 Test test Hi, everyone. Welcome. We're not starting yet. You've got about three minutes until we'll get started. This is just your three minute warning. Okay, everyone, we're going to go ahead and get started. If folks could find a seat or stand, or do whatever brings them joy, but settle down up. One of those things. Lydia, did you get your question answered? Okay, great. Welcome everyone. I'm so excited that you're here. If you don't know me, my name is Zariah Hightower. I use she her pronouns. I'm the thank you. I'm the co chair. I feel like I'm doing stand up. I'm like, Oh, I got to do a joke. I won't I'm the co chair of the Burlington Progressive Party. Last time I tried to do jokes and political setting it did not work out well. It was during my campaign. Carter is the other Burlington co chair. He does all of the work and lets me do all of the fun stuff like sitting up here talking, which is a pretty good deal for me. I'm super excited to have you all if you don't know where you are, you're at the Burlington Progressive Caucus for the March 2023 elections. Yes, very excited. Excited to have you all excited to be in person again. Excited for all of you that are online. Excited for Deb back there. She made it. And for those of you don't know, even though I'm sure you all do. Progressive Party is a great third party movement in Vermont working for social justice, economic and environmental justice. And we've got great candidates who want to do that today. So I think a little bit about the process just in case you don't know is we're going to take candidate, we're going to take nominations for city council. Folks will get you microphones. I think there's going to be somebody on the right on somebody on the left. If you would like to make a nomination. You cannot take more than two minutes for a nomination at a minute and a half. I'll start doing a little dance. And at two minutes, I will just cut you off. And then once you have been nominated, if you would like to accept the nomination, you can just come up here and take a seat in a chair. Then when all the nominations have been made, we will close the nominations, candidates will get a chance to give an introductory speech. Then we will do questions from you all for the candidates. In your questions, just keep them brief. We're looking for just a short question. I'll try to potentially reframe it to ask more of the candidates. But great. And then we'll work. So we'll start there and then we'll go to some of the other positions that we're nominating for today. Any questions before we start? Does everybody feel good? Great. Then we will open the floor for City Council candidate nominations. Okay, Barbara Prime. I'm so happy because I get to nominate my friend, neighbor of 20 years, Milo Grant for City Council. I've been talking about affordable housing, talking about difficulties of poverty in our neighborhood, talking about police and police reform. And Milo is insightful, engaged, hardworking and bold. And we are so lucky to have her. I'm so grateful that she's putting herself forward. She's been on the police commission, fighting the very hard fight for all of us. And I really hope you'll all join me in supporting her for what for a central district. Thank you. Central District City Council. Go Milo. Great. Our first candidate Milo Grant. The floor is still open for nominations. Would anybody like to make a nomination? Yes, please. Hello, everyone. My name is Catherine. And this little fellow was up. He can't vote yet, but he's trying to. I'm here to nominate my best friend, Jake Schumann. We all here today because we need positive people in our office. It's a time to Yes, thank you. It's a time to consider the issues that we all care about and decide which candidate to support. I'm here for Jake. I feel like he will take a positive position on the issues I hand. He cares about the community and have leadership qualities. He's intelligent, honest and have the ability to communicate and listen. He cares about the issues you care about. He's been through the same thing you've been through. Never judge a book by its cover. So I'm here to nominate Jake Schumann. City Council. Great. We've got another nomination. Jake Schumann. And if I may, I'd like to make a nomination myself. Oh, yes, you're the four floors open for nomination. I would like to take the opportunity to nominate Romeo von Herman to represent the Progressive Party running for the Ward 8 race. Romeo and I have only met very recently, but I was very impressed by the energy that he was bringing and the reasons that he told me for running. He is a working class person. And he's out there seeing every day the struggles that people are experiencing and trying to help them in the ways that he can and advocate for them in the ways that he can. And I think that that is so noble. And he's the type of person that we need in the Progressive Party representing us on City Council. Thank you. Amazing. So we've got a central and east and Ward 8. Would anybody like to nominate another candidate? Yes, please. Thank you. For Ward 8 City Council, I would like to nominate Ward 8 District. I would like to nominate Adam Frans. He is someone I have known for some time now. And I can say without a doubt that he's one of the most compassionate people I know. He's the type of person who would stop and talk to almost anyone to learn more about them. And he's very passionate about making change and doing right and very driven and one of the most intelligent people I know. And I feel like he can bring a lot. And yeah, we would all be better for Adam Frans for Ward 8. And we've got Adam. The floor is still open for now. Is that you? Hi, so I want to nominate Ron Allison for Ward 8. I've known Ron for a while. Ron's got pretty solid politics running on a platform of, you know, worker power, housing for all that kind of stuff. Adam, I believe is running for East District, not Ward 8. There might have been a little slip up there in the campaign, but both of these candidates are really solid and they're running in a overlap in constituencies. I'm excited to see the both. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Ron, for joining us. Are there any other candidates for City Council? Go ahead. Hi, I'd like to introduce my dear friend, Fareed Munarsha, who is running for South District City Council. We love Fareed. He is a tireless proponent for making Burlington a livable city, as we have seen through his extensive work through his mutual aid group, The People's Kitchen. He feeds those in need, as well as those supporting causes at protests and community events. It is absolutely true that the revolution has run on this food for many years. He is a supporter of Proposition Zero, also the initiative to form an oversight board called Community Control of Police. I am absolutely confident that these important battle items will come into fruition if he is elected. And we've got Fareed for South District City Council. Thank you for joining us. We've got one more seat, so I assume we've got one more candidate out there, one more nomination. Maybe not. Is there just next to seat? Last call for nominate. There we go. I want to nominate Will. I've only met him a couple of times, but I've been very impressed each time, more impressed every time that I've met him. Solid politics and he really cares. Policy buff, that is for sure. So I'm nominating Will. Oh, sorry. South. South District. Will, what is your last name? Will Anderson. Will Anderson for South District. Are there any last nominations? Final call for City Council nominations. Great. Then this time I actually will time, I didn't time anyone, but this time I will. So I will start with you, Milo, and you will just get the mic and pass that down. You've got three minutes to introduce yourself to all of us, especially for those of us who don't know you. And thank you so much, all of you for being up here with us and being willing to want the progressive endorsement. Go ahead, Milo. Thank you so much, everyone. Briefly, Born and Raised in New York City came up to Burlington, fall of 84, and attended the University of Vermont. And then after graduating, somehow managed to stay. I think it was my love for music, DJing, get involved a lot with people in the arts community here, creating a safe space for myself. So pretty much living here, having a good time. And then of the Millie Brothers incident that use a force case, which is still dragging on really woke me up to the fact that Burlington talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. I was on the special committee for policing policies. I then put in application for the police commission. And it's it's been very, very tough. And I feel that this is just the next step. I would like to answer a question that I received in a pretty aggressive email. But hey, I put myself in this so I'm ready for it. The question is, should residents expect a solution to affordable housing, addiction and mental health illness before before capitalized, expecting accountability of those who violate universal laws against stealing, robbing violence and more? Well, isn't that the question of our time? Isn't that the big argument that is splitting the city apart? And the answer is an either or is a toxic solution. It's not a realistic solution. We can arrest drug dealers all day every day. We're not but we could. But if we're not addressing addiction, what does that latter part matter? So it is the support of the continuing concept of a variety of resources in place, mutual aid, proper systems within the city at all levels, addressing issues of livability, which are also important to me, that includes affordable housing, that includes how we interact with our neighbors that includes what type of arts and entertainment are available to our neighbors. It includes different areas of the economy. A downtown business is important, but we need to support the businesses that are in our district as well. So I think I might be out of time. I'll be respectful of that. I want to I want to say that it's going to be really important for people to come out and vote in March our district historically. We don't vote. We don't vote, which is why we don't get respect on our name. And that's something we really need to be thinking about. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. My name is Jake Schumann. I'm very happy to be up on this stage with several friends of mine. And, you know, maybe some new friends will see we'll see how things go. It hasn't been long since I've been at a progressive caucus seeking a nomination. Only three months, less than 100 days. And I think that the last time around a lot of friendships did come out of it. And, you know, I want to respect the fact that there were some instances too, where, you know, folks might have felt like what I said or what I did might have been not so great, right? Running as an independent against a progressive. And now I'm saying I am a progressive and I am part of this party. You know, I want to recognize that there's a lot of learning that happens in the course of a campaign. And afterwards, there's a lot of feedback that's received. And I think that I hope that folks can trust that I did learn from that last experience. And I think that's what I have grown as a result. And so I guess, you know, what I really wanted to focus my comments on tonight was when we have the best of intentions, we can still cause harm. But as individuals, we can stop and we can check in. And we can seek to make things right. We can try to learn and grow and develop before we move on. And so my question that I would pose is why can't why can't our institutions do the thing, right? Like, why can't our institutions that are made of individuals, when they cause harm, why can't they admit to having done so? Why do they struggle to heal the hurt before moving on and developing? So I think that's kind of the mentality in the mindset that I seek to bring to City Council, as we seek to rebuild our public safety infrastructure is is kind of trying to create a culture of safety, where we can safely say, yeah, we've messed up, we've caused harm, and that's okay. That's not and that's not us admitting to being bad. That's how we begin to be better. Thanks. And just and just to check in that was Milo for Central, Jake for East. And now we've got Romeo for eight. Thank you, everybody for having me. Good afternoon, everybody. I want to thank everyone for having me here today. Indeed, it's an honor and a privilege to run for Office of Public Trust and represent the voices and aspirations, concerns, and resolutions of Ward 8 residents at the City Hall. As a future City Councilor for Burlington, Vermont. My journey to this point is no accident. Born and raised in Mogadishu Somalia, being first generation migrant here in America. I have seen the importance of public service, as well as good governance and the opposite case and point when elected members of our community to office of public trust, key issues are addressed and the overall quality of life of the city and its residents improves. When the issues are not addressed, the opposite happens. And as you can tell, Burlington, a lot is going on out here and it's Burlington is a very capable city. It just needs the right folks to be at the right place. On that note, folks, I seek your vote today for Ward 8 City Councilor because as a resident and as an individual that works at Greenmount Transit, who is pro robust public transit system here in Burlington and who is the liaison secretary for our committee for justice, equity and diversity. I am also equally for promoting diversity here in the city at every level of governance. That being said, some of my key issues are not limited to just public safety, homelessness, substance abuse, climate change, rising living costs, as you are aware that's going on here in the city. It's incredibly very expensive living, but it's something that we can find a way to resolve it. One of the key things that I am really proud of that I really want to push in this city is to build a trust between the community and the judiciary system. These communities include the by-buck community, the immigrants, the LGTB community, and other minority communities right here in the city of Burlington. My method of resolving issues aforementioned here today will be through compassionate means but yet remain resolved in resolving them. I'm open to working with everybody, including all city council members, the mayor's office, the judiciary, including law enforcement, and members of the community to achieving tangible results in this city. I plan to work with everybody and everybody. I welcome your questions, suggestions, and ideas to further elaborate my plans, my priorities in this city as your future city councilor and as the station manager and supervisor here in downtown transit center. So you can always find me there. I'm happy to help you board the right bus to go where you guys need to go and even as a future city councilor I'll still help you out whenever you guys need me, no matter what. I thank you for giving me the time to be here. I'm very blessed to be here. I'm very proud to be in Burlington, here in Vermont, and I can't wait to work with everybody both at the transit center, on the bus, at the council, at the city hall, everywhere. So don't be shy, come and say hello. I'll be happy to help. Thank you. And next up we've got Adam for East District. Hey, thank you very much. I grew up in Vermont. I've lived in Vermont my entire life. I've been very inspired watching the Progressive Party of Burlington and of Vermont, inspired by the Ali House and Zariah's race last year. Coming to the Progressive Summit in the summer, learned about all the history of the Progressive Party, dating back to Bernie Sanders' membership, very inspired by that. As a union member with the Vermont Starbucks Workers United, I understand the value of organized labor and I understand the value of organized labor and workers all over, having a strong connection to political and electoral movements like the Progressive Party. So I've made workers empowerment, workers power a priority in my campaign. I have an entire plank on the platform labeled workers power. It lists priorities such as eliminating forced arbitration, raising the minimum wage, and good union jobs for all municipal employees alongside good union contracts. I believe that, you know, we can bring this to the council with this platform and bring my experience as a union barista with me. Bring my platform with me. This experience and this platform is what got me the endorsement for Teamsters Local 597, which covers the Green Mountain Transit and UPS and workers all across the state of Vermont. I have a pretty strong vision for what we can do in this city and I hope you and all can support me in that. I also have a plan for strengthening the democratic infrastructure of this city. I very much appreciate as elections inspector that this city makes it or the state makes it easy to vote for all students and for all residents and workers of this state. But our democratic infrastructure is not sufficient at the moment. So I support common sense worker friendly proposals like the voting rights proposals that have been put on the ballot for this year. I also support other reforms that would make workers democracy more feasible, such as Proposition Zero, which was put up by my friend over here. I know a lot of people in the progressives have worked very hard on that and it's really wonderful to see what we can do as the city. So I hope that you all that are living in the district will support me and will support my friend Ron Allison here on the Champs of Socialism slate for city council. Thank you very much. Next up we've got Ron for award eight. Thank you Adam and thank you Zora. My name is Ron. I'm a student at UBM third year economics and history. I moved out here from San Diego California and I was hoping to escape the atrocious state of housing and climate there only to find the exact same problems here. Who here rents? I'm pretty sure a good percentage of you rent and I'm pretty sure all of you have noticed how the prices of your rent have skyrocketed recently and there is a reason for that I mean inflation all that but it's also because the school is pumping in more and more students and filling up demand without providing any housing in the city of Burlington. Hopefully as a city counselor I can help curb that through aggressive pro housing supply policies. Public housing takes some of the older unused buildings and retrofit them into public housing. Additionally I'd like to propose a ban on Airbnb's within the city limits of Burlington. Those units could be used for people to live in them not for random strangers to come hang out in them that's what a hotel is for. But I don't only run on housing although it is a significantly important point to my policy proposals. I'm also a large fan of fixing our city's infrastructure even further. Just like Adam I've been endorsed by the Teamsters and with that endorsement I would like to push for more buses here in the city and not only that shovel out the buses to make it accessible for people who have limited mobility. I'd like to advocate for a means of bike share because all those bike companies that had their startups failed here and I think that having access to public bikes would be very useful for us. On top of that I'm for decriminalizing drugs in the city. I don't know how exactly feasible that is but we can push for it. I really would like to increase the public safety apparatus really pushing for the civilian oversight of police and yeah I really hope you guys could vote for me. I've been canvassing pretty much non-stop in every election that there's been since I pretty much got here. Canvas for Alley House, Canvas for Kate Logan who just got in the state house, Tonya Vajhovsky worked with VPurg over the summer, got a lot of practice talking with voters and convincing them and I'd like to represent the students of my school in city council and push for a better city. Thank you. Next up we've got Farid for South District. Assalamu alaikum. Burlington by and large we care. We care about our community. We care about each other. We care about the environment. We care about the world and we care about our values and we make sure that our values are reflected in our public institutions. I was born on the other side of the world and I feel blessed that I found this place in 1995 and I've proudly called Burlington home since then and it is also special because it has a proud history of progressive politics as well as creative out-of-the-box thinking to the courage to have to carry out our conviction. It truly is a special place but obviously we have issues. I've got issues. We as a community have issues. We are facing multiple crisis situation. The pandemic has made the existing environmental crisis and a crisis the economic crisis of inequity much worse and our public institutions have been stretched to almost its breaking limit and I want to thank you all for your support in the Proposition Zero project. We made it so thank you all and it'll be on the ballot this March and it's important because it's the first step to reclaim the power of the public. As a member of the public I'm concerned with the direction of our public institution and also the corruption in our public processes. I think people should have the right to participate fully in decisions that impact their lives and those who are impacted most directly should have a more direct say and that's what the Proposition Zero is about. That's why we need to be able to use our voice and to use our numbers to counter the effect of privatization that has occurred in our city and when I'm talking about private privatization not just selling Burlington Telecom although that was really bad but also possibly selling a memorial auditorium making Church Street a pay-to-play area and most importantly is cutting off the access of the public to our public processes. We can't afford that not with like what's going on not with the crisis that we're facing. We need to reclaim our power and we need to reassert our control of our public assets our public resources and of our public processes so please help me vote yes on for the Proposition Zero ballot questions as well as the police oversight thank you. And last but certainly not least we've got Will for South District. Thank you and thank you to all the candidates spoke before me with some really inspirational words I have to say I know a lot of you don't know me but those that do probably the first thing you think of is that I am a huge nerd about a lot of things but especially what I really especially love is economic policy which I know sounds pretty boring but to me I see public policy as a tool that can achieve not only economic justice but social justice and environmental justice as well and these values are just really deeply ingrained in who I am you know to introduce myself I would say I believe in a very broad slate of human rights and personal freedoms and that all people should have the same opportunities that I've had which I consider to be a great privilege. When I look at the city of Burlington from an economic perspective I see a crisis a growing crisis of affordability tenants are paying more in rent each year something like I think it's 60 percent of Burlington tenants are paying half of their income or more in rent compared to pure cities across Vermont across New England across the United States this is abnormally high. When you look at single family home prices these are shooting up as well obviously this is much more difficult to impact with municipal policy but we shouldn't neglect the fact that it's much harder for for young families in Vermont to purchase a home. Now the issue of property tax after the most recent appraisal almost every single family homeowner is facing a higher property tax rate for those on a fixed income or low income this is an outsize economic burden on their lives and I think that's extremely unfair. So should I be nominated I'm going to make a campaign around some very specific and substantive policy proposals that I think are long overdue in the city of Burlington. Starting with rent stabilization rent should be stabilized at a given percentage a low percentage between probably between zero and three percent along with the median consumer price index. Landlord should not be allowed to be raising rents with impunity and we do know that although the city was able to pass just cause eviction it was vetoed by the governor so we definitely need to secure that as well but rent stabilization I see as the key to keeping tenants in a more stable economic situation. Along with that a property tax reform. I see this as particularly appealing in the south district where there's a lot of single family homeowners in owner occupied houses you know people that own their own homes but often are facing low inflated or fixed incomes you know in retirement. I'm going to propose property tax reforms that shift the burden of the property tax to those that own multifamily properties. Essentially what I'm going to suggest is that anyone who lives in their own home is not going to face increased property taxes from the school bond boat that we passed last so I just like to say I hope you can support these proposals and my idea to get them out there. Fareed also I think is a great choice and should I be nominated I'll definitely be looking to him for support on racial justice on policing and hope to work together with him in the future with all the other candidates and all of you thank you. Thank you and another round of applause for a whole slate of candidates. I'm so incredibly I mean this is really about movement building and I just want us to remember that we have more in common with every single person than that is in this room than a whole history of people who have been in power in the past and so I'm just really really grateful for the movement building that we're building right now and how many of you there are on the stage and with that sentiment we will turn to questions from the audience I believe that there is mics running around oh whoa was that a okay okay we're gonna go to questions again keep your questions short brief kind loving kind-hearted all of those things and you can direct them to a candidate I'll try to give we have two races that are contended and so I'll try to give the other person the same amount of time to speak or answer to yes to the same amount of time to answer Carter did you want me to go to you first or did you want to sure sorry he gets he does a lot of work he gets first steps. I'm being selfish so my questions for all the candidates and just pretty quick informational one how are you going to identify on the ballot because for me it's really important if the party is getting behind a candidate that they're helping build that shared infrastructure that data and all the other things that help us keep this movement alive long-term and then if you do not win the caucus are you going to be running against the progressive nominee nominee. Okay so we're going to start with Will and go down the line just super quick just such a Carter question super quick are you running what will you be on the ballot and would you run anyway if you did not get the endorsement. I would certainly run as a progressive I think this party is the best thing ever and if not nominated not only will I not run but I'll try to support the nominee in their race as best I can. I'm running as an independent and I think that's I would be lying if I said like I would be identifying with the party and also the South District I feel like that's also the best way to reach people. I'm running as a progressive and if I lose I will be throwing my support behind Romeo. I will be running with the progressive name in the ballot I've not made a decision about you know otherwise I think the most important thing is that the Democrat does not win reelection. I will be running as a progressive no matter what happens and if Ron is chosen I will be more than happy to support Ron. I was very naive last time around I am not an independent I am a progressive so if I receive the progressive nomination I will be a progressive on the ballot if I do not receive the nomination I will not run and I'm really excited about proposition zero so I will be putting a lot of time into that and I will be proud to be running as a progressive. Great so we will start with Earhart and then we will go to this lovely person in black and then we will go to Brian and then we will go to Jack. I'm going to start writing that down. Thanks Soraya and yeah in the name of movement building this is kind of a similar question to Carter's so our bylaws our progressive party bylaws encourage caucus goers all of us to base our endorsement decisions on several criteria so my question for each of the candidates is do you endorse the Vermont progressive party statement of principles do you commit not to work in opposition to any provision in the progressive party platform do you commit not to work against progressive party endorsed candidates and do you commit to caucus regularly with other progressive elected officials I think all the candidates got this initially when they spoke to Carter around asking for the endorsement so it's kind of a yes or no question just love to hear from everybody on that and have you just say the four things again and very brief yeah so affirmative endorsement of the progressive party statement of principles commitment not to work against any provision in the progressive party platform commitment not to work against any progress against a progressive party endorsed candidate and a commitment to caucus regularly with other progressive electeds so principles platform candidates caucus yes yes yes and yes I've read them recently so that I can also say yes yes yes and yes I'm going to simplify to just four yeses uh the first two yes not sure about the third one the last one absolutely yes I don't know yeah uh yes yes uh yes thanks to rank choice voting and yes and I'll also suggest to all four provisions thanks guys I will give you mine I need one hi I'm Margaret Joyle I uh live in ward five where I have lived since I moved to Burlington um in 1985 I've been a member of the progressive party I'm probably not presently because I haven't paid dues I certainly uh support the progressive Vermont subressive progressive party my question to Fareed and to Will is uh the elephant in the room who's not here uh but is Joan Shannon and the Democratic Party and uh I understand why Fareed would choose to run as an independent because we have never never never won in ward five never and we now have somebody who's been there for a really long time all right okay okay you're right you're right I stand corrected one time one time I've worked on many campaigns you're right anyway my point is we don't win we don't usually win Barb and Jean I bet you can agree with me about that usually we don't win and and so my question to you is what are you going to do about it fair enough what are you going to do about Joan Shannon and I really like elephants I'm going to say Joan Shannon is not the elephant in the room um but we'll start with Will and go to Fareed sure so uh you know obviously uh based on previous election results uh based on the situation general a tough campaign my strategy will be to present a better platform than hers make the people of ward five and ward six and offer that they just can't turn down so we're talking rent stabilization property tax reform better urban density uh you know a great plan to make the police better not racist not brutal uh and I'm going to present that in a way that's uh is better than Joan Shannon's you know very tepid platform that's my strategy make a better offer to the voters of the south district um I have several victory conditions first one is if the ballot items pass that's the main priority for me is to set up an alternative way so that we could propose uh ordinances and we could pass them through majority rule uh we do have a lot of uh uh partners and a lot of proposals that are popular but never would be presented to the voters because the city council has full control over what gets on the ballot so uh I think if like we get there I think it would be a win for me and it would be a win for Burlington and as far as Joan Shannon we hopefully uh we'll we'll have we'll that will provide a counter check and provide some balance to the decisions that she's part of um great thank you both um we've got Brian next and then Brian you're gonna hand your mic to Jack who wants to get in the queue after Jack okay we've got green shirt blue shirt brown jacket we'll go after that so I have a specific uh a question that's geared towards two candidates but everyone's welcome to weigh in um I recently ended my affiliation with the Champlain Valley DSA um due to harm cause to myself and others that was perpetuated by Adam France and his campaign manager Trey Cook who's sitting over there um and uh there was a statement made in the electoral working group and Adam and Trey were part of this discussion in which they said approximate quote although contingents of democratic socialism exist in the progressive party their control is not absolute and when I asked them what do they mean by that they never answered but I have experienced autocratic behavior prevail over democratic behavior as myself and many others have been driven out so my question is if that's how you acted in the past how can we trust you're going to be any different when you have real political power and how will all of you stand up for democracy when faced with the forces of autocracy um pressuring you and sorry can you those are two starting with Adam and then to the general okay we'll start with you Adam yeah I want to start by saying that I I do respect Brian a lot Brian was the um harassment and grievance officer for Champlain Valley DSA for a long time uh before I began and you know in his absence we have not been able to fill the position because it's a hard job and nobody wants to take up the grueling position um you know CVDSA is a very democratic organization um I came to it after it had been pretty defunct um due to COVID-19 um and came into it um you know we were in a difficult space when it came into you know into 2022 um but I'm proud of how it uh of what it's done in the meantime sorry that's kind of distracting um yeah so we do try really hard to make CVDSA a democratic organization and I know democracy is not always fun for everybody involved you know I know that the progressives try to be a democratic organization my union is a democratic organization and CVDSA is as well I know for my union we take votes a lot of the time that I I don't agree with um but you know I do accept you know what happens I don't recall any conversation like what Brian is talking about I you know have a lot of respect for the progressive party um which is why I'm here today and I want to be running with the progressive party um I think it's a broad tent and that's where it's at its strongest so you have people that identify as democratic socialists um and you have people that that don't and I think that's a great thing um there's room for all of us in this party and I I think when we when we get to the council you know hopefully there will be at least six of us there that will have to get along and work together to create a better Burlington regardless of you know how we might decide to politically identify because we do have as I said more in common together than we do with um people that you know have come before us great and if oh so we'll have one more person go ahead did you want you want it to go right sure I just wanted to make a quick point of affirmation to the question asked uh you're right in the sense that when folks are being uh nominated of course a lot of folks do make a lot of promises out there and obviously it's different than once the person comes to power or at least once the person's off you know they're in office of public trust so to speak um what I can do I can speak for myself is give you my affirmation that I always believe in and stand for that democracy direct democracy delivers for its people irrespective of where you come from and I want to say personally that it's regrettable what happened to you and that uh that it can be resolved in an amicable manner through discussion to the folks that are involved in the statement that you just made and as your future city councilor upon hopefully chosen for that matter that I will make sure that I work with everybody including you in coming with resolutions you can be with any party you can be with progressive party but at the end of the way it's important is that we we should be there to work with you as an individual as collective citizens as collective residents and coming up with resolutions in what you are facing and as a progressive party member I'm more than happy to listen to you your concerns and even when I'm not in office I'm happy to still listen to your concerns no matter what great thank you both we will go to jack hello there we go uh this is for those running in the south district so just about everybody here has talked about how housing is such a big issue it's very important how there's a lack of affordability and just a lack of housing overall so what are some specific solutions that you have when it comes to zoning um for example because I can think of a couple of things off the top of my head in the south district um and I was wondering your thoughts on that let's start with Farid this time did we do will first last time yeah um housing should be a human right it is a human right we all need it I don't know when governments stop building public housing but that is like I'm willing to put everything on the table as far as like solving this housing crisis because it does underline all these other symptoms uh that we're seeing um so it it should be our main priority to make sure the housing first approach uh regardless of where people are that we support that because when you don't have stable housing you don't have a place to go to then there's no way you can like hold a stable job or like deal with your addiction uh or or move forward so I think there are many proposals like that that's been uh put forward and I I I would love to listen to some of the ideas that you have um but I everything is on the table um from you know rezoning to additional uh ad use uh also to the government like city government actually just building uh single residency occupants single resident occupancy units uh and taking over even some of the unused like building in the city and rebuild them as housing units yeah I I really support pretty much everything that Farid said but maybe to build on it a little bit um in the south end I think that we're presented with with quite a conundrum because a lot of people there that I've talked to uh are infected with this nimbyism you know this desire uh to keep affordable housing and especially to keep you know tall buildings uh out of their neighborhoods uh without trying to get into their motivation too much um I do think that there's solutions to this issue uh number one would be making zoning more inclusionary uh so make it make it easier for for people to build ad use uh to build uh their buildings up in order to increase density and uh you know we could offer incentives as well to these landlords uh to try to build more units on and to make them affordable um I'd also like to mention an idea uh you know called social housing uh which is a bit of a different dimension on the concept of public housing public housing uh is a difficult economic problem because when you're not asking people to pay a lot in rent uh it results in you not having a lot of resources to maintain the housing stock you have to pour a lot of public resources into it but in a social housing scenario you're trying to get your public housing to reflect the entire society not just the people that have the you know a struggle to afford housing so if you have people across an entire economic spectrum the higher rents can subsidize the lower ones so to that effect uh I would support a policy similar to what Farid was suggesting in buying uh older buildings I think the city of Burlington should be purchasing a lot of buildings should developing a housing trust to purchase these buildings and then rent them out at all different rates using the higher rents to subsidize the lower ones overall increasing our stock of affordable housing uh really I think I think the problem is that we have landlords that are using rampant speculation and charging rents that are too high I mean it's really no surprise to me since they control the democratic party here but uh I'd really like to make a difference in that regard thank you both we will go to Wyatt and then to blue shirt uh real quick sort of across the country a lot of university towns are benefiting the exact same issue of student populations leaking into the rest of the housing market as well as the student populations themselves being packed like sardines in a can some one solution that's been proposed which is particularly interesting to me uh is an admitted student cap uh moving forwards as part of your housing solutions just real quick for the contested candidates the contested races here would you support a student cap on the amount of students admitted to uvm to try and fix the housing supply issue so I'm still just going to let us go down the line we'll start in the middle just for funsies with Roan um and if you're not contested maybe just keep it a one word answer can there we go uh yes absolutely support a admitted students cap um it's not even good for the students who show up um within the ward like you constantly hear about the declining quality of services at the school and then they get out of the school and they start filling up the community more and more more people who need to be housed and that pushes out uh residents who are long term here so an admitted students cap um is absolutely uh necessary as part of the um solution to the housing crisis here um yeah thank you I also support an admitted student uh cap I would like to see um the university non accept any more students next year than it did this year because every year it accepts more and more students than the year before without building any more housing um and yeah I think that's going to be a really popular policy with the students too as a student I um would like to see it in Roan as well so I think the students can see that there's a problem and that's the way to fix it or one of the ways yes so um I agree with the both points and I concur with the statement just made I think it's important to uh think of quality of life at the school anything that hinders uh the quality of life of students needs to be reviewed and corrected in with immediate effect including with the statement just made so as future city councilor that is something that I will definitely put to the table and work closely with the student body as well as the staff at UVM and uh as well as any other colleges that are within our city limits as uh as a point of order and so yes I am for that as well uh it's a sound bite that I can subscribe to yeah um I will say though that it's a little more complex than that um to start um I don't think that the city of Burlington has that authority so it's something that we would have to work with our state house delegation on um but I would also say that it should be more dynamic than that because if you have a hard cap then what's to say that um that's that's not going to fall disproportionately on the amount of in-state or low income admissions right like if the university is admitting more students because they need more money and we put in a cap then they might just cut off how many folks are coming in who are getting some significant financial assistance so yes I do I do feel like it is important to ensure that um the admissions do not exceed um our housing capacity and our quality of life capacity but I just want to make sure folks are aware that um that I I am am thinking about all of those uh side effects that might happen and and and thinking about those how to mitigate those um I'm absolutely for a cap I think it's been a very serious problem for several years now where they're like look we are building and then they admit far more people I don't think the university of Vermont really understands what's happening in our community with the struggle to meet rents and there's also an issue where we have to have a balance so we're kind of out of balance with our student population versus the fact that we need homes to bring in um say more nurses or more person people to take jobs and to build the economy in the area so I think it has to go back to making these agreements with uh UVM and I think also we need to be looking at the pilot fund the payment in lieu of tax situation because come on they get off so easy we really need them to contribute more to this community I respect how important they are I'm an alumni I know that their their presence is important to the community in terms of education in terms of employment but they need to really recognize um what's going on off of campus and if we can be honest they are not packing up and leaving and going anywhere we can force certain conversations we can we can ask them to have the hard conversations thank you we should totally leverage that pilot fund and like the tax breaks that we give UVM to the tune of over six hundred million dollars and if they're going to use Burlington as the backdrop for their marketing campaign they need to step up and actually play a more active role and to negotiate with us we given them so much as far as like the student cap I'd have to see how it's designed if it's like other state students or other stations above certain income I could definitely support that but I think we should be asking for a lot more from UVM they need to play a lot bigger role yeah again I think it's a really difficult issue because on one hand we have no choice we have to cap the student population because they're really starting to push people out of town but on the other hand as it was mentioned by a couple of other candidates our authority to do that as a city council is probably dubious at best I'd like the idea of putting tax pressure I like that idea a lot I mean if they're going to be putting this outsized pressure on our city we should be you know reaping some benefits from that as well I really think though that the change would have to come from inside UVM like as was said you know their culture is is very different from ours in the way that they're operating seems to me the best solution with them for them to be to expand beyond Burlington you know other towns in Vermont that are suffering you know especially given the level of technology we have today that it seems difficult to imagine they can be bringing this many more students into an area already struggling with zoning and housing in this way so I'd like to find a solution if a cap is feasible absolutely great thank you everyone so we are slowly running out of time so we had two more people in the queue after that we might just take three minutes and you can run up to your candidates and ask them some questions so that we're not all all listening to all of the questions but next question is and I'm so sorry I keep calling you blue shirt it's cat both for Jake how do you plan to involve residents in a decision-making process in our town and that is a question to all of to all great so we will this time start with Adam no we'll start with you sorry and then we'll go down the line I'm just changing it thank you cat that that's a very good question we need to make meaningful participation apart for our decision-making process and in order to do that that's like that's really a tall order because not most people are not going to pay attention they're not going to have enough time to look at the city council meeting or to follow like the process so we need like before we could get there we need to make sure like that people have livable jobs they have secure housing they can they have nutritious food to feed their family and they have childcare before as we are like we're also increasing participation I do see a lot of hope in if the proposition zero pass because that lowers the barrier for people to have a direct say in our public policy-making process it's a rather tough question specifically in ward eight because a lot of them are students and by nature are not exactly engaged but I mean they're outliers of course personally I will be involving myself in DSA and the YDSA along with the young progressives on campus along with some of the other clubs I will have a public snapchat that the students can message me on and ask me questions I will engage on various levels of social media and also offer pseudo town halls every now and then generally I will ask students and residents within ward eight what they would like to see happen to pull them into the decision-making process similar to Roan I'm pretty easy to find I'm an officer of Champlain Valley DSA of the Young Democratic Socialist of America for University of Vermont and for the UVM progressives all three of those those are easy places to find me students can find me obviously on those student clubs but non-students can also find me very easily at meetings for CVDSA I'm not hard to find you know I'm a student I'm doing things just like other every other student you know I'm always going to be somebody that people can approach with a question or concern and you know my emails always open I'm also welcome you know citizen participation in our city council I know that some city councils in the past have high concerns with raucous participation in our public comment but I don't have a problem with that I think that any sort of public participation in our city government is desirable so I welcome anybody voicing their opinion in any of those spaces that I've talked about yes so I'm going to use every available platform including in-person meetings with the ward members and I think the thing about being a city councilor it's not that you only represent your ward but you represent the interests of the entire resident that live in that city so I will use every avenue available to me to meet as many residents living in the city to invite them and maybe have a day with the you know city councilor at the park and just you know kind of give them a little bit of brief of what's happening at the city hall and then tell them to come over and have them hear what's being said and so on and so forth so yeah I'm going to use as many platforms as possible to reach out everybody and try to get the message across and create more public participation there is a project that I've been thinking for quite a while called the young adult social and political and great integration project which I think would be a very useful project in getting city whole message across to because we get this city a lot of young adults that live out here that's not to say I'm not going to reach out to the other younger folks as well but certainly that is something that I've been thinking for quite a while and I think that's something I will consider in implementing at city hall along with what I'll be doing in the near future I think there are a lot of things we can start by supporting and passing proposition zero a community oversight board for police and all resident voting on town meeting day we can also empower our NPAs more we can provide child care at those NPAs we can ensure that people don't have to work too many hours so that they have the time and energy to participate we can pay our city counselors more than a stipend we can actually pay them a wage just to start we can have more city counselors and not less that way you know folks have the bandwidth and the energy to actually engage with their electorate there's a there's a lot of things that we can do we can make these processes as friendly and as incorporating as we as we have as we can but at the end of the day that's kind of what it comes down to right is is the the relational aspect we can work really hard to make sure that we build those relationships with each other and make sure that the party is as unified and cohesive as possible recognizing that it is a our diversity of opinions and perspectives and strategies that make us so amazing but we are not the party of the status quo we are the party of the liberation and let's all come together under that umbrella and work together to make some real change so one of the things that i have been talking about over and over and over again ad nauseam driving the chief of police driving the mayor crazy is the lack of community engagement around public safety so community engagement involving the community in politics in decisions that will be affecting their lives it's going to be really important to me i frequently attend these wednesday morning coffees that the mayor has and he always has them in the new north end he does not go to any other parts of the city recently where's councillor McGee back there throughout the idea of having a similar type of thing where people from the community can come to a spot in our community to give their feedback give their concerns councillor Barlow has just started something similar and i would be very interested in doing something similar giving different levels of opportunity for people to give their opinions not just email but to actually talk to people i was thinking part of my campaign and i throw myself on rid it and do an AMA or roast me maybe a combination of both but we'll see how that goes but there definitely has to be different ways because representation that we have right now especially on one side is just not listening i like to say they're living in a multiverse somewhere um a different burlington where they just refuse to see the reality of some of our situations so definitely different levels of engagement are needed thank you thank you uh yeah along the same lines proposition zero i think would really go a long way for this i do think that we should have a shadow coffee house either for individual counselors or for the progressives as a block i would also whether permitting have my own backyard counselor hours there on south union street and then lastly kind of touched upon a little bit by some of the other candidates just the idea of digital democracy i mean so many of us are connected to devices today uh we should have some kind of digital progressive platform by which everyone all our neighbors can pretty much constantly share their opinions with us um you know we have the technology we should use it you know other countries are using this for all kinds of e-government at this point so i think that we should explore options of how we can think outside the box to use uh digital democracy to get more input from more of our neighbors thank you thank you one last round of applause for all the candidates and so a couple of announcements um first is just to say my priority my selfish priority is to get at least three of these wow what i take for if we could um but at least three of these candidates selected um so that requires a lot of work on their part it also requires a lot of work on our part so don't leave here without committing to helping these folks get elected um whatever the outcome there's also other folks who are running and collecting signatures so as you leave um and maybe they can put their ballots in themselves kind of on that back table so don't leave without helping get folks on the ballot with the signatures that they need um not everybody got to ask their questions so we're going to take about eight minutes eight minutes um you can come up you can ask the candidates more questions individually um but you are going to fill out your ballots and vote this is not the end we have another segment after this to like school board to elect um inspector of elections things like that that'll be much quicker we'll hopefully do it as a slate but for now we're going to take a pause for eight minutes if you are one second and then we'll go to barb central district is going to turn in their ballots over here north district is going to turn in their ballots over here east district is going to turn in their ballots back there and south district is going to be in the back barb did you have a announcement donate all of these candidates just committed to running without taking corporate funds even if they don't know that that's what they just did so make sure that you donate because we are not corporations is the ballot ranked choice harder i don't know the answer this question yes it is ranked choice if you have already voted go back and rank your choices or just vote because it's it's two people one minute warning this is your one minute warning okay everyone if you can find your spots again whether that's sitting whether that's standing cease your mingling devs do a good job find your seats find your spots we can all and have a beer after find your seeds find your spots huh find your seeds find your spots okay everyone we are at the final part of our agenda which is to elect all the other very important offices which include school commissioner ward clerk inspector of elections folks can come back and give me 15 more minutes i'll try to do it in 10 okay i am taking nominations for school commissioner for all of the district districts we've got east central south or north are there any nominations for school commissioner any nominations for school commissioner yeah i knew we had one airheart gary gold is that right gary gold for east district golden gary golden for east district gary are you here did gary leave i don't see carol okay his petition is here so we have gary golden carter is writing it down do we have any nominations for ward clerk all wards and if you not thought about it think about it do you want to be a ward clerk run for ward clerk i want to nominate ward three ward i don't know if barb's doing it i want to nominate wendy coe for ward three ward clerk ward two ward two ward clerk great for ward clerk for ward two we have wendy coe are there any other nominations for ward clerk barb i nominate charlie gianoni for clerk for ward three he's been the clerk for the last several years and he's wonderful charlie what would you go ahead and like to say something charlie no no i'm all set okay great we've got charlie for ward three any other nominations for ward clerk would you like to nominate yourself for ward clerk yeah any other nominations for ward clerk inspector of elections three-year terms open for all wards any nominations for inspector of election so i'd like to nominate barbara also she's been on our team now for three years right and she does a great job and everybody likes her so i hope everyone will vote for barbara also as a progressive for inspector of elections great inspector of elections barbie also in ward ward 3 for the three-year term are there any other nominations for inspector of elections three year term going once going twice think about it could be you inspector of elections to your tour term for ward eights are there any out nominations for inspector of elections to your term ward eight are there any nominations for inspector of Elections one year term, wards five and seven. Any nominations for Inspector of Elections one year term, wards five and seven. Great, Carter, if you all don't mind, we will vote on these folks as a slate. So we will now take a voice vote after Carter reads us the slate. Okay, so we have Ward Clerk and Ward Two, Wendy Coe, Ward Three, Charlie Giannone, Inspector Three year term, Barbie Oslop and School Commission East District, Gary Golden. We're just gonna do a big voice vote. So if you support this slate, you yell out aye. If you, well, we'll do that and then we'll ask for any nays. So do we need to move in a second or is it just second? If you support this slate of candidates, please say aye. If you do not support this slate, Barb. Okay, if you do not support this slate, say nay. Great, Barb. So can we just, for the people who are watching online, explain how they will get to vote so that they can see it now? That's all. Some people are actually watching online right now. I've gotten a bunch of texts. It's great. So after this caucus concludes, we're gonna send out a virtual ballot using Opavote, which is a secure online voting software we've used throughout COVID. So folks should check the email that they registered with. Also, I sent out an email to folks and I'm gonna follow up tomorrow with phone calls and texts. If there was a problem with your registration, you received an email from me with some information on how to fix it and what you need to do in order for me to send you a ballot. And as long as you do that before the deadline, which is Thursday at 7 p.m., you can still vote. And I'll send you a ballot. So you'll receive that in your email, you fill it out, you'll get confirmation, and then you're done. The deadline for online voting is Thursday 7 p.m. And for the event registration page that everybody used to register, we're gonna be updating tonight with just a list of the candidates who are nominated or up for a vote. And then all the campaigns are gonna get together right after that deadline. We're gonna count the in-paper or the in-person paper ballots into the, add them to the virtual ballots and then we'll announce results. And a member from each campaign's invited to that process. And for those of you that didn't catch that, that means you will not get the results until after 7 p.m. on Thursday. So that is when all the tallying will happen from the online things, the in-person things, and for city council, we just did a slate for all of the other positions. So if you have not voted with your in-person ballots, make sure that you submit those now. This is the last call for in-person ballots. You cannot vote in-person and online. So if you were here, please turn in your ballot so that your voice counts. And that is all. Thank you so much from Carter and I and the whole rest of the Progressive Steering Committee. And we would love to help with cleanup. Thank you, Barb. Yeah, if folks wanna fold chairs and put them.