 Make any topic at all public. Yes. So the last meeting there was a call for that. I don't know, Michelle, do you know what happened with that? So what happened is, well, first, we have a word clerk and two inspector of election positions for the ward. We have one active inspector whose term ends in March of 2021. We have no word clerk and my term as word clerk ended on Tuesday. So we had someone who was acting word clerk for this election. And we tried to get her elected through writing votes. But you have there's a threshold of 30 votes, which she had 24 votes, I think. No, there was Annie Veetz. So we have no active word clerk, which is an essential position, as you can imagine. And then we have Rob Bacchus is active as inspector for one more year. So it would be great if someone would give serious consideration to either being word clerk or inspector. So if no one steps up, we try again to appoint someone to be acting for each election. So we have the state primaries in July. And then the concern, honestly, is for November, which should be a very, very busy election. And even with a really well trained experienced staff in 2016, we counted ballots till two in the morning. So our ward six is a really voter intensive ward. We have a lot of participation. And we have really experienced workers. The most experienced are right here, the Manics. But there's always a call for more help and particularly people to run for office. Yeah, it lives in my head. I can tell you that's one place where it is. So the inspectors and the ward clerk are responsible to oversee the election. And they have to know how an election functions. They have to oversee the assistant election officials, people like Becky and the Manics who work during the election on specific tasks. So the inspectors and the work clerk need to understand how the election functions. They also sign off on all the chain of custody forms for the tabulator and all the ballots. And the interesting thing, when you really get into the weeds of an election, Dave, you know this, every single ballot has to be tracked and traced and accounted for from the minute it's out of its cellophane note from the minute it enters the city hall probably until it returns at the end of the day. So you have to understand every phase of the process for managing the ballots. What's great is we have a super supportive city clerk's office and they have put together a manual that tells you how to do every single thing. And so there are a lot of resources. There's trainings before every election. And there's lots of help from people who are experienced. Hey, hey, jobs. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Any other public comments? Okay, so I'll I'll go next. It's kind of like public comment. We're having a call for new NPA committee members every year. All five of us are up for election. We actually have two members that are going to be leaving. So we have these two people. But you know, if 10 people want to do it, we have a good we don't have there's no income and see or anybody who wants to do the job we're doing here. Anybody, anybody who's award six resident can do it on the table. Gail made a nice kind of job description that people can take a look at. We usually get committee members from people who like to come to this meeting, which is why we wanted to talk about it here while everybody is here. So I'd really like to ask people to consider it. Certainly, you can ask any of us. I'll take some questions now if anybody asks about it, but you can certainly talk to any of us afterwards. If you want to ask some questions, we're going to have the election, I guess in two meetings. Is that right? May, right? So there's a little time to get ready and ask questions. And we'll post this on front porch form as well, so that we get more get more interest. But does anybody have any questions about it? Or while we're all standing here? Dave, Dave, you're not eligible for Ward six, but go right out. Thanks. And he may have a question? Or is that good enough for now? Spread the word. Okay, great. So next on our agenda, people saw that our agenda changed, we were going to have Sir Ash Garamella here tonight. He had to go out of town. And just as a fortunate happen happenstance, Tim Ash happened to tell me I'm going to be at the beginning of your meeting if you need if you need somebody to talk. And we said, Wow, awesome. That is exactly what we need. So we have Senator Pro Tem Tim Ash here. Thank you. Testing. Alright. So good evening, everyone. And so good evening, everyone. I'm sorry that I'm playing second fiddle to the president of UVM. I'm the president of the Vermont Senate. That's like, you know, sort of a it's kind of an intriguing title, but it's not president of the University of Vermont. I'm actually not sure who has more influence in the state. I'm going to give him him the score on that one. So I'm going to talk just briefly about some of the things that have been kind of making their way through the legislature so far this year. I'll focus at first on a couple bills that have been through the Senate, then I'll talk about a few that have been through the house that are coming over to us. And then I'll stop on a dime so that you can ask me about anything that's more interesting to you than what I've said. So I'll start with probably the most impactful legislation so far this year was the minimum wage bill. So this has been a journey, this legislation. Starting in 2018, the legislature passed a minimum, a substantial minimum wage increase that was vetoed. We knew there was no chance that there was an override of that veto, because in the house, the votes had been about 79 and you have to get to 100. So in 2019, we tried to figure out how to move forward in light of that. We came back in 2020 and proceeded with a two year increase of the minimum wage to 1255 over a two year period. Some of us wanted to go farther than that. But the fact that the house overrode the governor's veto on that one by without a single vote to spare means if we had gone another penny over it, it probably wouldn't have become a law. That's one of the things from the outside looking at it sometimes hard to really appreciate because people say 1255 by 2022, that's pathetic. And I say it sort of is, but it's also the reality we face in terms of what people in the legislature, particularly in the house, were willing to vote for. But overriding a governor's veto is not done frequently. I've been this is my 12th year in the Senate. It is the third time. And the other two were in 2009, the first year I was there, it was marriage equality and the budget in 2009. So this is a very unusual circumstance. And I'm happy to talk a little bit about why it's good that it's unusual in a little bit. At an at award six NPA a couple years ago, I feel like now, actually, Robin Lloyd had asked a question about criminal justice and about the use of private prisons to house people who are Vermont inmates, but for whom we do not have capacity here. And so therefore are shipped out of state. At the time that Robin asked that question, we had people in prisons in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona, all owned by the same private prison company. How to how to not get so in the weeds. We have 1750 inmates, basically right now. 1500 of them are in Vermont. Therefore, 250 are in Mississippi right now. Now, this is an aside, many people are quite troubled by private for profit prisons. That industry grew in the 80s and 90s as a result of federal legislation. And Corrections Corporation of America was where our people who are out of state were incarcerated for a long time. In response to some concerns about that, the state of Vermont entered into an agreement with the state of Pennsylvania to use extra space in one of their prisons. So that's a public prison. So on the surface, those who had great concerns about the profit motive in prisons would have been happier with that result. It turns out the prison in Pennsylvania were quite horrible, including requiring people to pay copays to go to the infirmary. But it's hard to pay the copay if you don't have any money. So a lot of people were getting very sick. In one particular story, a gentleman died who had been saying that he needed care. And the correctional officers in Pennsylvania hadn't really believed the story. So things were not very good. Personal possessions were being taken away. There were fewer classes, fewer training opportunities, fewer jobs. So now they're in Mississippi. All right, that's all prelude to say that many elected many candidates for office have given nice speeches about how we have to abolish the use of for profit private prisons. The problem is you then have to do something to make that a reality. And that has been something that we have now been working on in past legislation just now. So last year, I instructed the Senate Judiciary Committee. President Garamella gets to order 8000 people around. I get 29. So I ordered our Judiciary Committee to take a look at measures in the criminal justice sphere that would help drive down the total number of people who are incarcerated. As a result of that, we engage some national experts worked with the judiciary, the executive branch and the legislative branch. And we just passed legislation we're calling criminal justice reinvestment to. There was a previous one about 15 years ago. What this will do is try to address a problem that has been poorly understood in the past. So right now, I told you there are 1750 inmates. Many people would say, Oh, well, that means someone went out and did something really bad. They got a sentence of five years or 10 years and they're in there serving their five years or 10 years. No, that is not the the makeup of our prisons. The vast majority of people who are in prison have served their minimum sentence were released into the community on some kind of community supervision, parole furlough, and then made a mistake and got sent back behind bars. Now, sometimes that mistake is a bad one, right? If you are someone who has victimized kids and you are told stay away from kids unless you're supervised, but you break that. Well, that's more than just a technical violation and you probably should go back. Other people are missing a meeting with a probation officer or they have a beer when they were told not to have a beer or maybe their car goes into a zone briefly that they weren't supposed to be in because they got detoured or something. There are people who are getting sent back into jail for those reasons. The reason that's a problem is the longer people spend behind bars with more hardened criminals, the more likely they are to commit offenses when they get back out. So what we're doing in short with this justice reinvestment legislation is saying there have to be better strategies for dealing with people who make that mistake when they're released. Address their needs in the community. If it's a mental health issue, get them the mental health treatment. Don't send them back to jail. If it's a drug issue, get them a media treatment. Don't send them back to jail. And so on. We think it's going to cut just in a couple years by half the number of out of state inmates. So it's not the solution to the whole problem, but it's the first meaningful dent in years that we've made. And I think that's really good news. We are also focusing on the house side on the women's prison. So anybody who read the reporting about the women's prison, of course, there's always more than meets the eye in these stories because a lot of it is, you know, there's always many sides to these things. But we know that there's a problem. I believe one of the things that has to happen is we have to stop treating the jobs that are inside of prisons like they should be low skilled positions. So right now, even after all that reporting, I was driving back from on failure one night, I was listening to WNCS on the radio, and an ad came on and I shouldn't do this. I won't do my impersonation of the ad with my radio voice because it's being videoed. But but the transcript went something like, have you wanted to have a job in criminal justice? Well, the only women's prison in Vermont is hiring no experience required, etc, etc. And I thought that last piece no experience required tells you everything you need to know about what's the problem in our system. We're basically paying people the lowest amount in our state employee pay scale. We're saying you basically just have a high school diploma and you don't have to have any training in rehabilitative services, mental health, drug addiction. You don't have to have any of that training to get these positions. And these are the individuals and God bless them. They're doing great work in light of the situation. They're the ones who are spending most of the time with our inmates. So one of the things we're trying to do is rethink what a correctional officer is so that in the future it's someone who's part of the rehabilitative process, not someone who is looked to more just like a guard. One other bill we passed this one's important for younger people recently out of college is putting in some pretty strict regulations around student loan servicing companies. I don't know if any of you have heard the reporting about people who are coming out of college with student loan debt, who wish to get loan forgiveness if they go into a certain set of public service positions. I believe it's called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Well, tens of thousands of American young people have left school, taken a job like in teaching or for a non-profit or community service and believed that if they stuck with it for 10 years and made all their payments, that the loan, the remainder of their balance would be forgiven. Less than one percent have been approved. So what's happening is as these loans are handed off to private companies whose interest is basically in having the lowest cost to administer it, if someone doesn't fill out the form properly, they don't call them up and say, hey, you're going to put your whole thing at risk. They're just letting the person spend another five years paying their bills, paying their bills. Then when the person goes to get the loan forgiven, they're finding out that they're out of luck. So we're putting in some tight restrictions there. Last one I'll mention on the Senate side for the moment is the beginning of a process. This is one where we have worked with the governor to try and set in motion something akin to universal after school programs. So some communities like Burlington have a more robust after school offerings for kids around the state. It's a real checkerboard. There are many kids who just do not have the after school opportunities. That's a problem for a variety of reasons. Kids aren't getting the kind of enrichment, socialization. It's also making life harder for their parents who have to work around the schedule of the school instead of having maybe an extra couple hours. A few last pieces from the House. You may have seen that the House attempted to override the governor's veto on the paid family leave bill, but fell one vote short. It was 99 to 50, I believe, or something like that. That is obviously a disappointment for those of us who wished that everyone would have the same benefit now actually that the Scott administration has extended to state employees. That will have to wait till next year and either the legislature will bring it up again or it won't. Firearm safety. After last year's veto of the 24-hour waiting period for handgun purchases, the House took the lead on sort of regrouping. What they have been focusing on is a rather technical legal process to protect people who are in domestic violence situations. So right now the law allows law enforcement to remove firearms when they are there responding to domestic violence or sexual assault. The process in place has not really proven very effective and for some reason many law enforcement officials have not been removing the firearms. That is the most vulnerable period of time for women in particular, sometimes men and sometimes children, and so they're working on easing that process to deal with firearms. Waiting periods, there are many of us in the Senate in particular who do not want to let go of that issue and I'll just briefly tell you why. Suicide by firearm is actually Vermont's biggest firearm death problem. 90 percent of the firearm deaths in Vermont over the last six or seven years have been suicides. And what we know, and it's just a terrible reality, what we know is that many of the individuals who use a firearm to take their own lives are going through very obviously very very difficult circumstances, but that all the evidence suggests if there is a brief window of a hurdle for the individual to purchase the firearm many of them will get to the other side of whatever the acute moment they're going through is. To try to breathe life into this issue I tracked down really the top two researchers in America now on the issue of waiting periods and the extent to which they save people's lives. They are, they happen to be Harvard Business School professors who otherwise do not look at gun issues at all in their research. They're like geeks about you know behavioral economics. However, after Sandy Hook they became very passionate and wanted to better understand what laws actually help save lives. So they came up to Vermont, spoke to two of our Senate committees, and have the gold standard research and indicated that in states that have adopted waiting periods for firearm purchases basically of any length. It reduces suicide by firearm by about seven to eleven percent and homicides much more. In the Vermont context because ninety percent of the firearm fatalities are suicide that's seven to eleven percent is the more meaningful number to be honest with you. So I don't know what the future is there. I feel very strongly that we should not let that go. Energy legislation there are three primary bits of legislation going through in the broad category of climate change and addressing our impacts on the environment. One is something that we'll be looking at this coming week called the transportation and climate initiative. I won't bore you with all the gory details but I'll leave it at this. There are 12 states that have been at the table trying to come up with a regional compact by which there would be effectively a guaranteed reduction in transportation emissions which in Vermont is about half of all of our harmful emissions. The fuel suppliers the ones who own the tank farms would effectively pay an auction price for the right to sell fuel into the states that participate. The states would then recoup the proceeds and invested in clean transportation. Second there's a bill that the House just passed called the Global Warming Solutions Act. This is intended to take our environmental goals and put them into statute as requirements to try to push the issue so that state agencies would be developing coherent workable plans to not just have aspirational goals for the environment but to actually drive to it. And then third Senator Chris Pearson and I and I believe Michael Sorokin amongst a couple other people sponsored a bill to accelerate the requirement by which utilities the date by which utilities have to have 100% renewable power and increase the amount of that power that has to be produced locally. So right now only about 10% of the electricity mix in each utility area has to be renewable. We're trying to push that up as high as 20. We're struggling to work it through but we're pretty committed. Last I'm going to say something and I don't see Bill Maris isn't here. However, I wanted to say Vermont just got an A and was one of like three states in America for pollinator friendly legislation which I actually think is and it's really it's a great thing and you know we take for granted sometimes you know we pass bills and they've got chemical names and you know everyone just votes for it but in the end I shouldn't say that they think very long and hard then they vote for it but it doesn't stand out right it's not the thing that gets news or anything but we have adopted a series of pieces of legislation in recent years to ban the use of certain chemicals which kill pollinators and I'll just tell you when the bees are gone so are we and we've got a couple more things coming. So if any of you see Bill Maris in the coming days please tell them that we got we might not get an A in many things we got an A in that one. Oh there you go so all right so tell them please. So I'll stop there because I've probably talked even longer than I'd hope to and I'd rather if there's any questions on that or anything else I'm totally in. Great. Yeah about the prisons with the increased decriminalization of marijuana have people who have been incarcerated for either having drugs on their body or selling them have they been released from prison it didn't that happen in California that they released a whole bunch of people after the change in laws related to marijuana. In the Vermont context when we decriminalized marijuana possession so we've done two things we decriminalized marijuana possession up to a certain amount which meant that it was still illegal but you would get a civil ticket instead of a criminal offense then we legalized possession up to a certain amount. Before either of those became law to be perfectly honest our courts had pretty much rejected incarceration as the answer to many of those so you know when I arrived in the Senate there maybe there were a handful of people who were literally in all of our jails for the sole offense of possession of a small amount of marijuana. There are some people in who are big time dealers. There are a few people who probably if you looked at their rap sheet it has something to do with marijuana but there's a whole lot else which is really bad. So the good news is because Vermont didn't have those mandatory minimums and three strikes bills in Cal like California did we didn't have a bunch of people sitting behind bars wasting away for you know really pointless reasons. But what we do have now what I mean we all you know you hear this sort of sound bite sometimes about how the prisons are the primary mental health system in many states. Well it's also becoming a drug treatment program. We are now providing medication assisted treatment in our jails. We are the most aggressive in the country in terms of trying to meet people where their addiction is and get them back into being able to be productive people and up to their potential. But there are some very serious drug addiction problems in our state and I just leave it at that. I have the mic so I guess I can go. You get to dominate. Tear it out of my hands. So in addition to having Bill Mares's wife here and Bill Mares has done so much in this state to develop and promote beekeeping. He's amazing in that regard. I'm also the daughter of the founder of the state's largest apiary and I still may be the largest apiary in the in New England. So I know my nephew Chas Mares has worked very hard as well on making our conditions possible for bees to survive. And this area has been historically really valuable for honey production. Aside from that in terms of the prison issue my understanding is part of the problem in terms of overcrowding in prisons is that prisoners who have served their term but can't demonstrate that they have housing that's approved by the prison stay in prison because of a housing issue. So I just wondered if you've addressed the housing problem related to the population. The reason the legislation is called justice reinvestment is because we want to take the savings as people aren't required to be housed out of state because we pay basically an annual amount for each person who's out of state. So if you reduce the number of out of state inmates people out of private prison by one it's about a thirty thousand dollar cash back to the state. So what we're saying is as we drive that number down take the money and reinvest it in strategies that will make more people successfully get out of the jail sort of pipeline. There is one of the problems we've had is our corrections department has been terrible with data. So at one point they had to make a long story short if we wanted to know how many people fit into the description you just made which is they're incarcerated and other than the lack of appropriate approved housing they're sitting behind bars they couldn't tell us that number. So we now have sharpened the information and we are committed to investing some of the money in the kind of appropriate housing that will get them out. Now like I mean this is where I'm a bad politician I should just stop but one of the challenges I'll give you an example of how it like on the ground it's really challenging. So dismiss house there's a dismiss house in Burlington there's a dismiss house in Rutland there might be one in Winooski. Does anyone does anyone here work at dismiss house. All right because I'm about to say something which I'm almost certain is true but I'm prepared to be corrected which is if someone drinks at dismiss house they're out and some people are back in jail because then they don't have the approved housing. So some of it is working with the existing providers to think about their policies a little different. Anybody who knows someone who has tried to who is in recovery knows that relapses are part of the game usually. So we're trying to work with organizations like dismiss who provide amazing services to make sure that we're not inadvertently setting some people up for failure and putting them back in. The other challenge is there are some inmates who want to go back to communities where they ought not go back to right if you're victim is in town A and the the justice system says well the person's sort of ready to be released but we don't want to hear she to be back in town A because that's the problem area. But if the inmate says well that's where I'm going back sometimes that's why they're staying past their minimums and I'm not I'm not saying how many times that's the case but sometimes that that story is a little bit more complicated but long and short of it is we are making more investments in the kind of housing transitional housing and treatment housing so that we can clear out the people who really are ready to get out. Yeah and Tim I'm going to ask you to come back to me after my question. What was the economic take on the part of I don't remember Kavett's first name Tom is it Tom and Jeff Carr to the dynamics of an increase in minimum wage. The so this the governor has an economist named named Jeff Carr and the legislature has one called Tom Kovett and this is just for educational purposes the reason these two economists are important is they jointly produce economic forecast so that you don't have the legislature saying all this will be no problem we have plenty of money for it and then the governor saying no we don't we have to have a unified agreement. The most of the work on this one was done by the legislative economist although I don't think there was any real disagreement between the two. The belief is that the pay for about 40,000 positions will go up and a few hundred positions over the coming handful of years may be eliminated. Is that what your well the last time I was here I kind of got some early dismissed and I've been thinking about it ever since because I have a degree in economics and I have an MBA from an Ivy League school and I was dismissed in the fashion that that when I raised the point that that it is inflationary through the personnel chain within whatever organization it is to raise wages and I was given a lesson in economics that well but those people can now go out and spend more money and I didn't want to get in a back and forth dialogue with with the microphone going back and forth but what happens when Joe goes out to spend his money is if he goes to a similar establishment he spends his money in a place that's had to raise prices and my view of inflation and minimum wages. Yeah there's a time delay but ultimately it catches up which is why I asked you what the economist said because I'm sure they're better economists than I am but that to me is the way it plays out and like I said I didn't want to get in this debate at the last NPA meeting because we just would have been back and forth on it. Unquestionably there are impacts on prices. I mean if wages go up and that's and all other things are fixed right the price of the good is going to go up so I there's no debate with you there. The question really is a matter of trade offs and you know making a balancing act decision as individual legislators. The some total of the effect on Vermont's GDP according to the economist was basically that it's negligible in any direction. So I just offer that as not a response to the issue of the inflationary point but just in terms of the some of all the parts they said that the effect is fairly negligible on the Vermont economy. And due to what due to the size of the affected population due to the size of the affected population and so on. And of course Chittenden County might actually be impacted a little many positions are already having I mean 1255. I mean I don't know. I don't want to be pejorative towards McDonald's though it's often used as that that's what they're paying even there. I think they're starting you know probably at least 12 maybe higher. So yeah and it's hard to get people you know there's a shortage of workers so but I but I will be clear with you I did support it strongly and but I respect that you might see it differently. Thanks for being here. So on the paid sick leave bill it's been on the table for years and people really advocating to get it through. I'm wondering so it came so close this year. Can you just say exactly sort of what happened what the what the bill was why didn't it go through and what do you expect to change next year to help it go through. So paid family leave started taking getting some momentum about three years ago I'd say and what it would do and I don't have all the like all the real details in my mind but I'll speak conceptually would have allowed it would have been a payroll tax on all working for monitors effectively it would have done given provided two benefits one benefit would be if someone had a child would have allowed each partner to spend some time at home with some wage replacement something on the order of like 55% of their wages would be replaced it would also allow someone under qualifying circumstances to be home with a loved one who's very ill wouldn't be like the kids got the sniffles it would be something more significant than that and also provide payment you know for the person as a wage replacement the the bill the governor never liked it he wanted to create what he called a voluntary plan he had conceived with the governor of New Hampshire maybe pairing together and creating a plan that that one didn't go very far because the legislators in New Hampshire didn't like it very much so when they said no way it kind of made that not very viable so it came within one vote and I'll just this might be more information than you want for those of you who don't care about paid family leave suspend belief for a moment there were some who wanted the benefit to be much richer and include the individual worker him or herself so I'm not I'm out for a long period of time effectively temporary disability but through a you know universal benefit there were others who were concerned about the price tag of that that would have made it roughly an eighty million dollar payroll tax by removing that it brought it down to about thirty million in the logic there was really two full trying to get somewhere between the governor and the legislature's original position but also most of the public's primary support and I'm not advocating this I'm just regurgitating most of the public's general support is the belief that you should be there for your family that's why it's called family leave the idea that you would be sort of mucking around with temporary disability system since many employees already have temporary disability through work was a little bit more complicated so the fact that they got one vote away in the house is an indicator of how tenuous it is because there were a few people who voted no because it wasn't generous enough and there were others who would have voted no if it was any more generous I am not going to be in the legislature next year so I can't see the future but what I can tell you is that there will be house and senate members who want to bring it back up it's not clear who the governor will be if it's Phil Scott I guarantee it's going to be the same you know it's going to we're going to see this play act out again if it's one of the democratic candidates my suspicion is there will be a paid leave program it's just a matter of what it will look like so I hope that provides a little bit of insight into it the coronavirus is an interesting so the coronavirus you know Jerry and I did our elbow touch and then of course I touched all the ladles over there and realized that we might as well have shaken hands in the first place so the coronavirus though you know I think we're all realizing you know we talk a big game about pandemic flu prep preparedness I used to work in senior housing we spent a lot of time getting ready to make sure people would be safe and vulnerable populations would be taken care of and I think all state agencies have some kind of plan but it's only now when you realize that those plans are really robust enough and I had a senator Randy Brock who's really into security issues and things he emailed me this morning and said under what conditions will we shut down the state house and it's not so far fetched to think that could happen like within a matter of a couple weeks so I'm having a discussion with the House and Senate there's a little mini group of us who come together to try to figure out the overall state house dynamics and we're going to have a talk about what will be the basis for us shutting down if we do shut down will we work remotely as committees like how would that work we'd have to change rules of the Senate and House to allow people to vote remotely right now you have to be sitting in your chair to vote and none of these are easy things because you also don't want to I mean the whole point is we're very public when we're there everyone can watch us they can I mean I've had people I can feel the breath in my ear lobe it really is so public so if we if we do something in reaction to be remote it means no one's going to be able to really follow along what we're doing so it is suddenly like a wake up call for a lot of us you may have seen the public school the the Department of Health Commissioner Mark Levine among his bullet pointed statements was we don't have to close schools yet and I thought the word the emphasis is key there yet if it's we don't have to close schools yet we'll think about what that's going to mean for people in the people workplaces you know that there's this one part I don't know I've never I don't go to parties with a hundred people anymore maybe I've got a boring nightlife but this party in New Hampshire or on the White River Valley there were apparently a hundred people the vast majority of them have been roaming around ever since and so you know the governor is right to tell people it's a matter of if not when not if and we all need to really think about that all right we're we're actually right at the end of the time here I feel like there's more questions and I'm sorry we're going to have to move on to the next thing but we really like to thank Tim for coming thank you very much thank you it's it's relatively easy to find me if you have questions you can the email that is sent out by your steering committee members has the email addresses for each one of us so feel free to drop a line if you see something that doesn't look right or you just want to check in happy to happy to give you intel all right next we have DPW coming Jenna and her team talk about stormwater stormwater mitigation in the city all right awesome I just a lot of people came when it gets exciting so a lot of people came in a little late there there's some food over here would really encourage people if you're hungry please get a salad or get something to drink or whatever you would like thank you so I'm joined tonight by Rob Goulding and he is passing out copies of the slides last time I was at this can you guys hear me I'm just going to talk right into it the last time I was at this NPA you guys did not have a screen or a projector so I was planning ahead and it turns out you're prepared this time so Rob will be planning handing out the slide deck I'm going to keep this as brief as possible just out of respect for your time I will preface this by saying that there will be a more detailed meeting at the end of the month on March 31st so my name is Jenna Olson I am the water policy and programs manager for DPW water resources I'm joined by James Sherard he is our storm water program coordinator you'll be seeing a lot of me over the next few months as water resources starts rolling out outreach for a number of bigger picture projects that we're working on not just you know hard and fast infrastructure but a number of larger initiatives and plans for water quality improvement projects again tonight we're just going to talk about a very specific set of projects that are planned for this summer so the overview is that there are a number of green storm water infrastructure retrofits planned for Ward 6 to mitigate combined sewer overflows and those are planned for the neighborhood that is depicted in the image on that second slide I guess not the cover slide the first one so there are six systems in total that are made up of 15 distinct features that you'll be able to see on the surface in total these projects are going to provide management for just under six acres of impervious surface in the south end which is roughly 26% of the area that currently contributes to the Pine Street combined sewer overflow point so for those of you who haven't been following along over the last couple of years I know we've been doing a lot of outreach with the city but roughly 30% of Burlington is still made up of combined sewers while this is a problem for obvious reasons and that when there's too much rain that overflows and can get into surface waters it was originally designed that way for protection of businesses and homes so the system was built with a number of relief points originally we had 12 of these relief points around the city and those points are areas where again when it is raining too much water can discharge out of the system into a surface water body over the course of the last 30 years or so we have done a significant amount of work in disconnecting those locations throughout the city and we are down to only five of those CSO points on the whole four of them really don't discharge that often the most problematic one that we do have is the Pine Street CSO the reason why those other four don't discharge very often is because of a significant amount of work that was put in around 2010 and 2011 to implement green stormwater infrastructure practices in the Old North End it's not perfect out there right now but it has dramatically decreased the frequency and duration of those combined sewer overflow events so the way we came about these particular sites is that the city is also undergoing something called integrated planning again I will be coming back to you over the next couple of months to talk to you more about that specific effort but basically we're the first municipality to come up with a statewide plan for a comprehensive and prioritized way to meet all of these increasing water quality regulatory obligations and to meet all of our local water quality goals so in late 2017 our integrated planning team identified they did a citywide study and came up with a variety of locations all across the city the map that you'll see on your slide is it looks a little crazy and it probably is at that scale but they identified all of these locations that would be suitable for implementing green stormwater infrastructure cut to 2018 that summer we had a number of fairly acute challenges with our wastewater system and had to come up with a way to address that we got really strong feedback from the community that that was a priority for Burlington and that culminated in our request to the city for approval as you go out for a $30 million bond we received a 92% approval rating on that bond which was a really significant message from the community that Burlington believes that water quality is a high priority that plan you know while expedited at the time was built on a lot of years of planning and analysis the key area identified for improving water quality was implementation of stormwater retrofits specifically to mitigate combined sewer overflow activity so shortly after we were approved to go out for that $30 million bond a pretty unique grant opportunity came about the Lake Champlain Basin program released a request for proposals through the Department of Environmental Conservation and made available $1.25 million worth of grant funding to implement green stormwater infrastructure practices specifically to mitigate CSO projects we were able to secure a million dollars of that $1.25 that was available there was a lot of the blood, sweat and tears specifically the tears part that went into that application process but we did it and we got a million dollars of that money so it was a pretty short-term turnaround and what we came up with thanks to having that integrated planning opportunities map already identified we were able to identify 12 projects six of which we're talking about tonight six more that will be beginning the initial design phases in the next few months in total those projects will be able to manage 15 acres of impervious surface and they need to be completed by September of 2021 so again we used that opportunities map and that initial planning work that we had done to identify these locations Burlington's Board of Finance and City Council approved us to accept that grant in June of last year and that was yeah we were able to accept the grant and started right away on finalizing designs so the projects that were identified were again specific to this location for a couple of reasons one of the main reasons was that there are two really discrete areas that feed the Pine Street CSO this location that you're seeing highlighted on the map the red area is the only area of that neighborhood that actually feeds the Pine Street CSO there is one to the north it's within the vicinity of Ledge Road and as you would have it there is a lot of really shallow ledge there and so implementing practices like these can be really challenging in those locations because you need subsurface real estate in order to put these practices in so that is why these specific locations were identified in total these specific projects alone will be mitigating 5.86 acres of impervious surface I said that to begin with but I really want to hit that home because it's a really significant area and again we know that these practices work we have implemented similar systems in the Old North End and it has made a meaningful reduction in CSOs in those areas so anticipated benefits and impacts the benefits are the list of benefits is a lot longer than the list of impacts thankfully so there are city-wide water quality benefits obviously reducing the number of CSOs is good for the lake this speaks to our climate resiliency plan you know we are increasingly having to prepare for higher frequency, shorter duration storms and we are doing that work to make sure that we're prepared and that our infrastructure is prepared to manage that changing climate it is mitigating our most challenging CSO at Pine Street there are some neighborhood aesthetic impacts so these are gardens they are planted ideally with pollinator species we have implemented similar systems elsewhere in the city that have also that we have specifically targeted for pollinator species we work closely with Burlington Park's rec and Waterfront to select plants that are suitable for these systems and will support pollinator species there is some habitat in green space reclamation again you know creating pollinator habitat we're reducing impervious surface so these areas are these gardens are going in spots where there is currently a roadway so that's an overall benefit and there are some inherent traffic calming benefits throughout the city we have a number of areas and we get this feedback often from residents that folks come screaming down the street and we need to do something and we need to slow people down these systems create a visual barrier for folks in the lane and it does result in folks slowing down so that is also positive okay yeah so that's really it so if you guys have questions I'm happy to answer them again we will have a more detailed meeting on March 31st I saw your hand first okay okay my name is Joel Fitzgerald I think I called down there and so I just want to say again that I'm all for this the only thing I'm concerned about is the signs are right in front of my house we have driveways across the street I get everything about it but I'm just hoping that if it in fact because I do feel you know that my property could probably you know the city could benefit from my property you know I'm just hoping that you take some input from the citizens on the layout of these things I mean I talked to four of my neighbors one of those signs are they're going Joel we'd love to be part of this but we don't want to have to try to back out around it there's areas where we think it would fit so we're just hoping that you know and I talked to Karen Paul a little bit about it about you know just maybe some input from the people you know so we don't come home from work and this thing stuck it out in front of our house you know and I think it's going to go a lot farther with the community on that yeah so that's a good point and I guess that this is an important point to mention that there are actually two parallel projects happening so this project that we're talking about is going to construction this summer and the site selection issue is tricky because even very close together the subsurface soil conditions are super variable in that neighborhood I mean we had a solid eight feet of beautiful sand and a separation to groundwater in one area and a couple hundred feet away we hit groundwater at three feet so it's a very explicit set of site conditions in order to get these systems in the ground and the variation is dramatic the other project that's happening and it's because we need such specific site conditions is just a general inventory of the right of way and that's as number of signs went up and that's just information gathering so just because there is a sign in your yard does not mean that there is a system going in the only systems right now that are hard and fast on schedule to be put in a specific location are the ones that are called out here and there will be a neighborhood meeting again on March 31st and we will be discussing that more with residents so we're gonna be putting out a letter hopefully next week and we'll be able to get some feedback from folks and hopefully be able to mitigate any issues that do come up for folks yeah so. Hi, I'm at 875 South Prospect and I see four green lines right in front of my house what can you tell me about that? So basically what I was just saying to Joel is that the system locations are very specific because of where the site conditions work for it so those systems will be do we have the picture of that? It is on here the last on the summary slide my apologies on the summary slide there's a picture of what the systems look like this is on a smaller scale but it's basically a bump out with a garden in it that will accept rainwater there will be four distinct features yes yeah. So we don't have sidewalks here which is fine but these are abutments sticking into the street walking as a pedestrian or walking your dog or whatever it looks like you're forced without sidewalks to walk around choke points is there a way to build a pathway through the face of these abutments so that one can do you understand what I'm saying? So you can avoid curving into the street where you've already got a narrowed pathway and cars that don't always go 25 miles a narrow when you have no sidewalks do you understand what I'm getting at? Understood yeah we have design needs in close coordination with our technical services division and our traffic calming program and so those types of considerations have been made so that is certainly something that I can take back to them and see if they have any thoughts on additional ways to mitigate that issue but they have had a chance to weigh in and they are specifically looking at these with the concept of walkability, bikeability in mind for sure. And just a curious question does this go to any way toward endearing us to what is it environmental district two federal environmental district two with whom we have a memorandum of understanding for mitigation of the TMDL? I'm not sure what you're referring to. We have a major issue with, I believe it's district one or district two of federal EPA. Oh region one, region one EPA yes yes this is District region. Yes sorry I thought you were talking about the Act 250 commission my apologies. Does this play positively into that MOU process? It does, this will be part of our TMDL response plan yes. So where exactly are you talking about because the maps you can't see anything at all. What addresses are you talking about? Yeah so again this was just a. Boards I mean you get a bump in front of it? Yep. Just because you were here? Four of them. So where exactly are these going to go? Yes so we do we have a website that you can look there's a map that you can navigate to we will provide that so we will provide these slides and more detailed information to the steering committee. Again all of the residents will be getting a letter within the next week and that will have all of the information about the upcoming meeting. It will have the website address and you will be able to look at a more detailed image of where these are located. Okay because you can't see anything on here. I understand that. Sure thank you for your time I appreciate it. Jenna thank you very much. All right next we have Virginia Litchfield from CEDO to talk about youth restorative practices and Michelle reminds me to point out that Virginia brought the vegan muffins in the back which we'd like speakers to continue to do. It's a very nice new tradition that we're enjoying tonight. So Virginia welcome. Thank you. Hi my name is Virginia Litchfield. I am an AmeriCorps who serves at the Burlington Community Justice Center. I'm actually oh a little closer is that better? Sorry I'm an AmeriCorps who serves there and this is actually my third service term. And I do have some copies of the slides as well if anybody would like to see it up close. I didn't know how many people would be here so there may not be quite enough for everyone with those and I apologize for that. This is my first NPA so thank you for being a kind audience. So the snapshot you see up here on the left is a copy of the website for the Burlington Community Justice Center. And my project this year is to look at what Burlington would look like as a restorative city for youth. The Burlington Community Justice Center is a part of the Community and Economic Development Office or CEDO that's the logo that you see there. So Burlington is looking at this effort of the restorative city project. Restorative cities are popping up all over the world and some of the ideas because it's a new concept for most people, what would Burlington look like or what would Burlington have to do in order to become a restorative city for our youth that live here. And the first thing we would have to do is take a relational and strengths-based approach to community building. So putting relationships at the center of everything we do, particularly with the youth in our community. We know they grow up to be hopefully the youth who stay here and buy homes and pay taxes and contribute to the workforce here. We would also empower growth in individuals and organizations through active engagement. So how are we empowering the youth of our community to eventually be the adults in our community? We would foster shared accountability and collective problem solving. So involving folks who are impacted by decisions in making those decisions, letting them have input. I think we just saw a good example of, right, you were looking for input on a decision that would impact you. And how are we offering those opportunities to youth as well? And ensuring equity of all voices, especially those that are most impacted. So when we're making decisions that affect youth, how are we bringing youth to the table so that they can also have youth and families so they can also have a voice there? And then focusing on repair instead of punishment when we're responding to harm. So when things go wrong, whether it's conflict or something that rises to the level of criminal, how can we repair relationships, right? Because a youth who lives next to you, who gets into some trouble or gets into a dispute with you, still lives next door after the harm happens, right? So repairing those relationships helps us to have happy and healthy communities. So it's first important to understand why we need restorative practices here in Burlington before we can talk about really what they are. This is a picture of a community building circle that happened at Hunt Middle School. Most of the pictures in here are from either our school district or our community. So you can see live pictures of how we're doing this already in our community. So in 2015, Vermont Legal Aid put out a report called Kicked Out to discuss the state of discipline in Vermont schools. And what that report found is that five to 10% of Vermont's school students during that school year had been suspended and they lost 8,000 days of instructional time from those suspensions. Students who are suspended one time in the ninth grade are twice as likely to drop out of school. And students who are suspended just one time are three times as likely to be involved with the juvenile justice system. So one suspension twice as likely to drop out, three times as likely to get into trouble. Students of color, students with special needs, so students on the IEPs or 504 and students who experience poverty are two to three times more likely to be suspended than their peers. And those students who are often not in class have lower achievement rates in both English and in math. And then when you look at our juvenile justice system, the racial disparity in our juvenile justice system is pretty stark. So in Chittenden County, and I do just wanna frame this by saying that the data that we have, we are reliant on the folks who collect this data. So we have data that's a little bit more granular at the community justice center, but we rely on the police and the court system for data around arrests. And they collected white youth, black youth, we're reliant on just the level that they collect it, which is why you just see the proportion of black youth here. 6% of Chittenden County youth are black youth. So when you look at arrests, 27% of the arrests that are made in Chittenden County are made of black youth. Family court filings, so when a youth goes to court, they don't go to criminal court, they go to family court. And 31%, so roughly a third of the filings in family court are black youth. When you look at detention by the police and by Woodside, that's where it gets really ugly. Almost half of those detentions are black youth, when we only have 6% of our population here that are black youth, so that's a huge disparity. And then the adult and criminal court filings, so basically when youth go straight to family court up to 17, on July 1st, that age will be raised to 18. And transferring them into adult court essentially means treating someone who's a young person as if they were an adult, means they get adult punishment as well. 40% of those youth that are being transferred over are black youth. The restorative justice process, the community justice center of Burlington statistics is the most equitable point in our community justice system or in our justice system currently. There's still a little bit of a disparity. If there was no disparity, those two bars would be equal, but it is the most equitable point at this point in our justice system, so part of the reason that we are here to talk to you guys. So why are restorative practices important? The interactions that we have every day, so the interactions you have with your neighbor, the kid who lives next door, the kid you see walking to school or crossing the street, or the young person that you meet in the store, all of these interactions have an impact on the receptivity of the brain to learn and to take in new experiences. Restorative practices helps people build those connections by building relationships. Are you guys familiar with the Youth Risk Behavior Survey? Every year we ask our youth about lots of different things. One of the things we ask them is if they feel like they matter to their community. So in 2017, three out of five youth, 61%, in the state of Vermont, said they feel like they matter to their community. I think we can do better than that. When you break that out to traditionally marginalized groups, that number drops down to 39%. So two out of five when you look at LGBTQ identifying youth are saying that they matter in their community. I think as a community, we can do better connecting with these young folks and helping them understand there are a lot of people here who care about them, right? And I'm sorry, this may seem like a lot. We offer two-hour workshops and three-day trainings in this. You guys are getting a very small snapshot because as a part of the restorative city for youth project, part of what we're doing is we're trying to help the community understand why you're gonna see seeds of restorative practice if you haven't already seen them. If you know any youth who are involved in the school district here, all of the schools in the school district are implementing. So we're trying to help people understand a little bit more about restorative practices. It's impossible to teach you all of it in 15 minutes, but just to give you a little snapshot of what restorative practices are. So there's a continuum of practice with restorative practices. It's not just one thing. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. Every time you wanna build a community or every time something happens and you need to respond to harm. So if you look at the left-hand side of this slide, it's from proactive to responsive. Restorative practices covers the entire gamut. So when you hear the school district saying that we're implementing restorative practices, they're implementing both proactive practices and reactive practices, meaning responding to harm in a restorative way. On the left-hand side, simple things like restorative communication. So when you're speaking with someone, how can we speak with someone across difference and using language that's friendly? How can we be kind with each other? And when you're speaking to someone walking up on something that's gone wrong, how can we ask questions to essentially suspend our bias or suspend our assumptions about what happens and find out what's going on? And as you come across the spectrum, the processes get a little bit more formal. We use circles for community building. Circles can also be used when something happens. Circles are very essential practice in restorative practices. And then all the way on the right-hand side, when repairing harm, family group conferences are used as a more formal practice when something has gone wrong so that we involve everyone who's involved. If a youth has been in trouble involving their parents, involving the school, community members who are impacted so that when we have a solution, it's a solution that works for everyone who's been involved. And so when they go back into the community, they have more lasting supports. So restorative justice, when we're responding to things that go wrong, whether it's a conflict or a crime in the community, restorative justice is a paradigm shift. It's a different set of questions, a different way to look at how we do justice. Our traditional system, what you guys may know is the criminal justice system or the current justice system asks a couple of questions when things go wrong. So we wanna know what expectation, what rule, what law was broken so that we can decide who is responsible for that and what punishment they need. That's how we respond when things go wrong in traditional discipline and also in the traditional justice system. In restorative justice, we look at that a little different. So it's not a crime against the state. It's a violation of a relationship that you have with someone, right? If I stole your wallet here tonight, it's a violation of my relationship that I have with you. Even if I don't know you, we still have a relationship because we live in the same community. So what harm was done by the act that was committed? What are the needs of those involved and how can that harm be repaired? And collaboratively, we look at those things and come up with a solution. So how is Burlington using restorative practice? Oh, let's give him that. As I mentioned, the Burlington School District is implementing restorative practice in all of its schools everywhere from the preschool. My daughter is three and she's in Burlington School District preschool and they do circle practice and they pass their talking rock and everybody gets a chance to have a say and put their voice in. Even the students who are non-verbal get a chance to have some input in the circle. The Community Justice Center, we offer restorative processes for both youth and adults. We get referrals directly from the police department. We also get referrals from the state's attorney's office and we offer people a chance to go through a restorative process, just a different way to deal with the harm that they've caused. The picture that's here is from Ishan Street, the Office of Student and Community Relations at UVM, brings students and community together to garden so that the youth who are living on that street who are college students get to meet the neighbors that own homes in that area, so that hopefully the first call that happens if there's a party or if something goes wrong and unexpectedly they can have that relationship to deal with those young folks. And in AmeriCorps, we're training all of the AmeriCorps, we train them last year and this year, who work in the city of Burlington in restorative practices so that we can have a way of building community with these young folks and hopefully giving them some of those relationships so we can increase that 61%. And this is my last slide for you guys, other than my contact slide. These are the organizations in Burlington that we know that are using restorative practice already. Some of these, like the YMCA, King Street Youth Center, Upward Bound, they're training their staff annually in these practices of building community. The Community Economic Development Office funds the AmeriCorps program, so they're placing AmeriCorps all around the city. So we have seeds of restorative practice all around the city. Spectrum has put out a proposal to start a restorative practice program. Don't have that one for you. There we go. So this is my contact information. If anyone has questions. Yeah, let's have some time for questions for sure. The purpose of my, it is really informative for you guys, the handouts that you have, oh, you don't have them, but I'll make sure you get them, are nine ways to live restoratively. So if you're interested in how do I take these principles and practices and bring them into my own life, I have those for you and also a flyer about the project. Hi, I just have a question about the transitional youth to young adults, there's been some talk about that particular age group which were very vulnerable because it kind of dropped by the system in all ways, the 18 to 25 year olds. And are you working with that group at all in any of this way? Because I know that in some places that's been a conversation to include that particular group of people instead of treating them, oh, you're an adult now at your 18. So our definition of youth is up to 24. And the reason why we define youth as up to 24 is because we know that youth's brains are still developing even past 24. But neuroscience tells us that those youth really still have some development happening in the executive functioning and prefrontal cortex area. So we are working with youth up to 24. And as we're a little bound by statute in terms of at the criminal justice center, the youth that we see and how we define them as youth. But as the state raises the minimum age each year over the next couple of years, we'll have more youthful offenders that'll be able to come through that family court process. I actually wanted to ask about how many kids or young people do you think go through your programs in a given month or quarter? Do you have any rough numbers for the number of people you're affecting? I don't know those numbers. I'm gonna, Kelly might, Kelly is, I'm gonna put her on the spot a little bit because Kelly's our youth restorative program manager. So she might have a better answer for that. Paraphys, yeah. I didn't tell her I was gonna give her questions too. You know, it really does vary year to year. A crime rates like in Burlington in particular, especially low level kind of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, it ebbs and flows. And the way we get our referrals. And so it's, you know, in any kind of given time, I'm just sort of thinking offhand, like around 70 youth in Burlington, but not to get into the weeds too much, but the Burlington Community Justice Center for about 20 years focused in the city of Burlington. And just last July, we took on all court diversion programs for the entire county. And so I feel like my answer is in this in-between stage, kind of six months from going from one number to we're about to bump that number up quite a bit. But I'll make sure that Virginia has that in case she gets in the future. Thank you. Okay, Virginia, thank you very much. Okay, we haven't met our next presenter. Are you Bob? Bob, please come up. Thank you. So next we have, so Bob Stock is here. Do you talk about the upcoming census? Thank you. So now that we've got the technology in order, we can talk about the United States Census. And thank you again for inviting me this evening to speak with you about this. As a matter of fact, earlier today, there was a meeting of BTV counts, which is the complete count committee for the city of Burlington. And that's also a run out of the CETO office folks there. So what that committee is made up of our trusted members of the community. When I say trusted, what I mean by that is is that a lot of our heart to counts, what we call heart to counts, anyway, we need these members of the community to be involved so that we make sure that we count everybody, count them only once, count them in the right place. As of a week from tonight, people will begin to be able to respond to the 2020 census. So the census is important. It's mandated under article one, section two of the United States Constitution. It stipulates that we will count everybody in the United States. And it also stipulates that it is going to, it is, and stipulates it is going to determine representation in Congress and funding for the States. So we're not gonna have to worry too much about the representation in Congress. When I moved here in 1984, the population was about 602,000. It's about 623,000 now, so we're not gonna get to 750 anytime soon. But what is important to us is the funding for the 55 major programs. There's actually about 130 programs, but 55 major programs, most of which are familiar to you, Medicaid, section eight housing, Medicare Part B assistance, SNAP, which is the food stamps, school lunch, special ed. It just goes on and on and on. So to the extent that we are successful in counting everybody in Vermont, it does have a dramatic impact on our funding. So it's important. And I'm here to tell you it's also safe. A lot of people don't realize this, but the United States Census Bureau operates under title 13 of the US Code, which means that we do not share personal identifiable information with anybody. And that includes Homeland Security, ICE, the FBI, the CIA, and we are not superseded by the Patriot Act. And that has been challenged in court and been upheld. Every census employee takes an oath to protect any personal identifiable information that we come across, which we try not to. But if we do, we have to protect it. And the penalties for not doing so are severe. $250,000 fine of five years in jail. And I, for one, have no intentions of encountering the American justice system, so. But we don't look for a lot of personal identifiable information on the census. There's only nine questions this time around. And I'm actually giving more information to Amazon than I am to the census. I mean, I'm essentially giving them my name, my address, my phone number, and some demographic information around age, race, that sort of thing. So if you're single like me, you're basically getting this thing done in about 30 seconds. That's all. The only time it's gonna take you longer is if you've got a number of people in the household and you're enumerating every one of them. So this time around, another thing with it is it's easy. This is the first one that people can respond via internet, via telephone. Can also respond via paper if they want to. And finally, if we have to, we'll send what we call an enumerator. Those are the ones you see. Used to walk around with a clipboard. Now it's an iPad that has 59 different languages on it. So, yeah, one of the surprises to me was when I was working with Essex, which for whatever reason I tend to think of as, quote, IBM Global Foundry Town, but also somewhat rural. They have 43 different languages in their school system. 43. I mean, I'm thinking myself, really? I mean, if they said Burlington-Wanuski, I'd have thought, yeah, okay, but no, 43. So we have a very diverse society. I'm not telling anybody in this room that anything they don't already know. So we have traditional hard to count population, such as the homeless. We have ways of taking care of that. We know that, for example, 18 to 24 is notoriously hard to count because why? 10 years ago, they were eight or 14. And somewhere in between, so they had not exposed to the census. So we have ways of addressing that also. Recent immigrants can be troubling to count because a lot of them come from governments they don't trust and they don't trust this one. So that's why we use trusted members of the community to reach them, to make sure that we count them and to be able to explain to them the importance of it because Bob Stock, living in Shelburne, is one person. That anybody else is one person. We want to count people, right? We don't care what your demographics are. We just want to count. So with that, it's important, it's safe, and it's easy. So what else do we do? Well, we have to hire, by the way, I live and work in Vermont, but I work for the New York Regional Census Center which is out of Lower Manhattan. And let's say there is a Lower Manhattan worldview. So one of the things that they mentioned was, this is back about a year ago, we need to have 9,100 applicants in Vermont, really. I needed to explain to them, we have a couple of counties up here that don't have 9,100 people in them, okay? Be that as it may, you know how far I got with that. So they have their metrics, we need 9,100 to hire 2,000. By the way, this is the largest single effort that the United States puts forth in peacetime. We're hiring about 500,000 people nationally. We have millions of partners that are working with us on this. So it is a huge, huge effort. The jobs we're still hiring, by the way, they pay anywhere from 20 to $22 an hour. So if you know of anybody that's interested, I would encourage them to apply. We still need people. It's trainings paid, mileage is paid, and you basically work when and if you want. You can work full-time if you want, work part-time, just work nights, work Saturdays, whatever. So it's a pretty good job for about 10 weeks. So the rollout, as I mentioned, people will be able to start responding a week from today. We will continue with mailings, and then if we don't have a response from an address by May 15th, we will start to begin sending the enumerators out, and that goes through July 31st. And then we have a requirement to have the count to the president by December 31st, 2020, and the Congress for redistricting by April 1st, 2021. Oh, by the way, the Area Census Office is in Burlington. It's where some of you may remember where Social Security used to be on Pearl Street 58. We're in there now. So, again, back to my friends down in Manhattan, when they told me where it was gonna be, one of the questions they asked me was, where's the nearest subway stop? So, well, I'm gonna stay in the United States, maybe Arlington on the red line. Brassard up in the metro. But anyway, so that's where we are. We are moving ahead. We're ready. We're psyched to get this done. And we will do a good job on it. And that's about it for me. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them. Let me just, I'll start off. I'm just wondering about, what is the checkout of the new technology been like? I mean, how confident are people in being able to handle the volume? Because I know some of the internet stuff's a new, first time, right? First time used. First time. My background, I've been with the Bureau for about a year and a half. I actually come out of technology and I actually come out of cybersecurity. What's the old CrossFit's term? No more plant survives contact with the enemy. So we will see. They are confident. I mean, I'm not sure exactly, I'm just being honest with them. Not sure exactly what else they would say. I mean, there's been a number of trials on this, but because this is the first time that it's internet, I'm not as worried about the safety or the security of it because any data we get is immediately stored offline. I'm more worried about the volume. So we'll see. Well, please, I hope everybody responds within a week or two. So, oh, by the way, one other thing before I forget, I'm sorry. As of the 20th, if you are interested on the 2020census.gov website, you can track the response right down to the board six, if you will, what the response rates are. That's something we'll be watching very closely, as a matter of fact, because we will deploy teams in those tracks where we feel a response is not where it should be. Thank you. All right, Bob, thank you very much. Okay, now we have our city councilors. Yes, Karen, that's you. And Joan. We can probably share. You can share anything. Okay. All right. So, are we both reusing this? Yes. Are we? It's okay to touch it. So I'll try not to speak too closely. We're very used at the council meetings to literally be speaking so close that we find it frustrating when people get up at public forum and aren't very, very close and try to get them to do this or we can't hear them. So, well, first of all, just wanted to say thank you. Thank you very much for, I see so many people here that I saw on town meeting day. It just feels like it was a lot longer ago than two days. I will say that this is probably of all the town meeting days that I've stood outside. This was by far the easiest. In fact, I actually even had a few people who came up to me and said, where are your snow pants? Where is the, I usually am extremely bundled up and this was a very easy, much easier day to stand outside. But thank you very much for your support. Thank you for your votes and thank you for re-electing me. So there's a lot that's going on. I think certainly one of the more focal issues in Ward six and in the south end is the roundabout. We have been working on this for a very long time before I was elected and we are getting potentially to a very important point. There was one abutter that we had not been able to come to terms with through the more routine channel. We went, the one abutter is majestic car rental who was not happy with the offer that was given to them. We did a site visit a couple of months ago. We had what's called a necessity hearing and on Monday they are gonna be coming back they hired an economist, they worked out what they felt was a reasonable offer and the city council needs to then vote on that. Once that happens, the project can really begin in earnest with construction documents. They're planning on going to bid in January. They're hoping to start construction in the spring of 2021 and it will take two years and in the fall of 2022, if all goes, I know, I know. Everybody's thinking, yeah, okay, but that is the plan. And it seems as though it's possible it actually could happen. I know about the Champlain Parkway and that's been a long time, but this one does appear as though it is going to go forward. As far as other construction things, Moran, we voted on that where they're gonna start that in the spring, the Moran Frame Project Memorial. We're still working on, it's a very expensive project. We do have debt capacity for $15 million more. That's really all the city can really do. And we are working with an operator. This is not something the city can do on its own. We need an operator to bring entertainment to Memorial basically to pay for what needs to be done. It'll also be a great venue for the winter farmers market and many other activities, but that has not, we haven't gotten that far. The idea is between now and probably September to if we can get that far that we would be coming to the voters in November with a ballot item for a bond for the city's part portion of the project or the $15 million. There's still a couple of million dollars that's left. And then many of you, some of you I think were at the city place, the second community meeting. That was a week and a half ago. They only had one at noon, which I think was rather unfortunate. A lot of people could not go and they made a decision, it's their meeting. They made a decision, Brookfield, to only have one meeting. And I actually was said it during the comments. A few of you were there that there were a lot of people who were very unhappy about that. So I'm hopeful that they won't do that again. But the next meeting that they're gonna have will be part of their permitting process. And that'll be at the NPA in boards two and three because the downtown, their project is within boards two and three. And the one exciting part of the meeting was that they now have floor by floor schematics, which were very interesting to look at. And so they are making progress. They did show a timeline and the timeline hasn't changed. They're still hoping for an August 2020 start. And the only thing that they changed a little bit slightly is I think at the first meeting they said completion the first quarter of 2023. And I think they said at the second quarter of 2023. But other than that, I mean, they appear to be moving in a positive direction. And then City Hall Park, there's actually good news there. City Hall Park is actually ahead of schedule. Part of that is we've actually had, I guess, in terms of this project, good news on both sides. We had a late start to winter, so they were able to work longer. And it appears as though unless we have a really rough march that we may have a quicker start to spring. Even if that doesn't exactly go to plan, I think it's fair to say that, I mean, all indications are that by late August the park will be reopened. There may be some seating issues, but for the most part that it would be open. And if you're at all interested, they have set up a time-lapse camera and it's actually pretty cool. They have it on the enjoyburlington.com website. And it's one of those time-lapse fast fast. I don't know, if you're into that, I'm sort of into that. I think it's pretty cool. They have that until they stop construction and they are gonna start it again in the spring. And I think the only other thing I did wanna mention is that having the person here from the census, one of the other things that's important about the census is that it's important to what we will go through again, which we did in 2010, which is redistricting in terms of finding out where there have been increases, decreases, probably mostly increases in where people are living in the city of Burlington. And I'm hopeful, in fact, I've drafted a resolution to hopefully make it so that the redistricting process, if we need to do that, happens a lot more quickly than it did last time. It took us basically four years. Hopefully, it won't take us quite this long, but we won't have the data for a while. But when we do, and we do have a pretty good idea of where some of the, you know, some of the developments that were going on in 2010, which of course now are finished, they didn't count in 2010 unless you were living there, but people are living there now. And for example, Cambrian Rise, although it's not finished, there are a lot of people living there. They weren't living there in 2010, obviously. So, you know, filling that out is extremely important to representation in the city of Burlington. And I think that's sort of it for me. I'll let Joan, if you have any questions, or, and again, thank you. Thank you very, very much. A heartfelt thanks. This award is phenomenally important to all of us. I grew up here. It's an incredible honor to be able to serve on the city council in a word. When I walk the streets here, it's, I feel like I was back when I was in school, being able to just be able to connect with all of you. So thank you. First, thank you for your service to our ward. We appreciate it. Can you just remind, yay. Can you remind us of the status of the Moran plant redesigned and when that's going to commence? Oh, see, I went by it so quickly that I probably should have said more. So we did vote on that. There's a whole, I don't know how in the weeds you wanna get about it there. We did come up with a concept last summer that was developed the frame project, which basically takes a lot of the building off the building and is leaving us basically with a frame. I don't know. Unfortunately, what happened was that there, we have tipped money, about five and a half million dollars, and we were told that to do the project as it was given to us in the summer, last summer, that we could do that. Well, what they found was that there's things on the metal that make up the structure as well as other things that have to be remediated, and that is a lot more expensive than we thought it was gonna be. And so the cost, the 5.6 million that we thought was gonna cover the whole thing is not gonna cover the whole thing. So we've come up with a way to get at least phase one of the project done. Part of that includes, just in the interest of full disclosure, part of that also includes the fact that the original owner of the Moran plant was the Burlington Electric Department. And there is a law that if there is remediation issues found, that it also falls to the original owner. And we've made an agreement with Burlington Electric. Because remember, the Burlington Electric is our ratepayers, not necessarily the same group of people that make up the city. And so between all of us, we've gotten it to the point where we do have covered this first phase, and that's what we'll be doing. It's gonna start in the spring and it'll be done in phase one next year. We are hoping to be able to finish the rest of it, but that will depend on the ability for CEDO to locate funding that is not taxpayer dollars. And by that, I mean an outside source. I would like to congratulate Karen, not only on a win, but on being uncontested in her race, because obviously she keeps her constituents so happy who would want to run against her. I think Karen really touched on most of the things that are before us, but there's a couple other things. We did pass our ordinance for accessory dwelling units. And with that, we removed, you can now build an accessory dwelling unit. It has to be owner occupied. And there's no additional parking requirement in your house. The thinking being that that might be an elderly parent who's living there doesn't necessarily drive. The units are relatively small. And if you're living there, you're probably going to want to provide whatever parking is needed for your family. It also increases the lock coverage that's allowed. If you want to build an accessory dwelling unit, you can now go beyond the lock coverage that you were restricted to previously. Also on Burlington Telecom, at our last report here, I had asked for your input on whether or not we should reinvest in Burlington Telecom. And I think those who did participate and did give me input on that. And I will say that there were certainly disagreement in the community. And people I respect on both sides at the end of the day, it's really, I ended up where I started out. I had never really thought that this was a good idea, but I was open to being persuaded for somebody to give me a good reason to reinvest this money in Burlington Telecom. And I was not able to find that good reason, but it's kind of a case of you put the pros and cons on a scale. And some people may say those pros make it worth it. That's not where I was. And I did have a North Avenue news piece that just came out explaining my vote. And if anybody is interested, that's just a copy of the North Avenue news explanation of the Burlington Telecom reinvestment decision. One more thing. The Winooski, we're gonna be voting on the Winooski quarter at our next meeting. And that is a proposal to make that stretch from Main Street to Pearl Street, three lanes. So you have a lane in each direction and a turning lane and bike lanes on either side, which sounds great. The business community is concerned about the queuing at City Market and I'm trying to think of it's Cherry or Bank Street that's right there because there are people going Bank Street. Okay, so there's people turning left, going in opposite directions and not a lot of room for queuing in a turn lane. So that is somewhat of a concern. I have talked to Public Works and I've been assured that if there's a problem that they're going to respond quickly to that. And it's probably something that we should try. I don't think the status quo is satisfactory to too many people, so hopefully that will pass. There's also the section from King Street to Main Street is gonna remove 12 parking spaces. I forget now if it's King or Maple to Main, but there are 12 parking spaces being removed there for bike lanes. And the more controversial part is when you go north of where North Union Street comes into North Winooski, there are a lot of businesses in that section and those businesses tell us that their livelihood depends on people driving to the destination and certainly people in the neighborhood really enjoy walking to the destination but if they don't have the other clientele to support those businesses, they could lose those businesses that they like walking to. There's also residents that park on the street there and that's the part for me that I am concerned about. They are planning to do a parking management plan to address the parking needs in the community. We're being asked to approve this prior to the parking management plan being done. And I am reluctant to approve it on the assumption that the parking management plan is gonna be fine. I think we should be allowed to see that and that's not something that's gonna happen this year anyway. So why not kind of divide that and approve this first part and then look at the second part when we have the parking management plan to make sure we have something that the community feels is going to work. I think that's about it for me. On that, in front of the city market on Winooski, is there a plan to put big white X's there so that people can come and go from city market? It seems like. White X's where? A block that shows an access to the street and so traffic coming on Winooski has to leave that box open so people can come in and out. As you try to leave there and cars just pack in at the light and if they had a box, you could come and go. I just think that's sort of an obvious thing that's never happened. Right, yeah, that's a good point. They're looking at, there's a possibility that you won't be able to make a left turn into city market anymore. So they are looking at changing traffic patterns to city market. Well, that would help too, but the box seems to me it would help. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. That's a good question because I know that there's talk of not allowing left turns into city market. I'm not sure if you'd still be allowed to make a left turn out of city market. But you're talking about the people who, even just people going right can't get out there. I think you have to be able to make a left turn because yeah, because South Union is one way. Right, right, okay, good idea. Pass that on. I've heard that there. Yeah, the question is buyer for the old Y building, yes. Yeah, I mean, I thought there was. I could be wrong. I thought that it was Frank Von Turgovic that is buying the Y. Well, then you're ahead of me. I was not aware of that. I had heard a hotel. I'd like to ask, what's gonna happen on Shelburne Road while the construction's happening on the rotary? Is it gonna be closed some of the time or do you know anything about how that's gonna go? Actually, all the cars are gonna be queued on Ludwood Court. It's gonna be a through street now. Yeah, we're gonna make that a through street right in front of your house. Traffic open. They are planning to keep traffic open. Either, either, counselor, any updates on a new police chief? Well, I actually was in touch with the director of HR today. They had posted the job a couple of weeks ago and they are going to keep it open on the city website until it's filled. In the meantime, they are organizing a committee, similar to what they do often with department heads and are hoping to get that done by the end of next week. As of right now, there are 15 candidates that meet the minimum requirements as per the job posting. There may be more, I don't know about that, but there are 15 right now. But again, the position is still, the posting is still open. And they're hoping to narrow that down to have interviews with the committee of five to seven, with one to three, preferably not one, but I think the mayor would like to have at least two to last time it was two to, there were four. So certainly a number that would then advance to an interview at that point. But it sounds to me like we're, and again, this is just sort of me based on what I heard today that we're looking at probably, it would seem by the first of May, but that's just my guess. There was not, I didn't, no one said anything. That's just me figuring, given the number, given the number of weeks that I've been told. So I just got, Karen, the other night I went to the meeting down at the high school and there's a second gym proposal and you know, the city, we keep building these community spaces and then now we're gonna have a memorial auditorium. And I didn't get a chance to talk to Claire or, I mean, at what point, I mean, and I don't know if you have a lot to do with the school, but I know you have something to do with the community spaces, but they're proposing a second gym and they're taking it out and they're gonna put it back in first. Yeah, F-Building, which has to do with the trades and all that stuff, they're doing nothing too. So some of us in that meeting had concerns about this second gym with community space. When we, as a city, just continue to contribute to community spaces and at what point, you know, why does a high school have to be a community space? We got the Miller Center. We got other spaces down the avenue. Now we're gonna have a memorial auditorium and we keep, so I just wanted to, I don't know what you folks do with that, but I'm a little concerned and a lot of the people in the room are concerned that, you know, why are we gonna have to put up a second gym for community space when we obviously have really good community spaces around there? And I think that's like a $5 million bill. So I just wanted to make that point. The only other thing that I had was that for the city downtown, city place, is it still their intent to put a lot of people from the University of Vermont Hospital down in there for the tenants? Have you heard that? The office space, yes. So the other question I have is, what is the tax impact on that? Does that mean because the hospital is nonprofit, does that affect, I mean, are we still gonna get the tax revenues from city place even though the nonprofit is in there? I mean, how does that tax go? Are we still gonna, is it almost, do we get the same amount of tax as we would if that was a store going in there? Yes. Okay, all right. And unfortunately, I'm not, I don't know if you are, I'm not that familiar with the entire plan for the high school. As you may know, tonight is the same night that the community is getting the opportunity to meet the superintendent candidates from six to eight. And I'm sure that's where Claire and Jeff are tonight. And they would know much more about it. But I think it is still a work in progress. Most people know, or as you may know, we passed a bond for $70 million. Well, that's what it needs to be or the money needs to come from somewhere else. Their first estimate was around 90 and they are looking for ways to, there are some ways that they can, just off the top in terms of some of the things that are in one of the issues is the HVAC system. Right now they've got, they originally bid an HVAC system that's really like the best of the best. Well, do they really need the absolute best of the best? It has its advantages, but it's also very costly. So there is, they are working on that number. And I just don't know enough about the second gym to really know, but they've got a working group that I think meets once a week. So they are actively working on it. All right, Karen and Jim, thanks again as always. All right, thanks a lot for coming. We are adjourned.