 It's 5.33 p.m. and I will call to order the Board of Finance on April 26th. The first item on the agenda is the agenda and I would welcome a motion to accept it. So moved. Great. Thank you. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Pine and any discussion on the agenda? Any changes? Catherine, do we need any modifications? I don't believe so. Okay. So there's no discussion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? We have unanimously adopted an agenda and that moves us to the consent agenda, which is about the minutes from April 12th. We're ready for a motion on this item. Go ahead, Councillor Pine. I would just move the adoption of the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Excellent. Seconded. Would any? Councillor Layton, second it. Second. Thank you, Councillor Powell. Discussion? Motion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the public forum. Actually, we probably should reverse those for the future just to have you notice that before the public forum is supposed to be before the consent agenda. If anyone now has anything to say about the minutes from April 12th, we could reopen that item. But is there any member of the public who would like to speak to the board? I do not see. Oh, looks like someone has their hand raised. Jeff Neck. So I'm going to recognize Jeff Neck for public forum. Welcome, Jeff. Go ahead if you could. Can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. All right. A miracle. All right. Great. Well, thanks. I would have informed everybody I couldn't really figure out how to sign up early for speaking position here. But anyway, I'm calling you or talking to you about as chair of the church chief marketplace commission. And I really want to encourage the city council and the finance board to fully fund a law enforcement budget this coming year. As you know, we rely heavily on a law enforcement presence to really help us maintain a clean safe and fire fun environment downtown on church street in the surrounding blocks. And that has been a challenge lately. I'll remind everybody about 20 years ago, Burlington implemented us additional 1% gross receipts tax with the promise at that time from Mayor Clavel that we would see an increase in law enforcement presence, which we much needed back then. And we still need that today. And you know, we are the economic one of your biggest economic engine down here. And we really need help with a lot of just a tremendous amount of unruly and anti social illegal behavior that seems to be growing. And I'll just I'm on the street every day. I walk up and down the street, at least twice a day. And what we see and what we hear from everybody is public intoxication, public urination, drug dealing, fighting, sexual harassment of female pedestrians, graffiti, litter, blocking a sidewalk in the right away for pedestrians. A new one I see a lot of is speeding bicycles and skateboards up and down the street. We just installed last year 36 new signs that say please do not bike on the street. And yet, during lunch the other day, I witnessed 10 people biking and skateboarding at high speeds. One kid was jumping over over the rocks and not over the fire hydrant and nearly hit a baby stroller. So I have not figured out a way to stop this behavior without law enforcement presence on the street. So you really have to help us out here. We've got shoplifting problems. We had I just want you to understand that we need your help. And we really have to take this seriously. So thank you. Okay. Thank you, Jeff. I wasn't putting you off there. If there's more you wanted to say, I do just want you to know we are at the early stages of the budget process. There will be in the month of May for departmental budget meetings and numerous other public meetings where the budget will be being discussed between now and passage in late June. So thank you though for for weighing in tonight. I don't see anyone else signed up for public forum. But if you're an attendee and would just like to use the raise hand function, we can recognize you. And I don't see anyone raising their hand. Okay, very good. I'm going to now close the public forum. And we'll move to item 4.01, which is the approval for a contract with CLA for grants, management and fixed asset management. The floor is open. How would the board like to proceed? Councilor Paul. Thanks. Well, I mean, I have a question. Or if somebody wanted to make a motion, I'm happy to wait. Go ahead, while you kick off here with your question. Okay. So usually when we do these kinds of agreements, usually the amounts, although there are there are times where it's a not to exceed figure, usually the not to exceed figures are not round numbers. You know, they're based on an agreement for accounting services. They give us an estimate. We know how much it's approximately going to cost. We know how much work is going to be going to be, you know, going to be needed. We have a pretty good idea. Approximately how many hours are involved. And, you know, and based on that, we have an amount. I realize it's not like paving the street. You know, this is hours of time. But it seems as though that that number should be either there should be a range, you know, so that we know how much it's at least going to be as opposed to not to exceed. So I'm just curious to know about that. I don't know. You ever speak to that? Yes. I'd actually like to have Rich Freshback from Vacation respond to that as he was our lead negotiator with CLA. Thank you. Rich Goodwin here. Yes, I agree that typically when you put out a contract, you'd like to say it's going to be 87,325. This is a little bit more unique in the sense that there are three different initiatives that we are trying to resolve. All of them have been management letter recommendations or even findings. So again, the three areas that we don't know what the investment time will be to make this right. So we did it up to $100,000. If I was asked to put a bottom on that amount, I believe that it's going to be no less than $75,000. That's a large range. But one thing that we're looking to do is address the fact that we have not been able to meet our target dates for the audit. One example would be our fixed assets that is done by one individual for the entire city, which is substantial in nature. Another area that the Clerk Treasurer's Office has picked up is this logically due to I'd say high turnover rate within the CEDO department that grant management is now a responsibility Clerk Treasurer's Office and that took place approximately four months ago. And we're looking to streamline all of our grants. We're looking to centralize our grants and we're looking for an individual, a point person to manage that portion. The last piece which has been ongoing, but as there are challenges with different departments, the Clerk Treasurer's Office is responsible to resolve that. So we're looking at CEDO. There needs to be a deeper dive at its, you know, the structure of their accounts and the way they're doing reporting and how they're getting their expenses. So there's going to be three major projects that we're looking to move forward. And as we go through this process, we're going to uncover where there's opportunities for improvement. So again, that is why there's a significant range because there's going to be a lot of work from CLA and there's going to be recommendations. Thank you. So if I could just simply follow up, you know, on page three of the engagement letter, it says that they're estimating the amount of time to complete these projects is going to require 600 hours of work. And there are two categories, work that's performed by a senior and one that's performed by a principal. Even if you assume that all 600 of those hours are performed by a senior, we're talking about $81,000. And I think it's a little misleading to think that all of those hours will be performed by a senior. I guess that, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think this will be under $100,000. I think that we're probably walking into this thinking, thinking that, but it probably won't be because that's an estimate of 600 hours. And even if you assume that someone's off by 5%, we're talking about more than 100,000. And I think it's just behooves us to do, to be more conservative about our expenditures and just call it what it is because it probably is going to be more, there's, I don't think there's anyone that will complain if you say 125 and it comes in at 98,000. But I do think that it's not right for us to say 100 when we have probably a pretty good idea that it's not going to be. And I don't see how that is probably going to happen. Plus there's also additional expenses that are not included in that hourly rate. So please don't get me wrong. I think this is amazing that we're doing this work. I am not here to complain about doing the work. Nothing would make me happier than to see a management, to see those management findings, those audit findings go away in the next management letter. And I applaud you for doing this work. I just think that particularly as we enter a period of time where there's going to be lots of funds that are going to be under discussion and a lot of round numbers that are going to be used, that we should try our best to be as accurate as we can. And I would encourage us being conservative as opposed to possibly not being. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Further discussion of this item or do you have any additional reactions? The only thing that I would add is I mean my opinion is I really believe we can get through the scope in this exercise for under $100,000 that I do not believe that you know we'll be looking for CLA to be looking at fixed assets, grant management in CEDO by the end of this year. I'll make this note though that I think it's the possibility that I may be using CLA for our capital that we're still working through next year. That I don't have as large a confidence as I do in these three projects that we're looking to undertake. I am actually looking at this to be a one-time cost to make it right. And I'm going to do my very best to keep it under that $100,000. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I simply wanted to add, I know we need to move on, that while Rich indicated we may want to extend our agreement with CLA with project accounting in the future, I wanted to point out for the board that Rich has done an excellent job managing that contract. It is a larger contract but again it was one of those kind of shot in the dark over a couple of fiscal years with a large number. I can't remember exactly what it is now but he's worked hard with that organization to make sure that we land within budget. But I also want to say thank you Councillor Paul for your overall support of this initiative which I don't want to get lost in this conversation because ultimately you're trying to potentially give us more money for it. So thank you. Thank you. So thank you and you're absolutely right. Don't want this to detract from the value of what we're doing. With that said, I would make a motion to approve and recommend the council approve and authorize the Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Schaad to enter into an agreement for accounting services between the city and CLA not to exceed $100,000 between March 1, 2021 and March 30, 2022 subject to review by the city attorney's office. I would and just before somebody seconds that I assuming that those dates are correct and that you're doing this retroactive. Okay. So I would so move. Second. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Further discussion? Okay, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? And the motion carries unanimously. Welcome Councillor Jang. Did you want to be recorded on that voter or no? Just since you came right through. Yes. Okay. Great. We are on just the second item then after the public forum 4.02 obtaining standby approving obtaining standby letters of credit for the city's workers compensation program. Another clear treasure item. Do you want to give a quick summary of this, Rich or Catherine? Certainly. The standby letter of credit is a requirement of travelers. We've been doing this for I believe this is before the year. We've never used it, but we have to have it available and travelers will not renew our insurance to what's been signed. You know, the actual cost of such contract and that money at a fingertips that's been provided by a local bank. It's approximately $25,000. All of this is being paid by the insurance fund. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Rich. You're welcome. Do we, are we ready for a motion? Councillor Pine, go ahead. Thank you. It's our second. President Tracy seconds. Any discussion at 4.02? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. And thank you, Rich. That brings us to 4.03. Burlington Greenway rehabilitation. Maple Street, College Street realignment. Welcome. Sophie and Cindy and how the board would like to proceed on this one. Councillor Pine. I think I think I would benefit from hearing a just a quick overview and I think it's an exciting project that I think the public would like to hear about. Great. Cindy or Sophie, take it away. So the the the realignment basically are you asking for an update of where it's at or yes, okay. So this week we're waiting for the bids to come in for the third contract, which is between King Street and Maple Street for the construction of the bike path and the passenger rail. And the first contract between College and King Street has been awarded and our kickoff meeting is next week with a contractor. So the work should be proceeding soon but due to COVID there's been a lot of delays with materials but we don't have an update on how that will impact this project specifically but it is as far as we know moving forward within the time frame that we anticipated. And then the last portion which is the La Valley Lane realignment is in design currently concurrently with the design of the rail rail yard expansion and we'll be looking for I believe approval for an easement for the rail along Perkins Pier at some point in the near future on that section but we're not there yet but you can anticipate that in the coming meetings I believe. Does that answer your question? Great thanks Sophie. Go ahead Brian. And I would just add that the you know the fact that this is moving forward is just I think a really a moment that Burlingtonians are going to be really excited when people see it because our meetings that happen on Zoom don't necessarily reach the broader audience and people aren't aware and then they'll see it and I think this will be huge this is just such a this is a sea change for our waterfront for our bikeway so our bike path so great work staff thank you so much. If you go down there I mean I it's impressive to me how much work has already been done with the realignment it's looking pretty sharp down there in a lot of ways all right so hopefully another productive season ahead. President Tracy. Thanks Mayor and just echo Councilor Pines sentiments I'm really excited about this and taking yet another step it seems like there's just so many votes that we've got to take for just this little section as compared to all the other sections but appreciate that. One concern that I have heard from the public is just about the detour aspect and I didn't see that in the memo I don't know that it's necessarily something you would include in this kind of a memo because it's somewhat tangential but I do think it is important to just be clear with the public about how they're going to be able to safely get around this detour and access the beautiful new southern parts that are just just completed and then the northern parts and so is there a plan for a safe or protected detour way for folks to get through because that seems like a crucial aspect of this project. We've definitely heard a lot of feedback as well on that aspect because as you know people are getting out and about more currently in the section between College and King is already in detour and we are working collaboratively with DPW and CEDO as well in trying to identify the best solution for that detour in terms of both safety and considering the businesses along Battery Street that have already been impacted by COVID in terms of if we were to look at parking or encouraging cyclists to use a sidewalk either walking their bike or sharing that area with pedestrians which is probably not and and direction we'll be going into but we are definitely exploring all avenues and working with our engineers to also make sure that anything we land on is safe for everybody. Okay yeah I just would like to just encourage any sort of protection that you're able to put in there I just think that would be really meaningful especially to folks who may not ride as often as we know is kind of the case sometimes with the recreational uses of the bike path I think that added protection is really crucial there so anything you can do to bring that in even if it does mean sacrificing a little bit of parking I think is important just because I feel like safety has to be the primary goal here. I appreciate the comments we're definitely working on it. Great thank you thank you Sophie agreed President Tracy it's an important issue and I'm engaged on that as well. Are there are we ready for motion or further questions on this item? President Tracy. I can move it. I would move to approve and recommend that the city council approve and authorize the execution of a contract with uh Banas, Hangein and Brussels, Inc. BHB for a price not to exceed $50,760 for the Burlington Greenway Re-alignment Project plus a project contingency of $12,690 for a total of $63,450 and to authorize Cindy White director of Parks and Recreation to execute the amended contract and any related documents needed to carry out the project subject to the review of the city attorney's office. Second. Thank you Councilor Pine. Any further discussion? Great we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and now that brings us to the phase 3b south bike park rehabilitation resident engineer contract and um another Parks and Rec item. You want to do a quick summary Sophie of this one? Sure um so last summer as you know we um did reconstruction all the way south to the northern portion of Oakledge. This begins where that ended and basically um and ends the bike path rehabilitation in the south end at Austin Drive um so it's uh reconstructing that section. There's a bit of a realignment in there um to help with the grades that are more challenging to people who aren't um you know uh either have accessibility challenges or aren't super fit and um also includes a gateway at Austin Drive and reconfiguration at Flynn Avenue which um also includes beach access um at that kind of intersection where there'll be a ramp down to the beach as well as stairs leading down to the beach which will make it a lot easier from almost everybody to get um to Blanchard Beach and enjoy it um and we're hoping to start construction at the south end at Austin Drive so the beach access can remain open as long as possible during this post not yet post but getting there post COVID summer and then um finish the construction closer to the beach um towards the end of the summer or into the fall and those bids are out for the contractor um they went out on Friday so the RE that um we're um hoping to hire will will help us review those bids for constructability or the plans for constructability and review the bids with us for hiring the best contractor to negotiate both the project itself but also the public um that will still be using at least a portion of the park throughout the summer our hope is to at least isolate the work within sections so that we can allow people the most access to Oakwich. Councillor Paul. Thanks mayor um so that was actually going to be my my question Sophie as I was hoping that uh we could sort of like work backwards so to speak and do the beach do the beach area last uh doesn't exactly have a mob of people in the um by mid to by mid by mid October it's a little bit quieter there um and uh it's a great project um thanks so much for all of your work on this um I'm I'm happy to make a motion uh to take the recommended action as listed in board docs. Second. Great thank you Councillor Paul thank you Councillor Pine. Further discussion? Seeing none we'll go to all those in favour of motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and um this brings us to um we got through third of four parks items lease of concession space at Waterfront Park for 2021 season this um Councillor Pine. I would like to move to approve and recommend the City Council approve and authorize the execution of a lease agreement with sense of humor LLC to perform food and beverage sales at Waterfront Park for the 2021 season and to authorize Mayor Murrow Weinberger to execute the lease in any related documents subject to the review of the City Attorney's Office. I'll second. Seconded by Councillor Paul. Discussion? Present Tracy. Brian did you? Oh I was just going to actually preface it by saying that the um the important thing for folks to recognize this is a one-year lease and it's one year only because it's really to accommodate the construction season the activity that's happening uh in relation to both the bike path and the um and the rail track uh related to a rival of Amtrak and it's it's intended to be a a one-year only um agreement I just want to be clear we're not we're not commercializing Waterfront Park in a permanent way we are putting trying to accommodate the the needs um that arise from the projects that are happening so I just want to to preface this by uh by putting that out there I think it's important that folks know that this is not the beginning of more commercial operations in Waterfront Park it's really just a an accommodation for for the present year. Thank you Councillor Klein. Present Tracy. Yeah I just wanted to say that on that basis I'm willing to support this I don't think I do not see this as something that needs to be that should be an ongoing thing an ongoing issue I connected with folks who work um um who representatives of ECHO and they express concerns around sort of that idea of commercializing the Waterfront and the impacts that that would have on um existing folks and this is an existing business so it's kind of I don't necessarily see that as something that that is an impact there I think this is just acknowledging the impacts of construction but I don't see this as necessarily something that I would like to continue going forward and I think it's also important that um to recognize that we're just that this will be something that will um that they'll have to clean up after it's done and restore the site back to its original or its current um uh condition so I on those terms I'm okay with it um I hope that they're able to to be successful in this location for one final year and that Bob is able to to have a wonderful retirement after this. Thank you President Tracy go ahead Caspar. Thank you just for the benefit of the public um you know because it's a 21 page lease agreement it is on page two that the that all parties understand that the it commences on the effective date but it will and it specifically says will expire on October 24th 2021 or the running of the Burlington City marathon whichever is later um and I agree with you President Tracy I think Echo was certainly concerned um original drafts of this um were a little bit more open ended this one is very specific as to the term and uh you know we've worked hard to not commercialize the waterfront and certainly don't want to go in a different direction um and then just also wanted to acknowledge the not only the work that city staff has done but also I know that Councillor Pine was was there rooting for Bob the whole time and worked hard to make this happen so and for others as well thanks very much. Thank you Councillor Paul I would just echo it's certainly the administration's position that we're doing this as a one-year uh accommodation um given the disruption on the waterfront and it seems like the right thing to do for this year but it will not continue um uh beyond beyond this uh beyond this season so with that seems like we're all in agreement on that um is any other discussion we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and thank you to everyone who worked on that um and brings us to final parks item 4.06 authorized to authorize the amended grant of the easements to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and Preservation Trust of Vermont for the city's 311 North Avenue property um Cindy you want to do a short summary here um minor lot adjustments with this as far as the easements go originally the uh free before it came on there was a sense that the back end of the building would come down and so they had drawn the lines with that happening um but with the analysis of the building the condition and the opportunity the back end provides for us we decided we wanted to retain the back end of the building and so then the lines just had to be redrawn to include the build the back end of the building um is now part of that um outside the conservation easement but more part of the building easement great thank you Cindy floor is open for questions or motion Councillor Pynne Cindy the um I didn't actually see anything in there and it's probably just a little piece of history that is is being uh is is not necessarily front and center but that building obviously the historic portion is clearly historic the back portion was really added on as a dorm for the school that was called the Don Bosco school which was um attempt you know basically a school for uh young people who were um facing challenges in life at an early age and I'm just wondering if there's any um sort of historic mark or anything there that will recognize the history of that Brian that's interesting I hadn't heard that actually that history I thought it was built for the Burlington College that addition on the back so that's an interesting one um but so it's not part of the historic part of the building as far as where we have to follow from with the preservation trust of Vermont but you know if you wouldn't mind sharing that history you know offline if you can share that with me that's nothing I'd heard I'd heard it was built as an addition again part of the Burlington College um it'd be interesting to hear and just as a side note we have this really just wonderful architect Jay White who's working with us with that building on getting um kind of the next step score it's getting ready construction because we do have money from a private donor to help with the restoration of that building and he's really doing just a wonderful job of looking at the stone house and really bringing out the character of it as it was and then we look at it as the west wing is where for more community meeting spaces with a small sort of kitchenette and then still having our storage available downstairs so just really a wonderful way of looking at it so I'm really looking forward to hearing more about this you know additional history additional history for that building so thank you for sharing that yeah it's in my neighborhood and a lot of the people have been here a long time refer to it as the Don Bosco building so that's that's how I know the history of it that's great thank you thank you Councillor Pine are we ready for a motion so moved I would move to recommend the city council to authorize the mayor to execute and deliver the Vermont housing and conservation board and preservation trust of Vermont the amendments to the conservation and historic preservation easements to reflect the retention of the back end of the building known as the stone house and all other documents necessary to affect same informant substance subject to the review and approval of the city attorney's office great thank you Councillor Pine we have a second thank you Councillor Jang uh further discussion we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye other any opposed motion carries unanimously and great thank you very much yes thank you Cindy for all the work tonight and next up we have team DPW here for 4.07 North Avenue raised intersection project authorization award construction contract um it's been a little while since we talked about this uh keeping could you uh first remind folks what this is about for great happy to uh this is a upgrade of the north avenue berry and um Washington intersection and uh it's really elevating the intersection to provide increased safety for all modes and design it shift the crosswalk a little bit for safety as well overall this is coming from three financial sources which will also the recommendation comes out of the north Ave corridor study and ultimately this will enable this intersection to handle the additional traffic from Cambrian rise as well as this existing multimodal traffic so we're really excited to get this construction underway this season and public works engineer Olivia Dries is here to answer any questions presentation thanks for that it's exciting to see I think this may be one of the I don't know if we've have we use this this this type of traffic calming intervention before in the city or an entirely raised intersection I don't know yeah so this is similar to the raised intersections that were just installed on birch cliff parkway in locus okay um they are five inches rather than three inches so it will be a little more aggressive than the ones that you see over there um which we've reviewed that design with the fire department fire departments on board we vetted it through all the appropriate channels um we're very optimistic that um this treatment using a five inches rather than three inches will be be effective in in uh yielding traffic at that intersection okay and one of the issues we noted in the memo is just that there's a speed issue so I'm just wondering if there's going to be like a post intervention follow-up on that to ensure that it actually has worked yep so we'll continue to monitor the intersection after construction is complete um this was before my time with the city but there we did conduct counts of pedestrian crossing crossing volumes and driver yielding rates at this intersection during the north avenue corridor study and we'll continue to monitor that and and compare afterwards because there have also been quite a few requests for rfb's at this location um so while we don't believe those are necessarily warranted at this time we also don't want to over dilute north avenue with rfb's because when you start to use too many they can really start to lose their effectiveness so we'll continue to monitor if we continue to have some issues um then we will revisit and reconsider the addition of rfb's another thing to just highlight which Chapin already briefly mentioned is that we are relocating the crosswalk that's currently located to the north of very street to the south of very street and that's because the site distance from that northwest corner um is very poor there's a really busy utility pool that we is essentially unfeasible to move at this time i tried to talk with ded to get it moved and it's just not going to happen any time in the near future there's on street parking there's trees so um we make the engineering judgment call to move that crosswalk and i think that's really going to help with like the visibility and um slowing people down when they see that a pedestrian's waiting at that crosswalk because right right now i don't think we don't think that um they're even being seen until the last minute so that's causing a lot of the the issues um in the concerns there so that should happen as well no that's that's great that that's fantastic i appreciate that all that answer and i was going to ask about rfb's so i appreciate you including that as well that makes sense i mean is there other signage that could be included potentially so there will be um sorry i didn't try yes so there will be um of course signage um warning the for the tabled intersection again similar to what you see on birch cliff and locust right now um and then there will still be um advanced pedestrian crossing signage as well so in addition to the signage you're also going to have the speed table marking so those kind of um triangular arrow things leading up to the table so those will slow traffic down as well and just overall kind of you know alert drivers like hey there's something here slow down so nice that's great well thank you for that and for this project i think it's going to grow in importance is that charity's path that's going to lead down through cambion rise i think this could be that that connection will only grow in importance so i'm glad you're getting ahead of the things and that that that use by putting this this forward net at this time so thanks for all your work on that yeah cancer pine yeah i appreciate the um the thought that's going into it and those questions that president tracy asked were really part of my questions as well but the um the one that continues to be an issue for some of my constituents is getting out of of berry street um to uh to go northbound it's very challenging and um i did ask if dpw would consider um a convex mirror and those are a no no you can't do convex mirrors but there were several several residents who really want to see some increased visibility because um you know especially when you're at the intersection and you're looking to go north on north avenue and there's a bus at the bus shelter it's really difficult to navigate so i just want to highlight that i know there's no convex mirror coming down the pike here but i would just ask you to pay attention especially with the crosswalk moving a little closer to the bus shelter it might make the sight line for the pedestrian while the bus is there at the bus shelter a challenging scenario so i just want you to keep keep a close eye on that and and just really monitor that if you could yeah of course this is actually the first time i'm hearing about this um concern so maybe chape and has more to say we certainly well counselor pine i think to your point um we will be monitoring and the whole goal of making this intersection perform better is slowing the speeds north and south on those approaches so that the east and west movements out of those side streets can be done more safely thank you that's good news i'm hopeful too yeah i just um before we have a vote i just want to note for my colleagues i think it's public knowledge but my minority ownership of the building that abuts this intersection i don't think that that um has any significant impact on on my vote here but i do just want to disclose that um as a full disclosure i can answer pine i would just i would move to approve and recommend the city council authorize the director of public works to execute a construction contract with don weston excavating ink for $197,044 to complete the north ave raised intersection project and to further authorize the use of an additional $23,682 in contingent agency funds that's 12 percent for total construction budget of $220,726 all of which is included in the amended project budget and f y 21 budget subject to the review and approval of the city attorney's office counselor president tracy is that a second yes okay thank you um is there further uh discussion of item 4.07 seeing none we will go to vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye and are you opposed the motion carries unanimously and this brings us to 4.08 reorganization update to staffing structure reclassifications retitling creation elimination of positions for phase one b of administrative integration of the parking services integration plan bpw and hr item and we welcome jeff and lin to the discussion chape and jeff would uh when you like to uh tee this up i'd be happy to tee it up uh thank you mayor the parking and traffic division really is an entrepreneurial enterprise in the city it's special revenue fund really driving a lot of the economic activity and enabling the economic activity downtown the last couple years have been one of significant change for the division we brought in mobile payments we brought in credit card payments we have caught up on significant garage capital work we have used the funds to double the painting budget for a lot of the bike lanes and traffic calming work around the city uh it has helped fund the great streets uh project on st paul street and uh we have just set up a parking program for low wage restaurant and retail workers downtown to help in the recovery of downtown and most notably and last you've heard from us was around the transition of parking enforcement uh becoming part of dpw we're renaming it parking services and that really has been a uh transfer transformational opportunity for us to take this division and have it be more customer focused and to set ourselves up for even further reorg uh when we uh look at additional uh opportunities with the parking services team being part of dpw and the memo lays some of those out in the future this proposal 1b does not increase fte's it keeps two positions vacant that we've been managing without uh and then reclasses and reshuffles other positions i'm here to answer any questions as our assistant director jeff page as well as hr uh manager len reagan great thank you um thank you chavin um the floor is open how would the board like to proceed councillor fine but i just wanted to ask i did look at the material it is 59 pages so i want to make sure i didn't gloss over something but is there a cost description of the cost impact of these changes the reclasses sure the it's mentioned in there but briefly not in a chart so uh it is a cost neutral uh proposal in front of you uh these uh two positions that will be held vacant uh have been communicated to the union that our intent is uh very likely as part of the next phase is to eliminate those positions but in conversation with the union uh they had requested that we not eliminate at this phase so we have agreed to defer that and keep them open uh to allow greater flexibility in the next phase so it is across cost neutral proposition in front of you tonight uh jeff anything you want to add now i think that uh pretty much sums it up yeah it's important to note that the the reclassification but the increased cost of reclassifications are offset by those positions remaining frozen thank you okay are we ready um we're ready for how would the board like to proceed it's i know it's it is a uh a lot of moving parts here um i do see this i appreciate all the work that's gone into um bringing about this uh implementation of this uh change that we uh you know both the change that we um set ourselves towards a year ago in terms of consolidating these different functions but really the larger parking transformation um uh challenge we've been working on for years has reflected in this as well and i appreciate all the work that went into it uh council punch i do have one more question in it and it's maybe easy to answer but it because of our challenging times with this with your revenue source being so challenged during covet um this is a little counterintuitive to do right i mean this is like in many ways the worst time for the for this division financially to to be in this position but i think it's still the right thing to do but i just want to highlight that it if somebody were to look at and say wow you're financially just this operation has been challenged badly during covet it's a funny time to be doing this so i guess maybe you could just speak to that because that's just that's rather i think that's rather a cursory review of it i'd like you to to address that because a constituent did reach out to me and said with a department that's financially struggling um or a division that's struggled because of covet with revenue um what's what's up with that so right uh appreciate appreciate the question from a well read constituent and thank you uh counselor pie for making it through the 59 page packet um the reality is the moves here position is for success and and a successful next couple of years is what's going to get us out of our covet uh condition and uh you'll see here that uh we've had uh concerns from the public about uh the maintenance of our garages and the upkeep of our garages so we are shifting from an ambassador a night supervisor to a working foreman for our garages our garages need to be a welcoming sense of arrival for people coming downtown and sometimes they are not and we need to turn that around so these are steps that long term pay off financially this is a cost neutral move today and i'm confident that the moves and putting the right people in the right seats will pay off for us long term we've had a lot of transition to be honest in the division director position over the last five to six years and it is important that i have a leader in this position who can really uh put a steady hand on the tiller and keep this recovery going thank you so i hope the board liked like to appreciate on this um on the side there are further questions we're ready for motion council pine ready to recommend the city council approve the attached resolution thank you council pine is there a second seconded by council paul um further discussion okay um if there is none we will go to vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye and they're any opposed the motion carries unanimously and uh again thank you uh thank you too to lin uh thank you everyone involved in this and good luck with this important step um we now have 5.01 which is a city attorney's recent classification of the public records and information coordinator position from limited service to regular city attorney's office this experiment has proven itself to be quite valuable um we have eileen here to speak to eileen would you like to tee us up further sure uh sir the gaitana was hired in november um generally under the personnel policies after a year as a limited service position we're supposed to review the position because of covid and and and cutbacks etc we delayed a few months in doing that but this position serves in both my office and the ceo's office her job is partly as a public records coordinator working with the city attorneys on fielding public records requests and responding to them and partly working on overall records management at the city her doing that has been somewhat delayed over because of covid and the inability to get physically in and and and working with records but right now for example she's just spending a great deal of time reviewing everything that is up on the fourth floor of city hall and they are building new shelving up there and there's a lot of construction going on and she's been in charge working with that in addition our office has moved and she's been pulling records together and moving them there she's been responding to various departments about what records they should keep and when and how and there's a great deal more left on this uh records management projects uh citywide so we would like that sarah's been invaluable in the position and i believe kathryn also supports me in that we would like to make this position a regular position great counsel paul i'd like to make a motion to approve the reclassification of the public records and information coordinator limited service full-time non-union not exempt grade 15 to regular full-time non-union not exempt grade 15 thank you counsel paul seconded by counsel jang uh further discussion president tracy just wondering why this is a remains a non non bargaining unit position because in its role doing public records the position reviews a great deal of legal information it has access to all kinds of confidential information concerning employees if those things are being requested in public records and often is making decisions about whether to disclose or not we're not making the decision but assisting us in reviewing to make the decisions on whether things should be disclosed or not okay all right understood thank you counsel paul uh thank you um just wanted to also add it's i've made no secret of the fact that i am not a fan of limited service positions i'm always glad to see some a position that was limited service work out and that we don't wait um before before we take action to get that person as a regular employee so thank you very much for doing this and uh um for recognizing that and moving forward on it great thank you counsel paul further discussion being none um we will go to about all those in favor of motion please say aye all right are there any opposed and the motion carries unanimously and that ends the deliberative um that this last action we're expecting from the board tonight we do have an important presentation now um uh that represents a um the next of what i am expecting are many um and are we are planning are gonna be many conversations about um money over the coming coming months both um with the uh path with the need to pass a FY22 budget by the end of um june as well as as we discussed last time are our plan which we still welcome uh feedback on if uh if people do have any thoughts about the kind of preliminary process that we laid out in that memo a couple weeks ago um uh about the um american rescue plan dollars um the substantial majority of which we think um should be set through a more deliberative uh process that involves significant community engagement stakeholder engagement council and administration collaboration um uh that will happen separate and longer than the the budget process um and we had hoped we we had the initial memo we sent you had suggested that we would um uh have some kind of summary presentation on the budget for tonight um catherine and her team and and i and really the department have teams have been working hard on this um we think uh what we have proposed is that that's really not quite ready for tonight we think by next monday um a special uh budget uh session to just focused on that that is encrammed into the last half hour of a board finance meeting for that important kind of kickoff discussion of the budget um is what we are are proposing so most so that stay tuned for that next week we did want to carve out one thing we are prepared to talk about um and we have both Catherine and Cara here to lead this discussion um is um our uh and this is for discussion only we're not expecting any action tonight um uh but your your feedback and feedback of other counselors um i see several have joined us uh would be um helpful as we're preparing this proposal for you we um we while reserving 95 plus percent of the um our first funding discussion american rescue plan funding discussion for those later longer processes we do as we signaled back in february um i believe what last time we talked about this we are coming to the end of our non our emergency funding allocations so the million dollars that you funded the council funded right at the beginning of the emergency that helped us leverage i believe the total now is uh catherine hummy out with it but i believe was like another um two to three million additional uh dollars that we were able to to leverage ultimately from the various emergency programs of the state and the federal level um that total allocation of emergency dollars that we have put into everything from uh community masking efforts to covid testing uh uh expenses to ppne expenses for our fire fighters transporting covid patients and so many the dozens and dozens of other programs and activities we are um in february we told you we were down to our last about 80 thousand dollars of that money and there has been some additional investments since so we are approaching soon the time when we will no longer have these very uh flexible uh dollars um uh available to continue the level of uh constituent service customized response that thousands of burlingtonians have enjoyed over the last year continue the level of public health intervention that um uh continues you know to this past weekend where we are incurring expenses for these BIPOC clinics that have been held at the Episcopal Church the last uh i believe five weeks now um and um importantly a new area exciting new area optimistic new area of really being able to ensure that the reopening this summer of our downtown waterfront succeeds um we uh for these three major areas um if we're gonna be able to kind of uh mobilize and and act in this decisive way we are going to need additional uh approvals from the council soon and so that is what this discussion and presentation is geared at tonight is sort of kickoff of that conversation and with that um uh kara you're gonna take it from here yeah kara why don't you take it from here and i can lead uh the power point if you want or would you rather drive no sure yeah let's do it that way and as far as uh warming up i just want to make clear i didn't i want to really clarify if this wasn't clear the supporting materials that you will have to actually vote on this will be considerably more this is a summary power point for the discussion tonight each of these items um would have um uh detail behind it um particularly kara has a whole plan around the reactivation needs and i think our we have some real clarity about what the expenses will be um to continue the level of constituent service uh and engagement communication and all that would be in you know when we bring this back as a formal proposal this power point was intended to get the conversation started and give me a sense of how we were thinking about so sorry i'll stop cutting in kara go ahead no it's fine um good evening um as we have been um looking at how we're going to handle the economic recovery and this one time once in a lifetime perhaps um income of funds from the federal government um we were looking at what we might need immediately moving forward and we identified three main buckets which you can see here um the public health response which the mayor has addressed already and we have more details in following slides um community economic reactivation and responding to constantly responding to constituents needs that are still ongoing um so so for the public health response i've been working closely with brian pine to get some of the details on what he's going to need and to lead our health response moving forward we're still we're finding that the wastewater testing has been invaluable in being able to predict and react to the virus and how it is spreading in our community um food relief programs as we know there are still acute food needs in our community um we provide a lot of staffing support for the vaccination sites um we still need a high quality masks to be able to give to our residents and our employees and this enhanced communication sending out mailers making sure everyone understands for example which age group can now be vaccinated or what you can or can't do when you're vaccinated or if you can travel or not etc we're finding that taking the as you know the rc has taken out one page ads in seven days um and we've been translating all of our communications which has been an ongoing cost but um we have heard it's been really well received in the community i'll just go through these slides and then we can open for discussion um in terms of downtown and waterfront reactivation a lot of cities have been sort of looking as the mayor said to a more positive um future view um some of this is tightly related to mental health as well and depression in our community and trying to welcome everyone safely back to the streets we also know that um there have been hardships and loss of jobs um so i'm particularly happy about the first bullet point which is called equitable access to fun um some of the rough details around that would be perhaps working with local motion to provide free bike rental for community members that with their families want to take a ride and can't afford it or paddle board rentals on the lake um as well as other activation that allows us to create uh community small community events in different neighborhoods which would involve um booths or little parklets that would be mobile so we could create community events for neighborhoods throughout the city um public art the graffiti which as you all know there's a memo as well that um for council uh round graffiti and our um work with an interdepartmental city team for that um and i mentioned the placemaking kit are ready um again this ties back a little bit to the public health responses that i had mentioned we're finding that the rc has been invaluable um there is some thinking that this needs to be expanded and continued we do we may need to invest have one-time investments in things like software or special phone systems in order to track and um handle all the incoming requests from the public um and trying to figure out how to research and structure best practices around that we're feeling that this could be um sort of an invaluable addition to the structure of the city and how the city communicates with its constituents and then i think yes questions great Catherine do you want anything before we uh open up um i think Cara did a great job i would just say on constituent services um one of the other pieces we're thinking of is to be able to have those staff also trained on what are all of the programs available to constituents to be able to help connect them with all of the funding that we know is coming down the pipeline so um we envision that department or service having many different functions and one of them being a one-stop shop that the city's never really had and CT office has kind of been that but then also kind of the mayor's office and other places but also much more enhanced than that in that those customer service agents would also be providing like proactive hey you need a grant for this yes let us connect you with this kind of program other than that Cara i think it was everything we talked about i may add briefly to enhance what Catherine said is that we in the city were actively tracking the legislation coming down from the state that is still being formed as well as coming down from the federal government separately through grant programs that either the city could apply for or individuals could apply for being careful not to duplicate any services so we're not spending money in a redundant manner but rather again wanting to create and strengthen the RRC so we can connect our constituents whether they be businesses individuals families in need with all of these services that are coming down the pipeline great thank you Cara thank you Catherine um floor is open for questions and comments Councillor Pynne you just want to make sure um my name was mentioned earlier but it was really Brian Lowe who gets all the credit sometimes our names do get mixed up so much so that when he first arrived at the city we turned into be pine and be low for quite a few years we've been called below and be pine just to be clear i didn't i didn't have that expertise if i have it i would love to be able to use it but i don't have that skill that that you mentioned sorry about that yes and i was wondering why people called Brian be low but now i now have that history thank you two two brines on the same floor right next door to each other there so very good this is this is really promising and um i'm really excited about the what seems to be sort of cross departmental involvement and you're tapping into really the expertise of of folks across city departments which is to me um you know it was it was necessary at the beginning of our COVID response but it is increasingly clear that it's a it's not just necessary it's a it's an ideal way to to develop our capacity and to utilize people's best skills and and capabilities and i'm really excited by uh by what you're putting forward here thank you Councillor Pynne um Councillor Paul and then President Tracey thank you um um so uh you know it's it's interesting one of the um you know we never we we only created the rrc in response to COVID but the reality is that i think one we one thing that we have found out is that it's a pretty amazing program and we should probably be using it all the time um and certainly when people talk about what will return to norm what what returning to normal will be while this will be one of the advantages is that we have learned how important it is and how and and that it's not incredibly impossible um to do this it's there's a lot of work involved but by necessity it came to life and uh and here we are hopefully on the cusp of making it more permanent um the uh the only concern that i have and i i expressed this in an email unfortunately i didn't get to it until about five o'clock this afternoon so i'll forgive those of you who did not read it i sent it to the ceo to uh to car and to the mayor is that i just um you know i am i guess i just sort of have to say it that i do feel a little concern that you know 27 million dollars is more money than this city has ever seen probably i would imagine has ever seen in terms of a you know a windfall of of of funds that will come to us as one-time funds and there is going to be despite the fact that it's 27 million dollars there is going to be a lot of um discussion about how to spend that money and um and there's going to be a lot of very very worthy um ways to spend that money um the only concern that i have and i'm assuming that this is something that will be addressed um very soon is that um and i use just the example of the graffiti um is that you know when you look at the wonderful work in car thank you many many times over for all the work that you and so many have have done to put this together this is a difficult problem to solve and uh i think you've got a great plan on a lot of the things that you have in your communication are quantifiable um and some of them aren't but some of them are and i'm just concerned that you know when when you when you on the spread on the on the power point when you talk about you know what the items are on that we just not get that we that we do whatever we can to ground these projects in actual dollars and not just a million you know when you say a million it sounds doesn't sound like a lot when you're talking about 27 but it still is a lot of money and i think we need to hold ourselves accountable to how we're going to spend that those funds um because before we know it they will they will dwindle and i'm not saying we shouldn't spend them i'm just saying that we need to be i think very careful how we spend those money and that money and and that we are accountable to the community as to how that money is spent every step of the way so thank you and i'm assuming that will come in the very near future yes it it absolutely there will be considerable additional detail um in in in the proposal following this this discussion tonight um i do i think one area that we we will propose a number and and ask for it to be kept um fairly flexible is around public health needs just in that um i really think it's been a strength of the city response that the council granted the administration such flexibility with public health needs you know we we couldn't have envisioned we didn't envision um and when this started that we would be out there taking you know multiple wastewater samples every every week um we just didn't know that that's what the future held and i think we could still have some twists and turns and you know unexpected events here and and having some level of really flexible um uncommitted money that that we can move on quickly just i has had um an enormous impact uh over the last year and i i do think you know it is um again i i don't have the number i should have the number and maybe kathleen you can help me out here you know we are going from a the 2020 year in which there was something like four and a half million dollars of uh you add up all the state local and federal monies and i think it was over sorry i don't want to i think i just misstated whatever it was multiple millions of dollars um that we we aren't expecting any more help but that anything like that magnitude coming from those other levels and so having uh even though the public health need is definitely going to shrink having some um level of flexibility here i think would be of real value kathleen can you help me out here with my yes a stumbling over um it was included in the february ninth update to board of finance and it was four point five million dollars that includes the cdb g grant um if you take that out that's one point one million and of that we have 72 thousand left um that hasn't been spent or encumbered um and of course i'm going to keep 25 000 as a contingency just in case because there are costs that are still trickling in so that leaves us with uh about 47 000 left c council freeman's turned on her video as well if you want to get in here um happy to bring other counselors into this conversation as well uh president tracy so i had a couple questions thanks mayor um and thank you car for your presentation very much appreciate it and all your work on this um first question um is really having to do with collaboration with reib in particular and how um we know that bipoc folks have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and so how these efforts are are related to that ongoing collaboration with uh reib in centering the needs of bipoc community members thanks thanks actually for that question president tracy and i feel like i should have addressed that in the beginning so in the the group that's meeting to discuss these funds and the economic recovery is um not only taisha or director green but also um blaine and skylar her two staff members come to every meeting so that i have whereas other departments only send one representative we have the whole team there to make sure in addition she has created for the city a racial equity toolkit so before we engage in any sort of um policies or projects we are looking at them through this toolkit lens it's like a five-page almost questionnaire to make sure that anything that we are doing is targeted in the way we want it to be targeted um and so yes so i hope that answers your question okay thank you for that and then two other questions we're just having to do with you know recognizing that coming out of the pandemic some of the motel programs that have housed um community members experiencing houselessness and then also that um community members in many cases have struggled to keep up with rent payments as well as businesses um and so understanding how this recovery money can be leveraged to keep people in some form of stable housing um yes again that would relate to us actively tracking what's coming down from the state so that we don't create redundancies or overlapping programs there is a lot of rent relief and business relief funds that are coming down right now and i see the mayor unmuted himself i didn't know if he wants to um i was just going to add i mean it is our expectation that there is a big national story today just on the billions of rent relief money that has been appropriated by um congress in recent months that has not yet reached the ground certainly if we become the way we've been trying to approach this for some time president tracy is um that um there are these other levels of government that are have these huge pots of money that are aimed at addressing um housing insecurity um we want to be there if there's a part of the safety net that breaks down that we want to be there is like the funder of last resort to help um address polls in the in uh and gaps in these programs and we're we're watching that very carefully and certainly i would encourage um it's one of the uses of the rc if people are having housing issues that they're not getting the help from the other programs uh for um we want to be there to help and certainly when that reaches a point where there's enough clarity about how the other monies are going to be used that we can um create our own uh programs that address the Burlington needs that's certainly something that i would anticipate happening over you're up over this over the coming months um uh but so far we have not we have not been seeing big needs for that yet but we're if we encourage people to be in touch if they disagree or they see uh see needs okay yeah i think that the city can play a crucial role as kind of a a facilitator in that um and then um my final question really has to do with um just community input on the spending of these funds because i think that what we've seen has been just tremendous community creativity and involvement in creating systems kind of on the fly and oftentimes those effort the creativity um outpaces kind of the funding that folks have to make those efforts really um as big or as as um as they could be and so i'm just wondering if there are community members who are engaged in a variety of different relief efforts who have ideas but maybe that maybe not necessarily the funding on those ideas how folks can bring those forward because i think that that's that that feels important to me that the community should be able to really drive the spending um based on on on experiences that they're having maybe even you know the neighborhood or even block level yeah i'm happy to address that i know that um ceo shad had also put in a previous um memo to board of finance that we are planning on having extensive public input and engagement in town hall forum types of settings um and if i could back up to your second question again and follow up on what the mayor said um i feel like question one and question two that you post go or go closely together so as we're watching for example what's coming down from the state in housing or food relief or things of that sort um we are noticing for example that there's not um in our opinion a large enough carve out for for bi-pop communities that there's not a lot of specificity on that and so we're doing gap analysis on what's coming down with taisha and her team so that we can try and fill those gaps um sorry just time back one and two okay thank you cancer jane thank you mr mayor um and thank you also president tracy for that question about the community input i believe it it is key um and um to me from my perspective that's where we needed to start the conversation um and i'm glad that in front of us this is just a conversation that we are having but it would have been better um that we uh do it you know the different way instead of giving the people something to reflect on and just allow them the space to express what they would want to see and if what type of support they definitely need um that's one and i think the second element is about um the the homelessness issue you know um i think also another element that is really hurting burlingtonian is about childcare and i think we have a big opportunity here we see step 27 million dollars to really make an extensive a great step forward in solving this issue five hundred thousand dollars a year since um and i think it's an initiative from the mayor no other may have done it before but now how do we elaborate set with this money in building capacity in making sure that women's will go back to work after this pandemic and the city will be supporting um the vulnerable populations to access to high quality childcare and the opportunities here and i hope that the conversation is already starting at the administrative level that's two and i think the third element that i wanted to share is um the list everything that we have shared here from my perspective i think is most of them are already reinventing the wheels we have great wonderful organization in the city of burlington and chitindon county that are doing going above and beyond in supporting people with food in supporting people with many other um items that they need to leave with dignity during this coronavirus other than the testing um wastewater testing and the new initiative about recreational outdoor activities i think those two elements are key are important and we need to invest substantially to those two elements but the other one i am not really sure it seemed as if it is just what to carers point earlier uh we're waiting for the state the state is already doing that and doing it very well if it's not the state local organizations are doing it and also doing it very well but now the city we have to think outside of the box here we have an opportunity and i think to do it it will start by asking the people creating a system asking burlingtonians what do they really need and um to max trace this point and we need to start from the household to the neighborhood and then to the ward and maybe the district and and see what we can do for the burlingtonians up here thank you thank you councillor and i'm mindful that it is now seven o'clock um and um uh i think we're i should probably be turning over the zoom to present tracy quickly i saw councillor paul did you want to get in with one um yeah just wanted to just mention i mean i think everyone has made excellent points about what we need to do going forward i mean my understanding was that the the agenda item was really just for the immediate needs um and so um while all of the things that everyone has mentioned are extremely worthy conversations as well as getting as much community input as we possibly can the the issue before us or that will be before us after this discussion is really about the um the the three the the public health the reactivation and um and the uh the third one which now sort of escapes me which one what it is public health the community constituent service the rsc and right exactly so i'm hopeful that we can you know when we come back together that the conversation just from the point of view of not getting distracted too much to what is the immediate need is that we'll have a full plan as to you know how we move forward with these particular things and then it will be a discussion of um the remaining 26 million doll or yes the remaining 26 million so thanks very much that's all i wanted to say right thank you thank you councillor paul that's that's helpful um clarification and um also i think we will work to i i um here and i agree with the kind of urgency and the hunger to um define better how we're gonna um move through decisions with the the at least you know more than 95 of other funds that we've said uh at the beginning would be um addressing these other processes and um we we we are actively working to try to and we're looking very carefully at how other communities are doing it and we will have more as we come back with further detail on this proposal uh we will seek to you know um deepen that conversation expand that conversation as well so thank you this has been very helpful and um uh i will um now um if there's no objection adjourn the board of finance at 703 p.m and hand over the zoom to president tracy thank you mayor and welcome everyone to the regularly scheduled council meeting for um monday april 26th i will call that meeting to order at 703 p.m first item on the agenda um before we get into the agenda itself um is the pledge so let's do that okay so that brings us into item number one um which is a motion on our agenda i do not have our normal person and councilor who does that um councilor stromberg with us this evening so would someone be willing to please um make a motion on our agenda for this evening like a motion to approve the agenda okay um thank you for that councilor farlow i just want to um if you could just actually please read out the the motion that's on board docks um so um the entire motion that's right there with recommended action let me get there i'm sorry i'm not saying though the the recommended under recommended actions yep yeah so you just move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows and then read that entire um piece um just because um we want make sure that all um all that is known um to the public and okay i make a motion to amend slash adopt the agenda as follows no updated revised version of consent agenda item 4.15 emergency work in paved lead policy per cao shad note updated version for agenda item 5.06 creation of the burlington aging council councillor pines and carpenter pine and carpenter add councillor high tower as a co-sponsor per councillor pine also to remove from the agenda items 5.07 the resolution uh city councillor compensation uh councillors hansen and stromberg and jeng and 5.08 public financing of local elections uh per councillor stromberg per councillor stromberg per city council president tracy per councillor stromberg notes slides for agenda item 6.01 update on police transformation joint committee councillor high tower per councillor high tower thank you for that motion councillor barlow i believe that's your first motion on the city council so thank you for that nice work um do we have we have a motion from councillor barlow is there a second second and by councillor high tower any discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our agenda please say aye aye me opposed that carries unanimously um next item on the agenda is public forum but it is quite early for public forum um so i'm gonna skip over and we'll do some non-deliberative items as we don't um we try not to get to deliberative items well um before we've heard from the members of the public if you are a member of the public interested in speaking in public forum this evening you may sign up to do so um by going to burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum that will then take you to a forum that you fill out and submit um that i'll then use to identify you if you are calling in on a phone uh from a phone um if you could just uh indicate what that number is um just so that i can identify you um that's often helpful in that regard um and um we um certainly um uh all we um i'll be getting to folks in just a little bit um for public forum but we'll get to i'm gonna go skip over that item and go to climate emergency reports um did any councillor have a climate emergency report that they would like to offer this evening okay seeing none um i will go ahead and close that item and i'm gonna skip ahead um to um the past the consent agenda because that um uh and the deliberative agenda to um committee reports um i we had had a requested update um on the police transformation joint committee which councillor hightower has agreed to give and um there is some additional material it's a little bit more fulsome than um another normal committee reports in the sense that councillor hightower has prepared some slides as well for to share with us um councillor hightower do you feel like you're able to get into that now or would you like us to to wait um later on i know you may not have been expecting us to get into this right away i'm happy to do it now i'm having some trouble my computer is a little bit frozen so if folks want to just give general committee updates while you try to get up and running that'd be great wonderful thank you so much and really appreciate your flexibility on this um are there other committee updates um any committee chair is wishing to offer an update councillor uh hanson yeah the um transportation energy and utilities committee um we're having our first meeting with the new committee it's going to be i'll be chairing this committee and um councillor stromberg and barlow are going to be serving as well um where our first meeting is tomorrow night at five o'clock we're taking up three pretty big items um the i-89 corridor study um the water resources rate study um and consolidated collection and looking at a municipal option for collecting um waste and organics and and recycling um and then we'll also do some planning for for the committee longer term so should be a good meeting tomorrow at five via zoom that's well thank you councillor hanson other committee chairs wishing to offer a uh committee report okay not seeing any councillor hi tower you feel ready yet yes i do okay we'll go ahead and turn it over to you great and it's really just sharing the slides can you all see just a powerpoint deck great and that deck is also on the um on the city website on board docs for anyone who who wants to look at that um i'll just go over brief presentation and happy to take a few questions afterwards so just a reminder that the membership of the um joint committee is both the public safety committee and the police commission i'm the chair shereen heart is the vice chair um we have had a little bit of fluctuations with um member changes so we have three people who are past members two councillors and one commissioner um yeah and then jumping into the timeline so this is a little bit of review for some folks um but also maybe some new pieces of information the joint committee was created end of june with the racial justice for through criminal and economic justice i think the resolution was called which past end of june um the first meeting was in mid august and in two weeks we just or in that first meeting we decided to split the task of um an assessment into two different pieces the first of which would be a community facilitation and input piece and that that would be a separate request for proposals also known as an rfp and that we would have um a second rfp that would be focused just on assessing the police department and so we decided to start with the community input rfp and then follow with the bpd burlington police department rfp sorry i'm going to try to um say out all my acronyms but um we drafted the first rfp by the end of august um and then drafted the second rfp in september or we're working on drafting it the first rfp didn't get posted on the city website until about a month later in september um and then it was posted for a month we selected to lethag consults um for due diligence and met again four days later after one of our members had time to do that due diligence in terms of checking references um november 5th we approved the second rfp for posting and december 3rd we had a kickoff meeting with tulitha but we did not have a contract with them yet so it was very high level in terms of not getting them to do too much work before they have a contract um and i don't actually remember what that second part means but um um for on december 22nd oh sorry that's discussed equitable sharing is at least the second bullet um then the end of 2020 we had selected cna for due diligence so kind of over the course of 2020 we wrote two rfps posted the rfps um did due diligence um on the two organizations that we chose for the rfps um by january 15th we had a reference check-in for cna but we didn't get to all of the folks just because it was over the holidays so we decided to do another meeting 10 days later um we were hoping to have tulitha um come again but we still didn't have a contract for them but we did approve the second contract with cna at that point as a committee um had the tulitha kickoff february 1st so that was kind of their first formal engagement with the committee um and we continued to engage them throughout february um the end of february they had the first meeting with a few organizations that if you go back and look at there at the rfp there was an appendix the appendix g which had a bunch of organizations um that we invited committee members and others to have input on um and they had kind of that first two sessions with those groups and in february um then march 15th we kind of continued to discuss cna and who would be managing that contract and also tulitha continued to work um summarize some of those outputs and they had their first town hall we're now in april of 2021 um on april 8th cna did their first official kickoff with us so that was just earlier this month um and tulitha is going to have a second town hall tomorrow at 6 15 p.m which everyone is very welcome to and we hope that you join especially if you didn't make it to the first one or two of i think there were two npa meetings that tulitha's done and then just a quick pick into what's next um in early may tulitha will be doing a survey i think it'll be going out may 5th um next just in terms of what does all this actually mean in terms of dates so starting with tulitha because that's the first contract the scope of work asked that they identify the needs values and vision of the community of burlington on how to build a healthy and safe community and what institutions we need to reach that goal so again kind of with the understanding that they're really supposed to be getting community feedback they're supposed to help us understand the needs values and visions of the community so they designed some feedback mechanisms both in terms of workshops and then they're now working on designing the survey materials um to facilitate that community feedback so they've gone to they've had one town hall two npa meetings and then the second town hall will be tomorrow um and they had two meetings with organizational groups so they're supposed to record and report this they've already done one report up for the joint committee um that was kind of interim and we expect to kind of have a more full report of what the city would like to see um both based on that community conversation piece and individual surveys and then based on that they're supposed to draft as well a strategy for continuous community input into a methodical transition to public safety and so just a reminder of the dates we had the rp issued um a month later was the deadline a week later they were selected a month later the council approved the contract two months later the contract three months later two months later the contract was finalized where they are now is they're wrapping up kind of the the conversation based data collection and they've done an initial report out and then the final thing that they'll do is the final kind of conversation based data collection tomorrow with the final town hall and then there will be an individual survey that'll go out and they will have their final report in a month in about a month late may or early June switching to cna um is a larger contract the scope of work is mostly revolving around and this is pulled from the scope of work a roadmap that supports a methodical transition to a new innovative public safety apparatus that delivers valued community services another way of saying it later in rp was examining and reevaluating public safety needs in burlington and reassessing the role of bpd and promoting public safety and so they're supposed to help us address the key question of how does the community desire compare with the status quo of who what where and how the burlington police department is providing public safety services they're supposed to reevaluate the public safety needs in burlington and reassess the role of bpd and the report back and this i want to make sure on just because i think this is where there's some confusion around what the assessment will do and what the outcome will be the final report is supposed to provide a recommended menu of city services to add or enhance or to reduce or remove an analysis of the benefits and barriers to policing alternatives and a framework for decision making on the menu of services and options for delivery within and outside of the police department so it's really supposed to help make help the community create can make a decision so it's supposed to provide some options and a menu more than come back with any this is the one true way of doing public safety in burlington and a reminder of that timeline rp was issued in november had a deadline one month later selection was made one month later the council approved it fairly quickly in february the contract wasn't finalized then until late march or early april i'm not 100 percent sure and then they're currently in data collection so they're both asking the burlington police department for data directly and they're also doing focus group and individual interviews and their final report will be done in summer i'm not sure of the exact date um but i know that it'll be in summer and that's kind of all i have just an fyi there's a few other things we've talked about which was the review of the bpd oversight model that was discussed late fall and early this year and then of course the equitable sharing program which we've tabled to some extent just to make sure that these contracts are getting there therefore therefore needs addressed by the committee wonderful thank you so much for that report counselor high tower it's not our normal practice to allow questions during committee reports but because that was a more substantive and kind of intensive update i will allow any just a few questions from counselors i don't want to get into an extensive back and forth with counselor high tower i think that the best place for that would be to engage directly with the joint committee and i know in communicating with counselor high tower in advance of this meeting that that she and others would welcome that participation from other counselors but do want to just offer folks to ask questions if they have them at this point because there was quite a bit there council high tower yeah one quick point is just that the next joint committee meeting is this thursday of 5 30 awesome thank you for that so i mean we can go i can go to public form and then come back if there's quite a few questions but any counselors who would like to ask any questions about anything that was presented here counselor carpenter just a quick at the very end you mentioned and i was unclear that the joint committee was going to review the police oversight model and the equity sharing or cna and you tabled it can you just re-explain that to me yeah so that was sorry this whole presentation to some extent was looking back at what we had been so we had we did have a conversation about the oversight model and i just wanted to put that in there and then we started to talk about equitable sharing program and both chief mirad and vice chair commissioner heart had some conversations with some of the federal agencies just in terms of trying to get information from that and we haven't really gotten enough yet to feel like we can make a decision so but it was getting to be a lot of work to try to collect the information so we decided to table that item as a whole so we have not it is supposed it is kind of in the committee's to-do list thank you councillor carpenter councillor jane um this is more of a comment just to say thank you so much for allowing this presentation president tracy and also councillor hardtower for doing such a great job simple and that's all we needed i believe thank you keep on doing your good work yes thank you very much that was excellent councillor high tower um and thank you for the request as well ali that was that was helpful as well other councillors have any questions on this council shannon go ahead thank you president tracy and thank you councillor high tower for a very clear presentation which i had the benefit of at the npa meeting um i i have a concern about a couple things and wondered if you can kind of first explain how talitha is assuring that they get a broad spectrum of community input um through through the processes that they're undertaking um secondly and i know you don't want to go back and forth so i'm going to kind of lay it all out there and then you can respond as you like councillor high tower if that's okay um second uh my understanding is that talitha did go to two npa's but then didn't go to others so how is that and and i did ask you this at the ward five npa but i'm still not really clear how um they're collecting information from some npa's but not others i think there was an expect expectation at ward five that they were going to come but then they did not so how are we making sure that there is equal input from across the city and across kind of stakeholders and then third there were um there were two stakeholder meetings and apparently the city council was represented at a stakeholder meeting and i'm wondering how the city council was represented and how the stakeholders were selected because the stakeholders all seem to be they they seem to all be nonprofits without having any other stakeholders so who determined who the stakeholders were and why were some included um in some cases twice and others not included or was it somehow self-selected so that's that's all i have thank you thank you councillor shannon councillor high tower did you catch all those and are you yes okay i'm happy to i won't be the right person to address all of those necessarily so some of those i would defer to aria b who's managing the contract um but i'll and i'll answer all of them to some extent so for equal input i had originally recommended that um to leave the consultants goes to each of the npa's um and they got they got i want to say an hour hour and 15 minutes of the ward one ward one joint npa um i know that they visit another npa and it's escaping me which one it was and if it was one or two words that were represented and then um just in like aria b and to let the consultants together decided that it was getting too difficult to get enough time on the npa schedules to really have a dialogue um so that was replaced with the town hall which is open to all npa's um yeah so that was just it was just the fact that npa's already had full schedules and it was hard to even get into it for the next five or six weeks um and i wasn't i wasn't part of that decision-making i was informed of that decision so i i asked um skyler and tayisha if you want to know more about that the stakeholder meeting so this was approved by the council that was part of the rfp was the list of stakeholders to consult um initially as part of the group and we reached out to all of the stakeholders that were in the um appendix g i'm not sure that all of not all of them responded um so it's not represented that not everyone in appendix g joined but um so that was an open document that was i was that we asked for recommendations and feedback on i think before it was finalized um and then i just forgot your third question i think i wrote two of them down so shannon did you yeah that's a good what is my third question um the stakeholder group the npa's broadly how are um how is talitha assuring that they're getting broad stakeholder input the um one town hall meeting that i went to did not look like it was at all broad a broad view of um of interest represented at that meeting so how is it being assured that we're hearing from all different communities in burlington yeah that's a good question thank you for that um yeah the last town hall meeting and part of the reason that we're having a second one there wasn't a lot of time between the announcement and when the event actually happened um just the planning had started being slower and so um so just to answer for the town hall specifically we're doing a second one now which had a lot more leeway it's been on this city calendar for i think almost two weeks so hoping to have much broader much broader representation there and then there's also been and again i would turn to skylar because this is discussions that we hadn't joined committee and then of course like skylar and talitha ultimately made the decisions about how to implement this we both had conversations about um having separate focus groups which i think happened or are happening with um different communities especially where there might be languages language barriers to participating in the town halls um so having like a separate like nepalese group meeting and a separate Somali group meeting um and i think that those are happening um and then of course just one having the town halls be more broadly marketed in different places so not just from porch forum but having more of a social media strategy and so on we've also just gone to specific groups and tried to invite them like uvm the burlington business association um and other folks that i heard there was a gap of in the first meeting um which i didn't represent or which i didn't attend great thank you for that counselor hi tower i'll go to counselor freeman and then i got you counselor paul as well um i'll go to counselor freeman let's get your questions out and answered and then um counselor paul come back to you after public forum and we can continue questions if folks have them go ahead counsel thank you i just wanted to clarify really quickly counselor shannon's question about the stakeholder meetings um in regards to the council participating um and and or the police commission what was what happened is that anyone on the joint committee was sort of allowed to be at the stakeholder meeting her like talitha's um you know sort of work with the joint committee it was myself i was there um and the police commissioner was there i didn't i was in no way like representing the council and i actually didn't even participate in it because i felt like um it was a meeting um to hear from the stakeholders who were participating and that it wasn't um a place for um any input that i like would want to give into the the process that that wasn't the right space for that so i did go um i have been to the town hall meetings i did participate in one town hall meeting but i you know i really to me a lot this process of this point is really hearing from the broader community and i feel like um at least in my role as a counselor that i've had a lot of ability to to create input on this conversation so far so that was really the only meeting that i've um that i that i spoke at and participated in but that the meeting with the stakeholders um there was no like uh just to clarify there wasn't it wasn't like i participated or perv participated on behalf of the council or or anything like that and i think i just happened to be it happened to fit into my schedule and that's why i ended up going um and why one other commissioner there was one other commissioner there as well thank you so much for that clarification councillor freeman councillor paul come to you after public forum i do want to get to our public forum commenters because it is 731 so we'll transition to that we don't have a ton of uh folks in the queue for this meeting so i will allow for um for three minutes for folks um as we as is our practice we do um prioritize burlington residents so folks who have indicated that they do live in burlington will be prioritized within this um if you are interested in signing up um you may do so by going to burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum it's burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum um and then if we could just um please get the um get the timer up awesome and i'll read off our first couple of speakers um and then get them identified so i have cameron seagull to be or seagull to be followed by david and shine abby german al denis resaire long carol hinson uh genie keller um lila fortune off and dan um so let me um locate cameron seagull or seagull cameron i've located you and have enabled your microphone max can you hear me yes i can go ahead so i uh i was planning on uh i spoke with jordan earlier speaking around eight o'clock when the agenda item is there for the council on aging um but i'm happy to speak now um so i just wanted to put that out there um so i okay thank you for that clarification um so you are going to actually you i okay you were speaking to that resolution okay i'm sorry i didn't didn't understand that um i understand that you have a professional role is that correct with with um that that intersects with that resolution yes with the resolution and so i wanted to make sure i had an opportunity to speak but jordan reached out earlier today uh invited me to speak around eight o'clock or whenever the uh whenever we reached that part of the agenda okay all right thank you hold that out if that's cool for now okay thank you yeah i can come to you then for for that point um given that you did have involvement with that um that resolution and that invitation was extended so um i will come back i can come back to you um and i will go to david um shine machine i'm sorry if i mispronounced your last name um you should be able to speak i'm here can you hear me yes i can go ahead okay um i wanted to talk to i i noticed that there was a resolution or not a resolution but there was some communication from brian and max and some others about the really tragic sad thing that's happened to north end studios in terms of the allegations of abuse and i don't want to talk about those that though it's a very sad thing for the community that that's occurring and i hope it gets a resolution that brings justice to everybody but we're facing the loss of these amazing community spaces that north end studio you know ran and the everybody depended on them to create community space and space for artists and solstice studios and offcenter was in their building and so and a lot of you know the north end studio all the different new american groups were part of that and the chinese dance group and i'm really scared about what's going to happen to those spaces and that the burlington is not paying attention to preserving small community spaces and small spaces for artists i mean off center got booted out by hinsdale you know for an axe throwing bar and and you know this is a very valuable artistic cultural enterprise that we were part of we i think we found another space which is great but these spaces are in jeopardy and i don't know if it's parks and recs burlington city arts is mostly concerned with visual arts for performing in music there's not a lot for us from bca right now and i'd like to get a conversation going with parks and rec bca and burlington development what plan is there to perverse to preserve small spaces that north end studios was running and preserving and now that they are in you know in deep trouble as they maybe should be you know i'm not defending anybody there but the loss of the spaces and that kind of management is very important to the young artist and the and the new artist and and kind of old fogies like me too and you know lois tromblade she fought for the swan dojo and raised money but that almost went under and people like us who have these studios and teach these classes we're in jeopardy now north end studios took a huge load you know in their new north avenue space and their wanoski space and at the space at 294 when north wanoski that's now getting totally privatized and you know we got to be out of there because hence still you know so i'm just concerned about this i want to start the conversation i've got a letter in seven days about it and i'd love for you guys to talk about it also and see what um how the conversation can get furthered about this loss of community space i'm done thank you our next speaker will be abby german to be followed by al denis abby i've located you and have enabled your microphone hi thank you so much um to the council um my name is abby german my pronouns are they them um i am an employee of the daytime warming center which just recently closed down and um i'm planning on speaking later at the public hearing for funding the housing projects i believe it's agenda item like five or six something um so you'll hear a little bit more from me then um but one thing i wanted to bring up now um was i am on the police review committee for the city of montpellier and something that we have been practicing when we have public forums is to open our city hall so that people who don't have um wi-fi internet or phone access um it's all socially distanced of course but they can like physically show up to the meeting and have their voice heard and so for some of these agenda items i think will be affecting stakeholders who maybe don't have access to things like wi-fi or a phone or internet or computers so i was wondering if that would be possible or feasible for that um to become a regular practice for this council as well um and then just one question would be like an approximate time of when you think the public hearing for um funding housing projects is going to be thank you so much and i look forward to speaking further with you all so i don't usually go back and forth in terms of questions um but i i'm not exactly sure as to when we're going to get to that item um there's a lot in flux with the agenda so i'm not exactly sure when we'll be getting to that item but if folks are interested in commenting on the the cdb g fund um allocation recommendation there is a public hearing where you're able to speak specifically to those recommendations later in the meeting and then there is that we're not adopting those tonight there's another yet another meeting that we have um in on may 10th where those the final where those recommendations will be finalized or accepted so that's just a brief explanation there and i we can have staff um further clarify um as we get to that item um i was not able to locate al denis um but um i did find uh rosair long or lounge um and i will enable your microphone go right ahead thank you president tracy um as i indicated on a form i do not need to speak at this point i just want to be sure that i i could be available to if i needed to answer any questions having to do with 5.10 and 5.11 um the rl boundary at 925 north avenue so when you get to that if i could be present in case there is a question sure yeah no and i appreciate you um just raising that i just uh and we can certainly if there is a question um that we're not able to to get an answer to we can i appreciate you letting us know that you're available if you've been involved with that item um i will um in that case move on to our next speaker um who is carole hinson to be followed by gene keller uh lila fortune off dan and then dan cunningham carole i've located you and have enabled your microphone can you hear me yes i can go ahead okay great i i come to you folks today first of all thank you very much for serving our city as a i'm a very disgruntled resident uh right now this reappraisal has been so unfair and i mean i know since covid it's tough for every one of us um it's horrible to get a phone call back from anybody at city hall there are a few people i would like to say that have been wonderful all the women at dpw are great getting back philoline at city hall but and sarah carpenter i can't say enough about you for helping me when i came to you with our reappraisal where i live at star farm beach there's 34 camps and we went up from 300 to 1100 percent we don't have any idea why we don't have any methodology um and that's very frustrating and sarah got right on it for me and really helped me and so i really want to recognize her and also uh president tracy today for speaking with me i appreciate that um i want you to know i have sent many messages to john vickery john and i have very bad history we had a spot appraisal that was completely full of as the city board of assessors said non truce and we had to fight that um there have been a couple other things i won't get into but i left many messages from back when he was coming to our neighborhood planning commission meeting and i could not go never heard from him all through this reappraisal i call i call nothing and my um husband finally sent a message tomorrow the other day i had four messages tomorrow and finally uh jordan got back to me she was very very nice i've never heard from vickery until last friday when he sent an email to me telling me one of the grievances i was doing for an elderly couple was changed now per jordan it was a group email he's using his own personal email and you folks need to know that and then he tells us we cannot respond to it so it wasn't just a grouping mail because he also sent one to my husband which was completely different and bill did write to morrow's office we have not heard anything so today my husband decides to call vickery kenneth in the office was very nice and sent vickery a message vickery called him back and bam a man calls he gets a call back and he has a meeting with vickery on friday but i just want you folks to know how frustrating it is to be a resident here to pay taxes for years and years and to be treated the way that i am treated by john vickery it is not fair it's not fair to any woman and the appraisal is a mess and i think it should be extended for at least 30 days for us to work out all these issues and thank you very much max dracy for listening to me you our next speaker is gene keller or keller gene i've enabled your microphone i just unmuted so thank you very much and thank you to the counselors who responded to the email that i sent out today with a copy of the letter that three of us sent to john vickery i posted it on our front porch forum and in two hours i have 30 signatures on a petition we'll be circulating this to other front porch forums to get other citizens to respond and sign on to this letter but very much the same story that carol was just talking about we've been getting different answers to the same questions from different people in the office we've been getting incredibly vague answers some of the answers that we get are rather disturbing for example my friend barbara crook who lives on de forest asked what is the time what is the date certain that you are using for the date of the valuations and the answer given was oh it's rolling you know it depends on when we do it and so my friend said so if you finalize somebody in january of 2020 that would you might finalize somebody else in january of 2021 and she said yes and we all know what has happened in that intervening year which means that baked into all of this is just an unfairness because of what we've all been going through and what's happening to property values and the great volatility also you know we've I want to explain why it's taken us so long to reach out about this because we've been trying to make sense of this on our own we've done you know we've divided up ward one and we've done spreadsheets where we went into the assessor's office and got information and we're doing comparative things and we've been like noodling for days on is there a pattern can you can you find a pattern can you see what the fixed variables are versus the variables that aren't fixed and what might this mean and can you know is this replicable and I think that's the issue this boils down to if another group of people came in and tried to replicate the appraisals we got I dare you I dare you to replicate what's been given because there is apparently no pattern no formula no transparency different answers to the same questions and which I just you know I would close with this before the school board budget is voted on we have meetings all around the city where we talk about what the basis of it is where we understand we know what's happening why hasn't that been done with such a major reappraisal thank you very much for listening thank you next speaker will be lila fortune off to be followed by dan dan cunningham fickle or fickyle and kelly divine so lila I have located you and I'm enabling your microphone hi everyone I'm lila my pronouns are she her I live in ward three um I also would like to speak at the public hearing for agenda item 5.09 but I do want to make a few comments about other agenda items right now so I wanted to address agenda item 5.05 which I recognize which is the communication about the graffiti removal effort I recognize that it is a communication and I'm not exactly sure what it means but it seems like it's already been decided and it's just needs to get the go ahead but I I still want to comment I first want to say that the way that the communication is written just is sort of a classic dog whistle and tiptoeing around talking about race there's words like social commentary like graffiti is a social commentary and it's part of a vibrant community and those are just code words for you know talking about race without actually out actually talking about race and I just feel like the communication can be more straightforward and you know it's really important to acknowledge that graffiti originated as a practice by black people and regardless of who the artists are of the graffiti in Burlington there is a history of graffiti being under is undesirable because it's directly tied to anti-black racism it's not surprising that the city wants to prioritize getting rid of the graffiti because it's going to look nicer for tourists but I just am disappointed that the city is considering spending money and I would love to know how much money is going to be spent on this when there's still only one public bathroom that's available 24-7 in the city of Burlington I just think there's a lot of other things that the city could spend our money our taxpayers money on rather than trying to get rid of graffiti which is just going to continually be a problem like people are just going to keep painting um so I'm just confused about why the city thinks that this is a good thing to spend money on you know putting reparate putting that money towards reparations for Black Vermonters that that could be a good thing to do I just I'm curious about what our priorities are in terms of the graffiti so I'll end it there thank you thank you our next speaker will be Dan to be followed by Dan Cunningham Dan I believe I've located you they've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes okay so just quickly I want to say I also think that the city should not prioritize removing graffiti I kind of like the graffiti if it goes away my rent's probably going to go up again but that's not what my whole comment is about I recently learned about this organization called the National Coalition for Civil Right to Counsel and this organization advocates for if you're familiar on the criminal level you have a constitutional right to counsel if you can't afford a lawyer one will be provided to you but that's not true for certain civil cases unless another ruling on the statewide level is in place there so in Vermont for example there is no right to civil counsel for domestic violence disputes for any kind of housing disputes such as discrimination evictions or just general housing issues for healthcare access employment discrimination things like that specifically I think the relevance of this today is that we're approaching the end of a federal and a statewide eviction moratorium and throughout this moratorium quite a large number of illegal evictions have been going on and part of the reason why those evictions are often successful is because low income and working class tenants can't afford or don't know how to get counsel so I think that when these moratoriums end in the absence of specific and targeted assistance to tenants we're likely to see displacement of people from their homes on levels that we have not seen in the recent past if if ever in the recent history of this country and I think that's going to be a really big problem I hope that there's something that the city council can do around guaranteeing tenants in Burlington a right to counsel in housing cases I think that this would greatly stem or greatly reduce the number of illegal evictions that are going on during the moratorium as well as give tenants more protections when the moratorium ends and I think that this would be I think this ought to be something that has bipartisan support and I think it would be something that everybody could hopefully get behind to stem the tide of evictions that I think is likely to come as this moratorium ends so I would appreciate it if city counselors would look into that I'm also going to try to raise this issue at the statewide level I'm not exactly sure admittedly what the city council can or can't do about this in terms of passing resolutions or anything like that and I also think beyond landlord tenant cases there are a number of other civil cases such as domestic violence cases and like employment discrimination or benefit claimant cases where this could also be something worth looking into so I just wanted to bring that to the attention of the council and hopefully you'll be willing to do something about it. Thanks. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Dan Cunningham to be followed by Kelly Devine. Dan I've been able to your microphone. Hi folks I just wanted to speak for a moment about the graffiti vandalism outbreak in Burlington. Graffiti is not art when it's done on other people's property it's a crime it's damaging property and it's costing individuals and business owners significant time and money graffiti is harming our historic buildings and there's a lot of data that shows that it leads to crime increases there's good evidence from New York City from the 1980s that when they cleaned up the graffiti and prosecuted the vandals they made a much safer city for all residents. I've personally heard many people make commentary that quote Burlington looks like a dump and they have never seen the city so bad so I just want to weigh in I think the prior two speakers were completely wrong regarding graffiti and race this is something that actually helps all races will help our economy and frankly is the law I don't think it's not for example the graffiti on the mailboxes is a violation of federal law but it's also local ordinance I'm very concerned that Sarah George is failing to prosecute even rock solid graffiti vandalism cases that have been presented to her by the dpd she's using the process the prosecutorial discretion claim this is dispiriting to many people working on the issue from citizens to police while the city is admirably going to clean some of the mess up we also need to prosecute those people responsible I don't think anyone here wants to live in a society where laws are not enforced and punishment is not levy to those who commit crime so I urge you to consider those thoughts among other solutions including cleanup and hopefully end this play on our beautiful city thank you thank you or an final speaker for this evening because I was not able to locate fickle or fickile or al davis is kelly divine kelly you've enabled your mic looks like you're muted on your end thank you council president tracy can you hear me now if I can go ahead okay great thank you want to speak first on a couple of items tonight one first is about the the plan that car all the swarie and the folks in the recovery center have put together for graffiti remediation not only have we heard concern from a lot of property owners about this being the damage or vandalism to their property also I've heard from a lot of residents you know I folks do reach out to me with concerns about downtown and you know people have said wow exactly what the last speaker just said downtown doesn't look as nice anymore and and I think there's room for both art which the plan calls for as well as cleaning up graffiti I'd like to see the plan move forward also the last caller made a good point it is damaging to our older brick buildings the the materials you have to use to remove the graffiti actually are are can be quite caustic to brick and so the more that you have to do that the the damage is some of our really beautiful old buildings downtown finally I like the community involvement with the project and you know I think there's a good opportunity to get people throughout the community involved in this cleanup but I think the most important thing is downtown burlington I often think of as our community living room I mean right now we have the students from burlington high school there we have no folks from all parts of the city there you know mostly it's been used by locals the last couple years and we've had a lot of people turning out and while some members of our community don't have a problem with graffiti you know some of the messages are you know could be offensive to some folks especially some women so I think it's really important that we look at it as a community initiative and move forward on it in a way that I think that makes our downtown welcoming for the entire community the other thing that I want to mention is we submitted a letter of support for the council on aging resolution very supportive of moving that forward I think ARP is a great resource for the city of burlington and I'd like to see the creation of a council on aging as a way for organizations like theirs and others to expand their ability to support the community and finally I want to thank councilor pine and others for the support on the one-year waterfront concession agreement for our dear community member ice cream bob I know that was really important to him he was on the board of finance listening in and just want to thank you all for stretching a little bit to let him have a place to be while we await the construction of the railway thank you thank you for all that that was our final speaker for this evening so I'm going to go ahead and close our public forum and we are now back to the item that we were on prior to the forum thank you for being patient councilor paul with your questions I will come to you and if others have questions just let me know great thanks so I just wanted to mention a couple of things there really isn't necessarily a question but just to clarify so there was a concern that Talitha may not have gotten to all of the NPAs and I can't speak to every one of them I try to make the rounds but I can't speak to all of them I do know that Talitha was not at ward six however Skyler Nash was and there was a discussion and there was feedback that was given so I think between that and my understanding of one eight and five and four seven I don't know about two three but I'm assuming that someone was there that I believe actually maybe the NPAs were all covered perhaps not with a representative from Talitha but certainly there was a discussion on so wanted to you know I think we've I think to some degree we have really covered that and then also you know I'm I'm very happy that we are having the additional town hall tomorrow I have seen that it posted at least in ward six three times on front porch forum I've seen it on social media I've seen it on Facebook I've seen it on the city calendar um people have had uh over I think probably two weeks because it was done shortly after the last town hall so you know I hope that there will be a robust discussion with lots of um diverse voices um and then I just wanted to also mention something um this Councilor Hightower is an excellent um presentation um a month ago you celebrated one year on the city council if people didn't know that you had been on the council for one year by the efforts that you have put in no one would know and um you've done an amazing job on this committee um I haven't attended a meeting as a committee member yet um but I am looking forward to and just wanted to say that I'm honored to serve with you and look forward to the work ahead thanks thank you Councilor Paul um were there other questions okay seeing none um Councilor Hightower did you have anything further that you'd like to add no I think yeah just appreciate um Councilor Paul's clarification and also want to say that you know in terms of representation I really hope like partially that you know the town halls in addition to kind of getting that qualitative feedback um I think it'll really be a chance for individuals I I think it also created a dialogue around what is happening that's hopefully active in the city now after we've been doing this for a few months and really hope that we'll get very very broad engagement on that on that survey excellent well thank you for that presentation Councilor Hightower very much appreciated it and all your work on joint committee and your leadership there it's been really great to have your your brilliant leadership um really leading that effort so thank you so much we'll go ahead and close that item we'll come back to some of those other non-deliberative items at the end of our meeting but I do want to get into some of those deliberative items at this point um well first we got to get to our consent agenda though so um Councilor Barlow actually can I come back to you please for a motion on on the consent agenda and this is a short motion so it should be pretty easy uh I make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated we have a motion from Councilor Barlow is there a second seconded by Councilor Hightower any discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our consent agenda please say aye aye any opposed hearing none that carries unanimously that brings us into our deliberative agenda but I before we get into that I would like to actually recess this meeting because we do have some licensing items that is starting to pick up again so before we get into deliberative I'm going to actually recess this meeting and go over into our local control commission meeting um so I will recess the city council at 8 o 3 p.m and call to order the local control commission meeting at 8 o 4 p.m we have a couple of items on the uh deliberative and consent agendas for this but before we get to that um may I please have a motion on the agenda Councilor Mason thank you President Tracey I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented thank you have a motion on the agenda seconded by Councilor Hanson any discussion seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our agenda please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously we now have our agenda and we'll move into our consent agenda Councilor Mason may I please have a motion on the consent agenda yes President Tracey I'd like to make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you we have a motion on consent is there a second seconded by Councilor Hanson any further discussion seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the local control consent agenda please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously which brings us into our deliberative business for the local control commission um may I please have a motion on item 3.01 Councilor Mason thank you President Tracey I'd make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 second class liquor license application for Asian Food Mart LLC 244 North Tennessee Avenue with all standard conditions. Councilor Mason is there a second to that seconded by Councilor Hanson any discussion let me just yep go ahead Councilor Mason thank you President Tracey just for the benefit of the Council we have a number I think four or five on our deliberative item on license and then a few over on the regular agenda the committee met early last week I would say none of these were controversial some of these are all of them I believe were on the deliberative as opposed to the renewals because of changes in of the ownership group in committee it came out that there really were not any expansion of hours either on the entertainment permit or these would be renewals but for the fact that there was changes in the ownership groups of each of these applying so with that thought I would give that background. Thank you for that any discussion on 3.01 okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of the second class license for 3.01 please say aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to item 3.02 may please have a motion on that Councilor Mason. I would move to approve the 2021 2022 first class restaurant bar liquor license application for Gurung restaurant and bar LLC 1130 North Avenue with all standard conditions. Thank you your motion is a second second by Councilor Hanson any discussion hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries unanimously let's go to 3.03 commissioner Mason. I would move thank you President Tracey I'd move to approve the 2021 2022 first and third class restaurant bar liquor license application for M. Dunn's Tavern DVAT rugs Tavern 149 Elmwood Avenue with all standard conditions. Thank you got a motion is there a second second by Councilor Hanson any discussion seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed hearing none that carries unanimously brings us to item 3.04 Councilor Commissioner Mason. Thank you President Tracey I would move to approve the 2021 2022 outside consumption permit application for M. Dunn's Tavern DVAT rugs Tavern at 149 Elmwood Avenue. Thank you is there a second seconded by Councilor Hanson any discussion any discussion seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries unanimously which brings us to item 3.05 Commissioner Mason. I would make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 first-class restaurant bar liquor license application for Huskies capital LLC DVA Vermont Lake muster monsters at Centennial field with all standard conditions. Okay seconded by we had a motion by Councilor Mason seconded by Councilor Hanson any discussion on this item okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries unanimously got a roll in here we got item 3.06 Commissioner Mason. I would make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 outside consumption permit application for Huskies capital LLC DVA Vermont Lake monsters at Centennial field. Thank you for that is there a second Commissioner Mason's motion seconded by Commissioner Hanson any further discussion hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed that also carries unanimously got two more items on this yes. Commissioner Mason. I would make a motion under 3.07 to approve the 2021 2022 outside consumption permit application for Bluebird barbecue 317 Riverside Avenue and ask for the floor back for a second after after a second. Okay we see a second from Commissioner Hanson Commissioner Mason the floor is yours. Just as an explanation this is not a renewal this is a new space that Bluebird barbecue was trying to create at their location on Riverside Ave. Okay thank you for that any further commentary or discussion okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed hearing none that also carries unanimously and then we got one more item on this on this local control commission agenda 3.08 Councillor Commissioner Mason. Thank you I would make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 2022 outside consumption permit application for Traderia delia Soto Anateca Soto provisions located at 152 St. Paul Street. Seconded by Commissioner Hanson any further discussion counselors or commissioners. Okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting 3.08 please say aye. Aye. Any opposed unanimously a motion to adjourn as an order Commissioner Mason. So moved. Your second seconded by Commissioner Freeman any discussion all those in favor adjournment please say aye. Aye. Any opposed the local control commission is now adjourned at 811. Thanks folks for in Commissioner Mason for all those motions and moving through it if those just for members of the public just to clarify all of these items that we're dealing with having to do with licensing issues have to do with our herd at a committee hearing beforehand that's why we're able to move through them relatively quickly and these items are deliberated out there so they come to us having received feedback from that committee but we do discuss them here in case counselors have further questions to add or questions so in that sense that just to kind of clarify and I usually have the chair of the that committee a counselor Mason in this case move those items that's why I was going to that particular counselor just to clarify for that for the public now we do also have some of the items that have to do with entertainment permits which this committee also hears that come on to our deliberative agenda which I'm going to call our city council meeting back into order at 812 and we'll get to two more items before getting into the rest of our deliberative agenda that are also licensing related so counselor Mason may now have a motion on 5.01. Yes President Tracy thank you I would move to approve the 2021-2022 indoor entertainment permit application for M. Dunn's Tavern DBA T. Ruggs Tavern 149 Elmwood Avenue with all standard conditions. We have a motion from counselor Mason seconded by counselor Freeman any discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries unanimously which brings us to item 5.02 counselor Mason. Thank you President Tracy I would move to approve the 2021-2022 outdoor entertainment permit application for Huskies Capital LLC DBA Vermont Lake Monsters with all standard conditions. Okay we have a motion from counselor Mason seconded by counselor Freeman any discussion on this one okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries unanimously all right thank you for all those motions counselor slash commissioner Mason and we will now move on to a couple of appointments that we have this evening. So before I invite the person who is being appointed Karen Durfey to share any remarks with the counselor I would like a motion and I understand that counselor Carpenter is going to be offering the motion on this item so counselor Carpenter go ahead. I am very pleased to move the appointment of Karen Durfey as the Human Resources Director for the city of Burlington. Thank you and I don't believe we need a second for an appointment so I thank you for that did you want did you want to say anything further counselor Carpenter? Yes yes I wasn't sure if we needed a second just that I'm really very pleased to do this I serve as the chair of the Human Resources Committee and about two weeks after I got appointed last year the Human Resources Director left so I don't know if it was anything I did or not do but I know that it's been a really tough year for the city to be without that position it's very critical particularly given the the year that we had and I know the staff and the mayor's office and a number of department heads have been been looking long and hard through this last year to find a candidate that would fit our city and it's always such a pleasure to get someone who's my neighbor number one and a local Burlington resident number two and somebody that comes I think with a lot of experience in Burlington businesses Karen as you may know worked for the city market for a fair number of years and really ran operations there and I think through her work as in that role intersected tremendously with the human resources function and so she just brings a lot of varied and deep experience in managing personnel through her through her work in that venue as well as her more work excuse me more recent work with the Echo Center so I think she'll just be a real plus with her knowledge and more importantly her more recent knowledge is being a city police commissioner and understanding city government so she just brings a lot of I think multi facets to our government and we're really really looking forward to having that position filled and for the HR committee to get working as issues come up and Karen brings her new energy to the department. Thank you Councillor Mayor Weinberger did you want to speak? Thank you President Tracey sir Councillor Carpenter just shared a lot of what I appreciate and I'm excited about in bringing forward disappointment of Karen Durfee tonight and she said it better than I had so I won't repeat it all I will just say I am very excited at the prospect of adding Karen to the the city team and bringing all of that experience in this region those skills and really her commitment to the community to bear in the human resources department and as Councillor Carpenter suggested a really critical time we are coming out of this pandemic we are in a period of a lot of hiring we're in a period of trying to make cultural change within the city city team and make the city a better employer and a more inclusive employer and I think Karen is exactly the right person at the right time for this work and I'm proud to be bringing forward her appointment tonight. Thank you Mayor with that I will turn it over to to Karen Durfee if you would like to to share some remarks with the council and then councillors if you have questions or remarks of your own I'll come to you next. Karen would you like to address the council? No thank you very much Sarah Carpenter and thank you Mayor Weinberger I've been addressing the council I feel like I've talked to most all of you on the phone thank you so much for giving me your time and your patience and some of us talked for a very long time some of us talked for a short amount of time thanks to Jordan also and Mayor Weinberger for getting you know this process going through a weekend and thanks to Catherine Shad and the HR team the position has been filled not filled for about a year so I think everyone I have met with a very talented HR team that has been working remotely through a very difficult year and I'm very excited to lead that team and you know with a lens of inclusivity so I'll stop there and see if anybody has any questions. Okay wonderful are there any questions or comments from councillors? Councillor Hanson to be followed by Councillor Pine. Thanks and nice to meet you virtually Karen and it was good to meet you by phone last week and connect and talk a little bit it was really helpful to have that conversation and get your perspective and one of the things we talked about I just wanted to raise here was I don't have a lot of experience with the HR position I haven't I haven't served on the HR committee but I was pretty deeply concerned January this was around late 2019 early 2020 with an investigation by the HR department into into the former Deputy Chief Jan Wright's social media misuse and Vermont Digger for folks who don't know this had good coverage and really dug into it but VT Digger really uncovered much much more than what the internal investigation did and they did so in a much shorter amount of time so I was wondering if you'd be willing to just speak a little bit to your your you know your approach in the role around you know independence and thoroughness in terms of investigating if and when issues do come up with you know city officials as they did then because I found it really helpful to hear your perspective on that privately but would love to hear it here as well if possible. Sure thank you Councillor Hanson one of the reasons that I really really appreciate the work of HR and especially in the municipality and within that agency which is the police department is there are there is a contract and there are policies and procedures and when you have both of those in my experience and I have led some pretty significant investigations it makes it easier to be transparent and be very clear because you're operating it with actually two sets of agreed upon rules that should complement each other so I think when you and I were spent you know spending time on the phone talking about that I'm not going to pretend that I was aware of everything that went on with the investigation but I'm a very transparent person and I will look to and I'm very specifically excited to be working with the Burlington Police Department I won't go into you know plans and details but I think you can expect from me I'll be very quick on the turnaround I will be working with the city attorney's office but I think we have enough tools at our disposal not to have something like that happen again. Did that answer your question? Yeah thank you I appreciate it. Thank you Councillor Hanson. Councillor Pine. Thank you President Tracy the Karen if you were to be able to fast forward so you've been in this job for a few years and you look back what would you hope as HR director that we you're known for what are you what do you hope that people look back and say Karen did this at least you know had some tough times perhaps because these jobs are hard but at least she got this part done what would that be for you? That's a long list I'm a very ambitious person but I think you know overall you know I'm really looking forward to working with Director Green and her team. I really feel that inclusivity is a lens you know and if we're really looking to forward this work the way the mayor laid out in his speech we really do need to use the inclusivity the REIB lens on everything and it's not hard you know these are systems HRIS is you know those are systems applications are a system Neil Gove is a system recruitment is a thing so I think you know to answer your question Councillor Pine I wouldn't say that I would be looking for myself to be you know getting the accolades but the city was a much more inclusive employer and a great place to work and people just cannot wait to get here and serve. Thank you that's awesome. Yeah okay any other councillors wishing Councillor Freeman? Thank you so I did serve on the HR committee in my first term and did work with former director Deanna Plova before she did leave and one of the things that came up was a report that I requested on workers that were exempted from livable wages and that report came back to that committee it was determined that it was around 140 workers and I noticed based on the equity reports that the city had created in previous years where it shows that seven percent of folks who work for the city are folks of color unfortunately it's double in terms of folks who don't make livable wages who are for the city it's closer to 14 percent and I expressed that as a concern and the response that I got at the time was well you know we're trying to increase our diversity in our workforce as a city these are entry-level positions and folks of color are they're accessible you know maybe to folks of color that's where we're recruiting right now and that's why the number is higher and I always felt like that didn't really quite that doesn't sit right with me and so I do want to make sure that as we're looking to be an inclusive employer we're not doing that in a way that is ultimately inequitable because we do see like when I think you know studies show that they're when like inclusivity measures are created it doesn't necessarily create inclusivity at all layers of sort of like pay rather and so that's definitely a concern that I had and and you know I just hear you speak about your you know interest in collaborating with REIB and I'm just sort of curious to hear your perspective on that you know I'm you know you know absolutely interested in appointing you tonight to this role I would just be curious to hear your perspective as someone who's coming into that position. Sure thank you Councillor Freeman for that I want to share a little bit about my experience with that we did have a situation like that I think most folks shop at city market no city market as a you know we weren't always you know two stores and everything you know this you know this you know I've been gone a long time now so I can't pretend what that environment is like but we did have a situation where you know folks were hired into specific positions because they were accessible and I worked really hard and a lot of folks worked really hard to get to eradicate a grade one within the bargaining unit so that was the low wage it wasn't it wouldn't hit livable wage back of you know that in that time and so we just got rid of it there doesn't need to be a great one we need to have folks being able to get a livable wage and you know it includes insurance benefits which most folks took advantage of back in those times but you know if something's not working you don't need to keep it and I think that's what's really exciting about this HR our role right now is you know HR has been traditionally a certain kind of way and I've avoided it I've decided you know I've loved operations for a really long time you know I've been an operations person for a long time but you are doing human resources but to commit to that that means you're committing to humans and that means that you are going to be looking at livable wages and you're not that's not an inclusive practice and and you know there's another thing you know there's a phrase and I think I heard it in another meeting from director green and another woman this is not a book club you know we're not we are if the city's going to take this work seriously then we're going to have to do things like that doesn't work anymore I don't care if it's been around for 30 years it just doesn't doesn't work so hopefully um counselor Freeman to answer your question I'll be really active um you know because every time you come into a new position there's you know the hope that there will be equity and expanding on certain things and then you get inside and things are different so um I'm you know hoping for the best and I'm gonna you know keep on doing that work and I that's that's where I want to be with my work and myself thank you thanks for sharing our perspective thank you okay and counsel jane thank you president Tracy and Karen derby glad that you are here in front of us here today I am particularly um excited and also appreciative um that you stepped up um to feel this position you know uh and I think what you represent is is key because you are a woman of color and also you have been very involved in the community before this position I have never known about you until recently and I think we met the first time when we were doing the mural you know black lives matter on just and you know you also resident of the new north end but I just want you to understand that I am truly appreciative of your level of involvement from the police commission to uh being there and providing information to the public about what is happening not only about the police but also just about city affair in general your level of commitment to the city is is inspiring and I'm so glad that you stepped up to feel this position and another element too is you contrary to all the people who are appointed but they do not reside in Burlington but you are I think that's a problem we already checked and I'm so glad that you're here you live right here and uh that said I was just wondering if you can tell us from your perspective how many people actually work for the city and of that data do you know the percentage in uh uh people who are uh non-white people working for the city of Burlington um just was wondering if you can answer that quickly I don't I don't have that metric um I think there's about 300 employees in the city and you know if I had to you know I wouldn't guess about um the population of color because that wouldn't be fair I don't know the answer to that but I do know there's about 300 employees okay I have yes I would imagine I would imagine that the percentage is similar to the percentage of you know representative representation of the city but I don't know the answer yeah um thank you I mean basically it is uh just coming to there would be definitely a learning curve because I mean based on your experience and you know your education I think this is a big job that you're stepping into and there are also a lot of things involved um and I'm just looking forward to work with you and please know that we are all here to support you for success and I'm very proud to be um uh you know voting in support of your appointment and uh congratulations thank you okay I don't have any other counselors in the queue did anyone else council Shannon go ahead thank you president Tracy and I just wanted to thank you Ms. Durfee who I've been getting to know really as a police commissioner over maybe the last uh year or two and I'm so impressed that you want to come and contribute in this way to the city and I think that your your voice and your insights are going to be really helpful to us and I would actually also um echo counselor Freeman's concern I think that that's a really valid point that I hope you'll be digging into but I've seen um I've seen your people skills and I think our human resources department is really going to benefit from the contributions you have to bring to the city so thank you for for stepping up and being willing to join this team thank thank you council Shannon any other counselors wishing to comment okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of appointing Karen Durfee as our next um human resources director please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously congratulations really appreciate it look forward to working with you um and certainly welcome welcome you to come back to the council with all the great work that you're going to be doing um as a as as now director Durfee so congratulations got a another appointment of a an assistant city attorney position and for that I will go to um counselor mason for another motion on that appointment thank you president tracy I would like to make a motion to approve the appointment of Jared Pellerin as the uh city's most recent assistant city attorney and ask for the floor back for a brief comment after a second I don't believe you need a second counselor mason so go ahead then I will I will speak um I think well I won't speak for the rest of the council but I know the the department I am most often interacting as the city attorney's office and I I realize through my interactions how short staffed they are and um I am encouraged by Jared's qualifications he's eminently qualified and I I hope his experience working for the city of Albany proves especially helpful to us moving forward and I certainly know uh he will be a welcome addition to an understaffed department so I hope this is unanimous and I hope he is able to start as soon as possible thank you thank you counselor mason um attorney city attorney blackwood did you have have anything that you'd like to offer or may or wine burger yes president tracy I would just like to briefly um again echo everything uh counselor mason just said certainly um having Jared added to the team right now is critical um he is coming with a lot of really um point in relevant experience he's worked for the city of Albany he has has legislative experience he knows this region having grown up just over the other side of the lake I think he's going to be a great addition to the team and hopefully have the council strong support tonight thank you mayor city attorney blackwood I apologize or was there something you wanted out as well I just wanted to say thank you for considering this and I hope you all support this nomination we are looking forward to Jared who just blew us away in this interview uh with his experience and his great answers to all of our interview questions wonderful and Jared did you want to share any remarks with the council and good evening everyone thank you mayor wine burger and Eileen for bringing me to the table here this evening and it's nice to see you all virtually I hope to meet everyone in person soon here but I wanted to just quickly thank you all for the consideration of my candidacy for the position of assistant city attorney I believe my personal desire to work in a capacity that enables me to impact the community through public service along with my personal love for Burlington and the shores of Blake Champlain make this a really exciting opportunity I have always been drawn to public service and that is another large reason for me choosing to pursue this opportunity and I genuinely believe in doing work that benefits those around me and producing work product that hopefully will lead to positive growth and change and through team effort nothing is impossible so I look forward to making hopefully a positive impact within the city of Burlington and I again thank you for your consideration wonderful thank you for joining us um counselors any comments or questions okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of appointing Jared Pellerin as assistant city attorney please say aye aye be opposed the appointment carries unanimously thank you welcome as well to the city of Burlington and I'll just also say that I look forward to working with you as well so thank you for joining being willing to join the city of Burlington team as well all right that brings us into item 5.05 which is a communication from director Almasraoui regarding the graffiti cleanup initiative director Almasraoui I will turn it over to you. Hi yes um so this was a memo um written to mayor Weinberger and CEO Shad who had asked me to initiate an interdepartmental team to um basically address a lot of the um complaints and concerns that we had been receiving from citizens and business owners um uh regarding what is viewed as um a vast increase in the graffiti in our city um I in this memo am suggesting um three phases uh phase two and three are not fully fleshed out yet and the team is meeting um frequently and um phase one as you can see here involves um hiring a team of 10 employees temporarily to um address what we see as the the current situation and try and ameliorate and ameliorate and remediate it um we have received some questions as to why it's not more of a community initiative um and so I'll address that up front that is because we have assessed um the city team has even met on site in the city to view um what is considered vandalism and to remediate some of these um some of the graffiti requires um power washers paint solvents um and things that we would need waivers for and the um ours the safety manager for the city hadn't had concerns as did the city attorney's office so we um moved in a direction where we were recommending hiring um to handle the sort of the wave that we have right now of graffiti and then moving forward to um try and put in a lasting solution to assess graffiti as it comes up because um even today we had a resident who um reached out to the city regarding um graffiti that was racist and we had to move quickly to remove it um and we also are looking to obviously engage in longer term projects involving um art classes aerosol art classes um things of that sort with bca but I don't have full details on those yet as the team still works those out okay thank you for that director on this rowey I will um go ahead and open it up to the council uh councilor barlow go ahead um thank you president tracy um and thank you cara for that um what are the plans for um other graffiti in other parts of the city that aren't identified in the current initiative and uh secondly what how should residents communicate um the existence of graffiti uh to your office sure so the existence of graffiti is normally communicated through the app called c-click fix and that lands in director ward's office permitting and inspections and I can see he's here with us tonight um and that's readily used and he responds as best he can given um his role in the city um and initially as we were doing a rough inventory um we have seen that the majority of the graffiti right now is in the downtown core which is why we uh chose the geography that is outlined in the memo was that councilor okay other okay councilor pine for thanks for this um this information and for your efforts um on this issue what I'm wondering is there was a bill would remember it was called a um graffiti response team that might not be the right name but it was through community justice center and it was a collaboration with code enforcement and bpd was a little bit involved but it was really more citizen there was a lot of citizen involvement and so groups of citizens were engaged in this issue if they were motivated and cared about it to to sort of go out and address the um the graffiti in the community is that is that still an idea that deserves support or is uh is there some issue with doing it that way so that team no longer exists in the city and a lot of that had been um and now I can't remember her name um and the burlington police department the sort of the community liaison carolyn I believe was her name um who's no longer with us um and so that team um disbanded and is not currently funded um in addition director ward and I have discussed more community involvement after we deal with the amount of graffiti that has accumulated over this past year um and that would involve as you as I believe director word has shown a lot of people he has a graffiti wipes some of those are very effective um but there needs to be training with them for example if you do them on the back of a stop sign they work if you use them on the front of a stop sign you'll take the red paint off as well so um we had discussed and uh director ward had also suggested that after the initial clean clean up we can work with different neighborhoods and maybe have um neighborhood teams people who want to be involved with graffiti more frequently and help teach them how to remove it okay and um this is going to sound a little strange but when I was a kid growing up one of my friends parents decided since they were writing all over the walls at home they gave them a wall that was just like the graffiti wall of the house and we all just did stuff on that wall so is there an idea that that might work in the community that we create spaces for people to go and express themselves or is that just like conflicts of the whole idea of sort of the spontaneous nature of the way this works I guess um I think whether that's effective or not maybe I can't respond to that and and we're looking to engage artists um further to understand that however allocating a wall has definitely been discussed um there has been discussion about perhaps whether we could have a wall up for example where the old midtown motel was which has now been taken down um that might be a nice central location um where people could express themselves um why an individual might tag something that is not a designated area I can't necessarily speak to but I do think a graffiti wall would be a welcome addition to the city. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Prine, Councillor Jang. Thank you President Tracy. Um so on March 22nd I did receive a communication from Bill Ward um Director Ward um and you know just telling me what exactly the city is doing in terms of graffiti removal you know and I followed up with a couple of questions and I'm just going to ask those questions here um and I think one of them just three questions one of them do you know how much time um you know those cleaners are spending around this issue and what will be the monetary estimate including the cleaning supplies also being being brought I have not received those answers because I was waiting to basically bring a resolution that will call for a task force around this area and I think one of the questions also many people here talked about it are the community members and or stakeholders involved in the cleaning but it doesn't seem none of the community members were involved in this and it seems this is coming from the city down to the people and I think this issue is such an important issue that in that that affects every single person here right I would have loved for maybe what you have started to open it to the community members you know and I have representative from business community you know to to serve on the task force artists to serve on it because these discussions when they happen at the community level or stakeholder level I think the important what is what really need to be done will be discussed and then decision will be made by the community with the city and to get this done and we will never come back to it again the second question that I ask is what is currently being done in terms of prevention for graffiti to not happen again and also surveillance in protecting buildings from graffiti you know I think those are important element and to me it will be imperative for the group that you already built to start to enter this question and I'll forward you all the communication directly to you I would love to please consider bringing a resolution and creating task force where people such as Leela Fortunoff who spoke in front of us here today and all the people could also come and have a lengthy and valuable discussion that could move the city forward and make Burlington an aesthetic and beautiful city for tourists and also residents just yourself and please consider including the community yes and thank you councillor jane for that I think this initial this memo is simply addressing phase one right now which is the actual physical cleanup of the city and the amount of graffiti that again has accumulated over the past year in terms of how the city is going to be handling graffiti moving forward if you'll see at the bottom of the memo I suggest that we bring in youth organizations the CJC who had previously been involved in graffiti remediation issues I suggest we bring in members from the arts community broadly this is merely the actual physical cleanup response that we're hoping to initiate this spring so but I do actually agree with you that I think more voices at the table will be helpful in terms of addressing how the community views graffiti how we value it or don't value it as we heard as you said we heard multiple people in public forum addressing it and how we think the best way moving forward that includes all of these perspectives with it yeah um thank thank you I'm glad that you're thinking of you're thinking about it that way and I love the the idea of that graffiti bus I don't know how you call it it's a van yes yeah the van it's just amazing and it can also play all the all the roles as well um yeah no further questions and thank you and looking forward to also be part of this because this is important great thank you thank you councillor jane councillor hanson great thanks and yeah I'm I'm looking forward for sure to that deeper community process and engagement with different groups on how we can move forward um I was wondering so for this initial phase one for to hire folks to clean up in the materials um where is that funding coming from and sorry if I missed this earlier um if ceo shed is with us um I don't know if she is right now um so uh so we are looking at hiring um 10 individuals 40 hours a week for four weeks and that was our initial um assessment and I see catherine's with us now um I just didn't want to misspeak on the funding buckets that you use ceo shed um and the question is the funding for the 10 temporary employees um we do have um some funding for restoration of seasonal employees from some of our line items that have come in ahead of revenue such as local option tax um so as a part of some of the that restoration we've seen that for instance in dpw um and in the library um there are some funds and we will allocate those um to permitting and inspection okay I that's that's interesting and I think worthy of maybe a deeper conversation maybe right not maybe not right here or right now but um I guess that just for me raises questions around um prioritization I guess of this versus restoring some of those seasonal positions that were cut um are any seasonal positions being restored yeah just to clarify all of the seasonal positions that people have asked for have been restored and now we're adding these so every um every uh request that I have gotten from department heads um I have said yes to and now this is a new request and I have said yes to that as well okay I I think that's that's worth I would love to hear more about which positions have been restored and thus far and which haven't I didn't actually realize that that's great news um and would love to hear which ones yeah haven't haven't been restored and um what we're thinking going forward in terms of some of the positions that were lost um this fiscal year so maybe we can follow up offline or at a future meeting um and and discuss that great I'd be happy to great thank you any other counselors yeah quick okay go ahead counselor jane um thank thank you yes so this item was posted as deliverable and it seemed it's only a communication I don't know if any action from the council is needed um that's that's when it's a question for you president we're not approving a policy here we are just accepting communication so if you'd like to make a motion to accept the communication that that um director alness rowey has written um now would be a good time to do that if you'd like to do so I will do it I will I'll be happy to do it um but before I was also wondering if director can answer the question by having those 10 temporary positions will it infringe the union rights as well so I have had communications with the city attorney's office um and while I do not have a law degree so I don't and I don't have the email up in front of me so I don't want to quote exactly but we have um looked into that in terms of being able to hire temporary employees for these jobs so I did get clearance from the city attorney's office all right um then that said I am happy to accept the communication and place it on file making a motion president Tracy thank you okay so we just have we have a motion to accept the communication and place it on file is there a second to that motion seconded by councilor pine any further discussion of this item okay seeing none let's go to a vote um all those in favor of accepting the communication and placing it on file please say aye aye any opposed that motion thank you director on this rowey for your presentation and we will now move on to item five point oh uh oh six which is a resolution um the creation of burlington aging council councilor pine thank you president tracy I would move to approve the resolution and request the floor back after a second you have a motion from councilor pine is there a second seconded by councilor carpenter go ahead council pine so the the question for the council of how we prioritize and focus our responses and our resources as our conversations around older residents of our community was kicked off in a in a substantive way a couple of years ago when the council was asked by both of our existing senior centers whether we could increase our support for them so it was mostly around funding of senior centers that they brought this conversation to um to ahead but at the time the council decided to take a broader view of the issue and spent quite a bit of time really kind of a deep dive with with seniors themselves and with stakeholders and um folks who make their living working directly with seniors and who who focus on the issues facing our older residents and I think what was really um uh one of the most important recommendations in addition to funding our senior centers was for the council this city council to decide and discuss how to ensure that the needs of our seniors were in the at the forefront of our planning and our allocation of funding and uh and that we bring to the forefront issues affecting our older residents and uh we as a community have um we've asked our older residents over the years what they value and what they want uh the most from our community our city and our community and overwhelmingly folks say we want to be able to stay in the community that we love uh and and grow old and and age in place is really what folks want and so uh this effort here is really a an attempt to elevate the needs of of our of our older residents and to you know include more people because the notion of as we age um big part of how we stay healthy is to stay connected to other people and to stay connected to our community and for us as people who who are still sort of maybe in our working life in the middle of our working careers to be able to look to some of our older residents and draw their knowledge their experience their expertise you know there's just so many contributions that older folks can make to to our community that I think the goal here is to really bring that to the front and to the center and not to have that be sort of a footnote or or sort of a an extra consideration but have it really be central to the work we're trying to do for our community so I'm really excited about this council and I hope the full council will this council will support uh creating a an aging council we um uh worked out at the community development neighborhood revitalization committee for the last few months and uh the we we asked our stakeholders though to come up with the plan if you will so that's what we've we're presenting here tonight thank you thank you pine and councillor pine just for clarity you don't set the top on board docks it says updated version is that that's the one yes exactly okay all right just wanted to be sure so that counselors who are referring to that we're all working off the same document so thank you for that introduction councillor pine has their comment need a discussion from the council councillor carpenter I just certainly want to um support what councillor pine said and it's been a really um fun process to work with all the providers on on advancing this and I want to acknowledge that um it started with the um summit that predated me it got sort of put on the side because of COVID but in fact the city and the city office did a great job in pulling together providers senior providers during that period of time and really has supported them well and I think it it made everyone realize that this is an effort that we've got to continue um and really um give it authority there's been attempts over the years to kind of um put together a council like this and sort of loses steam after a while and I think this provider group was energized by the tough year they've really had uh and and seeing what they can do if they work together and I hope the city's energized by the fact that um they can provide a lot of input they will need support from us so you're saying what's the ask the ask is um that we continue to support this effort and take advantage of um all of this expertise and take it seriously really legitimize it um so um I think that is what we're asking you um Cameron did want to say a couple words so if if that's okay I'd love to have him speak on behalf of the provider group which has really um done a fantastic job in in shepherding this wonderful thank you for that councilor carpenter I will um enable Cameron's microphone Cameron you should be able to speak and go right ahead can you all hear me yes go ahead so first of all I want to say thank you um of course to cdnr so councillors uh carpenter pine and high tower has been fantastic to be able to help push this through um and then thank you to city council for for uh you know taking this time to acknowledge this opportunity and then in the vote I want to say I'm speaking to you as a Burlington resident um I uh lived down the street from chip I ran into him at the stop sign and we did the awkward uh you know you go you go thing and then also as a member of uh senior management at a non-profit that operates residential care homes one of which is Ethan Allen in the new north end so um this group um we spent a lot of time um putting together the focus areas the membership and the deliverables um the focus areas was really the easy part we all live it every day um it's sort of an endless list I hope you all have seen what we put together which laid out um you know each of the focus areas I think there are about 10 of them um and then the membership makeup which is just simply who should be a part of it but I want to say this is not a simple um task at hand but it's an excellent step forward and you know this group really believes that providing for Burlington residents for the future means caring for that the most vulnerable residents today and that vulnerable population are the older adults we want to really give a voice to the folks who most often do not have one and um you know COVID exacerbated an already challenging situation for many senior providers and even organizations that maybe just moved working we saw every single focus area every single issue exacerbated by COVID and this is the opportunity to capitalize on that momentum if we can call it um I hope that you all have seen the letters of support that I sent you I have many more that I could send but this community is ready to do this and I know that we have a team of people who would gladly jump aboard and help to move this initiative forward and I'll just end with uh you know in Councillor Carpenter's point of this has sort of been tried in the past is it was important that we try to combat that by making some clear deliverables and what we came up with was the Burlington plan on aging which would would sort of work as a guiding document for the city for other departments and other committees to have issues that that impacting older adults older adults to sort of focus on um so I'm very hopeful uh and I would love an opportunity to serve and I think many of the members of this group would as well so I uh I want to thank you all for taking the time to vote and I hope uh you guys are all in favor so I'm happy to take any questions if there's anything but uh if not thank you for giving me the opportunity great thank you for thank you for that um Councillor Jang go ahead um thank you President Tracy and also thank you CDNR for putting this resolution together Cameron thank you so much for your ongoing advocacy and I think I attended at least one of the meetings at CDNR and the discussion was just amazing and to tell you the truth you know this is something that I'm really passionate about and as a candidate for mayor this was one of the initiative I wanted to achieve as a mayor and but you know the elements the vision that I had and this is somewhat similar but still different but I think it would be important to point out one aspect here um is these members will be appointed by a combination of both the mayor and also the city council which is key but my previous vision was just this was supposed to be a mayoral initiative and not requiring this much of representative to serve in this council but a fewer but also to for those people also to receive some type of intensives as well and some intensives can uh are very simple such as just having access to parking passes or having a 400 dollar stipend at the end of the year but all of those are details um but um one question that I have which is one organization I think is is missing here and they do amazing job through for the region which is H well I don't see them having the area agency of aging I think they would be valuable because their scope of work encompasses a lot of what this group will be uh asking to do such as access to meal transportation long-term care you know public benefit I think if we can amend and at least have a representative from agencies of aging it would be critical uh for because their input would be valuable um yes can I make that actually so um I believe the first membership is an organization providing advocacy for all the adults we saw cove uh community of Vermont elders and age well as that first um membership area so a change to the language would be totally fine age well was obviously the really the first on that list because they are um you know across multiple areas you know reaching older adults on a daily basis so to be clear age well is the the thought was there in that very first section but we didn't want to just say an area agency on aging because there are other advocacy organizations like cove um which does excellent work sort of in a different way so that advocacy piece was the first one but any amendment on that I would you know I think we would all totally support um then if you don't mind or if you just can approve this resolution knowing that we are talking about we having a designated area of aging uh agency of aging as a representative I think we can make the amendment now if you open to it or CDNR members so are you making can counselor jay are you making a motion but let's discuss first uh well counselor pine uh are you open to that my only caution oh go ahead mr. council president tracy okay um my only caution is that we tried to lay out the criteria that we were trying to fill and I don't think we named any you know specific um organizations rather than you know we stuck to to broad criteria as the as the category we are seeking for representation so I think I'm more comfortable with that because I think it is we're not calling out a specific um entity to serve and I think that gives um us as the mayor and the council the flexibility that is going to be appreciated I believe I think that's probably and I understand the intent what you're trying to do counselor jen um but I just want to make sure that we you know don't get into a place where we perhaps they're too busy they don't have the capacity they can't do it and then we have a seat that you know we we don't feel so that's my worry okay yep um okay thank you and you know the mother of act I mean I think they are a little bit concerned because they were not one consulted and two they also did not because of their scope of work they were not consulted and also their the name of their agency was also not included in here and what I'm saying is because I received a couple of chain of emails um that they advocating and I'm I don't even know why one of them did not show up here to speak in in in that area but I'm the middle man trying to make sure that those with expertise are also included but uh it's up to you boss thank you okay councilor carpenter do you have something with reference to this this issue yeah I just a couple I mean they were invited to an original meeting and I think what um councilor pines trying to say is we laid out credend some people may double dip if you want if you want to call it that I mean you you know because there's a lot of criteria there and so somebody might represent two interests um you know as opposed to just one interest so I think we tried to kind of keep it flexible I think the other thing because it was a really good planning group is nobody's intended to be excluded um I think once the group gets going I mean you could have had 50 people on it and so at at some level you have to you know name it and for full disclosure I was an area agency aging director I don't know if councilor jane knows that but in my first early career that was my job and I served on a on a group called the long-term care consortium of chitin and county but again we had to have sort of this double dipping of people might represent more than one one interest so I don't think there's any intent to be exclusive and I hope they their staff will be active participants in the meeting that the council's schedules in the future thank you council carpenter all right councilor I had councilor hanson in the queue great thanks um yeah thanks so much to everyone who's who's worked on this I'm definitely very supportive of it and one thing I wanted to raise or ask since we're all together talking about this um is and I haven't been able to participate in the process so maybe this has been discussed but um I think something that's really lacking in our culture in our society is just um social interaction across generations I did notice that there was the bullet around social inclusion but um just curious what the discussion has been within this around trying to get create opportunities for seniors to be able to interact with other other generations socially um because I think that's something that is great and lacking can respond to that um the discussion that we had with the community partners that that worked closely with older um older adults was very much on that topic uh came up frequently was multi-generational or intergenerational opportunities and that that's part of what this effort will result in more um sort of harnessing those opportunities that are there creating new opportunities for that and really interjecting in lots of people's minds thinking about seniors and connecting seniors to younger generations in ways that we haven't always been at the forefront that's great thanks councillor pine that's super exciting and really looking forward to that aspect and just all of this work in general um it's super important so thank you all for working on this and excited to vote yes okay any further councillor comment it will be quick so Jane go ahead yeah um so yes and I was just wondering also if there is any timeline um for the Burlington plan on aging to be submitted or presented to the council like in two years three years or councillor pine I had to mute myself and then I had to scroll through the resolution to find that section um the the idea was that the the first sort of order of business would be um you know for the the the development of the plan but it we didn't specifically um say get back to us with the plan by this date but um you know that very much is uh you know at the top of the list for for the group because that's really what they that's their charge is to create a plan on aging and to you know work with the council and the community and engage the whole community around this um around this effort so you know it's going to be it's going to be their top priority uh I think we'll see something and maybe Cameron could speak to how quickly he thinks the group can can do that but uh I think it's going to be what they're going to dig into right away yeah and I'm happy to so Vermont puts out the plan on aging and expires in 2022 so the you know at least my hope would be something that could sort of take effect either in 2022 or 2023 but uh you know this this is going to be an evolving thing I mean I'm looking at the on the uh you know adult services division website it's a 66 page document so it for the the entire state it's going to be sort of enormous to unpack um but you know sooner than five years sooner than six years I mean as soon as possible but this first group will be really interesting in terms of what it's able to achieve and set precedent for sort of uh engaging the idea was from our perspective to have it stagger with the state plan with the older americans act to sort of when that comes out we can you know the the council would make adjustments specific to burlington so uh council general have an answer as to the date um but that would be the number one you know you know initial for sort of business I'll be very happy to support this no problem and was just wondering maybe if cdnr have that information in one of their committee updates to just maybe mention if that group set a timeline in bringing forward and looking forward to this to evolve and thank you all so much for putting it together thank you thank you I don't have anyone else in the queue are we ready oh mayor weinberger go ahead thank you president tracy um appreciate the chance just to um make clear the administration's full support and really enthusiasm for this measure um in reflecting as many have noted the on the last year covid really laid bare um many of the great weaknesses and disparities uh discrepancies in our in our society and one of them most dramatically brought forth by the pandemic certainly has been the weaknesses in our in our treatment of of the elderly the lack of resources in key areas the understaffing in many skilled nursing facilities and if there is going to be any progress that comes from this incredible period we need to grapple with those disparities we need to build on what covid also did which was force us all to work together in new ways by by necessity and one of the things that happened from the very early days of the pandemic was the city was engaged with our senior providers at a level that we never had been before we had multiple conference calls in the opening days of of the pandemic with our senior providers and those calls pretty much they have continued to this day there are not that many things that we have done throughout the pandemic that was a strategy that proved its its value and its value amongst all the partners to each other getting people together that way and it is certainly my hope that having this formal body will ensure that we hold on to the lessons that we've learned over the past year and make meaning out of out of the losses by making this part of our society of our city stronger than ever and I think that we are not the only ones to have come to the realization that much more I mean a lot of new investments need to be made amongst our seniors this is also certainly something that in the Biden administration's various proposals they are talking about fundamentally reshaping the way in which we invest in in healthcare for seniors and I think to have this body active engaged resource as that kind of conversation is going on at the federal level could prove to be extremely valuable to the community to the city and certainly the administration will will work hard to properly support this group getting created and then getting off to a great start so thank you to everyone involved in bringing forward this resolution tonight thank you mayor I don't have anyone else in the queue we're ready to go to a vote okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of the resolution please say aye aye any opposed hearing none the resolution carries unanimously next item we had a couple items that were removed and will potentially appear on another city council agenda those items being 5.07 and 5.08 which brings us to 5.09 which has to deal which has to do with a public hearing regarding the community development block grant and home proposed allocations for 2021 and the 2020 action plans for housing and community development before I open the public hearing I will go to Katie Kinstatt for a presentation just so that we have some additional context on what it is that we are what it is that the hearing is being held on this evening President Tracy yeah before my apologies for interrupting even though we're not voting on anything this is a public and this is a public hearing I have a professional conflict of interest with the CDBG grant program and will not be listening to the public hearing and not voting on it when it comes to us okay thank you very much for letting us know that I appreciate that Councillor Paul I will now now turn it over to Interim Director Kinstatt hi I'm sorry am I on my internet cut out at the worst time no worries okay so are you okay if I present a few slides just to give it overview of the plan it'll be wonderful perfect okay so we're here this evening to present an overview of two draft action plans this provides an overview of our entitlement funds which essentially is a formula allocation from the housing urban development departments so the two action plans that we're going over today are our entitlement 2021 plan and this covers an implementation period from July of this year through June of next year we are fortunate to have received about $760,000 for community development block grants and another $414,000 for home entitlement funds in a normal year we would only bring one action plan to you for review but as we'll talk about in the next slides we were able to use some of the flexibilities that HUD provided and that resulted in us kind of doing some funding um switches between our 2020 plan or 2021 plan and so we are also bringing to you today a substantial amendment to our 2020 action plan and there's about $100,000 that will be reallocated within the 2020 funds and these funds were available to the city of Burlington beginning in last July so to give you a some background on the timeline we launched this back in January when we accepted applications for different programs we convened an advisory board to review the applications in February and March and the recommendations were finalized in April where we're at today is a public forum to solicit input on our proposed uses and yet to be completed tasks include presenting the CDNR in early May we're still working on confirming the date for that and then coming back on May 10th to the city council and board of finance to seek official approval so that we can submit to HUD before the May 15th deadline where this plan is due each year so to give you a little bit of background to help understand decisions we've made before I dive into some of the slides where we talk about the specific programs that were funded two important takeaways one from last year which is that we have a special provision where our public service cap which just works with how much funding we're allowed to allocate to specific types of projects was lifted for entitlement years 2019 and 2020 to help communities like Burlington better respond to COVID we typically have a lot more demand for our public service dollars than for our development dollars so that was helpful but that was not extended to our 2021 funds again one of the reasons for bringing both plans concurrently and then another positive piece of news that we can bring to here today is that the advisory board decided and was able to fund all CDBG applications that were received as there were sufficient funds available so I'll just jump into now some tables where we can go over the awards that were made so there's a lot going on in the slide I apologize but I just want to be able to present everything in a format just so people can easily digest the awards that were made this year so these awards that we started with are the public service they're divided into three different categories you can see in the third column the amount requested and then whether it is funded from the entitlement 21 plan or entitlement 20 20 funds um so within new services we funded the Sarah Holbrook Community Center within housing and homelessness we're able to provide three grants to USRI Vermont pathways Vermont in a new place of note is that we're really excited to have two new applications from USRI in a new place so they're not CDBG grantees and we reached out specifically to make sure organizations knew that we are welcome to working with recipients even if they're not accustomed to receiving CDBG grants in the past and especially within the sector of housing and homelessness we intentionally open that where in normal years we go with a public service we focus either on new services or housing and homelessness we decided to do both this year just because of the needs faced in our community during COVID the third category is economic opportunity and we are able to fund the two applications received from CBO and from resource so just in summary all public service applications that were received were funded how we were able to do this working with the 15 cap for our 2021 funds was by looking back to our 2020 funds and using funds that weren't expended during that period and reallocating them to more urgent COVID priorities moving on to our development applications again we received three applications in the categories of economic development and then again in housing homelessness and we were able to fund all three the awards went to CBO mercy connections and CHT the fourth line down here is a program that was defunded it was defunded because they didn't they received the funds last year but they were able to get 100% of the funding through the state and so they returned the funds to us and they were repurposed for COVID specific work the final category are programs that are funded within CEDO and within the city and we have listed here four programs plus admin that were funded this year there are some so I'll just go through those sorry the first one is economic opportunity so we're doing a targeted populations job training the second category is brown fields and then within housing we have funding available to our housing improvement program so this last section is a little bit confusing because we simultaneously funded and defunded essentially the funds weren't expended due to focusing our efforts on some other priority and not moving a lot of housing improvement program projects during this year so we wanted to prioritize some of the public service programs in the housing sector that were responding to specific COVID needs with our 2020 funds but we had sufficient development funds remaining from our 2021 to be able to fund CEDO programs which will continue operating through this year into the next fiscal year so with that that is a whirlwind overview I apologize for speaking quite quickly in going through the material so fast that it is quite late this evening and I would welcome the public hearing to receive input from the community we will take that into consideration be able to discuss it at CDNR within our team and then as needed make amendments to our plan before we bring our final approval on May 10th so with that we can either I assume oh I'm very sorry that's CDBG we also have home funds that I did not yet discuss so with the home funds we have three categories that we have decided to award one is for its TBD so essentially we award those projects on a rolling basis based on applications that meet kind of the priority areas where we'd like to fund the second category is for a CHOTO for an operating grant so community development housing sorry a community housing development organization of which there are two that are qualified in Burlington Champlain Housing Trust and Cathedral Square Corporation and so there is about 20,000 set aside for an operating grant for our CHOTOs and 62,000 set aside for a reserve project so as I already jumped ahead with that we can open the public forum for further inputs and we look forward to questions and feedback so thank you great I appreciate that if you could just please go out of share mode and I will now open the public hearing if you are a member of the public wishing to comment on these recommendations please use the raise hand function okay well I see Lilla I'm gonna I've enabled your microphone you can use the raise hand functions at the bottom of your your screen to raise to identify yourself if you're wishing to speak Lilla I've enabled your mic so go right ahead thanks president Tracy hi everyone again I'm Lilla my pronouns are she her and hers and I live in Ward 3 um yeah I'm just gonna dive right into it so I appreciate the presentation that was helpful although still have a lot of questions about like what the those programs actually entail I know there's a 78 page document that I have not read I guess just to give a little bit of background on where I'm coming from and and my perspective which is not one of particular expertise um I have never experienced housing insecurity I have even though I'm I don't have a very high income personally I have a lot of intergenerational wealth and financial privilege afforded to me from my family so I'm not speaking from personal experience just trying to convey things that I've observed and also um through uh some mutual aid groups have gotten to know a lot of folks in the community who are unhoused and housing insecure um and uh I'm gonna try to convey some of the things that I learned from them about um what they think of different programs that are currently existing in Burlington and and what they wish existed um so yeah I guess firstly I just want to say that the process of determine I'm raising an issue of how the process of determining where this funding was going to be be allocated to was very inaccessible I know that there were public hearings but but they were not well advertised um as as far as I know um but and especially um to the people who are going to be receiving the funding um which obviously are the most important people to hear from about where the funding should go um I have no idea to what extent housing insecure unhoused and poor folks were involved in the proposals or the review process of the proposals but none of the folks um that I talked to who um are part of the mutual aid communities that I'm a part of or at the um the cvoeo uh daytime warming center that was at the vfw knew that this was happening at all um and I just happened across this public the came across um the public hearing on the meeting agenda when I was looking at it on Thursday and so I've just sort of had a few days to try to ask people their opinions um about this and try to get more information about how this whole process works um and then on top of the advisory and decision-making process about where all these funds were going to this hearing tonight was not well advertised to the public at all like I said I only happened upon it by chance because I was going through the agenda um but if you don't know about city council meetings or if you don't know how to navigate board docs and also if you just don't have computer access or wifi access your voice is going to not be included in this public hearing which is ridiculous um since a lot of unhoused folks don't have access to computers or wifi um yeah I'm just this seems like kind of a formality like a lot of decisions have already been made um and I would love to know was did the advisory committee seek out um ideas and opinions from unhoused folks or housing insecure folks low income folks who are actually going to be using these um the the programs that it's that are being funded or are they just talking to the organizations um who are distributing or who are facilitating these programs um so that is really questionable to me um yeah I also um just and me and then my friend Abby who's also going to raise their hand um are just going to be speaking from um what we learned from folks in the community who are unhoused or housing insecure um and just trying to convey their ideas to the council um since they don't have wifi and computers and can't be here themselves um and then I just want to say this out loud because I know that all of this is going to be documented and recorded and um is just going to be on file but and I think because this frequently gets forgotten that those experiencing houselessness or housing insecurity are the people who know what they need themselves they are experts on their own experiences and should be able to decide what resources they need these resources should not be withheld from someone regardless of whether they're sober or not if they have a pet or for any other reason I know a huge barrier for people um to get access to services and housing is whether they have proper documentation and ID um it's ridiculous that folks are denied housing if they don't have ID um people deserve housing but when everything needs to be documented and reported um you know like who is staying where how long they've stayed um etc human beings get shortchanged because of bureaucracy um and I just want to name that that is a problem um yeah again my biggest recommendation is that in between now and I believe May 10th that people on the advisory board meet and talk with unhoused and housing insecure people if they have not done so already and even if they have talk with them more um those are the people who need to be heard on these issues ask them what they need ask them where they think the funding should go to um a concern that I have in regarding to where the funding is going is that um a new place is being funded um a new place has a lot of religious ties and also requires that people who are staying there maintain sobriety and have they have other strict rules rules as well um those restrictions may work for some people but I know many people who um have had really bad experiences with a new place um and that's another reason to talk with unhoused folks people who are actually staying at a new place rather than the people running a new place um I know uh so yeah so a new place is um able to how they have Champlain in now and their housing folks um and that's sort of in addition into this hotel program where folks are able to stay at hotels and I know that that is a state sponsored program um really appreciate Brian Pine for explaining some of this to me and hopefully that hotel program will be extended so more folks are able to continue to stay at the hotels but if that were to end you know at the um at harbor place at the days in at the quality in if at the holiday in if those hotels are no longer able to be housing for folks that would mean that a new place is one of the only um you know short-term housing um and it's really restrictive and so I think that that's pretty problematic um let's see yeah I I think that there is a plan for Champlain Housing Trust to get some funding to build new low barrier um apartments I don't I saw the number 24 for number of units that's not merely enough um and I'm also really curious about what the barriers to staying there will be again folks deserve housing regardless of their sobriety status regardless of criminal record anything like that um so yeah just starting to think about what's going to happen when folks or if folks are not able to stay at the hotels there are hundreds of people staying at the hotels right now um and it would be amazing to get those folks into permanent housing um into apartments um if the hotels do close there's definitely going to be people who are needing to live outside and um folks choose to camp outside um and I know that in the past there have been um just a lot of there's been a lot of criminalization of people living outside and so um I think that depending on what happens with the hotels the city really needs to make sure that the police are not going to be antagonizing people who are either choosing or are forced to camp outside um on how folks are often criminalized for just simply existing um you know there's the people who have businesses on church street really don't like unhoused folks to exist because it's unsavory for tourists um and that is just absolutely despicable um I have major concerns about how the police usually quote deal with unhoused people they destroy people's property they slash tents they confiscate objects they arrest and find people and are violent towards unhoused people um and so there I know that there's going to be more people living outside this summer the summer and the city cannot allow the police to criminalize people for existing um I think it would be amazing if there was funding that um dedicated for a camping area or a place where people could go and set up their tents um I know that there was uh the the north beach campground was designated for that last summer and I don't think that that's necessarily an option this summer but you know talking to folks seeing where they like to camp already where they feel safe to camp and then designating those areas as places where they can actually exist legally I think would be a great step and would not cost that much money but could be a great use of these funds um I'm gonna leave it there but Abby is gonna continue um Abby's what Abby says is basically gonna continue on what I have said so I'm gonna leave it there thank you okay thank you um and if we could just keep please keep comments directed specifically to the the the recommendations within the public hearing I think that we're wanting to hear feedback on the recommendations and within the within the the the cdbg funds so that was the the guidance that I've received so I will recognize Abby Abby hello council um thank you so much for your time tonight as I mentioned earlier I'm a housing advocate at the daytime warming center which was operating at the vfw post in Burlington from mid-january through this last sunday um if you have not heard about the center uh it operated as a free food distribution site provided free clothes safe use kits tents blankets hygiene products and many more material resources free of charge we also had two computers and one phone for community use and we worked securing emergency housing for unhoused community members through this work I've had the privilege of developing relationships with a lot of Burlington residents who unfortunately due to the accessibility of this meeting are unable to participate in the meeting tonight uh during my last couple of days working at the center I collected testimony from these community members and I would like to start by sharing them with the council tonight quote the dwc is a place that I feel safe it helped me a lot it helped me so much every day just to come here get coffee feel clean you knew that if you were cold there was a place to go and people were so nice that's what it was for me I wish it didn't end end quote quote it's been wonderful you could come here use the computers get food clothes it really helped a lot of people and I hope the city finds some way to keep this going for everyone especially the computers because they've been really popular end quote quote it's been a nice experience because I get to meet people I got some stuff done here got my taxes done it really helped me out it did benefit me in small little ways it got me out of my apartment where I live gave me somewhere to go to socialize a little it was nice it would benefit to have another space I think it would because people still need help end quote quote my personal feeling is that we need to stop just putting people in hotels stop having these big service providers help the homeless and simply house people it seems like it would be a lot more efficient and less expensive skip the hotels skip all of the people who have to be employed to help the homeless and just house the people taking it to the next level would be unhoused people working taking classes things like that to be more productive citizens I see friends that they go to five different hotels they get thrown out because they have a dispute with one of the workers they smoke a cigarette in their room or they're in their room with a friend that they've known for many years drinking a beer so then they get sanctioned they get thrown out for 30 days and it seems to me that that should be illegal because the government pays a lot of money for these people to stay there and they're kind of just living their normal lives smoking a cigarette drinking a beer and it's not uncommon for people in workplaces or neighborhoods to not getting along so they have the same problem sometimes in hotels and if they don't they have a dispute with a worker then they have to stay outside for 30 days and some of the conditions out here as we all know are very harsh to be sanctioned in March when there are still storms is too harsh they could literally die be frozen isolated all by themselves in some park and so once again the answer is housing the warming station is really important because it can offer all of those things to housing to people who are homeless or marginally housed or getting evicted or they've had their phone service cut off while they're getting evicted and then they lost their job and they have no food we need a place for people to reorient and get their daily needs met I've never seen any place like the warming shelter that would help people to use the phones use the computers to get personal hygiene products and clothes in the wintertime and then some assistance from these professionals who help people either with IDs or housing or whatever it is that people are requiring assistance with there really is a need for it there must be approximately right now with the hotels 100 people sitting around in the street looking for food and different things when people lose their hotel rooms there's easily going to be a couple hundred people out there every day looking for assistance or food or clothes and to have a place like this open is really important to Burlington because Burlington's homeless population is small enough that it can be worked with at something like the warming shelter where the professionals are helping people to get the housing so I think it's really essential that this place continues to exist in some form not at the bfw but in some other location there are many of them vacant buildings around that could be used for a place like this there's a lot of vacant often spaces and properties I think it's really great that we do have the serious services that we have in Burlington and that we can relatively easily people's needs for food with the food shelf but another crucial addition to this formula downtown is food not bombs because they're there seven days a week rain or shine every day to give people food so food not bombs is really important but in between this and food not bombs people are having a better life downtown so really the only thing I can say is I hope the warming shelter can continue continue in some other location and I'm really grateful that I had something to do with it it was the best experience of you know having a place and needing services and getting help it's the best experience that I've had in my entire life it's wonderful really really wonderful and quote quote this place is like a home and quote so that was just a small sample of the community's view and I find it very unfortunate that there has been little effort to include them in the meeting tonight since as a stakeholder group they will be disproportionately affected by the outcome of these housing funding projects as I mentioned earlier I serve on the police review committee for the city of Montpelier and what we have done to accommodate unhoused individuals or community members without phone or internet access is to open city hall and have a computer there so that they can participate in these zoom meetings we've been able to do this in a way that is COVID safe and socially distanced and I urge the Burlington City Council to adopt a similar procedure so that you're not excluding this constituency it is my view informed by my work with this community that permanent community resource center a permanent community resource center needs to be allocated funding and opened immediately I hope from the testimony that I've gathered you can see the real need for a center that is providing essential resources for the community I'm very grateful that the city particularly CEDO partnered with CVO to make the warming center happen for the months that it did but the community's need for a site like this hasn't gone away just because it's getting warmer out we need immediate action and funding to meet the needs of the community who have been frequenting the center and relying on it I and the rest of the daytime warming center staff are dedicated to this cause and would love to work with the council or the committee to share our knowledge and experience to make this happen also unless the hotels are given more funding to continue to house this community there will be hundreds of unhoused people losing their shelter after the month of June they will be without housing on the streets and if the Burlington citizens are concerned about graffiti I doubt they will react positively to seeing unhoused people in town we need to prioritize funding spaces to house this community it's my view that we need to convert vacant buildings to shelter into shelter for the community as well as provide a designated area for the community to camp in this must be unbothered by police presence who in the past have slashed tents and destroyed these people's property I am wondering how the city plans to meet the needs of this community as they lose their housing because from what I can tell in the funding there's no addressing that impending crisis I think that it should be treated as such with swift action to meet the needs of this community thank you thank you so anybody else wishing to speak in the public hearing you can use the raise hand function anybody else Councillor Carpenter are you wishing to I just want to bring up a point that's in and for another meeting and maybe Katie can come back there's several intense planning processes with the Chittenden County homeless alliance and the consolidated HUD plan that really looks at a lot of this so this is a very narrow public hearing for one pot of money but if the council's interested we could ask Cedar to come back and inform us on those planning processes yeah certainly and thank you for just taking the time to provide your input on the issues housing and homelessness is very important to us and we are very happy that our small pot of CDBG funding is not the only funding that we have to tackle these issues I would be happy to talk more to explain how the process works with the advisory board and just the history there but in a nutshell we really try and use our CDBG funds to bridge gaps the other state and federal funding sources can't provide so if you take the funding that we gave for a lot of the providers working with individuals experiencing homelessness in Burlington it really is around case management and access to services to plug them into much larger pots of money that are available to find housing to find vouchers we have the continue of care which has its own multimillion dollar grant um we're fortunate unfortunate where we are in the crisis and that unfortunate that there's just a lot of uncertainty around housing especially those that are currently in the hotel system but fortunate that the state has allocated perhaps up to 250 million dollars to solving some of those issues so yeah as mentioned Councillor Carpenter we'd be happy to come back again to discuss these issues in more detail we certainly believe they merit kind of in-depth discussion further but within the context of our limited CDBG funds as you mentioned it is kind of just one piece of the funding pie that we have available and that we are kind of presenting today to get seek approval and seek input for how we have proposed to allocate these funds I'll also comment as a former user of these funds they're horrible to use they're not flexible so you have to really narrow narrow the projects that fit the federal guidelines and thank you I think the city does a good job in putting them in the difficult hole that the federal government gives us with that particular program thank you thank you for that I will go ahead and close the public hearing and this will come back to the full council for further discussion we'll go to the CDNR community development neighborhood revitalization committee and then to the back to the full council at our next meeting on the 10th so we do have a another public hearing to follow this which is 5.10 of public hearing regarding a boundary at 925 north avenue I'm going to go ahead and open that public hearing and if anybody I'm going to actually lower any hands that were raised in the last one if anybody has any comment I will go ahead and open this well actually I'll go to councilor mason for an explanation and then we'll open the public hearing thank you president tracy I was just as a question of process are we opening a public hearing for all three of the proposed ordinance changes that are up for second reading are you going to do them individually president tracy I will open all three actually okay so if you could just please give an overview on all three of the the the zoning amendments then I will open the public hearing and then we can go into each of the the three items 5.11 1 2 and 1 3 sure I was planning on doing it when I introduced but I'm happy to step that up so the first proposed ordinance for which there's a public hearing relates to a request for a boundary line adjustment at the elks club which is located at 925 north avenue this proposal seeks to move in essence the back of the property I guess on the west is a currently it's a separate you know there's a line that separates rl from rco conservation the proposal is to in essence move that boundary line adjustment to the west it would add about 2.4 acres to their parcel the applicant went first or has been in discussions with the city about this for a long time for anyone that's visited the elks club their impervious surface is you know there's a big parking lot and a big building as such it has rendered them unable to make any modifications to the property to accommodate I would say the need and the services that that they offer the public this request will afford them if approved would afford them a little bit of flexibility in order to a come into conformance currently it's not conforming and be a little opportunity going forward Mr. Lawn she was here I think and spoke in public forum before the ordinance committee spoke of one example they were was adding an additional structure with picnic tables underneath it and the like this was unanimously approved by the ordinance committee after much discussion and I know that both Scott Guston and Megan Tuttle are here to answer any specific questions the next proposed ordinance change for which there's a public hearing is one relating to the parking garage illumination standards this one was a little less controversial this simply seeks to update our ordinance to remove specific request to a lighting standard which expired many many years ago and consistent we were slowly trying to update our ordinances to not be tied to specific standards this is just a standard as adopted by the IESNA I don't know who the IESNA is but Scott or Megan could answer that question I put this in a technical update column then finally the third ordinance that we will be asked to consider tonight relates to some amendments to the shoreline setbacks and buffer the amendment seeks to establish a maximum front yard setback for shoreline properties in the waterfront residential districts and to provide a measure of shoreline naturalization upon development of shoreline properties the way it was explained to us currently it's measured as an average so in essence you would look to your neighbors on both sides and given what exists on the ground today this has the unintended consequence at times of forcing a property to move you know develop in the front where the lake is as opposed to the back which is completely inconsistent with our policy goal so I'm trying to think the other provision in that amendment also speaks to what's called shoreline naturalization and was intended to develop a threshold for improving shoreline conditions by allowing for some and Scott can explain this to those of us vegetative regeneration the only change the ordinance committee made was a small tweak to what was changing from no mo to low mo to reflect the reality of it was not a no mo zone in front it was just a low mo with that I will be quiet president tracy and allow the public hearing to open wonderful thank you for explaining each of those councilor mason to get things started I will go ahead and open these public the three different public hearings uh perspective to the items that councilor mason just explained to us which are three separate zoning amendments if anyone is interested in speaking on any of the three or a combination of the three commentary now in the public forum you may again use the raise hand function if you are interested in participating is anyone interested in participating can the raise hand function should be at the bottom of your screen anybody interested in commenting on any of these zoning amendments okay seeing none I will go ahead and close the public hearings relating to the these three zoning amendments and we will now move into the actual amendments themselves which the first of which is the boundary at 925 north avenue counselor mason may please come to you for a motion on that amendment yes president tracy I would like to make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance as presented I do not need the floor back after a second or would again note the presence of planning staff if there are technical or specific questions thank you thank you for that we have a motion from councilor mason is there a second seconded by counselor barlow any further discussion councilor hanson just to note that the um the I don't know if it's the owner of the property or just the director of the aux club but they they were here for public comment I don't know if they're still on but if they are folks could ask questions um leave yeah I I do see that rozer is still here and I know that he and I spoke before the meeting and he indicated that he was available if there were any questions specifically for the alks I think I am here to do address any concerns okay any questions on this item okay seeing none thank you for being here and being willing to answer any questions um rozer really appreciate that um thank you for your consideration yep for sure all right seeing none um I will take this to a vote all those in favor please say I hi hi can you post that carries unanimously the councilor mason may please have a motion on five point one two thank you president tracy I would like to make a motion to waive the second reading and adopt the ordinance as presented we have a motion is there a second seconded by councilor hanson any any discussion from the council okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say I hi hi can you post that carries unanimously and our next item is uh five point one three councilor mason may please have a motion on that as well thank you president tracy I would like to make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance okay we have a second motion from councilor mason a second from councilor hanson any further discussion seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say I hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously as well thank you to our planning staff as well as the ordinance committee and councilor mason for making I think the most the most motions I think I've ever seen a councilor make all right so that carries unanimously and we are now on to our final item which is five point one four which is a communication from the city attorney's office which is the on the annual report on the livable wage ordinance attorney black what I see you've turned on your camera are you able to give a overview of the report itself certainly as you those of you who have been doing this for a while know that each year under the ordinance the city attorney's office reviews the contracts of the city to make sure that the certifications have been provided and we provide you with a list of the city contracts and those certifications we use a a program now called contract works that that maintains all of the city's contracts and we've had some issues with with exactly how it runs reports so so it's very possible that you will find so we've done our best to try to make sure that all the city contracts are covered in this report but it's possible that some of them are in contracts works and didn't come out because we kept finding little anomalies in addition my office has been working on making sure that the places where there are a few blanks in the where the certificates are not up to date and making sure that they come in and get up to date we also reported to you what has happened in the last year and this has been a anomalous year because the the city has relied on a designated accountability monitor who who receives complaints of refers them to our office and works with us on identifying entities that we need to audit they resigned at the end of June we put out an RFP and because of COVID I mean frankly because of COVID we were late in getting that out but when we got it out we got absolutely no responses whatsoever except that I got a a communication from a couple of individuals who said hey we don't qualify under the ordinance um but you know we have some ideas about how you might do this I am have been putting that together into a memo to come to you and I hope to have that to you I have something to you for the next meeting about what that proposal looks like that I think is actually going to be pretty effective in trying to make sure that that we're testing the accountability of the little wage but I will absolutely say because of COVID and shortages of personnel in our office that we did not do a wonderful job this year of of ensuring enforcement of that ordinance thank you attorney blackwood there just is there a discussion from the council councilor hightower to be followed by council hanson yeah this isn't so much discussion I guess as um I mean a question is much just a comment which is I'm really glad to hear that you've been getting feedback I think that the original memo that we received um from the worker center also had some feedback on what they think we should do so yeah I think I'm glad you're putting that together and I think it's really up to us like as a council to clarify some of the ordinances and general processes to make sure that um yeah this is uh something that this is a program that will be successful um going forward and kind of overcome a lot of the challenges that sounds like have been discussed in the community and that we really tackle that so thank you for doing that work councilor hanson yeah I agree with that I I think we need to step up and and take action on this and make sure that we're doing our due diligence um um my question was just around um some of the line items in the report where it's a blank where there's a blank on the date for the livable wage um certification received what what does that mean um it it means that somebody who entered the information into the computer didn't enter that in um the and the way that that this occurs is that each of the individual departments enters their contracts in as they come in and we've been working hard to get everybody making sure that they get all the fields that end up coming out in their report centered and and sometimes they aren't in in other instances it may be that um there there's some blanks where some contracts came up that I noted didn't even fall within the livable wage ordinance they were under $15,000 so there's there's one or two of those um and there are various explanations like that for each one there are a few where we did not find the livable wage certificate and we are working to follow up with those departments thank you that's our point is there a point at which it just becomes most effective from a monitoring perspective and just a cost effectiveness to just keep it to keep it in house somewhere within the city I'm not saying it has to be your office it is your office yeah that so that's a piece of what I'm going to recommend is yes bringing some of it in house and I mean the big picture is bringing it in house and stepping up the audit piece of it because that's what we've found has been the most effective tool to finding out who's really doing it which is requesting records having somebody review those and and taking enforcement based on that and we have existing personnel to cover that or we need to we need to ramp something up and within a proposal is going to be about hiring okay personnel to do it okay okay thank you sir freeman yeah I was just going to say that I um I appreciate um councilor hightower ring of those points um and also the um conversation around you know having it be in house versus not and maybe having a designated personnel it sounds like I turn you black with it um you were going to maybe be making some recommendations about that I'm just um interested in looking forward to thinking about ways that we can focus on the compliance piece um so be the audit piece and then you know really just you know any other loopholes that are existing that um are are causing issues that's all thank you okay any other counselors wishing to comment on this counselor pine are you gonna be moving it thank you that'd be wonderful I would move to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file okay we have a motion council pine is there a second second by councilor hightower any discussion okay hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye opposed that carries unanimously okay so we have now completed our deliberative agenda which and we did uh we already did committee reports which brings us to city council general of city affairs any counselors wishing to comment on general city affairs counselor pine just want to note that a um a sad moment has arrived in the history of burlington today when coffee cup bakery closed its doors um they have laid off their entire workforce and uh that's a that's a it's a tragic thing for the folks who rely on their jobs the jobs that they had there and um it's uh it reminds me that we in vermont have not really grappled with the the concept of ceding some rights to the workers that are afforded to people who live in mobile home parks where they get a chance to make an offer to buy the to buy the park that they live in ought to be the same way for workers who whose companies are sold out from under them and they are told literally when they come to work they were told actually you can go home we don't have a job here anymore that's unfortunately how this um this this transpired and i think it's i think it's a travesty i think the fact that um um you know i i'm sure the comp the finances were complicated i i understand that you know you got to be able to pay your bills but um the uh i think in in many other instances companies which were uh overburdened with debt they were able to work out agreements to uh to actually have them less debt burdened and to have the the jobs continue and so uh i hope we can find a way i think this is a will there's a way to to give workers a little bit of agency in that process so they don't just end up coming to work and being told you can now go home you don't have a job and uh many of the folks who work there um are going to be you know i'm sure they'll be able to find something in this economy but those were those are pretty decent jobs for uh for folks who were um maybe not as uh skilled on the on the in the labor market so i it's a sad day for folks just wanted to note that thank you councillor pines any further comments on general city affairs councillor jane thank you president tracy i have two items and i think one of them um is to address my deep gratitude to director vickery yep and and team i know that uh lately they have been receiving a lot of questions about the reappraisal and i also value um the process that has been taken so far i know that it is not perfect but i just want director vickery and team know that we are here as resource and also he can utilize us as much as possible to deliver great wonderful updates about what is currently going on and also appreciate also catering uh chat for outlining you know a summary about where things are at and i was happy to see that there was over 1160 property appeals and just far and 72 percent of those appeal have been already scheduled i think this is not a perfect process but um we all need to come together in making sure that this is not a responsibility of one department alone but this is a responsibility of all city officials to come together and provide as many information that are accurate and also timely as possible so vickery we are here um and please utilize us as much as you can that's one the second item is to also share to all those listening that we are going to have the second dog meeting um the issue about dogs have been uh increasing lately and we had one meeting on the 30th of March it was well received and well attended and the discussion was very um proactive and also solution oriented i think no one has a crystal ball in some of these issues because it doesn't affect a lot of people but we should not just wait out there or try to dictate what we need to do but i think what we have established are city councils of the new north end and also councilor john shannon it's a right step to the right direction and also to say that the second meeting is scheduled for the 28th and it will be at 6 p.m. and the information about the zoom meeting will be shared soon why i am excited about this is because this information coming out we already have expert yesterday received an email from a dog trainer who really want to be part of this conversation and who already want to educate about some dog behaviors that people need to know about uh yeah so the 28 at 6 p.m. the asum and the information will be shared so thank you councilor carpenter barlow shannon and old as well as cindy from burnington passing recreation for bringing the city residents together to solve the issues uh thank you thank you councilor jane any further comments on general city affairs councilor hightower and i apologize if this was addressed in board of finance it may have been but i missed the meeting which is um i guess to expand on ali's i'm sorry councilor dang's comments i think that you know every appraisal is really tough especially i have it on one department but like given some of the issues that we've had in terms of getting out to the system um getting through to the system um i hope that you know that we will i know that we're already late but that like we make sure that the window is open long enough that everyone who tried to get a reappraisal will or to get a um to get an appointment will be able to do that um and won't won't miss out on that um and that also to the i'm and i know everybody's already working on this but i just feel like we do have to voice it um to the extent that we can give preliminary expected new tax rates um that'll be really helpful because i know it was a lot of very shocking for folks to see the figures and it's really hard to know what that means when you don't have even an estimate of what the new tax rates are um so just wanted to voice voice the voice that i know a lot of people are really frustrated and it's kind of an uncertain time for a lot of people thank you councilor hightower anyone else on general city affairs okay we will go ahead and close that item um for city council president updates um one thing um that i wanted to make sure that um counselors and members of the public are aware of well counselors are aware of it because you've gotten your committee update your committee assignments for this year but for members of the public i um have assigned committees um for the counselors um those being the standing committees of the city council if you're interested in seeing those they're available um on board docs on the consent agenda as item i believe it's five point um uh four point ten um and then they're on the city website um which is probably your easier place and you could bookmark that it's city burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash standing dash committees and then that's a place where you can go um and find count who's on each committee um their contact information um as well as um the staff person who works with that committee so um if you are interested in um some of the committees like for instance we reference the community development neighborhood revitalization committee tonight you can see just um where those committees are um and then um they um and that who's who's going to be part of those committees the other piece that i also just wanted to draw counselors attention to was that um uh board of finance meeting next week um believe it five thirty on monday um which is not does not correspond with a council meeting there's not a council meeting at the same time as we normally um do so that that meeting will be specific to budgetary items um and recovery information in that conversation um that we started this evening but um i think we have further discussion to engage in so just want to put that on folks radar and um note that people are um certainly able to participate even if you're not on board of finance and certainly encourage that and then that we do um also have um a number of uh budget hearings coming up over the course of may and we'll be announcing those as we get closer to um those those dates but we will have a number of budget meetings um throughout the month of may um to discuss the budget um with that i will um turn it over to mayor weinberger to close us out thank you president tracy um i'd like to uh focus my comments on three issues want to speak briefly about the latest um with covid infections um speak to some of the reappraisal issues um discussed tonight and uh i do just have a comment about the livable wage report finally um first of all with respect to covid infections there were seven infections in chitlin county today that is the lowest number we have seen by my eyeballing of the dashboard in many months and does seem to be part of a sustained now downward trend in new infections we've gone from uh over 70 a day as a seven day average to now approximately 20 and um there is real hope as vermont continues to vaccinate more and more folks that these uh these numbers can be sustained and and go even lower um it again to to quote uh requote uh president biden on this i think he captured it well just because the end is in sight does not mean that the end is here um we continue to hear uh hear this from fellow mayors as well that people uh there is a real risk of people letting down their guard in this period sort of tragic to see some people getting infected between the time that they get their first shot and when that first shot takes hold people um really need to keep up their vigilance if they are not fully vaccinated yet for just a a few more weeks um and continue this um continue this positive trend with with respect to the um reappraisal um i want to say um that uh we have been pushing the consultant that we are working on in this tyler technology is very hard to respond to um uh the challenges uh in the opening days of this reappraisal they had not conducted this uh appeal um process during covid and they were clearly unprepared for the issues that would come up in the virtual environment and working um in in this way we have been um numerous senior city staff has been uh engaging with them daily to get them to quickly improve their processes to accommodate the very significant number of burlentonians who do have concerns about the initial assessments of their property um that system seems to be starting to work better 833 as of earlier today burlentonians have succeeded in getting a appeal scheduled um and it's the uh the weights um uh and and backlog appear to be getting significantly better we're going to continue to monitor this um i am aware of this new petition as of tonight and we'll work uh to to get a substantive response to those uh petitioners and those concerns we heard in the public forum um as quickly as possible finally i just uh want to um uh just um i i go it was a little late game i hand up during the the level wage discussion and it just it it just strikes me tonight is the last time that uh eileen is going to be giving this level wage report and i really think it just needs to be said um that uh while uh proper attention was given tonight in discussion of the continued improvements to the system that um uh we want to try to make a need to make there is no individual who has done more to improve the implementation of the current system than eileen blackwood the the until eileen wrote a report nine years ago um uh detailing the many flaws with the system uh at the time there was essentially no virtually none of the contracts that the city made a minor percentage that were in full compliance with with the uh with the ordinance it is now a very rare occurrence that there be that there be contracts that are out of compliance um and the fact that we even are having this report tonight was a a recommendation um of eileen's in that report nine nine years ago uh that and i think it's uh a tribute to her that i think this is a um system that will outlast her this has become part of our culture now that we check in and the implementation um of this important ordinance and on an annual basis and uh this will not be the last uh uh uh report um that comes out and we will continue to work to improve this system and that ethic has taken over in many other uh implementation um uh efforts uh as well so thank you eileen for your service uh on on this important function councillor president tracy that's my report for tonight thank you thank you mayor appreciate that and with that a motion to adjourn is in order so moved moved by councillor pine second by councillor hightower any discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed carries unanimously we are adjourned at 10 24 p.m. thank you