 Well thank you everybody for coming here tonight, thank you Melissa for facilitating our space here at the Miller Center tonight and thank you Town Hall Meeting TV for covering us. There is not really like a formal agenda, we just mostly want to talk about the ballot questions, answer any questions, raise any concerns, I know there's a couple of speakers here tonight but if you also want to get on the stack if you want to present please feel free, I feel like everybody mostly are on the same like chapter at least like in terms of the ballot questions, if not so raise your concerns or questions and also it would be great to hear from people who live here like how we can have a bigger presence and just kind of packed strategy of going into Town Meeting Day, how we can win especially the petition backed ballot questions but I know there's like some concerns about the other questions that number two I believe was the one that Nick will be speaking about so I'm going to start with Nick and turn it over. Can I make one request or suggestion as I think one thing that would be helpful because we've been hearing like a lot of great presentations, I think a really good use of time could be with the police oversight board specifically to address some of the frequent and common misconceptions could be a great use of time. I also have like some updates about that I will share, I just spoke to the former chair now Jabu Lani who I spoke to and there's like actually some information I did not know before that I would like to share with the group so but number two first. Thank you Fareed. Hi I'm Nick Persampieri can you all hear me through this mask? Great. That's for the recording. I live in Burlington near downtown and I've been working with a group called Stop Vermont Biomass and we're an informal group that's just come together recently. We're really committed to doing something about climate change. We're also concerned about air pollution, public health generally, as well as the protection of our forests and the biodiversity of our forests and I'm here tonight to ask you to vote no on question number two on the town meeting day ballot. That question is about what's called a carbon impact fee and when if you read the question it sounds like a really good thing that you might consider supporting. It asks you to allow the city to impose a fee on fossil fuel heating systems and the fee wouldn't be imposed on fossil fuel heating systems installed in new construction as well as in existing large commercial and industrial buildings when they replace their heating systems with a fossil fuel system. So it sounds like something that's good because as we all know burning fossil fuels is really bad for climate change. It's polluting but the problem is the question as framed is misleading. It says that we will impose a fee on fossil fuel heating systems and not on renewable systems. Again that sounds good but they don't tell you in the question what the city considers to be renewable and there are three different types of heating that the city considers to be renewable that will not be subject to the fee and all three of those are bad for the climate and for public health and for our forests. Those three types of heating systems are biomass so heating based on burning wood, biofuels and also something called renewable natural gas. Burning biomass for heating is horrific from a climate standpoint especially if you're doing it to generate electricity. Burning wood puts more carbon dioxide into the air per unit of power generated than burning any fossil fuel including coal. Burlington Electric considers burning wood to be carbon neutral but that's just flat wrong. They claim that it's carbon neutral because although you're putting CO2 into the air the trees that you cut down and burn will eventually regrow and absorb the carbon that you've put into the air. The problem is that that takes many years on the order of 70 to more than 100 years for the tree regrowth to make up for the CO2 that's going into the air so that we just don't have that much time to save our climate. Burning wood is also done in pellet stoves and we don't want to be incentivizing that either because it's bad from an air quality standpoint. It's bad from an indoor air quality standpoint. The American Lung Association recommends that you avoid using a pellet stove for heating and biofuels are problematic because again burning them generates fossil fuels, generates greenhouse gases and it's also responsible for displacing land that's used for crop production. Renewable natural gas is gas that is collected from landfills and from farms and it's the same thing basically as natural gas. It's methane so that also has climate impacts and it's polluting when you generate it and burn it for heat do you have a question? So what happens if we vote no will they have to go back and to the and to the drawing board and present a new plan like what's the consequence of like out voting no or if we actually get rejected by voters. So if this is rejected then there won't be any fee placed on fossil fuel heating systems and the city does have an ordinance in place that requires primary heating systems to be renewable so that would still be on the books. The status quo is preferable to what's being proposed. So the status quo is not good either because there's an ordinance in place that requires these so-called renewable systems to be used in new construction and again these renewable systems the so-called renewable systems are not good so regardless so we need to get that ordinance changed and that's something that we plan to work on. So an ordinance change like doesn't require the charter change to this like the one being proposed right now. Okay. Right and so the problem with putting a fee on fossil fuel heating systems but not on these so-called renewable false climate solutions is that you're incentivizing those false climate solutions and that's not a good thing. So for those reasons I ask you to vote no on question number two. And any website we should check out or how do we get more information? We do have a website. I have some materials I can distribute to you. Does anyone have any questions? Okay. And Dan Castrigano is working with us. He lives in the neighborhood here. Can you tell us or explain what happens to biomass that's created relatively recently in other words not that's created a million years ago. What happens to that biomass if it's not burned? What happens to the carbon in it if it's not burned? Well it depends what type of vegetation you're talking about trees. Any vegetation? Well trees grow to be very old and the older they are the more carbon they absorb. Yeah and then when the tree dies and a very small percentage of that tree is very small percentage is sequestered and will in a million years become some oil or some coal or some kind of fossil fuel for somebody a million years from now. But what happens to the 99.99 of that tree that isn't sequestered what happens to the carbon in that tree when it dies and when it decays? Well some of it goes into the atmosphere. All of it does. But that happens over many many years and if you cut the trees down now it goes into the air now rather than at the end of the tree's lifespan. I just want to point out what is the fundamental difference what the fundamental problem with carbon you know our CO2 problem that the 359 or whatever that thing the 350 parts per million thing is that over millions of years in the regular life cycle on the planet and there's all this carbon and their dinosaurs whatever they're dying their their carcasses decay almost all of it goes right back into the atmosphere but over millions of years that's tiny tiny little percentage of that carbon didn't go back in the atmosphere and it got sequestered and buried and more buried and more buried in top then it gets compressed and you know turns into shale and coal then it gets compressed more eventually becomes oil. What we're doing in 200 years since like 1800 or even 1750 what we're doing is we're releasing into the atmosphere carbon that was sequestered over millions and millions of years suddenly over a 200 year period and that's causing us our problem but burning wood from the forest is not it is six of one half a dozen of another burning wood from the forest is going to return the same carbon to the air that the wood rotting would return to the air. Except it does it much more quickly. No but no it's a it's a it's a steady state system there's a everybody it returns it right away but what difference does it make if you're returning all this carbon in the air in this hour and then over the many years the same wood same exact wood would return that carbon to the air anyway along with all this other wood it is in the net scheme the same it's the same amount of carbon that goes into the air. Yeah we gotta move off. Well you know your view is contrary to the latest scientific thing. Actually I'm an electrical engineer with a PhD. That's all I'll say. I know energy systems and I understand this very very well. We got until 730 you wanted to say something about RCV. Oh thank you. I don't know I don't want to get an argument again. Okay well I don't know how I'm going to vote on two. Yeah okay so I was like okay I don't know how I'm going to vote on two. In three minutes okay so I will I would like I would like material. I can't even tell you how to vote on question six which is the RCV question. I don't even know how I'm going to vote on it. I am somebody who is in favor of ranked choice voting but I want it done right and we have a special history here in Burlington about it because we've had ranked choice voting about 14 years ago and and and 17 years ago and and something happened and anomaly happened which is actually kind of historical because this anomaly has happened only in Burlington in 2009 and then it happened again in Alaska last August in 2022 and but I I don't want to get in the nitty-gritty details about that. I just want to say that the the organization is promoting ranked choice voting and they they have names their name is fair vote and the other one is VPurg. They are in marketing mode they are not in product development mode they will not be completely honest with you and honest with themselves about problems when they come up and they will downplay them as best as they can. Turns out fair vote has a competitive organization called the Center for Election Sciences and they promote they have a product though they're trying to sell approval voting and Fargo North Dakota and St. Louis, Missouri adopted that and it's different than ranked choice voting it also has problems they also won't be honest about their product but there are scholars that are trying to be honest about ranked choice voting what is important about it what can be done right and what isn't and I've been interfacing with them and I'm the only Burlington resident that isn't it so they kind of like me because I'm here in this city where this historical failure of instant runoff voting happened anyway I'm not going to go into the details that we don't have time there's one other issue and it has to do with process transparency and elections for as somebody who's worked in the elections and we have other folks that have worked in elections um one of the most important things that happens at the end of the election day is when the last person votes they put their ballot in the machine and then they're done and then we press a button on the machine we do something and the machine prints out a ticker tape with the vote totals for that polling place and those vote totals we post in the back of the room right over there and candidates come in the media comes in they look at those vote totals that are on the ticker tape and they can add them to the corresponding vote totals from other polling places like ward four ward three like if it was a a state race that transcended more than one ward you can add those numbers together and you can know who wins you lose that with this wrong way of doing ranked choice voting the way that they're promoting you if if somebody does not win in the first round then it goes into opaquely the ballots are transported opaquely to the central tabulation location that's city hall in our case but if ranked choice voting goes statewide it's going to be Montpelier and you might have noticed in alaska when they've had ranked choice voting just this last november they didn't announce results until the day before thanksgiving took them 15 days to announce results there's a reason for that you have to centralize the vote even though computers are fast you still got to get all the ballot data securely transported and it's it's maybe securely transported but not opaque are not transparently it's opaquely transported we don't know what's going on until they announce it's all a central place there's no double checking of the results and the reason why this is important is and i will quote this abomination uh i'd just like to find uh 11 780 uh votes now what if that secretary of state in georgia was corrupt oh well add a few votes into this pile and add a few votes into this other city and add a few votes and they might dig up 11 000 votes for donald trump but they can't do that if you post the results you publish them at each polling location on election night and we will lose that with the wrong kind of ranked choice voting which is what's coming but the state the state legislature pulled out the type of ranked choice voting out of the current charter change that we have down for the city councils and they will again and i am on i'm taking my fight to the state house and so i don't even know how to vote on on number six yeah i i i don't i i might vote ye for it i'm actually for my choice voting but i wanted to yeah you know and i don't want people to lie about it and that's what happened in city hall when jack handsome reintroduced it uh because the original one they said well we're gonna try this out first before we go to the mayor and they didn't try it out first can can you leave your contact information so people who have questions can uh can get in touch with you okay yeah they won't let other people from other npa come here though they're not very friendly um they're not they ban me yeah no i mean as like i grew up in the country where it's so efficient we know the result of the election six months in advance efficiency right so let's uh we uh we're a little behind time here i want to open it up for is taylor still here taylor oh yeah so we got question seven and question eight uh anybody know is anybody voting no on this thing like let's hear let's hear uh the no voters so number seven is the community control of the police independent community oversight and and i don't know marco you're like you live here like i want to i want to hear what your neighbors or what you're hearing from your neighbors uh or folks who live here like it's i do north end perspective yeah well i mean i they ban me from the facebook group because i don't live here um and and me too yeah and i don't you know what it's like in my my neighborhood is pretty bad like i'm in ward five and it's so hard to talk to people about um either either of this number seven or number eight everybody wants the police more police and um people even who were like who did not like uh the police they got broken into and they just flipped right away it's like my house was broken into i'm now gonna like vote no on like number seven um um so i would be interested in like hearing what like what folks uh who live here have to say um or what their your neighbors are are are saying that we we particularly should address um well you know i don't i can't speak for anyone um really but myself but i know a lot of people are against it i happen to be for it and it's because i've seen it all the way from the very beginning and the development and i've watched the police commission struggle and get stronger but not have the authority to make changes and not get listened to i've seen the police get more outrageous and they think they're they're getting slicker but you know not really and um and honestly i do not trust the city so i think the community needs to have the larger role but maybe another um ward seven or ward four resident could tell you what their neighbors say but most of mine don't really get the the need for this and they don't get um the the complicated history of it and they they get the big voice from the status quo the police and the mayor saying and and the city council for uh to a great extent saying oh no that that's terrible we you don't want that so that's it's it's tricky i gotta say if i one thing that um that i found um actually changed people's mind was uh this last like scandal with the bpd around the river watch private security contract so it's it's one thing like to like to want to support the police or whatever but like when like they're taxable my neighbors like tax money are like being used to provide like people's like private security that's when i they actually flipped like i could see like in their face when like if they heard about it like they would less like yeah that's not okay and if they haven't heard about it i mentioned it and they were like tell me more about that and so it could be something that's useful in like convincing or like trying to like change change minds um and yeah word five is also pretty tough everybody there's like in on on edge i uh i'm a member of union like i know like the union i'm a member of actually is the i w w we invented what's called the wildcat strikes uh or quiet quitting now like the the kids call it or like slow down that's what it looks like to me it's like it feels like what the burlington police officer association is doing as quiet quitting it's like actually like creating this narrative that's being propagated in the city through the administration mostly of like how crime is is out of control sure well i mean honestly and then i see i see reports like the river watch contract i'm just like how perverse is that like if like you know like that then that so more crime would be good for your side gig right like that's i don't i don't want to like i can't think that i live in a city where that happens like i hope that is not true but it also wouldn't surprise me totally like if that was part of it i find it odd that i i feel like i live in the safest part of the city yeah it's the part of the city that ditches the most yeah so i mean you live you live here in uh seven and you you said like uh you've heard like some of the more common criticism of number seven so i guess what i'll i'll say i'll just try to keep my opinion out of it but what i'm what i'm hearing a lot um i don't know if it was on front porch forum today but and i think you know robber just made a really great point for the new north end is the problems that we have in the new north end are different they're different from the old north end they're different from downtown i would say you know what we're dealing up here with for crime i mean just like maybe minor vandalism um yeah so yeah yeah so i'm what i'm so i think that maybe just skews perception but so one thing that i did here on front porch forum is this this from this person's perspective is they understand definitely our police capable of really bad things in in other places yes we see that obviously that's in the news but this part from this person's perspective is they they were not aware of what behavior is happening with the police in burlington that would justify concern so um i mean obviously that that that does exist but i think that a lot of times that news maybe doesn't make it up here so maybe if you could go over those i mean i i'm happy to like listen but i do think it would be useful for the campaign to have a timeline documenting incidents yeah so we should we should definitely like you know we create like even a special website for it maybe that goes to that timeline um because there is a long history i've been here i've been in burlington and for 25 years over 25 years and i can i can tell you just like the major ones and also the many many many many times many many incidents i witnessed that was not documented in the press um so i i do think there's value in saying like you know and and honestly like even if you live here like longer than i have like sometimes you just never run into these things you know and i have a special interest as a person of color like to like to know these things because it has something to do with my survival and uh and my safety so i do pay closer attention and i and i'm like i mean i feel privileged that um that i've you know i haven't actually been like violated in any ways by by the cops uh although i have witnessed plenty treatment it's not just people of color it's also people who are homeless people who are struggling with mental health poor people i think you know that's for me like number seven the question the real question is do black lives matter do we believe victims do we think homeless people have the same dignity as people were housed that's the real question uh as far as like the legality and the process stuff it's it it has been it has been vetted by like by the city council uh one thing like that i i will mention Joan Shannon in her criticism of proposition zero which is question eight uh say that if proposition zero pass that if we had referendum and initiative it will produce more questions like the ccp uh because i think the reasons is she's saying that because it puts a lot of fear into people there's a lot of reaction against the this police control board but by applying that to proposition zero uh c is kind of tying the two questions like i don't know i don't mind like if that people would think that but i do think it's important to realize the way uh the question seven started it originated in the council the council charter commission actually created that first language um and then it was passed by the city council and then it was vetoed by the mayor so we had nothing to do with that like i mean like proposition zero we didn't we we actually wanted them to just straight up go through petition instead of the city council but in in many ways i'm glad that they didn't listen to me when when they were like starting because this is like because this this this is like important to to see what the process and to say to see how uh they have followed the process and this is the right process they started with the city council and you know and what it what questions heaven is more appropriately compared to is a referendum it's not an initiative like it's a referendum in that now like the voters are trying to override the mayor after he overrode the the council vote so just the the the fact that jones hannon who's like who's supposed to be the councilor who does her homework right like is saying that it's either like she hasn't done her homework or there's some other you know purpose in like in in confusing the public and i i think that's very unfortunate um if if our rule like people who are making the rules like don't actually follow the rules or i don't know what the rules are and that's a big big concern to me um tyler yeah so i i know i'm like kind of preaching to the choir here but i think the question about like what incidents are there is really important and important for like all of us to know how to respond to that um and yeah so for one like within the past decade or less the city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawsuits related to excessive force lawsuits and payouts for to to get officers to resign um on the website people for police accountability dot com there is a timeline that includes events of like how this proposal has moved through but also police related events like excessive uses of force and and other scandals with police chiefs um so that's a great resource um but some specific examples from recent years which we heard named over and over and over again in 2020 with the battery park movement protests where officer jason bellavance joseph coro who's the um vice president of the police union now um and cori cambell um and so if you haven't there there's public videos of those three officers two of them involve like life altering injuries to black members of our community one of them involves um a man being killed by an officer um with like escalation that was caused by the officer and and so all three of these have or there's like three or four videos that you can go view on youtube posted by vt digger of body cam footage definitely encourage people to watch them because it it's it makes the issue really clear and these are from recent years and would encourage if people are asking uh they're hard to watch but people need to see it um and yeah one of those jason bellavance after cries of the protests you know and the city realized we can't do anything only the police chief is able to do anything about this paid him three hundred thousand dollars to resign um so yeah i know a lot of you know about these already but i wonder if we uh we should create just like how when people say you know like prop zero is just like california like we get so tired of saying no we're more like vermont uh so you go to this website everyone but burlington dot com so then people could see like what we're talking about that we we compare that we have a list of the charters for every town i wonder if we could do the same for like burlington police violence dot com so then like when we come across these questions like just go to burlington police violence dot com you'll you'll see the whole list with video and links to like yeah right yeah we could link them on our website and just put warnings like that's something that's easy to remember for us to give out it's like just go to burlington police violence dot com you know i've seen the videos the bell of ounce one that was an assault to really have nasty assault yeah horrible i've seen the one the hospital one at least dog kilburn yeah yeah then i did see the video that the guy that was up in the uh cathedral square yeah bell granon yeah would that would move out yeah i didn't see that one i saw those but i um they uh one thing like i wish like we could obtain this uh footage is when they when they injected this kid who was uh you know who's like who's you know he's a special need kid you know stole some weights from like uh from a gas station and his mom called the cops to kind of teach him a lesson was right around the cop showed up and the kid was defiant like this actually he's a special need kids and they ended up injecting i don't know if you've heard about this like they actually injected the kid with ketamine and it was like it was you know what i don't i remember infinite was like kind of was one of the people first people who found out and he was trying to like help the family like there was nothing uh in the media about it until murad was getting confirmation and this was brought up and that's like when the media actually like oh okay now we're gonna like look into this story uh i just messed up i mean like where you know how are we gonna how can we trust them i think it is it is it is useful to like have like not that you know i have like a fetish for this that kind of thing but like it's like like i said it's like it concerns me because you know like i do walk i do wonder if like i'm gonna be a targeted someday um yes yeah can i add just one more thing to that question that i think is really important for new north enders to understand if you go to like the bpds publicly available data um the vast majority of police interactions and arrest and use as a force happen downtown you know those interactions aren't happening much up here it makes sense that people up here are like what what do you mean like we we hardly see the police you know because okay yeah yeah there's definitely some um but yeah you'd like open up the map of all the incidents and it's it's all downtown it's you know old north end and downtown is where where the interactions are happening um and so that that's who's experiencing this and yeah so the other common thing i hear um from the new north enders is concerns that this is a board that will just carry out an anti cop agenda and also that um how people will be selected and that it will just be a board of people with a bias against police yeah so sorry what was the the first part again was anti cop agenda yeah so yeah one thing that's really important to understand and this is part of the the kind of narrative that's being pushed against the proposal right now is that it takes away due process and that kind of thing and you know if that's the information you're being fed then like of course it's easy to believe that this is just going to be a board that's there to be anti cop and punish people for no reason um it is absolutely 100 not the case the standards for you know what what can be disciplined and due process are taken directly from the existing disciplinary process in the charter so the the language that um outlines disciplinary authority for the police chief um we just copied that and put that due process just cause language into the authority of the board um and so the in order for the board to make disciplinary decisions there has to be due process there has to be just cause for their decisions and the their decisions can be appealed and taken to vermont superior court you know and that's a point that even as someone is interested in in this i've been maybe unaware of is how a disciplinary event gets initiated can it just be let's say the the board gets convened can they just say like uh you know we've like heard a lot of chatter about this one officer or does there have to be like like an incident that's reported yeah so it's it's cases of misconduct um and so by default disciplinary decisions would still like if the board did not take up a misconduct case it still goes through the police department and the chief um but the board can take up a case and conduct its own divest investigation make its own decision on that um but yeah so they can't just like i mean they they have transparency into police department records and that kind of thing um but they are adjudicating complaints um and and cases of misconduct so i have something to say i have something to add that i just recently uh found out about and this has to do with the grievance procedure and this uh one of the arguments uh that we've heard is how this will affect all the city unions uh if this was to to be passed by the voters and uh in that like they asked me 1343 for example they would lose their union rights their grievance rights but what i just found out today is the way it's set up the police department actually is unique in the city in that the police commission is involved in the grievance process that is not the case with the department of public works you know parks and wrecks who also have other commissions they are not part of this grievance uh procedure and whereas for the cops they the police commission act as an arbitrator uh when there is uh grievance being brought by the cops union uh you know against management or against the city and so it's one thing that has been identified by a few commissioners and former commissioners as um as a regularity that prevents them from that actually uh handicapped them from like doing uh doing the oversight that's needed uh this is a unique setup with just the police department that is not uh the case with all the other unions in the city so i think when you know when when that argument comes up it's like we gotta really pay attention because um you know it just appeals to like people's solidarity sense of solidarity with labor union and and that is not the case i mean police is not really labor union they have a they are a fraternal order order even like even the fop themselves will say we are not a union they are a fraternal order and really by the way i think about it they were uh no they have just because you have a cba collective bargaining agreement doesn't make your union unions don't kill working class people unions don't defend the boss's interest against uh just because they're a union doesn't mean that they're a good union they're not well they're not i they they you know what they they they should be considered as a failed auxiliary of the berlington business association or the chambers of commerce that's where they actually belong not not as a union like that after me or the firefighters they would they would claim that they represent the police sure they yeah they that's right they so they represent the police and the police is not the labor movement they have always been at the forefront of crushing the labor movement like that let's not let's not like fall for that false sympathy like they was that legally they have collective bargaining agreement like that is like the like the terms union isn't really yeah no there's it's it's it's not really i mean like the legal evidence of a union there isn't really it's like it's somebody who's like uh collectively bargain like and that could be like anything that could be the sergeant association or like which is a management association that's considered like a union like union laws apply to them but there's not really legal definition of a union it's kind of like a union for wall street bank exactly exactly but we call that business like we call that chambers of commerce usually not not union yeah i mean i think like a really important distinction like you can't loop the police in with all these other different kinds of labor because the police have the unique authority to use it but i think when you know it's that because of that union that they're preventing us from firing bad cops and and the charter and i feel as a living in this town for 22 years and paying my miniscule taxes that i pay um but i i still feel that i'm part of the employer and when an employee is just doing a really awful job for us as the employer we should fire yeah i mean like i don't know how many workers killed their employers regularly like i think it's just a special situation right like they could get killed like killed the employer and get away with it so um anybody wants to say something can we just say something quickly about proposition zero anybody is opposed to uh more power for people no i'm biased i'm biased yeah please robert can find something though i agree the most common opposition i hear is that uh representative democracy serves the purpose of vetting things before they go to the legislature and the common concern i'm hearing is that uh anybody with money is going to start to push things towards the legislature um thank you yes thank you um that's a valid concern actually money in politics is why i got involved with proposition zero to begin with that's already happening um there is a lot of money already going into our political process uh if if you remember the mayor pioneered the use of PAC money to pass ballot items they already they could already do that through the city council um we can we can guarantee you prop zero is totally grassroots events uh uh movement uh i do think we know ski we could like look at winewski and take some of their examples they have put guard rails in the petition in process so before we even go out and collect these petitions you register you basically go to register with the city first you sign an affidavit certifying that you are a barlingtonian and like you're not being paid by anybody so this is the the this is the kind of things we like to see uh proposed by the city council and since they're they're actually not they don't want this at all um i don't think direct democracy is in opposition to representative democracy if anything without direct democracy we won't have representative democracy because i i don't get it how how do you think we are we are smart enough to elect one of them to make the decisions but not smart enough to like read like read the ballot questions i don't buy that i think actually direct democracy is the way to strengthen representable democracy uh and in that we provide checks and balances um we we're not even starting with recalls yet like that's coming down the pipe but i do i do i do think that's like a false uh you know like distinction i it's we it's needed i feel like the direct democracy is needed to check and balance the representative and i don't think barrington has representative democracy like you know it's like i would be interested in hearing like what ideas about what how we can increase the turnout to me like if you want to be representative you should reflect like the composition of the voters most of berlingtonians are either homesteader you know of a single family uh home owners or renters like the vast majority whereas on the city council we have business owners and landlords and like very few renters maybe there's two there uh two renters whereas barrington at least 60 renters something is not you know it's not it's not representative if we look at the back economic background and economic interest it's not really renters still get to vote they should yeah but yeah they have to yeah so they are citizens and they are residents of the city they get to vote absolutely they who they want yeah so but like let's not let's not forget like most people can't like you know most people can't afford to really pay attention and or even let alone run for office there's like there's there's a bias there for people who have a lot of time and not you know like you don't see you know like people with families like actually like in steering committees of the nta's because usually it's people with extra time in their hand right like so it's the same kind of like i would i would like be interested to hear like i want ideas we have to actually increase the turnout i mean i grew up in a country where 95 turnout is the north is low you know and i know like australia as a country like the institute so they actually like they won't give you your tax return unless unless you can show them that you voted and like i don't know if that's like that's a little heavy-handed but like i i see like the value in that so maybe at some point we should like you know we should sit down and figure out how like to increase like participation we i guess we get up pay everybody livable wage get like provide health care and child care it's right like so uh anyways well thank you for for coming here thank you cctv um please take some food home like there's a lot of food thank you robert and martha for sticking around welcome to the welcome to word seven well thank you i mean this is the most welcome i felt