 Good evening, today is November 21st, 2022. Thank you for joining us in person in Contoy's Auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting and as I said, the time is now 5.37. We're gonna begin our agenda this evening with a motion to adopt the agenda. Would someone like to make that motion to approve with amendments if you could list them? Anybody willing? No moved, I don't believe we have amendments. We have one and I think we probably, no, actually we don't. Well, we don't have any amendments. Okay, so anyway, thank you, Councillor McGee. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. And any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. Just wanted to also note that we have Councillor, Councillors, Carpenter Freeman and Jang who are joining us via Zoom. Thanks so much for being here. As the hour is early, even though it is very dark outside, it is very early and we've scheduled a number of presentations and updates that require no council action. And just to note while there's no action that will be taken, we do welcome the community speaking to these items during public forum if you wish. With that we'll go to item number two on our agenda, which is a presentation on an alternative to board docs, which is the system that we use for our agendas. And for this presentation we have with us, Scott Barker, who is the city's chief innovation officer, just by way of background for others who might be watching. We had a council retreat in May and one of the priorities that we looked at was board docs and seeing if we couldn't find a more user friendly, more robust, more community engagement friendly software system to use so that people can see in real time the work that we're doing. Scott, thanks so much for being here this evening and we've allotted about a half an hour if you could possibly use, say, the first 10, 15 minutes for your presentation and then we'll go to questions or I'm not really sure what you have for us. Absolutely, that's on. We have brought two representatives from the company Civic Plus. We use some of their other software, specifically Civic Rec, here in the city. We have Maddie Hansel, Sheila Wave, and Steven French. They're gonna give a quick 15, maybe 20 minute demo on what you and the public would see from the front end of board docs, or not of the board docs replacement of Civic, called Civic Clerk, sorry. Great, what's the name of it? Civic Clerk, that's the module. It comes from Civic Plus, so it's one of their modules. Great, thank you. Thanks so much for that, Scott. I am Maddie Hansel, I'm your account manager with Civic Plus. With me I have Steven French, who is our solutions engineer. That's really going to lead this presentation as he focuses on Clerk. Take it away, Steven. Thanks, Maddie. Thanks everyone for your attention and for having us this evening. Let me share my screen with you. Scott, I'm getting an error message on trying to share my screen. Is there something I can have permission set for? We are looking at that right now. Okay, thank you. While they're looking at it, I'd like to again introduce myself. My name is Steven French to the public and to the board members. I am a solutions engineer with Civic Plus, but prior to coming to Civic Plus just a few months ago, I was a city clerk for a couple of towns here in Michigan and Ohio for about 25 years. So I understand some of the pains that not only staff members, but elected officials go through with the agenda management tools. And I hope by providing some oversight tonight, I can give you a little bit more ideas into some efficiency and some transparency for you and your residents. So we had to make you co-host. I have it. Thank you, Scott. To give you an overview of our system, what I thought I would do tonight is share two different screens with you. The first screen is a existing client of ours. And I'd like to show you what your residents would see or those people would see when they visited your website looking for your agendas and minutes. This is an existing client we have in Missouri. There is an opportunity at the top of this screen for the city of Burlington to enter whatever general information you want your citizens to have regarding these agendas and minutes. Following that information is really the embedded part of Civic Clerk, which will allow users to see the calendar of all of your city commission, your various boards and commission meetings. They can search specifically by committee or look for all of your boards and committees. They only wanted to see, for example, city council. That list would be pared down. They can also search all of your boards and commissions by topic or by keyword. And they can search by date. For a past meeting, what I wanted to show you was some examples of this particular client and how they present their city council meeting. From this page, your residents are gonna be able to download the agenda, the agenda packet. And what I mean by agenda packet is the agenda with all of the staff reports, supporting documentation, things like that, as well as the minutes once the minutes have been either released to the public or approved by the board or commission. The users can also click on this particular tab and be brought to a page where they have many different options on how to view not only the meeting itself, but to view the attachments, the agenda, and to really participate in the meeting. First of all, residents can view the audio visual recording of the meeting, as you can see here. But what's really neat in this particular instance is that your residents can view this video while following along in the agenda. So if, for example, this resident was extremely interested on the invoices that were paid at this meeting or approved at this meeting, not only could they view and listen and see what the council and what any comments were made at the meeting, but they could pull up that invoice listing and see for themselves exactly what information council had been provided on the subject. They could also continue by looking at draft ordinances, maybe the draft personnel policy and procedure manual, maps, signed agreements. Again, everything that was included in the packet, your residents have very easy to understand, very readily available agenda documentation that goes along with our video. Residents, if they wanted to, can also download these files for ease of use. What's really nice about our system is that your residents have the option of downloading and viewing these files both in the PDF version and the HTML or plain text version. And the plain text version is especially helpful for your residents, for the viewers of your meetings who rely on ADA accessible devices. The plain text kind of scrubs all of the visual different fonts, colors, sizes, all that out of the way and really is useful in bringing the ADA accessible devices and reading exactly what is included on these files. Residents also have the ability to share this meeting with their neighbors. So if this particular meeting was of some interest to a neighborhood or a specific person, he or she could sign in, they could create a free account and go back into our system, email that to a friend or relative or a neighbor and really improve the transparency of all of your boards and commissions. In addition, residents can sign up to be notified anytime there is a new file published or made public to these boards and commissions. So if they wanted to be notified via email when a new agenda or when a new minutes document has been made public, they would receive that email with a link that would take them directly to that particular agenda file. Finally, although this client does not have this particular option turned on or made available, Civic Clerk will also allow your residents to submit comments regarding this agenda. So there would be an additional tab underneath the share meeting link here and it would allow people to sign into the system and submit a comment before, during and even after the meeting to be reviewed by city staff and then shared appropriately to those elected officials. Before I continue too far with this, what we call a public portal, does anybody have any questions that I can answer at this time? Thank you, Stephen. Councilor Bergman. Right, there's, well, let's have Stephen show us a little bit about the search, but obviously that that is dependent upon how much of the data we move over. And speaking with Jordan a couple of days ago, we would be looking at moving at least everything that's already in board docs, move that over to the new system. So we would have several years that you'd be able to search back through. But Stephen, can you show a little bit about the search capabilities? That was one of the things that we found as a strength. George, to do that, Scott, and to the rest of the board members, I would like to show you a different view of another one of our clients. This client is Port Orange. And I show you this because they have our website and they use Civic Clerk for their agenda management system. Using their website, they have placed their search obviously front and center for the residents. So a resident could not only come to their website and search for specific things just on their website, they also have the ability to use that same search for items related to your agenda management tool. So if I type in a request of noise, I wanna, maybe I have a loud neighbor or I have a, as you can probably hear in the background, the trash collection trucks are running through the neighborhood and it's getting late. Does the city have a violation of noise for that type of issue? Your residents will first see a result of the site content that's on the site. That gives them results from the search term noise on their website. So if there is a particular permit that's required or if there's something on your website with noise, it'll be reflected here. The second result is probably more interesting to this particular meeting at this time is all of the times the word noise was referenced within your Civic Clerk agenda management system. So we can pull up things like agendas, meeting attachments and agenda files that have the term noise somewhere in them. So if we return to our original result, we can see that the city of Port Orange, Florida adopted an ordinance in 2022 that regulates the noise and light regulations near their Riverwalk. So in addition to looking for results within your agenda management system, Civic Plus and Civic Clerk will allow your residents to search for things almost, they can search for two things at the same time. They can search your website for terms while at the same time looking for things specifically related to agendas and minutes, whether it be the town council, whether it be your parks board, finance committees, things like that. Thanks, Stephen. Council Barlow. Thank you. I had a question to follow up on the search capabilities. Are there ways you can restrict search with additional qualifiers like date ranges or I'm thinking about things like, the way you can search Google mail, which is very rich and the methods you can use to search it. Or is it just simply using a search phrase and the categories that I saw the radio buttons for? Absolutely. There is numerous search and I believe the term and don't laugh if it's wrong because I'm not an IT expert like Scott is, but I believe there's search bullions where you can add things like and or phrases, multiple hits within a string of words, things like that. So yes, we can send a informational sheet over to you that explains all of those types of searches that can be done within Civic Clerk. As we've been playing with different sites, Port Orange is one, Crevecore, Missouri, there's few others out there. We've been very impressed with what we've been able to do from a search perspective and drilled down into much deeper than where we can today in the current system. So we've been pleased with what we've seen so far. Thank you. Yeah, that's definitely one of the areas that I struggle with with board docs is I'll search on something and I'll get up 150 hits that 140 of them are things that seem to be irrelevant to what I'm searching on. So anything we can do to improve that would be helpful. The other area that I was really keenly interested in knowing more about was many of us are trying to conduct business from our phones and board docs is not a responsive app, does not do well on a small form factor device. So I was wondering if you could either show us or speak to how this product will address that. Civic Clerk will be very responsive not only to an iPhone or an iPad, but also we are device agnostic, meaning that we're going to work with any device, whether it be Apple or your average, I wanna say Best Buy type tablet or laptop computer. The best I can show you here is that this would be something similar to an iPad size. We often tell our clients that, yes, it will work on your iPhone, but again, your iPhone is very small compared to a laptop and it is useful, but it would be extremely difficult to go through an entire meeting looking at the packet solely on that small of a screen. So we do encourage a laptop or some type of a tablet for just ease of use and saving your eyesight for the next day. Thank you. So the two questions I had, I mean, one of the things you've already answered, which is that you've already answered is the issue of being able to, and we get a notification on Board Docs when it goes live, but I don't think others can do that. So that would be something, I mean, I remember being able to literally put in and you would be able to say which commissions you wanted and you would literally get those notifications. If we can go back to that, that was like a gov alert, it was on the, so we can do that. We do have that capability. Looking at it, logging in, and as you log in, you get to tell what you're interested in doing. And then the other thing also is when you do the search, not only do you get a ton of responses, but you get them in this, what appears to be a random order. There's like no rhyme or reason to it. Would they be in the order of most recent or can you sort of doctor that so that you're not getting literally like everything since 2013? And those are my only questions, thanks. Steven, can you answer that about the search results in terms of how they can be ordered? I do not know that answer off the top of my head, Scott, but I certainly will find out and follow up with you by tomorrow morning. I've also shown our screen just a little bit to show how the notifications can be selected by your residents. These are all of the boards and commissions that are involved with this particular client. Really all a resident or user would need to do is toggle over on each of these boards that they would like updates to. Simply toggling those to on, they're going to automatically get an email each time. For example, this task force audit committee or city council posted a new document. Great, thank you. That would be great. That's very cool. Thank you. Councilor Hightower. Yes, so I do think that two of the things that I find the most annoying about board docs, which is the phone not being phone agnostic, is actually having different viewpoints, whether you're on a tablet or phone or a computer and the search, we don't have answers to yet. I think one of the other things is for those of us, like, so the packets, I think sometimes folks actually don't want to download the whole packet, like it actually is right now that we can do that by agenda item, especially because an agenda item can have 10 things. And so if you have all the agenda items, that could be a hundred documents that you're downloading to your computer, which I could see being an access issue for some folks. So I just want to make sure that that's not necessarily a thing. And then I think this is more just a, I guess I'm saying I don't know what the decision factor is for the switch we're making, but I'm just trusting you to make the decision in giving you some feedback as to how much different this is for me than board docs. And then I think one of the other things is, I think it could just be a policy thing for us, which is the Word document. Some people don't have access to Word, which can make it really hard. So I think if we just made the switch to PDF, that would actually also make board docs more user friendly, but I think would also help with this platform. Right, there are certainly things with any system that we'll have to look at from a policy and procedure perspective. That's certainly a great piece of feedback that a lot of people don't have Word. If we can make everything accessible to everybody, that's the way to go. I do know in terms of your first question, I think Stephen's gonna show you from an agenda, how you could go into an agenda and just download certain aspects of what you wanted to look at. So you don't have to have the entire packet all at once. Awesome, thank you. Scott, Councilor Jang also has some questions. We probably just can't see him on the side of the screen. Councilor Jang, you're muted, sir. Sorry. No problem. Thank you, Scott, for being here. Thank you, Stephen and Madi. Thank you all for being here. So I think my question, one of my questions is all I had just asked about it and was just wondering if people can view the document without downloading them for capacity storage of their computers. Is that possible? Yes, sir. I go to this particular example, the ordinance. One click, it's available for viewing. If a user then wanted to download or print it, they could do that from the screen as well. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. And the second question is about the media. How do you call it? Media piece. There is this media, meeting media. And those who are currently using this logistics, do they have their own media person who takes care of it? Because Burlington, we have like a partnership with an entity that's outside, et cetera. So I was just wondering, what's the dynamic there? Absolutely. We need, all we need is a specific feed, which is a rather universal feed of an RTMP feed to be able to incorporate that into this media center that we have within our software. In speaking to audiovisual professionals, this is a very routine and very widely established type feed or it's encoded very easily. So I believe your town meeting TV is going to be very, we'll be used very easily, I believe, to into our system. Wonderful. All right, no more questions. Thank you again, Corbyn. Thank you. Scott, maybe you could just sort of explain to us what the next steps are. Sure. And also, I believe you've had some members of city staff who have gone through the tutorial in a more interactive way than we are this evening. We haven't done any tutorials yet. We've done a few other demos. We've had other people, Laurie and Mohamed have both been through a demo with the system. The feedback we've gotten so far is pretty universal that it is from back to front, considered to be more robust, more feature rich, and I guess in some ways maybe more, you can call it more modern than what we're using today. It's gonna give a lot of the features that we're all looking for. I would say that with any piece of software there's gonna be something that isn't there. So I'm sure that down the road, we'll find something that, oh, we wish we had that regardless of which system, but right now, the ones of the ones we're looking at, this is the one with the best match for everything that you all have expressed as being concerns. And meets the needs from an accessibility and equity perspective in terms of ADA and WCAG. The only other question that I would have, and I should have asked this a long time ago, is the school, the Burlington School Department does use the same, they use Board Docs as well. So have you been in touch with them and had it given them an opportunity to perhaps, I mean, are there... We have, we've reached out several times and have had zero responses from Board Docs. They are owned by the... No, no, no, I don't mean Board Docs. I mean the Burlington School District. The Burlington School District. I have not talked to them yet because we wanted to find out. The tool we use is actually built specifically for school boards on Board Docs. There are other aspects of Diligent, which is the company that produces Board Docs, that there are others that would probably be more appropriate in our city council and boards and commissions side. But at this point, they have never gotten back to us. Multiple phone calls, multiple emails reaching out for their sales team and they haven't responded at all. So my last resort would be to talk with the school and to see if we have a contact there that we could reach out to. But right now I would say that of the ones we've looked at, the one you saw tonight was probably leading the pack in terms of our evaluation. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions that counselors have? I noticed, Mayor, you had your hand up. Did you want some, recognize, be recognized? Thank you, President Powell. I just was curious if we have a sense of how significant the migration of the past historic documents over, and if that's the plan, how expensive or time-intensive is that gonna be? We haven't gone into a lot of depth on that other than to know that we can do it. It would be a piece that we would work out as we're talking about contracts and timing and everything else in terms of what it would take. I don't anticipate it being huge based on the conversations we've had thus far, but we'll have more details as we get farther along the path. Was there anything else that either of our, any of our presenters wanted to offer as any other comments or words of wisdom for us? From my perspective, no. I think from here we finalized some of the things that we're looking for, get some of the questions that came up tonight answered like Steven said, he was gonna get us some information. And then decide whether or not at that point do we have enough information to make an intelligent decision, or do we keep looking, yeah. Okay, all right. Councillor Powell. Oh, yes, of course, Councillor Chang and then we'll go to Councillor Freeman. I'm sorry if I did not see your hands up. Go ahead, Councillor. Yeah, I was, and this is for Scott, was just wondering also if they would, if this company will allow a trial phase, basically a three month trial phase before we go into a contract. That's a great question. I would defer to them on that. I would say that it may be a lot of work to get to a three month trial to get to bring everything in and to get it set up. It may be something that we wanna talk to them about, but I'm not a hundred percent sure how feasible it would be. Just to say a little bit about that. You know, it's something that there is a lot that goes into building your instance of Civic Clerk. So a trial is really just, it's not, it doesn't really make much sense for you all or for us all because of the amount of time and work that it would take to build up to that trial that I don't think it's gonna be really possible, but I'm happy to look into it if that's something that is very important for you. Thanks, Mani. Thank you. Councillor Chang, did you have anything else? No, thank you. Thanks so much, Councillor Freeman. Thank you. Oh, actually, can you hear me? Yes, we hear you great. Oh, you can. Okay, sorry. I wasn't sure if the microphone was okay. I just had a quick question, which was that I heard you mentioning Port Orange. I think Florida is it. And then I just wanted to, there was another town or two that you mentioned and I was just gonna check it out because I was curious to see, but I couldn't remember which one it was. The one Steven showed tonight was Crevecore, Missouri at C-R-E-V-E-C-O-U-E-R, I think. I came from that part of the state, so you'd think I could spell that, but I can get a list of other users as well out to everybody. I can send out something to the council. Yeah, that would be helpful because it just would give a better sense of sort of what the platform looks like. Absolutely. That would be really great. I appreciated a lot of the other questions, so I'm excited to answer them. Thanks. I think that would be a wonderful, I agree with Councillor Freeman, it'd be great if we could just sort of be able to go in and look and navigate and see how we can navigate it on our own without anybody showing us where and when. We've been doing that a ton, so I'll get everybody a list. Great. If there are no other questions from councillors, we will close out this agenda item. Thank you all for being here with us. Thank you, Scott, for all the work that you've done to get us to this point, and we'll look forward to next steps to come. Excellent, thanks. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you all. Thanks so much. We will move on to item number three, which is an update on the status of the crisis response team and a general overview of policing innovations. For this item we have with us acting Chief John Murad. Thank you so much for being here with us, and thank you as well for sending along the information in advance, so we had a chance to look at it. Just for everyone's benefit, we've allotted a half an hour for this. If you could give us a presentation, perhaps in the first 10 minutes or so, and then we'll have plenty of time for questions. Thank you again. Here we go, thank you for that. Thank you very much, President Paul, for having me. Thank you to the entire council for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to share this information both about what we've done with regard to the crisis team and what we have been able to do on a number of innovative fronts with the police department. I did prepare a presentation, I don't know if that's available to go up. So as that's working, I'll say that we're going to build on many of the things that we shared with you during the process of the budget. Obviously Mayor Weinberger and the council worked together tremendously well in order to get us a very strong budget that I'm hopeful is going to give us avenues of rebuilding. We're already doing some of that rebuilding and I'm hopeful that this presentation can demonstrate some of that. So that's a lovely photo that I took of Battery Park trying to recruit, put it out on social media and desperately trying to lure people here to this wonderful city and what I think is a terrific department. So the first slide is building capacity. As you know, in first December and then January and then again in February of 2021, we presented to the city council a public safety continuity plan and in that public safety continuity plan, we talked about the creation of the community support liaison position, a social work position that works on mental health, on substance use disorder and on houselessness issues and we expanded drastically our community service officer or CSO position and this gives you some data on that. You in the budget for this fiscal year authorized us to go up to 12 CSOs, we currently have seven. You authorized us to have a total of six CSLs. We currently have two, we just lost one to an executive level position in Essex Junction but we do have others in the pipeline and are actually very close to bringing some of those aboard among our CSOs. We have been able to hire members of our new American community from here in Burlington. That's something that this department has wanted to do for quite some time. The CSO rule is one that has already given us two of our current excuse me, one of our current academy recruits is a former CSO. We hope to send two additional CSOs to the police academy that will begin in August and excuse me in February and so this is an avenue for us for expansion in a number of fronts. Next page please. Thank you. The next is our total incident volume. As you see the thick black line is 2022. That shows year to date through mid October. The distance between 2022 and 2021 and 2020, this year has finally has surpassed those two years has actually expanded since October 15th and now in the middle of November it's a little bit higher than that. I would have produced a more up to date chart but our data analyst has had a wonderful new addition to her family and is not around to help me do this work. The next please. This is an indication of how those rebuilding efforts we're working on have had impact. The CSOs and the CSLs are both picking up calls for service in different ways. Frankly the calls for service to which CSLs go are not really calls for service that we necessarily would have had before. They are often follow up calls, they are additional work but they are not necessarily an indication of being able to replace work that was done by officers. The same cannot be said for the CSOs. The work that you see there for the CSOs is a replacement of certain work that we no longer send officers to and that is a component of our priority response model. We first introduced that in May of 2021. We had to modify it and update it in May of 2022 and as a result there are a number of calls for service to which we do not send police officers, we only send CSOs. Those are all priority three calls for service. The other component of that priority response model is that we sometimes stack certain calls for service. If we do not have sufficient resources to respond to a call, we will stack it. We stack between 15 and 16% of the time. We also drastically expanded the number of calls that we automatically refer to online reporting and we take online reports about 10% of the time. So even as we are building up some capacity here that you see and expanding up to the 25% and beyond zone for the new resources that we've built, there are 16% plus 10% of calls that are not being handled in some way, either because they are stacked and the handling is delayed or because they are going to online reporting. We are working our way through a very large stack of online reports. I'm certain that each of you has heard from constituents frustrations at how long that takes. It is taking time. We have hired what we call reserve officers, former employees of the police department, some retirees, some who have left us prior to retirement and we are using them to work through those online reports to determine which ones have solvability factors and which one we can follow up on and which ones we can try to dig into more deeply. But many of them do not have solvability factors and they really are simply going to be reports that are taken for record keeping purposes, insurance privacy purposes, et cetera. That said, I do think that this slide here is something that shows the impact of these new roles that we've developed as part of the Public Safety Continuity Plan. The next page, please. These two boxes give a sense of how often what the calls for service each role is going to are. You'll see that the reddish pink is our priority one and both of these roles go to very, very few priority one calls. In fact, if they are at it, it is almost always in a follow up or ancillary role. So for example, a CSL, the Community Support Liaison Mental Health Workers, do go to overdoses. That's the largest component of the priority one but they go as a follow up. They are not the ones delivering Narcan. They are not the ones who are first on scene assisting with the recovery. What they are there for is to do a follow up, to say, hey, do you want additional assistance? Would you like to talk to us? Are there things that we can help you with? Many times the people say absolutely not or say nothing at all but leave after having been revived. Other times they are taken to the hospital but other times they do in fact make effort to say we're going to connect with these services that are being offered by the CSLs in a new way. If you could read it, you'd see that for example, some of the ones that the CSOs go to involve different kinds of traffic issues, for example, an obstructed roadway and they also sometimes are the scene of incidents. So this is not merely incidents to which these roles are responding as primaries. These are roles to which they are responding at all. Each of the shooting scenes and homicide scenes that we worked over this summer would have had CSOs at those scenes assisting with exterior scene security but they are not going to be in the interior doing evidence collection. They're certainly not going to be part of an apprehension, et cetera. Next, please. And this is a picture of those priority one incidents. So the tiny portion of red that was in the CSO and CSL boxes, this is the world of priority ones. Priority ones this year are higher than they have been. In fact, September was the highest year ever since we've been keeping track of data through our Valcor system. So we are seeing a change in that. And then the last page is our sworn officer count. We currently have 62 of whom eight are not available. That's an improvement. We've actually gotten a couple officers back from long-term military deployment. That's a positive. We had an officer who had left us return. I think that that officer discovered that perhaps the grass was not greener in other locations. I think that officer wanted to serve a city in which he had grown up and that he loved, that his family had served. And I think that he recognized in other locations that that connection wasn't there. And I'm very glad to have that officer back. We have another officer who also similarly is thinking of returning to us. That's great. If we can be at a, unfortunately, however, there's other officers that I may lose before the end of the year. But if we can be at a higher than 60% number, at a higher than 60 number, that is better than we prognosticated when giving you the budget presentation. And our projections for how to rebuild are predicated on being at 60 as of January 1st. So if we're a little bit above that, then that's great. I am confident that we are going to have a significant cohort going to the first academy of 2023, which will take place, it's anticipated to take place in February of 2023. I'm hopeful to have five, possibly six in that. Our projections required that we'd be bringing six into each academy class and bringing in three laterals. So in some ways, these returning officers are equivalent to laterals. And in that respect, we have made a certain amount of progress on that. We are making excellent progress. We have a new recruiting officer, Carolyn Irwin. She had been in the role for many years. Prior to my arrival here, she is really terrific and she's bringing a new energy to it and a new way of looking at the role. She is really digging into this and I think is bringing to it a new enthusiasm. We are still working, however, on hiring a lot of positions. So it's not just these sworn officers. And even though this ends the presentation, it is by no means the only component of what we're doing. Our dispatch is drastically currently understaffed, although we just brought aboard one new member. Our CSLs, as I said, are down from what you have allocated to us and we want to build up to that full capacity. And our CSOs are down as well. We are working to make these hiring possible, excuse me, make hiring possible. I was in Dallas, Texas for the International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting last month. This is a problem that is facing the entirety of the profession. And certainly for anyone here who is in other professions, I'm certain that you're seeing it as well because it appears to be sort of a universal. Where did everyone go with regard to the working population? We're seeing a real challenge there. Across a bunch of sectors. Our job is to try to move through that. And you certainly have given us the tools to do that. I'm hopeful that we can continue to make progress on it. So that's the presentation there with regard to the crisis team and that is modeled on the CAHOOTS program out of Eugene, Oregon. We have made additional progress there as well. That is all delineated in the written presentation that I gave. But what we are looking to do is establish a multidisciplinary mobile response team that works often in lieu of police intervention but oftentimes also along with police intervention. And that practices trauma-informed de-escalation and is able to resolve crises in ways that either don't involve police are able to transition from police to this unit and then resolve. Or the real hope is that at some point this is able to prevent those crises from metastasizing to an incident that requires police intervention in the first place. So we have made progress on that. There was a state-level RFP to which we responded with a proposal. That state RFP would give us funding that would bring us in line with the cost estimates that were given to us by the one respondent to our state, excuse me, our city RFP from the spring. The respondents to those were a little bit out of line with our cost expectations. The state may be able to help fill that gap and we submitted that last week and are hopeful to hear results from it. That's something that the mayor was very enthusiastic about, made certain that we worked on that. We brought aboard a facilitator or implementer to help us do that. That's Jackie Corbally, someone some of you know from her work with opioids and having been the opioid coordinator for the Burlington Police Department. And so I'll leave it at that and then move towards questions. Great, thank you. Questions from the council and I will try to pay attention to those people that are participating online as well. Councilor Hightower. Just a question on the dispatch situation specifically and where that is and what's happening with regionalization and how what we're doing in the interim and then if there's something we can do to guarantee folks future positions so that they're not facing job security just a little bit more detail on that issue specifically. Sure, that's a huge question, councilor. And trying to put it into a nutshell, I'll say this, we're at for a component of four rather than 12, which we are allocated, is that uncertainty around regionalization? Regionalization is proceeding. It is experiencing challenges with regard to just, it's something that's been in the works for quite a number of years now. And so there's a lot about it that is still being developed. But it is something to which Burlington remains committed and it is something that we are working towards. So our job is to continue to have fair and I think effective employment for our dispatchers who are invaluable. The work they do is invaluable. And in fact, without them, we really, as we face the prospect of what happens if no one picks up our line or the 911 line, it has been driven into stark relief, just how important they are. The mayor has asked that we work on some plans that could address some of those uncertainties around regionalization with regard to making certain that we continue to offer the same kinds of employment protections and benefits that the city does even through regional. And having that hammered out and made more certain would be a component of solidifying regionalization and removing some of the uncertainty that I think it does hold for dispatchers, not just in Burlington, but elsewhere. I've been doing a fair amount of work on the regionalization and can provide some further update there. If that's okay. First of all, I wanna say that the fire department has stepped up in recent weeks to assist the police department with the challenges that we're facing and they are supplementing largely through our new recruits currently are being kind of trained on how to do the dispatch system and they are taking over the dispatching of the fire response. We're likely to be coming to the council in the coming months with a new collaboration with South Burlington where as a step towards regionalization, we would have fire dispatch being done by South Burlington which is going to be where the location, physical location of the regional effort will be. And hopefully, and there is some uncertainty about this but I believe we will see this new regional entity which does exist because Burlington voters and voters from I believe six other municipalities voted to create this new regional authority that there is a board for that authority with Burlington having representation on it. I believe that that board will be moving in a very short period of time to start construction on the new regional facility and to hire an executive director. This is a key moment for that effort. It has been more than four years now since voters supported this. Certainly the timeline for this project was impacted by the pandemic but from my perspective this either needs now to happen and happen quickly or we need to reevaluate whether this makes sense for Burlington long term. So hope that's a helpful quick update. There will be further discussion of this shortly. Great and then my second question is maybe as much of a comment as a question which is around the CSLs which I think the hiring has been much slower than we would hope to see. I think that there's a significant, maybe not significant, I think there's a section of the applicant pool that would maybe be more comfortable. I think we're already having a hard time hiring for positions across the city. Maybe that's especially true at BPD and to the extent that we're having a harder time hiring for positions within BPD maybe then the CJC reallocating some of those positions within the CJC and then having still that collaboration with the Burlington Police Department. If that's something that would be helpful I think we should consider pursuing that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Hightower. So we have Councilor McGee to be followed by Councilor Barlow, Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. Thank you, Acting Chief Murat for the presentation. I would have liked to hear a little bit more about kind of what we're seeing, the timeline being for the implementation of the crisis response team, given that this has been a conversation that has been going on for close to a decade in this community and more closely in the city here for the past two years and that our own budget resolution called for action to be taken on this item by October 31st. I think further delay on this item is on implementing this program, excuse me, is sad and it's unfortunate that our community continues to lack this much needed tool in our tool belt in terms of our public safety responses. So I appreciate that we've brought somebody else on to help with the implementation of that. I think the purpose of this program is to have a non-police response for mental health calls, for overdose calls. And I just wanna make sure that that continues to be the priority for standing this up as quickly as possible. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor McGee. We'll go to Councilor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you, Chief Murad. I guess to follow up on Councilor McGee's question, in the mental health summit, we heard that there's many times that we need a sworn armed officer to accompany some of the responses depending on the state of the individual that's being responded to. Can you talk a little bit about our ability to have this sort of reformed crisis response when we have a shortage of sworn officers? Yes, sure, thank you. And I do wanna acknowledge that it has taken more time than we would have liked, I think, that we have, although it's something that the city has been discussing as you pointed out, Councilor, for a decade plus to make progress on it in the past year and a half has actually been an acceleration of that process. I do think, however, we had a long summer with a lot of other things happening that, frankly, did take away some of my focus on this project, and I do apologize for that, although it was a matter of resources bringing in Jackie Corbally as a way of addressing that. So there are a number of things that we would like to be able to do moving forward of ultimately. My goal is ultimately to have a co-response capacity and to have that through what we call CAPE inside the police department. CAPE is Crisis Assessment and Intervention Programs and it includes the CSLs, it includes our Victims Advocate, who is a co-employee of CEDO but sits in the Burlington Police Department often, it includes our Domestic Violence Victims Advocate, it includes our Domestic Violence Prevention Officer who is the only current sworn officer in CAPE. The goal would be to have additional officers in there, a position we used to have called the Community Affairs Officer, which was unfortunately one of the first officers or positions rather that I curtailed upon the diminution of headcount as we began to lose officers. Ironically, the person who was in that role is now our recruiting officer. Carolyn Irwin had been our Community Affairs Officer for quite some time, after having been the recruiting officer some time ago. She did work on Meals on Wheels, she did work with Graffiti, she was a central location for Graffiti remediation in the city and losing that position was a blow to our ability to really effectively have community policing. Ultimately, I would like to have that back. It's not something that's really carved out in the diagram of staffing and headcount that the CNA report envisions, but it is something that ultimately I believe is necessary and is a good idea as a best practice. It was talked about a lot again at that Dallas conference with the IACP because there are a number of these kinds of calls for service to which people will not go unless there are officers. We're hearing that anecdotally increasingly from street outreach. We are hearing that in other locales as well, including other cities that have stood up new resources around mental health and crisis intervention, places where we're buying body armor and things, not we, not this city, but other places where they're buying body armor for people in these roles. There is a need for security at those and being able to have officers who are routinely working in that environment with those personnel and pick up a lot of the ethos as well as some of the training would be the real goal. And ultimately, I think a gold standard. But it's a ways off because that really does require at least us getting to that 87 current allotment. Thank you. That's helpful. The other question I had was related, I guess. At what level of officer count would we be able to have a more consistent downtown foot patrol or a presence to address many of the issues that we've continued to hear about downtown? Great question. So with our current staffing, we have 22 officers that is non-supervisory officers who are on patrol. And on most days, that means that there are three to four officers for the city. When I have four officers available, we do have two officers in the CCA or city center area. Today, because it was a Monday, which is an overlap day between the two 10 hour shifts, we actually had, I think, eight officers we're in today. And the CCA had a total of four officers who were out and about. And that is robust staffing for us. Now, that used to be a normal non-double day shift. That was just a regular old any day, Wednesday, Thursday. What do we need to be able to have that larger presence? I mean, every time we get an additional officer on a shift, if I'm above four, the first thing that we do is we have the fifth officer double up in the south area, because south coverage needs that as well. Then the sixth officer goes to the CCA. And then the seventh officer, also CCA. And so that's sort of where we are with regard to need. Now, getting additional CSOs is gonna assist with that as well. When we get to the stage where we have two to three CSOs on every single shift, that will also help. Right now CSOs are supposed to be assigned to the CCA only, but then they get called away by other kinds of calls for service. I mean, there are very few animal complaints, for example, in the CCA. Animal complaints tend to be in other parts of the city and that will pull them away and then they'll have to deal with that and then finish up that call for service, whether it's easily remediable or whether it's something that takes longer or maybe even takes an animal into custody. And now there's all sorts of things. And now that that CSO is not in the CCA any longer. So that's our challenge. What's the number? I mean, I think that once we get to say 72, 74, we will see a more robust presence in a lot of parts of town, sir. Thank you. My last question, if you could briefly update us on the status of the Vermont State Police volunteer staffing on the weekends. Is that going according to plan? Are we ready to roll that out to other agencies potentially? So I've extended sort of feelers to other agencies. There is no real desire for it in other agencies. What we've seen here in Burlington with the VSP, the Vermont State Police, as you know, that contract was nominally worth upwards of $60,000. If every single shift had been taken with the full number of officers, troopers, excuse me, and the full number of hours, instead we spent just over 4,000. So that's indicative of the sort of frequency with which they are volunteering to sign up for this detail. Anything is helpful to us. And we are grateful to the Vermont State Police for anything they can give us. We are experiencing huge amounts of cooperation on other fronts, not merely troopers volunteering to come and stand at church and main, but other components we are working with them in a number of investigatory ways. They are tremendous partners for us. But insofar as volunteer troopers being on the corner at church and main and also therefore moving up and down Church Street or into City Hall Park, it has not been as sort of frequent as we might have liked. Okay, thank you, Chief. Thanks very much, Councilor Barlow. I don't see anyone else. Oh, that's me. I guess obviously not looking on the right side of the table here. Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you, Councilor Travers. I wanted to ask you about the incidents and how those are calculated. If, because I know that a lot of incidents as you acknowledge they're kind of deferred to online reporting. So if I call up the dispatcher, I think that things that are not like going to be imminently responded to are often deferred. So if I call up with my bike was stolen, my house was broken into and there's nobody currently there. A dog off leash just bit me. Would all of those things go to online reporting? And if I failed, if after I called dispatch, I got referred to online reporting, which you get, of course, you don't do that on the phone. You disconnect and you either do it or you don't. Is it an incident if I don't then follow up with the online report? No, and those incidents that you just mentioned, I don't know that all of those are online. I think several of those are stacked calls. An injury from an animal would be a CSO. So we don't stack CSO calls unless all of the CSOs on staff are otherwise engaged. But it's a different stacking system than it is with officers. Officer stacking is predicated on making certain that we have at least two officers available for emergency priority one calls. And therefore you could have a stacked call even though an officer is unassigned. You cannot stack a CSO call if there is a CSO unassigned. That CSO will go. But if both CSOs are handling other CSO type calls, then such a call might be stacked. But it's not at the default. So the animal would be a CSO. The burglary would be stacked and we'd want an officer response. The bike might very well be an online report. That's a property crime, a larceny. And you would be asked to make that an online report. If you did not, or if you ran into challenges with it or frustrations with it, and I know that is a real problem. No, that does not become an incident that we track. I think I have been told that there have been burglaries that have not, I don't know if maybe they got an initial response, but it's hard to get a police report that's needed for the insurance. Is that because of the online reporting and just having to work through that or just in addition to coming and seeing what happened then the report is going to take longer to generate? The online report does take a little bit longer to generate than a standard intake report from that a dispatcher fills out. Normally what happens is if there's a call for service about let's say an ongoing assault on Church Street, that becomes an incident immediately because the dispatcher takes it in, reserves an incident number for it and immediately begins sending resources to it. On the other hand, if you have a call for service that is not taken as a stacked call but is instead referred to online reporting and then the caller does in fact go and complete the online process, the incident number is not going to be assigned at that moment because it has to be vetted by a person. That vetting usually takes place within 24 hours but sometimes on weekends it may be a little bit longer. At that point it's vetted, it does get an incident report is begun irrespective of whether or not there are solvability factors and irrespective of whether or not it's going to get a significant amount of follow-up because it does have solvability factors. Even if it's not, it still does become an incident and gets generated, it turns into something that we've got. As I mentioned, 10% of our current calls for service are total incident volume, 10% are online reports and that's because each one of them did in fact get a number and then ended up in our count of incidents. And then if you have, if a police officer is on patrol sees something happening on patrol, either people kind of getting aggressive towards each other, yelling at one another, acting inebriated or something. And the police officer intervenes in that, that is counted as an incident, correct? That's correct. So I mean, the colloquial thing that an officer is going to say is dispatch, punch me a card, I'm at the corner of church in Maine with a 1010, a disturbance of some sort. And it used to be that these were literal cards that dispatch actually had to punch and sort of work on and so the lingo remains with us even though there's nothing to do with paper anymore. But the officer says, punch me a card, at that point dispatch does so, gives it the next number in the queue, assigns it and then waits for the officer to fill out a lot of the material in there. The officer may then say if he or she recognizes the participants, you know, it's Joe Smith and Peter Jones again and then they go through. But that's how it works. Sorry. Thanks. Yeah, I didn't really need the whole, just so it's counted as an incident is good. It is. So when we have less than half the patrol officers that we had when we were fully staffed and these kinds of interventions happen less, we will have fewer reported incidents because the police officers are not reporting them because they're going to the calls that have come in and they don't have, they're just not less patrols is going to generate fewer incidents. Do we have any way to measure what was being reported in this way when we were fully staffed and in comparison with what's getting reported in that way now? Yes, the easiest and most general proxy I have for that is aggregated traffic stops and foot patrols. So those are always discretionary proactive officer activity, not always there are instances in which the public says there's a car driving very fast down Main Street, somebody go get it or address it, but the vast majority of traffic stops were officer initiated and proactive. The diminishment of that count is indicative of the ways in which a total incident volume has been affected by changes in officer proactivity rather than changes in calls from the public. And I have said for quite some even going back to June of 2020 that the diminishment over the several years from 2015 or so through 2021 was not driven by calls for service from the public. It was largely driven more than half by changes in officer proactivity that we asked for. Long before any memos or any changes in posture for example from the state's attorney, we asked for fewer traffic stops from the officers and we drove down those numbers ourselves voluntarily, purposefully for a variety of reasons, but that is indicative of a significant change. I don't really have a way of parsing out which for example assaults or 1010s or disturbances on Church Street were proactive rather than calls for service. I can try to see whether or not there's a mechanism for it, but the easiest way for me to talk about the phenomenon you're discussing is to look at traffic and foot patrol over the past five years. And that diminishment is significant. In fact, if you take this year's non-traffic and foot patrol total and you add 2017's traffic and foot patrol total to this year, this year is higher than every single year except 2017 for total calls for service. Which is indicative of the fact that even though that total call I showed you where we're sort of hovering over two years but below the others, that disappears if you re-add that proactivity. And I'm not recommending that we do necessarily, not that proactivity. We had reasons for diminishing traffic stops. But are there other things that are happening or aren't happening? Absolutely. Not counting things that didn't happen is very challenging of course. Well, thank you. I just want to say I am concerned when we're looking at this data that this data is really not taking into account the vast changes in policing and can lead you to believe that there are far fewer incidents than there really are. Because it's harder for the public to report incidents than it used to be. The police are not reporting incidents that they used to. And I think that there's a culture and desire to report fewer incidents. It doesn't necessarily mean, it's not a picture of the activity on the ground. But thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Shannon. We have Councilor Traverson, then Councilor Freeman. We do need to try to get the other agenda item in before public forum. So Chief, as much as I know, this is phenomenally fascinating to you. If you could just keep your answers a little bit more succinct, that'd be great. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks, President Paul. And thank you very much for the presentation, Chief. I have a couple of questions packaged together just looking for additional information on your recruitment efforts thus far. So don't feel like you need to answer each of these questions in turn. But really what I'm wondering here is, I'm assuming to the answer to this, maybe yes, given the size of the potential academy class that you have coming up. But I'm curious whether or not you've noticed yet an uptick in the number of applicants to the police department. If so, I'm wondering if you've identified any common threads as to where these applicants are coming from and what now has them interested in coming to Burlington. I'm curious whether or not you've made offers to applicants that have been rejected in the last few months. And on sort of the flip side of folks who are coming here whether or not you've heard any feedback from applicants who have rejected an offer for whatever reason as to why they are electing against coming to Burlington. Yes, money and the last one I don't quite understand. So yes, we have had an uptick in applicants, we have. And some of that has been money. The contract is very attractive. It is one of the most attractive in the region. I guess the question that I don't understand is what you mean by whether or not we've rejected, whether we rejected applicants. Whether applicants have rejected our offer. If they've applied and have for whatever reason withdrawn their application or we've made an offer and they've ultimately turned it down whether or not you have any evidence as to why that may be the case. I know of one where we did make a conditional offer and it was turned down and that had to do with the timing. I think we moved a little too slowly on that applicant and that applicant went for another opportunity. I think that there have been some of the best practices that we're talking about instituting and that Corporal Irwin has been thinking about and that we're hopeful the recruitment coordinator is going to help keep track of an implement would be questions of people who either leave the process, questions of people that we reject, it's a little more difficult. We really don't have a mechanism for talking with them about the process. And although getting feedback about what went well or what didn't go well is helpful no matter who it's coming from. Talking to someone that we have chosen not to move forward with can be challenging. Particularly because sometimes the reasons that we are choosing not to move forward are not reasons we can share. So that makes it a little bit more complicated. But the notion of getting that from people who do go through the process is a key thing. I'm seeking to implement some levels of internal interrogation that we've never had around recruits who finish the academy. How was the experience? Recruits who finish field training. How is the experience? And trying to work on getting some of those things in ways that we haven't done at least certainly in the recent past. If I may just ask a brief follow up, President Ball. I'm actually not familiar with how police academies work around the country. But there's some frustration that from my perspective that we maybe have five or six officers potentially who are ready to come on board. But we need to wait until the next academy class and then it will be another 16 weeks I believe after that until they're able to come back to Burlington. I suppose I'm curious in your experience in working with other departments around the country are there other models that sort of allow for folks who are interested in joining a department to get through the academy process, to get through the certification process and to get to the department on a faster schedule as compared to the way we do things in Vermont. So there are, it's a huge question and I will try to make it very short. There are almost as many models as there are states and to a certain extent almost as many as there are departments, right? The very large departments almost always do their own police academies and they therefore can meet whatever schedule they want. Most other smaller departments have to use some form of state academy. Ours is very specifically prescribed by law. So our ability to change it or do something differently is incredibly limited. There are states, for example, that allow officers to essentially train on spec. They can attend police academies or collegiate police academy programs and essentially make themselves into free agents and then look for work. That is not how Vermont works and it's not many states work that way. So there are other models out there. Implementing them is a challenge. There's a lot of movement right now at the state level with regard to the academy. I myself am the chair of a committee that is working on the entrance exam standards for the academy. That group of which I'm chair was instrumental in ending the use of the old academic test because we did not believe that it was fair and we believed that it was something that was getting us bad outcomes with regard to the kinds of people we wanna bring in. We're also changing the physical fitness standards. We're working on the psychological inventory. These are all things that are in the works. A structural change of the type you're talking about has been discussed, but it's a big, big move and it's probably a ways off. Thanks very much, Councillor Travers. We'll go to Councillor Freeman and then try to wrap up. Councillor Freeman. Thank you, President Hall. I had a question about a line in the memo. It's regarding the, so let me just find it again. I think it said that a request for proposals is seeking experienced social service provider to develop a crisis response team. It is anticipated that the Burlington Police Department will eventually oversee the social service provider that will administer the team. I just wanted to comment that I don't think that is the best model going forward. And I'm just wondering, is that something that, I'm guessing that will just get decided eventually. I mean, this is just my personal opinion. I don't think that it's a necessary, more necessarily best practice to have that agency, which it sounds like very well, maybe the Howard Center to be overseen. I understand it as a partnership, but not with, not sort of under the administration of the department. I don't know if you can speak to that line a little bit. I may be the best to speak to that, President Paul. So, you know, this is a, from my perspective, this is a policy question that we worked through and there was a fair amount of public discussion of about a year ago as we moved towards putting out an RFP. There was debate about whether this contract would be best managed by the BPD or some other city agency. The due diligence that led up to that decision significantly included looking at how other cities do this and specifically at the Eugene, Oregon Cahoots model where for, as I recall, more than 20 years, maybe more than 25 years, the police department has managed that contract and that has been seen broadly as a successful model given that the concept here is to make sure that this service is dispatched and is coordinated with our other first responders and given that, as we've heard, as was a major topic at the Mental Health Summit, that frequently that there does need to be some kind of support from the police department in these responses ensuring it struck us a year ago and again, there was discussion and there was review by multiple agencies before the RFP was put out and that's where we landed. So that is how we are moving forward and I do wanna say I did encourage Chief Mirad to bring Jackie Corbally onto the team to add to our capacity to get this implemented. We have been waiting, looking to get this implemented for some time. I think people who know the work that Jackie did for us on the opioid epidemic, I think having her on the team is a very positive addition and further, it is important that we're working for the long-term sustainability of this program as well as I think for some programmatic reasons, having the state as a partner on this will be beneficial. We've been working towards that for some time as well. It was not clear when the budget was passed this year how their involvement would be manifested. It only became clear in October that the best way for us to partner with the state was through this response to the RFP and I was pleased that the team did get a strong proposal submitted for the November, I believe 15th deadline, maybe it was 14th and we are looking, we were encouraged by the state to be responded to that and I'm very hopeful about that process. Thank you, Mayor, Councilor Freeman, did you have anything else you wanted to add? I do. Thank you for that context. Yeah, it's interesting that you brought up Kahootz, I went onto the Eugene website to try to understand their structure. I didn't realize it was managed by the police department. When I was looking into it, my understanding was that it was more so that they received funding from the city and were sort of in partnership, but shared the sort of, were connected through the sort of dispatch system. So, I mean, I'm happy to read out more on that and learn more about it. I'm still wary of that decision to have it be overseen by the police department, but we can continue that conversation further down the road. I think my other, one of my other main thoughts was around sort of this conversation about having police presence in like kind of in tandem or like in sort of at the same, responding at the same time to some of these calls. And I do, I feel like that has sort of come up often of this sort of basically this sort of either explicit or implicit talking point that we can't have just mental health professionals responding to calls. And I know that, Chief Mayor, that you did mention that eventually, but I just don't want us to start off thinking that we can only have sort of police at these calls as well in terms of responding to calls. I think that that's, in my opinion, it's not a great sort of framework for thinking about this and thinking about the crisis response team. I just have been sort of hearing that and I know that there are many people who have brought that up over the conversation over the years, but I do think we are trying to think of different ways of handling these types of sort of emergencies or types of issues in the community. And so just sort of starting to shift the way that we think about this and shift our perspective that continues to be helpful. I will also say just before we move on to another topic that I was hoping to have more of the conversation, not just the presentation, but also the discussion by the council to be focused on the crisis response team specifically. And I don't know if we can have a follow-up about this soon, but I understand there are a lot of other topics to discuss when it comes to public safety and policing. Certainly it's something that gets discussed in the community and with us often, but it felt like we sort of veered away from that a lot. And my expectation coming into this was to really hear a lot about the crisis response team and really be focused on that. And there will be future presentations and future conversations about this. So I do just think that it would be helpful to really give it its due diligence at some point because I think it's a super important part of this sort of next step and next stage of how we deal with these kinds of issues as a community. So thank you for the presentation and the conversation and the further context. And that was all, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Freeman. Did you want? I think, yes. Sure, go ahead. I simply want to say that if more conversation around this issue is to be had, I would urge you to bring in practitioners because those with whom I speak, the people who are the respondent personnel in the mental health field don't want to go to many of these incidents without police. This is being said by the people who do the work. And so to say to the people who do the work, no, we should do it in this way or that way, I think it's something that probably ought to be discussed with those folks. Thank you. I just want to resumably, I hear that and I understand that and that's why I brought that aspect up. I just, I think that there can be a culture shift not just in the police department but also in mental health professionals and how they see their role as well. I mean, when I think about the field that I work in in elder care or just in nursing assistants, there was a time when people, this is a really, in my opinion, a more extreme example, but there's a time when people refer to people who need assistance with maybe eating as they refer to them as feeders, for example. And this is a, and someone who worked in that profession would say, oh yeah, that's just what we call them. And this is just a very specific and very small example of the way that culture shifts over time. And like, for example, in my work and in my work community, we would never use those words because we understood slowly over time that there's a shift. And so I understand that that's where providers may be at now and that's where the police department is at now, but that's why I brought it up because I do think, and this is again, just my personal opinion, but I do think that we could start to see a shift around that because I think it's, I think we're trying to understand what transforming the way we respond to these kinds of issues looks like. And I understand we might continue to disagree on that, Chief Mirrod, but that's why I brought it up because I do think it's something that's worth noting and worth thinking about. Great, thank you, well noted. Seeing no other comments, we'll close out this item and thank you, Acting Chief Mirrod, for your time and for being here this evening. Thank you. We have just about enough time, perhaps, to get us to item number four, which is an update from the mayor on the 10 point action plan to fulfill the promise of housing as a human right in Burlington. If we do go over, we'll just go to public forum and then come back to this. Mayor Weinberger, the floor is yours. Great, thank you, President Paul. I am gonna kick things off, but there are a number of members of the city team who are going to help with this presentation and I think they're gonna come up and join as I get started here. We appreciate the opportunity to update the council and the public on the 10 point action plan to fulfill the promise of housing as a human right in Burlington. This is our most recent housing initiative that was launched just a little less than a year ago in response to the acute housing challenges that we find ourselves facing as we come out of the global pandemic. Housing has been a major priority of this administration since it started. As most people know, I was an affordable housing developer before taking office and building a lot more housing has been a focus of mine, of the administration since the start. We also brought additional focus and resources and effort to addressing chronic homelessness during the earlier stages of this administration as well. And both those initiatives were making progress prior to the pandemic. We saw an approximate doubling of overall housing production in Burlington over the pre-pandemic years of this administration. We also saw numerous new resources for addressing chronic homelessness created. We started doing annual point in time surveys. We working with partners created a coordinated entry system to bring a lot more data to bear on our addressing homelessness. We created first a winter warming shelter, low barrier warming shelter, and then we made that in 2020, a year round facility. And we were seeing roughly speaking, vacancy rates were rising during the period leading up to the pandemic in general. We saw, while not entirely linear, we saw reductions in the number of chronic homelessness, number of people living in homelessness in the community. We saw the total drop from a 2013 total of about, I believe it was 105 individuals down to as low as 35 shortly before the pandemic. The reason we announced this new initiative a year ago is because the pandemic reversed all those gains. Housing production slowed substantially during 2020 and into 2021. And in part because of how well Burlington and how well Vermont did with respect to fighting the virus, this specialty place became even more desirable for people to live. And we saw significant influx in migration of new residents and that put greater pressures than ever on the housing market. We now are seeing historically low vacancy rates that have continued over the last year, about a half of a percent. And we have seen an explosion in the number of individuals living who we identify as chronically homeless. That number, which again had gotten as low as 35 is now believed to be over, I believe 220. And we have seen an unprecedented number of people sleeping outside during this period. So in that context, we came forward with the plan, happy to report that a year, again, less than a year since the announcement of this plan, which I believe is as ambitious as any housing action plan, certainly with respect to addressing homelessness that the city's ever undertaken. The first year of that plan, we have seen substantial progress on all 10 elements of this plan. And so we did wanna take a few minutes to walk through each of those components. And if we could advance the slide, I think I'm gonna take the next slide. The kind of overarching vision of this plan is that we are seeking to achieve two cornerstone goals, if you will. One, we wanna, again, double the production of overall housing in the next five years. We basically are trying to build as many homes in Burlington in the next five years or the next four years on top of the one that we're completing as we built in the last decade, which again was an increase, a doubling of the prior decade. And we also have explicitly stated that we have the goal now of ending chronic homelessness in Burlington before 2025. It may seem jarring to in, as we are facing the most, this enormous increase in chronic homelessness to say that we wanna end it a couple of years from now. We did that very intentionally for this ambitious goal because Burlington, having such a goal is a critical element in achieving that outcome. There are growing number, Burlington essentially by stating this goal, doubling down on this goal, it has joined a growing number of communities that have explicitly sought to make homelessness rare and brief and achieve what we call functional zero. And there are increased, a small but growing number of communities that have actually succeeded at this. We now have that goal and I'll hand it over to my colleagues, the progress that we're seeing in some areas towards achieving and towards making investments that are gonna get us there. So with that, I think, Sarah, are you next? Sorry, did you want me to address this one before? You took this over, okay, you got it. Hi everyone, thanks for having me tonight. Sarah Russell, special assistant to end homelessness, one of the points up there. So I am here to talk about action point number three, which is the coordinated entry and our investment in coordinated entry has yielded an increase in staffing. Prior to the city's investment, we were at one full-time employee working under coordinated entry and now we have 2.5, which has added an outreach component, has been really successful in engaging people in and enrolling people in the coordinated entry system so that they can access housing navigation services and be connected with housing resources. That outreach person is able to go to parks, to the community resource center, to places where people are and enroll them in coordinated entry. They've enrolled 112 people within the last six months, which is pretty huge. We've also seen 123 households enter housing within the last six months, since we made this investment as well. We have developed MOUs with private housing developers for the first time. Prior to that, the only housing provider that had a memorandum of agreement to accept households' coordinated entry was the Champlain Housing Trust and now we have expanded partnerships with Summit and NetE properties. And additionally, through coordinated entry, we will be incorporating homeless prevention, which we're working on a deadline to hopefully have that incorporated into coordinated entry. Right now our system supports households who are currently homeless and the goal is to expand that to households that are at risk of homelessness so that there's equity and access for those homeless prevention resources. Sir, before you go on to the next slide, I did fail to speak to the first two points. So if we could go back to one slide and I'll hand it back to you. Point number one in the plan was to invest at least $5 million of our ARPA funds, the $27 million of federal funds we received in the American Rescue Plan into housing with at least $1 million being designated for initiatives to better serve the chronically homeless. The council will remember that in March, we committed actually $3 million to various homelessness initiatives including the Elmwood Avenue emergency shelter. And the point number two, and this would have been a better segue than I managed to accomplish a moment ago as we agreed together. And then the council approved it was part of the plan. The council approved the creation of a new position, a special assistant to end homelessness within CEDO to provide a single point of accountability and responsibility authority for expanded community effort. This is a really important point because our homelessness efforts or attempts to help people experiencing homelessness are spread over many different agencies and in creating this position, we are very hopeful that we will create important new focus and certainly I've felt great momentum with that since Sarah joined the team in April. And with that, I will hand it back to Sarah to finish her part of the presentation. The action point number four, which was development of homeless dedicated units. Our goal was to have 78 units in the pipeline right now. We're close to meeting that goal, but we still have some work to do. So we're anticipating 66 new homeless dedicated units within the next, or before 2025. As you can see up there, these are kind of where the units are. It is important to note that there are additional homeless dedicated units outside the city of Burlington. I think that we have about, we're seeing around 215 planned throughout Chittenden County. So a lot of times when we talk about homeless unit, you know, our homeless response, it's very city-based, but we are taking a county-based approach. All of the towns in Chittenden County are responsible for ending homelessness. So the slide you have here really points to the Burlington units. Just wanted to note that there are additional units outside of Burlington that are homeless dedicated online, coming online soon. We have an interesting new program, the Vermont Housing Improvement Program. As you see up there, the VHIP has actually been an innovation with ARPA funds that's managed locally by CHT and state by the Community and Housing Development Department. And they allow for $30,000 to $50,000 per unit to rehab the unit to make it rentable and bring it back into code, as long as the landlord agrees to take a referral through Coordinated Entry and house a homeless household. So this has been a real innovation in working to not just connect our Coordinated Entry system with large housing developers, but also to work together on partnership with Private Landlords in Burlington as well. So with that, I am gonna hand it over to Samantha, who is gonna be providing a construction update for the Elmwood Shelter, which is action point number five. Thanks, Sarah. Hi, everybody. My name is Samantha Dunn, also Assistant Director for Community Works in the CEDO office. And we've talked about this a number of times, I think mostly with Board of Finance, so great to be back with the whole council to provide an update. I think folks know we received a conditional use zoning permit to move forward with the construction at Elmwood in July, and we're able to start construction in late August. In the past three months, I think everyone can say we've been successful at transforming this site. If you've been by, it looks significantly different than it did in July. So all of the utilities that are required for the shelter to open are in place, including water and sewer connections and underground power to all of the shelters. 25 pallet shelters have been constructed on the site, and a site-wide mural bringing color both to the ground and to the shelters was executed with the help of more than 40 volunteers over the month of October. So I wanted to say thank you to all of those folks. What's still to come on the site is five additional shelters coming from Up and This, which is a local manufacturer who had started the generator now has a factory in Johnson. Those are scheduled to come over the next five weeks. And then most importantly, what we need to open are the two community buildings coming from KBS Builders in South Paris, Maine. These buildings are behind the schedule that we had originally anticipated due to a number of factors. I think the first one that I wanna acknowledge is probably my overly optimistic timeline for completion of wanting this to be done, but KBS, like all builders and lots of businesses right now, continue to face really severe supply chain and labor shortages that have impacted their production schedule. So I am in constant contact of folks in the office of several times a day with KBS just working through how we can keep it moving forward quickly in what the different options are. And so that is ongoing. One of the recent changes is we'll be doing the mechanical equipment on site because that's something through our partnership with Vermont Energy Investment Corporation and BED. We know we have the expertise to do on site and that takes that work out of the factory. I did get commitment from KBS today that they're gonna bump a bunch of projects and our buildings will be going online on December 1st. That means that they should be delivered. The next piece is getting transportation of these units. Hopefully the weather will comply. But before Christmas, the units will arrive on site and then our local contractor will need about two weeks and that mechanical contractor to get them set for occupancy. So we are very hopeful to be opening in early January. And then I'm gonna pass it back to Sarah who's doing most of the work here to talk about the really exciting partnerships that are being put in place to ensure that the Elmwood Shelter community is as successful and essential as it can be. Thanks, Samantha. So as you know, we announced the partnership with Champlain Housing Trust to provide or to serve as the operating partner and they'll be providing 24 seven site coverage at Elmwood. At least four of their seven staff have been hired for the site, which is really promising because considering the staffing shortages that you have heard about tonight, we're excited that there are people who are excited to be part of this project. So we are working with Champlain Housing Trust and CVOEO to provide some onboarding and training to those new staff, including harm reduction, conflict management, de-escalation and racial and social identity professional development opportunities for those new staff to be able to properly support the diverse guests who will be staying at the shelter. We also will have a one and a half full-time position housing navigator provided by CVOEO. They will be providing all of the on-site case management services dedicated to the guests staying there. Additionally, CVOEO's core team will be delivering food and basic necessities to the site Monday through Friday and CHCB will be bringing their mobile medical and mental health outreach services to Elmwood as well. Turning point will be providing low barrier recovery meetings on site and the Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform will also be on-site implementing pieces of their new contingency management program to support overdose prevention and education and fentanyl avoidance and testing and incentivizing. So we have a lot of really robust services that are ready to go just as soon as those buildings show up there. We recognize the delay in opening Elmwood leaves a gap in an already lacking emergency shelter capacity within our community. And while there is currently no emergency shelter capacity, the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance is evaluating how we can advocate for creation of additional emergency shelter options in Chittenden County. An example of some movement that we hope to see is Zephyr Place, which is a new property owned and managed by Champlain Housing Trust in Williston. We'll be opening, they'll have 38 units and 36 of those units are referrals through the coordinated entry system for formerly homeless households. We're anticipating that about a little over 50% of those will be people who are currently in the motel system, which means that with those folks moving into these units, it creates a little bit, it eases the stress on the emergency shelter through the motel system. Next, Brian is gonna talk about the next two action steps around housing development. Thank you, and I just wanna note that the work that we're describing tonight is really the effort of a pretty incredible team at our office, and I wanna recognize Marcella Gange, who's not up here tonight at the table, but has been doing really single-handedly before we were able to bring on Sarah, has been carrying on the city's work around attempting to end homelessness and at least make it rare and brief, and I would always, I'd like to point out that prior to the 1980s, homelessness was virtually a thing that cities did not have to deal with really. It was really something that came about during a time when the federal government turned its back on affordable housing and low-income programs, so this is really a fairly recent phenomenon in our history, and I just think it's important to note that. I think the memo that you all got attempts to lay out what's happening with housing development in the city, because this goal was to support the creation of 1,250 new homes over the next five years, including 312 permanently affordable homes. I just think we're one side ahead of where you are. Oh, we bumped ahead, so back up one, that'd be great. There we go. Yeah, and so we are making great strides with respect to the overall housing production. In the memo, it describes I think 827 units are either constructed or under construction, and with more to come in the pipeline of several hundred more, so we're optimistic that the 1,250 goal will be achieved. What we really need to sort of put our effort and focus on is to ensure that the number of permanently affordable units comes as close as possible, ideally exceeds, but certainly comes as close as possible to the goal of 312. Right now we would be behind that goal. We've got several years to go to kind of catch up, and I'm optimistic that our funding scenario that we look at as we look forward will allow us to make some progress in that regard. As you can see on this table, we've got private sector development underway right now. In many cases that involves the inclusionary units, the affordable units on site, and in a few cases, developers are taking the option of paying into the Housing Trust Fund, which I'll talk about in a minute. The Housing Trust Fund, which has been in existence in 1990 has gone up from last year, last fiscal year we were funding the Trust Fund at roughly 200 to 220,000 a year was the annual allocation. This year it's 705,000. So this fiscal year is a significant boost in funding for the Housing Trust Fund. And the result is that comes from both the tax that the voters approved in March of 2020 that we held off on activating or implementing that tax, as well as payments in lieu for inclusionary housing and actually a few payments from an ordinance which was adopted many, many years ago when Councillor Bergman was first on the council in the 80s called condo conversion, which a few of those have occurred and as a result of the city Trust Fund sees some increased revenue. Hopefully the short-term rental policy will lead to new revenue for the Housing Trust Fund. I think there's a good nexus there between the work or the challenges of our housing market and expanding resources in the Trust Fund. We have applications that exceed the available funding right now because the cycle is underway, about 60% higher the applications exceed the dollars available by about 60%. So the need continues to far outpace the available resources, but we are funding the Trust Fund at a significantly higher level. As a result we'll see more, that enables more production of permanently affordable housing. So that is it for number seven. I think we're gonna have some higher level sort of planning and land use goals described by Megan that we're working on. I know you're running at public forum and maybe you wanna break right here and have us come back. Yeah, if this would be a good moment in terms of your presentation to pause, that would be great just so that we have public forum beginning at 7.30. Our apologies for running a little bit behind here. Don't go too far away. We'll resume this after public forum. As the hour is now 7.30, we'll move on to item 6.01, which is the public forum. Before we begin public forum, a few items of information for those who might be new to public forum. If you're in con choice and you're gonna be speaking during public forum, the system on the table that's in front of me has three lights. The green light will shine when you begin speaking. The second yellow light will shine when you have about 30 seconds left and then the last red light will shine when your time is up. We ask that you please complete your comments when the sound indicates that your time is up so that everyone has time to speak. There are about 15 people that are in the queue to speak during public forum. So we're gonna try very hard to keep to the two minute timeline. There is a hybrid system for public forum. If you wish to speak, you can go. If you are remote and you wish to speak in during public forum and you can do this now if you'd like, you can go to burlingtonvt.gov slash public forum and a form will come up. Just complete the form and the answers will come into a spreadsheet that I will see so that I know that you are interested in speaking and then we will call on you. It has been our practice and continues to be that Burlington residents will have first priority and then we will go to, so the way that this will work is we go to Burlington residents in con choice who have submitted a form in person then to Burlington residents online back to con choice for non-Burlington residents and then back to online for non-Burlington residents to conclude. During public forum, the only thing that we ask other than keeping to the time limit is that you do your best to use respectful language keeping in mind that there are children and young people who do watch public forum as part of their civic engagement and please do not personalize your comments, direct them to me as the chair and not to anyone else at the table. We really wanna hear what you have to say and it's a lot easier to listen intently if you speak respectfully to us. With that, we'll go to public forum. There's a number of people, Burlington residents that are in con choice to speak with us. The first is Sinead Murray to be followed by Todd LaCroy. Sinead, I hope you're still here. Great, wonderful. Good evening. If you can just make sure that the green light is on right on that speaker right in front of you. If not, just press the button. Okay. Wonderful, thank you. Yeah, I'm here to talk about rank choice for mayoral elections. My name's Sinead Murray. I work with V-PURG as their democracy associate. V-PURG's been working with rank choice for nearly 20 years. We also are the state's largest environmental and consumer protection advocacy group. We have over 50,000 members. We support the proposal for rank choice voting for mayoral races because rank choice has been proven to be popular and effective pro voter, pro voice, pro democracy reform. It benefits voters and candidates regardless of party with other benefits like producing majority winners, ending the spoiler candidate effect, disincentivizing negative campaigning and encouraging more women and BIPOC candidates to run for office. This reform will help alleviate many problems facing the first pass of the post voting system. Burlington voters have already overwhelmingly supported rank choice for city council elections, when over 64% of voters approved it in March of 2021. Burlington is now one of 56 cities, countries and states that use this reform. These elections range from city council to how we elect the president and made in Alaska, where they use it for federal elections and statewide elections as well. We hope that Vermont will join that list in 2024 for rank choice and presidential primaries. But still, we support the proposal to expand the use of rank choice for mayoral elections and to put it before voters before March of 2023 on that ballot for Tom meeting day. If it makes the ballot and voters support the measure, the city has an excellent opportunities to strengthen democracy ahead of the next mayoral election. The most democratic thing the council can do is to empower voters with the opportunity to decide by expanding the use of rank choice voting, you will only bring the benefits of the system to more races making Burlington elections fairer and more functional. Thank you guys for your time. Wonderful, thank you so much, Sinead. Our next speaker is Todd LaCroix to be followed by Robert Bristol Johnson. Good evening, Todd. 20 years ago, I could talk to anybody about almost anything. Today, I can't talk to anybody about anything. Democracy, you wanna talk about like fixing voting, fixing this, while you continue to ruin everything even faster than you talk about fixing it. It's ironic, here we are, the most powerful nation the world's seen in thousands of years, and you are obsessed with lying about everything while trying to use your technology to control what people say and declare what the truth is. Your colleges teach only lies and your children all know it. UFOs that the secret government has have physics that prove the physics you're teaching up on the hill is wrong. The history and the archeology is wrong, but yet you keep doubling down on teaching the lies. And everybody at this point knows it. And so the absurdity is that, you know what, in the last few years, I've gotten just as much violence and disgusting violence from Democrats, progressives, and liberals as I have from Republicans and conservatives. And I just see you guys arguing over what color fascism should be. Should it be red? Should it be blue? Should it be red? Should it be blue? It's ridiculous, because it doesn't matter what color it is, right? Because it's still fascism. And I can't believe that the Democrats are the ones marching us into World War III right now. And everybody's okay with it. That's what happened when you allowed journalism to die. Thank you. Thank you, Todd. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Carol Livingston. Good evening, Robert. So we need to remember that the primary takeaway we had from the ad hoc committee was that they don't want Ward 8 to be like it is. They don't want this ward that's only purpose for being is to be a utility in which we sweep under this carpet the problem, the other redistricting problems we have. Who wants to be in that ward? Another thing is that if anybody was like, worked as a recruiter or a broker or a matchmaker, you'll learn that it's not sufficient that party A wants to have a relationship with party B, but it has to be reciprocated. And so nine years ago, we had an amicable divorce. You could say between a new North End and the old North End and separating the two because they wanted to be distinct. But it turns out that we're learning in the ad hoc committee that there are folks that are downtown that want to be distinct from the old North End. Now, rather than making a neighborhood where one doesn't exist or just maintaining the current salamander ward for which I have to wear the scarlet eight on my forehead. Why don't we give this, drop this footprint of ward eight onto some people who want it? Because then what's gonna happen in 10 years, we're not going to get lectured by a bunch of people about this gerrymandered downtown ward. Why did we get stuck in this ward? We'll have people who want to be in it and they'll defend it. Thank you, Robert. Our next speaker is Carol Livingston to be followed by David Kahl. Good evening, Carol. Thank you all. I'm Carol Livingston, I'm here on Calarco Court. If you could just make sure that that microphone is on and in front of you. Thank you so we can hear you. I live in Calarco Court in Ward One. I'm on the steering committee for our NPA. We just, at our November meeting, the neighbors met and we voted unanimously for the following resolution. I think Lori Ulberg has put that into your board packet and along with a lot of letters from Ward One and Ward Eight. So this is just our sort of formality of flagging it for you. The Ward One NPA supports redistricting maps that maintain Ward One's historic boundaries and neighborhood integrity to the maximum extent possible. We specifically reject the following maps being considered by the city council. Ward Eight to downtown, Ward Eight to North Hill, version one and version two, Ward Eight with UVM main campus and some Champlain. Though they require additional work to meet its goal of maintaining historic boundaries, the Ward One NPA favors the maps entitled Ward Eight to Central Hill V1 and V2, as well as Robert Bristow-Johnson's map entitled Burlington Eight Wards V20. As speaking personally, not as a member of the NPA, the elephant in the room is UVM and the impact of UVM particularly on Ward's one and eight. And I know that's the struggle that you're having and we really appreciate the work that you're doing. And I think my understanding is that the MOU with UVM has been severed on their part and I just would urge you to try to reconnect with UVM because Ward's one and eight really feel the impact of that institution. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. Next speaker is David Call to be followed by Mark Sherman. Hi, I'm Dave Call and this is a positive thing. I have seen our community work with the unhoused in ways I've never seen before, especially with the Elmwood Avenue shelter community. The unhoused don't get a voice like we do. And they inspired us so much that the Unitarian Society Universalists decided to do Sunday morning breakfasts and help our community more. The faith community, the police department, the council, the mayor's office has done an extraordinary job. As a resident, I live right across from the Elmwood Avenue podge and I am so impressed by all the efforts that we have made in our society today. My heart goes out to anybody who doesn't have a voice and let's give the unhoused community a voice. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So our next speaker is Mark Sherman to be followed by Joanne Margaret Brown. Good evening and thank you for having me. I wanna thank Mayor Weinberger and Chief Murad for all that they are doing to make this city more livable for all of us. And I wanna thank all of you for your service. I also wanna thank Councillor Shannon for being the only one out of this august body to respond to the letter that I sent each and every one of you, along with Sarah George and Philip Ruth about the situation that we have in the city around lawlessness, I think you all know about it. $230,000 a year. That's what we pay in taxes and marketplace fees for Outdoor Gear Exchange. $200,000 a year is the annualized number of what we know we are losing at the front door without it being paid for. That is approximately half of what we think we're actually losing. $100,000 is the amount of money that we are spending annualized for private security to try to staunch that flow of money. This is a result of policies that this body and the people before you have enacted and we need you to fix it. Years ago, Jeff Nick came before this council and brought a box of cigarette ashes. That was the litter of the time. This, which is a destroyed security tag that I found at the steps of City Hall an hour ago when I walked in here, is the trash of our time now. This tag has been drilled, cut and removed from product that may well have been taken out of my store. I employ 150 people. We pay considerable amounts of money in local option tax to Burlington let alone what we pay to the state. That money risks going away from us and all of the other retailers and businesses in this city if you who have been elected to do so don't fix this problem. So I implore you all as a body and as individuals to take this on seriously and to come up with a solution that doesn't wait for the city to re-employ all the police officers and for a solution that takes into account the humanity we all believe in. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Joanne Margaret Brown to be followed by Peter Likowski. Good evening, good evening. Again, my name is Joanne Margaret Brown. I pick up my mail in Boston these days but I'm originally from the state of Vermont. I originate in Franklin County. The county seat is St. Albans but I have lived more recently in St. Johnsbury. I came, I come to remark on the fact that soon after the election on November 8th, WCAX wondered aloud whether Peter Welch is going to be up to filling the shoes of Senator Patrick Leahy. I come to appeal for the election of Senator Elect Welch to consider stepping away from the seat entirely and allowing another Democrat to go to the floor. I don't think that as Senator Leahy's protege now for several years that he has been very effective even in retaining the district office that Senator Jeffords had in Rutland County. When Senator Jeffords retired, Peter could have held that office in Rutland County open, that district office but he didn't do that and neither did he attempt to establish a district office in his own county, Windsor County, which is near neighbor. In Franklin County, we have had a major upset in our employment base. Thank you, thank you so much. My apologies, I let the pieces of paper get a bit out of order. So our next speaker is Peter Likowski to be followed by Cheryl Green. Good evening. Thank you. I attended the NPA meeting about redistricting recently, very informative and I've been following developments here and I understand that there is one possibility that's been discussed and that is a four district or essentially four ward solution with much larger wards and presumably about three people. I would presume three counselors per ward. I would like to speak in favor of smaller wards whenever possible. I think that apart from the fact that there's much better opportunity, much more chance that there will be a really free and meaningful transfer of information and opinion between counselor and citizen of the ward in smaller wards. There's also another factor, I think, and that is the increasing impersonality of campaigns and the role of money. The amount of money that used to be spent was just a few hundred dollars for some pamphlets and signs that went in the stores, in the windows of stores, that was the old days. Now we're looking at thousands of dollars for these campaigns in the city offices and it really does involve some really nice fancy printing and so forth. The larger the district, the more need there is for that sort of relatively impersonal but expensive contact with voters and therefore I'm speaking in favor of smaller wards for that reason. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Cheryl Green to be followed by Robin Friedenburg-Wyer. Good evening. Good evening. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for your work. I first wanna start with a very special shout out and kudos to a gentleman named John Hudspin who is part of our fire and rescue department and the issue is de-escalation, focus and professional caring. I called 9-1-1 a few weeks ago. A dear friend of Peter's and mine was in a difficult state with her breathing and here I am and John arrived with his team and came in and John literally, Peter was in the chair, he was a young woman and he spent over an hour with her on his knee and she was afraid about going to the hospital. He said to her, right up, you will not have to go anywhere where you don't want to go. She had hyperventilation. He explained to her what was going on. He brought her back. I would say within 45 minutes she looked at us and she said, you know, I'm fine and he continued to stay there with her. She didn't have to go anywhere. It's one of the most beautiful public service, de-escalation situations that I've seen that happened right here in the city, John, husbands. I wish he could be in a hundred places at once to help us. I live in Ward 112 and I want to reiterate Carolyn's comments and Peter's comments. I too have been at the NPA meetings and this beautiful active campaign that's going on for the East District seat right now has been wonderful to be part of. Zariah holds all three of those seats kind of in her responsibility at this point. I know that legally that can't really happen but I want you to know that I hope that you are listening to her and that you understand there are lots of us that love this small configuration. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Our last speaker in conchoice is Robin Frieden McGuire. Robin, welcome. Hi, thank you all tonight for being here. My name's Robin Frieden McGuire. I live in the New North End of Burlington and I worked with Shay Totten and some other family members to try to bring cahoots to the forefront here in Burlington a while ago. And I came here this evening because I wanted to hear what has been going on with it because it has just dragged for quite a bit of time and I understand a lot of the rationale for that. I think there's a few things that I'm just going to try to say at a high level and there's going to be things I'm going to follow up with point by point. But first and foremost, I would really like for this body to actually have a much more in-depth conversation about cahoots. It was a little bit disappointing that it kind of veered off this evening. Considerable amount of time didn't focus on cahoots and I think there was a lot of things that was expressed that some of it was misinformation, frankly. It's been a couple of years so it feels like there needs to be a touch back to that. And I just want to say that as a parent who has children who have mental health issues, one of the things that I'm seeing as a pretty serious issue in this city is that we don't have a 10 point plan for mental health and we have major institutions right up the road from us. We have the University of Vermont. We have the University Medical Center. We have Incredible. We have the Howard Center. We have United Way. They're all working in silos to serve community members here and there's tons of money that is coming in in order to address mental health but they're working completely separately from each other and it's such a waste. And I want you to know that when my daughter was in and out of crisis six times last fall nobody would come to our door. So some of what was expressed here by the police chief was accurate and what was expressed here by Councilman Freeman was also accurate. There needs to be a C change and I think this body is the right place to get it done but anyways, thank you. Thank you very much. We will move on to those who are joining us remotely. There are actually all of the people that are joining us remotely and wish to speak during public forum are Burlington residents. The first is Lucy Gluck and Lucy, I have found you and you should be able to speak now. Oh, I don't know if you... Do you wish to get my apologies Lucy? Hold on just a moment. Do you want to get the online timer on or how do you want to do that? Taking the camera on. Great, so if you could just put that back to two and that's wonderful. Lucy, please, your microphone should be enabled. You should be able to speak now. Okay, so you're hearing me now? Yes, I can. Great, thank you. Go ahead. Thanks for having me. I'm going to focus on the 10 point plan around homelessness and just to say I know there's just incredible efforts going on from every direction. I work for the committee on temporary shelter and have been there about seven months now and learning how drastic the situation is in Burlington. This is my hometown and I live in the old North End and close to folks who are struggling a lot with homelessness. Couple of big concerns. I understand the restraint around construction issues with the pods and maybe not having much control over that wishing that this all could have moved more quickly because having those 30 pods open sooner would really, really have helped a lot right now, especially with the weather changing so much so quickly and getting cold all of a sudden. So what I originally had heard that it was going to open October and then maybe November and then maybe December and now we're into January. So I'm wanting to just put out is there a creative solution around getting some temporary trailers on site so that the pods might open sooner or a creative solution around using North Beach campground like we did a couple of years ago, a few years ago with some trailers because there's a lot of people calling us and desperate to get out of the woods and get somewhere warm. One other thing that's happened recently I saw was that CBOEO did a great job with helping get a bus ticket for somebody who couldn't find a motel locally but needed to get out of their tent and out of the cold and CBOEO helped in a very quick amount of time get a bus ticket for somebody to get a motel room in Rutland. So those things are critical. Anything we can do to be creative and take this all really I know you all do take it very seriously. So thank you for your good work and let's keep all plugging on this together. Great, thank you Lucy. The next person in the queue just left a name of Gray and I can't find you as an attendee. So if you, I'll come back to you but if you wanna identify yourself by raising your hand we will come back to you. The next speaker is Keith Pillsbury and Keith I did find you and have enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now. Thank you Karen. My wife Penny and I lived on University Terrace for 48 years as part of ward one serving for 23 years as their school commissioner. In 2014 we were restricted, we were redistricted ward eight where I had to become the ward clerk and a steering committee member because there were so few people available to do those jobs. Neither ward eight neighborhood neither wards neighborhoods were easily accessible to University Terrace because we're so separate. Our street is surrounded by three census blocks that have zero residents. On the south it is boarded by Robinson Parkway which is in ward six. Our street has 76 people and it's closer to ward six neighbors. We believe it is time to redistrict our street to ward six where we share the same resident issues and most political candidates think we already live there. We support our ward eight long-term renters and homeowners who are seeking a realistic balance of homeowners, long-term renters and student renters. The ward eight to the North Hill maps versions are the best way to achieve balance and create neighborhood stability. Ward eight would lose campus students. However, it picks up the most heavily student rental areas in the city. The streets south of North Prospect have a good balance of homeowners and student rentals. I have campaigned many times on those streets and the issues of the residents there are the same as in ward eight. We were humbled that there was not any outpouring of support for our street to stay in ward one in 2013 when we were slated to be redistricted to a totally new location ward eight. We empathize with residents in ward one who are reluctant to change. The majority of the letters you received from ward one residents do not live on the streets that are identified redistricting. I'm sorry, I went off. That's quite all right. Thank you so much, Keith. The next person in the queue is Maddie Posig. Maddie, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Thank you, President Paul. Good evening, Mayor Weinberger and city counselors. My name is Maddie Posig. I live on hunger for terrorists in ward eight where I've lived for 41 years. I would like to speak to you tonight about redistricting as a member of a ward eight neighborhood group. I am aware that redistricting is not on your agenda tonight but I would like you to keep a few points in mind as you move towards a final map. 10 years ago, a mistake was made in the creation of ward eight. Many of you have recognized the problems of ward eight and have clearly stated the makeup of ward eight needs to change. Therefore, it is most discouraging to hear that a new map is being circulated and given serious consideration that is at its heart a recreation of the current ward eight. This ward is problematic for both its residents as well as for the entire city. It has been challenging to find candidates for city counselor or school board commissioner or volunteers to work at the polls. Ward eight has consistently had the lowest voter turnout of any ward. Although my neighbors and I feel the best solution to these problems are the maps that include adding the Northville neighborhoods. We are open to other options. Anything that would create a fair and balanced ward eight. The new map being discussed once again places the athletic campus and ward eight recreating the Salamander ward we currently have. Therefore, I'm appealing to each of you to please, please create eight wards that all have fair and balanced populations and not leave ward eight with the leftovers once again. Thank you. The next speaker I have is J.F. Carter Newbeeser. I do not see you, Carter, on, I don't see you as an attendee. If you want to identify yourself, happy to come back to you. And the next speaker is Tiffany Johnson. Tiffany, I do see that you want to speak when we get to the local cannabis control commission and we will come back to you at that time. The last speaker in the queue is Erhard Monke and I have found you, enabled your microphone and you should be able to speak now. Maybe not, did I just, I'm sorry, you should be able to speak now. Thanks, President Paul, can you hear me okay now? Yes, we can, thank you. Okay, great, thanks and thanks to everyone for this thankless task of redistricting. I just wanted to amplify the comments of Carol Livingston on behalf of the Ward 1 NPA and amplify the resolution and the emails that you got from so many Ward 1 residents in response to that North District map that as I said last week really eviscerates the more stable sections of Ward 1. You just can't fix Ward 8 by sacrificing what all of us have come to know as Ward 1, which some counselors will recall I represented many years ago and have just gone door to door many times for different candidates, including myself. It's just not something that I think Ward 1 folks can live with. As Peter Ockowski mentioned, I too have heard that maybe you're now considering kind of throwing in the towel on the kind of creating lines that help, that work for everyone and possibly doing a Ford District no Ward map that would have three counselors per district. I just really wanna strongly speak against that. That I just find that to be less democratic. Counselors will be further removed from their constituents. You will increasingly have a city council of folks who are not necessarily ordinary working Vermonters. They'll more be retirees. They'll more be folks that have greater means. Campaign spending will continue to grow and get out of hand. And lastly, it'll be really hard for counselors to represent the larger district. So please don't go this route. This is one of the main things that the advisory board on redistricting strongly urged against. So thanks for allowing me to comment and thanks for wrestling with this conundrum. Thank you, thanks so much. So we'll go back to the two that we were unable, I was unable to find earlier. One was a person who left us their name Gray and the other is Carter Newbeaser. I'll look and see if either of those names come up as an attendee and I do not see either one of them. So, and I don't believe there are any others that are wanting to speak in con toys. So with that, we will close the public forum and we will return to the item that we had left, which was item number four, the 10 point housing action plan. We do have a very busy agenda this evening and maybe if you could go through the slides that are remaining in the next couple of minutes and then we would have time for some questions, please. Okay, thank you. I can be brief. My name is Megan Tuttle. I'm the director for the office of city planning here and the last three slides that we had planned to show you were about the three zoning amendments that were part of the 10 point housing plan. A lot of the updates that you heard about already from the team from CEDO have to do with sort of immediate deployment of resources and services. These three action items are really about how we can set the groundwork for more longterm development of new homes within our community. So the first of these is to open new housing opportunities through the creation of a mixed use innovation district and a portion of the south end. We have been working over the last year in collaboration with a number of stakeholders in the south end as well as the planning commission and residents in that part of the city on developing a proposal for an overlay zone that would apply to a limited area of the south end that centers around the intersection of lakeside and Pine Street. The aim of this district is to help us implement the concept of an innovation district that was in plan B TV south end while also expanding to allow for some residential uses in that area. We're also as part of this amendment considering standards that would help guide the development of these very large sites in this part of the city specifically with regard to building massing and things like connectivity for new streets or non vehicular pathways. So over the summer we conducted a number of in-person and online opportunities for folks to provide input on a range of issues related to this ordinance and then have been working on the details of it with the planning commission over the summer and fall. Just last week the planning commission began their public hearing on this proposed zoning amendment and unfortunately due to a technical zoom glitch we're going to continue that into next month's meeting but we do anticipate some final refinements to that amendment and hopefully a referral of that to you all for consideration in January. The next amendment is about another zoning amendment that would allow for really opening new campus opportunities new opportunities for on-campus housing on UVM's Trinity campus. Again, this work began with a request from UVM to the city to consider some of the zoning standards that were limiting the amount of housing that could be developed on the Trinity campus and beyond those requests we have also evaluated a number of other considerations that came from our office, questions that came up, discussion topics that we covered with the planning commission and as a result of questions from the public. So in addition to addressing some of the what we refer to as dimensional standards like lot coverage, setbacks and building height that we were requested to look at this amendment will also come to you with a new requirement for applications to contain additional context for how individual developments on the Trinity campus fit into a campus master plan and some ongoing reporting related to that. So again, the planning commission began their public hearing on this amendment last week and we will wrap that up in December and anticipate a referral of that amendment as well to you in January. The final amendment is about opening new opportunities for citywide housing opportunities we call Missing Middle Zoning Reforms. This is here in Burlington, this is something that we're calling the BTV neighborhood code and if you go to the next slide this illustration shows you that what we're talking about here is really the range of housing types that exist in the space between a single family home and an apartment building. The types of homes that can really fit within existing neighborhoods in a seamless way. In January, we were awarded an inaugural grant from the State Department of Housing and Community Development to support this work and have been working in collaboration with AARP who has brought a number of technical advisors and a significant amount of financial contribution to help us perform analyses on our existing development patterns in our neighborhoods in Burlington as well as to evaluate what the main barriers for enabling more of these middle housing types in our neighborhoods are today. The initial findings from these studies were presented in October to a number of housing and development partners. You all were invited to that, some of our planning commissioners joined as well as some other stakeholders and we've presented that to the planning commission and we are currently working on a report that will be available on our department's website summarizing these findings. At the same time, we've also collaborated with a number of internal and external partners to provide education about the national and local housing issues that are contributing to this focus on the need to look at our zoning ordinances and to raise awareness about the opportunity for in particular for these middle housing types but for a number of the housing focus zoning amendments we are bringing forward. So this has been through a film screening in collaboration with the Flix in the Park series, several neighborhood walking tours in collaboration with community organizations and even a housing focused trivia night that ended up being wildly successful a couple weeks ago. So the next phase will actually identify us kind of taking our findings from the existing work we've been doing and building out some potential zoning changes that could really help us to build on our neighborhood's unique characteristics and help us kind of re-legalize some of these beloved forms of housing that used to be part of our neighborhood's kind of new housing creation and ways that we can help further incorporate new small and middle housing types into our neighborhoods. So I think with that, I'll wrap up our presentation and happy to join the team in answering questions. Thank you. Thanks so much. Are there comments or questions from counselors on this presentation? Counselor Bergman. I wanna thank you all and thank the mayor for a comprehensive plan. I'm focused on two areas in particular. I think actually these are in Megan's Valley Wick which is the South and Enterprise or Innovation District. I just wanna say and I've not been able to although I have an interest in going to the public engagement process but I have a concern that we keep enough land available for light manufacturing and associated enterprise activities there. We should not become a bedroom community here. The mix that we have in the South end is important because that is the commercial industrial area of the city and that's important for jobs. It's important for transportation. So I'm hoping that the rezoning is really taking into that account and in reading the proposed zoning framework that you have on the website. I notice the language in this, it's typical of language around zoning is that we permit this, we permit that but I think that part of the problems that existed the last time we tried to go down the housing road in the enterprise district is that the market itself pushes certain types of development and so housing being as tight as it is will create tremendous pressures to turn spaces that are for artists, that are for makers that could be developed for bigger commercial or other activities. I'm thinking now of the the rail yard and a park the carry that is going to be displaced by our railroad enterprise project and so I'm hoping that the zoning ordinance will not just look at it in terms of this permission market approach but will build in incentives to make sure that the maker spaces, that the artist spaces are there and affordable and all those other things I did. So I just wanted to add, this is a comment as opposed to the questions and in terms of the missing middle and I was part of that. So I just want to know more about the re-looking at the residential low density districts and I really do think that it's time that we take a fundamentally different look at the density of this city and actually do away with those districts to allow the city to develop as a city and I would just point out that in the 1970s it was in the mid to late 1970s the planning commission actually did call for the end of the low residential district in the New North end. People might be surprised of that and I served on the council not long after that. That went absolutely nowhere but I think that our housing crisis means that we should revisit that and I hope that your missing middle does look at that really seriously. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor Bergman. I see Councilor Carpenter and then we'll go to Councilor Hightower. I had a question, I guess for Sarah and for presentation, Sarah Russell, you talked about how you work together countywide and the alliance doesn't and I certainly know that from experience the service agencies do well by that but I had a question around other municipalities involvement. Are there other municipalities taking on specific efforts for the houseless contributing financially to some of the efforts like the city of Burlington has that you're aware of? Not that I'm aware of. I do know that school districts have just begun working in this area, the Champlain Valley School District for the first time hired a housing coordinator or a housing and assessment coordinator for their entire school district and the amount of housing instability that she's uncovered there is pretty astounding according to her most recent assessment that she submitted. I also know that Burlington School District all schools have homeless liaisons through the McKinney-Vento Act. Many of them don't, or the vast majority if not all of them do not actually provide direct service. They more track and make sure that children have access to school, transportation to school and equal access. So that's about the extent that I'm aware of in terms of municipalities being involved is just through the school district. Thanks, and that will just take me to my second question, which is, I think the city is doing a great job with very limited resources to tackle what is really a regional problem. And we the city are kind of taking the brunt of it. In short words, the obvious answer for the house is this more housing. But what should we be asking the state for right now this winter? And I hear there's a waiting list to get in the coordinated entry. I hear we're so short of motel rooms and shelter beds. I mean, what should we be working for this next six months? That's a really good question, Sarah. I think from my perspective and the conversations that we've had, I would say that there is essentially at this point, zero capacity in the motel system in Chittenden County. ESD posts those numbers daily now. There are no motels in Chittenden County for people who need to access emergency shelter due to the cold weather. Historically, the state was utilizing ARPA funds that have since dried up to transport households to other counties where there is motel capacity. At this time, there is not transportation for households to get to another county to access emergency motels. So I think that that's something that falls to nonprofits a lot of times. They're only able to pay one way of that transportation because of constraints. But then we also think about people who have jobs, doctor's appointments, support systems, locally in Chittenden County and are staying in a motel in Brattleboro is not really very appealing or helpful to their situation. So I think that there is, I see some challenges around that. I also think that you touched on a good point that people are waiting sometimes in excess of four weeks to once they are enrolled in coordinated entry to have access to a housing navigator to be connected with housing resources. I think that there's a huge strain, there's a lack of staffing, there's a lack of funding to support that staffing and then there are a lack of employees to fill that workforce issue. So those would, I think would probably be the main peaks that I would touch on. Thanks. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, Sarah. We'll go on to Councilor Hightower. Great, thank you all so much for coming to us for the presentation, the comprehensiveness, the variety. I'm gonna speak to a couple of the topics starting with Megan in the missing middle. So a question and a few comments, which is I'm curious as to how much of that planned analysis means that we're doing another major overhaul of zoning like we did long before I was on the Council. And I guess I wanna say that with the understanding that I am supportive of updating our zoning, I think most cities have outdated zoning and we're no exception. And so if we are doing it, I think the sooner the better in terms of starting and then the slower the better in terms of getting it right. And then along with those lines, just throwing in the single family zoning and the unsustainability of that, both for us in terms of financial and tax dollars that come from a single family home versus almost anything else. And then the environmental impact of our housing stock being built for household sizes that are much, much larger than they are today. And that being something that I think we should, that I know you're looking at the analysis but I still wanna say it. Yeah, so then just back to the question of how much this is the base work for more of an overhaul. Yeah, I think maybe some of the major zoning rewrites that we've done were in 2008 when we overhauled our entire zoning ordinance. That's not the scope that we're talking about. But another big zoning change that we did make was actually about five years ago when we adopted our downtown form code. So I would kind of liken the middle housing work more to the form code, which is maybe about kind of keeping certain districts but changing our approach to how and what we regulate within them. We have seen many different examples of how cities have approached this work all the way from just trying to make minor tweaks to their ordinances, to remove some of the most glaring barriers to these forms of housing, to really kind of changing and making their ordinances, having their ordinances use more context sensitive tools to say, we wanna welcome more homes in our neighborhood. We wanna balance kind of the scale and pattern of what those residences look like, what those buildings look like. And so we're definitely thinking more on that end of kind of the context sensitive tools, which would really change the structure of our ordinance, but not require rewriting everything A to Z. Great. And then my second point, thank you, Megan, is around, and this is if we, I don't think we got the presentation, so if you all would be willing to share that after the meeting, that would be great. But on the memo is Trinity Campus, which I just always have to speak to as the award one city counselor, which is to say that, which everybody has heard me say, but I will say it again, that I think having more beds on Trinity Campus is both something that I want and something that seems really scary in terms of UVM not having made much promises in terms of their future population or just making promises and refusing to put those promises into writing. When you have a university that doesn't even allow upperclassmen to live on campus, when you have an increase in underclassmen dorms and or upperclassmen dorms or graduate dorms, it's hard to know how that's gonna impact the community, especially if those beds aren't housing people who are already part of the student population but is going to be just an increase in the population which currently juniors and seniors live in our neighborhoods and that has a huge impact on our housing quality. And as we hear on redistricting and the viability of wards and all these other things, so I think that it's nice to get more beds and that's definitely something that we want, but when you look at what that means down the line, if we don't have some real reassurances about that, that doesn't feel good to me. I don't think it feels good to most people in my ward, probably not in Ward 8 either. And I don't think that giving that without some protection and some understanding of what the future looks like is a smart move for the city. And that's just a comment, not a question. And then one more thing, which I have to go back to look. Oh, right, which is the houselessness which is just Sarah, thank you for continuing to be a face for this. I want to echo whoever in public comments say that it actually feels really good and like we can be really proud of the fact that this is something that we're tackling so proactively as a city in a way that no other city I've lived in has really done. And at the same time, I think that this is really, really important to make a priority of the city. This is something that should be highlighted in the breakfast we have with legislatures that we're not doing a special meeting just on that just because this isn't a Burlington problem. This is like a state problem. And this should absolutely be a priority of the city to move forward with in the months ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor Shannon and then perhaps maybe we can wrap up this item. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you all for really an amazing presentation but I feel like I was speed dating a little bit. You were giving me so much and I know that we all have limited time tonight but I think it will take me hours to digest that and I echo Councilor Hightower's request for the presentation because I think I'm gonna have to both review this video and also the presentation. I have many questions but I'll hold them for the most part. I do wanna echo Councilor Hightower's concern about building housing on Trinity campus even down in Ward 5 in the South District. I think that there's really a city-wide concern that we're gonna just allow more density and more growth on campus that eventually because they're only housing freshmen and sophomores that's eventually actually going to bleed more into the off-campus housing crisis. So I know that you said in your presentation that there was going to be a requirement for getting a permit was going to be linked to providing a plan that maybe you don't have to answer it tonight but if you could share a little more information about that because I just would be concerned that providing a plan doesn't necessarily mean we like the plan and what the parameters around that would be helpful and also the crisis that we have around emergency shelters Sarah, I learned a lot from you in the meeting that we had at a new place. The work, the amount of work you have all done in such a short amount of time is astounding. I understand that there are delays and maybe benchmarks and dates weren't met but you have met every hurdle and there are unexpected hurdles. This is something new and I think you have done an amazing job but with regards to you had noted that there, I'm not sure if it's a shelter or some other type of housing facility that CHT has opening in Williston and I wondered if that is a congregate shelter or if that's more like private rooms. That's actually permanent housing that's opening in Williston. Oh. Yeah, they have 30, I think 38 units opening this year and then another 37 in an adjacent building next year but all I think 36 of the 38 in this first building are designated to households who are currently without housing. Okay, thank you. I misunderstood that. So is there anything in the pipeline for emergency shelter? There have been some discussions about expansion of emergency shelter and it's something that the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance as the sort of group that comes together to talk about these issues has been discussing. There's also some statewide shelter provider calls that happen around how to expand emergency shelter. I think one of the challenges is that we've really, we've moved from a congregate shelter model to a non-congregate shelter model because of COVID and also because that's a more humane, respectful method of emergency shelter to provide to people. So I think that it's trying to figure out how to actually provide that and how to make that happen. So there are conversations around how to expand emergency shelter. Certainly from a statewide perspective, we've fielded many calls even across New England at this point from other communities that are really excited and want to glean some of our experience from setting up the Elmwood community shelters. So I think that that's really proof to be a true innovation and there is at least one other community in Vermont that's looking to replicate that right now. Okay, thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor Shannon. It seems as though this is an awfully large topic and perhaps maybe we need to see more of you more frequently so that we're able to ask as many questions as we can and something as important as this is. So thank you to Megan, Sarah, Samantha and Brian, who I believe is somewhere and Marcella as well. Thank you all. We will close this item and move on to item number five, which is the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission annual report for FY 22. And for this report we have with us, very patiently waiting for us, Charlie Baker, who's the executive director of the CCRPC and our Burlington representative to the Regional Planning Commission and former city councilor Andy Montrell. Thank you. And I believe and Max Schindler as well. Thank you so much to all three of you for being here. We're looking forward to your presentation and the floor is yours. I get, oh, that works much better. Yes. The first page of the report, I'm just gonna review this briefly and then happy to take any questions or discussion on any of the topics. The first page of the report kind of gives you background on the Regional Planning Commission, a little history, our board membership, how we leverage municipal dues to bring in federal and state funding into the county and then has your representatives on our board on our different committees, as you just mentioned. And thank you to Andy and Max for joining me here. The second and third and onto the fourth page, which is the furthest that I've gone with any municipality has a list of things that we worked on with you in FY22. I'm not gonna review all of those, but just to touch on a couple of them, Winooski Ave and the parking situation there as part of that quarter study we did with you. We are working on the South End multimodal feasibility study there and a number of other transportation type projects, some brownfields, stormwater work. So happy to, and this is really, sorry I should have started off with, this is kind of a customer service call. You know, we do provide services to you as a member of municipality and I really wanna check in and make sure we're providing services in the way that you expect or get any suggestions for how we can improve what we do. So I don't know if you have any feedback on any of those projects or how our staff is doing by you or how we're doing by you, happy to take that. Or Andy, jump in. Yeah, I just wanna highlight a couple other projects that have come to a close fairly recently, ones that bring an Amtrak to Burlington, between New York and Burlington. I mean, the RPC played not the major role in it. You know, there were many others who did it, but the RPC certainly, you know, kept the abreast of what was going on, participated in it, played it at different times. I think a fairly significant role and you know, it's really great to see that it had come here finally after all those years. And the other project I just wanna call out is the Rotary on Shelburne Road. When I left the council in 2009, we had just voted on approving that project. And so my time from the council to being on the RPC really kept crack of what was going on with that. And it was really great to see when that finally broke ground. And now that it's all fully, I think it's all fully open. They may close it every now and then still have to do some final work, but that was a nice project to see finally come to an end. And it seems like it's going quite smooth. And I have to say, you know, there were a lot of traffic studies done back then and what the flow would be like. And I've just sort of checking in and saying, is it kind of like that? And it is, you know, there's not the big backups I haven't seen, which was one of the concerns and people seem to be getting used to it pretty quickly. So pretty pleased that that project finally came to an end now. And I will say thank you for finally being the first municipality in Chinden County to embrace an actual roundabout. And yet for anyone listening or watching that what is in Winooski is not a roundabout. And so that is great to see that. I've driven through that a few times as well. It's great that the city supported that project and it's finally open. Any more feedback for me on how we're doing? Max, did you have anything that you wanted to add as well? Yes, I just on the note of roundabouts, I wanted to give a shout out to the late Tony Reddington, a true mench of a guy. And I know he would email city council quite often and us at our roundabouts and just thinking of him and hopefully he's smiling. Absolutely, starting on the bottom of page four and onto page five are a list of projects that you have in our transportation improvement program which mirrors the state's capital program for transportation. You have a long list of projects, some that were done in 22 like the roundabout and others that are still somewhere in the program for funding soon. Some small ones and some big ones like the Champlain Parkway. And then also at the bottom of page five and onto page six are projects that are in our current year's work program with you. And even there's one that we are working on getting adding to it in our mid-year to continue work on the south end multimodal study. I guess I'll call that to see what might happen there. And then the last few pages have a number of topics that we work on regionally without regard to a specific municipality. I'll just call out a couple of those. One is you probably got notice about our legislative breakfast on December 8th. If the city does have topics that you'd like us to bring up with legislators at the time, please let me know. Happy to do that. We have still in the beginning stages of working on equity. I appreciate Councilor Hightower's involvement in that. It's much appreciated. And building homes together, I felt like I need to say something about that, since you just spent, that was time talking about what the city's doing on housing and to let you know, we did set a county wide goal of 5,000. Really appreciate that the city's trying to take on kind of your proportion of population share of 25% of that and 1250. And also that we do continue to work with all the municipalities in Chintena County on housing. And you got just a little bit of flavor of that from this earlier speakers, but other municipalities in Chintena County have now set up housing committees or working on trust funds or have implemented trust funds, implementing inclusionary zoning. So the city of Burlington certainly has been in the forefront of that work, but I want you to know, the other municipalities are not resting on their laurels or not doing anything. I guess I should say they are working on how to get more housing in other municipalities. So, and there's other topics here, but I'll leave it at that and take any feedback or questions. Great, thank you. So we'll go to a counselor comments and questions and begin with counselor Bergman. Well, I wanna thank you for that really comprehensive report and the links to the other documents in terms of the legislative breakfast. Personally, and I think that our transportation, energy and utilities committee has talked and will continue to be talking about transit funding. And you guys are a big player in a countywide need to find a sustainable funding source for mass transit. And so I just wanna sort of start with that. I personally believe that our cities and our counties transportation system is, if you can call it even a system, which I actually don't, I think there is no system and this is the problem, but it's centered too much on single occupancy vehicles. And when I read this report, but also the ECOS final report, I think that you're fundamentally agreeing with me. And I say this having read in particular, the transportation center section. And I just wanna quote that so everybody else can hear it says, you say that drastic changes in transportation policies and investments are needed to reduce single occupancy vehicles traffic and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. And I was really heartened by the strategic model that is in the, that you developed for that I-89 2050 study. And it showed that the best results in achieving decreasing traffic and greenhouse gases come from policy changes and investments in five areas. And that three of those were to double trips by bikes to triple transit services, which goes to my initial point, and to double the TDM participation. So I'm just wanna let you know that I'm really pleased at the scope of the TDM work that you all are doing and wanna encourage you to, I think more than double down on that. And it seems that data collection, I'm getting to a point and there is a question, but I wanted to make these comments that ongoing data collection and analysis associated with all those efforts would be really helpful to all the transportation projects that you're involved in and you'd agree with that, wouldn't you? Yeah, always, yeah. So it seems that we really do need to have that in a comprehensive and ongoing way. And I was actually struck by the number of projects that you did, but they're really particular. And at least for the city of Burlington, we've got nothing that's overarching, that's comprehensive and is ongoing. The closest things that you've got are like the property transportation plan that I saw coming up in the school travel plan. But I guess I'm encouraging you to be looking at something that is fundamentally more comprehensive. And let me just say, I don't, I can't speak for the city council's took. I'm not the chair of that, but I would really appreciate and I've mentioned it to us that you come and have a more vigorous conversation so we can get into public education, about TDM and about the data collection and analysis that we're doing and that we can do so we can really look at travel behavior and not just of people who are living here, but people who are working here, people who are coming to visit here, tracking those changes over time and really looking at how folks respond to the external pressures, be they gas price hikes or our own policy changes and investments. So I would love for the chair to ask you to come to the TUC and for us to have this conversation because I think that we're doing some things here, but we could really use the benefit of the resources of the commission. Thank you. I'd love to hear some. So we are in the process of developing our metropolitan transportation plan, which is really a transportation plan for the county right now, kind of a building. And I think a lot of those types of issues might be able to be addressed there. I think some of what you're getting at is even like scenarios, like what if we double the zoning in different parts of town and what kind of impacts that have. That is something I think if the city wanted us to dig in more to that kind of thing, happy to do that. And I will kind of note that you kind of called attention to how specific a lot of these efforts have been like last year. My hope is that they are actually implementing a broader plan that the city has. And so what you see us investing our time and money in is projects that the cities ask us to follow up on. So they're not in isolation, I hope. And I think that's maybe a question for both the city and for us and how we work together on kind of comprehensive planning or transportation planning and then making sure we're rowing in that same direction. So happy to continue those conversations. Everything you said is consistent with what I know about our work. So excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor Bergman. Do we, are we going to the chair of the two? Yes. Sure. Thank you, President. Councillor Barlow. No, I support what Councillor Bergman was saying and we'd welcome for their discussion at the two. See about scheduling that in the coming months. Great, thank you, Councillor Barlow. Don't see anyone else in the queue. You have all been very patient. Thank you so, so much. I raised my hand. Oh, I'm so, my apologies. Councillor Chang, please go ahead. No problem. Thank you. Thank you guys for the presentation. This is a great team. And for the person who was, can you hear me, right? Yes, we can hear you just fine. Wonderful. And for the person who was just speaking about the roundabout and also about Tony Redington, you know, I think that maybe there are talks around, you know, the city that maybe that roundabout could be named as the Tony Redington roundabout. I think it will, it will be great because he has demonstrated commitment to the safety and well-being of all the people in the city of Burlington. And I don't know about the process, but maybe also to bring that to talks for more consideration and exploration as well. So that's one. And two, I wanted to also say thank you so much for the plan BTV, New North End. I think you allocated some funding for the study, which is amazing. And it's been over six years that I've been waiting and I want to give a special big up to Megan Turtle and also Director Chap and Spencer for pushing this to the next level. And I'm pretty sure because of the support of Miro Weinberger. But I wanted to also ask you to maybe consider and we'll invite you to talk more about the Burlington Racial Equity Analysis of the, of city project, because I don't know what it entails, but based on how I'm reading it, I'm really, really concerned. And maybe can you tell us a little bit more about what it entails, please? Not a lot, apologies. That was a request we got kind of at the last minute, last spring, and then of course the staff person who submitted the request on behalf of the city, I think left the city staff. So I think it's, I will just call it an opportunity at this point. So we did reserve some money in our budget to help with something like that, but there's not much definition beyond what you're reading here. So there's an opportunity there to follow up on that and do some more analysis of whatever makes sense to the city's REIB office. So happy to have more conversation and flush that out a little bit more. Absolutely, and I'm confident that the REIB committee would wanna be involved and try to understand what it is and how do we collaborate to move it forward. You know, I mean, I think overall you're doing so much great, wonderful work. And from my perspective, there need to be a little bit of focus around social services and social issues in the city of Wellington, especially around public safety. And as it involved the new Americans, and they do not only live in the city of Wellington, but they are throughout the county. But I think I would love to see some type of leadership from your organization and collaboration with the city and all the municipalities to do something meaningful for the safety and well-being of newcomers. And also as part of your report, I could not see anything about, you know, the opiate crisis, which is also, and I know that you are involved somewhat with the city, but I would love to see what you guys are doing in advancing this issue as well. As well as homelessness as well. I mean, I think social issues in general could also be at the purview of the planning commission for Shijiden County. Thank you so much. And we will invite you for sure to talk about racial equity more with the committee. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. I should probably address that. The bigger subject you just raised about why aren't we more involved in social service issues. And it really goes back to what our organization was created for, which is to really focus on place-based planning. And so we get, and the way our funding streams work, we don't have any general taxation authority or anything like that. So the funding that we get is really in performance-based contracts from state agencies. The biggest one being transportation, which is why you see so many transportation-oriented projects. But other ones deal with more land use planning, housing, emergency management, water quality. They're very specific and very place-based, so we don't really have a lot of funding to deal with other types of issues. We kind of get into a little bit, and actually our work in the opioid work was really through some specific agreements that we had going back a few years that the Medical Center, United Way, and I think the state funded. But it was for a short period of time that we helped support that staff person that was working on that. And that contract ended, so our work ended. So I'm not saying that we can't, I'm just saying that we kind of get, if we get funded to do something, then we can work on it. And there's some overlapping issues here, right? We're able to get into the equity work a little bit because federal highway funding, and particularly President Biden's Justice 40 initiative has kind of said, you need to look at equity issues. And now they've started to say, and housing issues as you do transportation planning, but it's not there as a primary, it's kind of there as a supportive topic, which we're kind of trying to leverage as much as we can. And we've been kind of in the forefront nationally trying to leverage those transportation funds as much as we can into other topic areas like water quality, energy, equity. So I hope that helps explain our construct a little bit more. Thank you. Did you have anything else you wanted to add, Councillor Jang? No, I mean, I think maybe we'll follow up via email and conversation, but thank you again. Yeah, thank you, happy to do that. Thank you, and thanks for speaking up by my apologies for not seeing you. Does not appear that we have anyone else in the queue just gives me another opportunity to say thank you to all three of you for being here and being patient and waiting for us. Thank you so much for all of your work. Thank you. We will move on, we've covered the public forum, which moves us on to item number seven, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any Councillor who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we'll close that item out and continue with item number eight, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated? So moved. Thank you, Councillor McKee, seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on that item? Seeing none, all those in favor of moving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We've approved our consent agenda and before we get to the deliberative agenda, we have three other meetings that we need to attend to this evening. The first is the local cannabis control commission, then the Board of Civil Authority and the Board of Abatement of Taxes. So we will recess the city council meeting at 8.52 and call to order the local cannabis control commission. And the first item on that agenda is item 1.01, which is a motion to adopt the agenda. If there was a motion to adopt the agenda. Move to adopt the agenda. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Travers. Thank you both. Any discussion on the agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. So the second item on our agenda is item number two, which is the 2022 local cannabis control applications. And we have three applications. I wouldn't say that it's been our practice because we only have done this once, but we will try to make this our practice that we do have some of the applicants at least one, perhaps others, who are with us this evening. One of them I know is available by Zoom and there may be others that are here as well. And what we've done in the past is that while applicants are under no obligation to disclose any information other than what is listed on board docs, we would invite you to come forward, introduce yourselves, maybe give yourself a little bit of free advertising, and give us some information if you would like about your business, your location, and other information that you would like to share with the community. So again, no one is under any obligation to do so, but if you would like to, please come forward if you would like to do that. And I will also go on to Zoom and enable the microphone of the person. Tiffany, I have enabled your microphone if you would like to speak to this or if you would prefer not to, that's fine too. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, please go ahead. Thank you to the council and everyone who's in person. I would love to have been, but I have a sick kiddo at home, so I apologize for not being there in person to meet you all. And I would like to speak when my turn comes, if that's possible. Are you saying you'd like to speak when your application comes forward? Is that what you'd like to do? Is that how it's set up or should I just go for it? Okay. You can do it now or do it later. We've actually, this is only the second time that we're doing this, so we don't exactly have a protocol here. Okay. In the interest of time, I can just go ahead. My apologies to the other applicants. My name is Tiffany Johnson. I am a Burlington resident, a former Seahorse graduate of CCV, and a longtime member of the Burlington community. I pretty much grew up here. And I am in renovation of the, what everyone has designated as, the old Yankee Medical Building on North Avenue. And in hopes of opening a retail cannabis store, I am the mother of four children. I am a 100% black female-owned dispensary and am in the pre-approval through the state in my application process, have ticked most of the boxes except I'm still kind of vision up the place. It's been a staple in the community that building for way before I came along. So it's taken me a bit longer. I am, like I said, I don't have any corporate backing or anything like that. So it's taken a tad longer to make it beautiful. But I have engaged with quite a few of the neighbors and the community on the street, particularly and helped to try and meet them in a happy place regarding some of their concerns, which were very reasonable and realistic concerns. And I think we've all found a very happy coexistence. They are, most of them, a lot of them have my number and access to me. And other than that, I am overjoyed at bringing my life sort of full circle and having the chance to open a business here in the community. And so hence my application for a Burlington license. We do have a couple of people that are here in person. Please come forward and introduce yourselves. Well, I want to thank the city council for having me back. I've been across the street for a few years and I just been approved for a cannabis retail license. I'm the CBD store across the alley here, Greenleaf Central, right in Thorson Way. And I've been here for four years and it's been an exciting roadway getting to this point. And I plan to bring very good quality cannabis to Burlington. I plan to hire a lot of people, give them an opportunity to engage in this business. And I provided a very safe environment and my goal is to just make this a success. It's been a very hard roadway to get through. And I'm very glad that the city is embracing this and giving us an opportunity. And I want to thank you all. Thank you. Are you two together? Yes. Okay, great. That's mad. Great. Thank you very much. Good to meet you both. Appreciate it. Hi everybody. I didn't have everything prepared, but my name's Adam Gross. Everybody calls me Tito though. And this is Sarah May. And my wife couldn't be here tonight, but I'm so excited. Thank you all so much for giving us this opportunity. And we're excited to be on the leading edge of this and be some of the first to bring cannabis to downtown Burlington. And we plan on keeping up our tradition of excellence and professionalism that we've had at the burn gallery for almost 20 years now. And also we also bring a grow to the company. We're vertically integrated that way. And our grow, we pride ourselves on being, you know, maybe the, in my opinion, the best way you can possibly grow cannabis indoors. No till with LEDs, recaptured water from reclaim right out of the air. I mean, every way we can make it the best it could possibly be and to deliver the finest product. Plus we have some social equity hires in our company. And we really pride ourselves on being a really important part of the community. And I really enjoyed the mayor meetings lately. I love being involved in what's going on and what a journey it's been. I mean, I stopped blowing glass. I was a glass artist by trade and about seven years ago, I stopped doing that to focus on this journey full time and what a journey it's been. It's almost here. It's finally time. So thank you all so much for this opportunity and we'll make you proud. Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you to all three of you for coming forward and letting us know about your business. We'll go to motions for the application. So the first application is item 2.01 for burn legacy cannabis. For this item, I'll go to Commissioner Shannon for a motion. I had the wrong meeting. Take your time. Cause I had our subcommittee meeting up. I can't find our meeting. Sorry about it. Let's take your time. That is it. I had it right. I don't think this is a, that motion is not correct, is it? It's not a recommendation. It's just to approve, right? Okay. Sorry, I have to modify the script here a little bit. Move to approve and authorize transmission of local approval of the burn legacy cannabis, local cannabis control license application to the cannabis, cannabis control board. Is that, is that right? You think so? I think that's correct. Okay. That is, that is what the recommended action is. So I'm assuming that that is correct. So thank you for the motion. We just need a second. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion or we have the applicants that are all here, if there's any questions or any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. So we will now move on to item 2.02, which is a, an application for euphoria cannabis, LLC. And I'll return back to Commissioner Shannon for a motion. Move to approve and authorize transmission of local approval of the euphoria cannabis, LLC, local cannabis control license application to the cannabis control board. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on this motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion as made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. And that motion passes, which brings us to the third application, which is item 2.03, an application for Greenleaf Central. I'll return back to Commissioner Shannon for the motion. Move to approve and authorize transmission of local approval of the Greenleaf Central local cannabis control license application to the cannabis control board. Thank you for that motion. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Any discussion on this motion? Yes, Commissioner Travers. This is not a discussion with respect to the applicant in particular, I suppose. I just wanted to use this opportunity here briefly with the full commission and the full council here to speak to my experience on the subcommittee thus far with respect to the local cannabis control commission. I have been a bit surprised to find, particularly relative to what our local authority is over liquor establishments, how limited our authority locally is with respect to retail cannabis establishments. As we look towards the city's legislative agenda in the coming legislative session, I would really like for us as a council and as a city to look into whether or not it's worth advocating at the state level for the state to provide municipalities greater flexibility with respect to cannabis applications like that with respect to liquor establishments. Because without that, I'm frankly left wondering what the purpose is of the local cannabis control commission. If I was a cannabis applicant, I would be left frustrated perhaps a bit by this process. These folks have been through a very rigorous process at the state level. My understanding is that at least some of them have been approved at the state level and have been delayed in opening their retail operations because we're simply waiting to check a box here at the local level and that's really what our role is as far as I understand it is simply to check the box as long as they have their retail permit and have gone through their inspections and have gotten all their permits and papers in order here. There's almost nothing that this commission can do even if it's left with any concerns which I don't have any concerns about these applicants at all but if we were left with any concerns about the types of things that we're able to work on with liquor establishments like hours of operation, for example, there's nothing this commission can do. So I would really like for us to take a look at that and if we really don't have any authority whatsoever, I just wanna put this out there now that I question whether or not we really should even have a local cannabis control commission with that I do strongly support this application. So. Oh, thank you. Thank you for those comments. Commissioner Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. Since we're going there, I am 100% with Councillor Travers on this issue and I would also add when lobbying at the State House that perhaps having applications that had some information on them such as where the establishment would be located, what its name is. That would all be really helpful because it's a bit of a farce to look at these applications that are entirely redacted and to sit at this table and no, we do not have an option of voting no. I don't really like to vote at all if I don't have a no option or a maybe or something other than yes but like Councillor Travers, I completely support these applications and hope nobody votes no because we don't know what happens. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Not sure if I should even say the other but I will because we sort of, I guess we have to. All those in favor of the motion made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you and opposed please say no. That motion passes. Thank you all for being here. We really do appreciate it. We have very little access to any information and we are very grateful that you have come and shared with us about your business. With no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection will adjourn the local cannabis control meeting at 910 and with that, also with thanks to Commissioner Shannon and Travers and our licensing clerk, Laurie Olberg for their work on this. We'll go to the next two meetings which is the Board of Civil Authority, Board of Abatement of Taxes. Those are chaired by the mayor so I will pass this over to the mayor to preside over those meetings. Mayor Weiberger. Thank you, President Paul. I will call to order the Board of Civil Authority at 910 p.m. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda and we'd welcome motion on it. Motion to adopt the agenda. Thank you, President Paul. Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Discussion of the agenda, additions. Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and we have an agenda. The only item on the agenda is the consent agenda and I would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the action indicated. So moved. Moved by Councillor McGee, seconded by President Paul. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? I believe the motion carries unanimously. So I will, seeing no objection and having completed the business of the Board of Civil Authority, I will close that agenda during that meeting at 911 p.m. and call into order the full Board of Abatement of Taxes also at 911 and we'll welcome motion on that agenda. Motion to adopt the agenda. Thank you, President Paul. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Discussion of the agenda, additions, amendments. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the adopting the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Here too, we have only a consent agenda with two items on it. I welcome motion to adopt the consent agenda. So moved. Moved by Councillor Barlow, seconded by President Paul. And is there any discussion of that motion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The consent agenda is adopted unanimously and again, seeing no objection and without any further business, I will adjourn the full Board of Batement of Taxes meeting at 9.12 p.m. And hand the microphone gavel back to you, President Paul. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. So we will reconvene the recess council meeting at 9.14. There are six items on our deliberative agenda. The first two are tobacco license applications. The first is item 9.01, which is tobacco license application for APEX Arboretum. And for this item, I'll go to Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. Move to approve the tobacco license application for APEX Arboretum. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Traverse. Is there any discussion on this item? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion to approve the tobacco license application, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes, which brings us to the second item on our agenda, 9.02. A tobacco license application for Green State Gardner, LLC. And I'll go back to Councillor Shannon for that motion. Move to approve the tobacco license application for Green State Gardner, LLC. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Traverse. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And that brings us to item 9.03, which is a resolution, the ratification of a tentative agreement and authorization to execute collective bargaining agreement between the city of Burlington and the BFFA Burlington Firefighters Association for July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2025. And for this motion on this resolution, I will go to the chair of the Public Safety Committee, Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I would move that we waive the reading and adopt the resolution. And I do not need the floor back after a second. Great, a motion is made by Councillor McGee, seconded by Councillor Hightower. Councillor McGee, you want the floor back, it's all yours. I don't have much to say, but I know that we have Acting Chief Libby here as well as leadership from the BFFA. So if they would like to say anything, I welcome that. Yes, we are very fortunate to have with us the Acting Chief as well as the president of the BFFA, our Fire Union, Kyle Blake. Kyle, thank you so much for being here and for waiting for us and to Acting Chief Libby as well. We would welcome your comments. Just want to take the opportunity to thank the council, Cedar City leadership in the union for the actions that brought us here today. It was a long process, but respectful from both sides and cooperative to get through any hurdles that we had. So we appreciate the labor management relationship that we've established over the years and that we continue and the support that we receive from the city and from the council. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just, excuse me, I'll just echo what Chief Libby said. After eight months of this process, sitting here for two hours was easy. So all the time in the world, we are thrilled that this is before you today. This was not an easy process. Both sides had big items that they wanted to move forward and we had hiccups as well. I'm sure as you all know, Chief Locke, former Chief Locke abruptly resigned sort of in the middle of the negotiations. We lost the assistant city attorney that was representing the city in the middle of negotiations. Acting Chief Libby assistant attorney, Jared Pellerin, stepped in, took the ball, ran with it. And for that we're grateful because we were able to get a contract before you. I would also regret not taking this opportunity to recognize two, I think, and I can speak on behalf of the negotiation team for the union, critical roles on the city side. And those are human resources director, Karen Durfey, as well as CAO Catherine Shad that brought a level of clarity and moderation to the process that brought two sides that at the beginning were very far apart to the point where you have a contract that I think is a win for both the city and the union. And that's not something that in my experience with contract negotiations, the collaborative process and to echo once again, Acting Chief Libby, the respect that both sides sort of had and worked collaboratively to find solutions to problems that fit the needs of the community, the needs of the municipality and the needs of the employees is huge. So we are thrilled to be here looking forward to and hoping for a quick ratification. And then Tuesday morning I'll be in your office, Mr. Mayor, pen to paper, joking of course. But yeah, we're thrilled. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your support and more than happy to answer any questions that might come up. But it's my understanding that the city team has done a great job of keeping you all abreast of all of our asks, needs and wants. So thank you. Thank you very much, Kyle. It is incredibly heartwarming to have you here. We really appreciate your presence. Are there any counselors who have any comments or questions? Oh, and I do also see Attorney Pellerin who has joined us via Zoom. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sherrod, for being here. Does not, oh, I'm sorry, Councilor, Mayor, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I would like to echo my thanks for both the partnership and hard work on the union side and getting to this agreement. And I really think the city team that worked extremely hard, not just on this contract, but on the other three as well. And in doing so, I'm proud to say, looking back at the last decade, we now have had three straight bargaining rounds where all four of the contracts have been resolved at the bargaining table without having to resort to our dispute resolution system arbitration, which I've never gone back and done the analysis exactly, but my understanding is that was quite unusual and quite rare in the years prior to these three contracts. And I really want to thank the current team that made that possible this last round. Catherine, and they've been thanked already, but I'll say Catherine, Karen, Jared, who are here with us tonight. Also John Maitland played a big role as outside council in two of the contracts. And the department heads in each of the three contracts, including Chief Libby, on this one also worked hard to get us these outcomes. So it is welcome that we will, be able to focus on the important work before us for several years now in each of these areas. Another benefit of getting to a resolution with these multi-year agreements. And again, thank you to everyone involved in getting us this successful outcome tonight. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Seeing no other comments, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion before us to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you to our outstanding bargaining team and to the union leadership, Kyle, to you and to others and the collaborative work that led us to this agreement. And a unanimous outcome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much. So our last three items on our deliberative agenda are all charter changes. The first of the three is item 9.04, resolution March 7th, 2023, annual city meeting, a charter change regarding qualification of voters and citing appalling places. And for this item, I will turn to the chair of our charter change committee, Councillor Bergman, for a motion and then an explanation if you will, Councillor Bergman. So I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and after a second have the floor back. Thank you, Councillor Bergman, seconded by Councillor Travers. Councillor Bergman, you have the floor back. Thank you. It's not often that I think that a resolution, particularly the whereas clauses, really lays out the argument. So I could go in bloody detail and maybe for the public, I should do that, but I'm not going to do that tonight. We got this item and I've reported to you a couple of times already, at least a couple of times. As a result of the redistricting process, which we all know is difficult in the best of times and can be made significantly harder when you have to then factor in where you put a polling place. And I have to thank Councillor Carpenter for bringing this to our attention in right at the beginning when we started meeting in April and May and we've worked through the details on this and I think that it makes a lot of sense. I just want to thank Sarah Montgomery from the CAO's office. She did an amazingly good job in communicating with us and in answering our questions. She's a credit to your office. And also to all of the ward election officials and the Board of Voter Registration, all of whom participated in the process and really helped us move to the point that we have in front of you a charter change that I think reflects the desire to have our polling places in our wards but the realistic and practical sense that sometimes there is a better, more accessible place that is close by. And that says that we will take that action to decide where the polling place will be in consultation with the people who have to run the election. You know, it's sort of not rocket science but sometimes not done by governments to consult the people that actually have to do the work. So I am pleased to bring this in front of you as the first of three and I want to just end by thanking not only Councillor Carpenter but Councillor Traverse for the hard work that we did because we met a lot. You would not get these charter changes if we met once a month. We did not. We met an awful lot. You heard a lot of reports. And I think that the product that we've gotten you and on all three is a testament to the seriousness that everybody, staff and councillors and the public took to bringing forward this I think very important piece of the democratic process. So I hope we can get a unanimous vote on this. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Just also wanted to note that we have acting city attorney Kim Sturtevant with us if there are any questions regarding the charter change that would be best served by our acting city attorney answering them. Are there councillors who have questions or comments on this resolution? Seeing no comments, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion before us to waive the reading and adopt the resolution which would place the question in the resolution on the town meeting day 2023 ballot, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to the second of three charter changes. This is 9.05, resolution March 7, 2023, annual city meeting. Charter change regarding all legal resident voting in local elections. I will return to Councillor Bergman for a motion. Let me just preface the motion by saying this will be a little bit more procedurally complicated, but I would with that move to waive the reading and ask that the resolution be adopted and have the floor back after a second. Okay, motion made by Councillor Bergman and seconded by Councillor Travers. Councillor Bergman, you have the floor back. Thank you. I made a substantive report on this many months ago. I also want to thank Sarah Montgomery and Jillian Natan from one of the assistant directors at CEDO for the work that has been done on this. So I have to say that Jillian has done an amazing work of the public engagement and will continue there. They were absolutely committed to informing the entire city in every way possible of this. In a nutshell, this allows those people who are legally in our city under the immigration laws of the United States to vote on local matters and to vote on school taxes that their kids go to the schools and have to deal with and all of the other aspects of local political life that we enjoy. And this is something that we've really reached out to groups like the Trusted Community Voices Group and we are following in the footsteps of Winooski and Montpelier in this. So this is something that has also passed a muster in the Superior Courts of the State of Vermont. And I am confident that it is both a legal and an appropriate political step to take to really make when all is said and done the promise that Abe Lincoln gave at Gettysburg that we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And with that, I will stop so that we can get an amendment proposed and it is based on the action that we just took with the siting. So I will stop now and... Okay, we will turn to an amendment to the resolution from Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul, and thank you for that explanation, Councillor Bergman. By means of explanation for this amendment as a Charter Change Committee, we agreed on the language that we voted on very early on in this process before we had agreed on the language that we just voted on with respect to introducing flexibility with respect to the siting of polling places. We agreed on the language very early on and spent really months, I think Councillor Bergman spoke to it well, engaging the public with the help of CEDO, with the help of Sarah Montgomery. As committee members, we went to all of the NPAs to meet with folks. I think it's a real example of how we can engage the public going forward on these matters of public importance for folks who are tuned in here. There's a great website that's up on the Burlington website, burlingtonvt.gov slash all legal resident voting that provides really all the information that you need with respect to this matter, including history of how we've gotten here. There's a frequently asked questions which our committee worked on that's been translated into six different languages on the website as well. So certainly would direct people in that direction. The procedural complication that Councillor Bergman spoke to is that we do need to make a relatively minor amendment to the matter that's before us now to align the language with the suggested amendments in introducing more flexibility to the siting of polling places. So I would make a motion at this point in time to amend the matter to reflect the highlighted and track changes in the version on Board Dock referred to as Councillor Travers update highlighted in tract. Well, you didn't even give me a chance to get a second. Seconded by, so a motion to amend is made by Councillor Travers and seconded by Councillor Bergman. I will assume that, is it fair to assume Councillor Bergman that your desire to second the amendment means that the amendment is friendly to you? Totally. So we do allow friendly amendments now and that means that we don't need to vote on this fairly procedural issue. Brings us back to the resolution as amended. Councillor Bergman, did you want the floor back at, no? No. Okay, are there other Councillors who have questions or comments on the amended resolution? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion before us to waive the reading and adopt the resolution which would place the question in the amended resolution on the town meeting day 2023 ballot, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Well, that motion passes unanimously. Thank you and thank you for all of your work on this and for keeping us so well informed as you were moving through this process. That brings us to the last item on our deliberative agenda and the last of the three charter items which is 9.05, a resolution, March 7, 2023, annual city meeting, a charter change regarding rank choice voting for mayoral school commissioner and ward election officer elections. And I will return to Councillor Bergman for a motion. Thank you and I would move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and after a second have the floor back. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman, seconded by Councillor McGee. Councillor Bergman, you have the floor back. Thank you. This obviously, as we know, came back to us later than the others, but I have to say that we had a significant number and a number of meetings and an amount of time on this matter and heard from quite a few people. Ultimately, this comes down to a question of putting before the voters rank choice voting for all of the elected positions that we do as a city government, mayor, the city councilors, school commissioners, and the ward election officials. And it seems reasonable after 64% of the people voted in favor of the city council positions being subject to rank choice voting that we expand that democratic choice and provide that opportunity for voters to say whether or not we want to expand this to the other elected officials. And I would say that this is actually the ideal time to do that for the mayoral position in particular. We've got the time to do this now. It will, if it is adopted by the legislature after being approved by the city voters, then there will be a whole year, well, maybe not a year, probably six months, where people will have an opportunity to weigh their choices as to whether to run, who to support, how that whole process is going to work. I am not going to go through the litany of reasons as to why rank choice voting makes sense. I think it, all of those reasons, and we heard that from the VPIRG representative this evening, are true and fair and right. And I personally would like the voters of the city of Burlington to have an opportunity to vote on this coming March. I would note that the committee did amend the version that the council had looked at in, I think it is two fundamental ways. The first, I think, is that we did add the school commissioners and the ward election officials. The reasoning is actually quite simple. All of those offices, we should have uniformity across the board with all of the elected officials that we're doing. I would say that in the 50 years that I've paid attention to elections in the city of Burlington as a city voter. So not just that I was, you know, in elementary school, but for the 50 years that I have been voting in the city of Burlington, I actually cannot recall a three-way race for school board or ward clerk or inspector of election. So while the likelihood is present, I don't think it is great for those. I say that. The, I'm trying to now remember the other big change that we had and I am blanking on that, so I guess it wasn't important as my mother would say. So I think I've laid out the position and I really hope that we can put this before the voters in a unanimous fashion like we have done the other two. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. So there are three councillors at this point who wish to speak. Councillor Shannon Barlow and Hightower. Councillor Shannon, did you want to speak? Yes? Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I was just going to ask for a five-minute recess. All right. Sure. Five minutes. It's now 9.30, 9.40. We'll try to keep to a five-minute recess. Thank you, President Paul. I'd ask that on line 51 of the resolution, which reads all elections of the mayor, city councillors, school commissioners and ward election officials, that the school commissioners and ward election official officers be removed. And I'll ask for the floor back after a second. Okay. That was line what? 51. We're in school commissioners and ward election officers. On line 51, is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Travers. So you had said Councillor Shannon, you want the floor back. Yes, thank you. So I just want to go through a little bit of history with this. I actually reached out to progressive councillors to bring this forward for the mayoral election. And it was my initiative to bring this forward. And it was welcomed, I would say, by my progressive colleagues. I had talked with Councillor Hanson about this. We had talked about including school commissioners. We had agreed that school commissioners wouldn't be included in it at the time that we sent this to the charter change committee. Since that time, Councillor Bergman became chair of the committee and decided to have this discussion about bringing school commissioners in. And I believe that that was, I think in an update on sub committees, we were informed of that. And I did not object. We were told that the school commissioners would be invited to participate in the meeting. And I thought if you get the school commissioners on board, that's fine with me. As Councillor Bergman has acknowledged, the school commissioners did not come to the meetings because they were in the middle of trying to get the school bond passed, which was a Herculean effort and credit to them. And so when I reached out, when I saw this on the agenda, I reached out to my school commissioners to see what they thought about this. I found out that they had not been able to weigh in. And I don't think that it is fair to put them on here without having the opportunity to weigh in. And I heard from one initially who was not supportive of it. I heard from another who was supportive, but concerned about the lack of discussion and taking any position really for or against without having that discussion. So I am concerned about the process of bringing them in. And I know that some people are concerned about even taking the step of putting the mayor into ranked choice voting when we had previously agreed that we would kind of test this out with the city councilors having ranked choice voting. And then if we wanted we could add in the mayor, add in others. I will say that the ballot on which this question will appear will be a ranked choice voting ballot. So I am comfortable moving forward with the mayor at this time, but I would ask the council to consider removing school commissioners and ward election officers in the, in Ward, I'm trying to think of it as South District or Ward 5, I think it was Ward 5. Really just a few years ago we had a three-way race for school commission. So it does happen. It has happened recently. It's not without having consequences on the school board. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Is there any councillor who wishes to speak to the amendment only? Councillor Hightower. And to add some context to Councillor Shannon's context is the original proposal that was brought to the council did include the mayor and it was taken out in order to win specifically Councillor Shannon's vote. So this is an A, this is to some extent a return to the original proposal. I do, I will not be supporting the amendment although I very much appreciate the spirit of where it comes from. I don't think that it was the intent of the charter change committee to not invite feedback. I think it is because the school board was so extremely busy with an important item that they had on the ballot. I fundamentally don't, I think that our recommendation to the public should be that it is all of the offices again for simplicity's sake. And if for some reason, I think we should now do that outreach now that the vote is over and the school board isn't as busy. And if they are unanimous in thinking that this shouldn't go through, I'm happy to change, I will commit now to saying that I will support the change. But I think if it's mixed results, I, I mean, I don't see it, I don't, or even not unanimous, let's say a veto proof majority, not that they have a veto, but I just think that we should move forward with our recommendation and then go around, go about involving them in the process and making sure that they have an opportunity to give comment during the public comment period if they truly feel as a body that this is not going to work for them. But I think that it will work for them for all of the same reasons that it should work for city council and any of the other positions. I think that a school board race is the same thing. It's like maybe we would have more three-way races if folks had, didn't worry about the spoiler effect. And I would welcome seeing more three-person races for school board or any other position. So I would suggest that we move forward with what we think is the best version. And then if we are otherwise, I'm happy to commit that if the vast majority of the school board doesn't feel good about it to remove it. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. I have a question for our other Councillors who wish to speak to the amendment only. Councillor Bergman. So I just want to say that one of the reasons for the public hearing process that the legislature mandates that we use is to be able to hear. So I do think that there will be ample opportunity for the school board to think about it and to come to us at a public hearing that would be held for this or that and that we can make amendments that are appropriate based on the public hearing. And so in line with Councillor Hightower, I am open to that if the school board seeks to have this removed. But at this point it makes the most sense and the conversation that we had really indicated that in the committee is that it makes the most sense that all city elected officials be elected under the same process. I know at least one ward election official who I am sure would be in is in favour of this. So. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor Travers and I don't see anyone on Zoom who wants to speak. But please raise your hand. I am watching. And I do see Councillor Jang. You'll be after Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Ball. So I agree with Councillor Bergman as a member of the Charter Change Committee that the reason why, at least personally, we added in school board members and ward election officials was the idea of ballot confusion. And if we are going to have mayoral and city council elections done by ranked choice voting, the idea of then having school board elections and ward clerk and inspector of election races done by first pass the post method didn't seem to make much sense. Other reason being that if after this proposed Charter Change we did want to down the line add school board members or ward election officials, of course, because this isn't the Charter, what that would mean is a third Charter Change question going to voters in, you know, basically as many years, first for city council, then for mayoral, then for school board members and ward election officials. All that said, and when we get back to the main resolution, I will speak to this. I will be honest in saying that I did not anticipate the question of ranked choice voting in mayoral elections would be coming back before our committee this year. And while we did have an opportunity and met a number of times over three meetings as a Charter Change committee to discuss the matter, we did not have nearly as many meetings to consider this matter as we did for the other two Charter Changes that we have voted on this evening. And unfortunately that does mean that there are folks that did not have as great an opportunity to weigh in on this matter, including members of the school board and including ward election officials. And while I have heard from some school board members and ward election officials who support ranked choice voting, I've heard from others who feel they haven't had a sufficient opportunity to weigh in. I do agree with my colleagues that the public hearing will provide that opportunity. But I will be supporting this amendment because I, whereas I voted in favor of it before the committee, I've heard from enough folks who feel they haven't had an opportunity to weigh in yet that I will be supporting this amendment and if the language is removed, would still welcome folks to come to the public hearing and would be open to putting it back in at that point in time. I think this is the right step to take. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor, Travers. Are there other councillors who wish to, I'm sorry. My apologies. My apologies again, Councillor Chang, please go ahead. No problem. Thank you, President Paul. And I think that I may have been the only city council who did not support the last RCB for city council only. which I think is the most important seat in the city. And before the city council, we should have even start with the mayor first and see how it will play out. And I do believe that it is, this is not about the current city councilors. It's not about the current mayor or current commissioners, but it is about our legislative body. And how do we bring a method of voting method that is very clear and also consistent? And from my perspective, this resolution as it is, it does just that. So we have the mayor, we have the city council, we have commissioners, we have people conducting the elections. And I think it is really consistent to what we're trying to achieve here. Consistency matter, and from my perspective, commissioners, if they did not have the opportunity to weigh in, they had so many different opportunities, basically for the second reading, first reading to weigh in. But actually it's not about them also, but it is about giving the voters the choice to vote around what they think will matter. And I think for the new American communities, this will bring some level of clarity. Why should I vote this way on the same ballot like this and the other ballot items and the other basically seats, I am voting differently. I think it's not consistent, it's confusing. Reason why I would not be voting in support for this amendment. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Jay. We'll move on to councilor Barlow. Hi, I wasn't going to speak until we were considering the underlying resolution, but I will speak in support of this amendment because it removes one of the two problems that I see with the underlying resolution, which is that we're prematurely going to additional rank choice voting in the city after we told the voters in the last charter change that they approved that we would try the city council races before we expanded rank choice voting to other offices. We haven't, so in my view we shouldn't, but I am supporting this amendment and I can speak further when we get to the underlying resolution. Thank you, councilor Barlow. We'll go back to councilor Hightower and then we'll go to a vote. I'm back and forth on this now. I don't know how I'm going to vote, but I do, we will have tried rank choice voting by the time before this even goes on the ballot in the East District race. Thank you. So we're going to go to a vote on the amendment and given that we have three counselors that are joining us remotely and the vote does not appear to be unanimous, we'll do it, we'll do it by roll. If, Lori, if you could call the roll, that would be great. Thank you. Councilor Barlow. Yes. Councilor Bergman. No. Councilor Carpenter. Yes. Councilor Jane. No. Councilor Freeman. No. Councilor Hightower. No. Councilor McGee. No. Councilor Shannon. Yes. Councilor Treverse. Yes. City Council President Paul. Yes. Five ayes, five nays. So the amendment fails five to five, which brings us back to the underlying resolution. Councilor Bergman, I'm sorry, Councilor Barlow, did you want to speak to that? I know you had mentioned that and then we can go to others. Sure, thank you, President Paul. I just want to say that to say that we've had, we would have had elections using rank choice voting before we had had a chance to do any analysis and taken any measure of what we thought about it. I don't think really serves the spirit of what we were saying when we were telling voters we were going to try city council races. I think the intention there was that we would try city council races and see how we liked rank choice voting, see how the electorate felt about rank choice voting before we added additional offices. So I just want to say that. And I also want to say that I've received email from my constituents against this and one today that I received was accusing us of political bait and switching because we had said we were going to do one thing and now we're doing something different. So I will not be supporting the underlying resolution. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Are there other Councilors who wish to speak? Councilor Jang, you still have your hand up. Did you wish to be recognized? Okay, thank you so much. Are there other Councilors who wish to be recognized? Yes, Councilor Travers. Thanks, President Paul. So I think we can have a legitimate debate over whether or not we should have rank choice voting in mayoral elections. We already have a runoff system in our current charter in our mayoral elections. We've heard vigorous debate in front of the Charter Change Committee and the Ordinance Committee mind you about whether or not we're using the right tabulation system with rank choice voting. And you could continue the debate over a number of those items. From my perspective though, we're not being asked whether or not we support rank choice voting in mayoral elections. What I feel I'm being asked as a Councilor is whether or not we should place this question before voters, for Burlington voters to decide whether or not they want rank choice voting in mayoral elections. In considering the issue, I can think of one good argument as to why not, which is that two plus years ago, the prior City Council agreed to going through this with City Council elections first and to return to mayoral elections at a later date, which is why I, as I mentioned previously and discussed in the amendment, did not anticipate that this matter would be back before the Council now. Nonetheless, it is and we're being asked now whether or not Burlington voters should weigh in on this. I was not a member of the City Council when that compromise was made with respect to City Council elections first and then mayoral. And since I've joined the Council, I've heard from many of my Ward 5 constituents who want the opportunity to weigh in on this issue. And I'm mindful of the fact that when rank choice voting in City Council elections was put to voters, it overwhelmingly passed among voters in Ward 5. So I will be voting in favor of this matter because I believe Burlington voters deserve an opportunity to weigh in on that question. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak to the Councillor Shannon? Can I ask for another five-minute recess? Yes, it is now 10.05. We will reconvene at 10.10 minute recess and I've sort of lost track of the queue if there is a queue for anyone who wishes to speak to the resolution that failed to amend. We are on the original resolution. If there's nobody in the queue, I'd call the question. Okay, well, you can call the question or you can let me call the question. What's that? Okay. So it appears as though there are no others who wish to speak to this or actually there are, which means Councillor Bergman, you were first in the queue. Do you wish to still call the question or allow Councillor Shannon to speak to the resolution? I would withdraw my call for the question. Thank you so much. Councillor Shannon, then maybe then we will go to a vote on the... Thank you, Councillor Bergman. I may return the favor someday. This is a hard moment for me that I didn't expect to come to. It wasn't until today that I found out that the school board really hadn't weighed in on this and I didn't expect my colleagues to be so insistent on including them despite that. I don't think that the way to approach this is to make the decision and then ask for input through the public hearing process, especially not with this is not just members of the public that haven't weighed in on this. This is the school board members themselves that are affected and I am in the very awkward position of feeling very strongly about this issue, about wanting to see ranked choice voting be implemented here in a somewhat incremental way, but to bring in the mayor's race is extremely important to me. I don't feel that this is fair to the school board members in terms of the process and I don't feel comfortable voting yes on this given that. I voted, I have supported what was IRB from the very beginning. I voted for it, every opportunity I've had to vote for it and when it became clear that members of the public were somewhat uncomfortable with it, I also voted to put it on the ballot because I thought people should have a voting system that they're comfortable with and whether or not it's my favorite voting system that wasn't what was important. So process throughout this whole debate over the course of what more than 15 years process has been important to me. More so than my personal feelings about it and for that reason, very sadly gonna be voting now. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. I don't see anyone else who wishes to speak to this resolution and again, given that we have three councillors participating remotely as well as the fact that this will not be a unanimous vote, we will go to a roll call vote. If the clerk could please call the roll. Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Bergman. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Freeman. Sorry, sorry, I just couldn't unmute it. I'm sorry. We're voting on the underlying, correct? We are voting on the underlying resolution. The amendment failed. Councillor Fowler. Right, yes. Sure. Yes, I'm voting yes on the underlying. Thank you. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor McGee. Yes. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Traverse. Yes. City Council President Paul. Yes. Seven ayes, three nays. That motion passes and with it, we will complete our deliberative agenda. We have a few items left on our agenda. The first is item 10, committee reports. Are there any councillors who wish to offer a committee report? Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. The two kids meeting tomorrow, November 22nd at 5 p.m. At 6.45 p.m., we will be hearing from the airport on the implementation of their sustainability plan. We'll also be discussing GMT's FY24 budget and funding and we'll be talking about the CSWD drop-off location strategy in Burlington. Great, thank you very much, Councillor Barlow. We'll go to Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. The Public Safety Committee will meet on December 1st over Zoom. We'll meet at 5 p.m. On our agenda will be the city's public safety radio system upgrade. The resolution that was referred to the Committee by the Board of Health, we will be discussing a council resolution related to gun violence. And we will begin our conversation of what I imagine we'll take several meetings discussing the draft committee report on the recommendations offered by the CNA report. So I'm looking forward to a very full conversation on December 1st. Thank you, Councillor McGee. We'll go to Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. The Ordnance Committee is meeting tomorrow on November 22nd at 4.30 p.m. We will be considering a proposed ordinance on vacant buildings and dangerous structures. We will also be considering the matter on minimum and maximum parking requirements, focusing specifically on the transportation demand management requirements in that ordinance. This is a matter that has been postponed a number of times before the full council was sent back to the Ordnance Committee at our last meeting, hopefully to bring it back in December. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Travers. Councillor Hightower. The CNA committee has met twice since I've done a report. So just so folks know, we did meet to talk about camping in parks and other municipal lands, as well as to talk about the Burlington Revolving Loan Fund, which is an exciting initiative from CEDO and Business and Workforce Development Department. And we're meeting again on December 15th after a series of Sarah Carpenter will have joined one of the meetings with staff. I'll be joining another meeting with local partners and we'll all be joining another meeting with local partners, specifically around the issue of houselessness or a next meeting on December 15th. We'll cover especially that agenda item, but also the camping, the camping issue as tied into that. Sorry, it is late. I'm complete. Great, thank you, Councillor Hightower. Any other committee chairs that wish to offer a committee update? Seeing none, we'll go on to item number 11, which is city council general city affairs. Are there counselors who wish to offer comments on general city affairs? Seeing none, we'll move on to city council president updates. I do not have any updates. We will have a number of work sessions in the month of December and even going into January, but that's a ways from now and I will be informing you of that as the dates get closer. That will bring us to the final event, final item. Final item of the evening, which is item 13, updates from the mayor. Mayor Weinberger, the floor is yours. Thank you, President Paul. The last couple of weeks have been a period in which we've seen a really large number of long-term projects hit key milestones. I want to particularly thank the DPW team under the leadership of director Chapin Spencer for their leadership role in this. They're not the only department that's contributed to it. Certainly Samantha Dunn from CEDO and has played a big role in some of these projects, Brolin to Electric Department almost. There are many aspects of the city that have been involved but just to summarize, we are under construction now at city place following the council's vote last time in a special meeting that we had just over two weeks ago. That project is now underway and picking up steam if you've been by the site recently. The Shelburne roundabout was open last week. Appreciate having President Paul join us. President Paul is a project she had personally champion for a long time. It was exciting to celebrate it together at the roundabout and then just today we had a ribbon cutting for university place, the totally rebuilt road and redesigned road that came about as a result of the agreement between the city and the university in 2016 that resulted in UVM contributing millions of dollars to our sustainable infrastructure plan. And finally, last week, we celebrated the opening of the Moran Frame project and announced the creation of an important new organization, Friends of Frame, which I have a lot of hope will be an organization that helps us ensure that there are future phases of the Moran Frame and that we actively program that site in partnership with this new nonprofit group for years into the future. The Friends of Frame are having their first crowdfunding effort to support community programming and activation of this new parks facility and I encourage council and the public to check out that website, Friends of Frame for more information on that. And with that, the final thing I'd like to say tonight, President Paul is happy thanksgiving to my colleagues here at the council, everyone has a great holiday and the public does as well. We'll see you back here in a couple of weeks. Wonderful, thank you, Mayor Weinberger. That brings us to the end of our agenda. I would ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. By Councilor Hightower and seconded by Councilor McGee. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We find ourselves adjourned at 10-22 and thank you for joining us this evening. Our next meeting is Monday, December 5th and as the mayor has already said, we wish all of you a happy and healthy thanksgiving. Thank you.