 You all for joining us for the start of the call, whatever it is, and our public form, we're going to have a We're going to hear from our state representatives seven o'clock, we're going to have an update across the place from from time to time. Actually, I was going to talk about a project that. We're going to have a campaign. Followed by. That's high level. That's my level. I'm going to be as part of this. Also with us is the area close to on the city. We're going to have a public comment. Hi, everyone. My name is there. I'm going to share with you all that we're going to have a public comment. And if you would like, I'm going to provide them to the community for those as well. The press release. Yeah, so public service and kind of sense as well. You certainly got to do now. But the NEA has been termed by C, though, that each of the entities are going at the same time. So it's postures and computers or cameras that we can distribute. I don't know about this. We can distribute this throughout the world. And because our next home you're getting is, like, for the office. Every time. Information and stuff available. Those who are next month, so we just wanted to take the heads up. But that's the city. Enjoy the input. I understand what's going on. I don't know. Back there. We're with and we're out and you know, we're six. And that's how. I'm just kind of asking. I don't know if I have a problem. Again, a final calculation. And you know, we've got a range of these voting works. Pretty good. I'm wondering about the term. We had one hundred and ninety three ballots process. And it was the highest turnout since. Election. I don't know. Other questions. What's new. How many. And. A hundred and eighty five. I'm personally. Working. And. All right. What happened as well. Well, that's fresh. And. Um. You know, the all residents of non-U.S. citizens. We're. We've got. I'm not a citizen. We're. We're 64. I personally. I personally. Over her. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. We didn't have one. I'll talk to. So. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not. I'm not sure. That I'm not sure. In the first year, 65, friendship voted in the Postgres. And she turned out, we were mostly three thousand. We didn't vote in exactly the same way. So, we had a lot of votes. We had a lot of votes. We had a lot of votes. And that's actually what we're talking about. And the way it works is you've got, definitely, God's, that's a number of people. I don't know what's happening to me. Four, that's why. I need two weeks. I need four of that. You can see this. We sat down or to recall the process. There was a two hour session to talk about seven. At the 11th of the day itself, seven hundred and twenty eight people. Not bringing their name out. Preferably have a sign and have a vote. And I just thought that my guess is the first, especially a lot of majority, because it spreads out across four different people. And the other question that I asked, so I had this, I mentioned we have a hundred and eighty five and I'm many of those. But I did a math here. And what I did was the top half of six. Orange wine. Or Mr. Today. And then I use a black market. The areas that were. Foundry was the boundary. Sixty. And then I see those stickers on the last box. And. And I'll let you use right on. I'll pass this around. We did have a few minutes. As we need that more, that more complaints than we want. And one reason that I don't think that. And there was a very tight. I don't think so. I'll be. I'll be. Yes, but we should probably more. That post. Just we just. We need to buy as much as possible. And they rely on the clients. And we probably. I think. We. But. I saw this. I didn't know she was. Talking. To check this. And she was. And there's a line drawing behind. So I like to ask. And so. And every. It's. Every guide some. And. And. About. About. Well, I do the. Two different parts. So. First of all. We have some. That. That sort of. And then she has about. And. Very slow. The final. Of. Errol race. All these people. And then the presidential. And. And. And. So. The question. The question. The question. The question. But. But. And. So. I thought it was very different. You know. So. So. The question. The question. The question. The question. The question. The question. The question. The question. The question. The question. I think. I think. Okay. My. I was just going to add to that, like you said, I mean, there's a lot of people out there. So I would look at this as a conversation. I think the management of the factors of election is very, you know, it's important to know that one of our three factors, I think it's a factor, awesome. Well, that's for real, actually. She did expect to have some sparks, actually. And, oh, and I wanted to, I don't know if that's the way it is, having your heart. It's absolutely incredible. I mean, this kind of, awesome. Each and every one of us, many, many of us enjoy that, right? Plans, I mean, conference calls and meetings. Bring out forums and, you know, and the next thing that we do, I have a lot of great issues for all of us in the office. I'm not a federal government or, most of the time, a secretary of state. I'm studying and reading all of these issues. I do a lot of work. Right. And all the work is probably going to go toward me. I was in a job called security. I'm married and I am. It's your own name. Yeah. But, yeah, they're up there. Thank you for your work. You need to, I was in the process of some hundred weeks. So, if you had seven more people come to your polling place and to say, have you ever been to your town? That's so many people. Or is it better for people to come to a balance and express on their staff? Well, it certainly, it certainly helps. It certainly helps to last for a couple of elections. Well, the last election hasn't kind of moved. Europe has moved. And we appreciate, in fact, that you spend time on the process and balance. Honestly, I work with the assembly elections before that. In terms of, you know, the number of schools that are not one thing to make sure that you're a worker. But seeing how it asks, you have four hour shifts. Checklists, we have six hour shifts. It's better if you do these things rather than strong. On the lines, I've never seen lines as long as you did. And that's even with the number of ballots. So. Well, either way, lower balance or fewer balance. But. That's not the. Actually, that's one of my questions. So long. We've worked long ways. How did Gary Burgesson remember writing about the second year? For instance, we have. Non-intensive. There's no candidates for the spectator of election. And in one of those, we have 52. We're writing. Forty-neighborish. We're just writing, right? Everyone has a story for this book. So we were just about. And we got. Actually, seeing. Power game. So this becomes a burden. I know it for three. It's so many. I didn't doubt a certain. Privilege. We're never not really allowed. There aren't particularly privileged in the role. And so you really have to collect those. So that is certainly a burden for the board. Three elections. Well, I am. I confirm logic. I'm just. I confirmed with that. Sarah, it was the rule that. Yeah. Opposites. Don't have to track the writings. That's the writings. Right. As close to the number of votes as the incumbent. The people. One person. So we were able to. But it is, in fact. By the time he had. After folks sitting down at the table. Going through all the ballots. All the ones that. The time later doesn't work. Some of the writings. All about. We make the person writes it doesn't. She doesn't. We have to look to all the ballots and. All about surely all names. I have to down. Only one or two of that too. But. That I guess we need. Where are we going to see all. I want to just hear it. They actually have to look up. Turn out that mayor elections. 2012. Prior to that, the highest. These hands. 13,000. 2012 we had 10,053. By 15. That's. 10,000 627. 2012,000 64. So we're getting books. Starting in 2021. I'm now. Plus the board. 4571. I'm having to. That for the bigger. I am going to. Yes, it's not just before the two protections. They should have been down to that. Our board, I thought from a very. As we're in the previous. First, it's on the people then I saw the difference. I said, look, I used to be in the district and they're not. Or it wasn't turned out to. Which I think. So anyway, I never learned, but it was. A lot of people using. So, okay, this has their address. So that they could put in this. Their election, which they want you to do that for. So it was a very interesting thing that a certain name of French. And for me to see all the gentlemen. Well, we're in this or if you can change that. Sex. Sex, which. Even. Was part of. So we can set that for us to do this. I mean, loss. So. What's true that that wasn't what I should have. But it did change. So I don't care. But I know it was talking to the face. If you don't know. So. Our representative. I'm here and check this online and check it out first. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm just like, okay. I am sorry that I'm not there in person, but my 25-year-old kid is celebrating his birthday with us. And so I'm going to get off so that we can all eat after my report. And I apologize for leaving early. So it's really hard to believe that we are halfway through the session. We have a lot to do before we close. And Gabrielle and I will be sending something out that talks about a number of different things and in greater detail. But we thought it would be important to try to say a few things about issues that you have told us are really important to you and about the budget. I'm always going to start with a budget because kind of that's where the rubber hits the road in terms of what we can end up doing. And first, the budget adjustment. Last time I talked to you, we were still in the midst of debating it. And the conference committee voted it out. We passed it in the House and the Senate. And it's nothing dramatic in that, Bill. It's really covering basic essential needs related to flood relief and mitigation, both for the state match but also to cover municipal match and municipal needs that FEMA won't cover and extending emergency shelter to folks they're currently housed in motels throughout the state through June 30th and to support state workforce needs. And the budget process is right now in high gear. And it's really shaped by three different realities. First, as I think I might have mentioned at the last one, we don't have a lot of federal funding to rely on this year for the first year in four. And we have had over the last several years $8 billion to work with a state budget. And this year, we have $2 billion less. Second, we're trying to help neighboring towns cope with flood damage that is going to be very expensive for them through tax abatements and through continued assistance as it makes itself visible. And then because of what we committed to flood relief in the budget adjustment, we start the budget process with a $15 million hole. I think what's really one thing that's important to share with you all is that the governor's budget doesn't really reflect the cost of doing the work that we expect state government to do. When you look under the hood, we find a number of ways in which the state has well, in which state agency budgets reveal really underfunded departments that are particularly fragile. And that underfunding has helped feed work backlogs, IT systems at the agency of human services that are so outdated they prevent us from applying for federal money that could help supplant some of the general fund money that we use to pay for services for families. And how that's reflected is in using vacancy savings in different departments to balance a department's budget. So maybe some of the vacancies really are positions that don't need to be filled, but a lot of them do. And there are vacancies that were created during the pandemic and have stayed with us for quite a period of, I mean, since, because recruiting in state government has been very, very difficult. I just heard a figure that a full 40% of people who are hired in state government leave within the first year. So the retention rate is really, really problematic. And another way that it's, you know, this is evident is that budgeting we found in some budgets that a program was budgeted for six months only. When we asked about it, they said that they would be coming back to us in the budget adjustment period for the rest of the funding. That's not a good way to budget. It doesn't tell us what the full expense of the program is. And so to fill the budget hole and to meet any additional needs, we are scraping every, we're looking for any unspent ARPA money that is not committed and can be repurposed for different, to meet a different need. We are looking at carry forward funding that isn't reflected in any of the documents that we typically get when we look at the budget process to see if there is some money that will carry forward yet again into the next year so that we know it's there. We, House Ways and Means, is also exploring because the needs are so great in a number of areas, the possibility of raising new revenue, and I think some of that was reported in Digger and in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well. So that is a marginal tax on incomes above 500K. And I, given the way in which that committee has been absorbed by the education issues, the education funding issues, I don't know that it will leave their committee, but they've got a couple of weeks and we'll see. That would reduce some of the pressures on the budget. I want to talk about a few things that are, they're moving that seem to reflect at least the interest of constituencies who've emailed me and who filled out our little questionnaire in the fall about priority issues. First, housing Act 250 reform continues, which I think what we will end up passing will be helpful. It will not solve the housing issue as Brian knows all too well. And I will in front porch forums send out a link to a document that I think is really instructive that Champlain Housing Trust put out that is a, they did a presentation, put together really all of the known needs and worked with different providers to identify what is it we're shooting for because we've invested a lot in housing. And what will it cost and how many units do we need? And it was a kind of a first stab at this, but that 10-year look makes it very clear that we will need to develop additional funding to do the kind of work to develop, to meet the housing needs, the full range of housing needs that have been identified. In health care, the health committee is going to pass, I think, the first major affordability legislation that it won't change anything, but it will basically commission a fiscal analysis of the cost of expanding Medicare in a number of different ways. I mean Medicaid, sorry. And reimburse providers at a more competitive rate than they're currently paid. We are poised to pass S18, which would ban the sale of flavored tobacco and e-cigarettes. Climate environmental protection. This is usually Gabrielle's bailiwick and she knows the ins and outs of this bill better than I do, but we'll be taking up H-289 in the coming week. And that updates the renewable energy standard that was set in 2015 to reflect inventions in renewable energy technology and the fact that there's federal money to invest in infrastructure improvements like those that would be necessary for those technological improvements. And then substance abuse. We are waiting for Senate health and welfare to take up H-72, which creates the overdose prevention centers that's critical to Burlington. Burlington's been a really strong advocate for it. I would urge anybody to write to our senators to start taking that up and to pass it because the longer the Senate waits to take it up, the less time we have to, well, I mean not the less time, but it's going to take us even longer to get the first one set up. So anyway, that would be very helpful, I think, just to keep that top of mind in the relevant senators' minds. I see that Council President Paul is here and I just wanted to thank her for coming to the State House on a number of occasions to advocate for Burlington, to listen to people, some of us, but also legislators and other committees, and to provide a presence for Burlington. That has been really important and I hope that this will continue, that the city will continue to have a presence there from time to time because there is a rural, urban divide that raises its head in different ways at different times and really building those relationships is very important. And that we can certainly do some of that, but I think that it really does help to have others there too. So that, I think, is in a nutshell my report. And I'm happy to take questions before I leave or just pass it on to my buddy Barbara. I must have bored you all to tears. I'm sorry. I can't hear. Everything has been very difficult to hear people speak. If somebody does have a question, then maybe you could talk directly into the microphone and I'd be able to hear it better. OK, you kind of broke up. I'm hearing maybe you don't need to hear anymore from me. Thank you. Yeah, we've been trying to figure it out, but it seems like most things are fine on our end, as far as we know, so. I'm not sure who's the most important today. And it's just a couple of us. So I'm going to just talk about the different items. One item that I want to go back to that represented when we talked about the training that I was about to take. And I would say to answer that, it would be better to contact the governor as well. Because governor, I think that he is not supportive of what he's trying to do. I know, I mean, we will be too. We're going to be happy at the end of the day on that. So we're going to be able to reach the aid that helps get the lives and more otherwise. So I'm going to go to the next speaker. Is there a specific call that you should be talking about? Each time you do. So I said I'm going to have to be here today. And I know that I have heard a lot from our community a lot of the way in the system for the day. We've gone through quite a few more times. So I wanted to touch on some of the things that I've learned in the House of God. So it's an unusual we call in our body with that role, where we call that we charge if they were wavering in some of these parts or if they are far away from this part. So basically, I mean, there's been some all those things that were that type of people from being charged with all of that. So the house has half the bill. Also, recently, in the House of New Jersey, half the bill, we talked about. But we were hearing from many people around the state about their church and our chief of police or that there were people who were multiple staffs, but they were all under $900. And so if there are a number of these happening in the very short time period, somebody will be charged as a plumber, which is something that I think is not for it. Because for somebody with a felony, you are much more likely to have a lifetime of our unintended well, God, early on in your life, a lot of consequences of it. Housing, having access to programs or getting a job. And so, so that connection or what we reach out to that, we're not looking to them to spend a lot of time in prison, but that's about it after prison is rarely and there are insurance re-advocations. But we put pressure on a lot of the fractions and institutions and they need to stay in work, sort of work by thought of what the term is. But the basis is for people who need work that are in prison. Correction has testified that there was really somebody in this program. So it's not right now. It's right now. It's nothing. But it lets people know on cemetery stage of life. And this will be many more options for people to get different kinds of skill and different ways to be exposed to different kinds of work. The other thing is people who are wasn't right now want to sell people some of the records that they don't realize that. Legislation is more than it's been built for years. The governor's office is going to be if they're not found in this land, they'll take our time in the site, but not up to two weeks, which we're actually right behind those days. But they are willing to deal with regulations. So we are trying to work with the governor's office to get something passed because something is better than the ideal. And one of the projects with the syllable is to resolve that, which is really important to me. And so I think this thing that we did that I mentioned last month, they showed that people working in clients know that the change is predictable. And so to that end, just to mention, there's also, which I think the backlog has been awful. And so our committee has been advocating for the lawyers, more judging, more prosecutors so that we can get the backlog dealt with. So that's what I wanted to mention about time. There are a couple of other things. I didn't want to stop there because one was behind it. People can reach out, they feel like they are concerned with our representatives. So then I think I wanted to put forward that people did not gather and want to get a copy. Then we're email and we'll get back to you. One of the people that we think we need to talk to and we don't have any services, we have a lot of information and we're fine. And I think it was behind it. I think they don't know what's going on. So one of the things that's important is letting the situation tell what is, they'll go right now. And so people aren't going to get to that. So I think it's a good job, I think, for you and me. And I want to echo what Chip said. It is a problem having our city councillor, they are recently, I think, 20% of people do not want to enter into the audience. And so you don't have to understand that. So that's an amazing and valid argument. So if everyone could just try to speak more directly into the microphone and try to maintain a more regular volume, just listening in, just because there's, I don't know, for some reason, the audience is not great tonight. But I have two questions. First, thank you for the presentation. My question is, my concerns, there are a number of problems that we can deal with, which might not work. I knew that I could change. Well, you think on an ending, obviously. OK. But they said, go on. The most basic have made much bigger strides in terms of expunging through those records. It's the, again, it's been tied to the research of how likely is somebody to offend at an eight-year point. Somebody could have made it to the crime, so it's more likely to commit certain crimes than the general public. So again, we are not saying, oh, you did join us in six months. Great. I mean, people have no eligible for ceiling. And the other part of the ceiling is, what enforcement reports could act as those records would fail to meet an appropriate legal reason to do so. But we're not ceiling records or recommendations in the records of people who have committed sexual assault crimes or other kinds of crime and crime. And again, I'm just looking at some that were made a lot in the research, some of them were drug use. Yeah, I'm going to ask a few questions, which I know would require a lot of thought, a lot of responsibility. All I need to know is tell them and they're on the firing engines. One of the things that I know is that we have to do this research that's going to shock those people in the city. A lot of the people in those areas are going to be a lot of liars. We're fast. I don't suppose they can take their picture, whatever. So that raises the question around how are these people going to be liable on a file and eventually arrested and charged? The second is, can any service help folks who are stealing from retail locations in regards to what portions of these are feeding the drug? You're stealing to be able to sell things, to get moved for drugs. How many people are stealing because they need food? How many are stealing just because they like to steal? That kind of thing. What are the statistics of the way on the demographics, so to speak, of a retail thief? So what I can do is I can send the information in terms of some of the testimony that we received. We spent a lot of time also looking at restorative justice centers. And one of the great things that they do is they also connect people to services. So somebody's coming in. We were hearing from some of the merchants, like people can do work in order to pay back, to make restitution. But it's also connecting people to other services. And we definitely heard from both providers as well as people who have served time about what was helpful and what wasn't helpful. And again, I think there's a ton of people who are like, let's go tough on crime. But we know that some people who are tough on crime actually makes our communities less safe. And so our chair and many of us are really committed to looking at the research, the evidence, and not just... So I'll send you my contact information. Thank you. We're gonna send things back to Nate. Thank you. Great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Ryan and Dave, thank you for being here. Thank you for having us. I'll just make a few comments and then Dave will give you updates since it's Dave's project day in and day out. Brian Pine, the director of the Community and Economic Development Office, our role as the city on this project is to really ensure that the public improvements that will result from the tax increment financing are completed as planned and to ensure that those public improvements are managed in such a way that the cost of those improvements are entirely covered by the added tax revenue from the project. And so that's the whole premise of tax increment financing. If you probably tell it back to the beginning of this conversation regarding redevelopment of this property, it's 10 years ago. Most of the discussions that took place over that period sort of culminated with a vote in November of 2016. A slight majority of Brawlington. So let's do this TIF investment. And there was a zoning change on the ballot at the same time, which also passed by similar margin. The zoning change in the end was not ultimately needed to allow the building height to go up to 14 stories. And in fact, 10 stories is already permitted and that's what they're building. So the fast forward to 2018, when the Venus owner, Mr. Sinek's demolished the mall and got to a point where he could not proceed due to his lack of financing and the project stalled in 2018. Dave and his crew of the three local partners forming what's called City Place Partners were minority owners for some period of time. And then we're able to actually clearly was on taking over the entire project in early 2022. 22. 22. So I really like to go through the project. There's some slides here which have some images and some texts to help guide this process. And then we'll blow it up. Yep. Thanks for inviting us. Ryan had called. We have weekly meetings and he said, hey, I've got invited to the word six NPA. Would you like to go attend with me and get more updates? Sure. I always like to talk about the project. I could talk about this project till two o'clock in the morning. That's my wife, work here and she goes and I'm a little six resident. I think I'm a little six resident. I live down on Shelburne Road. Born in Burlington. So I kind of love Burlington. So we've got a long history with the project but I'll make it quick. Myself, my partner Scott Ireland and Al Seneca. Ireland owns the yellow trucks with all the shamrock's on them. And Al owns Omega Electric and Omega Development. We all had little bits and pieces of involvement in the original Brookfield and Cinex project. I was working for the hospital as project manager doing estimates and schedules and stuff. Scott was doing some of the demolition and site work. Al was doing the electrical reconfiguration when they tore the place down. And so we got to know Don through different areas of involvement and then at some point he had a rough ride in Burlington and he needed a little polishing I guess or a little help and so someone suggested maybe get a couple of local investors. And so he approached all of us separately and I was kind of not very interested. But my buddy Scott was very interested and we coached baseball together and I had heard about it for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks till I finally said, all right, I'm in. So we kind of came in as minority partners as Brian said. And then the relationship that Don had with his larger partner was the Brookfield component started to deteriorate a little bit and they wanted to get out. City wasn't real happy about that. We had a chance to buy Brookfield shares. So our partnership with Dave Scott now bought Brookfield shares and became partners with Don in the whole project. And the whole project is actually three phases. Phase one is what we're working on now. Brian put this slide up and that's the old model of redevelopment. Phase two is what's left of the old model which is the L.O.B. and the Church Street piece and phase three is the Macy's building. And we're also partners in different percentages on all three projects with story with Don. Don's not involved in this project as Brian pointed out, May of 22. We finally, after a year of negotiating, we convinced him he had to take a sidestep from the project. He just, he was having some struggles internally trying to get the thing going. We were getting frustrated because we got in it to build it. And so we parted ways and fairly friendly. And then we took off because we knew what we wanted to do. This thing was already permitted. We're building almost exactly what was permitted that the outside of it is what went through the whole design review and all that. And so we engaged the architects, all the engineers, got everybody back on board. We broke ground November of that year, 2022. Worked that winner, got all the foundations in. We got a foundation permit from the city that November. Got the South Building Foundation Don started on the North Building. And we weren't, still weren't sure which way the project was gonna go. We were gonna build half the North Building, which was the original plan and then build the second half of the North Building and then finished with the South. And we kind of flipped the whole thing on its head and decided we're gonna take on the smaller building first, mostly to prove to ourselves that we could get it done, I think. So we started on fitting that up about July of last year. The steel showed up, we got the steel put up. You guys can see it now. It's framed in, cladded in, roofs on it. And real soon we're gonna be starting some masonry down at the lower levels, starting on the siding above, windows will be here, late April, the whole project we're living to have done early first quarter of 2025. Midway through our journey of getting the building built, we realized we needed some help with this. It's a big project. And we had a lot of other developers that were kind of poking at us saying we'd like to get involved but we found there were looking for a very uneven partnership and we've been through one of those already and we said, no, we're gonna keep control of this. A lot of people wanted to come in and like take over the whole project and we just decided that's not what the project needed. It had already gone through a couple of lives like that. And so we're gonna keep the local control of it. But in the end, we did partner up with a group or if our fourth partner is now a junior hotel management group and they had a little bit of history with Burlington and that they had bought the YMCA building like on the third sale and everybody was trying to get that thing redeveloped as something they were looking at as a hotel. But they heard about our project through our common lawyer and he kind of put us together and said, you should really talk to these guys. They're good guys. They kind of think like you. So we started discussing them coming into our project and they were gonna roll out of their project and that's where they ended up happening. They sold their project to the lawyer who's speaker who's now redeveloping the Y as a housing project and they joined us in the entire project at city place. And we got a lot of questions about why the hotel, we thought this was all housing and we've answered this question a thousand times. It's what we needed to do to make the thing happen. It just, it didn't work given from when we started off in 2020, it looked like it was gonna work. And then we hit the COVID and high interest rates and loss of labor and huge, huge material price increases and the thing just didn't work. And then we found a way to make it work. Basically we said, with the added cost, we moved it to develop a plan for added revenue to pay off the added cost. And that worked out well by introducing a hotel component to each of the buildings, fairly small portions of it. So yeah, there's a picture of that. So that's a little wrap with the South building right now. It's gonna be retail all the way down the ground floor just like it was originally planned for. The second floor up from the street is gonna be what's called the jump lobby for the hotel. So you come in, valet your car right now at the front of the building, go up to your, the lobby, it'll be a little lounge and restaurant bar breakfast area. And then the next four floors will be hotel rooms. And then from that point up will be regular apartment units. So we're gonna have, Brian had asked a bunch of questions that are like, give me some numbers, people like numbers. So we're gonna have 161 or 162 hotel rooms. There's gonna be a little area of extended stay for the people that are coming to Burlington that need to be here for like a month at a time. And then the floors above that will just be standard hotel rooms. Then we're gonna have about 50 apartments above that from the sixth floor up to the 10th floor. That sort of like, so this building's gonna get wrapped up first quarter of 2025, we're feeling real good about the schedule. And then the balance of the project, which is even bigger, the next part is actually about three quarters of the whole thing, which is red building, runs up the new St. Paul down Cherry, turns the corner at the high school and goes down Pine Street to the south. There's gonna be 300 units in this. There's gonna be another small hotel in one wing of it. We're contemplating some level of student housing. We haven't really nailed that down, but that would be on the, we're thinking on the St. Paul Street side on the first three floors above the retail. And then the rest of the place will be apartments. We'll have our inclusionary zoning required apartments. We'll have some workforce housing, apartments will have market re-housing and the retail in the hotel in this building. And we're scheduled now to be completed summer of 2026. Originally with the TIF agreement and the development agreement, we were supposed to be done towards the fall of 2025. But we recently asked for a little bit of an extension and they got approved at the city council a couple of weeks ago along with some of the zoning changes and an adjustment to the schedule. So we're hoping that summer of 2026, both streets will be open to traffic again and the project will be closed out. This is a picture of the North building. We have started in the foundation, still scheduled to arrive around end of July, early August. And this is a big U shaped building that runs up St. Paul, the new St. Paul, we don't cherry down back down pine. And in between this and the South building, we call it the donut hole. We don't call it the pit anymore. It's the donut hole. In the donut hole is gonna be a three story parking garage that'll have one level below grade, one level accessible off both St. Paul Street and Pine Street and entrance that you can come in on either side and then one level above grade. And then a roof was on it and then a green roof which is covered with vegetation to catch rainwater and help stop the flow into the storm water. For the city. There's a lot of neat things on the lines of that. We've got three tanks. You can't see them in this picture, but there's three humongous tanks. One's 50,000 gallons, one's 80,000 and one's 125,000 gallons that catches every drop of rainwater that hits the roof. And it's a dedicated roof drain that takes it to the storage tank and holds it there until the storms are over and then Brian calls and says, okay, you can let it go. We've got a switch, right? Yeah, it's on my phone. There's a big valve and it stores all the rainwater. So we're not contributing to the inundation that happens every time we have those big July storms. We just keep it on site until the city's gotten through their kind of crisis. And that's a really good thing. Our development agreement called for this to be all electric. It's a lead rated project. It's gonna be lead gold, which has certain standards for insulation and energy efficiency. Triple glazed windows, the walls are this thick for insulation. So it's gonna be an affordable building for everybody that lives in it. Easy to heat and cool it. I think that's about it. One of the things you're saying about the north building, truth, the south building? Yeah. So everything just about lead gold. Yeah, the whole building. And the efficiency section to housing too. Sections of green roofs throughout wherever they could put them. There was some percentage of roofing. I forget if it was 10% or whatever. That had to be green. And then everything's captured into the stormwater system. There's gonna be solar on both roofs. And the inclusionary housing is also a percentage of the south building? No, we're gonna be building that in the north building. So they're all in the first phase, there won't be additional affordable housing. Correct. And so that would be like a two year period before the actual affordable housing comes up. Yeah, we're beginning with 2025 and then everything will come online summer of 2026. So that's when the affordable housing would be that 2026. We're talking two years. Yeah. Just a little time. No, it was what the retail, women's will be. When will you? We haven't signed any leases yet. There's been a lot of interest, a lot of local interest. And we're really focusing, that's who we wanna invite in first and talk, restaurants, some rental shops. There's some national shops that are in Burlington that may wanna move there. But we'd love to just fill it up with our people. It's local. Yep. Yes, questions. Thanks, Nancy. If there's any other some retail industrial locations that are closing, there's some businesses that are closing down. We anticipate kind of robust interests in those spaces. That's so far. I mean, we haven't argued it yet because it's still under construction. We're taking, by summertime, we're gonna start talking to tenants in more detail. But there's been a lot of interest in it. And it's gonna be a good demographic with people. This is gonna be, when we're all done, I think we've said there could be 600, 700 people living just in this block. That's a huge advantage. People need to go out and buy socks and buy batteries and band-aids and all that stuff. So we're hoping to have a good mix. And back in the 50s, in this particular block, this block happened to be a lot of heavy on the churches. See, my church was there. Within two or three blocks of this area, there was like six mom and pop stores, corner stores. So neighborhoods need that. I grew up on South Muskie Avenue and right across the street was for Shets Market. Anybody remember that? Yes. Mary does. Shets, remember for Shets? I do. Top of... South Muskie? Yeah, right on South Muskie Avenue, what the court was headed down to Smollett Park. But, yeah, they were all over the place. So I had a question. You wanna go? Go ahead. Okay. Regarding the start of St. Paul Road, that's facing the transit center, is that gonna be too early traffic? Yeah. My concern is that I do work there. I manage the station right there. And you get the buses that make a left turn on that road. So if you have a traffic that is coming in, I'm worried that people might be driving too fast, almost crashing into the transit center. Let's say... Because it's such a huge space for the vehicles to come through. And we have, you know, buses that always move through our wallet. So my concern is, could when you guys were planning ahead, do you guys think of having full traffic rather than having a vehicle go through there? It's not such a huge space. We didn't design the roads. That was a city obligation. And then we hired the noodles of engineers, traffic studies, and civil engineers. Okay. They studied it, so they want me to be able to determine about traffic flow in times of day and the frequency of when the buses are going in which direction. I think all of that is in the consideration for how to handle that. So we have a lot of the time, people who just come through and like driving, I don't know, 30 miles an hour through our bus station and they just make a left quickly and let's just run through. My only concern is that people that are on, say, posted because the direct transit center is basically almost like straight ahead. I think we just zoom through and come into the transit center. Quite well taken. Yeah. Did you have something? Yeah, but I don't know, Greg, did you want, you had your hand raised if you want to come in? Sure. Probably. Okay, all right. So I just wanted to say what first I wanted to mention is Megan, you brought up the issue about affordable. And I just wanted to make sure that, first of all, the second amendment to the amended and restated development agreement, which we fortunately call ARDA, as opposed to having to say all of that about 18 times over is we passed the council unanimously, which I think is a, it says a lot about the council wanting to have this project forward. There were concerns about whether or not this would be the fact that we were gonna be having hotels, was that going to be a concern? And I think universally counselors understood that this is a multi-generational, transformational project for the downtown. And we can't, sometimes things have to change in order for us to be able to finish a project. And we know the hotel space is in demand in Burlington and just try to make a hotel reservation in downtown Burlington. You'll know, you'll also know when you realize what the cost is, that there is definitely a need for that. But the other thing also is that not to get into the weeds, but in the ARDA, and I don't remember exactly how it's worded, but we would remember that if for any reason the new building, for any reason is not built, those affordable units are going in the south building. Yeah, there's a provision that if it's delayed or it's not gonna happen that it doesn't get built, but if the world came to the end and it didn't get built, the affordable component would be met in the south building. Yeah, so, you know, my point is that I haven't seen spreadsheets, obviously, but that the affordable housing was postponed and able to have financed the entire project in order to phase it, in other words. It's going to be in a phase so that the more expensive housing could be built first in order to have financed the rest of the project. That's what it looks like, Ami. That's kind of how it flows. The original, as Karen had said, and I see Amy's here, the original plan, we had to deal with CHT to have them provide it. Right, which would have been so great. Actually, we had to ask for a delay of the completion of that because of their financing. They were going after multiple grants that were only available, like this one's available for half of this year. If we don't get that, we have to wait till then. They must have a huge gold insurance, the one for month. And all of this was not related to this. I don't know what we did. It depends. He's got money here to be the same. No, it didn't work out as part of the first phase. No, but there actually is a better. There's actually a happy ending, so to speak to that as well. And that is the additional number of units. Ami, you'll be able to speak to this. Certainly better is that this is actually a win-win for affordable housing because that housing is being built. It is being built on a Cambrian lies. So, I think this is not a loss of affordable housing. This is a gain for affordable housing. You doubled the unit. Yes, it is. So, again, those are the issues that are in the weeds. I think that was part of the reason why it passed the council unanimously because it's not only a win for city plays. It's not only a win for Cambrian lies. It's a win for affordable housing in the city of Burlington. And I will, because I know that others want to speak, I will stop only simply to say that, Jane, you have to listen to this all the time. I do not have to listen to this all the time, but I would love to listen to it. I just have to say, I mean, what Dave and Al and Scott have done is something that I think we all know about Burlington is, which is that when the chips are down and we need to get something done, if we ask people who are local to do it, they get it done. And you're seeing them with the pharma YMCL, which is being done by Bruce Baker. You're doing, you're seeing that on the project that we are going to pass a, hopefully pass a pre-development agreement on the gateway block, the memorial block, which is being undertaken by Joe Larkin and Eric Ferrell, which will result in additional housing. So these are the projects that we have to look forward to for the next five to, well, hopefully in this decade, we'll be done by 2030 and we'll add hundreds and hundreds of new housing units downtown. And so if you want to leave, if you want to leave this meeting with a happy face, that should be something to bring a happy face to everyone for the future of Burlington. And I will get off my soapbox now. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Great. Do you have those time? Okay. Uh, well, certainly. I'll, I'll, I'll ask. Let me see if you could eventually on. I got to go to bed. Yeah, no, maybe this is either a naive question or a non-fair. I mean, it's not worded correctly, but I was just wondering any projections, what year, if everything was according to the plan, what is the, what is the organization see, we don't see a profit. I don't know if I know that answer. Oh, I mean, obviously from thing one, it needs to make money to pay off the construction loans. So it will be profitable to the operations. Maybe I have a new grandson that's about six weeks old now. So maybe he'll be able to answer that question. We actually didn't do this for the money. We did it to get it done. This, this had to be done. Nobody was going to do it. We said we got to do this. So we are building it for the next generation and the next generation. Very nice. Thank you. So I have a question. You need to get to a microphone. One is just specific, trying to understand. So the first five floors of the south building are hotel and then the next four are the apartment. First floors, it's called G level. It's a great street level. It's all retail. Then that's where the entry to the building is for getting to the lobby of the hotel or getting up to the apartments or you can go to retail off this larger lobby. You have to jump lobby of the hotel and then you can get to the next five levels of the hotel rooms. And some of those are extended stay. So those are on the lobby level. There's six or seven on the lobby level on the southwest corner. So what I'm getting to is kitchens. So those would have kitchens. They have small kitchens, yeah. And the apartments would have kitchens and in between you have the hotel rooms with no kitchens. So if they were renovated into longer term living, there would be without kitchens. I think that would have to be something to look at. The hotel rooms, yeah. Yes, that's actually happened. Joe Larkin, the kid that's doing the memorial auditorium, did that to a hotel in Melbourne. She's herself. Oh, let's do it. Oh, that's great. She's a great kid. She's a great little girl. Yeah. She's a great little girl down there. So he's a kid to me. He's a good kid, though. He's a great little girl. Yeah, so he's a great little girl down there. And I'll turn my nose, you know, on shoulder. Yeah. He's a grown up. One of the suites? Yeah, the suites. Yeah, one of the suites properties. He can really watch. Just thinking down the future. So I mean, it's always convertible. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's plummings right there. You can throw in a six foot, eight foot kitchen on this particular layout. There's a, the rooms are like 13 feet wide and there's a entry area, closet area, bathroom. You could always put a kitchen on the back side of the wet wall of the bathroom. And then so looking past all of, so South Building, North Building, then we have the LLB and Church Street Building and then we have Macy's. What becomes to Macy's? Is that totally? It's totally in the air. Yeah, it's busy right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, and the LLB Building stays, leaves? We're not super privy to Don's plans on that. He doesn't care. We don't have any owner of that. Only that, they're all sort of Macy's. Macy's as well. So we're 30% owners of Macy's. 30% owners of the mall building and 30, almost 40% of the Macy's building. It's just how the numbers shook out. And how, how, is he at what percentage of the North South Buildings? Zero. Zero, okay. Yeah. That's why we're building it. Yes. Mentioned the addition to the grand list. Yeah, I remember a slide that did point out, and this is a really conservative estimate. This first of all, obviously with the city assessor, the first building is estimated to be, be a value of about 40 million. That's the South Building. And at a very conservative estimate for the North Building, it's another 60. So we're estimating at least 100 million added to the grand list. Just note that obviously some of that is needed for the TIF because that new revenue is what's generating taxes to payback the financing that we incurred to build the public improvements. But at some point you have more revenue than you need to service debt. And either you put it down sooner, which is unlikely where you actually go back to the Vermont Economic Progress Council that oversees TIF and you move to them where you have excess revenue and that starts to flow back to the taxing authorities from which the money was captured. So the state ed fund would get its piece and the city would get its piece if we have essentially more revenue than we need to service debt. If that's not too confusing. And that doesn't make any sense when it comes to meals taxed. That doesn't touch rooms and meals. Rooms and meals estimates are significant. Have you run rooms and meals estimates? I think we've run them. The chamber tells you for every guest at a hotel, there's ex-expected multiplier effect. Then there's on top of that rooms and meals tax. There's additional sales tax. There's a whole bunch of other revenues that we're not actually capturing. Rooms and meals does go to the city. What is the grant of state? I'm sorry, we got 2% I believe of the 19 pay. Roughly, I'm thinking my room's pretty close. State gets seven we get. There's a 1 for 11, 11 gets two. Brian, if you could just say that the grant list. That's the list of taxable property. It's how we generate the money to pay for our schools and our city services. Okay. I know there was a lot of interest in this topic. We do have one more topic that we need to get to tonight. So I want to thank you. Get out of here. Definitely you're welcome to stick around in here. Thank you, Dave and Brian. Thank you very much. So, our next topic is an update on the Champlain in. Thank you very much. So, our next topic is an update on the Champlain in. Thank you very much. And I will just go ahead and put this on the Champlain in. Paul and Amy, if you could introduce yourself. Thank you. You should get a mic, I guess. Thank you. I'm Amy Benetowitz with the Champlain Housing Trust and Paul Dragunin with the Champlain Value Office of Economic Opportunity. Thank you for being here with us tonight. Absolutely. I don't have a fancy presentation or that was fascinating enjoy listen to that. I think it's just kind of quickly empty you and the champagne in the service provision where we're doing. I'm going to hand it over to Amy and he's going to talk a little bit about the renovations. Right. CHT owns the building. I'll talk a little bit about the history and we have this partnership with a few other buildings. I was not doing a lot of property management. So we do a lot of services. And so I'm going to ship a value of economic economic opportunity also known as CV. Our mission is social racial economic environmental justice. For our German nation, we cover Chittinham County, Addison County, Franklin Grand Isle County, and we also have a lot of statewide programs too. And do 10 different interrelated programs. So we do everything from emergency services like shelter work, warmth. Fitting Chittin is a program of ours. And we have a head start program that was initial micro business. So we do a lot of work to help people gain economic independence as well. So, in the summer, we were told that the previous owner of the Champlain in the shelter could no longer operate it. So the state and the city were looking for some nonprofits to potentially take it over. So we decided to take over. So we've been running in the Champlain in since October 1st. We've kind of dramatically changed the model. With the previous owners, people had to move during the day and then line up back at night. It's now a 24 seven. We've increased the staffing. So we have three shifts to three people on every single shift. It is still no value shelter. So people can come and go and then we tell people is that your room and we work really actively to get them placed into permanent housing. But as we talked about today, there was not a lot of affordable housing. So that is somewhat of a barrier. We have a lot of services on site. We do tenant. What I want to say is we do financial counseling. We have CHT. I'm sorry seats community health center broings and doing medical care. So we're trying to be a lot of services on site with hot meals that everybody delivers from our feeding chicken program. And we are really thoughtfully towards an occupancy that is not a mass congregate shelter, but is more of a single occupancy or in some cases, because the rooms are so big, a double occupancy and maybe even a triple. But we're thoughtfully matching people to get there. There's a lot of research that says that mass congregate shelters. Don't help people take the take the next step right people need their own space and they need some intensive services. Um, so we said we take the program on for one year at least because we're going to lose that emergency shelter capacity. We notified that it looks like we'll have funding for next year. And then we're just going to have to see what happens after that. We didn't really can talk about this. We've got a large renovation grant from our housing and conservation built you're going to beat the building. That's also got some historic features. So it's going to also work a lot better. I'll let Amy talk about the renovation. All right. I was wondering to know that there's intensive services on site. The models changed. And I'd be really interested to know if you have any concerns about what you're seeing at the template and because we'll work with you closely on doing whatever we can. Yes. So is it occupied now? I thought it wasn't quite ready. It's totally occupied. We have 26. Permit residents and we open up a room and shelter to just for the winter through. April 15th. So we have another 12 people there. So right now, 38 people staying there. So the 26. They're months to months day to day. Yeah, they everybody comes in. They have a housing plan where we tell you as you can stay as long as you need to have to be working on your housing plan and we have these levels that people have to work through a lot of people come in. They don't have IDs identification. They don't have anything some have, you know, other extremely high needs that we have to work through. So they can stay as long as as long as the housing advocates nightly have to work. Intensively to try to get them on to the next step and that's permanent housing. So do they apply to get in there? I mean, with the pods, you have to apply and there's a long list. Yeah, so they. Right now they go through. We are prioritizing people who are living on shelter on the street. So everybody here is been unsheltered and living on the street. We're also grabbing people from the rest that we again didn't displace. Everybody moves on to this is probably running too much into the weeds, but a quarterly interest. That's how we house people. Or through the state, but in Chittenden County and we get prioritized ranked based on their vulnerability. And so families, veterans, people with disabilities. So that's a higher priority. So that's why we're reading or a lot of them are reading because there isn't the right match in the right housing. I don't know if that answer your question. Yeah. I guess that's it. Yeah. Mary, did you want to have a question first? Yeah, because I don't see people. So something's happened. That's what I'm after is what's happened. Which is so different than it used to be. Yeah. Before people have to be very early in the morning and they have to come back in the evening. Probably so long as the years are probably sort of Exodus in the morning where people were wondering really well. And people have to take their things with them. When you fit that model and you create 24 sevens have people have got their own rooms. And so when you look really closely with them provide, you know, meals on site. People, you're not going to, you're not going to see people congregate and, you know, having to wait to get back into the room in the evening or have a max mass Exodus in the morning. It's great. Yes, responding. I'm glad it's worked out. Thank you, Mary. So if somebody is being with about 20 years of my months, and they haven't found a place to move on to, do you guys give additional months for them to stay or was it a step. It doesn't make any sense to us. If people are working on a plan. That's all we asked for. And we're not going to discharge anybody to work on a plan because they're just going to put them back out into almost a cell. It's based on behavior. You know, so we don't allow violence or things of, you know, that nature of people will have to leave, but we do, you know, we. People constantly people have been pretty severely traumatized. Almost this is traumatizing. So we work very closely with them and try to create a sense of community there. We have community. But there is the discharge for people as long as they are recklessly completely refused to work over months and months at a time to not have a housing plan. Then we will talk about discharge. We're just adding to. Right. Regarding the sharing process as roommates, like people. I've seen in the past, you know, folks that go through transit or sharing their story, but people who they've been paired with who either stole their stuff from them or. We've been in that influence where people have been drugs into and so on and so forth. What are you guys doing to have people as the right people hopefully pair with them? Yeah, this way they should know any like toxic roommate next to them or much more problem than it was before. Yeah, it's great. It's a great question. We took over the Somalian house in St. Albans for the same reason the organization before it could do it and we shifted to single resident occupancies. So for the most part, people have a name and that's important because of trying to peer people together and what can happen, particularly in mass shelter settings. The other thing is we're seeing a lot of people who are transitioning or LGBTQ plus and they don't, you know, they don't. A person is trans does not have to now pick between a man and a female. They can get their own people to identify some people do feel more comfortable in another person. So we interview them just to make sure there's no potential domestic violence or anything like that or pressure or anything like that. And we do our best to kind of peer them that way. There's no magic to it. But we at St. Albans, we want to see names only except for couples and the rooms here are so big and we can we're going to be talking about partitioning some of them. We are leaving some open for people who self identify was wanting to be together and we feel like it's a safe, it's a safe room to be in. That's so I can talk a little bit about the plans for renovations there. We're really happy to be partnering with CBO again on managing the building so the physical building and not the program. The building is pretty tired. It's old. It was in phases and not built particularly well. So there's a lot of renovations that are needed. I think kind of starting from the outside and what people will notice right now there's a construction fence around the outside. We're going to, we're going to replace that with a permanent vinyl solid fence that provides sort of a courtyard for people and a little more privacy from the street. It's been a little bit of a fishbowl there and so we wanted to create more privacy. Also that helps to increase security because then there's one access into the building away that building is right now and has been operated. There's just you can walk in any place right so having that fence around a courtyard books have to kind of enter in one one way which is really helpful. Also the green mountain green mountain transportation is planning a bus shelter right out front. So you'll see that coming in as well. So we'll be installing a sprinkler the building does not have a sprinkler it's not it doesn't meet it by code but it felt really important to us for safety to install a sprinkler so if you're doing that. There are major electrical upgrades needing plumbing there's constant plumbing leaks so we're going to be upgrading all of the plumbing installing heat pumps so it'll become an all electric building to provide even cooling as well as heating it seems to be coming more and more of the necessity really so we're doing that we're going to be upgrading all of the fencing around the site so if anyone lives like in the back we're going to be making improvements to that fencing we got a grant to actually through the city for that work we'll be changing out the finishes flooring paint that kind of stuff and then there's a single family home that's up on the street and that's where folks are having some congregate dinners that's where food is done but it's not accessible so we'll be installing a lift to make that building accessible all this work is going to get started within the next couple of weeks and we're kind of waiting to have a little bit warm season so that we can do some shifting of people because it's going to be hard building to do occupied rehab in so we will have to reduce the census to some extent to accommodate the construction. And that'll be at least a six month project. We already been able to. But shelter like this one is the drug testing or how do you handle the question of drug trafficking and use. So everybody comes in there's a guest welcome packet. They go through it with the housing advocate or the director and there's no drugs allowed on site. We're not foolish we know that that probably does happen and we engage people we take we take care of it if we see it. We do not do any drug testing so we have a shelter we take that so a lot of people who are experiencing homelessness have dogs so those dogs on site. And we just keep engaging people working with people we do have you know me drop boxes in different places. We're getting the fencing as well. When I passed by the pause I looked at the type of fencing that they have and in almost reminded me of like a community that is basically blocked away from everybody else. Yeah, and I was wondering the fact that I was behind it I'm hoping that you're not reaching for that kind of fencing and that they were much more in the community that you know they can see outside an object can see them rather than it be well off. And I'm happy to that since it was our office that actually developed the pod community in conversation with folks experiencing homelessness, the idea of security and safety for them as folks inside the shelter and not having folks looking in at them here at them for last time and that took right over whether it looks aesthetically attractive to those of us who look at it from the outside. So it was really mostly from talking to folks who are going to be served. The fence at Champlain that we're that we've got planned is a vinyl kind of fence so it's a very attractive fence, and it'll essentially be following the same footprint that the chain link fence is now so creates a little courtyard in the front of the building. We're going to have a smoking shelter there picnic tables it's going to be a nice kind of active area. It provides a privacy for the guests just so you might have a fenced in yard and it's an open face that building so there's plenty of spots to look out from on the second and third floor. And that garden where we will take me by UVM students coming in late able to really make a nice garden and it's a great yard there as well so I think it will be a nice setting for people. So the parking will go away is that true. There will be a lot of parking there. So we still have parking and then I didn't the two you know it's kind of a horseshoe you drive in one side and out the other and you can the cars will be parking facing Shelburne Road, and no more drive through or still you can still drive through. I understand how the fencing then creates a courtyard if you've got parking there and you've got to road cuts. So you know the fencing is now because you see it every day right. Yeah, it's set back quite a bit. Okay, right now, you can drive through there. You can drive in one drive and out the other. The fence isn't isn't blocking that it's set back. It's really just making up sort of. So if you think about parking towards the building, it's taking up that row of parking or the first row in the driveway. Okay, okay. Thank you. And then we use the button, the bus stops are there, but there are no crosswalks which was a big problem we had with the rotary or the now whatever it's called. So if you're expanding the bus stop there to shelter know that people will still need to cross and there it's I it's half a mile or more from one crossing to the other crossing. It's a distance. And now maybe some of those people are fast enough, but not all of them. So having a crosswalk where the cross where the bus shelter is is important for not only us but also these folks. Yeah. It's a really good point. We should look at it. I know that generally, you don't want to have a crosswalk in the middle of such a long. You know, the bus is here and you stop and then there's the one there and then they took out the one across the street and then there's one there and then there's a crosswalk all the way down by by Kenny drugs and the school between that crossing and over here. That's past. It's that's a lot for somebody in a wheelchair. That's a great point. I think that's a good one. Take care of it. Question. Yeah, the residents have access to. Which can be. In the. In the park. Yeah, I will be. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I will put it on site. Yeah, I. I don't know how actively. Five months and five months and I don't like the way out team promotes it, but this will be the first season for us, but we'll make sure they know about it. We're looking at this really nice and we are looking to really create a nice garden back there. Are you going to be spilling over to into South Park? Or not. We're going to be spilling over. Well, there's a lot of use. When you were at the brown wherever you are. We're talking about people using the people using the. Well, again, I'm the model. It's different. If you're not seeing a lot of people hanging out in front. Again, people can say they've got access to computers on the site so they can research for jobs or work with case managers. They don't have to leave them and find some place to. We locate them. I think that's where you saw. Maybe some people from the champagne park. There's a lot of outreach team. So if you are that. Nancy has my memory. If there's any issues, you can just call or text me on an outreach team that can go out and meet with people. And one other thing that we wanted to talk about are there opportunities for community support or volunteer. We have volunteers. Volunteers serving as a possibility. There's going to be great possibility for helping us with the garden threat with the summer and into the fall. And if you are interested in volunteering, our assistant director, Tiffany, can find opportunities, baking and other things you can just email. Thank you. Thank you. Paul and Amy, thank you very much. Great update. was the NPA business. We're going to be talking about buy watch changes, NPA budget and a couple of other things. We're going to push those. We're running late on past our time and we want to stick to the critical items. So the essential item for tonight was on our new steering committee member and we're going to push everything else to our next meeting. So last month we announced that Romeo Herman had volunteered to join the steering committee and we were going to put it to a vote tonight's meeting. So I'd like to do that now and all those in favor. The eyes have it. Welcome up there. We're going to table the remaining NPA business to the next meeting. Can I just say one thing before we close now? Because Karen Paul is here and it was a shame to have a town meeting election where Karen wasn't on the ballot and our state reps expressed their gratitude to you for the representation that you gave to Burlington and Montpelier and I just personally would like to express my gratitude to you for your incredible service to the city and to this ward. Anything available to us at a moment's notice to come to any meeting or answer questions or support us? Can I say a couple of words as the steering committee? I just want to say that the first time since I've met Karen, she's been a little amazing person and she's been very guiding just as new to town and I really find a lot about public service and she was the first person that I wanted to go to and speak to and thank you so much for everything that you've done in this seat and for me as well. It was funny I think Greg said this before you came in Karen that he was giving us some metrics about voter turnout and he said the previous high for voter turnout was the first Karen. That was a very very high voter turnout here in a very very close race. I won by 51 votes. Yeah it was a very 14 year incumbent. Thank you. It's very kind of you to say. It's been a wonderful experience and I think I had said this when I was at your at your home when we were talking about and I just recently is that I ran in a very close race in 2008 when I got elected and people said to me when it got to 2010 well you got to run at least once more because you ran in such a close race and I thought well okay yeah I guess that makes sense. You don't really get a chance to do a whole lot in just two years and you know I never thought when I when I ran in 2010 that I would run in 2012 and then so on and so forth up until up until this past year but it has been you know for me you know I you know I grew up in Burlington and so for me this is like serving in my own backyard and my father was on the predecessor to the city council which was the board of Alderman so I I grew up watching it was a small child watching my father go to city hall on Monday nights it was still it was Monday night it's always been Monday nights and you know I remember as a little kid you know watching my father do that and wondering you know what first of all what's city hall right and secondly where do you go and you know he always said I'm just going to to do my part Jamaica you know to to do my part for Burlington so that's how I always took it and maybe I'll be lucky I have three children maybe one once upon a time we'll do it but it's been it's been a great opportunity and I'm eternally grateful to the citizens of ward six and the voters who have repeatedly chosen to reelect me so thank you thank you very much thank you okay