 Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming down here to Nectar's this afternoon, taking time out here today to talk about public safety as it pertains to people who live and work in the downtown core. My name is Chris Haseley. I live over on College Street above Patagonia in the archives. I've lived there for about six years now. I serve on the Wards 2 and 3 MP steering committee, and I'm also a Church Street Marketplace Commissioner. Over the course of the past few years, I've watched a market change in the conditions here in downtown. I've heard from a number of folks that work in the industry at late night shifts, their own businesses, expressing concerns about the public safety and just overall quality of life issues that have had an impact on everyone here. So the point of this meeting really was to get folks who work late nights or who are typically not able to participate in the public process at city council or the various commission meetings to give the all a voice to kind of speak out about what's on your mind, but also, more importantly, to kind of share any ideas you may have and how we can improve the situation here in the city. So I've got a couple other guests here that I'll introduce. We have city councilor Mark Barlow from the North District, who's graciously come out to listen as well. And we have Lee Morgan, right of Mr. Barlow, who is on the park, in a moment, yes, from the Parks and Rec Commission. And without further ado, I will turn it over to them. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, I'm really happy to be here and see a good turnout. So my name is Lee. My pronouns are they, them. I'm a Parks Commissioner. I live in the New North End. And so part of my focus as a Parks Commissioner has really been public safety in parks. My primary focus is City Hall Park. So part of my initial information gathering was being at City Hall Park at different times of day. So morning, daylight hours, night, and late night. So often I'm around the area, one, two in the morning, because I was hearing a lot of different things. And I wanted to see firsthand what was going on. Part of that is I've also been in communication with police officers about their experiences with policing in parks. I've done ride-alongs and also Chris and I and Mark do our own little foot patrol ride-along talking to different business owners. And I saw very quickly that there's an overlap here with interests around downtown workers and then my interest in public safety in City Hall Park. So I'm here to listen, gather information, and go back to my commission and brainstorm how we can best help you all folks and meet your needs. Just very briefly, I'm Mark Barlow, North District City Councilor. I've lived in Burlington since 1974. And I've just been extremely concerned about the deterioration of the downtown and the sort of intersectional problems of drug addiction and homelessness and its impacts on the business community. We hear a lot about the harm that's done to the individuals who suffer from homelessness and from drug addiction. But we also know there's great harm being done to the economic vitality of the city. So likely I'm here to listen, hear your experiences, and hear your ideas about how we can make it better. So as I said before, this is not just about giving people a place to vent. We have some poster board over here. You've got some sticky notes there. So if you have thoughts and opinions you want to share ideas on how we can make the situation better, feel free to jot them down on the sticky note. Walt's on over here to the appropriate poster and stick it up on there and we'll debrief a little bit later in the meeting here as well. So without further ado, I think Skippy from Burn Gallery, you have to be somewhere. So I'll just get started with Skippy if you want to come up and take the mic right here. Say your piece and we'll just go around the room and let people have their say. Thank you. My name is Aaron Williams. I worked for Nectar when he's still in this place. I've been doing security in Burlington for two decades at higher ground and a lot of the bars around here, et cetera, et cetera. I have also pretty concerned about the deterioration of the marketplace. I mean, it's really also just a deterioration in society. It's not just opioids, it's not just mental health. There's people that are having just a blatant disrespect for what we refer to as the law or even like standards. And we need to have some type of enforcement and or punishment for people who step too far out of the line. I have personally been to prison. I have stepped out of the line myself and ended up in prison at a very young age. It's just something that I kind of don't understand why we defunded the police, but like didn't have a plan to go after that. You know what I'm saying? Like what was the actual, what was to come after that? I do have a plan. I didn't just come with complaints. I think that there's plenty of organizations who are willing to use their goodwill and their resources and manpower to do things like that. Example, there's probably more than one veteran association with a veterans who have people who have been in stressful combat or otherwise been overseas. They have a lot of life experience and they would probably be able to without firearms do some type of patrolling and use their like nation building skills to help build back our nation. And there's a lot of other things like that. I think we should seek out from internal organizations that are local who have like time and manpower that feel like they want to put that in. I personally, again, have been working downtime for a very long time and I would be happy to help organize some lower level people with stuff like that, but some people need more than just their goodwill as an incentive. They might need some kind of recompense, you know? So I don't know how that works, but we do, there's some areas, actual physical vital areas in town that are extremely unsafe and that is very, very unburlington of us and it does need to be more than a dress that needs to be like dealt with pretty much immediately. Thank you. Check. Hey everybody, my name's Matt Kalinsky. I'm one of the partners here at Nectar's. We took over end of July last weekend, last week of July in 2022. Almost immediately we saw some pretty vulgar behavior downtown in general. I know that keep using the word marketplace and church street and that is a vibrant part of our community, but it's all of downtown really and just the whole city of Burlington. But I think in the month of August last year, we saw, I don't know, Tyler could probably help me out here, three people shot and killed within a three block radius of Nectar's here and that scared the death out of me. I was scared to come down here. I have a 14 year old child. He helps us clean and do odd jobs and we're trying to teach him how to be a respectable member of our community and work and I don't wanna bring him down here anymore. He loves coming here and he tells me that he's scared to come down here and if we can't figure this out like now, just like Skippy just said and deal with this immediately, it's not gonna get any better. I would love to know more information about the defunding of the police and what the plan was or lack thereof. When we started, when we took over last year, we participated in a Zoom meeting, which maybe some of you guys were on that with the mayor and I really didn't get any information out of that meeting either at the time. I thought maybe he said, oh, there's gonna be a plan in place and blah, blah, blah. Now there's nothing and he's not running for reelection so I don't really know what to expect out of our leadership in the city of Burlington, Vermont right now. I would say as business owners, we need to try to help. If someone else isn't gonna help us, we need to help ourselves and we need to do it together. It's all I can really say. I know that our team here, that's all I can speak for, tries to do the best that we can to deal with the homelessness and the drug problem downtown right now. We try to treat these people like people. They're humans, they have a problem and that needs to be dealt with but we need help from our government. That's the whole reason it exists and I just hope that people, the right people hear this and get us where we need to be. I will celebrate my 12 year anniversary in Burlington in February next year and I don't recognize this place anymore and that's not a long time. So I know a lot of people agree with me so I don't really know what else to say. I'm sure we're gonna hear a lot of the same comments over the next few minutes. Thank you. Anybody in order to answer our pretty people on the spot? All right. All right, we'll let Bentley go. This is your meeting everyone. We're not here to talk yet anything? I am Bentley Droy. I work at Ken's Pizza as the operations manager. We have a lot of young staff that works for us. Couple weeks ago I had a group of guys smoking meth out front while we were setting up with kids walking by. Police told me as long as no one's overdosing or dying, they won't come deal with it. So apparently smoking meth is totally fine in front of the children now. We've been getting violent threats. I had to get a restraining order against one of the bums because she was threatening to kill me every day. You know, it's just for me, I'm trying to protect our staff and it's really hard when my staff tells me they're getting followed home. They're scared to leave work that night. They're scared to even come into work in the middle of the day because they get harassed on the way in. It's just, it's stuff that, yes, it's drug overdoses but really it's the public safety. You know, 10 years ago I would be walking down this street from Ken's to Nectar and feel totally safe. Now you couldn't get me to walk a block. I mean, it's just unsafe and I just don't know where we go from here that we can protect the staff, the customers, the tourists. I mean, it's just getting to a point where why stay open? So that's how I feel. Thank you. Do we have anybody from retail that wants to speak? Okay, thank you. And as a reminder, this wasn't a planned thing but the city council is holding a meeting tonight. They will be considering a resolution on public safety, copies of which have been distributed for y'all to read through. If you're so feeling inclined to come out and speak on the resolution tonight, there will be a public forum at the city council meeting. So thank you. Hey everybody, I'm Aiden. I work at the outdoor gear exchange. I'm kind of in charge of the loss prevention over there and I started working there end of 2021, which is really when this has all been kind of the, you know, the prime of what we've seen out here. And, you know, it's been really hard. It's been just been tricky because our mission at OGE is to get everybody outside and just try to, you know, make it as comfortable as possible and with the right clothing and gear and all that stuff. And, you know, I think every day we have theft and then we have people outside who are overdosing or, you know, having a hard time standing up. And then, you know, and it's been really tricky because we have a lot of customers who come in the store and they're really frustrated because they, you know, they're not, they're from far away and they're kind of, they're tourists. And so they, you know, they're not used to Burlington the way that we are. I think a lot of us are kind of numbed by it if anything and so when customers from far away come in the store, they're really frustrated because they, you know, they pull up and they're immediately asked for money and then you're, you know, right next to, right next to that there's someone who's overdosing in the ground. And so from like our perspective, we definitely, we see a lot of it and it's like, just like this continuous frustration of just, you know, it's sad because I'm from Vermont too and I, you know, grew up going to Burlington, even being a kid, you know, going to the Flynn with my parents, you could walk up and down the street and it was totally fine. And I mean, now like my folks don't even come to Burlington anymore. And I mean, if I had kids right now, I wouldn't bring my kids to Burlington right now. And that's kind of how it feels. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying not to complain because I feel like, you know, it's been a lot of complaining and I'm trying to think of more ideas that we can all work together to try to, you know, make something happen. And I think that, you know, if we're able to kind of get over the, because I know that, you know, there's a lot of stuff to happen in 2020 when with the defunding of the police and now we're trying to like crawl our way back. And I think everybody's a little defensive, the police, us, I think we're all a little bit defensive and sometimes we butt heads. We've certainly have, you know, had some headbutting with the police when they're not able to come. And, you know, we understand that it's a lot of, everybody's short staffed, like even the police. And so I think if we can all kind of smooth that out and all work together, I think that's kind of one of our issues at the moment is that we're not kind of all in the, we're not seeing eye to eye everywhere. You know, and I think that that's kind of, we're all kind of, we've got to all be on the same team to be able to figure this out and I think we're not there yet. So, anyone else? Deb? Hello, Deb Miller from Ken's Pizza and Pub. My husband and I own it. Also the OP bar, which can't really tell you what goes on much down there because we have a manager that takes care of it, but he says it's way worse than you can even imagine what goes on on the marketplace and down here. No details on that though. I looked over the new resolution and basically what I saw is all it is doing is enabling drug use. You can't enable these people. There are ways to cure it and it is not by giving them homes, giving them food, giving them this and that. You've got to shut things down, put them in jail because everybody I know that is a recovered addict had the door shut on them and the city is doing the complete opposite. That's how I feel about that resolution. The only good thing is to try to get this state's attorney to start putting people in jail, which she refuses to do. I think that the city of Burlington should invest in mace pepper spray and give it to every single employee that is in this downtown area. I had to hold somebody at mace point last week in our restaurant, which was full for about 20 minutes. The entire police force came, which was five of them, but they said that was all that was on duty to help us get out of that situation. I mean, this is ridiculous that I'm having to deal with it and the guy is like, I'm not leaving till the police come because they're not gonna do anything to me anyway, which was absolutely true. They couldn't, there's nothing they can do. Obviously it's totally legal to shoot up heroin and do any kind of drug you want. It's just amazing to me. There's no laws. So we have young children walking around watching people shoot up. We've lost everybody in Chittenden County that would ever come into downtown Burlington. My two sons in their 30s will not bring their children down here and neither will anybody else. I think Burlington needs to rebuild, do something that more than just these little resolutions, try to get some real positive stuff going and have the city councilors vote on it and then announce who votes for what so we can get rid of the city councilors that aren't voting the way we think is gonna keep us safe. The mayor from what I see refuses to do any kind of resolutions in a positive manner. He's afraid of the veto. He shouldn't be afraid. Let us see how everybody's gonna vote on everything. There's already three retailers gone on the marketplace. I heard there's another five businesses that are ready to go. Where is the city gonna get taxes? Everybody says that apartments that you can't find in an apartment because it's not reasonably priced. Is $800 a bedroom a reasonable price? I think it is. We've had an apartment for rent for over a month. Nobody wants to move in. Nobody wants to move to Burlington. So what's gonna happen when this city place is done and all these empty apartments? I mean, I think that the consequences going on here, the city council and the mayor are not realizing it. I guess that's it. Do you have anyone else that wanna come speak or do I have to put people on the spot? All right, Commissioner Morgan. So I am sitting here and saying, please come to public forum in my head. So I wanna give a little more information on that for people who may not be completely aware. So public forum tonight starts at 7.15. You can come in person to city council or you can also attend the meeting via Zoom and you can comment that way. If you're occupied tonight and you can't make it, you can also submit your comments via email to the council and it will be included on the agenda and in the public record, all the counselors will read it. To access that form, go to burlingtonvt.gov and navigate to the city council page and yeah, please, please share your opinions. I think a lot of times with city council meetings, we get a lot of people with good intentions commenting in public forum, but may not be as well acquainted with the issue and I'm hearing a lot of stuff here that I really want the council to hear tonight. So please comment and come, thanks. I'm gonna try to keep this short because I represent quite a few different groups. My name's Tyler Nettleton. I'm one of the managers here at Nectar's. I'm also the regional manager for unified parking partners which manages most of the private parking in the area. I'm also here on behalf of Wolfskart which is a very, very large tens of thousands of people car event that happens in Essex and on behalf of the owner and founder, he asked me to be here today just for his concerns. I've seen a lot of things downtown. I think I started, Alex, you might be able to recall to the 2017, I think I started working for Alex in Red Square as a security guard and then I moved over the year after to Mr. Mike's. I was running Mr. Mike's for two and a half years and then back in 2022 came back to Nectar's. So I've been around, I've seen a lot of things and generally when I'm out and about it's anywhere from seven, eight in the morning to five, six in the morning on any given day. Last night I was downtown at four in the morning cleaning up and I was back here for a meeting with the mayor's office this morning at nine. The things that are happening in this town were not things that were happening in 2015. When I moved up here, they're not things that were happening in 2020 prior to any of the protest movements or defunding the police. They're things that have been growing and growing and growing and have not been properly or adequately addressed in my opinion. We should not be talking about a city park after it gets completely rebuilt and watching kids running through the water while people are shooting up into their feet or arms 10 feet away from them. We should not be walking from business to business, worried that somebody's gonna cost you in any way, shape, or form. I obviously have a little bit of a different experience with that, I'm a six foot five, 300 pound man. I don't have the same experience as some of the female identifying staff that work downtown or just come downtown. Yet I still see it all the same. Back in January or February a homeless person tried to steal my car while I was out working and I had to pull my firearm on them. That was the way that I had to deal with it. I called the police, a bunch of people walking by called the police, the police actually showed up. Contrary to that, I think spring time, I was sitting right here about three in the morning with my co-manager, all the lights were off, we were just having a conversation and four gentlemen were up against that garage window shooting heroin or some other drug into their necks. Called the police to let them know, hey at the very least I would not like to come back in the morning to open the doors of this business and find a dead body out front. There was no response. I was here for an hour and a half after that, no response. I called again, they basically told me they're inundated, can't deal with it. I'm not blaming the police, I'm not blaming any of the decisions that have already happened, but there obviously needs to be a change moving forward, otherwise this problem's just gonna get worse. And I don't want this to turn into one of those things where some college kid who comes here that comes from a prominent family in a big city, and it turns out to be some sort of lawsuit that comes down on the city because of something that happens to that kid. It needs to be something that the town recognizes as an issue overall and deals with accordingly. There's a lot of different ways that we can deal with that. It's kind of up to discussion, but I think everybody needs to be open to the idea of change moving forward. That being said, obviously I believe just, Chris correct me if I'm wrong, it just happened the press conference for the announcement for the new homeless shelter at the VFW. So less than half a block away from here. I think that's starting December 15th. If I read the article correctly, there's gonna be a homeless shelter holding 30 people open at night for the winter months. Obviously that's great in terms of preventing any unwanted deaths during the winter season. At the same time, we're keeping the issue directly downtown. We're keeping people within a block radius of where all the problems are happening anyways. And from what I was informed this morning, it's basically what they call a wet shelter. So there's no checking bags. There's no checking the restrictions are not there. In my opinion, one of the parking garages that I run for unified parking is directly across the street. I already have a drug issue in that garage. Every morning I either have to pay somebody or be there myself to clean up all the needles. So the clients that come into that building do not have to deal with that when they come in. So I call it a three-piece hit. They go to turning point, they get what they need, they go into the garage, they shoot up the drugs that they bought, and then they wait at the bus stop whether in normal mode or zombie mode. There's no way around it. There's no more ignoring it. It's there, it's happening, and it needs to be dealt with. And to the final point about an event like Wolfscart, it brings a lot of money in. It goes pretty much to Essex because that's where it's hosted. But the founder of that event wants to move further into Burlington and has some great potential sponsors who wanna be here. And the one thing that's gonna completely turn them off is the state of downtown. There's a lot of money there that could be spent all over this town. Winooski's seen the benefits of it. They hold an event in Winooski every year where they shut down a portion of the roundabout. It flourishes for all the businesses. Same thing for Essex. Everybody sees the increase in sales. Everybody sees everything happen. We got to host our first event here for the event with Nectars. And it was a great time for us. We shut down half the block here, put a bunch of fancy cars. People were able to come down and view everything and then come in here and have a good time. And it was great. But as things get worse, the ideas for that start to get shut down and no one wants to be a part of it. So talking about taxes, talking about businesses moving out, obviously it's a problem. It's only gonna get worse if we don't do anything about the issue now. We're at a tipping point and you can't go any further without it just exploding. That's what I got. Anybody else wanna speak here? Nick? The other thing I mentioned that there will be a survey coming down the pike. It's in the works. I think some of you have seen a draft of that. So stay tuned for that. But I think that in addition to having an opportunity to speak out and be heard and say what's on your mind, it's also important to have some quantifiable data. And that's what we hope to accomplish with the survey. Nick? Hi everyone. My name's Nick Newey. I'm the late night manager at RJs. I am not a lifetime Vermont citizen as many other people in this room are. I came to Vermont from New Jersey to study forestry at the University of Vermont. And speaking with my peers, I'd much rather have conversations about what's the basal area of this hemlock stand we're studying or why the foliage isn't great this year. But instead I have to have conversations about how to stay safe downtown and what's going on downtown. And am I working the door at RJs tonight? Because they don't wanna come downtown anymore unless they know I'm working because their contingency plan in case of a violent act is to come to RJs. Because they know I'll be working the door and they wanna hide out in RJs until this goes away. And hearing these types of conversations from people that largely contribute to my bar's establishment and the economy of downtown, it sucks. And it puts a lot of weight on me being I am now responsible for the safety of everyone else downtown. All my friends don't wanna come downtown anymore. I'm kinda stuck in a hard point where I myself can no longer take the time off. I close at RJs six days a week. It's a lot. I'd really just rather take some time to myself and I really am getting to the point where I just need some help figuring things out because I'm no longer at a point where I can provide answers for people. And there's nothing that more I can do other than just say come to RJs, I'll help you if I can. I can't make promises. I see this. I've personally either witnessed, heard or had to respond to I think six shootings, two stabbings. What someone told me was a gang initiation, hundreds of other violent crimes and acts immediately outside of my business, outside a block away across the street in City Hall Park. I've heard stories. I've been in Vermont for three and change years. I feel like everyone else has been here for at least a decade. And for that timeframe, I have no witness of what Vermont was like before. My entire knowledge is the really destroyed marketplace. And I don't know what it was before because I haven't been here for that. So my only vision is this totally dilapidated downtown district. And all I want is for my friends to come down, have a good night and not have to worry about someone harassing them on the streets or asking for money or trying to steal their purse. And there's not much else I can do for it. So I'm just really asking for some help. Thank you. Anybody else have anything they want to share? Have any heard anything from the folks in the service sector industry at all? Alex, is that a hand that you want to speak? All right, thanks. All right, thanks, Alex. Those of you who know me, I'm Alex, General Manager of Red Square. Tyler used to work there, so I can corroborate a lot of what he's saying. But for those of you that have been here prior to COVID, this town was a lot different. I never heard a gunshot downtown prior to the summer of 2022. And in that summer, while working, I heard three different incidents within a block of where we are, including a murder right in front of our front patio, Labor Day weekend of last summer. Not here to put any blame on anyone. Not gonna complain, but I think that this is hopefully part of the solution where through a lot of like-minded individuals corroborating we come up with a solution because as Chris knows, he's come by and spoken with my staff and like to add on to what was said previously, a lot of female identifying staff feel very uncomfortable walking home or to their cars. And we try to provide an escort to their car or home, but it's not really conducive to a thriving downtown, which I can honestly say is what Burlington used to look like prior to 2020. Thank you for hosting this, Chris. And that's really all I have to say. So anything anyone else wants to share here while they're out here? All right, so what I'm hearing from folks is that there's a lot of concern about the current state of affairs about lack of enforcement here in the downtown and how that's impacting the business and how there's kind of an anything goes attitude. So just wondering like, what do folks think we should do about it in terms of solutions? You know, I wanna move us forward and I think folks wanna come together or like anybody have any ideas that they'd like to share about what we can do to try to make things better here? So. Put people in jail? Instead of just letting them? Councillor Barlow. All right, come on up. I'm just curious about how trespassing works when you have people in and around your places of business that aren't supposed to be there doing things you don't want them to do there. I've heard there's sort of like a difficulty with the trespassing process. I wonder if anybody could share some of your experiences with that? And if you have any ideas about how to make that better? That's definitely like one of our biggest offenses, I guess, is like definitely utilizing that trespass. And I think there's like a, I know the police, I think earlier this year handed out like a bunch of their own, cause we had our own kind of version of a trespass but the police I think distributed a bunch to folks that they could use. And I think the law is that I think it's always only up for until a year. I think that's the max is like a year long. A lot of times I mean we're typically trespassing people like indefinitely, you know, depending on what's going on. But our biggest thing, one of the biggest things we deal with is a broken trespass, you know, where people are, you know, not, you know, not, you know, they're breaking the policy or they're abusing the policy by coming through the doors after they've been properly trespassed. And I think a lot of the times there's situations where we're not able to, like we, we're not either able or not comfortable with the trespass one because we know of their violent tendencies. And so we had a little, just, we had a little thing going on with the police where we were asking them to trespass someone on our behalf. And it seemed like there's a little bit of like, there's a little gray area there because in the Vermont state law, a public enforcement officer can trespass someone on your behalf, but I guess, but then Burlington police was telling us something different. So we were kind of still trying to figure that out. And I think that that has still been like a gray area thing. But a lot of times that is kind of the biggest, the biggest thing we run into is folks breaking their trespasses after they've been either verbally or are issued a written trespass. So yeah. So I believe everyone has a sticky notes and pens. So I think what Chris wanted us to do, we have three categories here, public safety, parking, and affordability. If you all have ideas, please jot them on a sticky note and put them up. So if you know me, you know I am an eternal optimist. And the way I'm looking at this is, no one's figured it out yet. I mean, that's very clear in the whole nation. No one's figured it out. To me, that means the solution is still out there. And I think the best people to come up with that solution are the people who are in it. So I'm really excited to hear your ideas. Excuse me, you can't say that this thing's nationwide because when I got reports from New Hampshire or Boston, you don't see this, Providence or not. You don't see this there. So, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to minimize. I don't think that, I think we're having a very Burlington issue. I just meant to say that like, no one in the country has figured out this stuff yet, but I totally did not. Some have because it's not going on there. Right, so I just wanted to make sure. I'm sorry if I invalidated that concern. No, I'm just, I'm sorry. Don't mind me, I'm just venting. And that's what we're all here to do. We're here to speak your truth and thank you. I have a question. I think, Mark, you can probably answer this. Has the mayor or city council gone around to these other cities that seem to do it right or have it right and seen what their resolutions are and ordinances and what they're doing? Have they tried that or? I know I could, but I'll stand it. Yeah, I know, I don't think we have. And I concur with what Tom said. I mean, I've been traveling a bunch recently and I'm actually surprised you get sort of used to it and numb here in Burlington. And then when you leave it for a little while and then you come back, it's like, oh my God. And yeah, I agree that there may be things we could take from other communities, some of the best practices. I know some of the things we're trying to do around treatment, like the CARES model that is gonna be rolled out to deal with some of the, you know, mental health issues we're having downtown is something that came out of the Kahootz model, which was something another city did. So I do think there are things that are being looked at and tried, but I think we could certainly do more. And I also think that Burlington, we're 44,000 people, we're not a giant city. And I do think, although it's still sort of anecdotal, but what I see in a lot of the police reports that come to my inbox as a city councilor are some of the folks that are arrested for crimes, they've been known to police and they've had dozens, if not over a hundred in some cases, encounters with the police. And so I think there is something around enforcement and having some consequence with some teeth that would help us in this. I do think there's a breakdown of like order, whoever said that earlier, on Church Street. It used to be, I remember when you'd get a ticket for riding your bike on Church Street. And it's still in ordinance too, I believe. But yeah, we have to do a better job. I think it's just such an overwhelming problem right now. It's like you're trying to deal with the worst and the most critical first and then a lot of this other stuff doesn't get dealt with. But yeah, that's why it's really valuable to me to listen to you all. And I do wanna start taking more direct action. Someone had said, we need to sort of take, not matters into our own hands, but just use the grassroots sort of organizing that we can to try to make things better. An idea that I've shared with some and with the Burlington Business Association is to have a group of almost like a neighborhood watch where if people wanted to volunteer and they wouldn't have to be people from the downtown, but to take shifts and don't let people set up in doorways and businesses and be agents that we're working on behalf of the business owners and property owners to be authorized to tell people they couldn't be there and to trespass those people. Which is where I had that question about trespassing earlier. Cause I know it's sort of a, it's a little bit of a process and you have to have the person you're serving and get their name and be there. There's just some rules around it that are unclear to me still. So yeah, I would like to take some more like direct action neighborhood watch sort of stuff. Maybe maybe even have safety escorts like BBA had a program with safety escorts for downtown workers. So at the end of their shift, they could be escorted to their vehicle. But all of those things are things I'm interested in but I'm here to sort of hear what you guys are interested in too. So I don't know if Chris is here, Charlie. Okay, so I'm with, I'm Charlie from town meeting television, CCTV. The reason I emphasize people using the microphones is because I guarantee you hundreds of people that are not here will see the tape. So if you just send it around, like so you go to cctv.org and you put in today's date. So everything we recorded today will come up on a list and there's not that many. And so you search by the date, it comes up. You can use that link and you can send it to literally anyone you want. But and so we rely on people who are interested in the event today to spread that around because as I said, like hundreds of people or thousands of people can see this. And so I encourage people to come up and speak, speak your mind and then when you do see the link, send it around. And I just think you'll find that many, many people will see this film. Thank you. Mark, I was actually very interested in some of the things you were just saying. I wanna say from my perspective on the trespasses, back when I first started working downtown or first started managing one of the downtown like bar businesses, it was a little bit easier. I actually went to Church Street Marketplace, was given a trespass book. That trespass book was triple carbon copied, one copy to myself, one copy to the person who's being trespassed, one copy to the police department. Then it seemed like it mattered a little bit more. It was something that could just be passed off. It would go on file in some way, shape or form. Hey, you're trespassed from this. Next time they come onto the property, they get arrested for trespassing. Nowadays, it kinda seems like it's one of those cases where the amount of paperwork that BPD would have to do is more than what it's worth in the long run. The amount of times I've trespassed somebody from a parking garage or a lot on behalf of the ownership or from this business or another business, it doesn't really seem like it sticks and it's still a pain to get somebody to come out to deal with it and you know it's just gonna be a catch and release situation where they'll be back in the same spot two hours later. I had that happen just a couple weeks ago and it ended with the person that we were throwing out of the garage, threatening both police officers and they both recognized that it wasn't worth their time to do anything further about it. That being said, it's kind of a broken system as it currently stands. I know it's been a question for some other business leaders in the area but that's where it stands. I think one thing too that I just wanted to say just because of some of the articles that are coming up, I think one easy way to deal with this and I don't wanna say easy, I'll take that back, not easy way to deal with it but a way to start this conversation on top of enforcement is some level of compulsory care, having people that are overdosing three, four, five times in a given day and being narcanned and then getting up and running away from the police officers to go get their next hit the second they come back to it is ridiculous and I will say that while this problem is happening in Burlington, it's also happening other places. I grew up in Southern Rhode Island, I hung out a lot in Providence when I was younger. Providence has the same issue, you just don't see it as much because it's so spread out. This is so central to this five to 10 block radius of downtown, you just see it exponentially. I was saying earlier, my parents haven't been up here in probably six years to come see me because they just hate seeing what they see when they come here so it's everywhere. I think a good step forward is compulsory care in combination with a level of enforcement to where people are dealing with the things that they do. There are consequences for their actions but also the people who are just choosing or at a level where they can't choose anymore to continue to do drugs and overdose and use resources that we have set aside for other people that actually need the resources more to be brought back to life just to go do the same thing again I think is a huge point to be made. I just have a question really, every time we call the police usually they don't show up and usually the responses fill out an online incident report. I have maybe submitted 30 of those since the beginning of July, August and have not heard back once. I don't get any confirmation that this was looked at or even submitted, never hear back from the police on it and what we're submitting is not light hearted things. I mean it is serious things, there's pictures, there's videos and it's extremely frustrating we're told to submit an online report and nothing is done about it. You don't even know that it was really looked at so I'm just wondering should we even still be doing that and why are the 911 operators telling us to do that if it's not anything that's looked at. I have some information on that. So some information for anybody not just on this topic but some information on if you are unsatisfied with a response or an outcome you have with the police department, some different pathways you could follow is always follow up with the police department and let them know you want a follow up on this case if that doesn't give you a satisfactory response. A really good connection is your city councilor if you're not a Burlington resident then the city councilor who represents where your business or work place is at a lot of times they can be very helpful in reaching out to the police and getting the answer. Another option is the police commission you send them an email let them know what's going on that you would like some follow up and they have been super helpful and the people I've talked to in getting to the bottom of it and helping to get a response. Another option come to city council meetings come to the police commission meetings and also so the mayor is at the bagel cafe every Wednesday morning at eight o'clock ish and I've seen a lot of people come and express their concern to him and it seems like people are getting some good outcomes that way. So yes, there is a way to follow up on this stuff and I hope you can use that. All right, so I take it that everybody has had a chance to speak right now. A reminder that the text of the resolution that the council will be voting on is available if you'd like to see that. Again, I'm not here to talk to you guys we're not here to talk to you guys we really want to hear what you think. So if anyone hasn't had an opportunity would like to speak or just getting here. We'd love to have you come up had some folks come in. Okay. Yeah, those of you looking at the guy in the Miami, New Jersey. My name is Barrett Edry. I am raised in Miami, Florida. I've been in Burlington for about four months now and it's been a real honor working with guys like Tyler, Ed, Matt, Chris as well. From living in Miami to recently being near Austin, Texas Los Angeles, California, New York City this is not a new problem. This is not something that is new in the last 50 to 100 years. What I don't see changing is the intention on how we go about dealing with these things. I was fortunate enough to work in assisted living in South Florida where we were pulling people off the street that didn't have anywhere to go. And I had a budget of $4.25 per person per day. That means I had $1.25 for breakfast, $1.50 for lunch and $1.50 for dinner to treat our parents and our grandparents who were dying of cancer living with colonoscopy bags, had committed crimes in the past, but the intention was to treat these people like human beings because no matter where we want to put them in jail or where we want to put them at the wet clinic down the street so just we don't have to look at it or deal with the danger or deal with the violence these people are living in hell and hell is on earth and you can't help somebody that doesn't wanna help themselves to begin with and you're not gonna change somebody's mind that already has given up on life to a point where they are urinating and defecating on themselves on the sidewalk for those children and everybody to see. There needs to be a real intention from human beings that wanna sacrifice what we call resources is what it comes down to is money. There are communities all over the world that take their suffered people and put them in Israel, it's called the Kibbutz where they live together, they work together, they feed each other, they take care of each other on a regular basis and they're in nature so they don't have to suffer from not making enough money to living in the city and can't finding a place to work and getting kicked out of their house with two, three kids and having to go on a website or go to another place for another handout or begging people for money just so they don't have to wonder where their next meal is coming from. I believe there's a statistic in the United States today that one in four children don't know where their next meal is coming from. There's not an underlying quick solution to something that is going on in all the big cities and you're not gonna get sympathy from somebody that says a town of 45,000, 48,000, whatever it is that's half college kids is now dealing with big city problems and doesn't wanna deal with it or see it. There needs to be a real paradigm shift and intention for putting these people in a position to where they not only can live but not live in hell. And until that, it really is just a paradigm shift and intention that we as people seeing this and dealing with this on a regular basis sayings like you catch more flies with honey or treat people the way you wanna be treated. It's not to see people suffering and just bury it under the rug. If we really are gonna do something about it and people wanna come together and make a difference, it's gonna start with us and it's gonna start with that intention of what are we really trying to accomplish or is it just something we don't wanna deal with it because life is hard enough and that's up to the individual to do as a collective and until we see that change, it's politics and policies and asking for money and I don't have enough of it otherwise would be a much different story for most of us so thank you for the time and as I say to my staff and my coworkers, happy Tuesday because at the end of the day, it could be much worse and things can still get better. It's just that intention. Sorry to bring them down. No, no, not at all. Reality's good. Anybody else have anything they wanna add? All right, come on down. I'm not quite as good as Drew to Carrie. Definitely not a Bob Barker either. Thanks. So you just said something about people defecating themselves and giving up on life. I just wanted to say where can they go to the bathroom? Like where I'm asked all day working on church street where tourists can go to the bathroom. But so it's the bathroom problem is a problem for everybody here but particularly for folks who don't have a safe place to go ever and don't have the resources to like go buy a drink somewhere and go to the bathroom there. So I just wanted to say that first and foremost. Also, I'm wondering if anybody's talked about safe injection sites. That's something I wanna bring up. I just got here so I haven't heard what happened before me. But to my knowledge, there isn't a safe injection site near church street. I believe they're illegal in Vermont. That should change. That's wild because we have such a problem. Thank you for that heads up. But that it's just like this affects everybody. And I think it's time that like businesses also realize that like the well-being of the most vulnerable affects their bottom line. It affects everyone's safety and cities should be judged by how they treat their most vulnerable. And so yeah, I also think that like implying that people don't deserve to be brought back to life if they're gonna keep using that really like, I don't think that that is a reasonable decision for other people to make. So yeah, I just think people who are using may or may not like want to be doing that. But when you're stuck like dealing with addiction, you're suffering dealing with addiction and like we need to have safe places for people to go. Their humanity doesn't go away because life is really messed up. So yeah, those were my first thoughts. Anybody else wanna weigh in here? Going once, twice. Put you on the spot. You wanna come up and speak your mind? You just walked in, you know? We're just kind of going around talking to people now. Not so much, okay. One of the challenges I think that kind of frustrates me personally is that the way that this whole discussion and issue has kind of been framed in kind of binary terms of hey, we need more enforcement. No, we need more services. And it's kind of like, no, we need all of the above. Every situation's different. Every person's different. What we need is a suite of tools to kind of respond to the situations as they evolve. And I think that most folks recognize that folks that are dealing with substance use disorder, it is a medical condition. You know, I believe in my body, my choice. And we also need to acknowledge that folks that have medical conditions also have a right to refuse treatment. And some of them do. And so that's a challenge as well. And so it's like, where do you draw the line? And for me, you know, I've talked to folks that have lost loved ones and everything. And I kind of feel like what's so compassionate about leaving people out on the street that are clearly not in a position to take care of their own basic needs? And I think if you were to ask folks who lost a loved one to any of the substance use disorders and said, hey, you know, if you had an opportunity to bring your loved one back, but they had to be into a facility, you know, would you be supportive of that? And I think when I look at what's being done here, it's kind of like, you know, you can heal the symptoms and not affect the cause. It's like trying to heal a gunshot wound with gauze. It's like, you look at the housing that we're spending, we're picking people off the street at great cost. I think the statistic that I saw was $3,800 per person per month. We put them in a hotel. That solves the immediate need. You know, they're not gonna die of exposure or hypothermia out on the street. But, you know, there's a reason that some of these folks become unhoused. And for many of them, or a number of them, it's, you know, an untreated mental health condition or substance use disorder. And it's like just taking people off the streets without requiring or providing those additional services to address the root cause. It just doesn't seem like it's a good approach for me. So I would like to see, I think the state, I think we need a number of things like, one, maybe a real state hospital focusing on substance use disorder and mental health conditions. I mean, we're relying primarily on the private sector right now. I think Trey Anastasio and the Divided Sky Foundation just brought their facility online in Ludlow. I think it's a 46 bed facility. But I know that they had to scale back some of the treatment options that they were looking at because of community concerns. But really, I think we need to have a conversation about some type of compulsory custodial care for folks who, you know, despite our best efforts there's still continuing to engage in behavior that is not only harming them but harming the community and just to get folks well. Again, for me, it's like, what's so compassion about leaving someone on the streets and hoping for the best. So I'd like to, you know, bring folks together to kind of have these kind of conversations and brainstorm solutions and get folks an opportunity to be heard because I think that together, we all want the same thing. We want a safe Burlington. We want to be able to walk down the downtown any part of the city anytime of day or night no matter who we are or where we come from. We don't want to feel like, you know, we have to look over our shoulder anytime. And so that's the good news. We all want the same thing. We all want to be safe. But I think the challenge is we all have a lot of different ideas to get there. And I think the way that we can reconcile that is through a robust public process, you know, getting some data on not just what the issues are but what folks think about how we should move forward in a manner to address them. And I think that moving forward, that'll really be the way to kind of get us to where we are, to maybe end the division and kind of bring us together as a community. So that would be the hope that I would have coming out of these types of events. So I guess anybody else have anything they want to say or wrap up, we'll call it an end to round one. I don't really have anything else to say. Like I said, I'm, you know, want brought folks together just so you all could have your say. So anybody else? Alrighty, well, we will be here through four o'clock to listen and we'll get done with the speaker portion. If anybody wants to come speak to Mark or Lee or myself individually about different things. Again, I'm on the marketplace commission. Lee is on the Parks and Rec Commission so if you have thoughts and opinions about City Hall or any of the city parks, they're the person to talk to you. And of course, Councilor Barlow is on the council. So again, public comment tonight, 7.15 at the council. The text of tonight's resolution is available here if you'd like to see it. You have thoughts definitely come out. It's important, you know, for everyone to weigh into the process because that's what makes our community what it is. So thank you for coming out today and taking time out of your day. Lee. I have a question. So a huge part of what I'm doing with public safety in parks is just convincing people of the gravity of the issue. And what has really helped me is when people send me pictures. So if you are in City Hall Park or any other park or in the direct area and you see something that feels not okay, do what you need to do with that information but if you want to grab my phone number and text me those pictures too, it will actually be a huge help in what I'm trying to do. What if it's on Church Street? Who would we send that to? Chris. All right. Yeah. It's good to see it. They're smart, actually. Careful what you went for, Mark. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of incoming area folks and pictures. He's sturdy. Yeah, absolutely. Commander Casey. I am directly across from City Hall Park. I own the hair salon that was upstairs from Northfield Savings Bank. It's called Sheer Envy. I see everything all day long, every single day. Today, we had to install a security system where now when I'm alone at night, I can lock the door and buzz people in because it's getting that bad. Today, they called me and said, hey, your new camera. Does that record all day long? Which I found out it does not. It only records when somebody pushes the button. Somebody's car was vandalized four feet from my front door. In the broad daylight, there's two police officers over there now. They were kicking the car. They just, today there's 30 more people than there was yesterday on my side of the sidewalk. And I feel like the mayor just doesn't care. And I feel like the city council does not care what's going on in downtown. I've been here 16 years. 16 years that I've had my salon. And I've supported everything around Burlington. I've supported the construction in the park when it looked like a travesty. Before this, it looked even worse. I used to go sit in the park and have lunch every day. I would lock my door, go across the street. I'd sit with the homeless people and chat with them and the mailman and everybody else. I won't cross the park to go to country car anymore. It's horrible. And I don't know what the solution is to do. I think, in my opinion, we have empty buildings that nothing is being done with. Now, why MCA? Why not take that and make that a homeless shelter? Too close to the downtown core? They wanna put a hotel there, another hotel. Why not use that as a homeless shelter? Why not get some of them slightly, any of the able-bodied people and have them help dismantle Memorial Auditorium and rebuild it as a, what were we talking about? The mental health facility and maybe a rehab center. Instead of putting more hotels here. They need housing. They need to get off the street and out of my front yard. I mean, I have clients that are like, I'm not coming anymore because of what's out front. It is too scary for me to walk from my car to your business. And now that I have a spring system where they can buzz in, I'm like kind of scared to lock the door and have my clients standing outside waiting for me to buzz them in. Although it takes like 30 seconds to happen. But a lot can happen in that 30 seconds. I mean, I am always on the phone with somebody. I was telling you that the other day. When I walk to my car, because I park in the garage behind Friendly Toast, I walked through a little alley or I walk around and I am constantly on the phone with somebody in case anything happens. It is, and it's that scary. I'm not afraid of much, but there's nights where I'm afraid to walk to my car. And I'm not gonna call the police because if you call the police, they don't come. And I mean, there's been times where I have an alcove. Do you guys remember where Leather Express was years ago? That's where I am. I'm upstairs. And where that rounded window is, they sleep in the alcove, which is private property, which we do have a no trespassing sign. And now I found out there is a criminal no trespassing sign, which I may invest in. So we're trying to keep them out of there, but there's no room to put a gate. There's no room to put a garage door to come down to block off my area. I don't even wanna tell you the things we've cleaned off of our front door. And until something happens, I mean, I talked to my landlord and I said, if things don't quickly improve in the next couple of years, I'm not gonna be here anymore. And I've been here 16 years. How is this fair to any of the businesses? Everybody else, I'm sure, is suffering. Burton left, chop shop left, outdoor gear exchanges in the process of leaving, urban salon team left, Steven and Burns left. There's five businesses right there. Oh, Monal left, there's six. Anybody else that's left? Oh, and LL being left. And now Walgreens is leaving. So there's seven or eight, oh, and Penny clues left. So there's like eight businesses right there that have left in the last year, two year and a half. What can we do to keep people staying here? I mean, I've tried to come up with solutions. I'm just a hairdresser, but I thought changing YMCA into a homeless shelter would be a good idea to get them off the street. Let them build their own cubicles in there. There's plenty of room, there's plumbing, there's showers. There's, could be heat. God knows they'll set fire to anything. I've called the fire department a few times. So, I mean, I've talked to Chris several times. I've talked to Jill Battalotto. I don't know if any of you have met her. She's also on the Public Safety Commission. She'll be at the meeting tonight. But I mean, everybody's trying to come up with a solution. And I feel it's to the point where nobody's listening. I don't know how everybody else feels about that. But I'm, and I'm not on Church Street. So, I'm not part of the Church Street marketplace, but I'm like literally 80 pieces from Church Street. And years ago, it used to be that there was no homeless people allowed on Church Street. This was pre-Bob Kiss. And then he let them come on Church Street, but they couldn't talk to people. And now they're everywhere. And a lot of them are rude. I've been sworn at, I've been yelled at. I've been called several different names. And it just makes it not pleasant coming back and forth to work. I mean, my husband's to the point where he's like, get your salon out of there. It's just too dangerous. And I shouldn't have to feel like that going to my place of work. And I'm sure all of you work down here, I'm assuming, or live down here, yeah. So, I don't know what the solution is. So, we can talk all we want about it, but until something actually happens, right? My big feeling is something detrimental is going to have to happen for something to be done. And I hope it's not one of us, right? That's what you and I were talking about last week. Let's hope it doesn't get to that point. It should get to that point. Well, on that note, there are some positive things happening. We have heard folks complaining about the dirty needles in the litter in downtown. And I've heard through the grapevine that there is some proposals in the works to have a needle redemption program, kind of like a bottle bill for dirty needles, where people could turn in the needles that they have used and get like 20 cents or something, 25 cents for it, and use that money to take care of whatever needs they may have. My understanding is that in communities where they have done pilot programs like this, they've seen up to a 50% decrease in the petty property crimes and things of that nature. And they've seen a lot less litter. So I think that that's a positive step. And I suspect we'll be hearing that more in the coming months. I know that the wheels of government often move slowly, but that is one thing I've heard that's in the works there. So another idea that I heard too, and this was a bit of a surprise to me when I was doing some canvassing with some of the folks that are currently unhoused in the park. I was speaking to an individual last December who said to me, he's like, unhoused doesn't necessarily mean unresourced. And I think there's a lot of stereotypes out there. One of the things that I had heard is this gentleman showed me his phone. He said, look, I've got a bank, I got money. And he said, I'm coming here. I've looked at like 10 apartments this weekend. I can't find a place to live because I just moved to town. I don't have any job references and I don't have any references. So that was a challenge. But the idea that we were kind of batting around was like an everyday worker program where people who are currently struggling with houselessness can show up and at a certain day like a day laborer program and work for the city, maybe pick up trash, hump with the needles or whatever that needs to be done on an as needed basis to put some extra cash in their pocket to help them get through. Not everybody's good with money management. Sometimes by the middle of the month, folks don't have a lot of resources. So this would be one way to help them. But it would also provide a reference. Hey, I worked for the city. I worked on the everyday worker program and they can get a reference that may help them get a pull-time job or help getting them to get them into permanent housing because it is kind of hard to like, oh, we'll just get a job. Well, you know, you kind of got to look presentable for some of these things that you don't have a place to stay. You don't have a place to call home or shower or good clothes. You know, it does present barriers to the employment. So I think that we also need to take and consider out that it's not, we talk about houselessness, there's different types. There's chronic houselessness and there's situational houselessness. And for the situational houselessness, that's of folks who have become unhoused, typically through some kind of forced majeure advance, they lose the job. Their spouse who is the primary income generator passes on or something happens. They have unexpected medical debt. These folks are typically well adjusted and a thing like the Motel program will help get them back on their feet. But for the folks that are chronically unhoused, there's typically other things going on. And a lot of times it's mental health condition or substance use disorder. And from my perspective, this idea of housing first, it's kind of like, no, we need to have housing with. You know, like our current approach is like, well, you know, we value you enough to get you off the street so you don't freeze to death in the winter, but we don't really value you enough as a person to actually put the real money into the program to get you off of the, solve the problems that you have, whether it's the substance use disorder, the mental health condition. So what I would like to see is I'd like to see the state, you know, provide more wraparound services and do that. But also my grandmother, you know, she used to say a lot of things, she was big on different, I forget the term, but she used to say, you know, ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And it's like, you know, when we're spending $3,800 per person to put them in a hotel without providing necessary services to address the underlying cause, I can't help but wonder, well, what if we took that same $3,800 and split it four ways and gave it to four different people and said, hey, rather than wait till you're out on the street and don't have housing, let's give you a little bit of extra money to help you keep the housing that you have. And I think that, you know, keeping people in housing is a hell of a lot better than trying to find housing once it gets lost. So those are some of the things that I have. You know, everyone's sharing stories. My personal story is about two years ago, I parked in the garage behind Lunix. My car was broken in due. I had several thousand dollars worth of camping equipment stolen, trail maintenance gear. I had insurance through renters insurance, so it was covered. But just recently last week, my wife, she's a middle school teacher, Milton. I got an unexpected call right around 7 a.m. She was driving up Main Street and went to work and another car was literally coming at her, swerving all over the road. She almost got hit head-on, going to work in the morning and the individual did appear to be under the influence of some kind of substance. So I think every one of us has been personally affected in this situation and I think the key thing to remember is, you know, how can we get beyond that and let's talk about solutions as well. So I don't have anything else to say, so I guess we can wind this portion down. We will be here till four. I suspect other people may be filtering in periodically over the afternoon. Did get some text messages. Hey, how long you guys gonna be there? So we're here till four. If anybody wants to talk a little bit more individually, I'm happy to do that. But one last call, if anyone has anything they wanna share, okay. Thanks. Hi, my name's Ian Dorner. I own Burlington Records. I've been holding off saying anything because I'm so beyond frustrated with the situation that I might say some bad things. So I'll try not to. I think that I grew up not believing in the drug war, thinking that that was a horrible decision and it was, it didn't work, right? But what I think is different now than what's happened in the previous years is the drugs have changed. Fentanyl and methamphetamine, they were not part of our lives. They didn't exist really. Methamphetamine did, but fentanyl did not. And it's such a destructive drug that once you start doing it, you just can't, you turn into what some people say are zombies. And there's really nothing that we can do to help beyond more than what we've already done. So I really think because the drugs have changed, we really need to enforce the laws that are on the books. It is completely ridiculous that this is, we're just allowing this to happen. We need to get treatment for folks too. That needs to be part of the situation. Harm reduction is definitely part of the solution here. But it is not the only solution. We need to start arresting drug dealers. It is insane that we are not doing that. I see it every day. Burnley Throne Records is right on College Street, right across from Mark. My back parking lot is off Center Street, which is absolutely the hot spot of where all these people go. I'm completely inundated with insanity. My staff, they're stressed out. I'm stressed out. It doesn't feel like we're gonna make any headway here. So I really think that I see drug deals happening constantly. It's not hard to see them. I don't know where the police are in all this. This is insane. Yeah, I don't want to say anything else. I hope we can find a solution for this. We all need to work together on this. And I'm gonna hand it off to somebody else. Yeah, just a reminder, if you guys haven't did the sign-in sheet, please do so. And again, the city council is meeting tonight to consider a resolution on public safety copies of which are available here. If you do not have one, please come find me. I will give you one, limited number of copies available. And no, they are not numbered in autographed. Maybe they'll be collectors edition. Let me frame them up, I don't know. But yeah, that's really all I have to say. So again, we'll wrap this portion. Lee and Mark and I will be here for the till four o'clock and just kind of hanging to talk to people. But I appreciate everyone's time and trying to come together to figure out what we can do to make things better here in Burlington. So thank you.