 Welcome to the NBA 45 meeting. It is her station, the team. It's a wonderful place, really knows every day. So I'm here with us. If you just have a couple of folks in the room, if you're not here and are online, you're looking on some absolutely delicious food made by three and the team's kitchen, I've got some dry tofu and rice and vegetable salad in my bowl. So if you're not here with us, you're listening and join us next time and we'll show you some really good food. My name is Lena. I use the pronouns. I live in the North end of the South end. It's still a little bit of a new province. I love this neighborhood. And I'm excited about our meeting tonight. So just a couple of guiding principles about the NBA meetings before we get into our agenda. We've got several ideas with both of us. This is a safe space. We like to provide a welcoming forum for people who are learning to speak, ask questions, talk to each other. We have some community time before our meetings start so that they're free for our community to connect with each other. But the space remains safe, even when the community time shifts into the meeting. We engage in an accessible meeting and reduce barriers to our escaping with all of our community members. If you've got ideas about how to make this more accessible, please let us know. It tends to be respectful, but it's definitely helpful if you don't have different types of mentality and different perspectives. And we want this to be a little bit creative and fun space. This is a meeting for all of us. Some of us are on the steering committee. We'll identify ourselves in a moment. And some of us are not, but it is everyone's NBA. And then we don't end the responsibility and it is when you're to talk about our neighborhood and make sure it's more neighborhood. So this is not an entirely political space. So again, I'm Lena and then I'm Sherry River, so I'm on the committee. Roger Grassard, Lamin-Avon. Joe Derry, Berguson M. Jason VanDresch, Caroline St. Dan Goetheger. Jason and Brittany is also on our committee and they're over here. Thank you so much, Brittany. Good to see you. And if you'd like to find us on the line and you haven't yet either two websites where you can find everything or work, the first is managed by us and the second is managed by the city that's where we send us and notes and we use them, links, all of that in the chat. You can be Sam for the Adrian and doing all of our tech. And we're on time. Before we get too far, just a quick rundown of Zoom, which thank you so much. They've all done this a couple of times at this point, but just in the case, if you're participating mode on Zoom, you're seeing their hand function. If we wanna say something during public forum or if a question is a lot of our presenters can go and put that button. Otherwise, if you're really, really, one new year's out, only when it's your turn to speak, so we can all hear each other well and you can turn the window whatever gets you going. Okay, now it's really good stuff. So this evening, we're gonna start off with public forum as always. The third is questions, announcements, discussion items, you name it. And then we'll hear a legislative update from the legislative representatives. And then we're gonna go into an update from our Zoom counselors about since they're going on a learning journey. We're in a little bit of a year that we've been doing around the week of 2020. And before we start public forum, just a friendly reminder that we are not meeting and we should buy for the break. Some of us on the steering wheel are talking about what kind of event we wanna hold instead of a meeting in a lounge. If you have ideas, please get in and talk with us. We'll right here. And otherwise, we're either fine via either both websites. You wanna hear your thoughts about what kind of event, please go. That's what it's got except for the ground rules for the public forum. Please identify yourself before you speak. Tell us your name, where you live, if you're affiliated with the organization as you speak with us. And please be respectful of all of our clients. Keep your comments for a little minutes and I will be really, really, really, really, many areas. So with that, the name of the event should speak at public forum. And Andy. Hi, my name is Andy Simon. I live on Locust Street. And I used to be on the steering committee and I'm not anymore. I'm here to just make an announcement about events at the Pine Street Barge Canal. I'm part of a group called Friends of the Barge Canal and we've been doing various things to conserve, protect, remediate, and to educate people about the Barge Canal. One of those things is to offer many tours of the Barge Canal because so many people walk by on the bike path or on Pine Street and never actually get to see this 28 acres of wild space right in the midst of the South End. So once a month, we are offering just a tour, just a walking tour of the Barge Canal. Anybody that wants to come, it's always gonna be on the first Saturday of July, August, September, October. And we do it at nine o'clock in the morning, which is a barbaric time for some people. But we've already been up for several hours. This, the next date is July 1st, Saturday, July 1st. After the nine to 10 mini tour on Saturday, July 1st, we are gonna have a short workday for people who wanna come or stick around after the mini tour to be picking up more trash because there's always more trash at the Barge Canal to be working on controlling non-native species like buckthorn. We're also gonna be doing trail maintenance because there are a few trails that lead in and working on other kinds of maintenance for projects that we've been doing down there. So that is 10 to 12 on Saturday, July 1st. We also, if you can't make it on a Saturday and you'd like to have a small group come down on a different day, we can be contacted at sosburlington at gmail.com. That's sosburlington at gmail.com or through the website, which is pinespreakbargecanal.org for friends of the Barge Canal. And for instance, Jack and Daisy here came down last Sunday with a group of people from VBOP because they couldn't make it on Saturday. So we're glad to schedule impromptu tours that aren't on that scheduled day. Thank you very much. Did you say, pinespreakbargecanal.org? Pinespreakbargecanal.org. Can I ask for a word about you? Go ahead. My name's Ruby Perry. I live in Ward 5 about a block away and I wanted to let people know about a meeting, a symposium that was held in City Hall earlier this week. And it was really interesting. It was hosted by the city council committee called TOOC, which is the transportation. Energy. Transportation Energy Council, right? Utilities. Utilities. And what they were talking about was the McNeil plant and wood burning in general as a viable form of renewable energy. And Darren Springer was there from BED doing an amazing job of summarizing the work that BED does around that. But there were also two scientists they're talking about the numbers basically of what it means to be burning wood in terms of carbon sequestration and what it means in terms of policy shifts that are coming down the pike. So it was quite eye-opening. And the reason I mention it now is because there's a YouTube recording of it that you can tune into and get all of that in your own time and in your own home. Not have to go to City Hall. And I think it will be that address will be included in the minutes when they go out from this committee from the NPA. So take a look and see what you think. And thank you. Okay, so if you ever want to see something that's recorded on CCTV and see it on YouTube, you can find it. But the way to find it from CCTV is to go to cctv.org and you put the date that you know the date of the event and how important that day is gonna pop up. Oh, excellent. That's much easier. So go to CCTV, put in June 13th. June what? 13th. June 13th. And Charlie, do you know if it's up yet? No, you don't know it. Probably not. It might be. I'm not gonna check it. Probably not. It might be tomorrow. Having a way to get to things easily online. Thank you for that. It's great. Anyone else? You probably don't have ads on CCTV, right? Yes. I'm just gonna click down to the video. My name is Daisy. I use her pronouns. I live in the South Ends off of Marble and St. Paul in the corner. I just want to maybe raise some awareness about a particular crosswalk that I think is really dangerous. Smolley Park, which I don't think is technically Ward 5, but I think it's between Ward 5 and Ward 6. But the crosswalk that I am particularly concerned with is I think technically in our Ward. So it's the crosswalk on St. Paul that you cross to go into Smolley Park if you're on the opposite side. The lines are pretty much gone. You can't really see those lines. There is a sign there to let you know that that is a crosswalk, but I'm just kind of concerned that a child is going to get into a situation with a car there because the basketball court is right there. And if a basketball rolls down into the street, it goes down like a slant. And if you're an eight-year-old kid, you might not be thinking that there's cars going like over the speed limit on that road. I did email our counselors to ask about getting a in-street crossing sign put in there, but I haven't heard anything back. So if anyone knows who I could contact or ask about getting something put into that street, let me know. And if you're walking around, just take a look at that crosswalk and think if you would want your child or a child of any type crossing that or if you wouldn't want to cross there. All right, any pedestrian. Daisy, just to let you know that city counselors are going to be in this meeting later on. So they're on the agenda and you could ask them directly. Physically in the room? Yeah. Okay. Physically in the living room? Yep. Right here. I haven't heard otherwise. Great. It's also a thing called two-click fix. Yeah, I have actually submitted some things to that and I don't see a lot of those signs around, like the in-street crossing signs. I think they're good for calming traffic, but I only have seen them by like the Champlain campus. So I don't know if they're just not something that we use. The ones that you can put in the middle of the crosswalk. So if there's like something in the street and you're driving, you will slow down because you might think you're going to hit it. But they're like $400 from what I looked into. So they're like a pretty cheap option as opposed to one of those flashing signs that I think are like $10,000 or something crazy. It's interesting. Anyone else for a minute or two? Yeah. Hi, I'm Farid. I live in Lejmir Street. I have an announcement and comment. The announcement is there will be People's Pride celebration in Burlington. It's going to be in Ako Plage Park. So right in our backyard, it's going to be on Saturday, June 24th. This is not the official sponsored pride. This is more of a people grassroots type of pride. So it's over to everybody and June 24th and starting at 3 p.m. Ako Plage Park. My comment is about the recent appointment of the Chief Acting Chief Moret into a Permanent Chief. I want to congratulate the Chief. I know some people see it as the status goal being maintained. I don't particularly postpone it either way who the Chief is. I am more concerned about the accountability mechanism for our police department. Through this confirmation hearing, one thing that actually really resonated with me that the Mayor says, if saying over and over again regarding the incident at the hospital, the Chief actually already apologized. And that really, I mean, that's really a great thing. And I know there are communities who have been harmed by the police department. And I would like to suggest that Chief Moret asks one of these first act who actually acknowledge the harm that's done and apologize. I think that we've grown a long way towards rebuilding trust with the community that I've been harmed. Thank you. Yeah, excellent. Thank you very much. I want to come online or in the room for our remaining public forum, right? I'll round off the the announcement table. My name is Jack Tiano. I live on St. Paul and Marble as well. Mostly, I just kind of wanted to put an idea out there as I've been getting more engaged with the community, especially coming to the NPA. One thing that I really would like to see is a collaborative conversation around what the future of our neighborhood looks like, of Ward 5 specifically, in terms of how we handle both the climate crisis and the housing crisis, all of these compounding crises is going to ask change from all of us. And when we think about the equity involved in that, it's a long-term complicated conversation. And so that means thinking about how do we, as the city starts moving to think about zoning changes, I know the Southern Innovation District is a big thing going on right now, but it's probably going to ask even more from us, especially in the lower density areas of the city, to think about how our neighborhoods can change and evolve and accommodate more people. So anyway, I don't have like a thing to pitch or a place to go or an upcoming event, but just to kind of put that out there and kind of plant that seed and maybe try to find some other people that might be interested in starting that conversation in a more active way. But anyway, that's it from me. Thanks. Thank you. We'll keep talking about it. All right. Thus concludes the forum. And I hand it over to our representatives. Okay, here. I mean, just give us one minute. Yeah, we can. I don't have enough microphones. We have them unabunded. You want to go first? Sure. Hi, everybody. Thanks for inviting us. Representative Gabrielle Stevens. And I guess I'll start off with sort of an overarching perspective, which is as you've probably heard in the news, there have been a number of bills that the governor has to note. So we will all be going back to the state house next week, Tuesday through Thursday is the current plan. Bills like updating the 50 year old bottle, the childcare bill, a lot of the bills that he vetoed, I would say the structure has, the comments have generally been that it's too costly or that it's sort of a stick approach to government, something along those lines. That's sort of most of what he has said, not all. Sometimes he has other feedback on why he's chosen to veto bills, but so with that being said, one of the bills he vetoed was the budget, which kind of means that actually, unless a bill only had policy and had no money, pretty much nothing that we did actually move forward as of yet because if you design a, let's say a bill pertaining to judiciary and the court systems and there was no money in it, that could actually move forward because it doesn't trigger any money, but literally everything else, which is a lot, has money in it and therefore it doesn't move forward until and unless we are able to move the budget forward. And as probably many of you have heard, there has been just incredible, challenging heartbreaking conversations and real life situations with the motel program ending. Basically the motel program for unhoused people was able to run for about three years or so with federal dollars. And it's not a program that federal, sorry, that just state funds can maintain in perpetuity for as many people as it has. It's also really not a great program. I mean, it's great in terms of the sense that it's a shelter, but for a lot of these, not for everybody, but for a lot of the folks using the motel program, they need services, they need other support. If you think about a motel, like there's no kitchen, there's no, you know, it's not, it's not really a long-term policy to have people who don't have homes live in motels. It is better than tents. All of that to be said, the way the budget process works is it starts in the house, then it goes to the Senate, and then it goes to the governor. And the house actually last year, we put into the budget money and language to have the executive branch, the administration figure out a phased plan for the motel program ending because we knew it would end. That did not happen. And so we ended up in a situation where May came and went. We did pass a budget. The governor vetoed it. The governor vetoed it because it was too expensive, which leaves us in a place where even if the house were to increase the budget, it's likely that the Senate would have probably cut it down and then the governor would veto it anyway. So it's a bit of a stalemate as about a week ago. And about a week ago, there have just been a lot of efforts underway to figure out an alternative path. That is still being worked out. So there's a lot of hope that by next Tuesday we will have a way that will be less harmful and less painful for everybody who is not in the motel system and has been kicked out. Tiff has been following this a lot more. So I will let her cover that more and also the budget. I was given the task. I just wanted to set the framework that technically like 85% of what we've done, I think hasn't moved forward because it's all tied up with the budget. But we are hopeful that next week we will be able to see progress both in terms of the housing challenges and the budget as well as the bottle bill and many, many other bills that were vetoed. That being said, my area of jurisdiction to cover in tonight's conversation is really, I serve on the environment and energy committee, which is phenomenal committee. We cover so much. I actually get to write down notes because of how much we cover. We worked on climate workforce language and money so that we could actually see more dollars go into skilled trade. So we could see more weatherization. We could see more, you know, shifting insulation, air sealing of our buildings. We've worked on a biodiversity bill. That folks who bear may not know about 70% of Vermont's land is privately owned. So it's a very, it's a very relationship focused conversation when you're talking about preserving Vermont's land, because you're talking about land that is predominantly privately owned. So in this bill basically it's bringing all of the stakeholders together to figure out a plan so that by 2030, we have 30% of Vermont land and waters preserved in one way or another. It could be working lands. It could be, so they're different preservation models, but, and then by 2050, it would be 50%. This is really important in terms of how we're seeing growth occur in Vermont in terms of just long-term sustainability, having enough woods and water and food resources. So it's a really long-term vision. We also passed the Affordable Heat Act, which does not require Vermonters to do anything, but if they want to, they will be given more information, more resources, and more incentives to get their homes off of fossil fuels. Predominantly, there's a real focus on this bill for lower income and moderate income Vermonters, because for folks who can pay, like myself, I mean, we've already put into heat pumps. We've already done the air insulation and all of that. It's really about, as we see more people like me doing this on their own, we have a good sense of who's going to be stuck, you know, not necessarily being able to pay their bills 20 years from now, because maybe there's so much fewer people heating with gas or oil. And so it's the folks who have at least a amount of money, probably more people shift, and then they actually end up getting into an even tougher situation 20 years out. So that is the concept behind the Affordable Heat Act. Technically over the next year and a half, what it really does is set up the regulations and the rules. We have to vote on it again in a year and a half to actually turn the key on to the car to make the program run, because there was so much concern statewide that this is, you know, too much, too fast, that it would hurt people to report it. So the entire program, once it's designed from start to finish, comes back to the state house in a year and a half for a full revote. So that'll be a very intense conversation. Fourth try, household hazardous waste, Vermont is the first nation in the U.S. to require that manufacturers are going to have to pay and develop the program for how to manage household hazardous waste. So if you think about, you know, your great-uncle is trying to remove it. They pass away. You go into their home. It's full of like weird left paintovers, leftover paints from 30 years ago, some weird residual paint thinner, and you're like, what do I do with this? You're like, I don't know. So how many people like throw it out in trash? Not good. How many people bring it to the household hazardous waste day? A lot, but, you know, not everybody. Anyway, so our great solid waste management. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to do that. So, you know, entities like chitin and solid waste has been taking this, but the way they've been dealing with it is to absorb the cost and then also send a portion of the cost to all of us. So this is actually over the next year and a half, I think or so. Basically it'll require all of these manufacturers, global manufacturers to put together a stewardship organization that will figure out how to pay for it. How can we make our packaging smaller? How can we make this actually, you know, a different nozzle so that like, even less can leak out by accident and you start to have much deeper systemic change. So very cool. Vermont first, the nation representative, Mary Sullivan worked on that for three sessions. And I happen to be the lucky one. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. So we're going to have to do that. And I happen to be the lucky one. To carry it over the finish line. Follow bill. That's 50 years of the same old, same old. And hopefully we will be able to veto that and undo the veto. And then another bill that my committee worked on was, you guys probably heard about the whole bill. I think it's a very odd term. In my mind, I never thought of it as the home bill. I think of it as S 100. of things, basically, not so much in Burlington, but in other communities, maybe in Burlington. In other communities, if you can build a single family home, you may not be able to do a duplex there because they're just certain zoning rules from like 10, 20, 30 years ago. So this basically establishes duplex by right, which also makes it a fair amount more affordable if you think about it. If you're going to be able to build a home, split it in half, you live in half of it, and someone else lives in the other half. It allows for more affordability, more density. There is also, there are a lot of more details, but predominantly it's focused on how to guide development where we want it, which is where we already have water and sewer, for the most part, and where we already have some development. And that combined with some of the work in the 30 by 30, 50 by 50, how do we want to accept the climate refugees that we're going to see move to Vermont over the next 10, 20, 30 years? How do we want to see Vermont change in a thoughtful way? So with that, I will pass the baton. You are so efficient. Well done. Yeah, of course, thank you. Yes, and then in transportation, because I was, in transportation, I was in that committee last time around, transportation did a lot of work again in terms of like really looking at how to make communities more walkable, bikeable. There's this term complete streets that at the state level right now, if VTrans is going to do a project, they're supposed to sort of check to see if what they're proposing is going to be bikeable and walkable. And they kind of check and see and, you know, if they're like, it's not going to really work, then that's that. So what we did was basically put in more teeth, so that we start to make it so you have to report how many projects have you looked at this. Why did you not do it? Like there are situations where it does not make sense to do a complete street. If you have a road right along a riverbank, like, sorry bicyclists are going to have to share the road, right? But there are many other situations where if society says we really want this a walkable and bikeable community and not so car focused, then we need to take a little bit more time and focus on it and plan for it. So there's a lot in the transportation bill related to public transit, related to complete streets, you know, your typical, your typical roads, bridges, trains, airports, because that's important too, and electric vehicles, electric bikes, and now assault. Oh, that's all good. So what we, when Gabrielle and I last summer were talking to people in different neighborhoods, I'm sorry, I'm too gloomily, and I also represent four or five and six in our, in what is Chittenden, 14, 13, sorry, 13. Well, when we were talking to folks last summer and fall at our little neighborhood lemonade stands, we, we, and we asked people what really concerned them the most. Things people said housing, substance use, mental health, and childcare. Ate Family Lead was in there somewhere sometimes. And so when, so I serve on the Appropriations Committee, which develops the budget from the policy committee recommendations, and given what the governor has proposed, et cetera, I'll tell you what I'm particularly excited about and what we were able to do on those fronts that I think will make a difference. One, we've been bleeding staff at places like Howard Center, mental health professionals who work in lots of different capacities. And for two decades, they've been underfunded. The Medicaid reimbursement, the allowable rate has been held low, so low that Howard has something like I don't know what 300 vacancies. And, and that is that contributes to the mental health crisis, obviously because people have to wait too long to to get in to have treatment. What what we were able to do, and this was a major priority, both the health care committee and the human services committees were to boost the Medicaid reimbursement rate to the tune of $99 million. That goes into the base budget. That's something that then those agencies and professionals can count on. And these are substance use counselors, it's mental health counselors and doctors, primary care physicians, EMS workers, it is, we have underfunded them for 20 years. And I think we'll see a benefit down the road for that substance use treatment, mental health treatment. There, the health committee and the human services committees expanded what's called the hub and spoke treatment system, which will then make air accessible to more of our monitors in more parts of Vermont, establish a statewide network of mobile crisis units, which will then be equipped to address substance use and mental health crises. That will help reduce the pressures on our emergency departments. We've invested in recovery housing, more recovery housing. Those folks are not able to bill against Medicaid, and the state has not invested in them. And this was the first time we got a $1 million appropriation in for for that housing, and for vouchers for somebody's first month's rent and security deposit. There's settlement money that you've probably heard about in the news related to the opiate cases. And through that, we're going to be able to make Narcan more readily available. We're going to be able to test drugs for things like fentanyl, see what they're, which will help protect. We don't really have that kind of capacity right now. And you've probably also read a lot about youth mental health. And for the first time, we're developing a co located physical medical and mental health facility for youth in down in in Bennington is the only facility that actually responded to the RFP. I do think there will be other. There will be more available in the next section session because I don't think we did enough as it relates to mental health treatment, especially for youth. But it is a step in the right direction. Housing. So we the budget that dedicated $211 million dollars to housing, that's the larger amount that it has, you know, annual amount that it has dedicated $109 million of that is to develop affordable housing. And 102 million is to provide emergency shelter transitional housing for folks coming out of prison or folks who are leaving foster care or services that are tied to emergency shelter or temporary housing. And I can, I can talk, I'd like to go back to that in a second just to pick up a little bit on what Gabrielle said, but we also committed ourselves to universal school meals. And Governor allowed that to pass without its signature. It is given the testimony that that the General Assembly heard it is made a huge difference in the, in reducing stigma for kids at school. And so I, it's a, it's a controversial bill in terms of its costs. What is it 23 million? But it is it's food for kids. And I think the only thing that people are are object to is why aren't people who can pay for it paying for it and why are and just the cost of that, given the other things that we invested in. And the big disappointment was paid family leave, which was really sacrificed child care. As somebody who spent pretty much two decades working towards paid family leave, that was really hard to lose that. And it would, the argument with the Senate was over the funding source. And no Senate wanted to fund child care through through the payable tax, as did the House want to fund the pay family leave. So that, that I know is on the docket for next year. That was my, my personal, that was, that was the hardest thing. And, but second hardest was the fight over housing and for emergency housing, because there were a number of folks who were working very hard throughout the whole session to try to build more money into the budget so that folks could have a reasonable, we could reasonably transition folks. And from the motel system, that as Gabrielle said, the governor has had three years to figure out how we're going to ramp this down. And, and when he presented his budget adjustment act, it had nothing in it for the motels beyond March 15. But House Appropriations and Human Services put $23 million in so that we could take people through June to June and through the end of June. And, and then we put in the House put in $20 million more dollars in addition to adding 10 more to the base appropriation for emergency housing. It wasn't, I knew it wasn't enough. But it came much closer to where to, to being enough than the Senate version did. And I, you know, I, it's not helpful to point fingers, but this is the process. So you pass something out of the house, it goes to the Senate, they passed something, they stripped out $20 million that have been put in specifically for emergency housing. And then we had to go to conference committee. And in conference committee, we lost pretty much on every count, not every, but we lost a lot of things. And that was one of them. And so then you're faced with a choice to vote for the budget or don't you. And I think that it is, it is a fine stand for people to have opposed the budget that came back from the conference committee. I happen to know how hard our conferees worked to try to get more money into the budget. And the reason that that that the 12 and a half million you may have heard about was the last thing that was done is because there was resistance to doing anything more until the last minute. So, so there have been a lot of people involved in trying to sort this out. I do, I'm hopeful that when we go to, when we go next week, that the Senate and the House will come to an agreement at any consultation with the folks who have opposed the budget and will have something we can vote through, because to do, to not vote the budget through everything that I have read and for every conversation I've had will be catastrophic. We have, and I know that there are other folks who will argue, but we will have, we have to have a budget July 1st or the government shuts down. There's, there isn't any way for the government to keep going without a budget. And secondly, we, if we, if we, we are likely, if we don't overwrite a veto and have to write a whole new budget, a budget will be closer to the governor's budget. And we did, our budget is radically different from what the governor proposed. And so it's been heartbreaking to watch all of this play out. And, and I am, I'm sorry we couldn't get this right first time, but I'm hopeful that we can get it right. Can we go back now? Sure. Yeah. Sure. People have comments, questions. We've got seven or eight minutes until bringing their government representative. Okay. I just want to ask about VHS. It sounded like from the I got the whole list. Yes. So there are like a lot of other committees we didn't really talk about like agricultural committee, like we had a small grants program for a long time. Okay. There's a lot of other stuff. VHS. In the budget, the budget, there was 16 million this year for addressing PCB remediation. And the approach on from both the House and the Senate side was to divide up. So to focus one element on the technical center at the high school, which is really a shared resource. It should not just be Erlingtonians who paid for it since it's, you know, the technical center for so many towns and communities. So that is one sliver of focus. Then there was another sliver of focus, which was specifically on getting dollars this year for PCB remediation. And that's the 16 million. There was a third sliver. 16 million all for Burlington High School or across multiples? Burlington High School. Okay. But there is a, yeah. So between the tech center and the 16 million and whatever this third sliver is that I'm trying to, that I cannot remember, but I can follow up. We are hoping to get, you know, the tech center was about 10 million that was discussed. There's also federal money that's coming in. But anyway, but the bottom line is 16 million dollars. And I'll tell you that was really hard thought. There were so many amendments on the floor to strip that out of that bill and to, or to make Burlington pay it back. If it won the lawsuit, that was, that was, wow. And if you, if you want to send a little bit of love, you do have a Burlingtonian representative who sits in the house education. And she, I mean, we all worked pretty hard on this, I would say, the entire Burlington reps and senators, but she in particular, Mary Catherine Stone, sitting on that committee really working very hard. Because when you're, when you're in the committee of jurisdiction, you have so much more ability to really, yeah, to have those meaningful conversations one-on-one with other committee members, to explain like why this is so critical and why it should be a decision that they support. Are those education funds or capital funds or no, that's a special fund that was set up last year for remediation, recently remediation. So it was taken out of that special pot. I don't know the mechanics of getting it to Burlington, but we can find that out. That's okay. We just want to pass the question. What about all legal residents voting in Burlington? Well, it's coming up for, that's another veto vote that we're going to be joining next week. Yeah. Yeah. Or I mean, it, I don't, I don't think there's a chance it will not be overwritten given the vote that came out of the house and the, the fact that we passed that before, you know, want to see and realize that and, you know, mobility or so. Anyway, yeah. I'm wondering, I know the conversation about the hotel owner is obviously still ongoing, but this is their community, like we're going to see the impact no matter who we are. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about what we do that as we see people being forced out of the street and not really be able to offer them a viable alternative, like what, what should we do? So not passing them, but I will say that they're, I mean, one good thing that has come of this is that there's been a lot more coordination and communication amongst all the nonprofits. Many of the municipalities, you know, CEDO, Linooski, like a lot of the communities, not passing them by being a state rep, but in some ways were a little bit higher up that particular totem pole compared to some of the work that CEDO has been doing. And we did see a presentation last Monday that had, there are, well, I mean, and group, there, you know, there were 11 representatives at the city council meeting a couple weeks ago when Burlington's proposal to the letter of interest that it sent to AHS was proposed. There were at least 12 that attended a meeting in South Burlington from the Chilling County homeless alliance. I think that there are ways in which we can help in part to identify folks who are not actually meeting with AHS personnel who are living in motels right now and are not getting the services that they need and the kind of off-boarding that they need to transition to something else. Because there are people that are falling through the cracks and I do think the city of Burlington, I think, I mean, all of us should have had this in our sights because we knew that this was, that FEMA money was drying up and all of us should have had more of a plan. I think that there, I know that there will be a group of people working with the joint fiscal committee in a legislature to track to really follow what is happening on the ground because we don't do very well as a legislature, as a part-time legislature, actually not enforcing but cracking how things are actually, you know, are those grants actually getting out? And that's a big part of the issue because all of these municipalities are going to send letters of intent to do this or that, establish a congregate shelter or to provide services for folks during the day, etc. And we need to make sure they get the money. And actually that is one of the bills that we did pass, I don't know if it was vetoed, but basically it establishes, like over the summer into the fall, a working group to figure out how the legislature can have a better sense of government accountability and what's happening. I mean, we don't, we close up shop in May, we respond to our emails, but it's not like we're there actually working. But your question was a little different, was what can we do individually? And I don't know if when the conversation shifts to our city councilors, if they may have any more of an update, a more recent update, because I don't, I don't have an answer for that. As the legislature started to grapple with the shift over the last couple of years and what's going on with substance abuse. And I read the 70s article a little while ago about how a public spoke model is kind of not working in the case of new, much more open from damaging drugs. Is that something that you started to wrap your arms around? And if so, how did that manifest this year? Well, I think that in fact, the settlement money, the proposed uses for the settlement money, it does try to address that by establishing this facility that would actually check drugs that are on the street to see what is actually coming in to Vermont. But we don't, we don't, we can't anticipate that quickly enough. This will help. We also have settlement money that has not been extended at all. And we've got $3 million for this year. And I think that there's, there are a lot of ideas out there. And the group is directing the expenditure of that money is, I think, working pretty hard to understand the current landscape. Sorry, you didn't ask the question, Jason. But to, to understand the landscape and what, what, in addition to what they've already proposed is necessary. That's hard to keep up. Okay. Thank you both so much. Really appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I would really welcome feedback and where, you know, how to reach us. We'll let you know what happens next week. Okay. I, it's been not coming. We did not coordinate online card representatives. And Ben and I also sit on many together. So we don't necessarily different things to report on. I don't have enough of these to go around. So this when I'm passing out is, sorry, I'm not going to like these are the tax rates off the press today for adopting the budget. It's perfect quality talk. Yeah. Yeah, I see you didn't get them to leave them to fit her well in between. Yeah. This is a different, but what I need is kind of what I was talking about. Okay. Actually, no, I can't see a thing with those glasses up close. I know everybody else puts their glasses on. I have to take my number. Yes. So on Tuesday, Monday, Monday is Juneteenth. It's the national celebration of Juneteenth. Burlington is celebrating Juneteenth on Saturday. And I hope you all get to spend some time downtown. It's consolidated this year. It used to be all over town. I found it very difficult to get to all the different things I wanted to go to. So this year, it's much more consolidated. And there's different events happening. I think that they said something like 50 artists that will be doing everything from comedy to poetry to music. So that will be fun. So that's why our meeting is on Tuesday because of Juneteenth. And the budget is on our agenda to be adopted for Tuesday. This really is hot off the press. And I haven't had time to, we have had budget presentations over the course of two months. And so each department comes and presents. These presentations are all available online. If you have interest in watching the Board of Finance meetings, you learn a lot about how each department works and the different programs that they're doing. So that might take away just from looking at this. You look at two numbers, the budget tax rate and the projected taxes. So we can increase our revenue by increasing the tax base. So when you put an addition on your house, you're going to get reassessed. And you can have the same tax rate that will be paying more taxes. Likewise, if we build a building, that building will add to the tax base and allow the city more revenue without actually changing the tax rate. So that building gives the city more revenue, but your taxes stay the same because the tax rate stays the same. So looking at this number with the tax rate, the tax rate has gone from 0.7 last year to 0.75 this year. And that's coming mainly from two sources. One is parks. And I can't, I actually went back and rewatched that presentation to see if I could understand why. I don't understand why. So I'm sorry. I'm going to try and figure that out between now and Tuesday. The other increases are really in this category called budget-driven rates. And those are things that are really beyond our control. They're regional, like GMT is regional county tax. Retirement, that's money we have to pay so that we can pay our former employees debt service. So those are all things that are kind of outside the city's control. So the one item that's adding to that increase in tax rate is parks. Then another thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about is policing where we are. We did appoint Chief Murad, which I have been a strong advocate. I think that when you put anything under the microscope, you're going to see the flaws are really going to jump out at you. I don't think we will ever know a chief the way we know Chief Murad. So of course we're going to know his flaws or what we perceive as flaws because some people think this wasn't the right thing to do and other people think it was the right thing to do. But all in all, I think that he has really saved our police department over the last three years. If he could have left, a man who certainly has opportunities would be hired in a heartbeat by almost any other organization. And he chose to stay with Burlington and by him doing that, we were able to preserve some of our police force. I'm not sure that would be possible without him. So I am personally really grateful that he stayed and I'm really happy with the appointment of the chief. We have to understand, you hear a lot of numbers about how many police are approved. We have had for decades, we had 105 sworn officers was the approved number. But that doesn't tell you how many police are actually on toll because among the sworn officers, we have detectives, we have Hoosie people, we have people in the airport. So we last fall, we had 20 officers available for that goal to cover all of our shifts, 24, 7, 365. And that is quite obviously not enough to do even an okay job. And we all felt that. We're experiencing things like, I think I have heard three times people calling about somebody trying to break into a home. And being asked, are they in? And when they say no, they're told, call us back if they get in. And that is the very sad kind of triage that we have had to do in this community. So we are now up to 26 officers available for patrol. And the chief has also been very good in recruiting people in an extremely difficult recruiting environment because everybody is recruiting police officers. So I think we ended up with sending five officers to the academy, but keep in mind that pipeline is close to, it's 18 months to two years before somebody is fully onboarded. And then you have a very young police officer. And I think that a lot of our officers who have spent more time on the job, you learn a lot in that job over the course of time. So we want to retain our police officers and we are giving them a lot of incentives. And you will notice in that budget that despite the very low number of police officers that we have, we're not saving any money by having less officers. We're having to pay officers far more than we've ever paid them. They're working tremendous amounts of overtime, which is quite honestly not very healthy. But they do have a sense of team, I think, in the department. And they're stepping up for each other and signing up for the overtime. We do have some forced overtime as well. But I recommend for anybody more interested in not to look at the Chief Does Monthly Report, it's available on the police department's website. And I recommend you go there and kind of track over the course of time where we are going with reported crime, which is different than crime, as well as the department, you know, how many people we have in different positions. And then the other big thing I think everybody is aware of is the South End Innovation Center, which is right here, I'm sorry, that John Callow left before this, because he's a lead on that project. I think that somehow I have been painted as being opposed to this, which I am certainly not. I was consulted in the very beginning of this and, you know, by Russ Scully, and I told him I was supportive of bringing housing to this site, to this South End. Obviously, we desperately need housing, and I tried to give up some advice on how to navigate a little bit. Since that time, I really haven't had direct conversations with Hula about what their plans are here, so I can't speak to that. But this is certainly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I'm not of the opinion that our job is to rubber stamp what's been done by the Planning Commissioner or by the Planning Staff. There is a process at the City Council that this is supposed to go through. It goes through the Ordinance Committee, which Ben and I both are on the Ordinance Committee. And there are new amendments being proposed now that haven't gone through. They're being proposed by staff, and they haven't gone through the Planning Commission. There are also things that the Planning Commission wasn't in full agreement on, and other things that the City Council may want to question as well. There has been a lot made about eight stories and support of eight-story buildings because we need more housing. And the thing I want to really emphasize here is that eight-story buildings don't necessarily get you more housing. The limiting factor in this zoning ordinance is called the floor area ratio. The floor area ratio that's being proposed is 2.5 with the inclusionary housing that's required. 2.5 is pretty high for Burlington looking. What we allow downtown is four. What is built downtown is far less than that. And what it means is if you had a floor area ratio of one, you could build a one-story building that covered the entire lot, or you could build a two-story building that covered one half of the lot. So a floor area ratio of 2.5 means you could build a two-and-a-half-story building that covers 100% of the lot, or you can build a five-story building that covers 50% of the lot, or at eight-stories, I think it's about 30% of the lot you can cover. So there's two advantages, depending on how you look at it, of eight-story buildings. At eight-stories, you have a lot more units with lake views than you do if you're building three-story buildings. The other thing is you have, I won't call it green space because it's not required to be green space, but you have more open space. It could be paved. And I don't know what the plan is, so I can't tell you whether that will be green space or paved space. But since eight-story buildings only covering 30% of the lot, to me is a little bit of an odd format for building a city. What we have been shown as community members for decades, trying to persuade us that you can have density that you'd like, we have been shown row houses, fourplexes, things that are much denser than what we have, but we haven't been shown pictures, including drawings that are done to talk about the South End Innovation District. They show maybe six-story buildings. There's not anybody really showing us what an eight-story building at an FAR of 2.5 looks like. I haven't seen it anyway. So the argument on that has also been that if we allow eight-story buildings, we get more variety of buildings. And that is something I have questioned because I want to understand how is that possible. I think that there is a lot of, there's reason to go up rather than go out because of the late views, because you get higher rents when you go up. But we're also told by planning staff that that type of building is not likely to be owner-occupied. And if to get owner-occupied buildings, those are going to be the shorter row house type buildings. And I think we not raised the issue at the meeting of it would be really nice to have small units that were owner-occupied. And that is really important as a community. The mayor just put something out saying that Burlington is 38 percent of housing units in Burlington are owner-occupied. That number does not include people who live in nursing homes and it doesn't include people who live in dormitories. And that number, that is in this thing that I gave you. That's over 7,000 people in a city of 44,000 people that we are not counting in that statistic. So our city is, we are experiencing very high rents. That means we have a community of people who are at the whim of landlords unless they are in subsidized housing. And home ownership, even if that home ownership means owning a very small apartment, stabilizes your housing cost. So one of my questions in this process is how are we going to ensure home ownership in this? Or are we going to be a city that is 80 percent renters with many of those renters experiencing regular rent hikes? And even if we do some form of rent control, whatever rent control we're going to do is still then allow landlords to increase their rents. So those are the kinds of questions that I'm asking. And what I have shared, I have more of these than I have of the tax thing. I was just begging the printer to print faster before I came in here and it was being purposely slow. But so I have this, which is a series of questions that I have asked the planning department, the ones that are highlighted, I thought would be a little bit more relevant for people. It's just kind of insider baseball. And then these were just some of my thoughts about the zoning, things that are going through my mind, things that I think as people are focused only on eight-story buildings or, you know, is Joan four or against eight-story buildings? There's actually a lot more to it than being four or against eight-story buildings. And there's actually much more than what I put here. This was just just a few thoughts. One of the other concerns I have with the proposal over here is that that they're only allowing like 20, I think 20 surface parking spaces per lot. These lots are very large. And I'm now wondering, was it 20 per lot or 20 for something else? 20 surface parking spaces. It seems they'll mostly be like handicapped parking. That's very, very little surface parking. The rest is going to have to be structure parking. Structure parking is very expensive and also very unattractive. It's going to add to the cost of rent. I read on Reddit that Councillor Shannon does not understand the existing parking requirements. We don't have a minimum parking requirement. However, parking is required by the market because my bet is most people in this room, even if you didn't drive your car here, you have a car parked somewhere. And so we need a place to put those cars. And the requirement in this district is for structured parking. And then, so you can have some that is under a building. If you have all of your units stacked in eight stories, underground parking is more limited than if you have the same number of units taking up more surface area at say four stories or something park more cars underground. But then they want these parking structures to be separate from the buildings. So parking structures are just, to me, that's not building community. That is, they're ominous places. Their place is a lot of people in our community will not even go into and they will not be wrapped by uses. We were told that they've studied these things and wrapping is not the best practice. So they will be screened. They could be wrapped, but they won't be wrapped. But and by wrapped, I mean having like battery in colleges would be an example where you have the apartments, the parking garages behind that, and it's covered on two sides by the building itself. So that's wrapped at least on two sides. That is not a requirement in this district. The parking can be separate and what was introduced at our last meeting was staff, staff had several amendments that they wanted. But one that I found very concerning is the idea that if they build public parking, that won't be counted in the FAR. That'll be exempt from the FAR. If I understand this correctly. So I think that's giving like a parking bonus. And I'm wondering who is the public that is parking here? We were told that it's Pine Street businesses want parks to park there. So one of my questions is who are the Pine Street businesses that want to park there? Because I know dealer parks on this side and they have their own building here. So I don't know if we're talking about dealer or I don't really want to see this neighborhood become a neighborhood of parking structures intermixed with housing units. That's not the vision that I have. And so those are the kinds the parking actually is is raising more concern for me than the height. But the height of the buildings is an issue not by virtue of height itself, but these other factors. So I will leave it at that. I have no idea what time it is, or if I've over my time. I'm trusting that you would have cut me off. I've been looking at you and looking at the clock. We're doing great. It's 8.15. We can certainly go past our 8.20 conclusion for those questions. And if you're willing to stay. So I'd say let's turn it over to questions. I have a bunch, but I'm going to hold them for now. So if by all means. Can I just grab my water? Yeah, absolutely. I'll try not to say anything too far from my life. Anyone want to start us out? Yeah, go ahead. So Joan, the right now that the ordinance committee is looking at changing the current zoning for this district, right? That's what the ordinance committee is doing. Or have they already done that? We have not. It is in the ordinance committee. And I would say that there's a feeling of urgency from the developer and the administration to vote it out. And to say, you know, we've been told the work is done. You can just vote it out. I'm not feeling that with myself. So the ordinance has to, the current zoning has to change in order for this one project to be built. Correct. Okay. And the proposal applies to everything in this, zoning district after that. The zoning district, I think it's like, oh, it's not the whole, it's a, it's a new district. So it includes 11 parcels. It's not the entire enterprise zone. It's a piece of the enterprise zone, but it's more than a quarter of the enterprise zone. Okay. Who can, I was on the planning commission years ago when we passed inclusionary zoning, who can, who can mandate whether, whether this new construction is rental or owner occupied? Can anyone, can the city do that? That is a question that I have. It's not something that we typically deal with in zoning. Can we deal with it in zoning? I don't know. But what, what the planners are telling us is certain housing styles lend themselves more to owner occupancy. And the, the obstacle is in financing, is in getting financing. You know, you could build an eight-story building that has small units that are for sale. I mean, it's been, it's been done here. It's been done in other places, but current financing um, makes it much harder to build that building as an owner occupied building than as a rental building. Right. But I'm just thinking like partnerships with housing finance agency and other organizations where, okay, they haven't done it before, but they could do it. You know, those, it, it's looking really at the whole set of institutions that make this happen and see where are the barriers. Yes. What can we do about it? Yes. As opposed to, oh yeah, well, commercially it doesn't work. Right. From a capitalist perspective. Yeah. But it's, as, as, as you know, that it's, it's a path of least resistance. Exactly. But right now the path of least resistance is rental housing. Right. And we need both, but I just really think that we need to not get caught with in the, in the, in the immediate present. Yes. Look at what we need. Yes. Jay, thanks. Following right on that, has the administration, do you know if the administration has explored at all any uh, either partnerships or direct city funding mechanisms that would still be playing field in favor of uh, owner occupied housing? Like basically, you know, providing some sort of guarantee or other, I don't know what mechanisms would be needed, but whatever it is that bridges the gap between being feasible and not feasible is that, is that kind of thing actually being contemplated in any active way? Not to my knowledge. And there is an MOU. So there is a public private partnership that is between the city, um, the hula arm that's doing this is called ride your bike, I think, um, and Champlain College. So there's an MOU, but it talks more about, you know, building parking garages together. Um, it does not, by my recollection, it does not address owner occupancy, but maybe that is, you know, maybe that's the tool that we need. And I think the community, we need to say, we're, there are a lot of us here, especially older people who don't want a two bedroom home or building. There's a whole different market that's being developed that is not, we're not building for. Honestly, we're probably not building enough for any sector of the market, whether you're looking for a studio apartment or a four bedroom. Have a quick comment and then a question actually for all of you. The first comment is just that like, I would love to dive into some of the things that I disagree with what you were saying, but that's not really the avenue. But if anyone wants to talk to me about some of how I might see this in a different light, feel free to grab me after. On the topic that I think the comment that I made at the beginning about how we see our neighborhoods changing in the future, one thing to think about it is every unit of housing that doesn't get built here is going to have to be built in your backyard, in our backyards, in the existing built environment or be housing deficits in the future. So that's just one comment on that. The other question that I have for the three of you is actually around public transportation, just seeing the budget here for GMT. And you were talking about the where GMT public transportation funding comes in at the state house as well. It's my understanding that some of the problems or the bottlenecks in Burlington around increasing funding for public transit and building a more robust transit system is kind of the funding model. And I'm wondering if there's been any movement or progress or collaboration in terms of the city talking to the state in terms of figuring out how those issues can be resolved so that I don't know enough to like be extremely targeted, but about that like the way that we fund it is kind of a little bit more regional and it makes it difficult for Burlington who has a much higher need for different types of transit than more rural areas or more remote parts of Shinden County. But anyway, just to kind of as the three of you are here to kind of is there collaboration on that in our, could there be in the future? So I know I can't answer it, so we'll be back here. So I'd say you're right. I mean there is Grand Mountain Transit covers, you know, how to Jericho, right? And what makes sense here in Burlington is not necessarily applicable or useful or helpful in other locations. How much? I mean there's a lot of coordination between GMT and the state. There is some coordination that I'm aware of. I don't know. There could be a lot. I don't know that there's a lot. I know that there is some coordination between GMT. And for example, when I chaired Burlington Electric Commission with the Burlington Electric Department to get the electric buses, that sort of thing. So there's definitely coordination. And then there's the overlay of the Shinden County Regional Planning Council with Charlie Baker there as head. What I'm going to suggest, because that's a really, that's a really interesting question. And one of the pieces is I didn't delve into in terms of the transportation budget this past year is there was initially the proposal was to stop the fare free, like just carte blanche as of like June 30th because that's what we had done from last year. Mostly again with federal dollars. And what we ended up doing was figuring out a way to continue that for a bit longer while GMT reassesses what it costs to get, you know, a new transit system that you can have like a swiping so that the folks that really can't afford to ride, you know, but it can actually go through probably in an order amount of paperwork to actually get the car but could then travel for free. Whereas folks like me would still pay. So all of that being said, let me get your name. And because I what I can say is I know all the people that we could reach out to to find out what's being done what's not being done and is there a way to delve a little bit more specifically into how to address Burlington specific needs within the broader GMT system. And to be clear it's not specifically about maintaining the fare free program but about bringing the financial balance of how Burlington can fund the transit. But at this point it's fare free extended to when? I'm wondering if there is updates about from the Charter Change Committee on police oversight at the city level. I'm almost wondering if at the state level if there is anything being done about setting a statewide standard on police oversight as a million. And the other comment I want to make is that we we will promise a robust discussion with public input on public safety and they passed in a struggle for many of us to actually access this discussion. So I'm wondering what the city is doing to make sure that people who we need to hear from are actually participating. There so the discussion about police oversight is in a joint committee of the ordinance committee and the Charter Change Committee, which is chaired by Ben and by jointly by Ben as chair of ordinance and Jean Bergman as chair of Charter Change. We did have one meeting, no we have two meetings I think. And at this point I think we're kind of gathering information at our last meeting we heard from one of the co-chairs of the police commission that were members of the public who participated in that. And our it's it's challenging because that's a joint committee so it's a lot of people. Also requires more people than just our committee and so it's been challenging to find meeting dates so our next I'm thinking our next meeting is like July 12th because that was the next meeting we could find. And there it was I'm trying to remember the suggestion of the co-chair but I think one of the things that we're going to have to wrestle with a little bit is there's some desire to give more authority to the police commission and I think that there's also I think there are police commissioners who think that's a grand idea other police commissioners who are feeling so overwhelmed by the volume of work that they have to do now but there also could be more professional oversight and I kind of think would be interesting to look at because Burlington actually wouldn't have it's not like we have a huge number of complaints that need to be dealt with by somebody kind of outside the department there's there's many complaints that can be and this is according to the police commission that's reviewing these complaints many of these complaints can be resolved with little or no fanfare at all they're very cut and dry and simple and they're not necessarily big complaints you know uh cruiser didn't put a blinker on when they turned or they you know it can be some very little things um but so for the big things I think it would be good to have somebody at the state level who could adjudicate or facilitate uh some of these things to raise them to a higher level to a body that do a public body that can review these cases I do not feel and others may disagree there certainly are some people who think that they have the solution and the committee just has to approve the solution I'm not one of those people I see some challenges with there's there's good ideas there's good elements of each and every proposal and then there's other things that um you know like what the police commission is experiencing it's a lot of work who's going to do that work what expertise do you need to do that work so I think that there's there's a lot of questions to be answered and I know that there is a desire to have more public engagement on this so I appreciate your point and that has been raised with the unions as well and I'll just say that and I for the life of me I cannot remember its name but there is a there is essentially a kind of a police law enforcement oversight um group that was formed um through legislation and I think that's at the state level and I think it only really got formed um last year and I I need to check back in about that because um I is it the Vermont criminal justice council I think that is yes I think it is the Vermont criminal justice council but I I have heard almost nothing about what they've been doing so uh I can get back in maybe it's just as if I get back to the whole NPA with I think that has some really interesting potential my understanding is that they're very very very back top after I thought it's been open more than a year about back well I think it took a while to actually get started yeah start and get members you know appointed to it and all of that I mean all right folks it's 8 30 um I could ask questions about a night but let's leave it here it's wonderful to see and hear everyone's questions and it seems like three of you will be hearing from us and we'll be hearing from you on all the things that have come up and I guess my my one final question is just in terms of the the south end innovation district and and the kind of questions about oversight of those things like where's what are next steps are there dates we should be keeping an eye out for the next um the next south end innovation district meaning is going to be June 28th um you can keep an eye on the city council city calendar on the city website um because I don't know at this time I think it's gonna the meetings are usually at seven o'clock I don't know what room usually it's at city hall on the busher conference room but okay depends on if it's available and then I think it's July 12th for the joint committee there's the book containers if you want to bring yourself to Thanks a lot I'll talk over it's good thank you for eating thank you