 Hello, good afternoon and welcome. My name is Adam Roof and I'm the chair of the Burlington Democratic Party. It's my distinct honor to serve in this role in helping deliver on the mission of change through the process of electoral politics. Our work at the party involves encouraging neighbors to be candidates, supporting candidates and getting elected, and helping elected leaders be effective agents of change. The strength of our party is recognizable in many ways. Today we're going to hear from three incredible mayoral candidates, three incredible women on their vision for the future of Burlington. They've stepped up to serve the community that they love. Equally as important to the office of mayor is the city council. Across the city we have candidates of the highest caliber with a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives who are ready to answer their call to service. But candidates can only become elected leaders with the support of many. To date we have over 1500 Burlingtonians who have signed up to vote in our upcoming nominating caucus one week from today. The excitement over the caliber of all the candidates in that caucus is palpable. If you have not already please do register to vote in that nominating caucus and be a part of this historic event and contribute to the mission of electing Democrats this march. And the role of the party here is to plan and produce this caucus season, this nomination season, including hosting this forum and culminating in the nomination caucus a week from today. I want to thank our planning team, especially election administrator Andy Voda, who's also serving as timekeeper today, executive committee member Beth Anderson, our parliamentarian Jake Perkinson, and a special thanks to Councillor Hannah King who serves as vice chair to the party. She has been instrumental in planning not just this event, but the upcoming caucus. Of course I'd be remiss to not also thank Mayor Meryl Weinberger for his 12 years of service and helping and his efforts in helping build the Burlington Democratic Party into what it is today. Our mission, the party's mission in all aspects of our work this caucus season is to remain unbiased in creating opportunities for candidates for mayor and city council to share their vision for the future of Burlington. In dedication to this principle we requested that Catherine Huntley, a local reporter from WCAX, moderate this forum. Catherine has taken on the work of developing the questions today which have not been shared with any candidate or party officials. Catherine's participation today is in no way shape or form an endorsement of any candidate or the Burlington Democratic Party. The party is thankful that Catherine has lended us her journalistic integrity for this event today. And so with that please join me in welcoming to the stage our moderator for this afternoon Catherine Huntley. Well thanks Adam and thank you for inviting me to be a part of this. It's such an honor to cover a community where people from all parties are so engaged in local politics and really care about where their community is going. Next I will give a brief overview of what all the rules are. These have been shared with the candidates ahead of time but I wanted to make sure everyone else here knew what was going on and remotely. Before the forum we had candidates randomly choose numbers from the order to order their opening and closing remarks separately. The speaking order will then rotate for the entirety of the forum's question period. Candidates will have two and a half minutes for each question. If another candidate is mentioned in a response that candidate will then have one minute to respond. At that point the original candidate who answered the question will have time for a short 15 second response. Each candidate does have three challenge cards that can be used if they would like to respond to a question that they have not been referenced in. These responses will be no more than one and a half minutes and again if a candidate is directly referenced in that rebuttal that candidate will have one minute to respond. The time keepers, Beth Anderson and Andy Voda here, will be holding up cards to indicate 30 seconds left and 10 seconds left. Opening statements will be five minutes and closing statements will be three minutes. Some audience members might have filled out question cards or online. We'll do our best to get to some of those but that will be at the end of the forum. Otherwise those questions will be sent to the candidates and they can so choose personally if they would like to. All right, you guys ready? Okay, so in the opening remarks draw it went Karen, then Madison, and then Joan. All right, so you can take it away five minutes. I would like to start. See how this, okay. I wasn't quite sure how are the microphones work here. We have lots of microphones in summer better than others. Thanks so much Catherine and my thanks to the Burlington Democratic Party, to CCTV, to everyone for making this forum possible today. Thank you to each of you for taking the time out of your busy day to be here with us this afternoon. I am running to be mayor, to be your next mayor because amidst much that we have to be proud of in our city, we are faced with serious challenges and serious challenges call for serious solutions. In my years on the city council, I have always strived to be solutions based and to move our city forward. As city council president, I have made it my mission to develop authentic and respectful relationships with all of my colleagues to show the community that we are a collaborative and respectful body. I have worked well with city employees earning their respect because I value their work above all. At a recent city council meeting, I introduced a resolution proclaiming the drug crisis to be our top public health and public safety priority and that evening I said, we all want those suffering from substance use disorder to be well, to get well and to be safe. My record on harm reduction is unequivocal, having been on the record not once, not twice, but three times in broad support of public health. We also want our greater community to be safe and right now we know that many people do not feel that sense of safety. We are witnessing an unprecedented increase in crime and it is well understood that if public behavior like what we are seeing today is allowed to continue, it will become the norm and that quite simply is unacceptable to all of us. So I am running for mayor to change that. I am running for mayor to ensure that what we see in our city is consistent with our values as a community. I am running for mayor because Burlington deserves a mayor who has a track record of saying what she will do and then doing it. I am the only candidate in this race with the professional experience both as a CPA and with a deep background in finance and management that truly a mayor must have. I am the only candidate in the race with the political acumen and deep and well earned connections to hit the ground running and I am the only candidate with an actual comprehensive three year public safety plan that is bold, actionable and effective. Even this current state of our city and the need for urgent action, we need a mayor who truly gets along well with others and has established those working relationships already has established those working relationships. I have a track record of bridging divides, not in words but in actions. As city council president, I inherited a council that was fraught with contentiousness. And today I have cultivated working relations real and genuine esteem for each of my colleagues. I know I can bring that same integrity to the office of mayor. Tackling our challenges will require participation from every corner of our community. Burlington deserves a mayor who can make that collaboration happen. Serious problems require serious solutions. That is why five days after my campaign launch, I came forward with a comprehensive three year plan for public safety, one that incorporates the complexity of our evolving city, a plan that incorporates the need for increased housing and balances compassion with action. Burlington is my home, my family, and whether you've been here four months, four years or four generations, as your mayor, I will go to bat for you every day. Since announcing my run for mayor just over five weeks ago, I have listened and learned so much from all of you about your hopes and dreams for our city, about your concerns, about your love for Burlington, and most importantly, your commitment to our community and willingness to step up, to show up, and to do your part. In the past two weeks, we have witnessed the unthinkable occur in our city, the violent attack on three Palestinian students, but we've also witnessed the best in our community and outpouring of support for these young men. I have never been more optimistic that we can overcome our challenges than I am at this very minute, and I look forward to this debate. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for being here today in person and online. Thank you to CCTV. Thank you to you for moderating and getting us all organized here. I love this city. Burlington is the only home I've ever known. I'm a military kid and our family bounced around a bit, from Georgia to Germany to Georgia and then Alaska where I grew up. Thirty-seven years ago, I found Burlington. I was at Dartmouth, a junior, and I had an opportunity to interview for an internship here with IBM. I stepped off the bus at the corner of Main Street and St. Paul, and with one word, a stranger, a woman said hello, and she changed my life. She saw me with my big backpack full of books, economics, math, and psychology, and she gave me 30 minutes of her time. She walked me around the city, showed me where to catch a cab, pre-uber, where to pass time at Old Gold when it was still on Main Street, where to grab lunch and drop me off at the Fletcher Free Library so I could study. Her kindness, her willingness to share her community with me, it was the first time in my life I realized what home could feel like. Burlington, what we've been doing for the past 10 years isn't working. It's time to be bold, audaciously innovative. It's time to come together again as a community. It's time for something new. I bring my 30 years of technology experience, building teams that deliver solutions that help the people we're looking to serve, that improve quality of life, and we do it on time and on budget. What got us to where we are today won't help us to move forward together to a place of shared safety, affordability, and prosperity. It's time for something new, and that's why I'm running for mayor. Thank you. I will, like my colleagues here, thank the Burlington Democrats for hosting this forum and all of your volunteer efforts to organize two very big events. This one, as well as our record-breaking caucus that we will have next week. Thank you also to CCTV for your support and to you, Katherine Huntley, for moderating. I am proud to sit before you with this panel of qualified women. It's an exciting moment for Burlington. My name is Joan Shannon, and I'm running for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Burlington. Since our last debate, I've learned I have some commonality with my Democratic colleague Madison in that my love affair with Burlington also began as a college junior from an out-of-state college coming to Burlington for a summer job. My sister went to UVM and set me up with a summer sublet. I was supposed to go back to school in Pennsylvania at the end of the summer, but I fell in love with Burlington's beauty, the lake, and the sense of community and enthusiasm I found in Burlingtonians. It set itself apart from any place I have ever lived. I then rearranged my life to permanently move here, figure out how to graduate from college and make a living in Burlington. I have stepped up to run for mayor because I believe Burlington is at a critical point on many fronts, but most of all public safety, and we need courage and leadership to make hard decisions on the path to restore what we all know Burlington can and should be. I've been tested, I have stood against strong political wins, and I know I have what it takes to make those hard decisions in Burlington's best interest. I stand by my record as the only candidate who has consistently and vocally supported investments in public safety, supported community policing, and opposed the very well-intentioned but misguided efforts to defund the Burlington police. While also recognizing the need for evolution and improvement, my approach is evolution not revolution. The change Burlington needs requires a community effort, and I can tell you that my optimism for our future rests in our strong, resilient, skilled, and determined community. So many of you have stepped up to say, how can I help? You have offered professional skills, time, and labor. No one here has all the answers, and through our collective effort, expertise, and hard work, we will overcome our current challenges and celebrate the vibrant state and the vibrant safe and beautiful city we all love. This is what I call the all hands on deck approach. Our plan for public safety must be twofold, accountability and care. As a community, we share a vision and expectation for safe, clean, and vibrant neighborhoods and public spaces where our neighbors have access to the help they need to be healthy and housed. To get there, we will need to work together with state partners to provide the statewide social safety net that people deserve and also work together to clean up graffiti, pick up litter, hold people accountable for illegal actions here in Burlington. We need to restore community policing, which relies on all of us in partnership with our police department, and we need to rebuild not only the department itself, but the trust and the relationship with the community. I am proud to have received the endorsement of the Burlington Police Officers Association. Electing the mayor supported by this union will help us to grow the police department and assure current and prospective officers that city leadership and the public support them performing their jobs according to their training and directives. We need to also work to modify protocols where appropriate and hold officers accountable to those high standards. To truly have public safety for everyone, we need a healthy community. We need functioning, physical health, mental health, and addiction treatment so that those suffering the most in our community can get well and again make positive contributions to our social fabric. Our challenges are of a scale that we can manage and address. Our small city retains all of the assets that we have always made her the city we love. The lake, the mountains, and our shared values. I love the spirit of our city and together we will make the progress that we need. Thank you. Thank you to the candidates. Excuse me. So all the questions have now been randomized for the order moving forward. And all the candidates on the stage have spoke numerous times about how public safety is the number one issue facing Burlington. So I'd like to dig into that a little bit more and ask candidates specifically when you take over as mayor, what items of public safety will you be addressing right off the bat? And Joan Shannon, you're up again first. My public safety plan is centered around deterrence, treatment, housing, and justice. Deterrence includes rebuilding our police department, diversifying our police department, and prioritizing funding and creative recruitment. We also need to consider that before we can rebuild our police department, we still need to fill in the gaps. We need to hire private security. We need to continue to try and build our parks rangers program. But really, I think that the most important thing for public safety is that people get the help that they need. And that means that they get the mental health treatment and substance use treatment that they desperately need. That's not available to people. It's not available voluntarily. And we don't have a system that forces people to get treatment when they don't have the headspace to be able to say that I need it. I think we also need to prioritize housing. My approach is a combined housing first, treatment first approach. For most people, housing will help them get the other services they need. And it needs to be wraparound services along with housing. But for some people, they do need treatment before they can live in that housing. We have seen it at Decker Towers, where there are people victimizing the other residents in the building. And we can't have that. People need to get the services they need. They need treatment. They need mental health. Sometimes they need that in a locked facility. And they need intensive treatment. And we can't offer that in our regular housing or subsidized housing. And we need justice. We need to hold people accountable. Our first choice is that people get the help that they need through street outreach, through social workers, through housing. But when people's behaviors are endangering the rest of the community, they need to be held accountable. And we're not seeing that happening now. But that is the vision that I have, is that people get the help that they need and they are held accountable. Thank you. Next up is Karen Paul, Karen, same question. How do you specifically hope to address the public safety crisis? Thanks very much. So as I said, after I had launched my campaign, five days later I came forward with a public safety plan. And the public safety plan is a consistent, comprehensive, and very details-oriented public safety plan. It has some short, medium, and long-term goals. And it spells it out month by month. I feel that the voters of Burlington deserve to know exactly what we plan to do, what exactly would a mayoral candidate plans to do to address public safety. And I've tried not only to come out with the plan, but hit the ground running and already starting to address and to make some of those items happen, exactly as they're laid out in the plan. That plan was well vetted by many conversations with people in law enforcement as well as harm reduction experts and mental health counselors. So there were a lot of stakeholders involved. Two of the things that I've already done and have been well publicized is that I wanted to find a way for us to have increased security, even if it was private security, but increased security in our downtown, particularly during the holidays. We all know that merchants make a lot of money. Most of a good percentage of their income comes during the holiday season. Went to the administration with a plan to raise $50,000 out of our city budget to help with increased security. And then went to a private foundation asking for $50,000. I thought I might get lucky and get 25, but they gave me all 50. So $100,000 is going towards increased security in the downtown. And as many of you may have read an email from the mayor, that money is already being put to work and will help to have a safer downtown so that people feel comfortable in our downtown, particularly during the holiday season. I also wanted to make sure after the passage of the October 10th drug crisis resolution that it was very clear to all of our first responders that we support them. And at the next meeting, there was a photo taken of all city counselors and the mayor and it will be reused for recruitment efforts for both police fire and all of our first responders. For the police, for our police department, it will say we want great community cops. I think it's very important that people understand that our council and particularly at this time and through the work that I have done, it is clear that we support all of our first responders. Thank you. Following, excuse me, I get up here and I can't speak. Following 2020's reduction of the police. I didn't get it. Oh, I'm sorry, Madison. Not forgetting about you. Go ahead. No, that's fine. Hi, everybody. My name is Madison and I'm running for mayor just in case. Yes, I know the question is around public safety. And many times people when they think of public safety, they think of law enforcement. And of course, that's not all that really creates public safety. But I want to speak to the police for just a moment. My own relationship with the police is very complex. As a person looking the way I do with the skin tone that I have, I've had moments of engagement with the police where I don't feel safe. Like a simple traffic stop going five miles over the speed limit and asked, do you live here? Is this your vehicle? Where are you from? Are you in the military? And with his hand on the butt of his gun being asked, what's your social security number? So no, in that moment, I did not feel safe. I've also had the experience of having a domestic violence situation where I needed a restraining order executed. And we were in the courthouse and thankfully the responding officer showed up just in time. I got that restraining order and I was safe. I say that because we have to understand that in all the work we do as a city, sometimes two things can be true. And most of the times we need to work with a framework of nuance. So in addressing public safety from the start, let me say this, I don't have all the answers. I would be surprised that anyone sitting here says they do because what really needs to happen is we need a mayor who understands that it's going to take an integrated collaborative response to public safety. It's going to be talking to the people who are actually doing the work right now who are on the field and also the people most impacted. And some of those are the folks who make you uncomfortable when you see them at City Hall Park. But if we take care of them, we take care of all of ourselves. So let me go to specifics. First, we get more police officers in uniform. Visibility is a deterrent. Second, we continue to serve the people who are feeling harmed. When we house people, then we can deal with issues of substance abuse and mental health disorder. There's a lot more to speak on this subject, but let me just say this. It's going to take a community effort. It's going to take working with our neighboring towns. And it's absolutely going to take a reprioritization from the state and the governor to deal with all of these issues. Thank you, Madison. Thank you. Following 2020's reduction of the police force, Burlington's available officers dipped well into the 50s, nearly 30 officers below the cap, which is now set at 87. What will you do as mayor to attract and retain officers? And Karen Paul, we're going to start with you. Two and a half minutes. Well, I think a lot of that work is already being done. And it's being done because of work that has been done in the last two years. I think there's a lot of talk about a vote that happened in 2020. And you can talk about a vote. Or you can get busy moving the city forward and coming up with solutions that move us forward. There's one person on this stage that has delivered and gotten those results. And I'd like to talk with you about that. There's one person on this stage who brokered a deal to raise the head count to the number that you referred to of 87. That work was done by me. That work was done by bringing people together and figuring out a way to find a compromise that would raise the head count from 74 to what was arrived at 87. One of the keys to officer recruitment and retention is a strong police union contract. In the summer of 2022, we had an impasse in getting to a successful outcome with the passage of what I'm now being told by the head of the police union was the strongest police union contract in the country. During the summer of 2022 in July, that work, maybe that work could have been done by anyone. But that work wasn't done by anyone. That work was done by me to get us to attend to one vote on the strongest police union contract in the country. Those are the keys to recruitment and retention. Having an increased head count, having a strong police union contract, and showing our officers not in words but in actions that we support their work and we support expanding their ranks. That work was done in the October 10th resolution and was signified by our support not in words but in actions, passing that resolution and also a photo to show the officers that we stand with them. Thank you. Thank you, Karen Paul. Madison, you're up next. What will you do to retain and attract officers to Burlington? One thing we should recognize as a community is in 2020 in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the state of Vermont lost 900 police officers. 900 officers decided to leave the profession. So this isn't just Burlington's problem alone. There was a shift, right, in our nation and in this state and in our community. One thing I believe that we need to do is, and a message from the community, was a loss of support and trust. We actually need to do more culture work as a city and also as a police department. Because when you call 911, you should expect a response. And unfortunately, right now, there are some people who don't feel people will show up or you get told when you call in a priority, can you please go online and fill a form out yourself? The culture work has to be mutual between law enforcement and the community and the community and law enforcement. We need to have that community police partnership. That culture shift will help our law enforcement people who are putting themselves on the line every day. I absolutely respect that they put on that uniform knowing that they could be going into harm's way. The culture shift has to come from the top, from one of we don't have enough to we're problem solvers. I'm going to Chief Murad to lead that culture shift. Justice Fire Chief LeChance has included and created a culture in the fire department that his people come to him with answers instead of saying this is too hard or we're responding to a lot more calls for overdoses right now and we're bringing the ladder truck and that's just too big a response for that problem. So what created there is two members of his team came to him and said we can do this better. Let's create a community response team where we right size our solution and it's personal and we're meeting with people and we have heat maps that tell us when to show up and what times to show up. Do you know how long it took them to stand that community response team up after the moment they mentioned it to Chief LeChance? Three days. That's the kind of culture shift we need in our police department. Well they will have their own self-respect in the work that they do and that way we can build partnership between our community and our police officers and that's what attracts people to Burlington. Thank you Madison, Joan Shannon, final one. Thank you Catherine. I think that what both Burlington wants and what the police department wants is community policing and as I said, community policing is a covenant between the police and the community. It's two-sided. Not only did we reduce the number of police officers in 2020, we also took away tools and engagement and a lot of the elements that create community policing. We even defunded creamy with a cop, which is sad. The endorsement of the Burlington Police Officers Association is meaningful and I think that if the community elects the person that they have said they have trust and confidence in, that helps heal the wounds that have happened over the course of the last three years. Actions speak louder than words and if we want to create that covenant again with our police department, I think it's up to the community to say that they value their work. I agree that dispatch is a problem and dispatch creates a barrier between our community and the police. While it should be a connection, this seems some low-hanging fruit that needs to be resolved quickly. I also think if we want to recruit officers, we need to listen to the officers and we need to understand what their work is like. We're talking about, right now we're talking about another police discipline model coming down the pike. And I have repeatedly said, I think we should get their input before we bring this forward. That hasn't happened yet. I want the input of all of our employees when we're taking actions that directly impact them. I think that that's simply respect. But the officers also tell me that one of their challenges is the hours that they work and getting daycare. It's things like that, that we should be able to provide to all of our city employees. And I think we have some solutions there. We have a labor shortage across the board and some of the things that would benefit the police would also benefit the public works department and the parks department and I think we can take action there. Thank you. Thank you. Burlington residents are experiencing a number of serious issues including car theft, retail theft, and bike theft, all significantly impactful and violent crime is a very serious concern for Burlington residents as well. We've seen numerous drug related shootings and homicides over the past several years including just last weekend, three Palestinian, Palestinian American students shot in Burlington. And in this next question I'm looking for specifics. What measures as mayor will you take to address the violent crime in our community? Madison, we'll start with you two and a half minutes. Violent crime. It is making everyone feel unsafe. I know that. One of the things that we do have to do is we have to make sure as I said before I spoke with South Burlington police chief, Sean Burk and I asked him if you could do two things right now. What would you do to help improve the sense of safety in Burlington? One of the first things he mentioned was more police in uniform on the street because visibility is a deterrent. The next thing I would do is make sure that the Burlington police have the data they need to do their job. There is visibility and data for the fire department. They know where the overdoses are happening, where the hotspots are, for any of the other kind of calls they have. They know day of the time and date when the bulk of the work is happening. Unfortunately, police don't have visibility on all their data because they're not taking all their calls and because sometimes the Chittenden County data is all mashed together. But in responding to violence are a couple of things we need to do. We need to make sure that our police aren't handcuffed and that the laws are changed to enable them to do their jobs. Whether that's dealing with laws that deal with retail theft and allowing people to not necessarily be charged or having their records expunged instead of shielded so that our judges can't do their job and then put out the proper sentence. And then also, something that I've been brought up before is right now there are no stops unless there is imminent danger to the community. This is when we need to be reasonable and innovative and understand that the data we're using how is this actually serving us or not? So when it comes to stops and concerns around bias we can say 100 white people were stopped, 200 black people were stopped. But the question is when did you find evidence? In those 100 stops, if you found evidence 10% of the time but when you stop black people you only found evidence 2% of the time then there's an issue of bias. We can actually give our police officers back the tools they need to do their job if we're more accurate in the way we're looking at data because of course we want everything we do to be transparent, accountable and just. So my last part of this answer is empower the police to do their job. Thank you Madison, Joan, Shannon, you're next. What specific measures will you take as mayor to address violent crime in the city? I think a lot of the violent crime that we see in the city is directly related to mental health. And I have my own experience within my family with mental health issues and my uncle took a knife to my grandmother's throat and my uncle was a good person. He was actually in the seminary to become a priest when he did this. He didn't do it because he was a bad person. He did it because he was an ill person. And at that time it was before the defunding of mental health institutions and he did go to a mental health institution and thankfully my grandmother was okay after that. And he got well. He struggled with mental health his entire life and he would come out of the mental health facility. He lived on his own independently. He made a living. He contributed to society and periodically he would need to go back in and get the help that he needed. My uncle today would be on the streets of Burlington living in a tent, maybe using drugs to self-medicate and maybe causing harm to others as he attempted with my grandmother. But we got through that because he got the care he needed. This is something that is not within the direct control of Burlington and we need to acknowledge that. But this is a problem that every community in our state faces and it's my intention to work with those communities, to work with other cities, mayors of other cities experience the same thing. And we need to go to the legislature. We need to get funding for beds that we can provide the mental health care in a way that is affordable, that it has an economy of scale. And there are times when people, my uncle did not willingly be institutionalized but he got the help that he needed there. And we really need to change that. And I'm sorry I've run out of time to go into more detail about the many other things in our community. But I think that that is the number one most important thing we can do to keep all of us safe. Thank you. Thank you, Joan, Shannon, Karen, Paul. What specific measures will you take as mayor to address violent crime? I think what we saw two weeks ago was incredibly and profoundly shocking to all of us. What we're seeing in our community in terms of gun-related crime is awful. And I think the one thing that we should all keep in mind is that we do have a police detective unit that has solved many of these crimes. And I think that's something that we should at least hold that is something that we have that is working and is working very well. But the reality is that we shouldn't be having any gun-related crime. Gun-related crime is to some degree brought about by drug, by the drug trafficking that we see in our community. We have a drug crimes unit at the Burlington Police Department, an excellent one. And they will tell you that it is very difficult, particularly in the age of synthetic drugs, to be able to keep pace at all with the level of drug activity in our community. And yes, there are many incidents where gun-related crime is due to mental illness. I think that what I have tried to do over the course of time that I've been in the city council is to support, strongly support, revise gun legislation. And that is gonna take the state of Vermont to move that forward. We've tried in Burlington, we've tried a number of times. We've gotten all the way to Montpelier and then been told no. I would love to say that what has happened in two weeks ago, obviously, of course, we all wish that that didn't happen. Will this be enough? Will this be enough for Burlington, for Vermont to think about the way that we address gun ownership? I hope that it will. And I hope that we can move that forward. I can assure you that, as mayor, I would advocate for that. Thank you. And Madison is using her first challenge. I just wanted to go back and address violent crime and the rising crime in our city. After the vote to cut the police, unfortunately there was a culture shift that I mentioned earlier that resulted in a dispatcher saying, sorry, we can't help you, we've been defunded. As I've had conversations in the community, I've had many people say to me, yeah, that was a welcome sign. Come into Burlington, no one is going to help you. If you wanna create crime, go ahead. On the reverse side, what we need to do is change that messaging. It needs to be that Vermont is not open for business. It's a supply and demand issue. The Burlington Police Department, we cannot manage this on our own. We actually need the governor to step up, recognize this is a statewide crisis. And with the Vermont State Police, let's have a concerted effort to say all the routes into Vermont are closed if you're causing, if you're coming here to do harm, if you're coming here to bring poison to our people. We will shut it down, but we're gonna need a collective effort from every community, every police department of Vermont State Police and a governor who steps up and recognizes that this is a statewide crisis. Thank you. We've heard from people in the community who say they don't feel safe coming downtown. We've heard from people outside the community who are worried to come downtown to Burlington because they're worried their safety will be at risk. So I'm gonna ask all the candidates, do you feel safe coming to downtown Burlington, especially at night, and why? This first question will go to Joan Shannon. Two and a half minutes. Thank you. Obviously, for two of us, we come down here, I think really all three of us, I don't mean to exclude, but we come down here for meetings all the time, many times a week, and I often park my car next to City Hall Park. And I do understand why people feel unsafe and real things have happened to make people feel unsafe, but I still walk comfortably through our downtown. When we had the lighting of the tree, our family's tradition is to come down for the lighting of the tree the Friday after Thanksgiving, and we organized event called All Hands On Deck the Halls, and a whole lot of us came downtown together. And that's really important. We have traveled to other communities, we've gone to Boulder, and by we, I mean City Councilors, Councilor Powell included, we've gone to Boulder and Denver and Ithaca and Portland, Maine, and the theme across the board is to fill your space with good, and the joy that we have, and the pride that we have in this community. And our community gets safer every time people come together and bring their families downtown, because this is still a beautiful place. And that is what I mean by All Hands On Deck. We have to come together, we have to not be afraid, and we do have to come downtown and celebrate our businesses. That's how we're going to sustain what we have, and there's a lot to celebrate. So I continue to come here, I even go to the bars at night, as does my daughter, and I encourage you to as well, and if you want company, I'm happy to come with you. I've also, I live next to the Sears Lane encampment. I went into the Sears Lane encampment as well. I think we cannot be afraid, we need to walk with our heads high, we need to be proud of our community that we all love, and remember that, thank you. Karen, Paul, you're next up. Do you feel safe going to downtown Burlington, especially at night? I do, as Joan has said, and certainly I'm sure is the case with Madison. I mean, I spend a lot of time downtown and I leave council meetings. I'd like to say I leave them before we have to suspend our rules at 10.30. Sometimes we don't get that close and I'm walking by myself at 11, 12 o'clock at night. And I don't feel unsafe, but what I've said to many people who have asked me that same question is that it really isn't about whether I feel safe. The real question is whether all of you feel safe. And what I hear from a lot of people is that they don't. That was one of the reasons why I worked hard to create, to find what is now $100,000 that will take us through the holiday season with increased security. Because I want people to know, I want people to know that that funding is there, and that we are actively working to make sure that other people feel safe. I was downtown a couple of days after Thanksgiving. My daughter who was back from school, the two of us were downtown. We went and we shopped in stores. There was a line to get out at the checkout of every store that we went into. There were a couple of stores where you could barely move. There were so many people. And it was an exciting time. And I've done that in the evenings as well. And there are lots of people that are downtown. So I think that what is incumbent upon, particularly elective leaders, but also among all of us is to spread that word that people's perception is their reality. And we need to change the perception that Burlington is an unsafe place by giving people the ability to feel safe by having increased security and by making it a welcoming environment. There is a lot of pride in Burlington. There's a lot of pride on the Church Street marketplace. I remember when you drove up Church Street and we all thought that it was a pretty radical move to go and have a marketplace. Now we all love it here. And I think that's the spirit that we need to show, not only to our fellow community members, but also to the entire region because Burlington is the engine that drives Chittenden County to a large degree. And I think it's important that we have a vibrant downtown where we all feel safe. Thank you, Karen Paul. Madison, same question to you. Do you feel safe coming to downtown Burlington? I absolutely feel safe coming downtown. I've been living a lot of my life downtown for over two decades because I've done a lot of remote work here. And as a remote worker, I actually chose to have an office downtown. And when I did that, I got to know people up and down Church Street. I spent time just talking to people, so much so that I've never held public office. But when it was the height of the pandemic and we were having conversations around cutting the police, I actually had business owners calling me, someone who didn't hold public office and saying, hey, can you help? I need to talk to Maro and he's not calling back. Hey, can you speak to the city council? I asked them about having my people be safe when they walk home at night. And I was told, I don't care. So here I am, someone who hasn't held public office. And I've had community members up and down this strip and at Hotel Vermont and at Penny Clues inviting me to their anniversary parties because I've actually been in community with these folks. Do I feel safe? I absolutely do. And when I spoke to South Burlington police chief, Sean Burke, his second idea for us to immediately shift the narrative on being safe downtown is absolutely that, be here, have the programming, show up, take up space because chaos loves a vacuum. And we're allowing Burlington, our city of 45,000 people, we're allowing a handful of people to dictate how we feel and if we feel safe downtown. The onus is on us to show up. This is not something that just a public official could shift for you. We have to step into this. And I promise you this, I'm already downtown. You elect me and I'll still be here. Joan is using her first challenge. Thank you. I just wanna say that I think I just did a quick head count and I think we have over 100 people in this room and everybody should go shopping when they leave here. We have a holiday market. One of the things that really makes Burlington different is city arts. City arts provides the programming that we have on College Street where other streets like this have failed in this country. Ours is a huge success and it's largely because of the contribution of the arts and city arts. And both the holiday market and Church Street are waiting for you. And I can assure you that when the businesses call us to tell us they're worried and the workers are worried, there isn't anybody at this table who says I don't care. We do care. We're all here because we care. And I think you're all here because you care too. So I hope we can all be together. It doesn't really matter who we're supporting. Let's all just be together and support our downtown. Thank you. On that note, Burlington's business community has repeatedly called for the city to do more. They're worried about their employees. They're worried about loss of business for a variety of reasons. As mayor, what will you do to keep businesses thriving? We'll start with Madison, you have two and a half minutes. Thank you. One thing that businesses need to be thriving is their workforce. We have a housing issue. We have an issue around a 1% vacancy and affordability. One way to support our businesses is to make sure that their folks have a place to live and they can afford to live. Additionally, if we're talking about our downtown businesses, we need to be their biggest cheerleaders. We need to respond to any issues that they have. And so one of those things that is vitally important to me is innovation. Burlington is an economic engine. We have billion dollar companies that come out of here. So if we're talking about how do we support these businesses, this is when we go to them and ask them. And I do wonder, has the mayor actually sat down with these businesses and said, what do you need? How can I help you? How can I serve you? That is a tact what I would take. I'm not here to say I have all the answers because I don't know the intricacies of their worries and their concerns right now. But I guarantee you that it would be an open door for all of the businesses and that we would continue to have continuous conversations where we are collaborating together and they have a direct line. Joan Shannon, same question. What will you do as mayor to keep businesses here and keep them thriving? Thank you. I think that there's a few different things going on with businesses. Our downtown retail businesses that are open to the public have a certain set of challenges that are probably the most severe. And for that, I agree that we need to be the cheerleaders. We need to be present. We need to come down in numbers and we need for the good to crowd out the bad. But we also have a lot of other businesses including Hula in the south end and tech industry here and their entire philosophy is being an incubator space to grow businesses here in Burlington and to create an ecosystem here in Burlington much of which hinges on housing. Our, we now have too much office space actually and we continue to really struggle with housing. So I was supportive of the south end innovation district which in concept will provide worker housing and that supports all of our various businesses. The people in our community now and people who would like to come to our community and work in our community. We have a worker shortage here in the city that goes across the board. It is not just the police. We have a shortage in public works in the parks department and in the city attorney's office. People at all levels are struggling to find housing and as a realtor I can tell you I have seen some terrible bidding wars where even the doctors can't win housing when they're trying to move here to provide healthcare for our community and they can't find a house to buy. So that's essential. Thank you. Thank you, Karen Paul. Next up. Ms. Mayor, what will you do to keep businesses here and keep them thriving? Thank you. So in the last couple of months I've been meeting with a number of businesses. I've tried to meet with them several times and a couple of them have actually given me, have shown me some of their financials so that I can have a bit of an understanding into the challenges that they are facing and of course the easiest way to understand those kinds of financials is to compare it year over year or month over month to be able to understand seasonally adjusted how they are being challenged. There are some businesses downtown that are actually doing quite well. Not all of them are struggling. Some of them are. The ones that appear to be struggling the most are the ones that are most impacted by retail theft. And I found out just recently that retail theft is not a crime that is being committed as randomly as we might think. Is being committed by a very small group, the majority of it, by a very small group of people that almost, you could almost call it organized retail theft. We need to address that. And I'm not sure exactly how to best address it, but I think that it needs to come into the public discourse and we need to all understand what is really causing that. It is not people walking in randomly and taking items. Yes, that happens, but the majority of it is not that. The other thing that we need to do is, and it was brought out by the public safety letter and is part of my public safety plan was dealing with the trespass ordinance. We need to make it easier for merchants and private property owners to use the trespass ordinance. That was mentioned in December of the plan and we will be bringing forward a revision to the ordinance regarding trespass in the month of December at the December 18th council meeting. As well, I do think that it's important for people who work downtown to be able to live downtown. And I'm excited about the fact that there will be workforce housing at the city place development so that people can have the ability to live and work close or work and live close, work and live close to where they live. Thanks very much. Thank you, Karen. Dozens, if not hundreds of people are sleeping outside each night in Burlington. Besides looking for state help, how do you plan to address the people who don't have a roof over their heads? And Karen Paul, we're going to go to you first. Thanks very much. So homelessness is a really challenging issue and I think the reason why it's so challenging is because we're talking about people, we're talking about the human condition and there's a uniqueness involved that makes it hard. It's not like numbers on a spreadsheet. They're actual individual people with different lived histories, lived experiences, and I think, and there are different challenges within each one of these people. It was a couple of days ago that I got a call. It was when I was in the midst of going from one thing to another and I got a call from the manager of Price Chopper. I had gotten to know her really well when we did the South End food pickups and I would see her once a month and we'd get lots of food to bring to the Champlain Elementary parking lot. And she said that she had an employee who had been incarcerated but was an amazing and was an amazing employee. But he was living in a tent and he was living about three miles away from Price Chopper and every day he was walking back and forth. And it got to the point where he was walking and oftentimes walking so quickly that by the time he got to work he was sweating and he didn't have anywhere to take a shower. And so he was getting himself through the day as an employee doing what had to be done but he was living under challenging circumstances. This is a person who needed temporary shelter. This is a person who needs permanent shelter. This is a person who can be living independently but he was living in a tent. Fortunately there were a couple of people through a couple of phone calls that I made. We were able to connect him with housing and he is now living in shelter. Those are the situation, this is a situation, a real situation that comes as a result of homelessness. We can solve it one person at a time. It's going to take all of us. Each one of us can do this. Each one of us can help another. And that is how we're going to address the homelessness issue. I know that it is uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable with it as well. I'm uncomfortable driving down Battery Street and seeing the number of people that are living in tents. As a city and as a state, we need to make this a priority. It can't be about managing homelessness. It has to be about ending homelessness. Thank you. Madison, how do you hope to address the people who are spending so many nights without a roof over their heads? It's absolutely true that we won't get to 100% non-visible public drug use until we get to 100% home. We have people, we end homelessness. That's the way we need to do that. I agree that every story is an individual story. And we have to find connection with people. We actually have to talk to those folks who are hurting and ask them, how can we help you? What is the best way to beat your needs? Additionally, what we can do as a city is understand that we alone don't need to have the answers and to look outside the communities who are actually doing the work and finding it to be effective. One thing I believe we could do as a city is create a unified office of public safety and community health, where we have someone at the top who has that 30,000 foot view of how our police, our fire departments, our social services people and our community partners can work in concert to help people, that we go out and we meet people where they are. I invite all of you to go read the Houston article. Oh no, they reduced homelessness by 60%. They did that by being out in the field, by having their devices with them, by having connectivity between all of the services that are there to support people. For example, they had a young man who was homeless he needed a place to be, but he didn't have an ID. And on that tablet, they were able to in one place put in his information and continue on to help him to be home. Now I understand that's not something that's going to happen quickly, but if we're not mindful and intentional about how we actually build solutions that will serve people, we will continue to be in this place. This has to be a reprioritization, not just for our city, but county wide. Are there housing opportunities where we could actually send someone to be housed outside of our city? And it also needs to be a state priority because poverty is a policy choice and homelessness is a policy choice. Thank you. Joan Shannon, same question for you. Thank you, Catherine. I went into the Sears Lane encampment several times and I talked to people there. And it was very sad. It got to a point where I did not feel safe walking there anymore. But there was a point where I went in there with some frequency, talked to people and I was surprised one day I was talking to five or six men standing in a circle and finding out what they need. And of them, four out of five or five out of six did not have an ID. This was the baseline of their problem. And I asked them, why do you not have IDs? And I got answers that were confusing, but I think that the answer oftentimes was they came out of incarceration without a home. And they lost their IDs either going into incarceration or coming out of incarceration. But by not having an ID, they then couldn't get a job. They couldn't get housing. This was a baseline problem for many people. Most of the people in Sears Lane that I talked to did not come from Burlington. They came from other parts of Vermont. They weren't coming from South America but they were coming from other parts of Vermont. I don't think that we can solve homelessness from inside the boundaries of Burlington. I think it's unrealistic to set that as a goal because if the rest of Vermont is not taking care of their people who become unsheltered, how can we possibly do that here? So I ask every town in Chittenden County and beyond that, where are your shelters? Why are you not taking care of your own? This is what we all need to do to take care of our most vulnerable people. So yes, we can try to meet the fire hose of pressure coming at us right now. But unless, and I know we're supposed to take off the table the idea of asking the city of Vermont for help but it can't all be done here. We need to do what we can here. We need to provide shelters. We need to get people all the various services that they need. But we also need to share this throughout Chittenden County and throughout Vermont. Thank you. Karen Paul first would like to use her challenge and then Madison. Okay. I used one too. Oh, okay, sorry. Thanks. I think I understand that we obviously, we can't say the state is responsible for everything. The state isn't responsible for everything but the state does bear a responsibility here. What we are doing, the state of Vermont has spent over $500 million to address homelessness in the past six years. So what have we gotten for $500 million to address homelessness? We need a coordinated and a unified plan. We need to have greater refinement and focus. And over the Thanksgiving holiday, a lot of us got the New York Times article, read the New York Times article about Houston. And there were three things that they did there were three elements that helped them address homelessness. The first is that they had strong political leaders who herded nonprofits to do the work in unison rather than competing against one another. And we need to do that more in Burlington and more in Chittenden County. And as well, they had relaxed regulation. And they also focused less on general help such as handing out jackets and things like that. And they focused more on moving people into apartments in other words and other housing arrangements. So again, housing first is what really helped them. I would hope that as mayor, I would convene a summit with statewide leaders as well to work to make that happen. Thank you. Now Madison, we can go. Yeah, as mayor I would move towards a zero encampment policy. But what that means is you have to house people. And so one of the concepts here is we need to stop thinking just as Burlington, but a county wide response. And that needs to be county wide across the state because Brattleboro shouldn't be dealing with this alone. Rutland shouldn't be bearing it alone. And neither should we as Burlington. When we have more of a county wide based response and an integration of all of our needs, we can also take advantage of the fact that South Burlington is building, that Winniski is building, that other communities are building. So when we're talking about actually getting people house, we then have to be conscientious about what that means and how we take care of each other. It also means we need to have writer centered transportation so that people can move between our communities. So when we're talking about these issues, whether it's public safety or public health, we have to understand how this is a multivariable response that we're going to have to attend to. So you're gonna need someone who can have that 30,000 foot view and understand all of the moving bits and pieces and parts that you have to attend to to solution and not allow yourselves to drop the ball on some things. That's gonna take a true leader who's done this kind of work in the past, who has built collaboration, has built teams and has actually moved things to successful completion. That's something I've been doing for the past 30 years. I know how to do that. Thank you, Madison and Joan Shannon will be using a challenge as well. This is a popular question. I had a feeling. Thank you. Thank you to the dozen people or more who sent me the Houston article on Thanksgiving. Sounds like I was not alone. I think there's an important takeaway from that that goes unmentioned. There was, it was a good layout of the program that they're doing in Houston and some takeaways as to things that we can do and it's very important for us to look at what other communities are doing and not think we have to reinvent the wheel. But in that Houston case, there was a case study and this man had a mental help. He had a mental illness and at the end of the story, he doesn't get housed, at least not in the housing that we're trying to provide him. He becomes incarcerated because he was violent and both all of those things actually have to happen and this is sometimes unpopular. But he should have gotten the mental health care he needed in the first place and then he wouldn't have been unhoused in Houston. He also had an injury at work. He needed to get help to stay housed where he was and he did not. That's a problem here as well. And then when he became violent, he was held accountable in Houston. He did not go into housing where he victimized other people. He was held in supervised housing in incarceration and that is not our first choice because really probably what he needed was those other treatments and that's where our focus should be is getting people the help that they need. Thanks. Thank you and so many people are stuck in the vicious cycle of substance use disorder in our city, especially as harmful drugs like fentanyl and xylazine are finding their way into the hands of Queen City residents. Are you in support of safe injection or safe use sites and what else is in your plan to address the drug problem? Joan Shannon will start with you. Thank you. I've supported safe injection sites and I appreciate that they're controversial. There is evidence that they're helpful and they're helpful in both keeping people alive until they can get treatment and they're helping people get to treatment. They're not without their shortcomings for one thing, nobody should be driving to a safe injection site. In a city, we believe that we have a radius that would allow people to walk to a safe injection site and it may make sense. There also could be mobile safe injection sites that could work as well but I think that we need to reevaluate the information that we had when we made that decision because we didn't really make that decision when we were looking at what we're looking today. So with fentanyl and xylosine that is so prevalent in our streets today, people are injecting every two to three hours and with frequency like that, our safe injection sites really going to work. I don't know the answer to that but I think it's worth asking the question. On the other hand, the governor has drawn a hard line on safe injection sites and says he does not want to do that. We can beat the governor over the head with the fact that he doesn't want safe injection sites. I don't think we should look at them as a silver bullet. They're not, they're one tool in the tool chest and I'm willing to work with the governor on the things that he is willing to do because there's a lot of other things we could do. I think that people in some cases should be required to get treatment. We have heard at the city council that many people have come to us telling us their stories of how they got well and it also, it often involves involuntary treatment. That is a merciful option for many people in the cycle of drug use. Today when we look at how people are dying and so many people are dying, we know that very little, when they do the toxicology reports, very little of it is heroin. It's fentanyl, xylxine, meth, crack, cocaine. These drugs are different and they're dirty drugs. People get addicted to things, not even knowing it was in the supply that they're using. So drug testing is also important. So yes, I support safe injection sites. I think they should be reevaluated and I think we should not depend on them but use all the tools that we have in the tool chest to help people get well. Thank you and Karen Paul, do you support safe use sites and what else is in your plan to address the drug crisis? Thanks. So yes, I've been on the record three times having written two resolutions on what are commonly referred to as safe injection or overdose prevention centers and as well as drafting the third resolution. So I do support them. I support them because they have been around for decades and there are over 100 of them around the world that are safely functioning and there are now two in New York City and there has never been a death at an overdose prevention center. And I think that's incredibly meaningful. I think that's a really meaningful statistic. Why is that? Why is that? Because they are supervised and so when people are at risk there is someone there to help them. There's also a great deal of research on these centers and a great deal of research that shows that your chance of being able to go into recovery is much greater when you are at an overdose prevention center. The vast majority of people that die from overdoses are doing it, are dying alone and when none of us want that. Now of course, you can't be in a center every single time and certainly it is correct that it was probably more effective and a better alternative when we weren't dealing with the synthetic drugs that we are today. But that doesn't mean that they aren't effective and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be one thing that we still continue to advocate for. The other thing that we should be continuing should really be advocating for is expanding the hours in methadone clinics. We know that methadone works with fentanyl. Right now there's one in Chittenden County that people can access. It's four hours a day in South Burlington. Many people that are struggling can't get there and four hours just isn't long enough. I met someone actually yesterday who is beginning to work in that methadone clinic and they are working to expand the number of hours as well as the fact that they are very seriously considering a mobile unit which would be enormously helpful to people in Burlington. And it is true that many of the people who are struggling, many of the people who are now in long, long-term recovery will say that getting separated from the source saved their life. We need to look into that further and we need to come up with solutions for that. Thank you. Thank you. Madison, same question to you. Yes, I do believe in overdose prevention centers and the other terms that are used to label it. I think we need to turn to the experts here too. Tom Dalton, Vermont Center for Justice. I'm gonna get it, I'm getting the, thank you. Vermont is for Criminal Justice Reform, thank you. Definitely believes in these centers and also the opportunity to bring drugs in for them to use that are less lethal. And actually imagine if you do that, I know it's controversial to say we'll supply the drugs but these aren't your street drugs. This is something that would reduce demand for the supply of this drug. This is something that could also reduce criminality. People not having to think they have to commit retail theft or a bike theft so that they can afford to buy that next hit. As has been mentioned, fentanyl is 400 times more addictive than heroin. You have to administer it every couple of hours because of the way this just tortures the person. I also agree that as we see the community resource team has really helped with folks in having response to overdoses. We should have mobile methadone clinics. How can we expect someone who's unhoused to get themselves on a bus and travel a few miles to the only methadone clinic that's available? We have to put pressure on the state to say you have to give us enough drugs so that we can show up for people who are really asking to be helped and we can help them. Additionally, the other thing that I think we should bring back in place and the advantage of these overdose prevention centers is it's an opportunity for intervention. It's an opportunity for connection and when you make connection and people feel seen and valued it's that opportunity for them to say yes, I would like the help. The other thing we should think about is bringing back the rapid intervention criminal court which when people did come in and they had committed a criminal act, they had two potential pathways. One was to stay on the punitive track and the other was you can go into recovery. In order to make that really possible though, we're gonna have to deal with the state, we're gonna deal with the federal government because right now under Medicaid you're only given 14 days in recovery. That is not enough time to heal and that's not including a transition plan out of that recovery that would help people to be successful in that recovery that they're so desperately seeking. Thank you and as we all know, there's a plethora of questions that we could be talking about with public safety but right now we're going to move on to some questions about leadership. So Madison, we're going to start with you. What do you think the current mayor could have done better that you plan to do differently? You have two and a half minutes. Go out and meet people. Go out and talk to people. Don't just show up at the Burlington Cafe in Delhi. Actually, that's right. Actually be out in community. That's one reason I'm up here. Like I said, I just talk to people on the street. I talk to everyone. I stay connected with people. I do this work that I do because I really do love people. The other thing I think that the mayor could have done differently is actually invite people into the process. We have our neighborhood planning assemblies. Let's use those better. Let's make sure that it's not always the same people in the room. Let's make sure those NPAs are going to where the people are and actually inviting them in. So one way to get buy-in from the community on the work that needs to be done is you talk to them. So at those NPAs let's do something that's called a citizen assembly. It's being used all over the world actually to create policy because you're educating people. You're bringing in people who are knowledgeable. You're having facilitators so you can actually have civil discourse. Imagine that compared to our city council right now. So you're inviting people in to have conversation. And the way I would run that is the mayor's gonna show up. City council members are gonna show up. Department heads are gonna show up. Community partners are gonna show up and be there and have conversation with people too. And actually do presentations out. That presentation that happened at the October 10th city council meeting was powerful. That needs to be more frequent. We need to hear from our police department. We need to hear from our firefighters. We actually need to hear from every department about what strategically are you working on and what are the success metrics. Let me see what you're doing. So if I were mayor I would show up. I would be visible. I would be in community with people and I would make sure that people felt seen, heard and valued. Please no reactions to the candidates responses. Thank you. Just the one time. Just kidding. So next we'll be going to Joan Shannon. What do you think the current mayor could have done differently or done better that you plan to do differently? One thing that I have done as a city councilor is I often reach out to the community for input. And sometimes it's because I'm undecided. There are times when I'm decided and I let people know where I stand. With leadership I think it's important that people know where you stand before you raise your hand to vote. And I have consistently done that. I've been transparent with people. But also getting, I agree that getting input in the process is something that's always been very important to Burlingtonians and it's often been difficult to do. There are a lot of different channels now and we need to use a variety of channels to get that input. And I know that every mayor of Burlington has made an effort to do that and every mayor of Burlington has been criticized for not doing it enough. But I think that I have been on the city council in part because my constituents have felt heard. My constituents have felt that I've checked in with them on the important decisions. My constituents don't speak with one voice. And at the end of the day you have to make a decision and then you come back and you explain why you landed here. There have been specific things that I have had vehement disagreements with the mayor on and it's been no secret. I don't think that Burlington can solve our problems alone. I don't think that our next mayor needs to be superwoman. I think that we need partners. I think that rather than looking at ending homelessness within the boundaries of Burlington, we take a more collaborative effort. We look at a more collaborative approach with our neighboring communities, with our state partners, with the mayors of cities across the state to approach that problem. I disagreed with the mayor on certainly on the bed and breakfast regulation. I wanted to preserve our existing housing units. And I did not want to allow them to convert into lodging units. There've been many disagreements over the years, but there's also a lot of agreement as there is with everyone in the community. We oftentimes have more agreement than disagreement, but we focus on our disagreements. I think I have a different style. Thank you. Thank you, Joan. And Karen Paul, same question. What do you believe the current mayor could have done better that you hope to do differently? Well, I think the first is that, and I'm sure there are many of you that are here from the new north end. So I hope this won't be upsetting to you. I think that there are good bagels all over the city of Burlington. So while I do appreciate, and I have gone to many of the coffees on Wednesday, I think that, and one of the first things that I affect, somebody even asked me, so if you become mayor, are you gonna come on every Wednesday to the new north end to the bagel? And I think my answer was yes, but there are other bagels elsewhere, and we will, and what I would hope to do is to be able to do that every morning in a different district. There's four districts, there's five days of the week, and we can do that and expand that. I know that there's a number of people who have come to me and said, and it's not that you have to live in the new north end, but the reality is most of the people that are there are from that neighborhood, and there's a lot of people who've said, why isn't the mayor ever in my neighborhood? And I think that that is certainly something that I would change. Yesterday I was at a coffee from eight to nine o'clock at Vivid Coffee downtown, and it was probably one of the most fun hours I've had in the last couple of weeks, just sitting and talking with people is incredibly fun, but it's also a real opportunity to learn, and so that was something that I certainly would expand and bring citywide. I do think that, you know, one of the things that I have done in the 15 years I've been as a city counselor is I've given an update, a preview of every council meeting since 2009. I haven't missed one, and I think that people find that incredibly valuable to know what's going on before it goes on, as well as a newsletter that I send out in Ward 6. I showed up to do it the first time, and the only color paper that they had was blue, so I use blue, and it's become known as the blue newsletter. I would send that out to people in the city, not just by email, but also by regular mail, so that people really know what's going on. I think that's the one thing that I hear most is that people feel that decisions are made, and there isn't enough of an authentic, truly authentic engagement process, and as Mayor, I would certainly work to change that. And Madison is using her third and final challenge. The other thing I wanna talk about is, I don't know if y'all noticed, but we've got a shift in demographic in this city. So if we're gonna talk about communication as a mayor, we need to make sure that we're reaching out to every member of our community, not just the folks who show up at city council all the time, not just the folks who show up at the NPAs. I've mentioned this before, that in order to be helpful to people, you gotta meet them where they are. We need to make sure that we're speaking to every member of this community, and the way that best serves them. We need to lean into organizations like Vermont Professionals of Color, Vermont Health Equity Initiative, AALV, and any other community partner that we can to make sure that we're including every member of this community in the conversation. Because if we don't do that, we don't know what their issues are. We don't know what their concerns are. And you've got to acknowledge Burlington, that Burlington High School is starting to look more like me. And we gotta make sure that we're taking care of those kids and their families, and that their concerns and issues are being addressed as well. Thank you. All right. Please, please no reactions. Hey, next question. Will you support the person who wins the caucus in the mayoral race? Please start the question with a yes or a no answer. Joan Shannon, we'll start with you. Yes. I will support whoever wins the caucus. I think we have three qualified candidates here. I have been a Democrat for all of my 20 years on the city council, and I think it's important that we have a Democrat as our next mayor. So I would be happy to support either candidate. Thank you. Karen Paul, same question. Will you support the person who wins the caucus? Please start with a yes or no. Yes, that is absolutely my intention. Yes. Madison? I'm not sure. I'm gonna be honest with you and I'll tell you why. We have ranked choice voting that's gonna be happening. And, you know, the winner's gotta get that majority. And I want it to be a solid majority. In the last election, I supported Miro. I was the treasurer of his campaign because we all know the state that we were in and I wanted to make sure a Democrat was gonna be our next mayor. Mayor Weinberger won by a mere 129 votes. So I wanna make sure that the next mayor of Burlington is a Democrat that I will commit to. Thank you. So next I will be asking one specific question to each candidate. The other candidates will not respond to it. It'll be specifically directed at one question. So we'll start with Karen. So Karen Paul, back in 2020, you sided with the majority of progressives to reduce the police force by 30%. Since then, most in your party have criticized this decision for being a catalyst for some of the public safety issues in the city. Was that the wrong decision? You have two and a half minutes. Well, I think it goes back to what I've said earlier and that is that you can talk about a vote and you can claim that you were right or you can get busy moving the city forward and that is what I have tried to do and that is what I've been fairly successful at doing over the past two years, particularly as council president. There are three things that our police force needs in order to be successful. One is they need our support, not only the support of the community but also the support of elected officials. They need to have a head count that is reflective of the needs of our community and they need to have, while money isn't everything, they do need to have a strong police union contract. Those are the things that I have devoted my time to to being part of the solution. And let's talk about what the results have been. So, as I have mentioned before, in the fall of 2021 with face with an impasse, we needed to raise the head count of police officers. There is one reason why that head count was raised and that was by a couple of city counselors feeling comfortable enough to come to me to say that they wanted to increase the head count but not by as much as the administration wanted. Somebody had to go and make that compromise. Somebody had to go who was trusted by all to make that compromise and move us forward. And that work was done on that night when we raised the head count from 74 to 87. That's the reason we have a head count of 87. In the summer of 2022, the mayor was on a well-deserved vacation in Italy and so I, although it's only just a title, became, as council presidents do, acting mayor. That was at the time when we were trying to pass the strongest police union contract, what I'm now told was in the country. It is not easy to get people who have consistently voted not once or twice or three times, but even more than that, against the police to support a strong police union contract. We passed that contract on a 10 to one vote. That means that a number of those people said yes and they said yes to me that they would vote yes. We have tried very hard to work together to build a collaborative body and to move the city forward together. That's what we need right now. We need a bridge builder. Thank you. Thank you. Madison, the other two candidates have a, oh, I'm excusing. Go ahead, Jones. Jones, last, last challenge. Last one, yep. I voted no on diminishing our police officers from 105 to 74. Excuse me. Thank you. Remember? Right? I offered a reasonable alternative in partnership with others that was rejected. Voting two different ways on the same issue in the same meeting is not leadership. Counselors do not negotiate police union contracts and counselors came, but we are part of the process. We work with our negotiators. We tell them what they want in that negotiation and the counselors did that in negotiating the police union contract and every other contract. Counselors deserve credit for their votes. Thank you. And Karen Paul, your second challenge. It is true that we do not negotiate a contract but the only way that a contract gets approved is by our vote. That is the only way that a contract gets approved. When you're faced with a six to six vote, someone needs to move that needle. Someone needs to get that seventh vote. In the summer of 2022, that vote was 10 to one. The day after that vote, I received a very nice text message from the chief of police thanking me for the amount of work that had been done in order to get that 10 to one vote and telling me that that was going to be the key to recruitment and retention of our police force. So yes, that work did need to be done and one person, one leader, brought that forward and got that vote. Thank you. Now Madison, the other two candidates have long voting records and experience in city government signaling to voters where they stand on issues. Why should caucus voters put their trust in you? I have been a member of this community for a very, very long time and I'll address the issue that was just brought up here around cutting the police. I was working behind the scenes with Mayor Weinberger to avert that cut. I did not believe in the cut because I didn't believe that when we pass policy, we should neglect unintended consequences. Whenever we pass policy, whenever we consider policy, we should consider how will this be helpful and how could this be harmful? If we're gonna talk about where we are today, the cut to the police, there should have been an anticipation of how law enforcement would respond to that cut. Unfortunately, we had a culture in our law enforcement that resulted in, sorry, we can't help you, we've been defunded. We've got to correct that culture. Unfortunately, Mayor Weinberger and Chief Murad contributed to that. There was an opportunity there to lean in and say, the community's not supporting us, we've got to go earn that. We're gonna communicate with them and we're gonna make this work. And then on the other side, when you have a vote around Sears Lane and disabling and dismantling it, I know there was outreach to say, let's try to get you housed and some people didn't take them up on that offer, but you also have to consider what is the aftermath of that that could happen? What harm could happen? We had people who had their community dismantled. You may not have liked it as their community, but that's where they were seen and supported, healthy or not. So there should have been an expectation and understanding that those people are going to find and move somewhere. And we have City Hall Park and that's where they went. So if you're looking for a leader, I'm telling you, I have served this community. I was six years on the board of outright Vermont. When we were an organization where we had board members writing checks to cover payroll. When I left that organization in six years through my efforts and the other board members, here's how our leadership impacted that. We have a million dollars in the bank. Outright Vermont owns their building. We have staff who are paid market rate wages. They have 401K and they have benefits. That organization has a strong foundation and it will continue to be strong. That's the kind of leadership I'm gonna bring to the City of Burlington. That's when we brought people together. We got them moving in concert and we shifted the culture and the whole being of outright Vermont to the strong organization that it is today. Thank you. Joan Shannon, you've broken from party lines on numerous votes throughout your tenure on City Council. Why should caucus members vote for you knowing that you might not always hold the party line as mayor? That's an interesting question. I'm not ideological and I don't follow party lines. I have been known to cross the aisle with progressives. As recently I crossed the aisle to bring forward ranked choice voting, which my Democratic colleagues in the end supported but generally were not too keen on the idea. But I believed that it was the right thing to do. I think that it is a more fair voting system and I understand that I have supporters in this room who disagree with me. But I stand up for what I believe in and I stand up for what I think is best for Burlington. I cross party lines again with the Airbnb issue. We have a lot of struggle in Vermont and in Burlington with accepting development. It can be held up for five years by one person who doesn't want it going in, next door to them or down the street. The lowest hanging fruit on that is retaining our existing housing units. And I vehemently disagreed with allowing housing units to convert with Airbnb's. I parted with my Democratic colleagues. I worked with my progressive colleagues on that issue. There have been other issues. We no longer have Republicans, so I can't actually remember. I'm sure there are probably times I voted on that side as well, but I do what I think is right for Burlington. I have not hesitated to stand up against the mayor when I thought it necessary. And at the same time, I try to never be oppositional. I'm not standing up to the mayor to be oppositional, but because we disagree on an issue and I appreciate that we've always had some respect around that. The other thing I wanna say is that in the disagreement, while I am passionate about the issues, I try to always be respectful. And after we vote, it's done. It goes away. We work on the next thing. And I did that even with the policing issues that we had, and that was very painful to a lot of us. I'm always willing to come back to the table. I'm always willing to partner with my colleagues. We, and it doesn't matter whether or not we like each other. We all have the common goal of the city's interest and we can always work together on issues to move them forward. Thank you. Thank you, all three candidates. We're going to move on. We have a couple of minutes to move on to some audience questions. One audience member says, if we were able to hire 25 or 50 more police the day you take office, how would that address the issues of homelessness and drug addiction now facing the community? And who, and Madison will start with you. We would respond to every call. We would put more police officer in uniform on the street. And more importantly, we would have community police partnerships. And really that needs to be ongoing because just like when a fire department or if someone from the fire department shows up, you know they're there to help. I want to have that same response to the police, not that I'm in trouble, but that they're here to help. That's how we get to safety, but actually having a community that feels taken care of that knows that members of their community who are in law enforcement, of course they're dealing with the dangerous issues in the day to day. And let's go to that December 10th council meeting. We would have that small crimes unit set up. We would make sure that all of the working units that the police tell us they need to have in place are fully staffed. And more importantly, I would go and speak to them and say, what do you need? Now that you have this in place, what's next so that you can continue to do your job? That kind of conversation has to be ongoing. And again, I think it's important that we do create that integrated public safety and community health pathway and response unit because it's gonna take that unified effort, that multi-prong approach that I spoke to to really ensure public safety. I'll just stop there. Thank you, Madison. Karen Paul, next. The question was? Question was, if we were able to hire 25 or 50 more police the day you take office, how would that address the issues of homelessness and drug addiction now facing the community? Well, I think one of the things that we hope will be able to be enacted in the spring when we have about five more police officers so the number will grow to about 75 is to reenact the street crimes unit. And when you talk about retail theft, when you talk about some of the challenges that we see on our streets, that will be best addressed through a street crimes unit. If we had another police officer, it would be wonderful to have just another person in the drug crimes unit. We have four and we really should have five. There are other aspects of our police department that would be enriched by having more officers, certainly. And yes, of course, years ago it was actually, the chief of police was actually Elena Ennis and that was when I was on the police commission long time ago when we started community policing. And that is a vital aspect of our community and one that I think most people support particularly in a lot of neighborhoods where there's high levels of walkability. A lot has been said about the October 10th meeting and that October 10th meeting, the reason why that was so successful was because it was put together with a lot of deliberative. It was a very deliberative process, not only in terms of outreach, which was done on my part, on other people's parts, on community members' parts, but it was also a meeting where I held off on putting a couple of things in the meeting before that so that we could have a meeting where you really were learning a lot. The drug crimes unit was presenting, the fire department was presenting, the crisis response team, which actually took about 30 days to get on, to get from where it was created to actually being enacted. That presentation happened on the same night and it was, it was a very productive council meeting. I think those are the meetings which led to and will lead to the community forums which were part of the resolution on October 10th. Those will happen in con toys here on the 14th and 19th of December. Those will be meetings on to get dedicated to public safety. I hope a lot of you will attend. And I think the only other thing that could, would come about, or one of the things that would come about with an additional number of officers is just a level of creativity that we have seen with the fire department and being able to have the time to create other alternatives like they did with the crisis response team. Thank you. Joan Shannon, the question. Would you like to hear it again? Yeah. Thank you. If we were able to. I'm good with it. Thanks. The day of my launch, I had a volunteer who was handing out signs at the launch and he walked, he doesn't have a car and he walked to the bus station after the launch to go home and he was carrying my sign still. And he texted me afterwards and he said, Joan, four or five people who are homeless ask me for your signs. And I said, why? And he said, they support you. And I will admit that did come as a surprise. And I said, why? And he said, because they don't feel safe and they think that you will bring police to the community that you will hold them accountable because they're being victimized every day. There are people who are sleeping on our streets who have their shoes stolen from them that are beside them. They are victimized and the police help them. I hang out sometimes here at the corner of Church Street and Main Street where you often see police officers. And I watched the community interact with them and I see so many people come up to them and the police know them. And the folks are giving the police information at times that's helpful in keeping our community safe. And one day an officer noticed, he said, I forget the man's name, we'll call him Dave. He said, Dave, where's your walker? And he goes, oh, it's down St. Paul Street. He goes, I need to go to the hospital. I need to get a blanket. The officer said, look, let me, it'll take me just a couple of minutes. Let me go get your walker and I have a blanket. I'm gonna go get it and I'll come back and I'll bring it to you. Our police officers in Burlington are unbelievable. I think 25 more officers allows us to have the community policing that I think most of us think that we want. It allows us to have the street crimes unit and it allows us to have a response to crime when it happens. And it keeps our population of people living on the street safe. It keeps people with addiction safe. I'm glad we have the CRT unit from the fire department, which has been very effective in reversing overdoses. Our police do the same. Thank you. Thank you. And I believe we have time for probably one more question from another audience member. How do you propose to stop the exodus of businesses from Burlington, especially in the downtown core? And we will start with Joan Shannon. This really concerns me and we're worried about an exodus of our retail businesses. The good news is that we have seen a lot of retail business come in and fill the space as some are leaving, others are coming. It's fragile. Our downtown is fragile. And I think we need to be responsive to that downtown. We're doing many things, including providing additional security. We also need to be cognizant that our office space is vacating in part because of COVID, because people need less offices, but also people aren't enjoying the safety that they once had. I think safety is, in the hierarchy of needs, is pretty much the top thing, and that is what we need to do. We need to provide safety so that our businesses can stay here. Businesses always wanted to be here. We're a thriving community. We have wonderful restaurants. We have great retail, and we have great programming from Burlington City Arts. We're right here on the lake. You can walk everywhere. I think it behooves the next mayor to be knocking on every business's door and to be using our community and economic development office to make sure that our businesses are supported. That's a, the Community Economic Development Office is really, it was created by Bernie Sanders as a branch of the mayor's office to a degree at a time when the mayor had little control over anything because we had a commission form of government. And I do think we can use the community and economic development office to offer more assistance. I know that they're trying very hard in this moment to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Joan. Karen, Paul, we'll go to you. How do you propose to stop the exodus of businesses from Burlington, especially the downtown core? Thank you. So I think it's very important that we all appreciate that the marketplace is about business first. Anything else that's going on in the downtown marketplace that is at all related to crime or anything along the lines of crime needs to, does not have a home there. That is why to some degree some of these businesses are being challenged. They're being challenged by crime. They're being challenged by quality of life issues. We need to support them. We can support them. Of course, the best way to support them is by shopping. And the best way as well as we've all talked about is by not only shopping, but sending that message out far and wide. We all have the ability to do that. And I think that's what our businesses are really looking to us for. I, again, I worked hard to create, to raise the money so that we can have increased security in the downtown. $100,000 will go a long way in the next five weeks or the next four weeks in addressing the issue of security. What I also hear from merchants is that they don't feel that they're always being listened to. A lot of them are not Burlington residents and they feel that they are not listened to as they should be. I can assure you that as mayor, I will certainly listen to them. I have supported every economic development initiative that has ever come forward in the time that I've been a city counselor. I've always stood by economic development and I would continue to do that as mayor. We need a vibrant downtown and we all play a role in creating that vibrant downtown. And I think, yes, in fact, there are businesses that are leaving, there are businesses that are coming and that's another narrative that we need to correct. We need to get the narrative out there that, yes, there are businesses leaving, but there are a number of very new and exciting businesses that are coming forward and that's exciting. That's how a downtown evolves. I mean, years ago, I mean there were lots of businesses that would say established in 18 something. Well, it's great when that happens, but part of being an evolving community is that we are attracting different businesses and that is not a bad thing. But the one thing that I would do really to support downtown businesses is to show them that the marketplace is for business and anything that we can do to support that business be it activities on the marketplace, more programming, we should do that. Thank you and Madison. Perception is everything. We have to shift the perception of downtown that it is open, it is vibrant, it is a place that is happening. I was downtown yesterday supporting the Eat Shop Love and ran into someone who had a coupon for a buy one, get one free hot chocolate at Lake Champlain Chocolate. So I said yes, which offered it to me. And we sat down and we talked and we both agreed that we're downtown all the time. She's going to the Vermont Comedy Club all the time that we are both spending a lot of time downtown because it is a vibrant, amazing place to be. It's the perception that we have to shift. So yes, we do need to have more uniform police officers here. Yes, we do need to be attending to we know our open air drug markets happening across from city market. We need to see actual activity happening there. And the other thing we have to do is we need to be audacious Burlington. We need to think about how do we shift the narrative? We have a building at the end of Church Street that is notorious for calls from the police, for criminal activity, for drug trafficking. And this building has been up and running for decades and really problematic in the last few years. So here's the audacity I'm talking about. Here's looking out to other people and saying we alone don't have to have all the answers. Rutland, Rutland's doing an amazing job. They've had similar problems with other landlords not serving their community. And so they went to the state's attorney and they said, look, they're in violation after violation. They have a revolving door of criminality here. We need your help. They seized that building. They gave that building over to their equivalent of like, you know, Champlain Housing Trust or COTS. And they built public housing. They've done that for a few other buildings to create opportunity for the community. That's the kind of audacity I'm talking about. And the other thing we need to do, Burlington, is recognize that Memorial Auditorium has been empty for over 10 years. We lost a key public space. When we lost that space, we lost community. Our youth lost that space as well, 252. Our youth are hurting. The adult members of our community are hurting. We want to be in community with each other. We have to rebuild public spaces. We have to make sure they're available and accessible in every neighborhood. Let's borrow from the old North End Community Center. They have a strong community there. We need to do that kind of work everywhere and create that community in our downtown as well. Thank you. Now it's time for closing arguments. Not arguments. Closing remarks. You can't argue if you would like as well. And Madison, from the poll of the paper earlier, you will go first. Do you feel safer than three years ago? Do you feel that we have a vibrant, prosperous downtown? Do you feel proud of and connected to your community? Three years from now, I want you to be asking yourselves those questions and I want you to be answering yes. Yes, I do feel safer. Yes, I do feel that I could rent an apartment or own a home. And yes, I absolutely feel connected to my community and because this is our Burlington. Three years isn't a long time on these big questions, but it's enough time to change direction. It's time to be bold. It's time to come together as a community. It's time to try something new. It's also time to try someone new. So Burlington, I'm asking for your vote. Join me. Karen Paul, you're next. Thank you. So thanks, Catherine, and thanks very much for repeating the question a couple of times. Appreciate it. Thank you to all who organize this forum. I am the only mayoral candidate with a professional background to hit the ground running on day one with an understanding of our city, our finances, budgeting, departments, and how it all comes together. This is what I do for a living every day. Not only do I know the current state of our city, but I have an appreciation of what needs to be done to move us forward. We don't have the time to learn on the job. We need that experience on day one. I'm the only mayoral candidate who has proven that she is a bridge builder. My ability to bring people together is exactly what is needed at this contentious time. You can be bold, you can be tough, you can be unwavering in your beliefs, and you can bring people along with you. Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said that you should fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. With a bridge builder, we will make it to the other side. I have a 15-year history of being there for my constituents, of always going the extra mile. I'm excited to bring that same energy to the office of mayor. I'm honored to have earned the support of many of my city council colleagues in this race. Sarah Carpenter, Ali Jang, and Ben Travers have all worked with me to address our city's most challenging and pressing complex problems. And although we have not agreed on every issue or every vote through this work together, they believe that our city needs a leader who knows how to listen and how to lead cooperatively, and they believe that I am that person. And finally, my endorsements from Phil Baruth, Howard Dean, and Madeleine Cunin speak to their confidence in my ability as a leader to get Vermont's largest city back on track. I would be honored to receive your support as well in the Democratic Caucus. I promise that I will go to bat for you every day. There are two other candidates on this stage that will ask for your support, but I am that leader who will deliver for you on the complex issues that are facing our city. Together, I truly believe as someone who grew up here and as I know all of you care so much about Burlington, I know that there is nothing we can't do, there's no problem we can't solve, and there's nothing that we can't overcome. If we can see it, imagine it, we can make it happen, and we have in a moment to spare, this is our time, let's get it done. Thank you. Thank you, Karen Paul and Joan Shannon. Thank you. As a counselor and as a mayoral candidate, I've had countless conversations. I've heard your concerns as parents, business owners, immigrants, college students, generational Burlingtonians, and chosen Burlingtonians like myself. As your mayor, I will listen to you. To move our city forward, we need to consider all viewpoints and ideas, whether they are progressive, conservative, or anything in between. No one has a monopoly on good ideas. A successful path forward will require open-mindedness, careful listening, and rational, evidence-based decision making in the interest of Burlington, and not for the purpose of serving blind ideology. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. There are communities, and they're mentioned here tonight, that are having success tackling the challenges we face. We will bring the needed expertise and range of perspectives to the table to use available models and data to find our path forward. Please know this, and those who know me do. We may not always agree, but you will know where I stand, and why. Over the past couple of decades, I have stood by many Democratic candidates and supported those I believe are best suited to serve the city. I would like to note that whoever you choose in next Sunday's caucus, all of us sitting here before you will need a strong team on the council to move our Democratic agenda forward, and there are city council races in all eight wards. We have some great city council candidates in this caucus, and I urge you to get to know them. Find out if they will caucus with Democrats. We will still need candidates in some wards. Please consider running, all hands on deck. Burlington needs all of us now. I support every candidate willing to join our Democratic caucus. To participate in the caucus, you need to register. You can register on my website, joneformayor.com. The deadline for advanced registration is Saturday, December 9th at five. I love Burlington, and I know we can do better. With your help, I will lead the way for a better Burlington. In this effort, I invite you to join our team, Joan For Mayor, and our movement. I'm Joan Shannon, and I'm asking for you to trust, for you to trust and for your vote. In the Democratic caucus next Sunday, and if I am so fortunate to prevail on town mating day in March. I also ask you to go now, fourth, and shop. Get some free hot chocolate, and maybe free oysters too. Post your joy. This is our city, and we need to restore our pride, and we can. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all the candidates. Thank you to the audience. Thank you.