 All right, why don't we begin? So I'd like to call to order the South Carolina City Council meeting of Monday, May 17th, 2021. Megan has just arrived, so we have a full quorum. I wanna welcome everyone and under item one, I would, at the request of Representative Kalaki, I would like to make a slight change and following the consent agenda, John would like to speak to H29 or S29. S79, excuse me. S79, because he has some other engagements like sleep or something or getting ready for the final week. So if, are there any other changes or additions or deletions to the agenda besides that? Okay, hearing none, we'll make that change. So John will make his presentation following two comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. Is there anybody? I'd like to make a quick comment. Jessica, did you wanna say something? Yes. Okay. We can hear you and we can see you. Great, thank you. So go ahead, you're welcome. So my name is Jessica. I'm a resident of South Burlington and I'm just asking the city to prioritize the climate crisis with regards to all future decisions by the city. I remember when I was in second grade, that's when I first learned about greenhouse gases, which is 30 years ago, which was shocking to me too. And what have we really done to address the crisis since then? I think asking individuals to make better choices is not really a solution to this problem. We really need community wide action. And I think South Burlington community is the scale of action that is achievable. If the COVID crisis taught us anything, it's that Vermonters are capable of making dramatic changes to protect our neighbors. And we need to put the same urgency to the climate crisis. I have a 11 month old son and it stresses me out that I can't do anything on the national scale and it feels like the city scale feels manageable. So I would be supportive of any initiatives that the city proposed. So I just wanted to put that out there. I would love it if we prioritize that because I think we need the leaders of our communities to propose big ideas and bold ideas that will move our community forward. Yes, so that was my comment. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Are there any other comments from the public? Okay, seeing none, announcements and the city managers report. Does anyone have any announcements? I can't remember what I did. So I don't have any. Well, I didn't have any meetings. Megan. We did visit 180 market street. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, which we could report on. It was very exciting to see, yeah, yeah, to see things coming together. And the walls are up. Lights are unique and really eye catching. It's a spot for the clock. That is coming along quite nicely. And yeah, it just, the views are fantastic. I noted when going up the stairwell in the northwest corner that the view is absolutely fabulous. A real incentive to use the stairs rather than take the elevator. So talking about climate change, Jessica, hopefully that design element will be an incentive. And yeah, just wanted to say it's really exciting to see it come together. That's right. And we were all there. So everyone saw it. It was great. Any other announcements? Okay, how about the managers report? Just a couple of things, Helen. I participated in the city managers associated meetings on Thursday and Friday. Some good information on there about the ARPA, variety of other things. I actually did presentation along with two other city managers on just some lessons learned in city management that we passed along. It was a good round table discussion, but a good overall city managers meeting. Jared, I might add by your new city manager, Jesse Baker, who has been chair of the city managers, Vermont City Managers Association. You have your steering committee meeting tomorrow night. It starts at seven, seven tomorrow night, steering committee meeting. And really the two items on the agenda are the I-89 corridor study. Charlie will be in again to do the overview of the project for the school board because this is probably reasonably new to them. And also on there will be an update for the school board about the move-in schedule and the completion of 180 Market Street. So most of the meeting I think is gonna be about the corridor study. Jesse, as I mentioned earlier, city managers association chair, but she has now completed her time at City Manager of Winniskey and she's taken some well-earned time off and will be with us the Tuesday after Memorial Day, which I think might be the second. And so we're looking forward to that and hoping she's having a good couple of weeks off. Tom and I will be participating and Martha I think will be participating in a VLCT webinar tomorrow on the ARPA. The 160 plus pages of guidance are out from the Treasury Department. I sent you all kind of an overview of that document. Tomorrow we'll get briefed in on what the other details are in the document. And I suspect there are gonna be a lot of questions about this according to what has been reported. The city of South Burlington is an entitlement community in as much as we have a specific federal allocation as opposed to an allocation coming through the state. This is similar to how the community a block grant program operates. Burlington has an entitlement and they actually take their entitlement directly to them for CDBG money. We are eligible for that, but we have always felt we do better in the state pool than we would if we got a specific allotment from the federal government. So I think that's kind of carried over into the ARPA, but in this case, they will be giving us the direct entitlement allotment as far as we're able to tell. It ends up being a little bit of a different amount of money than we had calculated, slightly less, but we're gonna see how that plays out. And lastly, last week, Tom and I on one call and Alana and I I think on another spoke to the key staff members for both of our senators as it relates to the congressionally directed investment program, more commonly known as the earmark program and what we need to know about that. And the upshot of that is that they encourage us to not take the same project to more than one of the three of them. And so since the funding for the technology buy for the Consolidate Dispatch is in Congressman Welch's list of 10 priorities, we'll be taking the bike path or the bike and bridge project that is in city center, connect city center park to Market Street to Senator Leahy and asked for indoor recreation center to Senator Sanders. So they have deadlines, of course, as you might imagine. So that's all I've got, Helen. Okay. I wanted to just make a quick announcement. I signed up for and would encourage anyone interested, maybe Jessica has time. The state of Maryland's department of, I don't know what it is, housing or something puts on these or planning, I think, puts on very good webinars. And there's one tomorrow at one o'clock, it's called getting ready finally to build local climate resilience. And so it's at one, if anyone is interested, I can send you the link and it's free. And I'm sure, I don't think there's a limit of how many people can sign up. So it isn't first come, first serve. So if you're interested, let me know, I'm gonna be listening in. I thought it was finally with our climate change resolution. Okay, so moving on to the consent agenda. We have six items, disbursements, minutes, of April 19th, May 3rd and May 6th, approving a grant submission to the Vermont Trans for the Williston Road Crosswalks Project, yay. Approve a bid award for the Allen Road shared use path and authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a contract for construction services with the winning bidder, Portland Construction, approving a loan application for the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund. This is self-reliance three acre stormwater retrofit designs. And finally, approve a resolution authorizing the city the contract with our current banking services provider, TD Bank, as the city's credit card company. So I would attend, I would appreciate a motion to approve those six items. I have a question first, Helen. Okay, no question. No, you can do the question first, that's fine. Okay, either Kevin or Tom, can you, I don't see Justin here, can you elaborate on the statement that the southbound right hand turn lane to Allen Road from Spear Street will be, there is Justin, sorry, has to be sacrificed for the shared use path. I didn't understand that statement. May I, Chair? Yes, certainly, please. And Ashley Parker is with us also when she's on the project too. The, in order to create a narrow crossing, Tim, we are eliminating the exclusive right turn lane that southbound on Spear at Allen. So that gets us roughly an extra 12 feet or so less of a pedestrian crossing distance. That entire intersection was designed and approved by Act 250 in the early aughts and there have been numerous aspects of the South Village project that given the passage of time, the traffic volume projections that were commonly being used in the early 2000s have just not been materialized. And if that intersection were designed today, it would not meet the warrants based on current volumes for that right turn lane. So we thought a better use of that space was to improve pedestrian safety by eliminating the right turn lane, bringing that curve, therefore bringing that curve line a little bit further east and shortening the crossing distance for pedestrians. Okay, does that address your question, Tim? Well, it does, I get it, but once you have a right hand turn lane, I hate to get rid of them. And I understand why you're doing it. I mean, you're doing it to establish that shared use path and give proper crossing ability that with a shorter distance, I just think it might be a little short-sighted to get rid of a right hand turn lane that already exists. It makes for, you know, people have a choice when we have too few right hand turn lanes in the city as it is, especially at, you know, Hinesburg Road and 116. I hate to get rid of them. So it's just my opinion. I don't personally care if you make the timer longer so that people have the time to cross the road. I just hate to see you sacrifice a right hand turn lane if you don't have to, because it gets people off the side of the road and lets the people who want to go through go straight. And they don't have to slow down. And, you know, I mean, there are probably your problems with that too, but we, you know, we have a lot of intersections where the intersection at Hinesburg Road and Kennedy Drive is a 26 second crossing, which three quarters of the time, every time I'm there, nobody ever takes 26 seconds to cross that street. I mean, even if they have a dog, it's usually like 14 seconds. And so the rest of the traffic is sitting there languishing, waiting for, you know, the light to change. So I'm just- Well, I use that intersection. And if I go diagonal, I need, I don't need 26 seconds, but I need more than 14. I, you're in the extreme, you're an extreme minority. I have never seen anybody use a diagonal crossing there. And I think that police should listen. Okay. My point is, is that, you know, you lose functionality at that intersection by eliminating the right-hand turn lane. I don't have a problem with lengthening the timer on the crossing, you know, to, as long as we can retain that lane. Can we, maybe we should put this off in the discussion or if the council feels strongly, do they want to leave it the way it is? We'll just put it to a vote or we can pull it out and vote separately on it. I, it's up to the council. I don't want to make a big thing of it. I just brought it up. Well, Justin, do you have a response? And then we can decide whether to pull it out and discuss it. Yeah, I do. There are multiple elements of South Village project traffic plan. For example, they were supposed to be an exclusive left, left turn lane at the southern entrance into the property. We remove that. I understand that. And that makes sense. And the same with the right-hand, into the northbound right-hand lane too. That also makes sense. Sorry to interrupt, Justin. If we were permitting, if the development community were building that project today, the warrants wouldn't be there for a right turn lane. But we feel it's unnecessary space. And yes, giving people more crossing distance helps. However, I'd rather expose pedestrians less, have them be in the traveled way as the minimal amount of time as possible. This pathway, once it connects to South Village, which now connects to Dorset Farms, the Dorset Farms, which will now connect to the new rec path we're building down by Cider Mill. Like we're bringing massive connectivity. So this just isn't kind of a low. I know it's only an 800 foot project of sidewalk, but it's connecting vast sections of our pathways. And the design team has felt that the better use of this space is to minimize pedestrian's exposure. It doesn't meet warrants. It's just extra pavement that creates things like runoff. And we feel that this is the proper design. However, if it needs to be tabled or further deliberated, we certainly come back with more information. Do you want to call Tom? I see your hand. I have dogs. I agree with him, whatever he said. So I'm never one to rush through these things. I'd like to know the timing and if we need to make a decision on this tonight. But I'd also love to hear from Justin and Ashley is how much is the new soccer field right across from this area as well as the plan for that sort of village downtown with some shops and pedestrian attractions factoring into this new design? Is that part of the rationale for why you want the less time for pedestrians out in the middle of the way and more reasons to block or back traffic up at this intersection? Well, I think what you speak to gets to the larger development, land development and land use schools of South Burlington. So as you mentioned, this south village is going to have kind of its own little mini, I think it's no less, no more than 5,000 square feet, no more than two stories or whatever the criteria are. We're trying to keep people internal to their developments to the extent possible. The soccer field, which has been long planned will definitely be a generator. No one of those specific reasons is the driver, but I think they're all emblematic of this larger vision that we're trying to implement from a transportation land use policy. In addition to the connectivity, these are a few weeks ago, you did the Kennedy Drive crosswalks. Tonight, you also have the Wilson Road crosswalks. I just touched on the South Orson Street rec path. And we're finally starting to really bring connectivity to what has been, you know, even though it's the most miles, I think of any community in Vermont, it's still to some extent a disparate and disconnected recreation path system. So no one of those reasons, Tom, or why we want people to be exposed to possible oncoming traffic less. It's just accumulation of, I think the goals and the visions of the city that we at the staff level have been trying to implement. We also, I think I would add, if I could, Justin, you know, we have a contractor pretty much ready to go on the project. So I would, it would be great to make a decision on this tonight so we can turn them loose. But if it's up to the council to make that decision. Well, why don't we take it off the consent agenda vote on the first, well, it isn't the first five, but all of them accept that and then have a separate vote on that if that would satisfy Tim. That's fine. Okay. So I would, would you modify your motion then to agree to A, B, C? Okay. There was no motion, Helen. Oh, okay. So then I would like a motion then that would include A, B, C, E and F. So move. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Yes, second. Okay. So all in favor of A, B, C, E and F as presented unless there's other questions. Can we find by saying aye? Aye. A's. Okay. So that was approved. And then item D, which is this Allen Road shared use path and contract. Is there further discussion on that? I fully understand the reasons behind why I didn't remove that lane, but I'm going to, it's going to pass because we're going to vote for one here, but I hate to see a right hand turn lane subtracted from our traffic functionality in the city. So let's go ahead with that vote and I'll just vote nay. Okay. Megan has her hand up. Yeah. Looking through the comp plan some a couple of weeks ago, I saw that Spear Street is intended to remain a two lane road, that that was the desire of the city planners and the public. And so I think that it, you know, the widening of the bike, head lane and there, I understand you're concerned about the reduction of lane, but I think it is not going to be a road that is going to grow. And so we need to be sensitive to that. Of course, as we move forward or the city planners move forward in the future, but I just thought that was an important detail from our time. We support this shared use path. I mean, this is, this is a great connector and we'll allow people from Baycrest to come up and that's mostly where the traffic is going to come from and also for people on bicycles to be able to go down, down road safely. My point is, is that I just hate to see the turn because it's getting lost. And we already have left hand turn lanes going south and going north at that intersection. So it's already at least a two lane road in one way and three in the other. All right, are we ready for a motion to approve item D? I'm clarifying question. Yes. So we're not giving up any right away land usage. So if this is a terrible decision and 20, 10, 20 years from now and other councilors want to put that right with hand turn lane back in, they'll just have to deal with the shared use path and try to move it off to the side. That's not a fair statement, Justin. That is the correct statement. The right turn lane was constructed within existing city right of way at that time and that right of way is not being relinquished or extinguished by the city. So we maintain those future property rights. Okay. Besides us, who else has weighed in on this staff? Did DRV, did bike and head of others considered the giving up of this right hand turn lane? I'll go. Okay. The city's bike and head committee has seen these project plans. And so they have reviewed that set and supported it. Okay. But in all respect, the bike and head committee is a bike and head committee. They're not a car committee. So if there were a car committee here that was trying to, you know to support their own views on traffic patterns in the city they would say, why would you ever get rid of a right hand turn lane that's of use and functionality to the driving community? So although it's great to add this path I'm just trying to make the point you're removing functionality at intersection that works pretty well right now. The timing is very quick. People get going where they wanna go and they can take a right hand turn. There's a lot of traffic that wants to turn right to go down to Shelburne Road. And now that they're gonna have to sit and queue up behind all the cars and wait for the, you know, for the light to change. It just seems short-sighted in lieu of all the traffic so that it's gonna be built up because eventually, Spirit Meadows is gonna be built out. You're gonna have a ton of other developments and people using that road. I just, I'm gonna vote no because I think this is the wrong idea. Taking away traffic functionality is not the right thing to do. My opinion. Thank you. Tom? I'm gonna know as well, Tim, you convinced me. I'm happy to take longer and maybe revisit this at the next meeting and I could be convinced to be yes, but I've often very much respected Tim's perspective on these things with his experience with the DRV. So I can't support this right now until I have more information. I don't know if we have enough time to warrant for this tonight. You need to have a decision on this tonight, Justin or Kevin? We'd like to have a decision because we, like I said before, the contractor's ready to go. But if this is something that is gonna split the council and we'd like to have the full support of the council on the plan that's been worked on for about three years. Well, can we put it off until the next meeting? If I'm ready for what it's worth, I'm gonna use Tim's phrase here and Ashley can certainly agree with me or not, but I am more often than not, Tim, I am the one person traffic committee who is usually at odds with the Blake and Ted committee over things that they want. And I try to represent the other 97% of the population that's interacting with our right of ways. So for whatever it's worth, we're not always or often walk in step, but I feel I've adjudicated my role as the historical one person traffic committee on behalf of city and staff on this particular issue. Again, for whatever that's worth, what I often end the voice of those that don't speak in these forums when it comes to these specific matters. Matt, you're flip just looking to. Justin, you brought up the bike path on Dorset South. Is this contract anywhere connected to that? When is that progress gonna happen? No, it is not. We have anywhere between, I don't know, five and 10 active places. I'd like to see, I'd like to wait. I'm not saying that we shouldn't give up that right turn lane convinced by Justin's one-man committee. It sounds like there's a consensus to put this off for two weeks in the interim. What are we gonna do in the interim? I'm not quite sure what we're doing in the interim. I was just gonna go into that, Megan. I would hope that the counselors who have concerns would share those with Justin who might be able to generate the data that you seem to need in order to support this. I would also like to- If you have a few questions or Tom or Matt or Megan or I, we can submit them to Justin. Is that okay, Justin? Or should we send them to both you and Ashley? Because she's the other piece of this. Is that amenable to everyone? Yes. Okay, and the contractor, it will probably be amenable to that? I mean, I think our construction contractor that we're trying to get on board, they'll have to wait. So I'm hoping that we won't, I don't think there should be an issue if we're delayed in signing an agreement with them in terms of their availability. But I don't know that without asking them. Well, why don't you ask them? And maybe we could always have like a very special, very quick meeting to approve this if time becomes of the essence. All right, Jim? Yeah, so Justin, Ashley, do you have the other design ready to go in case we don't want to lose the turn, Lane? We don't, but that's probably, it shouldn't prevent us from executing a contract. We could always change order this out of a contract. Again, there's a lot of work and it's 800 linear fee and a substantial amount of clearing before we start doing any path placing. So we could conceivably award a contract and upon further direction from the council, change order certain design elements in or out of it. Ashley? Ashley? Yeah, sorry, Justin, correct me if I'm wrong, but also think if we go up the plan B, I think that's pushing us more, it would potentially push us more out of our right of way or we'd be pretty close to it. And so that would lead us into some right of way issues and needing to get some additional right of way that we weren't initially going to have to go get. We would most likely be faced with some creative challenges given the abutting property owner's opinion of the project. Okay, is the council still interested in taking more time? Yes? Yes. Okay, so we've approved the consent agenda without D with the anticipation that D will be on the consent agenda in two weeks or it's a little bit more than that. It's whatever it is that first week in June or the second week in June. Okay, moving on then, John Clacky is going to give us some information or insights into S79, which is a proposed rental housing ordinance that I guess you're going to tell us where it is and what might happen with that. So you have the floor, welcome. Well, thank you and hello everybody. S79 has been a rental registry trying to be set up since 2010, I believe. It's now come back from the Senate. It's passed our committee. It's now with ways and means. It's pretty much, it establishes a long and short-term rental registry for the state. Those cities like Burlington that already have one, they don't, you don't have to pay a double registration fee, it'll just be integrated into the state so that the entire state will have a registry of all of the rental units. And this would be very helpful. It would have been helpful in Irene. It would have been helpful during the pandemic with the COVID relief funds. There were a number of things for landlords and we did not have the access of who actually owned the properties. And so that's important. It is the light touch and it really is moving right now in many of our smaller communities. It's the volunteer down health officer who does any inspections. And it's gonna move to the division of fire safety and there'll be professional staff, but it will be complaint-based because otherwise it would be so enormous. But what it will be able to do is give state agencies the opportunity to connect with landlords to really address any health and safety issues in both our long-end short-term units. And as short-term, there's no regulation at all in any of this. This is a registry. The other thing is during the pandemic through the COVID relief funds, we started something called the VHIP program, which is run housing investment program. And that awarded $30,000 to landlords for abandoned and derelict properties that they could improve them and then guarantee that they could be used for either housing the homeless or for very low-income Vermonters for up to five years. This was a very successful program, but the state couldn't reach out to all our landlords about it. But during the COVID relief funds money, we actually were able to bring back online 250 units that would be dedicated over the five years for very low-income Vermonters. The bill proposes to continue that with ARPA money now put $5 million into that. And so we hope that will happen. And then the governor asked for a revolving loan fund. It's an interesting concept to have low-income Vermonters to help them with their mortgage down payment and also renovation costs. So people can apply to up to $50,000 of loan. And then once they sell their property, they would have to give that $50,000 back. So it would be revolving loan fund. And there wants to be a priority to reach out to the Black and Indigenous of people of color communities in our state as well to encourage home ownership. So that is part of the bill. That will be going back to the Senate as amendment that came from the administration. And then the last thing that's in this, which will also impacts how Burlington is we did put an eviction moratorium in during the pandemic. And a year ago, I think no one really thought it was gonna last this long. And even though the governor just extended another 30 days, the eviction moratorium is 30 days after the emergency ends, evictions could proceed if they need to. This bill creates some exemptions of that emergency rule for if there's criminal activity, if there's safety risk to other residents in the community, if the landlord wants to occupy the building themselves or if a new landlord is buying it to move into those, those would be appropriate things in this short term. Now, by the time this bill is passed, it'll only be one month of opportunity here. But we heard from so many landlords that it's been really crushing for them with this. And right now in a new federal money, only the tenants can be applying for the rental arrear to support not the landlords. And so that's made it very complicated. We hope that the feds will widen that to have the landlords do that as well. But right now, if a tenant refuses to do that, the landlords still can't evict that person. So it's an interesting dynamic and we felt like we want to be also responsive to the landlords. So this bill is now in appropriations in the house. It will be on the house floor. We'll send it back to Senator Chitman this week and we're supposed to be adjourning on Friday or Saturday this week. So we hope this gets in. I think it is a great idea to have a registry for all the short and long term rentals in our state. And it'll be $35 a unit that the landlords have to pay for the registry and that will then pay for the staffing from division of fire safety. And if you already have one, you don't have to pay extra. This is not a double pay. So that's pretty much the outline of the bill. Megan, did you have a question? I just didn't understand the last sentence that John said. If you already have one, you don't have to pay extra. Sorry, Burlington has a rental registry and so landlords pay into that. So Burlington's information will be integrated into the state, but those landlords do not have to pay a double fee to Burlington and to the state of Vermont. And is this an annual fee per unit, the $35? Okay. Okay, thanks. Okay. Well, thank you, John. That sounds, oh, I'm sorry. Tom, did you have a question? Can I ask a quick question, John? Absolutely. Is there any restriction on accessing this information? So would we be able to access the list of South Burlington rentals? It's a, that's a great question, Kevin. And there was a lot of discussion and I don't know, Senator Chittenden, if you were in that committee when that was discussed, it will be, the state will have that. And I believe that cities can also request that information. But individuals right now, as you know, we can go into our own town hall and look at the grand list and find out pretty much all the information. But I don't think an individual is gonna be able to use that list to market to landlord or something like that. So it's gonna be protected within government agencies. Okay. Thank you. Okay, Tim? Just, I've got about a million questions. So I'll just ask a couple. Well, I'm going to have a longer presentation later. Okay, I don't want to. So probably is going to share some information. So this was just John's little piece. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Email me any questions. I'll be glad to talk to you offline. Okay, just appreciate the opportunity to talk to everybody about this. I should say John's big piece. Thank you for your work. Of course. Thank you all. I'm good to see you all. Okay. Good luck this last week. Do good. Goodbye. Item five, point self-point and representative to the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. And I believe Chris Shaw, our current member or representative is on this call. And I don't know, Chris, if you want to say a few words I think we're ready to nominate you and elect you for another term, but you have the floor. Well, thank you. I do want to give you an update. I'm sorry I haven't been around in the past year. It seems like you pull into that shell very nicely, but you guys have been keeping up great work here. And I hope it's just been easier to be able to do it remotely. It seems like it has been, it seems like you get better participation in some sense and others you don't. And I think we see the same thing over at the CCRPC, although I don't think we get quite as much interest as you do. Certainly we're getting interest now with the I-89 vision and study, but be reminded that, you know, we are a partner as a whole CCRPC with all the county and we want to make sure that we are reliable conduit for the federal funds that come through us for these type of transportation initiatives if they happen. Our goal as with a lot of the communities and what Jessica spoke so tellingly to it at the beginning of the meeting here is we would like not to get to this point. And we want to find ways, plan A is to make sure that we don't have to have the increases in traffic that would trigger some of these improvements that are being offered. Then it goes through multiple layers. We want the bike, we want the ped, we want the dense housing that all contributed to that in the core where it will make sense for the climate and people won't be driving and coming down from Georgia, from Starksboro in from Richmond and so on. So, you know, that's important to keep in mind. And I think the general rule about any interstate in 89 is when you're, you've gained weight over the last year in the pandemic, you don't go out and buy a bigger belt. So that's always been true about roadways. And I think that when you expand it and this may be germane to your right hand turn lane that you're discussing tonight. If you expand it, it just encourages traffic. What it's been restricted as the 89 vision is hoping to do with 14, but to see some alleviation with the shorter transit either through 12 or 13, it will provide a benefit. And can people find other ways? As we've noticed over the last year, it's been great to see the drop in the car volume, whether that's sustainable, whether as a society we can encourage that shift and keep it in place. I doubt that the early returns I'm getting from Massachusetts are that everybody hit the road like it was in Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend already, they got two weeks to go yet to work up to it and everybody forgot how to drive. But what's important for the CCRPC is we're looking to John and Thomas and company to wrap up the final regulations and rulemaking for the CWS and I'm afraid we seem to be very acronym crazy for this. Codename the quisp. So CWSP is very much a very similar to the quack, the CWAC, we have the Clean Water Advisory Committee that's been looking at the Lake Champlain and all the rivers and streams flowing into it. And so the quisp is the Clean Water Service Providers who once again as CCRPC has done well with the federal transportation monies is going to be a funnel and provider for approving projects, monitoring projects that will clean up and keep the phosphorus loads for instance, out of the lake. So it's going to be done regionally through a lot of them are regional planning commissions and all regional planning commissions. We are in the direct to lake basin. So two new vocabulary words you're going to hear are gonna be quisp for the Clean Water Service Provider which we expect by the end of the session next week thereafter, CCRPC will be designated as the direct to lake basin Clean Water Service Provider so that we will help with getting the funds to the people and to the projects that will have been prioritized through natural resources and all to take the greatest load out of the lake. So the money will flow to those projects that will reduce the loads into the lake or on the other side of the state into the Connecticut River or the White River and further south into the Black River and so on. So those are the things we'll be looking at and that'll be very exciting for us. It's a sort of big expansion because it's gonna mean some more administrative work on the part of CCRPC. Shoulder to shoulder with Tom and Kevin and Jesse as they come on with the municipalities with the ARPA funding, we anticipate that that'll go to broadband or stormwater or sewer or one other item, I've forgotten, just general water because we've got our water in good shape but not all communities do. So that's really the bird's eye view for what we're working on at CCRPC. We're very excited to have gotten, I think through this past year and maintained our pledges and maintained our personnel and maintained the work that we do. So I'm happy to take any questions from you all. Well, I just wanna thank CCRPC for their willingness to collaborate with the different communities. And I think they've offered self Burlington, you know, a lot of resources and information and I like to see that going forward. So I appreciate that. You don't always agree, but I think we're in this together and looking for solutions jointly and we appreciate your willingness and ability to address some of the more provincial municipal needs or interests. Are there any questions? Well, I would like to have someone nominate Chris to another term. I move to nominate Chris to another term and thank him very much too for his many years of service. He's very well respected. And a second. And Megan, of course, has been an alternate thing. I've only gone once, you're a die hard, you're... That's great. I try and be dependable. Do we have a second? Tim second and we all thank you and appreciate your work. So all in favor of Tim, who will be... Chris, rather, who will become the vice chair of the CCRPC board, I guess it is, right? Yes. Yeah, okay, so all in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great, well, thank you very much, Chris. Thanks, Chris. And thank you all. You are welcome. So now we move on to item six, a presentation on racial discrimination in housing and we have one of our wonderful high school students, Menel, I hope I'm pronouncing it right. Menel Sarpo Adu, right? Right. And you have a presentation, so Menel needs to be the... Whatever it is, yeah, presenter. Thank you. I just made you a presenter, Menel, so you can share your screen now. You know how to do screen share? Yeah. Okay, so you're a presenter right now. Well, it doesn't let me see you guys while I do that, so... Okay, I won't be able to see you guys. You guys are saying something in the chat, I'll be able to see. It's not like Zoom. Okay, are we ready? Your screen is up on our screen. Yeah, the presentation, right? Yep. Yes. All right, perfect. Well, yeah, there it is. Wonderful. Can you guys see me? Yeah, although, yeah. If you find everyone at the top of the screen, you get more of the presentation. Can you say that again? I said, if individuals click at the top of the screen and they choose to hide everyone, then they can maximize the amount of space used for your presentation. Oh, perfect, okay. Where do you do that? Where it says view everyone? Yeah, click it and it should give you a choice to hide everyone. Oh, okay. And then later on, you can then reverse that. Okay, we'll do it. Thank you. So, hello, my name is Manel Sarfouadou. I'm currently a junior at Big Picture Self-Brillington. Big Picture is a self-directed, project-based, community-based learning program that lets students focus on their interests while learning. Throughout my life, I've lived in suburban areas of Vermont. And when I joined Big Picture, I started internship with a real estate investor named Michael Dumont. And so far, he's taught me a lot of valuable information that I'm beyond grateful for. And through my internship, I started realizing that a lot of homeowners don't look like me and that realization hurt me deeply. So, I made a presentation to bring awareness to this, to the untold racial discriminations in housing and to teach others to learn, observe, and speak up on the discriminatory acts. And also, I connected with CVOEO's Jessica Hyman. She taught me a lot. And I also learned about Fair Housing Month, which I didn't know about before. So, make sure to check that out. It's really wonderful. So, yeah, next slide. So, these are the contents of my presentation. As you can see, I was talking about racial discrimination. What is housing discrimination? What are the protections against housing discrimination? The history of racial housing discrimination and the data in Vermont. How it affects my community. What does it look like? Solution slash process on the individual and community level. And how to get connected to learn more. So, to start off, what is racial discrimination? Racial discrimination involves treating someone differently because he or she is of a certain race or because of personal characteristics associated with race, such as hair texture, country of origin, skin color, or certain facial features. And I would just like to add, this graphic does show other discriminations such as age, disability, sex, which are also illegal under the Fair Housing Law, but this presentation primarily focuses on the awareness of racial discrimination. So, what is housing discrimination? Housing discrimination can take on many forms. It may happen when a landlord refuses to rent you an apartment or tells you it's unavailable when it really is vacant. It can happen when a real estate agent steers you in a different neighborhood. It also may occur when terms and conditions of release or financing are different of those of other people. Illegal discrimination can happen in advertisements. Usually people are discriminated against in their housing search or their buying process, but discrimination and harassment can also happen when people are living in their own homes. So, to give you guys some examples, they would be phrases like, people who look like you cannot live here. You won't fit in in this suburban neighborhood. You cannot live here because you have too many kids. The neighbors would not like the smell of your food. You have to speak English to live here. You'll make neighbors uncomfortable. No section eight. You should look at neighborhoods where people look like you and no people who wear her jabs can live here. And just to add, one of the most common ones that are being said in Vermont right now is the one about the food. The neighbors would not like the smell of your food. So, what are the protections against housing discrimination? So, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibits discrimination in sales, rentals, and other housing related transactions based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, disability. And in addition, Vermont provided an even greater protection against the protective categories of sexual orientation, gender identity, victims of abuse, sexual assault, stalking, age, marital status, and receipt of public assistance. And just because these laws are in the book and discrimination is legal, that does not mean that it's not happening because it's happening all the time. And it just isn't always obvious. Sometimes discrimination is subtle or embedded in institutional policies or community planning. So, the history of racial discrimination did not start in the 1930s, but I don't wanna go all the way back to slavery. So, for the sake of time, I'm gonna just start with the 1930s when segregation was very prominent. In the 1930s, there was a rise in homeowner shift due to low interest rates. This wasn't the same for African-Americans though. Deeds, covenants, and land and zoning practices prohibited African-Americans from saving the same benefits as white people. African-Americans were often denied from seeing homes in primarily white safe neighborhoods. African-Americans ended up having to live in undesired neighborhoods, labeled as hazardous to loan to. These acts also happened in Vermont. Mayfair Park and neighborhood in South Brunton had a racial covenant to not allow any other race other than white live in that neighborhood. Now, the covenant is no longer in effect in 2020, or 2021, sorry. The covenant was removed a while ago, but in June 13th, 1933, the Loan Homeowners Corporation came out with the red-lining maps, which essentially said who was safe to loan to. Green meant best, red meant hazardous. The neighborhoods labeled as red was a minority community, where minority communities and green was the suburban white neighborhoods. And in 1968, the Fair Housing Act was signed to prevent housing discrimination. But that didn't stop it from happening. In 2021, people still don't know about housing discrimination or racial housing discrimination or about their own rights. So how does it affect my community? When we look at this graph, it is of the median household income by race, and this is of Vermont. So this data is of Vermont as a whole. So please look at the arrow on the second bar. That is what African-Americans are making in Vermont. 39,400 compared to white people right above them. 62,000, oh, 60,000 plus. And that is reflected by white home ownership and black home ownership. White people have a higher median income and also own the most homes. This graph shows the wealth gap of Vermont, and it also shows the highest median income compared to the lowest median income. So to explain that, the highest median income that a black person is making is still not even close to the lowest income that a white person is making. And as I said, this was reflected by home ownership. Blue indicates owner, orange indicates renter. And just like I said in the last slide, white people are making more than African-Americans and they also own the most homes. 64% of white people are owning homes in Chittin County and 36 are renting. Compared to 17% of African-Americans own homes and 83% of African-Americans are renting. So that is 83% of African-Americans that are not building generational wealth. So what is the impact? Let's just look how it's played out for children through generations. This is a comparison between a white child and a black child. Starting on the black child side, throughout the 20th century, racial covenants and agreements were made so that black families were segregated from white families. Often these black families would live in horrible areas and are now considered ghettos or hoods. These areas were red lines so banks would refuse to loan to them or give insurance to people who live in these areas because they were high risk or poor. We don't know if Vermont had red lighting but there was other systematic racism that exists. There were still racial covenants in Vermont though. These hazardous conditioned neighborhoods would often have exposure to poor health conditions and these children ended up going to really bad schools or less opportunities for higher education. Also the families would often not be able to pay for college or an equity on their home or build generational wealth. And this process just repeats for their children with even less money, which causes them to rent and never be able to build generational wealth. And now for the white family side, white families would often have the ability to live wherever they wanted or wherever they could afford actually. And there were no covenants or deans to say no to them. Which caused these families to live on the good, safe side of neighborhoods and with big homes and wonderful neighborhoods. They send their kids to great schools in the area because more expensive neighborhoods equal better schools. The schools give the children plenty of opportunities from internships to college preparation classes. And when students were ready to go off to college, the parents can take out home equity loans to help pay. Or parents could take the equity from their homes to buy an even bigger home in an even better neighborhood with even better schools and even more opportunities. And this process was just repeated for their children with generational wealth that was accumulated through home ownership. What are some solutions slash process? If someone experiences housing discrimination, they can go through a complaint form. This typical process includes investigation, sometimes lawyers and even a resolution. So the process would start with the Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD. When flying a complaint, you can go through HUD or VTHRC or the Vermont Legal Aid. For the process, they would do an investigation, they will talk with you and the person you feel discriminated against you and then a witness or witnesses. And if the investigator found that you have been discriminated against, then they will help you and help the discriminator find and resolve the conflict. For the in-state or federal court, they will help you find, file a lawsuit against their discriminator and then Vermont Legal Aid can actually help you and represent you. They also offer legal advice and help someone decide if they will file a complaint or not. If the case does go to court, it may, they may have to pay money or equitable relief. It's important to know that the process can take a very long time and only a small percentage of instances of discrimination actually get reported. And in those small percentages, only a small percent goes to court. And also if someone's facing discrimination in their housing search, their first priority is to find a safe, stable place to live so they may not be willing or able to actually file a complaint. And this can be made worse in a tight housing market like South Brawling Tents where there's a lot of competition for rentals and houses for sale. And it makes it even harder to investigate or to prove discrimination. So that is, and then there's remedies, which are this there, the money damages, punitive damages and equitable relief. I came up with three solutions that don't actually fix the whole problem in a whole, but it does bring awareness and helps people learn and become better. So as a community, we need to learn more. So you would make yourself aware and understand what is happening and how it affects people in your community. So you can sit in this presentation and just listen to what's going on and you're already learning more. And then you can observe deeply. So you'd look into the rules and practices in your community that affect how and where housing is being built and who is where. And then you would speak up. So you speak up against unfair practices, speak up for those who can't speak up for themselves and then speak up against unfair land and zoning acts. And then you would just ask yourself, what type of community do you want to have so that you can build those communities and have a vision for what you want. And then the last one is just get connected. So attend April Fair Housing Month, the workshops, the library events, community art projects and the human rights commissions, investigations, education, things like that. Fair Housing Month through CBOEO, they have referrals, educations, things like that. And then remote legal aid has representation, testing, education, legal information. And then thank you for all the people that have helped me through this. Any questions? Sorry, that was really fast. So any questions? No, you did a good job. And you didn't seem to rush and you got through everything. It was great. Are there any questions? I can't see any. Oh, Megan has her head up. I'm just curious about the big picture program. Is this a final project you did, Manel? Is this something that you did on your own and specifically wanted to contribute to CBOEO's work? I'm just curious about the process. Yeah, so I feel like I should have explained that in the way beginning. So big picture, I have a project called Service Thesis Project, which is STP. We just do a big service project on our interests. And before that, I actually wrote a 10-page paper on racial discrimination in housing and systematic inequality, redlining, and just things like that. So I was already fueled up for this presentation for this project. And then I decided to extend it by bringing awareness to it and actually making it a presentation and sharing it during Fair Housing Month. I shared with the Board of Investors, local real estate investors, and I shared with the Affordable Housing Committee. And then I actually extended it even more and I helped my friends at Visarn, which is Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network. I helped them create a lesson plan that we are teaching high school students right now in P-Walls classes, which is pretty much current studies classes. We are teaching this book called The Color of Law. I don't know if you guys know what that book is. It's a book about racial discrimination housing and systematic inequality, redlining. It talks about all that type of stuff. And we summed it up. We got activities. We had book excerpts and presented it to the students and they loved it. And then at the weekend, we talked about my community solutions that I came up with, the learn more, observe deeply, and the speak up. And now we are actually, our next steps are getting it into more of our schools. So we're working with lawyers right now. We're working with Beth White, who is a school coordinator who does a lot of big picture and like involvement and stuff like that. And we are just trying to bring awareness to the subject so that students don't grow up thinking that ghettos were just made by choice or that African-Americans just chose to be at the systematic level that they are compared to their white counterparts. And that this all ties together. So it's not, I don't know, I have a lot of opinions on this subject. So I feel like I'm just going on the tangent. Oh, it sounds like you know a lot. And that's wonderful. I was curious if you've talked to banks and specifically loan officers at banks knowing that that's often, you know, the line where, you know, who gets a loan and who doesn't get a loan is can be sometimes determined by, you know, discriminatory practices. Exactly. That's actually surprising. I haven't talked to banks actually. And that will, I will add that to my next steps. I should definitely get some information from them. Good. Like I feel like that shouldn't have been the first step, but I definitely hope that. So thank you. It seems like you've taken a lot of steps. So don't knock yourself out for having. I've been before a loan officer. You probably haven't, Menel. So, you know, kinds of things to my mind. All right. Any other questions or thoughts? Oh, Tim, Barrett. Just a quick question. Menel, thanks for your presentation. I really appreciate it. And I think it's good in two ways because of its educational aspect because it's educational for tenants. It's educational for landlords as well, right? Because both sides have to know what their, what the rules are and they have to know what their rights are. So I mean, it's sad when tenants don't understand their rights and what process they can find, they use legally to get resolution. It's also bad when tenant landlords don't understand the Fair Housing Act and what they can't discriminate on. So, I mean, this kind of information goes a long way for everybody so that hopefully we wouldn't have to have people trying to use the legal path, you know, for resolution of problems like that. But it's good for both parties to understand exactly what the law is and how to use the law. I appreciate what you've done. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, I wish that I could teach more people. I get that I've been teaching lots of agents and things like that and adults and students but I'd like to focus on like investors or people or banks or just people that are new to being a landlord because I know that real estate investing is new and they don't have to go through the whole get a license or that type of stuff because real estate agents that have licenses know this type of, they know what the Fair Housing Act is, they know those type of things but the private landlords and things like that, I wish I could bring more outreach to them because they don't actually know these acts, they don't know these rules and it's usually them that are discriminating but it's hard to get in contact with them. That's exactly why I presented to the Real Estate Investing Board because, well, I mean, I just said because, so yeah. Okay, just one last thing, if that's all. Or who will listen later and have some ideas for you and can contact you. That would be great. Sandy Dooley, her hand up. I just was wondering if Manel was surprised by the degree to which government historically has played a role in perpetuating racial discrimination in housing. Was that a surprise to you when you learned that? I'm sorry, you cut out, can you say that one more time? Were you surprised by the large role that government has played historically in perpetuating racial discrimination in housing? Honestly, no, because as a black female, the government has done things before him to negatively impact black people. So I mean, this type of stuff wasn't surprising to me. It was more, hmm, I don't know. I felt like it was more surprising to me that it wasn't, gosh, I don't even know. I don't even know how to answer that question. I just wasn't surprised. I was surprised that people didn't know, like more people didn't know. I think that would be what I was actually surprised by. Okay, well, thank you very, very much. We appreciate the presentation. We certainly are cued into at least trying to find affordable housing, but discrimination is certainly a piece of it that you helped educate us all about. So thank you very much. Yeah. Moving on to item seven. It's a resolution related to the council appointments to South Burlington board's commissions and committee. So we'll first have a resolution. Wait, is it seven 30? I'm sorry, we have to start our public hearing. I lost track. So why don't we skip down to item eight and we have an interim zoning application. IZ 2101, Allen Kay Long. We're developing two existing lots at 1720 and 1730 Spear Street. So we need to open the public hearing. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing? So moved. And seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. We are in a public hearing and we have this application before us. We had not acted upon it last time. So do we wanna hear from the longs or again or does the council wanna have a conversation about this application? Matt? Well, I think it's appropriate. The longs wanna give a minute. We've read through the packet. So we've sort of seen the project and some of us may have attended the sketch hearings to hear from the longs. And then of course, we wanna hear from the public. So, but the belongs could give a brief overview. Okay. And then move to the public to hear what they have to say. Okay. So, Alan, do you wanna be in charge of that? Who's gonna give the present? I don't know. Eleanor, I don't know. Any one of you. Sure. There's a lot of longs on this call. Yeah, I'm sorry to have flooded the airwaves with all of our pictures here, but I think it's important for you folks to recognize that it's not just me doing this. It's a family project. I'm joined here by my brother, Dan and his wife, Denise, by my wife, Carol, by my sister, Eleanor, and in spirit anyway, by my sister, Catherine and brother-in-law, David, who live on the West Coast and are kind of challenged by the difference in time zones. So very briefly, and I know you probably have read through all of this material. So none of this will be new. We're proposing an infill development between South Point and South Village on Spear Street. 49 dwelling units, which is somewhat fewer than we're allowed to under the current land development regulations when you multiply the developable acres, which is 17 by four, you get 68 units. So we're under that number. The development proposed is obviously a cluster development because the majority of the acreage, the eastern portion of the property is conserved under NRP. Statute, and then when we add in the habitat block concept that the planning commission is incorporating into the new LDRs, an additional six acres or so on top of the 22 already conserved under NRP would be conserved as part of an undevelopable habitat block. We've actually worked with the planning commission and we're proposing that we do build some houses in the portion of this habitat block, this extended habitat block that is along the eastern edge of our development in exchange for preserving a cops of trees and connected green space that has long been a feature of the property. We felt that that was appropriate because it was established old growth forest whereas the proposed habitat block extension is just hayfield that a couple of trees have grown up in. That's seemed important to us because we've always valued that cops at the top of the ridge behind our house. It's also important because we're working with both South Point and South Village to try to make this development consistent with the look and feel of those two areas and in particular the folks in South Point have been observing wildlife in this cops of trees for many years. They've set up a motion activated camera up there. I think you may have gotten an opinion from, I know that DRB did a letter from folks in South Point saying that they really valued our efforts to preserve that cops of trees. And we've also with a nod towards the natural resources committee talking with Ray Gonda have proposed a path that goes all the way from Spear Street along the northern border of our proposed project through that cops of trees and back into the big conserved area that's part of the Great Swamp. So the way Ray phrased that, he said that could be a walking path for human beings during the day and for animals at night. And that seems like a good compromise. I'll just close by saying that we've throughout the whole process of this permitting and all of these hearings tried to stress that we feel as if our project is a nice balance between conservation and development. We're proposing some affordable units as well as a number of smaller units, not single family homes as much because we'd like to be able to provide some housing that's reasonable for young folks who are establishing wealth in the community if that's really important. So I could keep going, but I think probably a lot of people want to comment and there may be some questions. So I'll toss it back to you folks. Okay, are there any questions, brief comments from the public? You all have sent us lots of letters and emails. So we're well aware of I think some of the positives and concerns that people have about this proposal. Leslie, did you want to speak? I did, is that okay? I'll make it brief. Thank you for letting me take a few minutes to urge you to approve this application because it will expand opportunity in our city and in the region. I'm Leslie Black-Pleau. I work at Vermont Housing Finance Agency. I do research and communications work there. I've been there for many years. I also live in South Burlington and I'm also on the Affordable Housing Committee. But this neighborhood would include much needed housing for our city and it'll preserve most of the parcel as natural space. And it was one of the parcels that was identified by the 2020 case for housing report that members of the Affordable Housing and the Open Space Committee worked on together. And we identified it as ideal for future housing because it's five miles from our state's biggest employers. It's served by existing infrastructure and it's consistent with our comp plan. And as Alan said, it's going to include five inclusionary homes, which will have prices affordable to our missing middle families. And that's super important right now in this era of rising number prices, staff costs for the home building industry. Many of us see home building around us and we assume it's enough, but our rate of building and our vacancy rates have plummeted and they're at historic low points. And what that does is make the cost of housing unaffordable for most of us. So when we can take an action to expand the housing stock here, we're taking a great step forward. So thanks a lot. Thank you. Are there John, Gee Bank? Yes, yes, I'm John. Did I come out that right? Is it Gee Bank or Guy Bank? Oh yeah. Yes. We know each other from the past sale from all my development stuff. So my name is John Gee Bank. I'm in a butter on the South property lawn of the Longs in the South Village Development but I own two separate lots on that South border right against the woodlands and the natural habitat and everything. I also have 40 plus years of experience in development. I'm a co-owner of Summit Properties. We developed and own the Pine senior living community just down the road of the city. We've developed numerous projects around Vermont, New Hampshire, New York. And I'm in opposition to this product. I submitted a memo. This is certainly not infill housing. This is not neighborhood housing. I don't understand how anybody could term this as being neighborhood housing when there's a half acre asphalt parking lot in this project. There are 49 units. There's multifamily units with no parking. So people have to park on the surface. The disruption of the wetlands and the natural woodland habitat is extensive in South Village. Yes, there are, it's mostly single family homes in South Village. There are duplexes and the multifamily, the couple buildings have all the parking underneath. So this project is not in sync with the neighborhood at all. The South Point residences are all single family. They're all garages. There's parking for guests on the street. This project is absolutely not an infill and absolutely not neighborhood planet. And the habitat, which Mr. Long referenced, is extensive. People have seen bobcats. There's deer and deer families with fawns. And they winter and summer in the woodlands right where they're gonna develop the multifamily housing. I also disagree. Yes, five units of inclusionary, that's only 10%. Burlington requires 20%. So relative to affordability, the other houses are gonna be $600, $700,000. So I don't think the city commission, city council should be really considering this project under interim zoning at all. This should be strictly dealt with on the DRB level. They've had sketch plan with DRB. There's been significant opposition for all the reasons that I've said, from wetlands, extensive wetlands that go up into the forested area, extensive wildlife, certainly not infill housing, certainly not neighborhood development. It has nothing in common with South Village or with South Point. And I really think that the city council should, I'm not sure your procedure for interim zoning, but either table it and just let the DRB deal with it or turn it down in relative to interim zoning and let the DRB take its on its normal course. The DRB and let it take its normal course of development with everybody. I mean, the natural resources council is in opposition to the project. There are numerous other groups in South Burlington which are in opposition to the projects for all the reasons that I've stated. So those are my points. I would hope that the council members consider that trying to push this through on interim zoning is really not what should happen. Thank you. Thank you. Are there, is there anyone else who would like to make a comment? Andrew. You have my name is Daniel. Hi, thank you. Thank you, Helen. I'm going to bother. Ayuku John's comments, I'll keep this brief. I understand the Long family has proposed something which they believe is a reasonable balance of development versus conservation. But with due respect to the family, the problem is that background against which developments like this need to be evaluated shifted. The world is facing a series of grave ecological crises and sometimes feels like things are normal in Vermont as we're blessed with so many resources, but it's not. I also agree with John, development is not infill to the wildlife that live there. There are significant natural resources on the proposed settlement site, a particular arrow would identify the habitat block on the site that would be bulldozed by the plan. The particular habitat forms part of the Great Swamp which arrow would found to be the most important habitat block in the city. There's also prime ag soil and notwithstanding the characterization of the area as a hayfield, what appears to be a fairly mature forest on the proposed development site. The proposal is inconsistent with the comp plan. The comp plan has a series of maps. Those maps have conservation areas on it and this proposed site is covered with those conservation areas and the comp plan prohibits development on these resources. As a community, state or country, we no longer have the luxury of treating the environment as disposable. We need to do better. I urge you to reject this interim zoning application. I hope that when this development is evaluated under the proposed land development regulations and natural resources on the site will be protected. Thank you. Any other comments? Yes, Francis? Yes, thank you. I'm Francis McDonald, chair of the South Point Homeowners Association and the South Point Homeowners Association is in a bother to the project. And I think under the interim zoning, there's six different standards that you look at to see if a project is consistent with those. And I see three of those where there's some inconsistency. The existing patterns and uses of development in the area. When the seven houses that are proposed east of Parkside Drive are really not consistent with the current development pattern of the South Point neighborhood. When South Point was built and approved by the DRB in 2005, there were no houses designed facing Parkside Drive. All of the houses in South Point, either faced onto South Point Drive or Upswept Lane. And there's no houses built on the east side of Parkside Drive with South Point conserving all of their land on the east side of Parkside Drive. And then for traffic, those proposed 49 homes have the potential to add 100 cars or more using the South Point Drive Spear Street intersection. And additional homes on North Jefferson Road in South Village may also choose the route through South Point as a shorter connection and further increase those traffic volumes. And then I think on the environmental limitations, I think those were covered pretty well by John and Andrew. And so I think our comments follow the errors in terms of the environmental limitations. And we would hope that the project doesn't go forward under the interim zoning, but waits until the final land development regulations are reviewed and approved. So thank you for listening to our comments and considering our concerns. Thank you. Are there any other commenters? Norm. Good evening and thank you for taking a few minutes to hear the concerns of another butter. Norm Stanton and Jen Rand, we are at 1751 Spear Street directly across the street from Mr. Long's two parcels. We've submitted significant comments in opposition to the Long's plan, as I'm sure all of the counselors have seen and are aware of. And I don't want to take the time to further dive into those. I would echo many of the comments that Francis and John and Andrew shared today. And I would add the fact that this is not just a conservation issue. We are very in favor of the conservation issues that have been brought to the table, but this is also a lifestyle and a quality of life issue for the neighbors that live in this neighborhood, both in the two PUDs that exist next to the Long's properties, but also for those of us that live on Spear Street at large, particularly those of us that live in direct view and direct hearing of this development. I want to bring a note of context to all of this. I mentioned this briefly at your last meeting in reference to the proposal that you are currently under deliberation for for South Village. And I'll mention it again in respect to the Long's proposal that just in the context of this meeting, you have had agenda items where, or that you are under deliberation for. You've had agenda items where you have potentially removed a left-hand turn lane at Preserve. You have removed the right-hand turn lane at Allen. You have added development traffic in the form of 49 homes. We have added potentially the traffic from the soccer field and people coming and going from those three intersections that are in question. Not to contradicts, Councilor Emory, but with due respect, Spear Street is growing and the traffic pattern is growing on Spear Street. The noise is growing, the amount of development is growing and the quality of life, frankly, is decreasing as a result. We would urge for all of the reasons that other folks have mentioned and for those that we have included. And in particular, in light of Manel's conversation and her training about fair housing and the fact that as several folks have mentioned that six and $700,000 homes does not do much to add to affordable housing in our community, we would urge the Council to not pass to oppose this resolution, at least until new LDRs are in place, if not outright. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Megan, did you wanna say something? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I would see the comp plan also indicating that there should not be an increase of traffic in this area or something that would draw an increase of traffic in this area, but there are perhaps better areas for denser developments. That's how I read the comp plan. So I think we're actually in agreement, the last speaker and myself and the comp plan. Thank you. Any other comments? Is caller one, your phone is green? I don't know if it just is always green because you're on the phone. I don't know if that means you wanna speak. Do you? No, okay. Tim, did you wanna, did you just put your hand up? You're muted, Tim. You're muted. I'm sorry, I'm muted now? No. No. So I just turned my camera on because I thought we were gonna start to get to an interesting part of this meeting where the Councillors give you feedback, right? I share the concerns of a lot of the neighbors, but I understand the need for balance here. There is a need for more housing. There's a need for some affordable housing components. At the same time, we're under IZ for a reason to try and protect the natural resources that we have in the city, especially in the Southeast quadrant. And this project encroaches upon the Great Swamp more than I'm comfortable with. So for that reason, I would like to see the new LDRs evaluate this project and not take it forward through the IZ component and a vote with the City Council at this time. Okay, thank you. Other Councillors? Well, Sandy Dooley isn't a Councillor, but she has her hand up. Go ahead. I just wanted to say a few things. One is it's my understanding that from conversations that the applicant has had with the Affordable Housing Committee that they have been working closely with planning staff such that their proposal complies with the environmental protection standards that are now about to be subject to a public hearing next week or now, this week. The other thing I wanted to say is I did attend the DRB meeting and one of the DRB members, Mark Bayer, did describe this project as infill. So I think the applicant's description of infills seems to be correct. Also, someone representing the Estee Ireland company that manages or owns or whatever, South Village also described it as infill. I believe the letter from the applicant says that they plan to have a garden where the community garden or a neighborhood garden for the area that's prime ag. And so I think the applicant, I mean, interim zoning has gone on for two and a half years now and I supported the extension, but I think you should take into consideration how hard the applicant has worked to comply with current and anticipated regulations as they are now defined while waiting two and a half years. And I will just add one other thing that Leslie didn't mention is the, oh, I'll just also say someone said that it's only 10% of affordable housing in Burlington has 20%. We didn't feel we could get 20% by our city council. And so the requirement for home ownership is 10% in South Burlington and 15% for the rental. So just because it's not as inclusive as Burlington would require it to be, I would encourage that not to be a factor in viewing this application negatively. So I'm thinking, well, I guess the statements of the opponents in my mind would not accurately reflect the tone of the and the interchange at the DRB meeting last week. And lastly, I, Leslie did not mention that the affordable housing committee voted unanimously in support of this application, especially because of in addition to the affordable housing, how hard the applicant has worked to comply with both current and anticipated regulations. Thank you, Sandy. Other comments from counselors? Matt, did you? Helen, did you see my hand up? This is Roseanne. I did not see your handout. I saw Matt. So let Matt speak and then Roseanne, you can speak. Okay. Chair, Chair Lee, I think it's a big, perhaps appropriate that we hear, make sure we hear from all members of the public before the council. Okay. All right. We'll let Roseanne go and then you can chime in later. So Roseanne, you have the floor. I turned my camera on and, but I guess you didn't see me before the counselor started, but I am opposed to this project. I support the four individuals who spoke against it. I won't repeat what they said, but I agree with that. I'm not in a butter, although I think a lot of the animals that live in that land come by my house at night. So I'm connected with that land. And I see bobcats and coyotes and deer and possums and raccoons and a whole bunch of other animals that I know come from that area. Cause it's definitely a wildlife carter. I'm going to repeat one thing and it's the most important thing. And that is this land connects with a great swamp. You as a city have commissioned through the years 11 different studies. Every single study on land preservation says the one thing you don't ever want to do is destroy connectivity to the great swamp. This would cut off acres from the great swamp. The new thing I'm going to remind you of that has not been mentioned is that this parcel is one of the top 20 or the 20 that were identified by the open space IZ committee as having, and I believe it has five of the five natural resources that the committee evaluated. So it is one of those parcels that your IZ committee said if you can preserve it, these are the top 20 to preserve. So I urge you to take that into consideration. I urge you to continue this and not make a decision until after interim zoning is completed. That's the whole purpose of interim zoning, as Tim said, is to evaluate preservation methodologies and not approve stuff before you finish your work which only has a few more months to go. So thank you for listening and I really urge you to oppose this project if you decide to close it and vote on it. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments from the public? And then I'll get to you, Matt, but you're probably right. Let's hear from the public. So Chris Tromblick. Yeah, thank you. Is there anyone else besides Chris? Well, turn your light on if there is later. But Chris, you have the floor. There is somebody. Yeah, thanks so much, Helen. You know, yes, the affordable housing did support this and we were really impressed with how they really tried to address the spirit of the future land development regulations. And, you know, that was really meaningful and the fact that they've gone out to the different committees. Separate from the affordable housing committee, you know, I'm just speaking personally, I think it's fantastic that we have a traditional neighborhood design that's trying to get in multiple housing types for multiple income levels. It's not just the affordable housing component. It's the middle income housing. It's the piece where, you know, they need the ability to move up through life to free up affordable housing for others and to, you know, to access those natural resources in a fantastic neighborhood. And I'd love to have a neighborhood like this built here in our neighborhood, but this mix of housing types really fits where the market's going. And, you know, I don't think it's realistic to have single family only households anymore versus apartment only households. I think everyone wants to enjoy what makes self-growing thing great. This looks like a reasonable proposal. So, thank you. Thank you. John, did you want to speak again? Yep, just very quickly, I would ask the counselors to actually look at the plan itself and make your own judgment on infill or neighborhood because when you look at the plan, there is a half acre, that's 22,000 square foot asphalt surface, one contiguous area that is completely out of context with neighborhood or infill. You know, if they want to have multifamily, the parking needs to be underneath, but that in itself absolutely discredits anything on infill or neighborhood. So, I've asked the counselors to really look at that plan itself on that. And the affordability, I've been in the business for 40 years, I can guarantee you, yes, you'll have the five inclusionary units and that all depends on how the city is going to deal with that long-term because Burlington spent years trying to figure out how to do home ownership for long-term affordability. And the rest of the units in there, they're going to be $600,000 minimum. So, I mean, that's just the fact of life these days with the cost of construction, cost of development, been there for 40 years. Thank you, John. Any other commenters from the public? I don't see any. So, Matt, we'll hear from the council. Yeah, I just wanted to make sort of a process, clarification slash question. It's my understanding that like a DRB hearing, we would close and issue a decision, we can make that decision in public or we can do it during a deliberative session, but it has to be within 45 days of closing, which means we're not going to hear any more testimony from the public or from our staff. I think it's also important to note the limits of what the city council can do and to provide full disclosure of what this means. We cannot reject this project. We cannot approve this project. The only thing that we can do under interim zoning is to allow it to go forward from sketch plan to preliminary plan under the existing LDRs. If we allow that to happen, the development review board has to review everything and then it has to go to final plan. And then if there is an objection to how the development review board issues their ruling, they can be taken to the developer, Mr. Long and his family, it can be taken to environmental court and then it can go to the Vermont Supreme Court if they disagree with that ruling. This is a long process. Option number two is either the Long family or because we vote to know that you can't go through with the existing LDRs, that you have to wait until the new proposed land development regulations come that they wait until November, where it's clear what the planning commission has designed and what they want and will approve it. So Long family has two different paths if we say, yes, you can go ahead, but none of it involves approving this project in the short term. It all involves a long road with a lot of tough decisions and changes to what we saw and what the development review board looked at at sketch plan. I think it's wonderful that a family who knows this land very well sees an opportunity to present a project that provides affordable housing, that matches the neighborhood, that ensures access to natural resources. I applaud the Longs for doing this, but you've got two different paths ahead. Either we say as a city council that you can go ahead under the existing LDRs and you face that gauntlet or we say no wait until November and then adapt your development to meet the new regulations that presumably we're going to adopt sometime in the next six months. So I just want to put it pause for anyone in the public that thinks whatever the vote is by the city council that we're either approving or rejecting this development, neither will occur. Okay, Tom Chittenden and then Megan. I somewhat picking up on what Councillor Cotto was just outlining. I'd love to direct a question at Paul, if I may. Maybe pulling back, pulling from also with Sandy Dooley highlighted. I think she said something to the regard that the Longs have been working very closely to match this project with what they anticipate what the planning commission is doing with EPRs with the environmental protection regulations that are being fleshed out. Paul, not taking anything away from what Councillor Cotto just outlined. If they are mapping with it, could you speak to that? That what they have presented so far, is it tracking with it? And do you have any thoughts on if it's just, if you were the Longs, would you wait until those EPRs are finally approved just for greater clarity or so on? Any thoughts on how these project maps of what the planning commission's been working on would be helpful for me, Paul? Sure. Can you hear me? My internet was a little bit shaky a few minutes ago. Okay, great. Oh, you're fine. So the Longs have been participating and attending many of the planning commission meetings over the last year plus to follow and understand what's been considered. They were aware of the proposed habitat blocks, which is a new addition to the regulations. As Alan Long was describing, they are aware that their proposal would impact a piece of what is in the habitat block as mapped by the planning commission. However, the planning commission, the proposal has a provision to exchange a couple of acres of land for equal or more high quality forest area, intentionally to, essentially to one, encourage the preservation of higher quality forest areas and two, to not put an applicant and a DRB in a circumstance in the future where a high quality piece of forested area is encouraged to be cut down in order to preserve a more recent growth. And so in that sense, the Longs have been following along. They've been following the development of the PUDs, which as counselors know is not fully complete, but it does include the idea of different types of housing of considering the scale of what's adjacent to it and trying to create transitions, create connectivity between neighborhoods in terms of streets and sidewalks and parks. And there was a last thought. Oh, and the applicant has described that they are working with the state wetlands group to do their delineations of the wetlands and meet the state and local wetland regulations. So as to your second question, I'm not sure that I can describe what I would do strategy-wise. I think this is a family decision that really needs to be from the applicant about the reasons why they would be advancing now versus waiting. I don't think I can answer for them. Thank you. Other comments from counselors? I have one, you know, I think we're, I'm concerned because we're currently still developing the LDRs regarding the environmental protection elements as well as PUDs. And we hope to have the final rules adopted by November. I would agree that I think the lungs have made a really admirable design. You've included a lot of the design elements that you believe reflect some of the intents for IZ. But since the regulations haven't been approved and aren't law yet, won't be for several months, I would be more comfortable with putting off a decision on this and waiting until we have the outcomes of IZ completed and agreed upon and then have you, I guess, potentially recalibrate so your proposal is in alignment with them. And I guess just a comment, and I know the term was used by several groups, the DRB as well as the longs, that this was great infill. And that really made me pause, frankly. It didn't make me happy, it made me pause because I can picture on all the roads in the Southeast Quadrant getting infill, developments connecting one development with another and have that as, oh, that's a positive. And so everything gets developed. And I'm concerned about that. I think infill, I have always thought of it as development within a neighborhood or an existing developed area that either was repurposed and infilled with housing like we had talked a couple of years ago with the owners of the mall to really infill some of that parking lot with housing and really, really reimagine or as you've seen, we've all seen in lots of houses in the Hill section in Burlington that were large homes with huge backyards and they were infilled. They were apartments were added on to the big house. And while I had a lot of infill and a lot of housing, I assume much of it affordable. So I would prefer or would vote to have this, I don't know what the right term is held off until after we have the outcomes of IZ incorporated into regulations. Hi Helen, I still would like to speak. Yes, yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay. I just wanted to echo what you said and I very much share your view of infill. I'm not a DRB member, but I am someone in an established neighborhood and I see infill projects and it is not what this project is. It is in someone's backyard where you are using an available space but within an established neighborhood and hopefully do that within reasonable ways, which needs I think to be enforced. And I'm glad CRDRB enforcing it and in the case that I'm familiar with. What I wanted to share is that this is the perfect situation. We have, I think past everything, but this is a case where we have a parcel that is in the top parcels that the open space committee identified. The 2002 Arrowwood study identified. And let me just read a little bit from what is included and Rosanne was right. It is all five of the tier two, which is riparian connectivity, which that is animal life, wetlands, class two wetlands, source protection for the water, wildlife, there's a large habitat block and grasslands. It's positive for the large forest block. It's positive for a view shed and it's positive for prime ag and farmland. And because it's adjacent to parcels within an area called the Great Swamp, which is rich in natural resources, this parcel provides significant connectivity to the south. And being a wetland, it's an important habitat for wildlife. It acts as a wildlife corridor between Shelburne Pond and conserved land to the north, including South Burlington's Underwood property, which is being conserved. And it also says that just the last paragraph and it's just two sentences. The eastern portion, which is approximately 50% of the parcel is classified as natural resource protection. And this is located in the Great Swamp, which should be left undisturbed. But as I said before, approximately 90% of the parcel was classified as an open space priority in the 2002 open space report. So much more than the 50% that specifically qualifies as the Great Swamp. And of that portion, the middle portion where some homes are located in the plan, this middle portion of the parcel is shrubby second growth habitat, which supports some declining species of birds. For example, the field sparrow and the eastern tow he. So that is from the open space report. We had a bird specialist chairing that report. I think that the asphalt and the impervious surface thinking about climate change is an environmental, and shall we say, environmental justice, which was being discussed today at 11 a.m. by a specialist on VPR, that we have to think about what goes into our natural areas and what kind of pollutants we would be putting not only in those natural areas, but also in the very neighborhoods where we hope people will live. I would very much like this to be seen through the lens of both our climate change, but specifically the IZ, which we are currently under IZ, and that is what is most pertinent here. And I see this as really the case. If there's one case where the IZ needs to apply, this is it. Thank you. Tim, did you want any other comments by counselors? Are we ready to close the public hearing? I don't know if we'd want to close it. Oh, well. I mean, I think that our options are either, well, we could close it, we could continue it. Those are only two options, really. If you want to keep it going till the end of IZ, we would have to continue it to some, maybe Paul could help us understand how that would work. Can we continue it to November? Well, so if you continue it until there's future regulations, then you'd be asking the applicant essentially to withdraw at that time and to submit under the future regulations. So typically what would happen is that you would render a decision now, one way or the other, and then the applicant would choose what to do as their next step. Let me present a third option if counselors want to, to counselor Barrett's, if you would like, you are also welcome to continue it so that you can have a deliberation about your actions before deciding whether to close the hearing or not. So that's a third path for you if you want to deliberate and discuss what you want to do before you formally decide on your action. So that's another path for you. Also, if you wait until the LDRs are adopted, it'll be at the time interim zoning expires and you'll not have any jurisdiction anymore. So when IZ expires, you're jurisdiction to hold these hearings and to render decisions on an interim zoning application goes away. True, but if we vote on this and we reject it, that's the same as stopping the project until the end of IZ, correct? It is the same as stopping the project until there is something that has changed substantively. So either you've adopted permanent regulations, the applicant proposes something substantially different. So you would be assuming the applicant doesn't appeal a denial, but yes. So it's something substantive would have to change if you were to deny it for them to come back either regulatorally or in their proposal. Paul, come back under IZ. Or permanent regulations have been adopted and either IZ has expired or you've seized its authority, you've dismissed the IZ, in which case they just go to the DRB and to the new regulations. So the safe move is just to continue this so we can deliberate about it. Why wouldn't we close? If we're continuing it, we're asking for more public information. And if that's the consensus of the Board, if that's the motion then, but do we need more information in order to deliberate and issue a decision in 45 days on whether or not this application can go to preliminary plan or whether or not it has to stop and it has to resubmit under the new development regulations that will happen in November. Well, that's what I would like to have happen. I have a question. Who is asking? Oh, Tom. You might want to change your view back on if you're having difficulty seeing who's raising their hand. Mr. Long had his hand up for a little bit there too, but I want to preface this question with a comment. I just want to say I see this land as being a smart development. So if you don't like the word infill, it seems to make sense to put houses there. So in the longs have rights to do so. And I think I really applaud them for what they've been doing so far to try to honor the natural resources and the great swamp. So just for whatever that's worth, the Long family hearing, I support you doing something with this land that meet the environmental needs as well as the housing needs of the area. My question is if it goes the route that I heard Council bear just touching upon where if we do close it and we just say, you know what, they should follow by the EPRs and then does that hurt them, Paul? If and when they decide to come back when the new EPRs are approved or out of interim zoning, the rules are passed, is there any negative consequence of having this being turned down by the Council in the eyes of future DRVs? Or if you were the longs, would you not want that to happen for any of these? Well, so a couple of things. One, consider that you may have two rounds of amendments coming to you. So the environmental protection rules and then the plan to your development standards. So that maybe you may choose to adopt that as a single package or two. The longs would have to consider whether, let's say you adopt just the environmental protection standards. Do they come back at that point or would they be expecting that you might give the same guidance and say, well, we're waiting for the future development regulations. So that's a calculation they would need to make and for something for you to be considering. In terms of downsides for the longs, I guess that's maybe something for them to consider that the DRV won't look at this any differently. The board's job is to look at under the rules that are in place at the time of application. What the council does does not sway their actions. Whether the timeframe would change the market opportunities that the long see, I don't know whether I really can't speak more to what might be their challenges. Yeah. Yeah, you shouldn't try it, Paul. Right, Alan, I see your hand now. Thank you. I guess I'm sure that you wanna wrap this up and move on, you've got a complicated agenda today. I could spend quite a bit of time trying to rebut a lot of these comments, but I guess I'll just focus on a couple. First of all, I really apologize if I've made a big mistake here and called this an infill development when none of you wanna call it an infill. You know, what we've seen over the years, we've looked in our backyard and seen South Point go up what we considered at the time a big development and very highly clustered as ours is proposed to be because like ours, their eastern portion is part of the Great Swamp and needs to be conserved. We're highly in favor of that also. So after that, then we saw South Village go up and that's a much bigger development right on our southern border. You know, I don't think it's our responsibility as landowners whose mother lived longer than the landowners who sold off the land that South Point was put up on or that South Village was put up on. I don't think it's our responsibility to provide open space for those two developments. I think that proposing a development that's a lot like theirs and that conforms to every single proposed land development regulation as well as the current ones has provided us with perhaps more of a challenge than those developments were faced with. I'll give you a quick little example. I took a look at the final plat or South Point today. Today they built 17 of their original 31 houses either on a class three wetland or in the buffer zone of a class two wetland that's more than half of their houses. So, you know, they face challenges of their own but it might arguably less than the challenges that we're facing. Obviously, you know, they build all those houses, you know, land development regulations weren't as strict then as they are now but I'll just, you know, go on to say that we of course respected the work that the open space committee did during its purview and interim zoning. We felt a number of other people have pointed this out too that perhaps the one weakness in their approach was that they labeled whole parcels without dividing those parcels into different zones depending on where the protectable and particularly significant natural resources were. The particularly significant natural resources on our property are our portion of the Great Swamp the minor stream that's part of that property. And this cops of trees that I mentioned earlier that's up on the crest of the ridge separated from the Great Swamp by a large field that has now grown up a couple of trees and some shrubs as Megan mentioned. And on the western side of that ridge really the same thing has happened that always used to be meadow. We stopped mowing it and selling the hay to local farmers and some trees have grown up. But that just like the adjacent properties has always been considered to be developable and under the NRP statute that preserved 17, preserved sorry 22 of our 39 acres on the eastern side of the property, including the Great Swamp. There was no mention of conserving that portion of the property. If you look at the comprehensive plan maps our neighbors to the south developed huge portions of the big portions of their development on land that's secondary conservation areas on map eight and comprehensive plan. Similarly South Point did also. So I just I'll go on just to wrap this up. A number of people have asked why we went ahead and applied during interim zoning. I think it's certainly a valid question and I understand that all of you are interested in waiting and delaying our project another six months until the new LDRs are finalized. The reason that we've proceeded is just that we didn't see anything in the new LDRs. And as Paul mentioned, we've been following this process and participating in it very, very closely. We didn't see anything in the new LDRs that would change the proposal that we've made. So that's really our rationale for proceeding. We've waited a long time. We've watched developments go up on both sides of us over the years. We've watched Spear Street go from a dirt road to a paved road. And we've listened to the city say, yes, if you do a development, you should connect those two stubs, a stubbed road from South Point going southward and from South Village going northward. They're lined up perfectly for our project to connect. So we're kind of doing what the city has expected us to do for many years and I'll close with that. Thank you. Other comments? I think it's appropriate that we make a motion to close and that we issue a decision. And I just wanna say that Mr. Long, that I'll do what Paul can't or shouldn't do, which is to say, I do think that this project is a good project. I think it can be better and I think the DRB process is what's gonna make it better. What I can't, and from what I've seen, I can't see how it conflicts with the development review regulations changes, the natural resource protection changes that are coming forward. So you may in fact end up submitting the same sketch plan if for some reason, a majority on this council decides that it should not be go forward under interim zoning that it should wait till November. But I would say this, I have no idea if you'll be better off under the existing zoning or under the new zoning, under the new development regulations when it comes to any legal challenges that you face. And I think that's something you have to consider, but the board, but the council may actually make that decision if they say, no, you have to file under the new LDRs. So I hope this project goes through. I hope you get a choice so whether you wanna file under these LDRs or the next, but that will be up to a decision of the board. But I wanna remind everyone, we are not approving a project. We are not denying a project. All we are doing is deciding whether or not this project can go through the normal procedure under the existing LDRs or whether it has to pause for six months and go under the new LDRs if we pass new LDRs. Okay. I would make a motion that we close this public. Okay. I appreciate that. I just wanted to say that the bylaws, I think clearly make a case for this not to go ahead. I wanted to hear Tim's reasoning for continuing. I know, Helen, you said you're in favor of closing. I just hear Tim's reasoning for continuing. No, I think that whatever process we wanna use, I think that there's a feeling among the board that is generally not in favor of certain aspects of this project and wants to wait for the new LDRs to be enforced when the project gets wait by the DRB. So whatever process we take to get to that is fine with me. It's okay. So if you wanna close, we can close and we can deliberate later on. That's fine. Well, we have a motion to close on the table. Is it a second? Megan, you're seconding. Okay. So all in favor of closing this hearing signified by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So the hearing is closed. So councilor really will schedule a time for the council to deliberate and render a decision within 45 days. Okay, thank you. Good. Thank you very much everyone for your comments and hanging in there with a long conversation but an important one. And I appreciate the long commitment to their project and our city. So thank you. We now will go to item seven which is a resolution regarding the inclusion of minors and non-residents to be voting members of our city committees. You recall this was presented two weeks ago and there was conversation and I think this is the result of listening, that listening and addressing those concerns. So Megan, you're the author. Do you wanna take us through it or do we need to? I'm sure everyone has read it. Are there any concerns about it or do you wanna? I'm happy to just make a quick introduction if that's agreeable. And then that is a question I guess. Yeah. Yeah. The biggest change actually was a recommendation from our city manager who stated that between city managers, U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens is falling out of practice. And it's just political sensitivity the moment right now. And the more common term is U.S. resident or non-U.S. resident. And so that I think was the biggest change to it. The other change was that there is no maximum number. And that was something that Kevin also recommended. He agreed with the viewpoint that our council is very capable of deliberating and making a decision about the committee makeup, which was my argument. The only thing I wanna just state for the record again is that I think it's nice for people to have peers. And that's why when I was speaking with a community member about this, someone who cares very deeply about it, someone who reached out to me, Bruce Wilson who asked me if I would take this up in addition to Sandy Dooley. The idea of having a peer came into our conversation. And so that's where the number two came from originally. But I do agree that the council is very capable of determining what is a balanced composition of a committee and taking into account all of the different backgrounds, all of the different skill sets and the personalities and how they work together. So I am presenting the resolution as it currently is in its current form. Okay, thank you. Matt? This is a great resolution to council armory. I appreciate you bringing it up. I just have one clarification that perhaps you or Kevin can answer, which is we're not adding new members. We're not expanding the DRB or the planning commission. We're simply providing an ability for us to name when we choose amongst the candidates for the different committees, people that fit the description of your resolution. Is that correct? You confirm that? Well, the DRB is excluded. We're not gonna get any. Planning commission or the formal housing committee, are we adding to those? No, we're not adding any members. This is just however many you have people apply, your four openings. One might be a student. Sorry for bringing that up. I just wanted to confirm and- Okay, no. So one. There was a question in the chat, Helen, if you wanted to- Oh, okay. Why are non-U.S. residents not allowed to participate in executive sessions or vote on executive session matters? Oh, jeez. So this was something that came from my discussion with Bruce Wilson. He has- This conference will now be recorded. Sorry, Helen. They didn't have their recording on. We have channel 17 here, I think, right? Well, we got 17, so. Thank goodness. Yay for channel 17. And I do defer to our legal team on that question. It is a question that I, I guess legally do not have the wherewithal in order to answer. What was that question, Megan? Why would non-U.S. residents be excluded from executive sessions pertaining to legal contracts or what was the other thing? Yeah, it didn't specify. I don't know a legal reason why they have, why they need to be excluded at all. Plus on top of that- Well, we're thinking of students though, if you're under 18, you're not an adult. So if you're, if the executive session, I don't know. Was going on some legal matter? I don't think it's a relevant question. None of our advisory committees meet in executive session. Oh, okay. Oh, well, okay. Well, we can sometimes invite, the council can invite advisory committee members into an executive session. So I suppose that would be a moment. I'm happy to strike it. It was, it was a kind of a hangover from Burlington's resolution from the early 2000s. Let's strike it. Sure. Because if the committees don't have executive sessions then it will never come up. There we go. So we'll strike the final bid for the result. Yes. Okay. Are there any other questions? Tim, we can hear you, Tim. Shoot, into the second to the last resolution. You say that all members shall be voting members counting towards the quorum. But then you have in parenthesis the development review board excluded but they're not allowed to be members of the development review board, correct? Right. So can we, so is it the DRB and the planning commission that they can't be part of? Those two. They can be part of the planning commission. It's just the judicial, the judicial nature of the DRB. Oh, okay. So in the paragraph above that, can we say that to any of our advisory committees accept the DRB and then strike the comment on the next paragraph where you referenced the DRB? Okay, that's probably good. It just makes it explicit, that's all. I don't want to split hairs and we got a full agenda. My concern is the PC and the DRB are both prescribed in our charter. And if we have a under 18 year old on either one of those, are we inviting legal challenge if somebody who can't, I don't know, is a guardian of somebody else? I don't want to make a big stink out of this. I'm just, the PC and the DRB are always special. And so I'm concerned with putting under 18 year olds on either of the reports. Okay, any of the boards or DRB and planning? I just exclude both. Yeah. Okay, Jennifer Coakman, do you have some? Yeah, actually recreation and parks has gone into executive session. Kevin Dorn advised us when we needed Jennifer. Executive session. And there was, I can't recall exactly what it was, but we have record an advisory commission that has gone into executive session in the past. The direction of Kevin Dorn. Yeah, I may have done that, Jennifer. I don't recall it, but I'm sure you're right. But I don't think there's, in the future there, this would be such an incredibly rare thing for advisory committee to have to go into executive session to receive advice from legal counsel, which is pretty much the way what would come up that I don't, I think we should be advising against it. That's all. Okay, I agree that it's rare, but it has and it was at your direction, Kevin. So we stand corrected, but can we just add, accept the DRB to the now, therefore be it resolved? That planning commission, planning commission, right Helen? No, I wouldn't, I think the planning commission is different. I think it could be really informative and educational. No, I agree with all that. I'm just concerned that if the planning commission and DRB are both outlined in the city charter, what its city charter change need to be in order to, couldn't really say. There's nothing in the charter. There's nothing in the charter about the membership of our committee. It just has the numbers. Right. It identifies how many members. To my point though. I don't think it says that has to be, half women, half men or anything like that. But it has specific designated responsibilities from the legal context of warning public hearings. And I don't feel like spending a lot of time on this, but I'm just concerned with us appointing somebody who can't sign legal contracts on their own in our society if they're not 18 years of age serving in that recognized legal role for the city of the South Berlin. So I think it makes sense to just exclude the planning commission and the DRB to be consistent with just about everything else. That's important. I support that too. I guess I don't because this is where the deliberation comes in and where the council's judgment comes in. And just like we have delegates to the affordable housing committee from the planning commission or to other committees. This would just be a situation where that person or two people potentially or more depending on the council's judgment. But I think that when you have seven members on a board having one or two of those members not be able to sign a legal document is not necessarily an issue. And if it is, then the council in place at the time would say that's an issue. And so we are going to appoint so-and-so instead of so-and-so. Megan, it sounds like the majority of the council though would like to accept the planning commission and the DRB. So I hear that. I still feel like I want to make the point. Okay, I understand that. I just want to move this along. Maybe in the future council members can share their concerns when you have the piece of paper for two weeks to consider it. So we're not wordsmithing at nine o'clock at night when we're an hour behind schedule just to suggest. What I would say is that there are students who would like a different kind of housing that this city does not necessarily have. And I think that their viewpoint would be valuable. Well, so we'll have to be on the affordable housing committee then. So it looks like we have agreement if in the now therefore be it resolved. There are a couple of other issues in here too that I want to raise from staff. I'm sorry but the whole discussion and the first therefore be it resolved clause about both non-U.S. residents and U.S. residents. And then as long as their residents of the city of South Burlington is create some confusion that I suggest language that simply eliminates the reference to non-U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens and just simply says all persons as long as they are residents of the city of South Burlington. That's good. Thank you. Good. Okay. Are you making these edits? Kevin, or do you need me to do that? I'll work with you on it, Megan. Yeah. Thank you. Can we bring this back to the next meeting? And my apologies, Helen, for not sending an email about this in advance. Well, we wanted to do it tonight because we have some members that sit into this. And I think we're there. I think we're there. So all persons and then include to any of our advisory city committees, except for the planning commission. I'll accept that and the development review board. And then be it further resolved that all members of our city's advisory committee shall be voting members counted towards the quorum. Period. And then strike the final. Yep. Is that all you had, Kevin? Yep. Okay. Is everyone agreeable to that? To those changes? So I would entertain a motion to approve this resolution as amended in the one, two, three, four, four ways. Four items. Okay. Okay. I'm not familiar with this. This too, did you get all that? This too, I feel good. I'll move it and second it, whatever, but I just want to make sure Sue is comfortable. Sue, do you have it all? But Megan moved it. Thomas seconded it. Okay. And Sue has it all. Everyone's listening. I will work with Sue on making sure that it comes through. Okay. So you're ready for the vote? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing no opposition, it passes five, zero. Now, since it's almost nine o'clock, I know it's late, but I'm going to call just a five minute break. So if someone wants to get up and use the facilities or get some more water or just stretch, you have that. Opportunity and we will come back to interviewing the applicants. Second discussion, the May 17th, self-run to the city council meeting, we are at item nine. We're going to interview applicants for appointment to our boards. I apologize for them actually, we're only an hour late. Sorry. And I'll start. The only way I think I can do it and follow along is to use the interview worksheet and just start with the first person, which is Rebecca Stasi. Is Rebecca Stasi with us? Yes. Yes, thank you. Did you hear earlier? Okay. Yes. Hi. Good evening. And as I understand it, Rebecca, you're interested in the library board. Correct. Is that correct? That's right. All right. So what makes you a great person, what aspect for serving on that committee or board? Yes. Well, I'm a long time South Burlington resident. I guess since 04, I've grown up in this community or grown my family, I should say in this community. I have a lot of respect and love for the idea of a library. I studied broadcast journalism and also health communication at the Rutgers School of Information and Library Studies. My profession includes being a content and marketing communications professional for Johnson & Johnson. And specifically I work on a major campaign that they've had in place for the last 16 years to support the nursing profession. And so a lot of what I do is around elevating a brand, engaging the public in it and educating the public about the value of in this case, nursing. But I personally have been raising my family but on the side working and also trying to become more and more involved in my community with such things as the United Way, Women United and I've been part of the South Burlington Mentoring Program for several years now. So I'm looking to contribute further within the community and continue to serve. Great. Have you been to any of the meetings and understand the time commitment? We clearly see the new library being built so you have lots going on. I sure have. I have not been to any of the meetings. I mean, I've read some of the minutes of some of the meetings from the past year. My neighbor, Patrick Leduc, is two doors down for me and speaks highly of the work that's going on. But no, I have not attended a meeting. Okay, there's other opportunities too. There's a fair kind of interest in the library board. So there's also, I think, a Friends of the Library and some other opportunities as well. If you find maybe you might be interested in that as well, would that be fair to say? You just want to get involved with the library or is it really just you want to be on the board? No, I'd like to be on the board. I think, I mean, that's what I'd like to shoot for but I appreciate the other opportunities and I'll definitely look into those. Okay, thank you. Other questions from people? Tim, and then Matt. Hi, Rebecca, thanks for applying. How do you feel about fundraising? Yeah, I saw that there's a capital campaign under way. My jobs haven't included specific development work. I've done it on a very small scale for a cooperative preschool on Hinesburg Road but I am always willing to make some calls and try my hand at something new. But it looks like you have really good skills in communication. Well, it's been the area I've focused on, yeah. Okay, Matt? Well, I just wanted to say to Rebecca, thank you for applying and just to say generally as we start out this thing, there's some remarkable people that have stepped forward and asked to volunteer and we have limits that we have to put on these committees but just the talent of people that want to volunteer is just very impressive and Rebecca is yet another one. And to say to anyone that applies to know that there are certain limits on the number of people we can put on these committees but man, I continue to be impressed. Your background in communications, Rebecca, would be very helpful in any number of committees including the library committee. So I appreciate you coming forward to volunteer your time. Thank you very much. I'll ditto that. My father worked for J&J too. Ah, okay. Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it's a company. And it's in New Jersey so that's where your father worked, Helen. Yeah, I'm from upstate but that's funny. That's a small world. Yeah, it is, it is, it is, okay. Do you have any questions for us? You know, just sort of logistically, just the process, I'm assuming as you said, Matt, that there are many folks who have stepped up. So just what are the next steps? What are the next steps? This is our third evening of interviews. I think this is the final evening. Then we will meet and look over all the candidates and what the needs are and make a decision as a committee and then you are informed. You're called or emailed or something that you've been selected or there wasn't room but apply again later or we might even come back and say, would you consider, I mean, not necessarily to you but to anyone, a different committee because we have a couple that no one has applied for. Okay, great, thank you. So that and that should happen. Well, I don't know, but we'll have to find a time. There's a lot of candidates. So in the next, so we hope to get it finished by the beginning of June so they can be an orientation. That's July 1st, right, it starts July 1st? Is it July 1st? Okay. No, no, no, no, that's when the new kind of the new year starts, right? It's July 1st. That's right, it starts July 1st. So we'll sometime in June. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for applying. You're very welcome. Okay, now Tom Bailey. And Tom is interested in economic development. Yes, I'm here. Are you just your voice? Okay, I see you coming. All right, so Tom, you're not on that committee now. So you're not an incumbent, but you're interested in joining and they need a number of people. They do. What would, what do you want to do on the economic development committee? Economically develop, of course. The Andrea Leo actually suggested it when I took myself out of the running for the planning commission because I thought that space might be vacant, but it's not, or I should say it's, the incumbent is running again. So she suggested it. I talked to John Burton, who I know, and then John Wilking, and they thought I would be a good addition and I'm happy to go play. Okay. I think I know everybody on the city council except perhaps Matt, but so if anybody has any questions by all means. Matt. Tom, it says you retired on your sheet, but I don't, I don't know a little bit. Can you tell us a little about your background? What did you use to do before you retired? I used to practice law up for 25 years, up until 19 years ago. As of June 1st, it's been 19 years, thankfully. And I've done a few other things since then, but I've certainly been on a bunch of nonprofit boards over the years, and I'm kind of familiar with that operation as well as I did a bunch of small business work when I was practicing law. So I'm hoping I can contribute. Thank you. Okay. And here, by the way, I've been on affordable housing previously as well as a form-based code. So I've done some planning as well. So, you know, I hope that I have a perspective that can be useful. Are there questions? Tom also was on the form-based codes committee, way back from the last IZ. So he's been kicking around a while, Matt. And active in that community. Thank you for putting it that way, Helen. I enjoyed kicking around. Which nonprofits, Tom, were you part of? I'm curious. I know. I'm sorry, was that a question? Yes, which nonprofits were you active in? Quite a ways. I was actually on the United Way and I was treasurer of United Way in the past. I was chair of Shelburne Craft School at one point. I was on, oh God, a spectrum for quite a while. But it was quite a while ago through a lot of indirect, they've had quite a few iterations since then. And that's what comes to mind. Let's see. Oh, that's good, that was just curious. That gives me an idea. A few over the years. Great, okay. Do you have any questions for us, Tom? No. Okay. Well, thank you very much for applying. Okay. For openings and one candidate. So it's looking very good. I might make it or I might not. You never know. But I appreciate you volunteering again. And I think this is, you know, you have a lot of expertise and interests and connections. So this would be very good. You also had a second choice, right? No. No, just you. Okay, I'm sorry. So thank you very much. Andrea should be complimented. Andrea Leo. I did not know her or I've never met her face-to-face, but she pitched this to me. She's lobbying. She's out there lobbying for people to join these committees. So it would be good. Good enough. All right. Thank you so much, Tom. Thanks. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Sir Ram. Or can we have Manel? She's here. I'm curious. Go ahead. And she wasn't on the list. She's on the list, but is a sir, I don't know how to pronounce this, terrible. Sir Ram Srinivas. Hi, I'm on. Hi. I'm sorry, I just butchered your name and I apologize. It happens often. That's all right. Well, how do you pronounce it? Yeah, it's Sir Ram Srinivas. And that's the, Sir Ram is the first name. Sir Ram Srinivas. It's really awesome. Okay. And a lot of people know me as Srinivas locally. So it's a nickname. Okay. And Srinivas, you are interested in the energy committee as a first choice and the economic development as a second. Is that right? Yeah, those are the two committees that appeal to me where I believe I can make contributions. Yes. Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about how you might make those contributions? Yeah, I am, you know, my experience is mostly in the private sector. So I worked for a major, you know, specialty chemicals company for 28 years based on a Boston and I've caught a bit of international experience managing big, you know, fairly big businesses and complex projects. So in any situation, I think I bring the expertise of objectively thinking about the issues, trying to understand the core of the problem and, you know, help the team strategize or consolidate an approach that is objective. So I think that's that type of skills I think can be applied to any issue. So and recently I've been working on an NGO project, not here in US, but back in India that's focused on women empowerment and micro lending. So I've spent quite a bit of time over the last four years back in India supporting the project. So that's impressive. Okay. Other questions by Megan. Question I have to ask this year. Do you believe in climate change, Srinni? I believe, I do believe in climate change and, you know, I, you know, I'm fairly new to the community. I've been here only for about a year and a half. I don't lean one way or the other. I'm not, I don't take a very, very extreme position on issues. I approach climate change from a very pragmatic perspective. My simple answer to climate change is we have to change our habits and we have to bring in new technology. We have to do both. So, and I think sometimes, having been here in a very short time, I do hear some extreme perspectives, you know, people who are deniers and people who want to have electric vehicles tomorrow for everyone. So, so I think, I think there needs to be a pragmatic approach and I do believe in climate change. Yes. What would be the happy medium between the deniers and the electric vehicles tomorrow crowd? Yeah. What would be the happy, what would you suggest is the next pragmatic step for us? I think the next pragmatic step is really education, I think. I think policy changes, policy changes need to be effective. Policy changes need to take into account for example, any new technology that is introduced, if you look at the last century, it's got a specific adoption rate. So, I would say whenever a new policy is implemented, you have to learn from the history, think of, you know, look at the adoption rate and be realistic about it. So, you can't have a policy that is too aggressive and doesn't allow for enough education, awareness and change management. What I call the change management is allowing people to be facilitated through the change instead of being enforced or forcing through it. So, on climate change, I think a lot of it is education, I believe. You know, there's a lot of great concepts on changing habits. There are a lot of concepts on bringing in new technology, but I think the policies need to kind of bring people along, so. Okay, thank you. Other questions, Council? So, your first choice is energy, but you wouldn't be sad if you were on economic development? It depends on the time commitment. I'm not sure how much time commitment piece of the committee involves. And I was also approached by somebody to consider the affordable housing committee. Somebody approached me on LinkedIn to consider the housing. Yeah, so I don't remember the name right now, so yeah. Okay, well, you applied for economic development and energy and it sounds like you have a lot to bring to both of those. The time commitments, I think they meet once a month. Sometimes the energy committee is a little more active. I don't know how active the Economic Development Committee has been. They didn't meet for quite a while, but I think now that you don't have to wear masks and stuff, they're coming back. They've been meeting all since January. But it's once a month, correct? And it's usually in the evening? Yeah, it's usually at 5.30 on a fourth Monday of the month. So that's what most committees meet once a month, sometimes twice a month. Okay, once a month is not manageable, yeah. Okay, do you have any questions for us? Yeah, sure, I have two questions. I guess since I'm fairly new to the community, I'm interested in hearing from the counselors, how effective do you think these committees are and how helpful are they in doing your job and getting what needs to get done for South Wellington? So that's one question. The second question I have is, what expectations do you have for these committees and what do you think are the significant challenges for them today? I would start to say, I think they're very good. They're very helpful. Some, I think all really work very hard and they make recommendations to us that are really helpful. Other times we test them with items. For example, the Economic Development Committee was tasked with doing some research and consideration of whether South Wellington would want to be a city that sells cannabis. Because that was brought to the council and we didn't have the expertise. So we're waiting on that report. So I think they can be very effective. Some work a lot and for example, the Planning Commission meets and the DRB, they meet every two weeks if not more and it's quite a few hours. And then others meet less, but they really do provide all information about what bike trails we need to be working on and where the gaps and making recommendations in that respect parks. So they're very helpful. I think what we need to do to engage them even more productively is to really once we make our new assignments, I'd like to have all the committees share or the chairs share what they're working on and then have the council identify if there are additional projects that we might want them to work on so we can really focus them in a way that provides them some direction. If anyone can add anything else if they want. We've had one quick thing. It's not just the council that uses the committees like the DRB will refer things to the Natural Resources Committee to the bike and pet committee. And I don't know if they've referred to the Economic Development Committee, but that doesn't seem far fetched to me to ask up people that are presenting certain notions to have these representative bodies of appointed individuals offer their perspective. So that's another way that they're engaged. And as we're getting them all together, we should do that and then we should do a barbecue. And we should do it this summer because we're all anxious to get together and be socialized and we owe all of our committees to say big barbecue. All right. Well, thank you very much for your interest, Siri. And I think did you hear the process will finish our interviews this tonight and then we'll get together as a council and make the selections and let people know. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to engage with you. You're very welcome. Bye-bye. Hey, Tim Pellin, he's an incumbent on the Energy Committee. Is Tim here? There you are. Hi. Hi, I am. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. So you're not tired of energy yet? Not tired of energy yet. I've been doing it for 15 years. So plan to continue for the foreseeable future. Right. What's the biggest thing that you think the Energy Committee should be focused on? Well, I'm actually really proud of the accomplishments of the Energy Committee over the past three years and engaging this council as well as city staff and other committees to establish things like a revolving loan fund for energy efficiency projects and renewables, having an energy coordinator in place that can help with municipal buildings and implementing those projects and playing some of the foundation for a climate action plan that I feel like will be one of our highest priorities into this next three-year period, something that we'll be looking to CCRPC and other partners to help shape but feel like we've been able to gain a lot of perspectives and voices and part of some of the formative conversations and look to do more to engage community members in some of this dialogue and discussion so that we can shape a climate action plan for the community that will help guide not only the Energy Committee's future actions but also the council and other committees serving the city. Great. Do you have any questions for us? I do not. No, thank you. Okay. Does anyone in the council have a question? That's for good form but it sounds like you believe in climate change from your notes here? I do indeed believe in climate change and interestingly just made the change to serve as the manager of energy efficiency and innovation for Vermont gas. So an organization that also believes in climate change and is looking to diversify business models and make public investments in energy efficiency over the next three to five years as well as finding ways to get off traditional natural gas. So it's something that's been able to practice what I preach in my day job as well as while serving the Energy Committee. Super. I appreciate that. Matt? I'm glad to see that you're at VGS. Thanks Matt. Good change. Nice, okay. Well, thank you very much for your past time and potentially your future. We appreciate all the work that you've done and your energy and expertise. All right, thank you for hearing me out this evening. You're welcome. Thank you for hanging in. I'd like to just go out of order and go to Manel, so for what I do, because she may have homework and she is interested in the portable housing committee and since we just passed a resolution that allows students to apply, I'd like to interview her. So Manel, you wanna turn your... Hello. Hi, yes. Yeah, so I'm really happy that that passed and students can now join. I don't know if you guys can see me, but... We can, but we saw you earlier, so and your voice sounds the same, so we know it's you. No imposter here. So what would you like to contribute to the affordable housing committee? Well, I'm sure I've been involved. Huh? You've already been involved, to a certain extent. Oh, yeah, I've worked a little bit with you guys, the affordable housing committee on my project and I would like to commit, I would like to contribute youth voice because I feel that's very important. I'm also very productive, proactive and I have really great communication skills and I can speak to any audience. So just especially the youth voice thing, I really feel that it's really important for youth to be able to speak up in these type of committees and councils and just have an opinion. That's essentially kind of all I would like to just add. I would really just like to add youth voice just to emphasize it as much as I can. That's important, yeah. So they meet in the middle of the day, that isn't a problem with school? I'm actually fully online. Oh, and you will be going into the future? I mean, is that's gonna be an option to be fully online? In the future, I'm going to early college and I'm gonna be pursuing an online early college because I feel online works the best for me and lets me be self-directed, which works best for me. Okay, so then that can work, good, all right. Any other questions from councillors? I'm impressed that she's self-motivated because it takes a lot of self-motivation to guide yourself for online classes like that. So that to me is, that's a lot, Minnell. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you. All right, and we'll let you know in June. Good night. Okay, our next interviewee is Kate Bailey and she, her first choice was the energy committee and the second is bike and pet. So Kate, hi, welcome. Thank you for applying. So tell us your first choice is the energy and what prompts you to apply for both these committees? Sure, so I've lived in South Burlington for four years now. I moved here from New York City and before that, my connection to Vermont was going to St. Michael's College. I graduated 10 years ago and at St. Mike's, we often have a saying, think globally, act locally, which I think applies to, is one of the reasons why I'm applying to the committees here tonight. My background is in healthcare advocacy and policy and that's my day job. And I think that we must act on climate change and environmental justice. And like Jessica spoke earlier at the beginning of the meeting, it's really important to do so and it feels manageable to take on at a local level. And so that's what brings me here to applying for the energy committee, even though my expertise is more in healthcare. And of course there's quite a bit of overlap and quite a bit of consequences to our health when we don't address climate change and if we're not taking energy policy seriously. I bike a lot leisurely when I wasn't working from home. I bike to work, my partner bikes to the hospital. He's a nurse and we also live in a condo complex that's right next to the Spear Street bike path. So we're on that quite a bit. And we also drive and walk around as much as possible and for the parks. And I'm particularly interested in the way that South Burlington addresses infrastructure improvements and energy efficiency when it comes to policies. And I saw, I read through the annual report in the minutes about the climate action policy, which really struck me as an interesting and exciting project. And a skill that I bring my professional experiences in public engagement and community outreach, which seems like one of the top tasks of the climate action policy is getting that public engagement and communicating the plan, which is dependent on it on its success is good communication and translating difficult topics into plain language for diverse communities to understand. So I do that in my day job in health insurance and very technical healthcare law and regulation. And I think I could use those skills similarly in South Burlington on energy regulations and technical policies when it comes to energy efficiency. I think it's important to communicate that in an accessible way. Also communication is a two-way street and I believe very strongly that we need to listen to the community and particularly listen to historically marginalized populations in South Burlington, which I think are disproportionately impacted by our actions or inactions on climate change, particularly for young people and for Black, Indigenous and people of color living in South Burlington. So that's why I'm here. Okay. Questions, anyone? She answered all of my... Okay. Well, it sounds like you have a lot of energy going on there and, you know, you're a great St. Mike's graduate. They do think globally and act locally and that's important. So I appreciate you applying and wanting to get more engaged in the community. It sounds like you have some good skills. So thank you very much. Do you have any questions? I'm good. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you. Let's see. Next is Amanda Holland and Amanda is interested... He's on two committees and is interested in continuing on them. Public art and the bike and pad. Hi, Amanda. Good evening. And you want to stay on both? Is that... And you have enough time and you know what they're working on? You're excited about the art committee? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been on both committees since 2015. So it was kind of the starting committee members in the art committee. And yeah, I've really enjoyed my time working on both and I'm hoping to get one more service term, if it will, on both committees. And I also served with the bike pad committee. I served in 2019 on the interim zoning open space committee. And was a representative on that with Megan. Yeah. I'll add that she was a very valuable member of the committee and really helpful with regard to mapping and all kinds of technical expertise that she brought to the committee was very helpful. Super. Tom, you have a question. Are you still an alternate for GMT for Franklin County? I was up until very recently. Okay. She's a volunteer extraordinaire. You need to win an award. If you win an award for a number of committees that served on Amanda Holland, it's going to get you there. Well, my day job is, or my profession is community planning. So I am well versed at night meetings and advisory committees. Okay. Any other questions? Do you have any questions for us? I do not. Okay. Well, you're going to have some new art space to oversee. Yeah. Yeah. The gallery is very exciting. And I'll just give a plug for, um, if I do get the chance to be on both committees, I'll just say that the things that we are excited about working on as a committee and myself is for bike pad. I know you've heard a lot of our efforts on trying to track, um, working with Justin on maintenance. Some of the things we want to work on next is really looking at maintenance of the rec paths and sidewalks. We don't really have a system right now that looks at how that, um, you know, what's the condition of those infrastructure. And obviously as we're talking about all these developers. Putting in new and new, um, sidewalks and rec paths. We aren't really tracking as a city. What the replacement costs will be. So that's one thing. And I know that the public art committee, we started conversations the fall of 2019. And then it obviously died in conversation in 2020 for a bit, but we'd really like to start working. Um, on looking at arts and culture plan for the city and just seeing what, um, there might be for needs and, uh, resources. So those are two reasons why I'm hoping to keep working on both those committees and see some of those efforts through. So I appreciate you guys considering me and, and I will look to hear in June. Well, that sounds like, um, two good, um, two good, um, two good directions to take both those committees. That's exciting. Any questions for us? Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your service and. For wanting to continue. Thank you. No. Okay. Um, Corey Santorella. Corey is an incumbent on the natural resources. Okay. Let's continue. Is she here tonight? Corey, Corey, Corey. It's a key, I believe. A key. Well, that's right. Yeah. I don't see him, but he is an incumbent. She's helpful. Okay. Well, let's move on. Um, Catherine. Yes. I see your name. Hi there. Okay. So you're interested in natural resources. What makes that appealing to you? Um, I've worked in water for a number of years. Um, I currently work at a nonprofit, the Vermont Rural Water Association. Um, we provide assistance to water and wastewater systems across the state. Um, and I've previously worked on. Water quality and wetland restoration in Montana. Um, studying the looms in Wisconsin. And I've worked at environmental education summer camp as well. That's a pretty broad spectrum. Um, You understand the time commitment. Have you been to any of the meetings or. For watch? I've not been to a meeting. Um, As I was going through the app, this application process, I, I. Tried to find more information, other than they meet once a month at 6 p.m. I couldn't find a lot of information. Okay. Well, they've had some challenges. So they're looking for some new blood. And so are we. So that would be helpful. And it sounds like you have, um, Sort of a natural interest, both in your. Um, Career as well as your personal life. Do you have any questions for us? Megan has a question for you. I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. Megan. Okay. Sure. Well, we heard three knee before say that, um, No. Encouraging people to change their ways can, can be a challenge. Uh, inertia as I know personally and professionally is a challenge. Um, I think it's going to need to be a lot more specific about what the issue is and. Sure. What you're, what your audience is. Sure. Specifically with climate change. And that's a question I've asked people too, is do you believe in climate change? Um, Yes, I do. I almost feel like belief is a challenge. Um, I think it's going to need to be a lot more specific about what the issue is and. Sure. What your, what your audience is. Sure. Yes, I do. I almost feel like belief is the wrong word. It's more like, I acknowledge the scientific fact. Um, But. It's a, it's a hard, very broad question to address. Um, I think really meeting people where they're at and with climate change, a lot of times. There's a lot of shared values that people haven't necessarily considered. How climate change may impact their other values. Um, But there's a fair amount of. Research in talking about, um. Family about religion. Um, about, you know, quite a number of shared values that can be. Addressed from a climate change perspective can be a fairly. Um, effective way to bring more people into the conversation. Um, I don't have personal experience with that. I, my communication background is pretty specific to water. Very good. I liked how you challenged me, Catherine, and acknowledge that climate change exists. Thank you. I appreciate that response. Thank you. Tim Barrett has a question. Hi, Catherine. Thanks for applying for this position. Um, it looks like you've been in water a long time. Like the way you, you've raised that. Have you, um, had a chance to, to, to, uh, move around the city and see the various stormwater projects that our utility has undertaken in the last few years? I know you just moved here, but I, I'm just curious how many of the projects you've seen that are either ongoing or recently finished. And if you had an opinion about that, or you appreciate them as well. Um, I have not gone and physically toured. Um, I have been on a number of zoom meetings that included South Burlington Department of Public Works and water and wastewater employees. Um, So I guess I, I can't say from a personal standpoint, my view from a professional standpoint. Um, definitely stormwater. Um, uh, more important conversation for a lot of municipalities and like the last decade, and it's great that we're getting there. Um, I do think going back to Megan's question that. Especially with climate change and changing precipitation patterns. Um, Stormwater is, is a place you can make a big difference. Thanks. Okay. Any, um, oh, so did you have a question for us or, or not? Um, The other applicants have asked good questions. I would still like more clarification on that. The time period of. The committee meetings. Um, I don't know how you do it, but for me staying up till 10 p.m. on a meeting does not sound fun. No, they, they don't run as late as ours. Megan, you know, what are the, what is. Six to eight, six to eight on the first Wednesday of the month. So you can get to bed at nine. That sounds ideal. What time is it? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Nine 45. We're almost in our jammies. Okay. Well, thank you very much Catherine for applying. I appreciate your interest and we will, um, You know, do our due diligence and get back with you in June. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next up is Frank Coakman. And he's interested in the DRB. Is Frank still with us? No, Jennifer's there. Maybe they're shared. No, Frank laptop. Is that Frank Coakman? I'm here. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, I can. So you're want to go back on board and do some more stuff on DRB. Huh. I do. Okay. I'm glad. Why do you want to go back on? Well, uh, Frankly, Matt asked me. And I think I can be useful. I asked you not to quit the first place. So you should never. I'm sorry. I said I asked you not to leave in the first place. So you wouldn't be here at this minute if you had left, if you hadn't left. Well, that's true. But, you know, the water under the bridge or not, depending on your view. True. I have the same interests I've always had. And the same qualifications I've always had plus a couple of your experience on the board. Some of you have a familiar with my work on the board. I am interested. In participating in the practical application of the new LDRs when they come up. I think they'll be interesting. I think they are. Innovative. Well, you have a lot of people to go through. I'm not going to make a speech. Okay. Well, you certainly know how it works. I remember the last time when we interviewed you, the first time you went on, you said, well, you know, it'll take me a little while to get up to speed. You know, the, the LDR is this thick, but I suspect you haven't forgotten much. So I appreciate you applying again and being willing to, to take it on. So it's a lot of work. Well, as I said, the very first time around, I lived here for a long time while contributing nothing in a civic sense. Jennifer beat me over the head. She was right. You know, I have 40 years of experience to bring to the table. So it's, it's of some value to the city. I ought to make a contribution. Great. Well, we appreciate that. Okay. Do you have any questions for us? I don't. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Frank. Thank you. Our next candidate is Andre. Good to, good to us. Good. What is it? Hello. Hi. Yes. Oh, yeah, I did it right. All right. Well, welcome. And Andre, you're interested in the D, the DRB or the bike in head. You call your resume. You've done a lot of interesting things. Yeah, I'm very excited to, to be here. And maybe I was the troll maker. That started the conversation about the. Non citizens and citizens. So. Sorry. There was an inconvenience. But sometimes it was not. Okay. Great. Yeah, so we move a year ago. To celebrate to know we move to Montpelier where my wife is from to have our first child and we decided to stay. We moved from New York City. And yeah, so. I want to contribute to the community. I want to be part of the community. I want to make this a better place. I think I would like to, well, my. Resume says that I. I have expertise in architecture. I have a background in architecture and build the environment. I work as a project manager for nonprofit. For nonprofits in New York City for a few years. And right now I'm working on getting my architecture license. And the bike in head part. Is that just an interest of yours? Yeah, well, I. I buy commute. I think bicycles are a way to. Help with climate change also a way to. Connect people and. Yeah. Oh, Megan. I don't know if you were here for that previous conversation. The DRB is no law is, is not. A committee where we would put. A legal resident, but someone who doesn't have citizenship. However, given your, your expertise. And I don't know if this is too personal of a question and tell me if it's inappropriate, but are there any plans for you to become a citizen? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, so we go resident next year when I'm able to apply. So next year. Okay. Very good. Very good because I am someone who's looking for someone with an eye to be on our DRB and an architect, which was my first love to be quite honest. That's what you do. You have an eye and, and that artistic eye that I hope you come. Forward and, and propose. Helping us out in that regard. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I was going to say that I'm very interested in reading about the LR LDRs. You are these LDRs. You were right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that is off the. Not an option, but the bike and head. Committee is so we'll keep you in mind for that. And then so much. And I appreciate really appreciate you. Applying. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Good night. Good night. Good night. Okay. Next is Daryl and Peters. I'm here. Daryl and she's on, you're interested in affordable housing. Wait, do I have to turn like this on or no? Well, if you, or you're seeing me, you're seeing me. No, no, we're just hearing you, but it looks like we might be seeing you. You have to turn on the. Good camera. Right to that. Well, on my screen is at the bottom. Yeah. If you can't see, you just tap you tap the computer and then the four icons show up. Okay. Now you can. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So you're interested in affordable housing too. And what. You know, why was that something you wanted to apply for? The reason I'm applying is my background as you can see is in actually was in public health for a long time. And public health. One of the things that you always talk about is healthy communities. So that all of the work that you do, I mean, you can do it on individual behavior change like smoking cessation. Public health works, environmental health, et cetera. But what I found, what I found with housing is that you get the intersection of everything when you have environmental issues. We have as we saw tonight with the long proposal. So there you have social justice issues. I read the color of law and did the two sessions at the library, the discussion sections about social justice and housing policies in the United States since 19, since the second world war. And so these things just keep, you know, coming at me and I started going to the affordable housing committee meetings. And I thought that's really the intersection of a lot of things I care about. And it's very real. It's very important to people. And there, it's just such a challenging issue. I mean, everywhere, every city, this is a huge issue. And so I started going, I was listening and then I looked at their resources and I read everything they had online and they were wonderful to me. I mean, I go to their meetings and they always say, do you have any questions? Because they know I'm, you know, doing all this. And the thing that surprised me is when I read their resources and their annual report for 2020, they have their goals for 2021. And one of their goals is to change their name from the affordable housing committee to the housing committee. And I was really surprised by that. And I thought I better, you know, listen and read and learn more because I didn't think that was the mission of the committee. And so I need to understand what they're saying. And I think they're saying the only way to get affordable housing is to get a whole lot of housing. And then developers will do a little bit of affordable housing with some financial incentives. And therefore they want to look at this larger issue of housing. And I'm still thinking about that one. I did do some webinars on the Greater Green Building, which it's there's some fascinating things being done in other communities, true infill, but with also looking at environmental pieces to it. I mean, it's not just taking an old Sears building and making it a bunch of affordable housing apartments. It's the whole design of the space to be both using the environment as well. And then the natural environment and the materials you use. Anyway, so with all of this going in all these 87 directions around affordable housing, I thought, you know, I'm going to just step up and apply to be on the committee. It's fine if they say, no, it's all right. I'm still interested. But that's how I've been on this journey. Okay. You want to add a little diversity to the conversation? I just, yes. And I want to do my share of the committee work so I earn the right to ask these kinds of questions that they have in their own minds probably already raised. It's probably already resolved. You know, I don't want to be a drag on their time. I've staffed and chaired lots of boards and committees in my life. And I know the last thing you want is somebody who takes you all the way back to step one when you're already at step 12. And anyway, that's why I applied. Okay. Anyone have questions or you certainly you've been to committee. So you know the time commitment and when they meet them. Yep. Any no comments or questions. Okay. Well, I appreciate you applying and sounds like you've done put in a lot of thought about affordable housing and that's all good. I appreciate that. I appreciate what you do. I, I participate in some of these meetings and I just think the stamina of the city council is amazing. Well, thank you. We're a tough lot. We are. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Next, we have Janet Bellarant's seat. There she is. Janet's interested in the affordable housing. Me as well. Thanks for hanging in. Hi, thank you. Yes, I am also interested in applying for a position. I believe in the mission of the affordable housing committee and that we need to provide affordable housing for. People who work in our community, whether it's small business, food service or a nurse, a nurse is essential workers. They have the right to housing. And I've also like Darryl and been thinking of been going on a journey to I've been attending all of the planning commission meetings, city council meetings, just listening and learning because my background isn't in politics. My background is in education. But I've been seeing how affordable housing and land conservation have become polarized. And I would think that the upswing of that is that tonight there were at its highest amount, 64 people participating in this meeting in city council. I think that is something to be proud of the level of citizen engagement that has been garnered. I think that those dual goals of affordable housing and land conservation will bring us the economic vitality and the livability that we're looking for in the city and I too participated just as a resident in the color of law book organization. I saw it at the library thought I would like to be in it. And I remember Jess Hyman from the Fair Housing Committee saying, what do we want our city to be. And I've really listened to a lot of people, listen to Manel tonight who said, you know, committee action, you need to learn. You need to observe deeply. And then you need to speak up. And that's kind of my personal journey. I've been trying to learn, listen actively. And I would like to be part of that committee to speak up as well, and to move our city forward. And I listened to Jess that was three and a half hours ago at the public comment when she said that we need bold action. And at the local level. And I believe we're capable of that. I believe we're capable that we have shared values to protect our resources and land and also to provide affordable housing. I don't see them as mutually exclusive. And I have done some research and reading and I think there's community models out there that we can follow and we may need to incentivize the kind of redevelopment we're looking for or development. But I would like to participate and be part of that. Right. Okay, any questions. We're great interviewers all these people. Yeah, I just wanted to say, Janet, thanks for your appreciation of the dynamic between the affordable housing committee and open space committee and, you know, the push pull of like wanting to build versus wanting to preserve and where the happy medium is. I think that's a road that we're going down right now. And I think it'll be ongoing for quite a while and the word infill will probably play a large part of that both in the commercial and the dense areas and in some of the more rural areas so thanks for your perspective. Yeah. Okay, any other comments or thoughts. I appreciate you applying I think you made some good points. And I think there's lots to to consider and it would be good to have a broader consideration in my mind. I did have one one question. I noticed that the meetings are 1030 on Tuesdays and it's the only city committee that meets during the day and I have a commitment on Tuesdays so I didn't know if that was an option that I could talk with the committee, the other six members about maybe doing an evening time that would be more inclusive of people who are working in the day or have commitments in the day. Yeah, my understanding is that the committee some seek to find a time that works for everyone. Okay. Okay, so that's reasonable to bring that up. I think that's reasonable. I think they used to meet at a different time when I was active with them and then, you know, I think Johnson's and needed to change it to the day and so we did but COVID things changed and so I was, I was kind of assuming that was maybe some of the reason behind it but that maybe we could find a mutually agreeable time. Okay. I would think so. That would be my expectation of committees. I mean, you know, we do that with the city council. Sometimes we started six, 37 and handed on people some schedules as well. Although we don't change the day but you know what's query. Okay. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Next is Nicole Goldman and she's interested in park and back. Nicole, is she still with us? I don't. She called her one. Is that Nicole? Then let's move on to Libby Daglian. Is that right? Is she still with us? No. Okay, Mike Siminoe. I think he's still with us. Yes, there you are Mike. I am. And Mike, do you want to continue on park and rec? And you're an incumbent. Tell us how many, how long have you been there? A long time, right? I'm not sure. It might be approximately five years. Give or take. Yep. Yep. Okay. And I liked your comment that you wanted to really push or continue to work for a, you know, a rec center. I don't know if that includes Thomas's pool, but you certainly like it. I'm appreciative that you haven't forgotten that in all of the things that have been going on with COVID and our city center and that kind of stuff. Comments or thoughts or questions from you? From me. Well, I mean, regarding the regarding the rec center and Rex and parks in general, I mean, there's, there are a few places where we can get as big a bank for the buck. As we do with the money that we allocate for our parks and the programming that are understaffed. Rec and parks department provides for members of this community. And I'm a big proponent of social equity. And again, when you, you know, you take a look at the people that a rec center would serve and that are, you know, rec department currently does serve. It's amazing what they do. So, I mean, we recognize the people on our committee recognize that there are a lot of challenges economically for lots of the agendas that are out there. And, you know, we're going to continue to advocate and to, you know, try to find a way of demonstrating to the community that a new rec center would be a great investment and that it would, you know, provide social equity for some people who, you know, currently may not enjoy it. And as a big part of it, I've got a real estate background and that background has come in handy as me being a liaison with the DRV. And, you know, we had some leases that were being renegotiated recently and was able to support our rec and park committees review and help with some suggestions. So, you know, there's there's relevancy. There's meaningfulness with with what I've been doing on the committee and I'd enjoy the opportunity to continue serving. Great. Well, I think we all know you well. I don't I don't have any questions. I think you do a good job on that committee. You're a good spokesperson for all those issues that you rattled off. Anyone else have a comment or thought or question? Okay, just thankful for his advocacy. That's all. Yeah, thank you for hanging in. This is thank you guys. All right, I'm if it's okay, I'm going to park company with you. Those requirements, they have to stay at the end of the meeting. Good luck with the rest of your meeting. Thank you. Good luck with the rest of your meeting. Oh, thank you. Yeah, we're almost there. Okay. Last person is John Pence. Is he still with us? He's an incumbent also on parks and rec. Okay. Well, that does it for the interviews. And actually it took us less than what we had scheduled. It's just that we started with. So we're moving on to item 10. And this is, oh, thank you, Sue Connelly. You must hate us. You're still hanging in there. And the metal. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And you're going to tell us a little bit more about at 79. And thank you so much for not going to bed. So I made you a presenter. Okay. It's not letting me. It's not letting me pull it up Kevin. You should go to your. You should click on your presentation. And then come back to this screen and hit. Share screen. Okay. Nice picture. Okay, can you see it? Yep. Yes. Okay. So this was a presentation I prepared when I first started engaging with the city council to try to promote the city to start. So I'm going to talk about some type of housing ordinances to protect basically neighborhoods of those that have rental properties and choose not to act responsibly for them. So the biggest problem that I found was the, there's no housing ordinances. There's no accountability for property owners that rent their, their properties. And we as a community neighbors community officials are all affected when there's one, you know, potential problem within a neighborhood, and that property owner does not choose to engage to problem solve. What I thought was that we were at a point at least in South Burlington where I live, where a lot of their houses are beginning as the elderly either move into assisted living or there's a turnover because they passed away. What's happening is at least where I am, there tends to be more people buying them as investment properties. Or there's now out of state people that are coming in and snapping them up. And as, like I said, right now there's no ordinances in place to engage property owners when something goes wrong. So the background information and why this has affected us personally and it became, you know, something that I felt very passionate about is we live next door to a property that the owner. Can you hit the present button. So that's full screen your presentation. Upper left corner. Upper left. It's a little. Yeah, to the right to the right, or whichever. In the orange bar top it's the it's the like the six icon from the left where it says auto save and then off. This get and then rotate rotate right and there's a little up in the top. No, no. Double click the orange area go to go full screen again hit the little to the right to the right there no to the right to the right. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, go. Get the rectangle to the right where your cursor was. The little square. Yeah. Now to the far left of the screen. In that same orange bar. It's the keep going. Yeah, move to the right to the right to the right to the right keep going right no right there click that no no to the left. To the left a little bit more to the left. A little bit more that click that one. Now it's full screen. Thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just couldn't. Okay. It's, it's, it's, this is totally different than what I'm used to. Um, Okay. Next. Yeah. And how do I move now to the next slide. It's not allowing. Just to dinner. Okay. Thank you. Um, so basically what happened with us is we had a property owner. Uh, the persons of property next to ours. They put their son in it who had substantial on mental health, um, situation, um, and issues. And, um, he started. Basically, I'm going to use harass, um, threatening, um, by, you know, vandalism. Um, and then we got into that and it was, um, It was a terrible honor. Um, It was a terrible, um, Over nine months and it wasn't just us. It was neighbors on the other side. It was neighbors down the street. It was property. Owners down around the corner. It was businesses. Um, in fact, there's several businesses that had no trespass orders that they've put in place. Um, We kept reaching out to. and nobody could help us. We basically, it was a gentleman that had severe mental issues. So we all tried to get the property owners to be involved because they were his parents and they refused completely to get involved with it. So what happened was it was nine months of just me constantly calling the police with others. And in fact, as I understand it, there's 47 instance reports on this one resident in nine month period of time. So when we contacted the property owners, they completely ignored us. They completely ignored Lisa Benninger from the parallel justice law enforcement called to try and engage to get something going on. They politely refused that state's attorney's office reached out when engaged. We ended up hiring an attorney to try and get them to engage. And they engaged with their attorney for one back and forth what basically were like, we wanna do right by our son. And basically they were willing to make an adjustment, a physical adjustment to their house like blocking a window because he spent 24 hours a day looking through the windows at our house. So they completely ignored it. It escalated to the point where he was threatening that threats to us. In some other neighbors, he had to go to court one day. While he was in court, he punched his defense attorney in the head in front of the judge. So he was immediately arrested. At that point, they put him in jail and they said he couldn't come out unless he had somebody that would take, I don't even know guardianship of him, I guess you would say, until the cases were solved. They ordered a mental health evaluation, et cetera, et cetera. He was deemed competent. At that point, the state's attorney, Sarah George charged stalking charges for us with this gentleman. Long story short, he went to jail. He pled, he went to jail. He's currently in jail. However, he is trying at this point to, and I don't know who's helping, but he's trying to get the conviction thrown out due to mental health. He was, apparently they're trying to throw it out because they deemed that he was incompetent when he pled to the case because every single time he's ever gotten in trouble before, he was deemed incompetent. So therefore the defense attorney and the state's attorney and the judge should not have agreed to let him flee. So if he is successful in this, then basically the stalking charge or the stalking conviction we have, as well as the assault charge on his defense attorney, go away. So it's like we're back to square one at this point. And I don't know if it's cheap or a phone because I'm not sure if he wants to jump in now or after. Yeah, he was on, I don't. Okay, so I'll just go through this with more. Oh, good. Would it be helpful for him to jump in? If you think that would help the presentation, sure, if Sean wants him to jump in, that'd be great. Certainly, I think the challenge that was facing this particular defendant and what may come to light in whether or not his plea is vacated is this thing that we're wrestling with in public safety with those with a formal diagnosis of mental illness or a crisis situation. And this guy was permitted to allow in his family's house unsupported. And he drifted away from his treatment plan and then became completely unmanageable. Unfortunately, his criminality was very menacing but misdemeanor at first. Very little that we could do by way of referral. Again, he would turn away resources that we had at our fingertips, community outreach, trips to the emergency room. We tried to leverage the emergency warrant procedure to have an evaluation done. We did that, I think, three times. And all the while, he would just get spun back out onto the street, left in this home owned by his family but still unsupported. And when this particular fellow is unsupported and not structured, he just slips away from his treatment plan and how and why he became fixated on the colonies is nothing that we could ever explain. But now the fear is that if he has his sentence overturned or dismissed that he'll return to the property and there'll be really no recourse to hold the landlord accountable for what's going on in this property far away from theirs in a neighborhood that's filled with people that are just trying to enjoy their lives and have shared respectful use of the space over there. I hope that kind of gives some context to what Sue was looking for. It does. Our greatest challenge was the fact when this started, when we started reaching out, we first got reached out to by a neighbor who was before we started being harassed, the neighbor reached out to us because they were being harassed. And then they were trying to get something done. And of course, like chief said, it was misdemeanor, they would cite him, he had to go to court but it didn't matter. I mean, even when we tried to get a no trespass, we were told by the police that we could do it but he doesn't like papers and therefore it would probably just escalate him and he would be more fixated. And in my opinion, what happened, why he started really targeting us, obviously he's right across the street from us was because the police were like keep calling us so that we can document this and the more they could document the greater the opportunity to present something to the state's attorney. But by doing that, we then of course made him more and more frustrated and more and more targeted us because we were trying to solve the problem. So that's my opinion on why it escalated to him, zeroing on us and others. I mean, I don't think he's got restraining orders, I think from three businesses that were two blocks away. So my point here is it's twofold. You've got mental health involved, which if there was a city ordinance, I believe that a city ordinance could help because it would engage the property owner and for this particular individual's parents, they knowingly bought this house and put him in it with his mental history. Prior to this, they had another property that they purchased for him in South Burlington several years ago. And from what I understand, it was a really bad life-threatening situation back there when they owned that. So I think for us, if the city of Burlington had an ordinance that would hold residential property owners accountable to make them engage, and I'm not suggesting, I mean, sometimes as landlords, you may get a tenant in there that you certainly didn't ask for and your hands are tied, but you're willing to work with officials to get somebody out. So I'm suggesting that if we had a city ordinance, because right now there's nothing. When our attorney went through to try and figure out what we could do on the owner level, there's nothing in the public nuisance. There's no accountability for property owners. So that's where we were at. So then what I came back to was saying, okay, what is the city of South Burlington created three different blocks of things where there was an offense and miscellaneous ordinance that it would blanket would capture just violations. If you refer to the city of Burlington's ordinances, they specifically say that the property owner has to keep unwholesome, noisome, or offensive houses or places prohibited and uses of building by disorderly persons. Then the second suggestion, so that's a blanket one, that just allows people to tie their situations to a miscellaneous ordinance. Then two would be to require residential rental units to be registered with the city. They call it a certificate of compliance in the city of Burlington. And then would you add onto that if you headed into housing ordinance where there would be residential inspections of properties, therefore, owners would be responsible to at least know what's going on at their property. And then they would have the minimum housing rental codes or tenants occupancy so that people wouldn't buy a house and then put eight people in with 16 cars sitting out in the driveway per se. And then the other thing is to start fostering more of a community responsibility so that property owners recognize that we're responsible to each other to live with quiet enjoyment in each other, promoting like parallel justice, encouraging a neighborhood watch, encouraging neighbors talking to one another when there's issues instead of all of a sudden like, oh, you have a problem called police. A lot of times all that does is escalate the situation between neighbors. And then the other thing we heard a lot during our journey was, well, this is a silver matter, take a civil action. And one of the barriers to that is basically civil actions don't solve the problem of the unruly tenant or property owners behaviors because you go into court, it's typically usually a monetary thing. And if you have an unruly tenant, there's so many barriers to even getting, even if you get a judgment, you can't collect the judgment. So it's basically a mute point when you've got this type of thing going on. So the other thing is if you did these kinds of ordinance, it basically holds the property owners accountable. It motivates property owners to vet their potential tenants because then they are holding the bag to have to step up and help problem solve. Property owners are the only ones that hold the power for eviction unless it goes to a higher level. This also opens opportunities for help with mental health occupants because if a property owner is engaging, then they have a better opportunity to get the mental health organizations to engage with them through the eviction process and making sure that whoever the tenant is, if they have a mental health issue, that they're transitioning them if eviction is the proper way to go into a support system. Again, it helps the property owners partner towards problem solvents and it empowers homeowners associations and condos associations. PUDs, currently a lot of them with their bylaws are very specific about what they allow for rentals and if they allow rentals within their PUDs. The same thing with homeowner associations and condo associations. Then when you create housing ordinance is again, it holds property owners accountable. They know what they have to do. It creates an up-to-date database for city officials. So city officials are up to speed on what's going on in their city. It compels landlords to inspect their properties, whether it be through a property manager or what have you, just so that they know the potential problems. If there's not something that holds a property owner to go by their property or inspect it or know what's going on, it's very easy to turn the other way and not worry about it. And it reduces potential for absenteeism but neglect the landlords. Plus, in my mind, the police department is bothered way too often for some of these unnecessary interactions where if they were on the owner's responsibility then they would be contacted soon after events were happening and that would become their problem, not problem, but their responsibility to work with people to solve the problem. So if there's consequences such as like with your noise ordinance thing, you have the noise one, you have the, what else is the one I saw the other day, the smoking ordinances. I mean, there's some pretty stiff penalties for that kind of thing. And I think if there's financial consequences to property owners, it gets people's attention. And I'm not saying that in all circumstances it would be slap a fine. And then like I said, the same thing with fostering community engagement, empowering people to work together because there's accountability. People, if they're held accountable then they, I believe, will find a way to work with one another. And this just goes back to the whole thing. It's when you craft an ordinance, it's the goal of engaging rather than punishing. My point is not that landlords are bad or all tenants or I'm just saying that when we come across a situation like this, we're not able to do anything. And then you may get, some of the other issues you might have is resistance of residential property owners. But I can tell you that responsible landlords engage and want to empower a successful community. Educating and engaging community members to work together and change is often difficult, but necessary. I suggest that the city of Wellington housing ordinance is a great model to look at, but I think it's extensive. And I'm not suggesting in any way that it be such an extensive model for the city of South Burlington. I think that because the law enforcement's based with trying to mitigate a lot of these situations, there's a lack of ordinances. So a lot of times when we were calling them, we were hearing, well, there's really not much we can do. There's not really an ordinance that we can hang our hat on. And then the mental health challenges, if I just know from my past experience, if a property owners involved in problem solving, then the mental health piece is able to not be as prominent a factor because it is, they're able to help mitigate it with the nonprofits that are available. And then the thing I can bring to the table when I'm having this conversation with you is we're a victim of nine months of pure L that we went through, thousands and thousands of dollars we spent between fencing our property in, cameras, basically legal fees, locking ourselves, we had to, we had to gate our driveway and we had to put a padlock on it so that he couldn't enter because he would stay. He, his mental health was paranoia. And the last day before, the day he tried to, that he did punch his lawyer in the head, he tried to break into our gated driveway at 4 a.m. And our cameras picked it up. So who knows, that day was a spiraling day for him. He was supposed to go to court that day. There was a no contact order because he threatened a business owner down the street. He threatened me that day that I had called the police one too many times on him. So from a victim standpoint, we were helpless and hopeless. And then I can bring the flip side of that is property management. So managed property in Burlington for 10 years on my own company property and commercial we switched to for 10 years. My focus now is more the accounting part of our business. So I've been on the receiving end of the city of Burlington ordinances, although I can say that they've gotten much more expensive since I've not had a portfolio of apartments in Burlington to manage. And then the current situation, as Chief Burke said, situation we're in right now is, if he's able to overturn this, or even if he's not and he gets out, will his parents buy another property in South Burlington? So they've done it twice. And who knows if it's gonna happen a third time? And that's my presentation. Well, I wanna thank you. I think this is, maybe the S79 is a start for rental properties. I don't know if it would have solved your issues because it probably wasn't really considered a rental property because it's parents, but I mean, clearly we have some issues in this community that we might wanna think about trying to find some solutions so that people have some safety. Whether we activate an ordinance committee or have some recommendations for select actions who certainly has put together a pretty comprehensive list. But I'd be happy, Kim. Yeah, I just, Sue, I wanted to tell you how sorry I feel for your situation and the extreme sympathy I have with you because it just reeks of hopelessness from this person's psychological problems that the system has, all the systems have failed the community because of this one individual. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just saying sometimes you find these individuals and just like nothing you do seems to be able to help the situation. And I'm just so sorry about that because I'm sensing that your family has suffered for a long time with this. And I can just relate on a very minute amount about being harassed by people in the middle of the night for something that you shouldn't be harassed for, but you've seen this exponentially more than I have, but I can relate to it. And I'm just, I really feel badly for your experience that you've had. I just wanna tell you that right off the bat. So I, you know, you're welcome. Well said, Tim. Absolutely, I was at a meeting and Megan, you were there too, right? Yeah, with Jeep Burke and Sue and Sean Burke. So that's why we wanted to, and Kevin, I'm sorry. Have you, oh, great. And have the council hear this and think about what it is we might wanna consider. And we don't need to come up with a solution tonight. I really like the accountability piece, Sue. And I can hear Lisa's restorative justice piece in there. And I think that rings very true that when you make people accountable, they're much more willing and proactive in seeking solutions and finding kind of a middle ground, just that will make peace for everybody. And I very much like that, that part of that. And not that, it's easy. Not that it's easy. Are there other thoughts or comments? So Helen, you had talked about having an ordinance committee. So putting together some kind of task force. Is that your thinking instead of having us plod? This is not something I could draft, for instance. No, no, I don't think we can plod ahead. I think it's probably the question is, is the council, you know, if S79 passes, then we at least will have a rental registry and potentially some of the properties will become known to us and there's some process, I guess, for taking care of situations like this. But there's also, as Susan pointed out, we don't have any ordinances to cover any of this. So I guess my question to the council is, are we interested in some manner pursuing something? Or do we just, they were really sorry and call it a night. I mean, that's not what I would like to do. So. No, I think we should do something. And like we said in the meeting, it should not be limited just to someone paying money to live in a place. It should also be tents and RVs and, you know, things, you know, the dwellings. Yeah, some issues. So, I mean, Kevin, what do you think? A task force? I mean, this is related to housing, a subcommittee of housing. You know, I don't, a subcommittee of counselors. We don't usually do that. We can't, I guess, with three. Michael Monti, could we bring in experts like Michael Monti or? I think, you know, Sue's a guidance to us, which is to take a good look at what the Burlington ordinance is. And then I would say. Maybe have the maybe have the affordable housing committee, which wants to be the housing committee, to look at what that 79 does and take a look at what the Burlington ordinance is, take Sue's input and see what could be put together for something that would address the needs here in South Burlington. One of the concerns I have is, you know, we don't want to be chasing something that's already happened and not anticipating that which could come. Sue's situation was extreme and difficult. And I agree with the chief on his perspective on that as well, but we got to make sure that we don't bring to you something that is laser focused on that specific issue, but is broad enough to accommodate others. And so I think maybe the affordable housing committee would be the place to start with us. My only issue is that I have reservations about anything that we could legislate that could have fixed this problem. And as much as that seems like that's not constructive for Sue and her issue, the real problem here is that individual and that individual's behavior. And there's like nothing that the mental health system or the judicial system could effectively do, except I mean the person's in jail now, but eventually they're gonna get out. So there was, Tim, I think, so this issue with this individual has roots in different areas, but as Chief Burke noted, three times the police took him for emergency evaluation. And if you do not have a willing patient who's willing to do that, hospital won't and can't really do it. And so this gets into the whole civil confinement issue. It gets into all those issues of mental health and arguably we're better resourced now, but we're well under resourced on mental health issues. But this is, I know the Chief can talk a lot about this, but we've had many instances where people fit in this space that is inaccessible under the law. And that's my point is I don't know how we can legislate around that if the state can't legislate around that. Well, we might be able to make that whole smaller and smaller and smaller if we work around it. But at the very core, we don't have civil confinement, we don't have requirements that people get an emergency evaluation if they don't want it. And that will be a huge political burden to get over or hurdle to get over in this state. Chief, you may have a, I think we're on the same page on this. We totally are Kevin. Just one thought about this process. It's really not to stay hyper focused on the root cause of this issue, but more broadly, if, because this family did set up an LLC and then acted as landlords for their son, but if there were an ordinance that would put a certificate of occupancy for rental units that were mismanaged at risk, that's the leverage point. This isn't about criminalizing those that are suffering in crisis or trying to criminalize the landlords or doing so, but more to Sue's point and Megan's observation, the whole landlords accountable for having reputable apartment houses that could house an array of different people. But just in this instance, this guy was afforded a lot of opportunities and was treatment resistant because the other aspects of the system fail, there could be a potential housing solution here if the city wanted to study what an ordinance might look like. Tom? My first year on council, whenever that was ages ago, we were wrestling with the issues on East Terrace and the nuisance ordinance. And what we did do, we didn't do a task force, but we did do a panel discussion. And it was a thoughtful, we brought in the Bill Ward from Burlington to talk about their ordinance. We brought in the chief of police, Trevor Whipple at the time, Paul Conner. We had about seven or eight people, I think Leo Nato took part. So I'm all for a task force as well, but I think a panel discussion, getting individuals that understand the Burlington Ordinance where they could have done things differently, that was a useful commitment of energies back then. I don't know if you recall that, Councillor Emery or... I do, I do. Yes, I do too. What did I think about? Okay. Well, was there interest on the council to try to pull something together to work, to at least get a baseline of information, look in and see what Burlington does. And yes, I don't know. That makes sense, Chair, really. Okay. All right, well, I'll keep talking with Kevin and Sean and we can... We have. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Get attorneys in a room together and they'll argue, but we have people on the DRB, we do have people on affordable housing. I mean, I can think of some people who might be really good at working together and finding, you know, working with the Burlington Ordinance and seeing how it can apply here in South Burlington. Okay. All right, well, then let's pursue that. All right. Thank you. Sandy Dooley did ask two questions. Is the individual capable of living independently? Are there support people working with him and what's his quality of life living in this house on his own? So those are questions that I guess could potentially a... Somebody could address, I assume. Sandy. Well, I was just... My husband is working on filing our taxes so I went in and out a little bit, but it sounded as if the role of the parents here was critical. Am I correct that they really weren't cooperative? That's correct. When I first reached out to them by letter, they referred to them as their renter and it was after that that I found out it was their son. And then from there, they would not engage at all. And then as we went on this journey, through the law enforcement, we found out that there was... What was the history of this young man? And I don't wanna get into too much detail, but it sounds as if... Well, at least to me, it sounds as if they are not acting in his best interests. I mean, it sounds like he needs a supportive housing environment. Not that he would be necessarily cooped up, but it doesn't sound like he's functioning well in this situation. But anyway, I won't go on, but it sounds like a very difficult... It's like a perfect storm of a bad combination of situations, of circumstances. Okay. Well, we sort of have at least some ideas about how to pull it together and we'll keep on it. Thank you very, very much, Sue, for hanging in there, for sharing your story. I know that I guess the more you tell it, maybe it's easier to tell, I don't know, but it must be difficult. And we'll see if there's anything we can do as a city to try to prevent these kinds of things from happening to someone else. Now we're... We're... Sorry, Sue, go ahead. No, that's okay. I was just gonna say that that's my goal is to prevent this from happening to others, especially those that don't have the ability that my husband and I were able to expend in trying to solve this. Right. Okay. Well, thank you. I was just gonna suggest that when we are gonna be thinking about making appointments to committees that we set aside some time to think about who could be on a task force committee for this. That sounds reasonable, so that would just... We'll see how long that process takes. Yeah, there's a lot of them. But yes, that would be a logical time to have that conversation. Okay. So would you hit share screen again so we can get you off your presentation off the screen? Hit the button at the bottom of your screen that says share screen. Yeah, it says it's not being shared right now. Ah, okay. Well, you're stuck on the council from now on. There you go. If I share on your screen as the presenter it might override hers and kick her off. But I see her shared screen too. Okay. I'll work on it. Okay. Shall we move on? Yeah. We can consider possibly a proven amendment to the city's PQE resolution. This is only supposed to take five minutes, gang. Yeah, Burlington tabled their discussion, right? Say what? I think this is about our own PPE ordinance, right? Right, so Burlington, I think they tabled theirs. They put it off. Not that we should do that. I'm just thinking that we have the choice of just not discussing it for a couple more weeks. I don't see any rush to pull masks out of our ordinance at this point. I agree with Tim. I think that with the governor's new position we just need to see how this all kind of settles. And I feel no urgency to make a change tonight either. And in June, that certainly gives everybody time to just find where everything is. I mean, when you see a state you can see statistics for a state. I haven't seen statistics for South Burlington who comes to shop in our stores. I don't, so he's making this determination through statistics that we don't have, right? I think it's prudent not to take any action at this time. I'm okay with putting it off two weeks too because he did extend the emergency thing for a month. But then he said, I think, as both said today, maybe a little back and it'll just be two more weeks, but okay. All right, so reports on committee assignments, anyone ever report? Good. Is there any other business? Oh, not. Just, oh, I had a couple of quick items and Tom's gone. Shoot. Tom Hubbard, he's still on. Is he still on? What's Tom, what are you talking about? Tom Hubbard, and I lost for some reason, hold on, they were on the warrants. Let me just give me a second here. I lost the warrant document and it's right here. Thank you very much, Chief Burke, for hanging in there, man. Long days, long nights, yes. That's what you get paid the big bucks for though, right? Hold on. Here we go, here we go. What was the charge for the antenna tower? The water district, the $4,600. That's the location where all the communications equipment is stored for the cabinets and everything. So we actually have to lease that space from CWD. That's a contract that the city has with the water district. So that's an annual fee that we pay. Annual fee, okay. And the lift bags for the Shelburne fire department? That was some equipment that the fire chief was going to purchase brand new, that was going to cost more than that. The town of Shelburne found out that the chief was interested in making the purchase and said, hey, we've got something here that we're not using. Happy to give it to you at a reduced price. And so they worked out that deal. That's what that was for. I forget exactly what the equipment was, but. The 86 grand for Spafford and Sons, is that just a late payoff for drilling the geothermal wells? I'm sorry, Tim. So the 86,000, Spafford and Sons for 180 Market Street, was that for the drilling of the wells for the geothermal? I believe it was. I'll check with Alana and ask him back to you. Okay, and the last thing, not having anything to do with warrants, is I walked long drive yesterday again and took some pictures. So I'll be sending them to Marla because I'm concerned about some of the stormwater plumbing that they've installed. And I just don't understand how they, what they did, but I'll send them to her. She's probably already seen it. It's probably okay, but in my mind, it's questionable. So, and there is still, they dug a pit down there and it's still full of water. So they're like, that soil is not, it's not perking at all. So anyway, I just thought I'd say that. Okay. Well, thank you for wandering around on our behalf. Okay, are we ready to adjourn? So moved. Second. Okay, all in favor. All right. Hi. Okay. Thanks for hanging in. I thought this was gonna be, well, anyway. It's getting nostalgic. Kevin and I'm getting nostalgic. Bye.