 Good evening. Today is Monday, September 11, 2023. Thank you for joining us in person in Controy's Auditorium, as well as online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 6.07. Before we begin our agenda, it would be impossible not to pause after hearing today's date and honor the memory of the 2,977 lives that were taken from their families, from their friends, their communities, and from our nation on what was a dark day 22 years ago. I would ask for a moment of silence as we remember the many lives that were lost. We honor them and we honor the historic first responders every day with our resilience, our compassion, and the spirit of democracy that we all have as Americans. So if you would join me in a moment of silence, please. Thank you. We will begin our agenda with item 1.1, which is a motion to amend our agenda. And Councillor Doherty, if you wouldn't mind reading the recommended action, and then we will go to a vote. Thank you, President Paul. I would move to amend or adopt the agenda as follows. We are adding to the Consent Agenda, item 5.25, communication from Stephanie Saguino, member of the Police Commission regarding resignation. Thank you very much, Councillor Doherty. Is this second to that motion? Seconded by Council. All right. I have that on mind in front of me. So maybe you're... Thank you so much, Attorney Pellerin. There is another amendment which may not be on the version that you're looking at, and that would be in addition to the amendment that you have for adding Consent Agenda, item 5.25, to also put the action of item 2.1 on the Consent Agenda. It's not on the agenda that I have, but I will... Thank you so much. Thank you again. Thanks, Councillor Doherty. And seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, Councillor Grant. Hi, thank you. I had to apologize. I'm trying to get the document up. I wanted to move... I think it was item 3 regarding the use of opioid funds from the Consent Agenda to the Deliberative Agenda. Are you okay? That's fine, so we will add that... Let's try, if we can, to please keep in mind that the agenda is available on Thursday before a Monday meeting, and if there are items that we want to remove from the Consent Agenda, it's suggested that you do that prior to the meeting. We will remove item part of the amended... Part of the motion will then include to remove item 5.3 from the Consent Agenda and make it item 6.2. Is that okay with the maker and the seconder? Yes. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councillor Grant. So seeing... Are there any other amendments to the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. In favour of the agenda as amended, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda as amended. And also wanted to acknowledge that we have Councillor Grant and Councillor Jang both joining us by Zoom. That brings us to the second item on our agenda, which is 2.1, the annual report for the 2022-2023 Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission. It is a pleasure to welcome the chair and vice chair of the Parks, Rec and Waterfront Commission, which are Abbey Duke and Lee Morgan. You're welcome to join us this evening to present the commission's report. If you'd like to offer some comments on the report and overview of the report, the floor is yours, and then we'll go to the council for questions and comments. And once again, thanks for being here. Great, thank you. And all you need to do is just make sure you have. Thank you. All right, there we go. Thank you for inviting us to be part of the meeting. I think all of you got a report probably in your materials. I will say to start, it's a privilege to be on the Parks Commission. I think we all know the Parks and Recreation and Waterfront Department. It's a huge department that touches all of us in many different ways, and I think is really fundamental to what makes Burlington such a good place to live. Now, because it's such a large department, it means there's a lot of different directions we can go on the commission. We've heard from a lot of different members, staff members of the department who come and give us presentations and interact with us. And I will sort of preface the rest of the report by just saying I've been just continually impressed by the professionalism of the department, really from the director on down as well as the dedication and the interest in trying to be creative and figure out how to do things better. The Parks Department is really on the front lines of so much of what happens in the city and interactions with the public. And so I think it's not an easy time to be out in our parks, but I think they've really done it with tremendous amount of effort and dedication. And as a commission, I think we really see our role as how can we support them, how can we support the department to do better and think about more things and really bring more voices from the community in. And I think highlights from the past year is I'm proud that we worked with the department and with the Parks Foundation to start building what will be a new fund to help with accessibility of playgrounds. And let's see, do you have anything to add, Lee? So much of what Abby said. I think for me, I'm just really impressed with how much Parks employees are doing. Like Abby said, Commissioner Duke said, we're a little less formal at our commission. Yeah, our folks are dealing with a ton, and a ton that's potentially outside the, in years past, the realms of Parks, but is very much Parks now. And I think the department has done an excellent job in rising to meet this challenge, and I have nothing but complete confidence in Director White on how she navigates this tricky space. And it's a complete honor to serve on the commission and to be here tonight. Great, thank you. Thanks so much. Are there questions or comments from the council? Councillor Barlow, former member of the Parks Freckin' Waterfront Commission. Thank you, President Pollan. Thank you for attending us this report. I did have a question about one of the challenges that you mentioned was increasing public engagement, and I was wondering if you had any ideas. It's something that, when I was on the commission, we struggled with as well a little bit. So one of the things that we were talking about doing as we went into COVID, unfortunately, was to try to take the Parks Commission meeting on the road and go to some of the Parks and, you know, some of the other areas in the city to try to increase engagement. I was wondering if you had some things like that that you were working on? Yeah, so we like the idea of taking it on the road. We haven't done that since I joined. I joined kind of during COVID primarily because of the accessibility and hybrid, you know, we really need to be able to have an online option and there's nowhere else besides the conference room at DPW where we can do it. We did do one meeting at the Boat House. I love the idea of taking it on the road, but it's been challenging because of that. I would say we have a plan to have a plan to do more. That's my short answer. We focused on trying to recruit commission members that represent different parts of the city and different demographics in the city and different interests. And we are working on some ideas, I guess, to try to just... I mean, part of it is just getting out in the community and all of us talking to more people and just trying to get folks' feedback. So if any of you have ideas for us to increase engagement, we're all yours as well. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councillor Barlow. Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you, commissioners, for coming here and for sharing your report with us. Last year, Councillor Jang, Councillor Barlow and myself spent a lot of time in the Parks Subcommittee of the Council, Parks, Arts and Culture Subcommittee, talking about public safety in the parks. And there was also a lot more public participation in those meetings than we generally get at our subcommittee meetings. There was a lot of concern in the community in the beginning of this season. We were hearing about needles and dugouts, et cetera. And I'm surprised that that wasn't an issue in your report. But I will also say that I, as just one Councillor, got fewer complaints this year about what was going on in our neighborhood parks. While we did hear about needles and the dugouts kind of early on, I didn't continue to hear about that. And I'm not honestly sure what happened, how it was addressed. But I think that there is a lot of good work going on in the parks department to address this. City Hall Park is another story. But wondered what conversations are being had at the commission level and how do you perceive things are going related to that. Thank you. Yeah, what is that? Yeah, this is actually my area of focus, which didn't make it onto the report because it became my area of focus, I think the month after this report was written. We started working more on that issue, kind of just as this report was getting finished. So this late spring. So I can update you. So one project I'm working on is not quite ready to be discussed publicly, although I have been in touch with the mayor's office about it and should be able to fill everybody in, hopefully in the next week or two, a project specifically to address syringe litter in a way that I feel is data-based and will dovetail nicely with what the city is doing already and can update you all shortly on that, hopefully. So other public safety issues in the parks. So in June, I invited Chief Muran to come to our commission and give a presentation on policing in parks as part of a bit of investigation I was doing because City Hall Park, for me, is a bit close to my heart. One, it's an excellent park. And two, it's home to a lot of issues that are close to my heart, both as someone who is formerly houseless and someone who is in recovery. And it's an intersection I feel of some very important issues along with stewarding natural spaces. So I myself spend a lot of time in City Hall Park both in morning hours, daytime hours, and late night hours because it's second to syringe litter. It's one of the top complaints I get is what people are interpreting to be the state of City Hall Park. So I wanted to get, you know, primary information, you know, is what I'm hearing, you know, very accurate, somewhat accurate, partially accurate. And so for me, I'm spending a lot of time there talking to other people on different commissions who are spending time there. I also started doing ride-alongs with the police department, doing a foot patrol around City Hall Park, the alleyways, and also Church Street. And I hope to be doing ride-alongs quarterly. I'd like to do more, but we don't have staffing for that right now. And that was incredibly informative speaking to this officer who actually used to be on the Parks Commission. And continuing to have conversations with Chief Murad about what I can... Yeah, so my understanding is that enforcement has increased in recent months, and that's through data and also anecdotally from people who are saying, you know, it's better. Is it perfect? No. I think a large part of it is a misunderstanding between what is illegal and what might just feel uncomfortable to some people. And so I think a large part of my conversations with people is when they make a complaint, is to really get down to, like, what was the behavior you observed and what's actually illegal, and of that, what's actually enforceable, what are some different ways, you know, as a citizen, people can work to improve these situations if they have that interest. And so for me, it's a lot of education. It's a lot of community building and enforcement. I think there's a little bit of everything in there, but yeah. So that's, for me, that's on my radar. That's City Health Park specifically is one of my interests, and then Syringe Litter is my other focus. Thanks very much, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Travers. Thanks, President Paulin. Thanks very much for this report. I know, having served on the Parks Commission, I suspect you are grossly underreporting the number of volunteer hours in this report because I know it takes a significant amount of time. One thing I will raise in the context of the point that your ongoing work continues increasing participation, accessibility, and equity in our parks is that prior to joining the Council when I was on the Parks Commission, we had started a discussion specifically focused on water access in our community. And this started soon after Winooski had opened, a great public pool. Essex has a great public pool. If we had unlimited resources, I think a public pool in Burlington would be amazing. Unfortunately, it seems our hottest days right now, which seem to be increasing with climate change are also the days when it seems our beaches are closed and folks don't have access to an opportunity to cool down, to get into the lake. And so we'd be curious whether the discussion has continued at all or not to see if you have any thoughts on that or if the discussion hasn't continued to see if there's any room for the Commission to continue it because I don't think, Abby, I can't remember, you may perhaps have just joined the Commission when we had that discussion and there were some folks from the department that came in with some sort of interesting ideas that perhaps would not have been all that cost intensive as to when the beaches are closed and it's the hottest day and folks are looking for an opportunity to cool down in our parks, whether or not there's more we can do in terms of water access, short of building a new public pool until we have those resources available. Absolutely. I had just joined the Commission. I remember that presentation. And it's my intention that that's going to be one of the primary things we're going to be focusing on this winter is looking at how can we increase water access for next year. So I guess, yes, we're continuing and talking, but this winter we'll be working more on it as well. It's also trying to get more public input about, you know, a long-term idea of a public pool and what is the interest and, you know, what is the feasibility of it. Great. Well, to the extent that Council can at all work and partner with you in that effort, know that I think there are folks over here, at least myself, who would be very interested in doing that work with you all. Great. Thanks. Great. Thanks so much, Councillor Traversol. Second, third and fourth that. Yeah, we'll say we have. It's no secret to anyone who's been paying attention for the past dozen years that a community pool is a, it would be a huge asset to this, to this community. And I'm all for it. Are there any other, Councillor Carpenter? Thanks. This is just sort of back on the issue of dealing with the unhoused in the parks. And it's really a general comment. I want to start by thanking all of the parks staff who are dealing with this issue. And this is really just an observation. And I know there's a lot of work in coordination with CEDO, with the CSLs, with Public Works. And I'm maybe addressing this more to the administration around looking at a consolidation of perhaps how we deal with those folks and whether it rests heavily on the parks department. I don't think two, three years ago when we decided to add urban park rangers that it was going to take up that much of their job description, I suspect the urban park rangers aren't doing many of the things that we thought they might do at the time we proposed it. So I'm just really offering that as a comment and hope that the commission with the administration can kind of sift through some of those because I, it's become such a burden for the park department and for the community and certainly for the persons and is layering all of that on park staff, the right answer for the best outcomes. So just a comment. And thank you or thank all of you for the work you do. I do know that there's been a lot of work to improve that coordination this year. It's certainly much more coordinated than it was last the year before. But I think it's an excellent comment. Thanks very much, Councillor Carpenter. We'll go to Councillor Jang and then to Councillor Grant. Councillor Jang. Thank you, thank you, President Paul. And thank you for the report. I have to say I thought that it would have been a little bit more detailed. I think it seems that you summarized it, but I would have get a little bit more context and also details. One of them I would have want to understand, for example, the arena, how much peace compared to last year's, how much money was raised by those dark partings. I also wanted to understand a little bit about the recreation programs who is accessing them in terms of data collection as part of the report it is missing. And yes, to be very respectful, I'm just saying, for example, consider next time, to make it a little bit, you know, bring some context, bring some data in order for the reader to better understand. One thing about your report is about the official P. It's a new program, I believe, and was just wondering about the level of, how is it going since it was adopted as an ordinance or whatever? How is it going now? How many people actually signed up to it? And we know that in Burlington, we only have 15 officials. Have they all signed up to it yet or not? One officiant has signed up. Yeah, but your constructive criticism is noted. I understand. Yeah. Okay. So that was just my question. Thank you again for your work and perfect attendance on both of you when you look at the report. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Chang. We'll go to Councillor Grant to be followed by Councillor Hightower. Thank you very much. I just actually wanted to piggyback this very word that I was thinking about was coordination. There's been a tremendous improvement in coordination with the various employees throughout the city in terms of how they work together. So when we look at the people who work for the parks department and especially the work from the park rangers, the street team, the CSLs, there's just been better coordination and better contact with people in terms of, even though in the city of Burlington we've chosen not to have a quote unquote official place to go in terms of not camping or using in parks, people are given guidance. And I guess I'll leave that at there. I do want to thank Commissioner Morgan for their time. We speak a lot about the situation around substance abuse disorder in the city and needles and safety in the parks. So that's something that I know is a huge concern for them. And it's great to have them working on this commission as well. Because I think that will also help foster the continued coordination because I believe the coordination that we have needs to be improved. And then some other things that are in the parks, so to speak. So thank you for the work that the commission does. It's really important. And I expect that we will hear more from you as the year continues and as we all work together to continue to keep our parks safe and open for everyone. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks very much, Councillor Grant. We'll go to Councillor Hightower. Great, thanks. I actually really appreciated that it was a good summary to read and that there wasn't a lot of detail, but different strokes for different folks, I guess. I was the only question that I have is on the same, along the same lines as Councillor Ding for the officiant program, which is, is that replacing any of the individual things or is it an option, an addition to? It was an addition. And the idea is that the goal is to capture all of the different commercial enterprises that go on in the parks. So whether it's classes and that was identified as something that was missing, that was not getting, that there wasn't a fee attached to it. Great. So it was a new program specifically focused on officiant. Great. So for all things classes, officiant, anything that it is, there's like a $20 per use fee or $200 per year fee. Well, the $200 for sort of unlimited, I think, is just officiant. Is that $200? Yeah, yeah. So the programs and the parks, which is especially for yoga, is $100 for the year. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks very much, Councillor Hightower. Are there any other Councillors who have any questions or comments for the administration? Okay. Thank you. So seeing no other comments, we'll close out this item with our thanks to both of you and to the other members of the commission for your service on this commission. And thanks for being here again this evening. Thank you. Thank you. We are a little bit behind. Public forum is to start at 6.30, and we're a couple minutes after that at 6.34. So as the time is now after 6.30, we'll move on to public forum. Before we begin public forum, for those who are joining us perhaps for the first time or speaking at public forum for the first time, we do have a process this evening. For those that are in consoys, the table that's sitting in front of me has a timer system. And there are three lights on that timer. The green light will shine when you begin speaking. The second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and then the last red light will shine when your time is up. We ask that you please complete your sentence if you are mid-sentence when the light and the sound indicate that your time is up so that we give everyone the same amount of time and we can keep the public forum and our meeting moving along. If you're joining us online, there's a timer system that will be set up on Zoom. We don't have a light system, but when your two minutes is up and the clock winds down to zero, please complete your sentence so that we can move on to hearing from the next community member. We have a hybrid system for public forum. If you wish to speak in person, there are forms to my right in the back corner of the room. You can complete one of those forms and give them to the clerk who is to my right in the front of the room. If you wish to speak via Zoom, you can go to BurlingtonVT.gov, forward slash city council, forward slash public forum, and there will be a form that will come up. Just complete the form and your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have in front of me so I can call on you in the order in which you submitted the form. As per our council rules, Burlington residents will have first priority to speak. We will go to Burlington residents in con choice who have submitted a form in person, then to Burlington residents online, then back to con choice for non-Burlington residents and we will wrap up with non-Burlington residents that are joining us online. During public forum, we ask that you use respectful language. We'd like to remind everyone who's here and joining us this evening that there are families who watch our council meeting as their connection to civic engagement with their children. And we ask that you please keep that in mind when you are speaking. Please direct your comments to me as the chair and to no one else at this table. Do not personalize your comments. This rule will be enforced. I will interrupt any speaker who attempts to personalize their comments or speak directly to anyone at this table. If you agree with a council with a speaker's comments, you can show your approval by doing this silently, only silently. Do not clap, do not jeer, do not speak on top of any speaker who is speaking. And please try to remember that we have many people really who are watching these meetings. Let's try to show those people that are watching this meeting the best of Burlington. As councillors, we want to hear what you have to say. And it is a lot easier for us to listen intently if you speak respectfully. With that, we will get started. The first person joining us in Contois who wish to speak is Michael Nadel to be followed by Jada Bearden. Hello. Hi. My name is Michael. I am a resident of the Old North Inn. And I want to talk about the temporary shelters on Elmwood that the cities built a couple months ago. They started. We were all aware that there was an understaff police force involved when those shelters were started. In any other city where these temporary shelters started, the drug use and drug activity has increased. So this happened with the pods on Elmwood as well. Every time I reach out to someone to say, hey, I've seen people shooting up every day. I see people trespassing every day. And I see people defecating on the lawn of the church and in Elmwood every day. Every time I reach out to someone, they say, the police are short staffed. And that's something that was a known issue. So I wanted to know what the plan was because it doesn't seem like there's any plan whatsoever to deal with this situation. It's very, very frustrating because it's a residential area. There's no public gathering area. So people are either visiting or they're trespassing. And they're not visiting. So they're there to use drugs. I'm concerned about the safety of the residents, but the success of the program is in jeopardy because there are drug users and drug dealers and drug use taking place right outside the shelters on a consistent basis. And that seems inconsistent with the goals of the program. So please do something about it. Come up with a plan. Thanks. Thank you so much, Michael. Our next speaker is Jada Bearden to be followed by Bella Furn. Good evening. What's up? Yeah. I'm here to address the kombucha granola white supremacy of Berlin to Vermont. And in doing so, I hope to do two things. Speak true to power and call for the resignation of, you know. Yeah. So first I want to start with I came to Burlington in 2018 as a college student at Champlain College. This is very loud. All right. I came to college student 18 and I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. And two years into my time at Champlain College, the pandemic happened, so I went back to Texas. But during those two years, I was there. I maintained a 3.7, 8 GPA. And I was also falsely accused of raping a white person, a white female body person. And also during that time when I was 18, I had sex with Jen Berger, who is now an artist at the Hive, Pine Street, and who was at the time a Champlain College adjunct faculty. So I didn't realize until earlier today in yoga actually that Jen Berger was my Harvey Weinstein. She is my monster. We didn't, to her, granted, we didn't know that we were both affiliated with Champlain at the time, but yes. So I bring that up because it's a systemic issue because now I am a houseless person and it's not a financial issue. Right? I have enough to afford rent, but I can't be housed. And I'm also a black artist and a black person. I'm only 23 years old and I don't have housing and I don't have the opportunity to speak my truth anywhere except here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Bella Fern to be followed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. Good evening. Good evening. I thank you for getting my last name right, Karen. I appreciate that. So hi, Karen. My name is Bella Fern. I use she, her pronouns. And I'm a resident of Ward 3 and I'm just here to remind everyone of my support and my community support of Tyesha Green and Casey Elleveray. In my 17 years in the state, I've consistently heard that it's the white estate, one of the white estates, excuse me, and I've heard Vermonters, particularly white Vermonters ask why. There's of course lots of history of racism in Vermont, specifically involving removing black residents from Vermont. But when it comes to the current place we live in, the current time, I think the ACLU says it best in their statement. Excuse me. I'm just going to turn to that page. We all deserve to feel a sense of belonging in our community. But the time and time again, black Vermonters are being driven out of their jobs and their communities due to racist harassment, retaliation and backlash of, excuse me, and retaliation and a lack of support to thrive. The actions against Tyesha Green is absolutely an example of this. And I believe further exacerbates the issue of racism in Vermont and empowers actionable racist Vermonters in the state. I ask you to hold those perpetrators accountable and ask them to take actionable accountability, more than words. And finally, I just ask you to think about the folks of color who live here in Vermont or who want to live here. Are they truly safe? Do they truly feel safe here if the status quo continues? So, thank you. Thank you so much, Bella. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Jack Tiano. So, good evening. I knew I was going to be here to say something and I never figured out how I was going to say it. When you speak truth to power, you have to speak the truth. And everyone in government who not only receives money and payment for their services, but also spends our money, it's our tax money, they're accountable. They have to submit themselves to account. And when any group says that we don't have to be accountable because of the group that we're in, that's a form of elitism. And elitism on the basis of race is racism. I have a brother who in the 70s was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, fell in love with and married a woman from Sierra Leone, moved to, back to the United States. I have three nephews who are persons of color. And they live in Minneapolis. My brother lives seven blocks south of where George Floyd was killed right on Chicago Avenue. One of my nephews is a city planner for the city of St. Paul. They all told me that the audit of Ms. Green was totally appropriate, like over the top appropriate, like should have been done. And they were quite familiar with the issue. You know, in the national news, we look at Clarence Thomas, for instance, and all of the freebies he's received from persons that may be in the Supreme Court subjects. And we can't audit Clarence Thomas because he's black. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Jack Tiano to be followed by Brian Thornton. So my name is Jack Tiano, Ward 5. I'm here to say that I'm excited to see the Neighborhood Code Project kick off tonight. I was very involved as a citizen advocate on the now completed Southland Innovation District Zoning Overlay Project. But as I've said before to you all, I think that the Neighborhood Code Project of tackling the barriers to housing in our residential districts is a much bigger prize than a spot zoning like that. And that it's how we really systemically change the problem of housing access and affordability in Burlington for the long term. I encourage the council to be thinking about how the changes pursued throughout this process affects the cost of housing per dwelling unit and let that guide the densities that you target. I was very impressed by the work done by city planning staff on the SEID and I expect that their excellent work will continue. And I look forward to engaging with you all on this process. With the rest of my time, I also wanted to quickly invite you all to a party. Next Friday, September 22nd from 4 to 8 p.m. across the street on St. Paul Street next to the park. Vermonters for people oriented places will be celebrating World Car Free Day. We'll be closing the street to cars, opening the street to people, hanging out, holding a pedestrian and cycling urban scavenger hunt with prizes and sharing information about alternatives to driving in Burlington. We hope to see some elected officials there. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. And our last Burlington resident joining us in con toys is Ryan Thornton. Good evening. Good evening. First of all, Ryan Thornton. I live in Ward 2. I'm a renter. I want to thank the Mayor and City Council for initiating this process. I think this is going to be a huge win for the neighborhood code. As you know, 80% of the city's residential land is currently zoned for single family, low density housing. And I think, while I think it's a really good thing to go ahead and change that, I think reversing the decisions that we made in the past to sort of ban multifamily housing is not likely to sort of get us the result that we want, because much of the city is currently built out with single family homes. And so, with that in mind, I just encourage you to take this as far as you can to make this affordable to people. 60% of Burlington residents are renters. Most of us are priced out of home ownership. So what can we do throughout this process to make ownership more feasible for more people like myself? I'm thinking, reduce all the barriers in terms of smaller lots so that we can build smaller homes. Or to make it more possible for multiple people to have a joint ownership, to have co-ownership of a property. That means addressing issues like multiple freestanding units. Another option will be to look at what it would cost to develop. Currently, I'm not sure that developing a duplex, tearing down a single family home and developing a duplex is really going to be financially feasible. So what can we do in order to make sure that whatever development we're allowing actually makes sense for people to do? I would also like to invite you to the September 22nd Car Free Day Party. It's going to be a great time. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ryan. We will go to those Burlington residents that are joining us online. The first person who is joining us online is Sharon Busher. Sharon, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak. Yes, I can. Thank you, President Paul. I wanted to speak to two items. One is 5.23 on consent, which is an ordinance regarding technical amendments. And then the other item I wanted to speak with is also the neighborhood code that is on your deliberative agenda. As far as technical amendments, that is, as I read it, first reading then going to be warned for public hearing and then action and not being referred to ordinance. And I understand the desire to streamline, but I wanted to alert you to the fact that the Planning Commission really, they had it on their agenda, but they didn't discuss it. I read through all of them. It's fairly lengthy. I'm engaged some comment, but I don't feel like I represent the city of Burlington. And I feel that the Planning Commission felt that they have great confidence in planning staff. So do I. And it was unnecessary for them to take it up. But I really feel like without additional eyes or review. We fall short of, of really catching something that maybe should be caught before it gets put into the ordinance. So I'm concerned about that. And I just wanted to alert everyone to that. The second thing has to do with the neighborhood code process. And I understand the desire to streamline and have joint committees. I in my past life have been part of that process. I'm not sure how successful that was. I'm not sure how successful that was. When we went through it, but. I certainly applaud the idea. My concern is compressing opportunities for the public to have input. I was encouraged by the staff memo stating that there would be opportunities at NPAs, et cetera. But I wanted to add one thing. If you would allow me. I would like to add one more thing. I would like to add one in the central area of the city that would include wards. One, two, three, six and eight. And I was really hoping that that could be added. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The next speaker joining us online is Colin Larson and Colin. I've found you and enabled your microphone. You just need to unmute on your side. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, we can. I'm Colin Larson. I live in the new north end. I'm also really excited for the neighborhood code. I like previous speakers was involved as a member of the public with the south and innovation district. And I'm really excited that it's, you know, kind of our turn in the new north end to help contribute to additional housing availability. You know, just for reference, if many of you may recall, the new north end is largely residential low, low density, which has a minimum lot size that's way higher than is feasible for the kind of housing that we need to build because of the laws around planned unit developments and minimum lot sizes for freestanding buildings, cottage courts are not legal to build in the new north end. And that's a housing type that I think is a lot more in line with what a lot of Vermonters want to see in their neighborhood. So it would probably be a little bit less contentious. Anyway, I'll hold a lot of my more specific comments for the meetings and public engagement later on, but I'll just say I really support this effort. And then I just wanted to make a quick comment about item 5.6 on the consent agenda. This is about the parking availability on north Winooski after the bike lanes that went in. You know, there were another number of solutions that were proposed during this process. And one of these was parking permitting system. And I think that this is something that the city should really seriously look at creating. Street space is public. There's a lot of people that are parking their cars there for free. And it doesn't really make sense to me that, you know, that's, they should be able to do that. So. Parking permitting. Take a look. Thanks. Great. Thank you very much. There are no, there are no non-burlington residents that are joining us in con toys. There is one online. So we'll go, we'll continue with, we'll continue with a public forum online. And that is Karen Sita and Karen. I have found you and enabled your microphone. You just need to unmute on your side. Thank you, madam president. That's Karen. Thank you so much. You look fabulous. By the way, I love the blue on you. I'm here to just remind for monitors. Okay. First of all, let me start here. I've always been hurt. Okay. I've always been hurt. And I understand that we sometimes think that a black person is coming to this state that they always are the best people for us. But we have to learn that just because our skin is black, doesn't mean that they always have the best intentions. We need people who are solid black, white, gray, blue, whatever. We need people who are solid. I'm actually here for the youth because I don't want them to think that this is how you speak to the mayor of your city. They're young, even with the gray pepper hair that the mayor has going on. He's a youthful man and he's watching and paying attention. We asked for the RBI and he listened to us. You know, I think people need to stop with his whole kid bringing up his child. I brought it up and I get it. People want to follow me, but that's not how you do it. I wanted him to have a legacy and he now plays a legacy. I mean, the state people that were yelling at the mayor were eating fried chicken in front of him like a couple of weeks ago. I mean, it's crazy. Okay. We're interested in here. Yes. Well, the general comment is that the mayor is here to stay and he's here to help us. Please direct your comments to me as the chair. Do not personalize them to anyone else at this table. No problem, Madam President. I'm just here to speak for the people. I'll just quickly say this. Once I graduate and get my policy degree and all this, I'm coming to make the policy because the people are really in need of a real leader. We're in need of housing. We're in need of people who are going to do stuff. We don't have time for lawlessness and lawless leaders. We need people who listen to the people and make action. It's time for action. Black, white, gray. If you got the action, if you know how to bring action to save Ramonters, Burlingtonians, this is the time. I always call it an action. People do something. File lawsuits. Whatever you need to do, do something to help the city because at this point, we have full of lawlessness and people who don't want to help when they know that the need is great. That's all, Madam President. Thank you so much. We do not have anyone else who wanted to speak during public forum. So with that, we will close public forum at 6. 58 and continue with our agenda. And thank you to all who participated during. We do have one other person who wishes to speak. Todd LaCroix. Welcome. Good evening. 22 years. 22 years later since 9 11 and here we are. And last we like meeting. You all confirmed that 9 11 successfully destroyed democracy. That the First Amendment means nothing to you. That politics and your games trump everything. And here you are all still pretending to be righteous after you all exposed yourself with hypocrisy. The First Amendment, the rights that you all pretend to defend yet you openly stop. And you support the very people who are tearing us apart because you don't know how to face the enemy within. Because you're all cowards is what you displayed last meeting. You know, you ask us to face the racist amongst us, but you don't have the same courage within yourself. You ask us to fight for rights. And then you turn and run when it matters. And we're on the front lines. You all are cowards. With Occupy Wall Street. I've been on the front lines for 13 years straight. And look at how you treated me. I am your base. And look at how you treated me. This is why you will lose the next elections. And I warn you. You are more empowering Trump than any of his supporters through the way you acted last fucking meeting. Thank you very much. With that, we will now close the public forum at 7 0 1 and continue with our agenda. The next item is item number four, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none. My apologies. My apologies. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. Yes, there are a couple of updates that I was hoping to share with the council and the public. First of all, the Burlington Electric Department is now the owner of the state's first electric bucket truck. This is exciting. An exciting addition to their fleet. This is one of the pieces of heavy machinery that BED utilizes to maintain the city's electrical grid. I think it's also exciting for what this suggests about where we're headed with the electrification, both of the city fleet and of heavy equipment, heavy duty equipment more broadly. This is a really the first addition to the city's fleet that is of this kind of scale and size of equipment. We've had Zambonis and lawnmowers before, but this is a new scale and suggests that really in the short years ahead that virtually any equipment can be electrified, which is critical for our net zero strategy. In addition, I did want to just note here we're about to have an extended discussion about the neighborhood code. Appreciate the speakers from VPOP coming out and engaging in this already. I expect the presentation tonight isn't going to dwell on the environmental aspects of this, but I do just want to take this time to remember that development in Burlington, in the walkable, neighborhoods of Burlington is almost always replaces substitutes for development in areas of the county and the region where the climate impact would be much greater. Households that are in Burlington tend to use somewhere between about half the electricity that suburban locations, half the power, the overall energy that suburban locations offer. So on top of the many other housing benefits and other benefits of pursuing this neighborhood code, we should see it as something that it will also be advancing us towards our environmental goals as well. So looking forward to the presentation. Thanks, President Paul. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Are there any are there any counselors who wish to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we will close out that item and go to item number five, which is our consent agenda. At this time, it would be great to have a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated. So moved. Thank you, Councillor McGee, seconded by Councillor Carpenter. Is there any discussion on the consent agenda noting that we had removed item 5.3, that is now 6.2. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the consent agenda, moving the consent agenda and take the actions indicated, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We've approved our consent agenda, which brings us to our deliberative agenda. We have two items on our deliberative agenda, and we're appropriate. There are time limits on these items. And we'll do our best to keep to that agenda. The first item is 6.1, which is the joint committee to review the neighborhood code recommendations. And for this item, we have Planning Director, Megan Tuttle, and Planner Sarah Morgan with us. Thank you both so much for being here. We know that you have a PowerPoint, which you've now. You always seem to be able to put them up no problem. Others struggle, but you never struggle. Well, last time we were here, we weren't so lucky. So we made sure this time worked well. Okay. Well, I wouldn't have remembered that. Certainly wouldn't have mentioned it. Great. And then we'll go to the council for comments and questions. So the floor is yours. Thank you for being here. Great. Thank you, President Paul. We are going to quickly go through these slides, which help outline our proposal for the joint committee for the neighborhood code. And quickly to remind anybody who might be watching and other counselors who have not been as closely engaged in this, what the purpose of the neighborhood code is. This is the third of the major zoning amendments that were part of the 10 point action, 10 point housing plan from 2021. And really helps us to advance part of our comprehensive plan for Burlington, which is about how our neighborhoods can remain strong and vital with unique patterns and strong identities, but also evolve in incremental ways to help us meet the needs of current and future households. When we talk about the neighborhood code, you'll hear us referred to middle housing frequently. Sometimes this is referred to as missing middle housing. This is a term that was coined by a firm called Optikos, which refers to these sort of house scale buildings that have multiple units. And you can see from the diagram at the bottom that they span buildings such as duplexes, triplexes. You heard some reference to things like cottage courts, sometimes even accessory dwelling units. And in some communities even start to span a broader range of buildings up to and including the neighborhoods that abut their mixed use or downtown districts. We've really been focused through our work at looking at the sort of left end of the scale and what we're calling house scale buildings. So the purpose of this joint committee and ultimately of the neighborhood code is to help us identify, specifically identify a number of zoning reforms that will help us identify housing opportunities in all neighborhoods of the city. When we came to present to you in May, we shared some research that our office largely Sarah and our office has been doing about the historic development patterns in Burlington, the history of our changes to our zoning laws that apply to these residential areas, and work that we had done to identify what the zoning barriers are today that are precluding more of these middle housing types. The next step of this work and what the joint committee will be involved in is helping our staff and a consultant that we've been working with actually take that information and provide recommendations about how we can actually support more of these middle housing types. I think one important thing to mention about these middle housing types is that they're not only already present in almost all neighborhoods in Burlington, in different forms, but this has also been a subject of importance across the state of Vermont. Since we identified this as a policy objective in 2021 and started our work on it, there have been two major initiatives at the state level that have further boosted the work that we're doing. The first is that the state identified and created a brand new grant funding opportunity called the bylaw modernization grant program We were one of the inaugural recipients of that grant funding specifically to help identify new opportunities for neighborhood scale housing across the state. So this work is supporting that state level goal. And then I think many of you are probably familiar with Act 47 which was an act of the legislature this year. Often called the home act. It was a very expansive housing bill that established a number of studies changes to state law and funding programs. The neighborhood code will address a number of new issues that we have to look at in our zoning ordinance as a result of Act 47. Specifically Act 47 created new standards for what municipal zoning can and can't do related to these middle housing types such as municipal zoning can't treat duplexes any different than single family homes from a regulatory perspective. So as we work through our potential zoning changes to help support more of these middle housing types we'll be making sure that we're addressing all of the new requirements that were brought forth by Act 47. So the reason we're here tonight is to just introduce to the council our proposed scope for this joint committee in terms of how we'll move forward with the actual recommendations of the neighborhood code. We have spoken with all of the members of the ordinance committee and the council president about this as well as the planning commission chair. And I know the planning commissioners themselves are really eager to get more in the weeds on the zoning amendments that would come forth from this process. So the proposed scope for this committee is to jointly review and participate in discussion about the public input that we've received to date through the engagement work we've been doing over the last about a year as well as to collect additional feedback through their joint committee process and through the work that we'll be doing this fall to help develop the draft ordinance and specifically to help work through some of the questions about how these housing types can be enabled. We're looking forward to the joint committee coming together to provide feedback to the staff and to a technical consultant that we're working with on the proposed middle housing types that we would like to encourage more of and the specific zoning tools that will help us get there. Specifically there will be issues where we might have multiple options to choose from in terms of how we might carry this forward. So that'll be an important place where getting the joint committee's feedback will help guide the direction of this work. And ultimately we know that based on the scopes of the individual bodies there are specific areas of expertise and their specific relationship to different constituents in the community that each of you have different lenses and different perspectives that you bring to discussions about zoning. And so our hope is that through this joint committee process everyone can be part of learning and hearing about that information so that we're bringing forward a recommendation that addresses the things that each of the bodies typically focuses on. And then ultimately following the formal kind of committee process which Sarah will quickly outline our aspiration is that this joint committee can provide a recommendation to the full council as a group in lieu of doing two separate reviews of this amendment. Great. So the proposed schedule and topics for these joint meetings we have kind of outlined into three phases and to the extent possible we propose to use the planning commission's regular meetings throughout the duration of 2023 as well as special meetings as needed. Running from late September to December the proposed schedule for the joint committee includes six meetings before referral to council to consideration. The first of these three phases would be through from September to October the first meeting being a committee kickoff where staff will provide an overview of the neighborhood code scope the new Act 47 requirements that Megan mentioned and work done on the neighborhood code to date as well as the summary of feedback on the code. With the second meeting being a presentation by the city's consultant which introduces the proposed missing middle housing typologies as well as the locations discussion of the design influences as well as a relationship to the city's current barriers to these housing typologies as well as opportunities for committee feedback. With the second phase being the development and review of ordinance language this third meeting would be the review of the draft ordinance language which introduces and includes a line by line walk through focused on the standards that relate to the presentation from the city consultant and meeting to where the staff consultant will provide an opportunity to answer committee questions and discuss possible edits. Meeting 4 is a similar structure where we'll have a continuation of the discussion from meeting 3 and the line by line walk through will discuss additional other related amendments and options for implementing these housing typologies with meeting 5 being the review and edits to inform a public hearing staff consultants will share responses and the edits from meeting 4 discuss other public input received during this process as well as identify any further edits to propose a draft ordinance for a formal public hearing and this public hearing will be the planning commission's hearing per statute but we hope to have the full committee support for moving to this stage. With this third phase being the adoption process which would include that sixth meeting being a public hearing and recommendation following this the staff will present a summary of the comments received and or any other recommended changes and the committee will discuss and vote on any final edits consider recommendations and including referral to council followed by a city council work session and eventual public hearing and adoption and we also just wanted to touch on ongoing engagement that's going to happen during this time. This includes stakeholder focus groups which are currently being coordinated by staff and these will these include meetings with subject matter experts to vet these proposals and help us and the consultant flag any particular issues or different opportunities for the staff and the committee will be able to address questions, gain feedback and just discuss what this would look like in each of the neighborhoods and additional partners with AARP hosting these coffee chats largely as Sharon Buscher had mentioned in the new north end and south end throughout September and October followed by a October full of NPA presentations and additional public engagement session is hoped to be in November or December where we will hopefully share these updated proposals based on committee's feedback as well as collect final input as well as additional technical assistance coordinated with AARP including fit tests with optico's design which would showcase what these housing types would look like in each neighborhood. We're here tonight again just to share with you our proposed plan for this joint committee's work and our hope is that we can answer any questions about the scope and the intended outcome of that process and through your acceptance of the communication we can get started with the joint committee's work. Great, thank you very much. So we'll open the floor now to the full council and first speaker in the queue is Councillor Travers, chair of the ordinance committee and then we'll go to Councillor Hightower. Thanks President Paul and thank you for the presentation just a couple comments here I think first of all I echo some of the comments that we heard in public comment as well as from the mayor that I'm thrilled that the neighborhood code is now coming forward and that we're beginning this process I think we are still in the midst very much so we have a housing crisis and time is of the essence I do think that the neighborhood code perhaps even more than the south end innovation district even more than our removal of minimum parking requirements even more than our attempts to address short term rentals is really perhaps the most comprehensive way that the city can further address our ongoing housing crisis and to the end of addressing that crisis I'm glad that you've been working to find creative ways to streamline this including through your proposal that we sit as an ordinance committee in a joint committee with the planning commission I also want to say though that while we're looking to find efficiencies and streamline the process I appreciate your efforts to highlight the public engagement that will take place over the coming months I think particularly in recent years your department DPW parks many of the departments in the mayor's administration have really reset the standard in terms of what our community should come to expect through public engagement you did an outstanding job with the south end innovation district and I know that no doubt will make sure that we have the appropriate time in place for further public engagement in the neighborhood code so thank you for highlighting those efforts as well and I also know that you've already done including in conjunction with the AARP a number of engagement opportunities on this particular issue I do also want to say though that I think that the key term around the proposal of a joint commission is that we will aspire to provide a recommendation to this joint committee to the full council my hope is that in sitting with the planning commission that the ordinance committee will be able to find more in common than we disagree on and my hope is that we will be able to aspire and sort of meet that aspiration of being able to come to a full recommendation that can then come to this full council without needing a separate process before the ordinance committee but I do want to sort of make a commitment to members of the public who may be concerned about this as well as to my fellow councilors here that to the extent there are areas that we're not able to find common ground on to the extent there are areas where there's disagreement between us and the planning commission that could benefit from a further committee process that by sort of approving of this or sort of voicing our approval of the aspiration here that we're not abdicating our responsibility as an ordinance committee and remain more than open to continuing to use that committee process again to the extent it would be helpful for us to continue to work through any of those issues so again thank you for this recommendation I think it's a great one I'm hopeful that it will bring further efficiency and streamline the process and I look forward to our sitting down to be working together thank you Thank you Councillor Travers we'll go to Councillor Hightower and then Councillor Carpenter I know I will have a lot of time to weigh in on this so I won't get into the content too much but I think just maybe I'll start with a question which is the neighborhood scale housing I just you might have said this but just so I didn't miss that what is the housing chart is that like townhouses like multiplex medium what is the cutoff there yeah great question Councillor Hightower we have been working up to this point to explore the opportunities up to the townhouses we specifically are looking at how we can also think about layers and this will get presented to the joint committee layers of context so I think I would say that we allowed and other types might be reserved for like corridors for example our major thoroughfares through different parts of the city so we are looking primarily up to that townhouse level great thank you so I would say the only thing that I would say even as you get started I think definitely making it echo two things just so glad that we're in this moment and that this is moving forward and really looking forward to digging into it but then also share Councillor Traverse's concern that I think it might be better if we assume that it might have to go to the ordinance committee especially just having been part of the short-term process and other things I think it's fine that if at the end of the process we say oh great we're all in agreement and this is good to go but I think it would be remiss to have the committee sit through the whole thing and then if we have a separate commission or separate recommendation to not really be able to formally present that and then also unfortunately sometimes the way public process goes is just sometimes going from one committee to the next is what jogs it enough in the media that folks actually note of it and then participate so I think based on how much input we've gotten to that point that might be a necessary thing we want to pursue just from again the public input perspective as well so I wouldn't want to assume that it will necessarily skip the ordinance committee although I appreciate the efficiency of us looking at it together thank you Thanks very much Councillor Hightower we'll go to Councillor Carpenter and then to Councillor Shannon I also want to comment on sort of the issue of the joint committee which I'm very supportive of and just offer that I had a conversation with Director Tuttle that I think we need to look at this whole process of zoning ordinances and the complexity because it's governed a lot by state law we spend as a council a great deal of time in angst over pointing planning commission members and then some times don't choose to listen to them zoning is a world on it to its own and I just think we can do better long run not short run in figuring out our process rather than having every single thing go first to planning and then to ordinance so I'm really offering this as just an editorial comment and I asked Director Tuttle to sort of think on it see what other communities do we still need an ordinance committee because we've got a lot of other ordinances but is there a better way in a long run to handle how we ponder over zoning things and this sort of two phase structure is this the best way could for example two councils be in the planning commission I don't know I just think we really owe it to ourselves to look at that and I hope we do during over the next year the other thing more specifically just to the neighborhood code I hope as we go through this that we have a parking lot to identify any issues that are not zoning but the city might tackle I think of things like sharing water meters and sharing electrical inputs and you know they're really there's a lot of code issues that sometimes make it very difficult to build on a lot that we haven't built on before and we can't solve it by zoning it but we need to create a the bucket of things that could be attended to in other departments and in part of that is my interest in how do we create more home ownership opportunities again because zoning doesn't speak to whether it's rented or owned but are there nuances that make it easier to facilitate the additional units as likely to be owned as opposed to rented thanks great thank you councillor Shannon thank you president Paul and thank you both for your presentation which always your presentations are really nice it always makes everything very clear I appreciate your work on this at the same time as you know I do not agree with the proposed structure of having a joint planning ordinance committee review and deliberation of this in its entirety I do agree with councillor Carpenter in that I think it would be wise of us to look at our process and decide if we want to streamline this process generally what are the ways that would be best to do that and have a conversation about that which has not yet been had I also appreciate just even in this case there is a desire to streamline things but streamlining things can also limit public comment opportunity we always feel like things go at a snail's pace and the public always feels like we're moving at lightning speed when it's something that causes them alarm in the end stages so it's also a case of how do we get the public engaged in this earlier in this timeline that's laid out I will note that the presentation to NPA is happening in October November which is more like the end stage of our deliberation and that timeline before before it gets to the city council once something gets to the city council it's it can be if there isn't going to be another ordinance committee review and possibly a reconsideration of the things that were done in the prior committee that puts it at the end of this stage when we're not in a good position to make changes based on that public input but what I would support is if you look in kind of the beginning of this presentation not the very beginning let's say seven or eight pages in the proposed schedule introduce concepts there are two meetings proposed to introduce the concepts and I think it will be very valuable for the ordinance committee to participate in that when jointly so it doesn't have to be done twice then when it goes to develop and review language by having a joint committee that means we're 11 people at the table that's more people than are at this table well if we include everybody on zoom that's I'm not sure how many it's 11 okay so that's too many people for a deliberative body this is not an effective process that we're laying out here just for that reason if we want to shorten this time frame I would not object to having a parallel track where the planning commission is deliberating on this and the ordinance committee is deliberating on this at the same time and like the legislature we then have a merging process of the ideas that come from both committees I'm not sure that we're going to know with 11 of us at the table what is the opinion of the planning commission what is the opinion of the ordinance committee I'm sure that they're going to be planning commissioners they'd agree with ordinance committee members and vice versa so I think that this is a great project that we are embarking on and I strongly disagree with the process that has been laid out here I hope there will be further discussion about it as we go forward because I don't think the other factor is the ordinance committee is very busy we have just we've just laid out a bunch of meetings of the joint ordinance charter change committee joint charter and ordinance committee now we're going to have all of these and presumably we have other ordinance committee work that we still have to do and schedule ordinance committee meetings that's an awful lot to ask and are there any other counselors who wish to for comments on the presentation or the process that you've laid out Councillor Jang thank you thank you president and thank you also for the presentation Megan and Tim it is very rare that I am in complete agreement with my colleague I completely believe on this one I am in agreement with her that this timeline is very ambitious you know it is good that the city now is striving to engage the community in a lot of processes but at the same time let's do it in a way that's qualitative and also quantitative it seems we're rushing to have things done with this ambitious timeline and from my perspective this at least could can take one solid year of revising of engaging before we make any decision and just to say that I am in complete agreement with conservation on this one thank you for your work thank you so much thank you so much Councillor Jang we will go back to Councillor Hightower I think I just have to say having been part of the short-term rental team which was a joint committee I thought I think Megan is one of the best facilitators of meetings that I have encountered in feedback and making sure to move things along so I have a high degree of confidence having seen the department walk through another very complicated process that took a really long time of the ability to take everybody's feedback and move it along so I feel very comfortable just to make sure that we have a joint committee process because I think having seen it happen in the past I think it's gone very well so again feel very comfortable with the joint committee process I think it saves down on a lot of going over the same things in two committees which saves down on a lot of staff time also consulting time and resources but I do think that having a staggered process of joint and then ordinance will reduce some of the concerns of public process and time taking more time on it thank you thanks very much seeing no others in the queue I just need a motion to waive the reading and accept the communication placed in on file if a Councillor could make that motion so moved thank you Councillor Traverse seconded by Councillor McKee any discussion on that motion seeing none my apologies Councillor Shannon just to be clear I'm certainly in favour of the motion and that is not a motion to adopt this that is correct we are simply waiving the reading we're accepting the communication that's been given to us and placing it on file thank you thank you President Paul I just wanted to make clear to council to members of the public that are watching these deliberations how strongly I support this initiative as well it's been very encouraging to hear a number of councillors voice their support for the effort if there's still clearly some debate about the right process to get this done I'm encouraged by the general sense that this is work that we should be doing we first articulated a goal of this type of zoning change a little less than two years ago I believe at the end of 2021 as one of ten housing action efforts that we would be attempting to increase the housing supply and to address homelessness head on I think we've made very substantial progress on just about really all ten of those points this is probably as has been noted one of the potentially most impactful initiatives that we can pursue and it is one that I think it is important to remember a good deal of work has already taken place quite a bit of public engagement on and I'm very excited to see it getting to this stage where we can start getting to the details of making this the new the new rules for about 70% of the city it's going to be a better city for housing when we get this done thank you for your work on it is it okay to respond thank you President Paul I just I wanted to note a couple of things based on the councillors comments about the proposed process I think I appreciate the note about the aspiration of the outcome of this process and certainly agree that we're not asking the council to suspend its rules and certainly there's still a statutory process that's involved any time we change the zoning which does require consecutive action by both the planning commission and the city council so what you saw was our attempt to kind of work within that framework to bring the committee's work committees plural work together rather than be kind of step by step I also did want to note that we are working with the organizers of the NPA meetings to try to get on their schedules I think that several of them are coming together in October earlier in the process already for the joint committee and certainly the committee process is set up with an intent to be iterative so that we can prepare materials for you take your and the public's feedback and then present information to you that's responsive to those discussions and that input we also will note that and I know for those of you that have been part of a joint committee process before we will be taking lots of public input during those meetings as well so like any of our planning commission meetings or ordinance committee meetings there will always be an opportunity for public comment at the beginning of every meeting and I would anticipate that you will hear from many people as a part of this process so just wanted to speak to those details thank you so much Megan Councillor Councillor Carpenter thanks just a couple of observations we of course want as much public input as possible and I think that will be incumbent on us as councillors to make sure that our neighbors know when these hearings they're not as used to going to planning commission meetings so I think we need to do our part and making sure people get out there and give us our opinion and I also just want to observe that I think the most controversial part of this conversation we've already agreed to which is that we want to allow more development on single family lots I actually think that ordinance planning part of it isn't going to be as difficult once we get over the fact that it's okay to put a second or third dwelling on the house next door to you and so I think in terms of the input that we're going to get and we need the conversation we in fact have sort of agreed to that and I think it's going to be really important to be clear to the public that the new legislation by the state has really overridden so even if I don't think I want a duplex next door I don't want a second house next door you're going to have it required to do that and so just getting that message out to the public I think will be really important as we proceed and then deal with the language about frontage and side yard setbacks and all that kind of stuff so thanks thanks very much Councillor Carpenter if there are no others we have a motion and a second seeing no other comments will go to a vote those in favour of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously with our thanks very much to Director Tuttle and Planner Morgan for being here and more to come great thank you very much our next item is 6.2 which was item 5.3 an update on initial receipt and obligations of the nationwide settlement of opioid money Councillor Grant you had requested this item be removed from consent and placed on deliberative did you want to offer if you could offer some comments on your reason for doing so I know the Mayor is prepared to answer questions if you have them or if you want to offer any general comments and then we'll go to the full council sure thank you so the Public Safety Committee the last two meetings we've been disgusting steps that we need to take as a council and also as residents of the city to really communicate more about what we're seeing with regards to the drug crisis and part of what needs to improve is the communication so I do appreciate that this was discussed in the Board of Finance meeting that is a meeting that a lot of residents don't actually watch unfortunately and I just think and I know I've talked about this before that anything that is in reference to what the city is doing to help combat substance abuse disorder in the city we need to be talking about it as a council because we've just quite frankly not been doing that so when I was looking through things on the consent agenda and let's all be honest sometimes things get buried in the consent agenda the average Burlington resident who may watch the meetings doesn't go through and read everything in the consent agenda so when I noticed this this really needs to be deliberative and have a few words spoken about it and then afterwards I just had a couple of suggestions with regards to how the opioid funds are being tracked thank you thank you very much Councilor Grant Mayor Weinberger did you wish to speak to this sure I'd be happy to President Paul I appreciate Councilor Grant's effort to raise attention to this I do think this is an important action that we are asking the council to take tonight the memo from myself and our CAO before you is really there's I think two important elements to it one it is an update on where we stand with respect to collecting substantial settlement dollars from a variety of different lawsuits that have been taking place and the city has been in one form or another a party to this is amidst the backdrop of absolutely heartbreaking and devastating and growing drug crisis this is probably the most significant piece of potentially positive news is that new resources are flowing to the city and the state for this fight the memo that we have posted tonight details three agreements that the city has started to receive some settlement dollars from to summarize we have received so far $220,000 and $651 in opioid settlement money to date we are expecting an additional $182,598 to be received over the course of FY24 we the second really significant part of this communication and there's really the action that we're requesting is that we make a further commitment of these dollars past city council actions and administration actions have already committed about $155,000 to date that the money has largely been committed to the support of the city's community staff effort this is the effort that the city makes to organize the various different treatment law enforcement housing and other professionals that work on one aspect or another of the opioid crisis the drug crisis the city convenes a monthly meeting on that we have a staffer and Scott Pavak who devotes a very substantial amount of time to the organizing of this regional meeting and past council actions have committed those dollars what we are proposing tonight is that an additional $75,000 be committed to the Vermonters for criminal justice reform this is the organization that has gotten some media attention for the services that they've added here in downtown over the last year that have succeeded in getting into treatment approximately 150 new individuals that were not previously receiving treatment they're working very hard in the justice-involved community as we know there are significant numbers of people who are being released from prison have drug opioid use disorder and this agency is actively working with those individuals and linking them to a variety of different services and has had real success with that as a result of that success we have given them the council may recall a two prior significant appropriations to VCJR one from the ARPA funds the community funds that we committed together and the other from prior CDBG dollars as recommended by our advisory committee this would be the third substantial investment since we really were the lead funder initially significant other funders have come on board and are now including the VM Medical Center as well as the Ben and Jerry's Foundation frustratingly despite direct action by the legislature to try to encourage to really attempt through the limited mechanisms that the legislature usually employs to fund almost directly the VCJR there was something close to an earmark for them two budgets ago up until now the Vermont Department of Health and the state agency of human services has yet to provide any financial support to this agency which is really one of the few bright spots in our current opioid crisis response drug crisis response so we will keep working and I know a number of members of the legislature are committed to keep working to see that address ultimately this is the type of program that must be funded by the state to be sustainable it's not something that I think the city of Burlington will be able to do on its own long term or even with the other philanthropic funders or smaller funders that we've assembled but I think it's important especially at this stage of the crisis that we keep this program going and that we make this appropriation until there is more support on the state the state administration for this funding so I hope that's helpful, happy to answer further questions on it. Thank you Mayor Weinberger Councillor Grant did you have anything else you wanted to add before I go to the full council? You know I might have some questions later I'll let any other councillors who have any questions go ahead thank you. Okay thanks very much so that we'll open this discussion to the full council for any questions or comments are there any councillors that have any comments to offer on this report I guess that may Councillor Shannon and then we'll go to the Mayor I just wanted to thank Councillor Grant for putting this on the deliberative agenda I too saw it thought about doing it didn't but you did so thank you I think the Mayor's review of this was helpful to the understanding I support it but I think that we all maybe need to have this more in the front of our mind that the back of our mind and having it on deliberative helps do that thanks. Thank you very much Councillor Shannon Mayor Weinberger did you want the floor back? I appreciate that President Paul I did I wanted to see a couple more things about this I failed to finish one it's apparent in the memo but I want to just lay out the math here with this commitment we will have actually made we will basically have committed $230,000 of our opioid settlement funds which is really all of the funds that we've received up until now plus a little bit more and I do expect that we will come back to the council working with interested councillors to make further commitments soon so that essentially as soon as this money is coming in from these settlements we are deploying it my belief is we are in a major crisis with respect to drugs right now and need to be acting as quickly and as decisively as possible to make new actions to make new interventions to try to turn this around and these funds should be deployed as quickly as we can once we receive them I want to note that is also there is a much larger pot of settlement dollars 70% of all the settlement dollars that come into the state are money that is administered by state governments not local governments and to the city has been active both I and Scott Pavek are serving on this settlement committee that makes recommendations to the governor and the legislature about how the states settlement funds should be used and we along it's a statewide committee that involves about a dozen other people that committee made recommendations in February of this year which were acted upon and passed by the legislature in advance well in advance of the budget in early May they wanted to give the state agencies the ability to deploy this money as quickly as possible not for to have it wait until the full budget passed and not to have it wait until the new fiscal year began in July and we appreciated that action by the legislature and they essentially more or less endorsed and appropriated all of the recommendations that the committee had made which touched on a variety of topics which I won't review entirely here but some of the big ones being expanded access to methadone the main treatment drug that we have that is effective again even in this fentanyl age expanded outreach the expanded use of contingency management we had our most recent opioid settlement committee meeting about three weeks ago and it was really quite surprising and disappointing to hear at that meeting from Dr. Levine and the Vermont Department of Health that it certainly appeared that none of the eight and a half million dollars that had been appropriated by the legislature in May has yet been committed and in many cases it sounded like the agency was only at the very preliminary stages of figuring out how this money will ultimately be spent and again given the crisis that we're currently facing I think that's we need much firmer, more decisive action to get this money out and have it start to have an impact on people's lives not only is it the eight and a half million that was already appropriated that has not yet been committed but we also learned at that meeting for the first time that although we had been encouraged to make about ten million dollars of recommendations the state at this point has actually received 23 and a half million dollars so it's not just the eight and a half million that they have full legislative authority to invest that has not been taken action on there is another what is that 15 million dollars that is languishing right now when it could be available to be helping people, saving lives and improving conditions in our cities and around the state that there's no mechanism to get out on the street thank you Mayor Weinberger Councillor Shannon I apologize as this sits on the floor I do think of questions is this money that I mean I think that as we face this challenge we are not being effective currently I don't think anybody can look at what's going on in this city and feel like we are effectively dressing the problem we need to be thinking out of the box we need to do things differently and I wish I could say that I had the answer if anybody at the table has the answer I hope they will raise their hands but as this money is being passed over from the city to a non-profit I understand generally what the non-profit does but is it earmarked in any particular way for the city how this money is going to be used how it's going to benefit people who are here in Burlington as opposed to all across the state so the $75,000 we're talking about tonight this is a Burlington based organization that is the offices are here a couple of blocks from here and I believe a hundred percent of the people that they are providing help to are living in Chittenden County I don't have the numbers right in front of me but I think within that a great majority of those are either living or frequently in Burlington so I think the council can be confident that and what is this money going into it is going to linking people to traditional forms of opioid treatment so buprenorphine or methadone access it is also what this BCJR has gotten some praise and attention for is being one of the pioneers of contingency management treatment which is the only known sort of science based treatment for stimulant users and it has been providing this contingency management treatment actually performing some contingency management services treatment from their offices in a way that is pioneering and offers the possibility of not just being a stimulant treatment but also for people who are using stimulants and opioids simultaneously so this is going directly into trying to help people who are struggling with drug use issues here in Burlington and there is significant early data to suggest this is promising I certainly agree councilor Shannon with the suggestion that you can't look at what is happening and think that we are as a you can't think we are on the right path with where things are going right now you can't see that both with what you see on the street and with what we see in the numbers in terms of the huge increase in overdoses and overdose deaths I do think it is really important not to draw from that the conclusion that the efforts that we have invested in and made for years are not having any effect working we know in fact that the overdose death rates here in chinan county continue to be well below what they are in numerous other parts of the state we on a number of metrics are doing better than parts of the state that are not making as many efforts as we are I think from my perspective this is a situation where we are not taking the actions we are we are not supporting the groups that we are had we not built the infrastructure that we have for opioid use treatment we would be seeing even more suffering than we are currently I do think we do need dramatic additional actions and that's why it's so important that's why I would make the point I made earlier that we have this substantial amounts of funds available to state leaders that are not yet deployed and I think where we are not seeing the same sense of urgency that new initiatives need to be pursued as quickly impossible as possible in the face of this evolving and worsening drug crisis there's a moment not very long ago 2018-2019 we actually were headed in the right direction we were seeing overdose deaths come down and property crimes come down we are clearly in a different moment and now Burlington is trying to respond to that with that understanding we need state and federal government to be responding with that same focus and urgency just a quick question how is the money distributed are other what other communities are receiving this money is every town in Vermont receiving it only the cities is it kind of by county the answer to that is a little bit complicated Councillor Shannon I don't think I'm not Burlington gets its own direct allocation that's substantially larger than any other municipal direct allocation I think other municipalities went through a process of electing to receive that kind of population based it wasn't entirely population based it was also there were some other measurements of impacts so if you are interested in sort of follow up we could get you a report describing what other municipalities are receiving again my understanding the rough breakdown is that approximately 70% of the settlement funds go to the state and need to be appropriated by the legislature 30% are going to municipalities and are divided up by just about every municipality that can establish some impact and that wants to receive some of these direct funds interestingly and I think importantly this is a very different way of distributing settlement funds than happened with for example the tobacco settlement funds in the past where municipalities were not involved at all in the way those settlement funds they received no direct monies or very limited direct monies in the way that I'm describing to you that we have that is a seat at the table that is required by the settlement out of recognition from attorneys generals like our past attorney general TJ Donovan that the lack of local involvement in the past settlements has been missed opportunity and has resulted in probably less impactful action municipalities have been given this seat this time to make sure that that the money is spent in a way that has an impact and we're working hard to make good on that concept. Thank you councillor Shannon we'll go to councillor McGee and then councillor Grant. Thank you President Paul. I had some remarks that I was planning to give during council general affairs but they're related to the opioid crisis so I figured this is a fine item to share them so I'll do that now. I know that we all hear from constituents on a weekly and sometimes daily basis about the many heartbreaking ways that the opioid epidemic is impacting our community. We're no strangers to this epidemic in con toys and years that I've been on the council we've talked about at length about harm reduction and we've passed two resolutions acknowledging the grim reality we face as overdose numbers that climb year after year and yet we sit here tonight just over halfway through 2023 with the numbers of overdose related calls higher than all of 2022. In fact this past weekend the Burlington fire department saw a 48 hour period where they were responding to an overdose every hour in fact almost more than one overdose every hour in recent years this worsening epidemic has permeated every area of the city forcing staff across multiple departments not just those trained as first responders to become social workers to reverse overdoses in our parks, in our libraries and in other city public spaces all of this evidence that we all of this is evidence that we need to lean all in on harm reduction a concept that we have discussed at length but one which we have not come close to fully realizing here in Vermont I know that we've talked about it a lot here and there are a lot of barriers on the state level and the federal level to us actually pursuing many of these innovative evidence based life saving solutions but we can't stop talking about it we have to talk about it at every meeting and so that's why I was glad to join the public safety committee last week and discuss a resolution that would have the drug crisis, the opioid crisis the overdose crisis as an emergency stated as an emergency and on every council agenda I think that is important and I hope that's something that we act on very soon we have taken significant steps within our authority to support harm reduction to date and I'm grateful that we're talking about this on the deliberative agenda I was planning to give the city credit and thank the mayor for the allocation to BCJR I think that program is one of the most innovative things that we have going on right now and it's shown a lot of promise so I'm grateful for that work and I understand that there's growing frustration in our community about the negative ripple effect we're seeing as a result of this crisis however we can't hide the myriad of ways in which society is leaving people behind by arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating those who are suffering lack of housing substance use disorders and mental health crises will not be solved by the criminal legal system 10 people have died in Vermont prisons this year these are not facilities fit for finding recovery, redaining stability, or seeking mental health treatment we're standing at a fork in the road we can choose to revert back to law approach one that has been proven time and again to cause more harm or we can continue to make a conscious choice to pursue evidence based people oriented policies that will save lives help people find recovery and stability and begin to heal our communities some may say that what I've just outlined is an unachievable utopia but it's not we have the capacity to come together from a place of compassion and demand federal governments reverse decades of harmful war on drug policies to save lives and to make our communities healthier so I'll close tonight close my remarks with a direct plea to our state representatives our state senators and to the governor that they do everything necessary to come back to Montpelier in January and pass age 71 a bill that would authorize overdose prevention centers here over one and move that swiftly through the legislative process because we don't have time to wait people are dying right now thank you thank you counselor McGee we'll go to counselor Grant and then perhaps to a motion thank you and thank you counselor agree McGee I agree with everything that you just said it's definitely been something that has come up in discussion in the last two public safety committee meetings I have really been extremely frustrated I guess it's a very nice way to put it over our lack of movement on this issue and lack of communication with the residents of Burlington I think that's as a council is a really huge problem our number one problem that we need to address and even without that resolution we can we can start to do that now by making sure what is going on is being talked about it isn't informing is informing people so I think the mayor that that was some of the additional questions I had was about how the the money is not moving in fact it's been stalled and we had a little bit of a heated conversation about this because I was concerned about the mayor being involved in that meeting and getting that information but not getting that information out to council and maybe not the next day maybe not two days but certainly for something that was three weeks ago with a major crisis in our city or the major crisis in our city or right now the council we need to be notified so we can be talking to our residents and so I would ask as the mayor continues to attend these various meetings that if you can be more conscious of making sure that we are being informed promptly so that we we know what's going on I feel like I just worry about treating people like they don't know what's going on but we're not telling people what's going on that there's there's a certain lack of fairness there so I just wanted those thoughts to be out and I appreciate the update I believe the residents of Burlington appreciate the update thank you thanks very much councilor grant councilor grant would you like to move the item with a recommended action on a civic clerk sure let me find it I move to authorize it go ahead it's a long motion but if you want to summarize I think we're we allow that so I would move part one to authorize and approve moving all opioid settlement agreement money received to date and all forthcoming into a signed fund balance labeled opioid money and then authorize and approve the earmarking of the expenditure $75,000 of opioid settlement money to support VCJR thank you is that permissible attorney Pellerin great thank you so much seconded by councilor McGee any further discussion any discussion on the motion seeing none will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously and with that we have completed our deliberative agenda we have just a few more items left to complete on our agenda the first is item seven which is committee reports are there counselors who wish to offer committee reports does not councillor travers thank you president ball councillor shannon did flag it but the ordinance committee is going to be quite busy here over the next couple months in part because we are continuing our meetings jointly with the charter change committee to address police community oversight we held a brief meeting last week to discuss meeting schedule in an attempt to sort of put pen to paper on a proposal if there is common ground in that joint committee there are four meetings that have been set up over the next month we are meeting at the moment on September 25th at 7pm on October 3rd at 7pm on October 18th at 7pm and on November 1st at 5.30pm with the intention again being that if we are able to find some common ground here on our proposal to bring back to the council including potentially a charter change if necessary that we will bring that back in time for that to occur on the timetable necessary for our next town meeting day thank you great thank you very much councillor travers any other councillors councillor grant you have your hand raised I don't know if that's from before or now nope it is now just to as we mentioned earlier and just to mention again the public safety committee will be working on the resolution so we have kind of two resolutions that we are going to be lack of a better word kind of merging the best elements of both resolutions to bring forth to our next meeting which I know that councillor president paul you are working on hoping to get us scheduled for that and it's just going to be very important for the residents of burlington to be involved in understanding what this resolution is and also to be involved in participating in advocating for the city of burlington and the state legislature in a way that we haven't done before thank you thanks very much I continue with what councillor grant said we are hoping to have a public safety meeting sometime next week it would be there the 19th 20th or 21st of September just waiting for confirmation from committee members as to their availability so we will have another council meeting next monday and be able to announce a public safety meeting next week if there are no other committee reports we will move on to item 8 which is city council general city affairs are there councillors who wish to offer comments on general city affairs councillor shannon thank you president paul I wanted to speak to the meeting our last meeting and note a few things one is the members of the public were asking this body how are you going to keep us safe and I think that that was a fair question I think it's a question for all of us how are we going to keep the public that comes into this room safe how are we going to keep ourselves safe and how are we going to assure that the speakers who come to speak before us get there for minutes of time no matter how offensive what they say may be the meeting had certain elements of physicality to me in that people stood, rose up they literally rose up one member of the public felt entitled to walk up to the person speaking on the microphone I think that that happens in an absence of a feeling that there is order in this room and I think it behooves all of us this cannot fall just to you council president paul it behooves all of us to be considering this our world is increasingly a less safe place as is our community and I hope that we come out of that learning something one thing that we didn't do in that meeting was the discuss the thing that was intended to be discussed which was a report about potential misspending in a city department it was one that in my opinion was long overdue when a department is budgeted for $100,000 for an event spends over $400,000 noting that there was also an additional $100,000 of private fund raising that raises questions and when you are spending public money you should expect public scrutiny I don't think it was unreasonable for us to do that and I think the public deserves to hear what was in the report that we paid good money for but we didn't feel comfortable in this room and I admittedly I did not feel comfortable myself in discussing that report we should never feel that way again we need to do the business of this city we need to not feel intimidated and we need to figure out a way to have control of this room in difficult times we had a speaker tonight that came and to me kind of sounded like they were slandering a private citizen at this table and that's not what public forum is for so we've always been really lenient and kind of let people talk about anything under the sun that is not the requirement of the law forum is that people are able to address our agenda items at this meeting maybe people want to continue letting people talk about everything under the sun but that gives me pause after what I heard tonight thank you thank you Councillor Shannon I took my eye away from the screen so I'm not sure Councillor Grant if you have your hand up again my apologies okay alright alright I'm trying to there's a few things a lot of what happened at the last meeting there were multiple issues at play there was the report and then there was some racism and I think a lot of what we saw and what we've seen in the history of our country especially in the last few years after the murder of George Floyd is a reaction to the racism to the anger so two different issues it's not about talking about the report it's about if you want to look at how the money was spent for 2022 I'm excited to do that but the way we did it there were problems with that like before there is a report we have put out in the window we have implied wrongdoing before it was even started for someone who wasn't even here for the 2022 event now my name was mentioned in that report and what really upset me and really showed me the sloppiness of the report was you're going to have my name mentioned about not having an invoice and then someone's going to question if I can speak on the issue when I wasn't even a city counselor back in 2022 you should have just come and asked why isn't your name on the why are you there what is this with you having a missing invoice no one came to me and asked me that did you ask any of the other mostly BIPOC people it's not all BIPOC people who were being point out for missing an invoice so there was this basic work not done on this report because I would have said I didn't do an invoice that's why there was a missing invoice so then what would have been the next question right well why didn't you do an invoice because I was given a contract and probably most of the other people there that fell under that category of performers were given contracts to sign so then the question is who was the city's signer was in Tahitian Green and when I went through my emails I believe the Tahitian Greens last day was March 9th, March 10th no one reached out to me about participating in 2022 to April 11th so I would assume and someone should be asking all the performers is that all the same thing and it was done through a local music venue they were doing the contract I reached out to them and I was like hey what happened with these stuff I'm the one asking these questions I wasn't asking this report so there's just a way that you should do things to be decent and to be honorable and to be respectful and these things weren't done because a black woman who came here to fight for equity in our city was being punished for that because as we see across this country people say they want to do the right thing but when they're told what the right thing is well it's easier to say than done so it's not just about the report it's about the racism and it's about the anger and it's about understanding as I mentioned in the last meeting that we took our cues from a city and we did have someone who spoke in public forum earlier just a minor correction to what they said the city of Minneapolis did not do an audit it was not an audit and it has a disclaimer in the report itself that says very clearly we want you to know this isn't an audit and just we just have to be careful and we're not and I think also if we are concerned about giving people their their right to speak which I fully support if we reach our hour and a half and we have to take a vote to allow it to continue we should all be voting yes if that's what we believe thank you thank you very much Councillor Hightower at the risk of repeating myself I do think a few things I guess in concern to last meeting I do again like I don't I think folks in the city those of us up here are allowed to be under public scrutiny but I think it's extremely problematic to associate someone with an event that they did not manage and then basically make them a scapegoat for any problems that did happen because of their departure and because so many people left in support of their departure and then to talk negatively or badly about them when the report found no wrongdoing that was we did that badly we published a bad report we let that get out into the public and then even though the report was somewhat clear at the end if you read it very carefully a lot of people misread that or talked about it in a way that was problematic and the anger was justified and I think that's the other thing it's like public scrutiny is fine but public scrutiny should be applied equal not public scrutiny but like investigation is fine but it should be applied equally to everyone which I don't think is what happened that's not how the city has been operating it has not been applied equally to everyone and then I think the I do I think we owe Todd an apology for what happened but I think we should be cut off I think it's one thing for the council president to take the role of adjusting people as she has done but it's another thing to not be allowed to finish which I don't think he was so that was an unfortunate moment and but I think some of the the rhetoric around fear that being called racist it's like no I think a lot of people who used that word used it very thoughtfully and when we treat one employee differently than we do all the other employees and we don't have a reason for that other than their advocacy that seems racist to me and I don't think that being I think that the idea that we should shouldn't be subjected to be calling racist when we're being racist is problematic and that we have such fear of that that we don't want we don't want to be scrutinized for our actions and how they reflect and then the I do think that it is problematic it's like we've had so many contentious meetings we had contentious anti-masking meetings we had contentious meetings and I just feel like nobody's talked about fear as much as when a group of especially like predominantly black women came into this room many with their children and we're rightfully upset and we're like that is terrifying and that shouldn't be allowed to happen and I don't I'm not saying that everything in that meeting should have happened but the the fear that folks talked about before the meeting even happened and then afterwards I think that's problematic I'll leave it there thank you thank you councilor hightower we're still on item on number eight which is general council city council general city affairs are there any other councils who wish to offer comments on general city affairs seeing seeing none will continue with item number nine which is council president updates I have no updates at this time we have another we have a meeting in a week which doesn't offer a lot of turnaround time but I I will be in touch with with all of you on that agenda very shortly that brings us to the final item of the evening which is item 10 updates from the mayor mayor Weinberger the floor is yours thank you president paul I do have a number of updates I was hoping to share with the council and the public I appreciate president paul that he started the meeting with a moment of silence for the 22nd anniversary of 9-11 I was living in New York City 22 years ago and Washington through most of the day Stacy was working about 20 blocks north of the building so the state's always one of reflection for me and I want to share that our fire department found a new way that the department plans to honor the memory of what happened on 9-11 in that they about 15 members of the department hiked up twice Mount Filo in full gear in full firefighting gear today in that that is approximately the amount of vertical distance of the twin towers and chief the chancellor reported this this morning I think it's something that the department plans to repeat in the future on happier note the city was thrilled to once again host the pride parade and festival this past Sunday from all the accounts I've heard it went very smoothly and positively the we also had completed the 31st art hop and every all the accounts I've heard was that that too despite having deal on Friday night with unexpected major thunderstorm was a very successful event once again and I want to thank the organizers for both events for making these wonderful events happen here in the city of Burlington looking ahead to an event that's taking place this week the wanted to update the council and the public on the Moran frame there's been events throughout the summer as we've talked about before using the frame really for the first time for recreational events this summer on primarily through movie nights that have taken place on Thursdays throughout the summer there is one more Thursday night event I believe it's Thursday coming up on September 29th this is the opening of an art exhibit at the Friday night the 29th this is known as blue alchemy and the insulation has been going in you can actually see the insulation starting to go in at the frame now we also have started the work on phase two with the council approval or the other summer for a design contract for phase two that planning effort is underway people may have seen these postcards that have been distributed around the city in a variety of ways soliciting input for what people want to see in the public there is also an opportunity this Wednesday at 5.30 for the public to give input to our design team on that second phase so there is going to be a tour of the site, a discussion there is also going to be free food and would encourage the public to consider attending again that's Wednesday the 13th of September from 5.30 to 7 and then finally I know the council and the public cares a great deal about our efforts to rebuild the Burlington police department and did want to offer several updates here we do currently have five recruits at the academy another large class coming off a large class at the beginning of the year as well these are the two largest classes that we've had in a number of years and while there's always a risk and not infrequently we do not everyone who starts the academy finishes it the reports are getting so far are positive about this year's class we also have had two new laterals from other police departments who come already certified have begun their work for the police department and further strengthened the ranks so we are again basically on track with the rebuilding plan for officers that was laid out at the beginning of last fiscal year so in June of 2022 we are in the process of hiring for the city positions for BTV cares we've posted a couple of times those positions and so anyone who we have not filled those positions yet and we welcome the council's help, other partners help in getting the word out about these new and important opportunities at the city and then finally I wanted to share with Gus I think we are close to hiring the new position for the CAPE program the assistant director level position there are finalist interviews happening in the coming days on that so hope to have an appointment to announce there shortly that is my update for this week President Paul thank you for the opportunity thank you so much Mayor Weinberger thanks for that update that brings us to the end of our agenda I would ask for a motion to adjourn so moved I can always count on you Councillor McKee thank you seconded by Councillor Barlow all those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye any opposed please say no that means that passes unanimously and we are adjourned at 8.35 thanks so much for joining us this evening and as I had said our next meeting will be next Monday September 18th and we will look forward to seeing you then have a nice evening