes a contract that protects the benefits the city manager for the city manager more so than the people of montelior who pay the severance pay at minimum the decision on this critical and fraught decision because I realized we don't have the support of the votes here ought to be deferred until a subsequent special meeting specially convened an independent attorney should be hired to verify or debunk this short history and maybe strip some of the benefits out of the year at like 10 minutes right now and normally we um we just go to um so if you could try to wrap it up that would be great okay if the city manager chooses not to re-up the contract after modified by an independent attorney working for the city not the manager fine he doesn't get his golden parachute but certainly the golden parachute provisions should not be any new contract going forward and we should be making a plan to transition the new city manager with better integrity as soon as possible thank you thank you uh vicki go ahead um um trying to think of a tactful way of putting this um having sat through many of these accusations uh my mind kind of turns off after I hear the first word lie um it seems to me as the the civility people make mistakes um I tactfully I don't know how to put this other than to say that the continual vicious accusations without nest without um proof um don't make me feel sanguine about the views expressed um I'm not um um part of me is doing a slow boil and it's turning to a fast boil and I'm trying very hard not to um not to buy into some of the things that I've heard uh I'm just getting really tired of hearing continuous negative things without a whole lot of positive um suggestions about how things might be changed I honestly do not believe that the city manager the chief of police and god only knows who all else um the mayor the council and everybody else lies I do not believe that that is true um I my lie detector is pretty good and as far as that has contract thing that you know that that mistake I remember exactly when that happened and I remember sitting in the in the in the city manager's office and discussing it with him um and there were a lot of things going on at that time that that that were very serious uh personal things going on with the then um public works director and that contributed to that mistake happening to I I should probably shut up while I'm still at I just can't take it anymore well thank you vicki um and uh you know so I'll just say for for my part um I have found the city manager to be very ethical um and uh but um if there's no other comments I will have to say that I applaud each and every one of you when you sit through that and sit through some of the things that have been said and do it with composure because I don't think I could well thank you vicki um and we are um going to uh move on to a discussion about uh city oh yes uh bill go ahead I'm not going to respond to all of the things that were said I just for the record would note that um a few years ago the city council did in fact hired an attorney that worked for the council and not for the manager to review the contract and that um that was done and the contract that is currently in place is the same contract that was in place then so the the the contractual piece that was requested has happened um and many of the other issues have been reviewed and it's I beneath beneath me did go his level fair enough and uh jack go ahead at this point I think it's appropriate to make a motion pursuant to one vsa section 313 a 3 I move that we go into executive set session to consider the appointment appointment or evaluation of a public officer or employee and that we include the city manager in that uh executive session yeah second it um before we do that actually I know we've had a motion in second and I am feeling a little silly here um there was a suggestion that um because it I doubt that we're going to get to the point where we have a vote um at the end of the evening um and so one possibility is that we could go through uh council reports uh now so that uh the public uh or yeah so that's the substantial portion of um the meeting could be over um what do you what do you think about that team I suggest that that would allow work at a turn off and the the public zoom to turn off and um all of that okay um so uh what I guess I'd recommend that we do is you know pending um unless there's other suggestions as to how to handle this because there's been a motion in a second my suggestion would be that we just hang on to that we'll do our council reports and then we'll we'll have a vote um on that unless folks have other thoughts as to how to handle it um Jack and then Donna yeah I could move to lay my motion on the table okay or you can just say well your motion will take effect when the discussion gets done yeah that's I I think I think we're fine to go ahead and take uh take up the other matters before voting on the motion okay um all right so we are going to do uh council reports um first and uh oh yes uh David Delcourt go ahead yeah I appreciate that you doubt that you'll take any action but that doesn't sound like it's it's certain and if you're saying you won't take any action then you know feel free and turn off the zoom otherwise please leave it on thank you yeah fair enough um well about that um are we going to take any action I think it's kind of a question of like how far we get in the discussions this evening I I I would feel comfortable saying that we are not going to take any action um coming out of this uh other other thoughts uh with the anticipation that we might uh Donna go ahead I mean we could just commit ourselves not to yeah no matter what we come out with we can say that we're going to do it next meeting yeah that's fair um Jack how do you feel about that I saw you had a hand that's fine I was trying to remember what the how we've managed this in uh in previous years but I don't I don't have a problem with Donna's suggestion yeah okay um I'm just anticipating that we'll come out of executive session and then just adjourn um so we'll we'll just um commit that um to to you all and to ourselves um does that seem fair everybody just checking one more time okay all right so thank you for that question um so council uh reports I'm gonna go in the order as if we were in the horseshoe because I can't think about doing something different apparently um Donna as long as you're happy to go first okay I'm I'm fine and I'm just gonna say I want everybody to think about voting I want people to get absentee ballots and vote early it really helps the process and I do want them to support the land bond and I want them to look beyond the immediate and look out in the future that this is an opportunity we should say yes to it fits in our vision it fits in all our planning and please reach out for more information because it is there call me if you want to know more thank you oh yeah vote for me also that uh all right thank you Connor go ahead yeah I just want to like uh thank the DPW staff with all the uh snowfall over the weekend there I had a couple of constituents reach out and just say I was in a jam and you know these guys went above and beyond the call of duty and like you know help me someone elderly it's uh so just the outpouring of support I think they're always underappreciated but I think in a snowstorm you see it more than ever um similar thanks to uh MPD you know I think we had a pretty sensitive issue on Friday there on Berry Street and I really appreciate the way the department got out in front of it you know Jack and I went there for the virtual reality training chief Pete said hey look at the camera footage look at the camera footage and if we're wrong tell us we're wrong you know and you know I think that you know just speaks to the character of chief Pete there and the character of the department and what we like to see so thanks so much and uh yeah unopposed but um like I think I'm a bit better than Mickey Mouse for the uh council race thanks very much thank you all right Jay yeah I'll echo uh Donna and Connor and and the folks that they called out and um supporting the the land acquisition and and Connor's um feedback around around the chief and and DPW and so I appreciate that I won't I won't be redundant there I just will add in one one small piece of um cute public acknowledgement to the community effort around um maintaining outdoor recreation and cross-country skiing um for folks in our community um it's been it's been a pretty you know a new normal with lots of ups and downs with with uh temperatures and snow and we have a really dedicated group of folks who are out grooming trails um all voluntarily and that just creates this just just an incredible outdoor resource for folks in our community up on North Street uh at at the you know golf course um and in the parks um and it's it's all you know it's all grassroots community driven um and I just want to acknowledge all the folks who have played a part in making that happen to support not not just the communities but then also all the school programs um so I just think that it's important to acknowledge uh that those efforts that have been having that that that have happened by the thank you thank you uh Jennifer thank you um I have really just wanted to voice my support for the land acquisition um as somebody who's not a homeowner in Montpelier because there are no homes to buy that I can afford um the opportunity to build affordable housing would be phenomenal and it's a hot topic I know on front porch forum I'm reading the posts every day and um it's a really interesting conversation and I would encourage folks that maybe don't have the information that they need or want or that's accurate to reach out to your city council person um I know we all like talking about it and um I just think it would be a very smart move because there are no other places really to develop um around here and I have lived here for seven years the entire time that I have lived in Montpelier or in Vermont sorry has been here in Montpelier and I'm raising my children here and this is where my husband's from and we don't want to move I want to stay here and um yeah that's what I have to say on that and also I'm running for one more year so please vote for me thanks right thank you uh Jack thank you um yes a couple of things uh one uh I want to second what Connor said Connor and I went over on Friday afternoon uh to uh have a demonstration of the virtual reality training set up and it was any council members who haven't uh done it yet it's pretty amazing you really feel like you're right there in the space in which these events are happening and you have to react very quickly including when the guy with the weapon comes running at you and so so I think it's uh it's going to be a real uh real plus to the uh to the training of the police and again we were the chief invited us right into the room where they were watching the video of the interaction with the guy on Barry street um it looked to me like a a dangerous situation that uh police reacted to very quickly and appropriately and um as we've had a been placing a real value on transparency on getting information open to members of the public as soon as we can and it was practically in real time before I got to the police department at three o'clock I had already seen the chief's post so uh well done for getting the uh the information out because I think that that does nothing but enhances trust in in our institutions that the uh the other thing I think it's great it's very gratifying to see that there's a lot of discussion about the items on the ballot not not only the property property acquisition um I've heard from some constituents I still have one call that I need to make to get back to somebody I I think the uh the posts from the city manager have been uh thorough extremely informative and uh and extremely valuable I support the proposal and I hope our voters do and I will put out some some of my thoughts on the other items too but I don't think we need to do that tonight I think I'm set thank you great thank you Lauren thank you just two quick things and just echo a lot of what you've all already said um so won't belabor that um one thing I was thinking it might be good for the lobbying committee to get together with our lobbyist um so we could just check in and make sure that they have the information and context and whatever and see if there's any updates or information sharing that would be helpful to make the most of that so maybe next week or something oh my cat wants to say hi um and only other thing I wanted to note is I might be I might be out of town for the next meeting I'm gonna try to participate but just to get that um on your radar in case there's anything that you would need from me ahead of time and especially was thinking of that's Jay's last meeting um and maybe we could figure out a way to celebrate with Jay sometime um it looks like cases are going down maybe we could figure out a way to thank him for his service and it's been great working with you but hopefully we would do a next meeting but just in case wanted to say that and that's it for me thanks great uh uh okay so I'll just throw in real quick yeah go ahead I would I would absolutely appreciate that opportunity but just know I'm gonna be in in the desert in Arizona zooming in to our next to my last meeting so it's it's not going to be at the after the next meeting so let's let's we can look a little bit further down the road so fair enough summer summer thank you Lauren yeah um all right uh so I agree with everybody so I'm not going to repeat things that have already been said um but I will also add that um I just want to thank Cameron of this meeting um and navigating um bombers um thank you for doing that you are a rock star um yes uh and so yeah new experiences okay now that's a thing apparently and um we'll just need to be vigilant I guess about that and so yeah now we know um so that's one thing second thing is um I before the pandemic hit I don't know if anybody remembers this but I actually started I had been doing office hours um prior to the pandemic and then stopped due to COVID and so I'm actually going to be bringing back some virtual office hours um this uh so every Sunday in February at least we're going to try that so every Sunday uh 2 p.m if you're interested uh then email me and I will send you a link and I think that should help um uh with um uh preventing the you know the things that happened earlier today um so uh we'll see um but anyway so yeah email me if if if you're interested in participating happy to talk about anything related to the city um uh so yeah that is um upcoming uh and so on to see clerk so John go ahead just want to say that ballots are finally in so we've had the fair amount of people coming in today to vote come on out to vote um we're going to send out we've got about 200 early ballot requests so they should all be out by midday tomorrow so yeah come on and vote great uh and bill go ahead I don't think I have anything additional than what we've already covered okay um Jack go ahead yes just a question for the clerk given the fact that it's uh liquor license season and we passed some liquor licenses today do we need to get to the police department and sign them physically yeah that's a good point and the warrants too um they you know we were just filing the minutes under the previous emergency order uh but the emergency order is off so things need to get signed I mean I'll double check on this but that's my understanding so everything's waiting at the police department and boy is there a lot to sign prepare yourselves that's good to know thank you for that question I have to ask that mean we should bring snacks John I'm always up for snacks yes okay um all right so we have a pending um motion and a second regarding going into executive session uh that is going to include the city manager in these discussions uh about evaluation contract um any further discussion on this item okay all in favor please say aye aye opposed okay so uh and we will not be taking any action when we come back from executive session um so thank you everybody and I will um see many of you anyway in the executive session so for everyone else on the call this link will be closed council will be able to uh they'll be able to log back in but I will no longer be recording it and it will be closed for everyone else because they're not taking action we'll be on a different link though right uh yeah just to for others people's yes okay all right well um thanks everybody have a good night