 more than seven NPA meeting and welcome and welcome back to winter. It feels like outside. I went and moved my car. What happened to 57 degrees today? I wanted to go over the ground rules for us. Listen to others speaking. Respect the agenda and process. Share your opinion politely. Treat people respectfully. I wanted to also say that we're not doing our round robin introductions, but if you do ask a question or make a comment to share your name, street or neighborhood when asking a question or share a comment through the evening. Tonight Olivia is going to be helping me with timekeeping, keeping us honest and on schedule. So thank you, Olivia Taylor. We'll start off with announcements. If anyone has any announcements, I heard Robert say if it can disturb your reading that you did have an announcement, Robert. Well, all I want to say is that I've been spending much more of my bandwidth in the past two weeks on the state redistricting than on the city ward redistricting. I kind of wish that Bob Hooper or Carol Odie or somebody was especially Bob Hooper is on the house government operations committee. So the big news that happened is originally we thought we were going to get 10 house representatives for Burlington. We deserve 10.43 representatives. That's what our portion of the population of the state is and out of 150 house reps. And the first map so that was coming from the legislative apportionment board was rounding us down to 10. That was to me no surprise. That's what I thought. And then there was the kind of the big battle of single member districts versus a mixture of two member and single member districts. It pretty much is clear that the legislature isn't going for the single member district idea or the all single member district idea. And the Burlington board of civil authority had voted to either go 10 single member or five two member districts to be consistent. They voted on that and then two days after they voted on that the state the house government operations committee came up with, hey, Burlington is getting 11 members instead of 10. And the district six to which is Emma of all the Stanix district is going to remain a single member district. But the district six six which is Barbara Rachel's district is going to go to a two member district and they drew a map. And I tried to get the attention of the board of civil authority before the 14th. I thought in fact that they were going to meet on the 14th to consider what precisely map that they were going to recommend to the state. That didn't happen. And so the state being the mommy government drew the map. And we are now going to be stuck with the map that somebody not in Burlington drew. And it's not a bad map. But there are some warts in it that could have been fixed with some local input. I did provide the house government operations committee a map to look at. But since I'm only one person and a schlub and not on the board of civil authority, they did not act on it. So I just want to let you know that that was going on. A problem with the map is that it's putting a line down Maple Street. And something that we've learned in the redistricting committee is that putting a line down Maple Street or putting a line down King Street is maybe not a very good idea. But that's something to worry about later. That's all I wanted to say. Thanks, Robert. Any other announcements? Is that a hand, Jeff? No. No, just more of a thank you gesture. Okay. No other announcements. Emma, I will give you the floor. We were going to divide up the elected officials, say reps, three ways. Since Carol and Bob aren't here, you could have six minutes. Because I do have to do like 30 minutes then. Wow. I will answer what I had planned to go over tonight because Bob Hooper does serve on Gov Ops. But there's a lot of Burlington specific stuff as Robert was just sort of mentioning that have been going through Gov Ops. So if they still haven't signed on and we're wrapping up, I'm happy to answer questions and pivot to redistricting or the charter changes. But I was going to assume that Bob was going to cover that. But I'll go back to that if there's time and I'm still the only one. So hello everyone. I'm represented Emma Mulvaney-Stanek, represent Chittenden 6-2, which is half of the New North End and half of the Old North End, sort of the Southern tiers of the Ward 4 and 7, for your purposes. And I serve on the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee in the House. And we are barreling really quickly towards crossover, which is the policy deadline for bills to cross from the House to the Senate. Of course, apparently there are exceptions, of course. And then there are these things I was just told called Frankenstein bills or zombie bills or something. So there's other ways for policy to move. But by and large, like 90% of what we've been working on for the first half of the session needs to be wrapped up by March 11 and pass over to the Senate from the House perspective and vice versa. Money bills have a little bit of a later deadline, but that's why a lot of us are working hard right up to town meeting break and then after town meeting break. So House Commerce sort of acts as a mini money committee. And we tend to also work on only a handful of bills because we put a lot into a very large omnibus bill. And there's two themes that we work on, workforce development and economic development. And workforce development is what the House has been working on first half of the session. The Senate, our comparable committee has been working on in the Senate, the economic development omnibus bill this session. And so workforce has been the big focus. If you want to follow along with that work, a very massive bill called H703 is the sort of the vehicle for which we're putting in probably at least 20, if not more, ideas around various ways we can leverage federal, all this, you know, one time federal money in programs that exist now and programs that various partners are trying to stand up. They are, you know, themes will be familiar for folks who might be involved at all in workforce development with around apprenticeships and internships and trying to make sure on the job training is available and well resourced in the state. We are also trying to make sure there's some sort of least I am parody and sense of all the different scholarships and loan programs we have out there and making sure parody meaning because some require you to stay in Vermont for a couple of years, some don't, some have a certain amount, some have higher amounts. So really pulling it all together and having some consistency so we can really leverage those in a smart way with the critical occupations that Vermont needs to fill. And there's about 60 to 66 or so with them that the Department of Labor has designated. And a lot of them are again in familiar fields that you'll be probably familiar with and nursing is a big one. Childcare, early educators is another one. So really try to be strategic around using apprenticeship, internships and scholarship and loans, as I mentioned, in ways that will make an impact. I have been asked in within that bill to focus on justice involved individuals and really looking at removing barriers for folks who have some sort of involvement with the justice system. They could have either served time in one of our facilities or have just some sort of record. And that is a true economic barrier for folks to both gain employment, but also there's lots of studies we've been hearing testimony on around economic like a wealth gap for folks who've been just as involved. So we're looking at things like expungement, I sat in on House Judiciary today, there's a bill moving there that will just be yet another tool to really look at how we get for Monters to work in in sustainable ways. One other thing that I'll just mention, and then as I said, I'll happy to pivot to other state rep stuff, if my colleagues don't appear, is around technical education. So CTE is something we've been talking a lot about, which stands for Center for the Center for Technical Education CTE. Yes, I think that's what it stands for. Sorry, long day. And the technical education world is we do it in a very Vermont kind of way compared to other states where a little bit of Massachusetts, a little bit of New York, a little bit of Ohio, and how we model it. And for Burlington, we have one of the regional Burlington Essex are the regional technical centers for Chittenden County, but they're independent technical centers, there are others who are structured differently. And we're trying to understand governance and funding. And I won't go in with tuning into the details, but it's a bit of a challenge to figure out how to make sure that money that gets sent, thank you, they have to get sent, because money follows the student. And so sometimes it's drawing resources from the sending school, in order for a kid to enroll in technical education. So we're trying to really unpack, is that the best way to structure funding for technical education? When we know several kids want to, many kids want to access technical education, but sometimes are prohibited because schools are worried about losing too many resources. And it's a pretty volatile way of funding technical education centers. So we're diving into that, we're trying to look at what other states have done, and figure out if the governance structure as well might be something to start looking at so that we have just best practice around the state and not all these different models and how we structure it. So I think I'll pause there and I'll just see if there's questions on anything I covered, and I'm not going to draw out the clock by any means, but if people want me to pivot into charter change, I'm sure I'm happy to do so, because I did do quite a bit of leadership on that for the Burlington delegation, along with Sarah, but I'll pause there and see if there's questions. Commerce is dry, so maybe I lulled you all to sleep early sleep at 7-0, 7-11. Well, I don't know if I'm supposed to call on people, Jeff. Okay, yeah. Emma, so following up on your comment about for tech education that money following the students, I have to admit I've kind of lost track. Is that consistent with how the rest of education fund money is allocated for regular school districts or are there constraints for regular students in terms of the money following the students? Well, because we fund education, we send all of our money into the state and they send it back out in a per-people formula, and then I'm not going to give you the four-hour lesson on education funding because I couldn't even give it, and I've gone through it four thousand times and I still couldn't teach it to someone quite yet. So there's also grants and other things that come to the district like Burlington, but essentially it is on a per-people funding basis, so if a kid moves from Burlington High School and goes to Burlington Tech Center or Essex Tech Center for that matter, that money travels with that student and then gets spent at that Tech Center or helps fund that Tech Center. So if, and I'm looking at my school commissioners because I don't want to speak out of turn, but if let's just say like 500 kids from Burlington High School want to go, that's a little problematic to lose 500 per-people headcount against a little more complicated than that. As wonderful as that would be, right now the funding system is a disincentive for a lot of districts to lose that many kids to go to a Tech Center all at once, and it's a struggle because we know and we want as a value and goal for the state to encourage kids to use these great programs because it's really a career readiness opportunity for students. Not all students need to go to college or want to go to college and take on student debt. It's a lot of win-win things if you can figure out the funding and governance pieces so that it takes the pressure off of districts where there would be any like quote-unquote loss because a student just decides to go to the Tech Center rather than the high school. I hope Kendra's not like staring bullets at me. I hope that, oh thank god, okay good. Well Carol, I see you have joined us. Welcome. Emma gave us an update. Would you like us to give us a two-minute update? Sure. I'd like to talk about something I think is very exciting and it is the creating of Vermont Child Tax Credit. There was a federal child tax credit that just expired the end of last year and it put money directly into the wallets and checkbooks of families with children. It is credited with helping people pay rent and buy food and reducing food insecurity by 25% and for parents with more income the credit has helped with mortgage payments and credit card student loan and card debt. So H510 passed the house in February and it would create a Vermont version of the Child Tax Credit. The payment of $100 a month for every child aged 6 and under would lift families with young children out of poverty and would encourage young families to move to Vermont or to stay in Vermont and thrive. So we are really trying to focus with this bill on young families addressing two important challenges, reducing poverty for young children and meeting our demographic challenges. Also in that bill is an increase in social security tax exemption to improve on changes we made three years ago. Anyone living exclusively on social security receives those benefits tax-free but this bill would allow moderate income seniors to use their payments for food and other living expenses. As of early March this bill is being considered in the Senate and how many minutes do I still have? I'll tell you one more thing. Vermont continues to welcome refugees fleeing violence in other nations and we want to ensure that our tax system supports Vermonters who step up to host refugees in their homes and age 461 passed the house and it would exclude the income of new refugees from the calculation of household income for the purpose of property tax release. And I have other nice news too but that's it and I thought Emma did a great job with explaining that school funding thing even though I came in a little late. Carol do you know if Bob will be joining us or no I don't know. Okay any questions for Emma or Carol from the group? Well Jeff if I can just say two seconds on the charters because it's just so Burlington specific and so just very quickly excited to report that both just cause eviction and thermal energy past third reading in the house in the last couple days the thermal energy passed today and they move on to the Senate thermal went through without any amendments and just cause eviction had a few minor amendments in the end which we were glad to have the help of the city especially counselor carpenter and the city attorney and a few others to really help advocate and push that across the line so that moves to the Senate and then we will see what the governor does and then the city can start the ordinance process along those items. The last item is the right choice voting for city council races that has not been taken up yet by gub ops but I was told it will be addressed around town meeting so hopefully that makes the policy I don't know if charter changes I look to Carol if that has the same crossover deadline or not I never can tell which has the sort of the special sauce on it or something and gets exempted but that one's the last one so we are almost through all four items. And Bob isn't here but he presented the two Burlington charter changes on the floor the bulk of them. Okay anything else Carol or Emma if not we will go to city council we can use the time we have you guys from now 717 to 730 if you want to each give a two minute update and start with Sarah if you'd like. Sure as always there's a lot been going on one of the things that we dealt with a few weeks ago and is a pressing issue in the city is use of the ARPA money to stand up several different programs for the houseless so we've proposed developing a low barrier emergency shelter pod program and these would be purchase of tiny and I'm just going to call them pods of rooms to put in a yet undecided place and provide support services for some truly emergency shelter so that's on its way and hopefully we'll be hearing more about that in the next month or so along with that we're going to stand up another low barrier community resource center it's sometimes called the day station but it's a place that people can go during the day to get support services be guided through programs and all of that so that's been a really big need we opened one several months ago in the VFW on South Muskie Avenue but at some point later this year that building in that site is going to start to move for redevelopment so that was only a temporary location in addition we've agreed to fund a special assistant to end homelessness and that that really is to add capacity to the studio office to very specifically deal with houseless issues and then as part of that we're also going to provide some funding to CDO for the coordinated entry program which is really the hands-on where we have a team of professionals trying to deal one-on-one with different houseless families so that's kind of my update on that we had quite a discussion on short-term rentals last night and but I don't have time to go in it so maybe one of the other counselors can show you in on that sure I'll go and I'll continue on Sarah's intro to the short-term rental conversation actually we passed ordinance last night they will restrict and regulate the use of residences or short-term rentals in the city these are the air bnb's the rbo's etc it's something that ordinance committee and the planning staff and others have been working on for about two years there's no doubt that we need to put some boundaries on what's allowable because currently a lot of the strs work or short-term rentals strs we're operating without without you know outside of ordinance and there's interest in protecting neighborhoods and limiting the impact to housing stock and it's been challenging balancing those needs with a desire to have strs is an option and to support those who are providing them all three of the new north end counselors along with counselor mason preferred a slightly different approach that was less restricted than the one that was ultimately passed and it was offered through amendment by counselor carpenter but another version was passed and so if you have questions on that we can answer that also last night we we chose not to renew the mask mandate so on it will expire on march 3rd but the worst of omicron search behind us is evidenced by the following positivity rates and falling hospitalizations we were choosing not to renew businesses and institutions can still choose to require masks or proof of vaccination status but the city is not going to manage it anymore and another thing i'll mention briefly is i'm in i said on the two can i'm on a committee that was charged with reviewing a parking management plan for north muski avenue we chose last week to continue work looking for for additional lost street parking options before we approved the parking management plan so so i guess my time's up but if you have questions about that i'm gonna answer ali would you like to give a two-minute update welcome you're muted i'm going to pass i'll allow mark ballo to continue for my treatments thank you yeah well i'll just i'll just finish up my thank you all thank you ali i'll just finish up um my update on north muski avenue so um there were a number of stakeholders including community health center and some of the businesses and residents along the northern part of the corridor from riverside avenue to union street that were concerned about the loss of 40 parking spaces so we're going to continue conversations with um off street parking looking for off street parking options for to to make up for those 40 40 spaces and the last thing i'll say is it's a reminder you've probably heard from a number of people already but it's worth repeating it's too late to mail your ballot so if you still need to vote you got to return it in a drop box or vote it on town meeting day and i'll end there all right we'll open it up to questions any questions for the city councilors i see tj's hand up first tj go ahead thank you really quickly where are the drop boxes i've been in california now i'm in connecticut and i'll be home hopefully fingers crossed tomorrow uh and i need to know where to drop off my ballot the miller center is has one and then have it at one down any other questions for city councilors yes i do okay dale going forward folks if you could use the raise hand function that would be helpful i tried but the computer reached out and hit me in the face and i had to go to a different route um my comment concerns last night's uh city council meeting seeing that we're discussing at this point in time with the three city councilors i was totally disgusted in the performance of our city council president last night when he basically went on a diet trap of 10 to 15 minutes uncontrolled and basically called the mayor of our city a racist i was disappointed that none of our counselors within the city interrupted with a point of order and asked the council president to turn over the gavel at that time because there was no excuse for the city council president to be going off on a rampage while he was the acting city council president um maybe the city councilors tried and they were rebuffed by the council president i don't know but i was very disappointed in the entire city council for letting city council president going off on that tire rate i thought it was totally totally disgusting and they'll do you have a question for the city yes i'm asking it did they try to raise a point of order and stop the acting city council president from going out on a limb and just going off and off and off thank you for your question if you look at the city council agenda there are points in the agenda when city counselors are either general council business or president's business where they are allowed and invited to offer remarks and it was during that period of time should the city council president turn over the gavel at that time i believe it was at the time he is allowed to give remarks to the you mean i mean in addition to what uh uh councilor carpenter said basically the city council president can talk in regards to general city affairs and that's what he was doing so i don't know why you see that as a problem sir because he was making racist he was accusing the mayor of burlington thank you for your question i think like he has the power to say whatever he wants as general city affairs or sometimes as the president of the city council so he can accuse anybody of being a racist as the city council i'm not talking about accusation but we just talking about the processes in which the government should work i'm talking about whatever he wants i'm talking about the accusations ali thank you sir we are going to move on we have about the accusations ali we're moving on to um thank you we're moving on to the next presentation um was scheduled to start at seven thirty um we have members of our school board um here martin i think you were leading us off and you had did you get capability martin to present i will ask um sam from cito um he was going to give it to the three of you sam were you able to do that yep we also all right okay great and um we have tom plan again i see claire will here as well so yeah thank you so much um i think superintendent plan again is going to start us off and i will ask him which document he would like me to share first we have the budget one pager as well as the budget development uh presentation and you're muted tom thank you martin i was thinking um uh that i could walk through the presentation okay yeah we'll start it'll be great i will share that can everybody see it yes great all right great thank you um so thanks for having us tonight this is the presentation that uh our executive director of operations and finance and myself did for the school board back in in january since then we've done a couple of additional presentations um one at town meeting day tv and we all um and we also have updated our agenda our um literature on our web page so we have a line item budget a um annual report the fiscal year 21 report that prepares us for the fiscal year 23 budget um and the budget one pager so those are all online at bsdbt.org for you to take a look um so these this is an an older slide that includes next steps those next steps were taken by the board on 117 to approve the ballot language that we have put forward and that's currently on on ballots so thought tonight we'd talk through with you all and just have opportunity for for questions and conversation too i know there are questions and uh about this so we're happy to take any questions um that you may have so if we go to the next slide martin yeah i was going to tell you to go ahead and just let me know uh when to move on and i will attempt to do that there we go sure um yeah so i'm going to move through some of these slides relatively quickly these are slides that have that that we've again put put out there before but this shows the education spending increase over fiscal years from fiscal year 2021-22 over over the past three years so that just shows some historical um context of of education spending increase next slide so when we were building the budget one of the the the primary thing that we were concerned with was being disciplined and not making any any significant additions to the budget outside of wages benefits and other other sort of annual costs to run the district we did not include any major new initiatives in this budget that were adds to the budget that we are bringing forth to taxpayers except for wages benefits and and sort of these other anticipated costs um we we included in that is the is the downtown um bhs so we do have an ongoing cost for downtown bhs that we think it's important for everybody to to understand and in in addition to downtown in addition to the funds that we have um or that the we all we have additional funds that are coming that have come through um to us over three installments from the american rescue plan and we call those the esser funds um or the recovery funds because we have to submit a recovery plan to the agency of education so that uh are to the uh yeah the agency of education who has approved our plan um and that is allows us to do significant work around mental health social and emotional well-being and academic achievement and it's as a result of the the pandemic and the impacts the pandemic have had on on the district so the big takeaway is is this 2.5 um million dollar budget growth plus the downtown bhs the cost of downtown bhs um and that's a so i i said that was included i'm sorry that's not included so overall it's a 3 um uh three point um i think 3.3 million dollar uh add to the or um a growth of the budget this this year the proposed budget in fiscal year 23 versus fiscal year 22 um but we do have these esser funds that we're able to utilize to address the the impact of the pandemic so the next slide oh the other thing to note on that slide is that we've run a surplus for the past seven years so you'll see the surplus come up um the district had a deficit problem historically and um and and thankfully that has been cleared up and we've been able to maintain um uh we've we've had strong fiscal management over the past seven years and have been able to maintain a um a surplus over the past seven years um so one of the one of the one of the things that we did this year was to create an equitable budgeting formula so we we knew that there were inequities in in the budget and that number one we needed to get a better handle on uh on where our staff was what schools they were at and and get better you know position control so that's part of what we've done here and also make sure the funds are flowing to schools to the types of activities that schools believe are important uh so we developed um a process an equitable budgeting process by which we allocated funds these are these are a part of these are not new adds to the budget they are just a part of the existing budget but we've given schools the opportunity to make decisions about what works best for their school with a certain amount of funding um based on a formula an equity formula that we that is actually the the recommended state equity formula uh that I'll um I'll speak about a little bit later so schools met with their school improvement teams or their school advisory groups those school advisory groups made some decisions about how to utilize funds specifically to support their schools and so what they were able to do is to reorganize some of some of their some of their investments and and we were able to reorganize some of our investments across the district to invest in things that are directly that will directly impact schools you see interventionists show up throughout elementary and middle we had schools tell us they wanted an additional special educator tutoring services uh academic pair educators classroom libraries and you can see more of the other types of investments that schools have decided that they would like to make on top of the base allocation that we made but just a reminder again this is not with new funds these are with funds that um that that we've been able to utilize in a in a more targeted way to allow students to allow schools to make decisions about what what best means the needs of their students the next slide so we'll keep going this describes how tax rates are are derived which is a combination of education spending equalized pupils the dollar yield in the common level of appraisal yeah and I just want to add before I move on to the next slide if folks want a little bit of a deeper dive in how this this funding formula works I highly recommend you go to the vermont school board association website under resources there is a about a 15 minute video on how all of this works thank you martin okay so these are the the tax variable estimates so you see the estimates that we've made to indicate the tax variables the the big takeaway here is is the equalized pupil count so one of the things that you'll see in the in the ballot language is that the equalized pupil is um is is 13.13 percent in our in our budget and yet even with that because of the health of the ed fund the the the estimated tax the estimated taxes tax rates are projected to go down and we can talk more about that I know there are a lot of questions about that but the equalized pupil count is important for everyone to recognize because this this looks at the number of students that we have and and how they're weighted derives the the fund there and we have seen a decrease in the number of students so districts across the country saw a decrease in in their enrollments we are due to due to the pandemic we've actually seen a decrease in enrollment over three years so that's something that we really need to attend to and that's that's playing into the equalized pupil count and why that number is high and and it's something that we really need to we do really need to attend to and I want to I want to make sure that people know about the work that the school board has done to advocate for an equitable funding formula so one of the things that we know based on a report that the Agency of Education commissioned and the University of Vermont Rutgers and the American Institutes of Research gave them produced a report that that highlighted how the funding formula in in the state of Vermont is inequitable and it's disproportionately impacting Burlington and Winooski and other districts that have although we have the highest number of students who are English learners other districts that have high that have students who are English learners and also have students high numbers of students who are living in poverty and who have special education needs that actually I think just moved out of senate ed last week Martin and Kendra maybe I don't know if you all want to give more of an update on that but there's a there we have to fix the funding formula or we'll continue to see our equalized pupil number be much higher than it should be because we have this this inequitable funding formula that everyone acknowledges is is is inequitable so there are really the two big things going on here or the equalized pupil count equal the number the our enrollment has been going down and number two are we are we are because of the inequitable funding model for the state we are we are we're paying too much for individual students Martin Kendra do you want to talk a little bit about that and where that is or is this not the right time I mean I can I can I'm happy to talk about that we have been working really hard and we've been keeping the NPA up to date kind of on on our progress because it is such an important you know topic for for Burlington and Manuski and other school districts with with large ELL populations so we're we are really happy that it looks like the legislature is moving in the direction of adopting updated weights that was presented in that 2019 per people waiting formula study that we've been talking about and senate education just voted to move along a memo that said that they're going to change the ELL weight to what Tammy Colby UVM Rutgers have said that it costs to educate a ELL student which is about $25,000 per student so it's a really exciting time and we're hoping that soon bill will comes to crossover and it has to go to the house so we have some some work to do with the house but the senate is looking really good and we're hoping that the house will follow in the footsteps of what the the senate is also proposing so be on the lookout for that because that will change the equalized pupil components so there's that those four tax components that Tom just talked about education spending equalized pupil the dollar yield and the common level of appraisal so our equalized pupils because they went down right it negatively affects our tax rate tax rate so we're really hoping that in the future that will be bumped up and it will help it will help all of us I think that's enough yeah great thank you that's Kendra so these are other other variables other variables that play into the the overall funding those include the audited fund balance the current levels of appraisal and state revenue we have an extremely complicated funding funding system here in in Vermont and so one of the things that we've really been trying to do is is work to explain it in a way that it's that it can that it can be understood and and really the impact can be understood so that's that's what we we're trying to do and we appreciate the opportunity like this to be able to talk about it and have people ask questions all right so let's go to the next slide so here are the estimated uh tax implications um so I think we may have Martine I I sent you a the a more updated version of this that we've used for town meeting day I wonder if you have that one because I I'd like to show that slide here or actually I can it looks like I can share my why don't I share my screen is that working can can everybody see that yes um thank you for yes thank you okay so this is the this is the presentation that we did on February 10th so the numbers can you know as we learn more we continue to to update update our information but this information again is all reflected in our web page on our web page on in the annual report in the line item budget and in the one page and those those three things are are all connected so the estimated tax implications that that um oops sorry moving things around that you can see here are um sorry I have to kind of move my screen around so here here we explain the impact on the uh on property taxes um but I'm actually going to go one above sorry I'm foam rolling around here a little bit why is uh spending if I mentioned earlier spending per equalized pupil is increasing by over 13 percent um and that is because of the overall spending increasing by that by 3.3 percent or 3.1 million which I mentioned earlier in the in that previous presentation the non-tax revenue to pay for spending is decreasing we used surplus last year to offset the impact of on taxpayers of the budget on taxpayers we use the less surplus this year and then the number of equalized pupils as I mentioned earlier decreased by nearly 200 over the past three years so you can see the breakdown of how these three items play to that 13 percent so about four percent um in the in the increase in the budget increase about three percent in in the less using less of the surplus and about six percent for the equalized pupil decrease so even even with the the equalized pupil uh at 13 percent because of the health of the ed fund we are anticipating that taxpayers could see a reduction of 6.89 percent of on property taxes now this assumes that there's there's a surplus of 90 million dollars in the education fund um currently and so this 6.89 percent assumes current law so we felt like we we really needed to lean on the the number that we knew was in current law and that is six that is the 90 million dollars which is a surplus we've heard speculation from multiple different places that the 90 million dollars could be used in different places but that's all speculation at this point and we would need change of law to do that so all we know now based on current law is that property tax could property taxes could decrease um for a hypothetical property taxpayer 6.89 percent so we are anticipating because of the health of the ed fund even if this whole 90 million does not go back to taxpayers which again current law says it will um that that we would see a decrease in uh for property tax rates uh for taxpayers um so well I'm going to keep moving I mentioned this the equitable budgeting model before so I won't go back into that but um and that led to that rise allocation that I mentioned earlier and the rise themes that I mentioned earlier we do have a surplus so I mentioned the surplus and we're assuming an audited audited FY 21 fund balance of approximately 3.6 million dollars and we're going to allocate that in these three ways 1.5 million going to the FY 23 budget to keep honestly to keep tax rates down and to keep the to to be conscious of that and and it goes to the budget to cover the things in the budget that that we will need without having to make an additional ask 600,000 to enhancing downtown BHS we knew going into downtown BHS that we would need to experience school there and make some improvements we've already made some improvements to downtown BHS we've raised some we've we've put up walls to the ceiling in some classrooms we've added some doors we know we need more there so this this allows us to to do uh to do that and then 1.5 million to the new BHS BTC project to reduce the need to borrow for this project so the other big assumption um or the big kind of guiding principle in the budget was to be mindful of the the fact that we're we are planning to ask um voters to support a bond to build a new high school in November of 2022 and so we've been we've been looking for ways to to raise money both internally and externally and we're going to continue to do that work but part of what we wanted to do here with the surplus is put some of the surplus funds toward that project and so with this and we've been able to set aside 10 million dollars from the American Rescue Plan funding we're we now have 11.5 million dollars that we're able to put toward um put toward that that new high school so here's the here's the question um I imagine many of you have have seen it oops and so the the question is shall the voters of the district school district approve the school board to spend 98 million and some um which is the amount of the which is the amount the school board has determined to be necessary to ensure uh for the ensuing fiscal year it is estimated that this budget proposed budget if approved will result in education spending of 19 uh thousand per pupil again this is a big one that we have to continue to to figure out over the next couple of years and I think the the biggest way that we will make a dent in this is through as an updated funding formula that fairly funds Burlington schools and because right now we are not we are not fairly funded and you can see that in in the way that our neighbors are funded versus how how we are um and that this projected spending which I already kind of explained the why uh per equalized pupil is 13.13 higher than the current year um we added this language that spending at this level could produce a property tax rate decrease of 6.98 percent that's a current estimate based on 90 million a 90 million dollar surplus and again based on the law that that um that that surplus goes back to districts um we do note in our in all of our materials and in all of our presentations that that could change depending on what the legislature decides to do and so but right now we don't know what that would be and anything we decide we said would be speculation and this is this is what we know at this point um so with that I think I'll I'll open it up okay we'll use the um raise hand function to ask questions all right I see a couple I see Deb Bhutan first Deb if you could unmute and ask your question yeah hi thank you for that Tom um I'm concerned that you know there's still the big disconnect that people don't understand how an increase is going to lower their taxes so I I guess I'm not optimistic that this is going to pass but um beyond that the thing that that I'm confused I mean I'm always confused about some of this but um the in your calculations you refer to the homestead rate and the amount that's going to come from homestead taxes why aren't non homestead tax taxes figured into that um and this is just a question I've been um trying to find out more about lately because the rates are so similar um that it's yeah anyway I don't know you're just only bringing in the non I mean the homestead rates into this right we are um well first yeah we are bringing in when we look at the key kind of tax variables where we are thinking about or we're utilizing education spending equalized pupil count the homestead dollar yield and the common level of appraisal and those those are the tax variables right but but we also have taxes I mean more and more people have been buying up homes and they're paying the non non homestead tax rate right anyway I just that's where I get very confused by this and more Martine you're gonna answer right or explain well I was I was just gonna throw out there that this isn't a decision that Burlington makes this is some this is a formula set by the state yeah so um you know we we don't we only you know we don't have a lot of freedoms in how we make these calculations um yeah okay I see thanks right this is this is uh state statute the way the calculations are determined yeah and I will say to your to your first question I know that's on on people's minds and I want people to I want everyone to know and people to know here we have used that last clause multiple times in the past few in the past seven or eight years we used it in 2017 and so the the idea is because because it's so complicated we want to we want people to understand what the the impact or what we are projecting the impact on taxes to be but have people also understand that that is that is a projection and so so we're trying to do our best to do that here and we use language that we used in 2017 um and um on on a ballot to do a similar to do a similar thing all right okay Jeff Comstock uh yes thank you um you mentioned that your equalized pupil count went down by 200 yes and I'm curious whether whether that is a loss of 200 of of students who were in the equalized pupil count or uh or have some of those pupils uh students migrated out up and out of the eligibility category so I'm I'm I'm trying to grasp on you know where you know given that an equalized pupil count of 200 it really means some number less than 200 of actual students and did they leave the district or did they lose eligibility and kind of the sort of the follow-up thought there is you know in terms of trying to it seems like a losing struggle to try to uh make up funding for the budget through um through equalized students by raising by raising just by raising the uh you know the ratio at which they're funded in order to make up our our funding shortfall that I don't know that seems like a losing treadmill proposition to me but thank you yeah so it is it is 200 students so 200 fewer students in the schools but that's not year over year that's over a three year period of time because they they've pulled the equalized pupil over three years and give us that number and one of the things that we are doing with our equitable budgeting model which I kind of alluded to a little bit earlier in the presentation is aligning staffing to funding at at the school level right we can't continue to staff at the same level uh if we don't have the same number of students and so the equitable funding model um shows us that we need to look more deeply at our secondary schools and so but I didn't want to I didn't think it was um wise to cut positions while we have implemented a new budget model and we need to learn about the impact of that budget model and so we are we are going to do a study of the secondary schools and staffing and and look at uh yeah and so we'll have a we'll have a report with recommendations on staffing what we've seen for enrollment over the past number of years is some decline in elementary school we had a bubble in eighth grade but we saw decline in elementary the middles were were robust and then high school we we we lost some students when we moved to downtown bhs and so that's something that we need to be really mindful of it's not it's not it's not this the 200 is spread across all grades right but we need to be really mindful of of our high school right and and and what kind of high school we will be able to offer our students so that people stay and keep their kids in the schools um and then the third variable is covet i mean covet we've been in covet almost two years now uh or we've been in operate we've been operationalizing school during covet for the past couple of years and we know that people have left the schools for for uh here and across the state and country um because of covet so i think it's a number of different factors and though there's not one way out right but if we have an unfair funding formula we can't get out we have to have a fair funding formula and we we know we don't have it that's that's fact everyone will i haven't found anyone uh who has disagreed that the funding formula is unfair all right i just want to end by saying that i i think i i like the concept of internal restructuring and redirection of budget dollars at at each grade level kind of thing i i think that's uh i think that's a good concept um sort of beyond that i have to admit i get quite lost thank you yeah it's understood and i'm had uh jeff i'm happy to talk if my um nathan lavry is our executive director of finance and operations he's he's happy to talk he understands the the every nuance of the budgeting very well and so um the between the two of us we're happy to talk more if you if you want to you know ask more questions about it i think it's better for people to know yeah thank you thank you all right we have time for some more questions matt harlbert thanks jeff and thanks tom um because this year is not a good year to understand percentages because it's a new tax bill because taxes will reassess it was supposed to have been fair but a lot of people have been grossly increased and a lot of people have gone down it's just complicated so when you say that the per pupil tax rate has increased in this proposed budget by 13 percent this year because we can't really compare in my mind so statistically what has that per pupil increase looked like over the last two three four years are we consistent is it always about a 13 percent 13 just sounds really high to me but i don't know what the past years have been no 13 percent is high and that is that is a combination of factors that you and you mentioned them and that is the that is the equalized pupil right that's not the the tax rate the tax rate the property tax rate is something different so is it higher per pupil because there's less pupils that is why the spending per equalized pupil is 13 percent that's one of the three reasons so it's the overall spending it's it's the surplus so we've been able to utilize surplus and and then it's the the 3.1 percent increase that we are proposing uh or sorry 3.3 percent increase that we are proposing for the budget for the so that's that's really what needs to be focused on is the 3.3 percent right i think in past years it's been pretty equal wasn't it 2.9 last year or something yeah yeah it's usually yeah that's the number to focus on the 13.13 is with 200 less students the math makes the per go up so that yeah and i think the tax the the the estimated tax impact is also you know something that i i think people should understand and so we've tried to try to articulate that here um and that is because of the ed fund can i just add matt to your point and question um i do think this year is an aberration i don't foresee that we will continue to have this kind of increase year after year um and i you know kendra and i as the co-chairs of uh facilities and finance you know this is something that we're going to really be focusing on and as i said a few weeks ago when i spoke you know as as citizens of burlington we're going to have some options right if this continues to be an issue we have some schools that aren't full at the moment so that might be something that we look at in the future it the city of burlington has not had an appetite for closing a school in the past but that might be something that we have to discuss in the future um are we able to bring some students back to the district if not what can we look at in terms of making some um cost savings in the future um i would also i just want to say since i'm speaking now you know we all also have the opportunity to speak to our legislators and our governor about what he's going to do with that education fund it's important that they hear from us um you know that that money is there and if we want it to stay there then then we need to speak up and a lot of you have already spoken up about the weights which has been super helpful thanks thanks martin it's about um six minutes left and so if we could go rapid fire with questions bob dunkin you have your hand up and um then i'll go up to david kirk but bob up for some reason you're not at the top of the screen but did you ask your question sure thank you uh tom you you said that um you didn't want to speculate on the property tax uh money that would come back from the state but you're assuming that the law would be it would be refunded as per the law which would be the full 90 million do you know offhand what berlington's share of that 90 million would be and so if we if we were to hear on the radio for instance that only half of that was going to be uh remain in the education fund that we would know that therefore there's a certain percentage that berlington we get and how that would impact our this speculated 6.98 decrease yeah bob thank you for that question unfortunately i don't have that i don't have the a whole number um for for a decrease um if if we were to see the ed fund part of the ed fund go in a to a different direction um i don't i don't have the number you know because i again i'd be speculating on what that number could be i have no idea what that number could be um but berlington must be getting some million dollars some many millions out of the 90 million as the as the largest school district in the state so if if we if the ed fund goes down to 30 million instead of 90 million wouldn't we get a third of what we would normally get yes is that so so i guess that's what i'm trying to understand if you if you were to tell me that berlington out of the 90 million would be getting you're expecting 90 which would result in a six point whatever we get would result in 6.98 decrease if berlington got half of what we're supposed to get that decrease would be some smaller number not half because it doesn't go that in that in that same way uh but if we were so if we're if we're 20 million of the 90 million that comes to berlington and and then the states is willing to give 30 then then we know we're going to get a third of 20 million then our tax rate is going to be substantially less or the decrease is going to be substantially less but seem to me that yeah you would know what berlington share of that 90 million is yeah i don't have that on my fingertips but i can i can try to pull it as we're getting question okay thank you i will say bob some of the things that we've heard from the governor and others is the the desire to invest in workforce development in cte and and in even we've heard a little bit that there may be some talk about using the ed fund to support the change in the per pupil in the funding formula again those are just things we're hearing at this point from different people and and legislature would need to act but in those case in each of those cases we would we would the district would would stand to benefit from from those decisions so i think there's there there are multiple kind of there there are multiple different ways that that could play out i guess okay next question david kirk it's costing us about 20 000 per equalized student per year per what it says on the ballot and realistically it's almost 28 000 per student to educate them in berlington with this 13 increase using your math using your numbers off the ballot and the amount of students that berlington has so if it costs us 28 million dollars per student and we're losing students uh you have you said when we lost 200 students uh in the last two years i figured it closer to 250 um but either way um and and you have chosen not to make any any decreases in the school with uh 200 less students in it it seems a little um like we're just patting ourselves and um paying for things that maybe we need to look at decreases especially with the 200 student um 200 less students in the district i mean sx has got more students than we currently do and their student body um and they're doing it for thousands of dollars less per equalized student um and i'm just using the numbers from berlington's website and sx's website to get this information i'm not you know i'm not a scholar but i'm just using the information that people are people are given and i'm trying to make sense out of why berlington sees the need for a 13 million dollar increase i understand we spent you know we're showing a surplus every year so it seems kind of painful to come up with a 13 percent increase when we're showing um windfalls you had a three and a half million dollar um surplus you said so as a taxpayer paying my taxes i understand that there's a chance we're going to get some decrease from the the state but there's no guarantee that and you know that as well as i do that you're not even going to know that number for months so it's very hard for the taxpayer to make a educated assessment on 13 and a half percent increase right david thank you for that question i i think the the one thing to clarify is that the budget is um is three point what was the number three point nine percent three point one percent more the proposed budget for fiscal year 23 is three point one percent more than last year and the overall budget is 98 million dollars um and so i think we were at 95 something 95 million last year um and it's 19 000 per equalized pupil uh so that's what we're paying per equalized pupil and that is a number and i'm glad you brought up sx because sx i i love sx i had no problem with sx they are benefiting from the funding formula that is unfair there there are a couple of districts that are that that all the studies that are telling us that the funding formula is unfair that's one of the districts right so that that is why uh that is one reason it's not why it's not the only reason and we do have work to do david we do have to think about uh the way that we're we're staffed and ensure that the way that we're staffed is is efficient um and what's best for kids the challenge with 200 students we have 13 school programs we have nine schools so we're pretty we're pretty small i'm from districts that are a lot bigger uh in terms of numbers but we have a lot of schools we have nine we have nine schools that's a lot of schools um for for the number of students we have so you know we do have we do have some some serious work to do uh to to think about how we're allocating our resources and that work needs to happen um needs to be really carefully thought through and implemented uh and i would say we're in that first phase this equitable budgeting model understanding where all the staff are the the we've we developed ratios at each school so we've developed we and we didn't have these before what are the ratios that that all elementary schools should have student to teacher right middle school student to teacher we had no ratios so we're trying to really understand uh our our current budget and where there are places where we we can think differently about it um so i think it's i think it's two things i think and i think you're right uh that we need to look hard um and i think we need to do that over over over time and we're we're fortunate this year that we have an ed fund that is healthy more we didn't think we were gonna have a healthy ed fund two years ago we thought that we would be it would be catastrophic and it's not um and and that's i think you know good leadership around around the finances in the state so uh we do have the that that that ability to keep tax property tax rates low this year um through the ed fund which and we know ed fund dollars are going to come to to the districts um last year it was 74 million um so we're gonna keep that so we're gonna you know the ed fund's gonna keep some of that ed fund surplus is going to come to us we know that for sure and and we believe that that is going to decrease the property tax rate uh on education for taxpayers truly uh and we know i'm gonna have to call it here um we're we're about three minutes over into the next presenter um so i i really appreciate this good discussion um any follow-up um if folks had questions should they go to i make one last just real quick remark which is just um something kender and i talked about um you know just a reluctance in covid to make any major changes we are in a pandemic we've we've sort of been holding steady david i hear what you're saying 100 there's also a teacher shortage there are droves of educators who are leaving and so when we do make if and when we do make adjustments to our staffing it needs to be thoughtful and it needs to be something that we've really given you know some time and thought to i just wanted to throw that out there and i'm happy to speak to people about an overweighted district versus an underweighted district because i've lived in both worlds so yes as am i and i do feel like in covid we do need to be careful like there were a lot of families who chose to homeschool that will go back and so we we cannot cut pro you know uh staffing until we actually come out of the pandemic and get to a baseline normal um so and federal immigration policy has also played a role in our decreased numbers so we want to see what a normal year looks like but we are we are up to looking and doing the hard work as tom and martin has said and and we are happy to talk to anybody offline um we've been living and breathing this for a while and that the funding formula is super complicated and so and a lot of factors go involved into it and the equalized people affects your tax rates in a way that is so significant that that's why we keep bringing it to you so in addition to our own budget but the common level appraisal also affects your budget and the education spending so there's things that are outside of our control as well and those four things really only one of those things are in our control so that's important to know with education funding thank you all right thanks you guys we are going to move on to our next um ballot item topic um the great streets main street concept design and presentation um this evening we have olivia and laura presenting and i believe brian is here as well if there's questions that go over to your expertise so uh i'm going to start sharing my screen and i'll try to get through this quickly and see if uh we can leave as much time as possible are you guys all seeing a uh presentation great so yeah we're here to primarily talk about main streets concept and as a revitalization projects but we'll also touch a little on the ravine sewer which is inside of ballad item four as well as the ballot numbers themselves but going through the background why are we here main streets really not so great right now there's a lot of deterioration of surfaces and infrastructure green belts that are struggling um ADA and accessibility challenges throughout the corridor as well as really old infrastructure under the ground there is a large water main that serves the reservoir that is 130 years old that goes up main street and so regardless of what we do on ballot item number four that's under the ground and that'll eventually have to get replaced so the city started our effort on great streets back in 2016 after our first tiff ballot vote under that effort we looked at a concept plan that included st paul street city hall park as well as the six blocks of main street that we're here to talk about today we did this in um as three large projects so that we could have a cohesive feel and also work on developing something called our downtown streetscape standards and so this document that came in front of the city council in 2018 helps us inform what we're going to do with our streets inside of this downtown block this gives us materials layouts of streets for transportation different purposes it's not to create a uniform look but more of a unified look so that generally as you arrive in the downtown of brolington streets can relate to each other but also have a unique personality or feeling our team that we've hired to help us with this effort of great streets is working at the street in three primary components they're functional the community led portions as well as the unique and beautiful items within the street so thinking about the functional components who and how are we going to be using the street we want to make sure that all modes of transportation are accommodated pedestrian cyclists vehicles transit riders as well as the adjacent business owners that that have storefronts servicing off main street this means making sure that there are safe connections at our intersections as well as potentially mid-block creating spaces for people to pause rest or just gather within the street also remembering that it needs to be functional i'm still going to need to serve transit on the street we still need to be able to have people of all abilities moving around as well as managing our stormwater that comes down main street it's a steeper street it has a lot of impervious surface that it feeds and so this is going to be an important component of the project also remembering that throughout this entire process you know we're supporting the businesses along main street that need to work through the construction but main streets are gateway to our entire downtown and our waterfront and so this project has a community wide impact which is why we are targeting such a large audience with our outreach this rendering was done during the original effort so it's just kind of a talking piece but it really outlines some of the goals that are within the standards that are wider dedicated pedestrian spaces tree belts that can be hard skated but they still serve a green function and so they are pervious pavers there's tree infrastructure underneath the ground but it allows activation and different use on top of it for main street specifically our bike walk plan calls for dedicated pedestrian bikes bicycle facilities in this rendering it's bicycle lanes in each direction up at the grade of a pedestrian downtown street standards have parking on both sides of the street they look to add on-street rain garden features and then obviously the accommodation of vehicle travel so as we break down that picture into kind of the three groupings the functional elements of the street this image starts to hint at one of the really important pieces that's a little understated in our efforts today but it's the underground utilities it speaks to our water and our sewer that are underneath the ground as well as adding in a dedicated stormwater piping system so that at the bottom of of main street at battery when the city is ready we can capture water that will have already been separated along main street like a lot of our old north end and new north end had already had a sewer separation project main street will already be separated and it's pretty close to the lake so we have a few ideas but nothing I can elaborate on but a couple ideas about how to take that water off main street and put it into an outfall that goes out to the lake other things that we are looking for and really looking for feedback as we shape our concept is about the community led spaces you know how it interact how the space is going to interact with the roadway and the adjacent businesses as well as kind of the features and the feelings that come up with so what we've done to date we've heard some feedback you know concerns that this is the first that you've heard of this project since 2016 it's a little bit by design we've been working on other projects main street is starting now there's going to be a few months of community input until our designers kind of take that and turn it around and then push it back out so this is what we've heard from you and this is how it fits on main street that effort of taking in feedback will continue until late april where we will then meet again with various community meetings and leadership meetings structured meetings and bring back those concepts for consideration and then ultimately you know continue through design with all the outreach and more targeted feedback and then finally ending in construction and we'll get the schedule a little bit later one of the things we want to make sure as we hear all of our voices in our community and we realize that some of our structured meetings don't necessarily get the full range of community members that we have so we've targeted some focus groups we've met with some youth of our community 11th and 12th graders my gosh those guys have had more brilliant ideas than i think i've heard the entire great streets process so it was really inspiring to meet with them we've met with the businesses along main street as well as a lot of the downtown over the last five weeks immigrant and refugees are scheduled for mid-march as well as a mobility focused group in in middle of march and we're still working on the scheduling but we do have a BIPOC group focus group that we are working on coordinating so one of the things you'll see on the great streets website is you can find the presentations that were done for the community by our consultant in the beginning of february there's also poll questions and so if you want some sort of structured way to give us feedback there is a sheet in there that you can look at the questions that we asked during that meeting but some really inspiring ones you know like what do you what tomorrow what do you want main street to become switching gears a little bit i'll talk about the ravine sewer so this is on the ballot item it wasn't part of the previous bond vote so we haven't really been able to start on this so main street had a component that was voted on in 2015 which is why we are where we are today and able to continue or have started this early the ravine sewer won't start until a little bit later the portion that we are looking to do some work on is the section of this ravine sewer it's this purple line here it runs between college streets and main street orientation this is Memorial Auditorium this is the fire station and this is the library and so this sewer cross cuts this gateway block as it's referred to about 20 to 25 feet in the ground 160 years old i'll show you a picture of the inside of it on the next slide but you know it cross cuts this parking lot and based on the location the age the depth and the way that it's constructed it really limits what we can do with this area and we'll get into why so why are we talking about the ravine sewer it is a six foot redstone tunnel in this location it is very uneven on the inside and the floor actually will step down in various places just based on the way that it's constructed and so for these top three reinforce repair and rehabilitate if we were to allow development to happen on top of this without doing any substantial changes to the ravine sewer there are concerns about how much reinforcements going to be needed to put over the top of this to build above it there's also concerns about how would we ever repair it with a building above it in its current condition and then the third is in its current shape construct size however it is down there we can't use our common rehabilitation practices such as relining that's used inside of a formed structured pipe so that leads us to why this is on the ballot these last two items here about relocating there is the option that we looked at that we could potentially relocate to the the sewer by interrupting it on college street and bringing it down south for new ski there is also the possibility of reconstructing in place and creating an actual pipe shape that in the future if there were concerns or need to maintain it underneath an existing underneath a new building or new whatever happens to be there but a traditional shape with new materials would go a long ways towards facilitating that so where are we going with all of this this is a schedule slide so over the next few months we're going to continue to work on refining the concepts and taking in feedback so please feel free to reach out you'll get an email address for Olivia at the end of the slide so you're ready to write that down we'll move into design and permitting next ultimately with the target to start construction on main street in 2023 it's a minimum of two years it's a little bit of a wild card on the east end because as we talk about the ravine sewer we're really not starting that work until after the bond boat till after the funding is approved to be spent on that that project which then puts it a little bit behind main streets development and ultimately depending on what is decided for the work type at that end of the project digging and replacing and putting in a new probably five foot six foot diameter sewer and that corridor will be likely create a little bit more than a two-year plan there we do want to highlight and we've heard it a lot already about how are we going to keep people engaged in this project both taking in feedback and providing out information we have a consultant that is scheduled to help us through all phases of this project and so we're really working on improving that effort knowing how much main street is to the community to do a quick highlight of ballot item number four how it relates to the work that you've just seen and heard me talk about we're estimating that the green street main street project and ravine sewer is about thirty million five hundred thousand dollars worth of work of that we have an existing bond approval from 2015 of about four and a half million dollars which buys down and and and relates to ballot item number four as a request for new debt of twenty five point nine two million dollars it also has an item called related costs of one point four seven million dollars and that's really to help with the admin project management staff time audit consulting that cost is over the next fourteen years which is the remaining life of the district whereas the twenty five point nine really speaks to the actual main street and ravine sewer projects so where can you get more information or how do you get in touch with us olivia's email is oh daris d a r i s s e at burlington bt dot gov um you can also find her email on our great streets btv website and if you're still looking for more information about the ballot um there is a banner right at the top of the burlington bt dot gov website which will lead you to those questions and so that's where we're at um and i will take this down in just a second in case people are copying things down great so questions now on yes all right great t g i c um your hand up all right thank you so much thanks for that presentation uh my one question and i've i mean i i think this is a complicated topic it's hard to understand but who owns that parking lot like who stands to benefit from that that all that work being done is that privately owned or is that owned by the city of burlington the city of burlington owns the parcel it's managed by dpw's parking services but there are other city owned parcels within that block as well okay and so if this is done and now all of a sudden that parcel could be used for something else are there are there thoughts or plans about how that could generate revenue for the city of burlington that's not dpw's role so maybe i'll toss that one to brian sure the um the goal here is to make that infrastructure investment that's needed to allow for um for that process to um develop and evolve but there is no there's no project pending right now for a private entity but the idea would be that it would be put essentially through a public process to either sell or lease for a development project to um to take place on that property to generate jobs and commerce and tax revenue great thank you that boon yeah thank you um thanks laura for that presentation it was helpful um what what what will happen if the vote doesn't uh isn't doesn't pass and will the project be scaled back will the design be altered will you do part of it what will happen now that's a great question and one that we we've certainly talked about internally um we're coming to you guys in march because it really provides the best opportunity and timeline to go for the bond and funding a little bit later there would be an opportunity um to act on this again in november i mean would be terrible with other city initiatives but um it would give us more time to to work with the community and find out what what scale of a project is appropriate or just answer questions if that's the area of concern okay so you would wait until november if to do anything at all then that's the answer that i know of really ultimately it's the administration's call as to how they would proceed forward okay thank you at hurlbert thank you just a few questions and some of them are selfish my office is at the bottom of main street so the first thing that pops up is remembering back to st paul it was a pretty extensive period of closed and businesses suffered so what's the anticipated plan for closure and then as far as the actual hardships is there a plan for increased parking which i think would be great or are you decreasing parking um and i i guess those are the big ones moving traffic is are we've closed half the streets down from three or four lanes to two lanes recently is there a plan to scale back moving traffic or is there a plan to move more traffic more fortunately um some of the other nearby city projects are the parkway would make an effort towards trying to to keep people more on main street versus some of the side streets and even the real yard enterprise would do so main streets plan is to still have its two lanes one in each direction and its final configuration and really during construction especially commute hours um i could still see that being a requirement that we hold our contractor to and that's where the two years of construction is also a little unsure you know until our designers get into what the design that our community helps leads us to as well as some of the nitty gritties of doing construction and what's necessary underground um it's still an open conversation as it relates to parking the proposal to be able to really unlock the potential of main street and what it you know can be today to serve our community and what it needs to be in the future to help with our climate emergency goals it does move the parking from being parallel to uh or from being diagonal to parallel so there would be a a loss of parking um to be able to provide accommodations for the other modes of transportation cars are still the primary mode of transportation so if you're going to reduce parking where are you going to increase it to at least stabilize and hopefully increase for the downtown businesses there's not a plan to provide any new or increased parking the project would help direct with new wayfinding to the available existing parking the existing wayfinding system was only ever allowed to go towards public parking and so we weren't able to make use of the private parking capacity that exists very nearby it's also to help the shifts in the idea of destination parking which is pulling up to a parking space and literally just going into a business and then coming right back out to more of a district parking which also will help the entire downtown economy by getting people moving around on foot and at a slower pace I do want to highlight you know when we come back in April we will have more information about the parking loss and and kind of changes but looking at our city's parking trends you know the highest parking months are July and August followed very closely by September and October and so those are generally fair weather months when the city's parking capacity is much higher than what it needs to be in some of the off seasons and so which is when people who are local who are using their cars so we are looking at kind of that whole balance as it relates to a parking model in this area in the downtown it I I love taking in feedback it helps to you know educate and inform all of us as to especially people who are nearby who are watching and seeing this I just think of a lot of clients and friends that own businesses restaurants retail and it's not easy and I have so many friends that just don't like to come into town because they feel it's difficult to find parking on a Friday or Saturday night for dinner and if you're decreasing it what happens when we're out of COVID and there's a show at the Flynn and that's a serious question that's not a joke that's no I I I can fully respect that we've actually had a really productive conversation with the Flynn you know and I fall in the same category I live far enough away that you know I would prefer to drive downtown but I'm going to look for structured parking and know that I can walk a block or two to where I need to go but yeah people who are not familiar with the downtown like I might be don't find it I agree and I have my resources but the average person that comes in occasionally doesn't so I just really caution the city's decision to remove parking for those businesses we're having a really hard time maintaining downtown business with them all closure closures on church street I would encourage to help them not squeeze them thank you yeah thank you Sarah carpenter um just a quick comment um Deb had asked about what happens if this doesn't fail and um I've asked that question very strongly and really feel that the Tiff is the right answer otherwise that ravine sewer the storm water the pipe that goes all the way down main street we're going to have to fund that another way which is general capital bonding or increased water and sewer rates and the Tiff is difficult to explain but it is an opportunity that we've got today to do that if we don't choose to do that we still have an obligation to fund most of what was presented and that would be the traditional old way of a property tax increase or a water tax increase so this is a more cost-effective way to do this Sarah is what you're saying my opinion yes yeah okay thanks okay next Bob pooper sorry we missed you earlier but glad to see you I was over on the youtube feed decided I should show up here in case somebody had a question but I want to echo what Matt just said about uh parking and the general move towards decreasing it uh we live in a state with a really old population and mobility is an issue so that's something that really should be weighed a little more heavily than just uh the the upfront how many spaces how many people think I've worked at the flin for years and it's amazing the number of people that come there that really have a tough time getting there um all I have to say on it thanks yep no thank you for that and and this project has the opportunity to help improve accessibility um you know some of the conversations that we've had with the flin are about the acts you know the the spaces that are nearby to that facility as well as their ability to pair ticket sales with with structured parking sales so these are comments that help lead to other conversations that lead to new strategies so we appreciate that um there was a comment or a question during the public forum from Bob that talked about the existing parcels in the downtown that are already contributing to if the three big ones are Stratos the Hilton garden and Champlain college are the three existing parcels that really were not in our 2011 tax base that exist now and are providing significant increment um for kind of those point sources as well as the background growth that sarah spoke to and that's just the um the natural property value appreciation not tax increase lord do you see this um coming out to the new north end to um north ave um you know because you you showed pictures at the beginning of you know the state of main street but I feel like our north avenue is even in worse shape than main street um will that filter out to this ward four and seven um i'm not sure that it'll it'll do it in a great streets way but i do know that you know the north ave corridor had significant proposed improvements that we are are still working towards the paving of north ave is in our bid package and we get contractor bids next week so it is something we are very aware of the condition of you know the immediate condition of pavement um and that would be scheduled for being repaired this summer at that no it's a it's a good question but thank you guys all for your your time tonight we appreciate it yeah thank you for your presentation and the questions we're going to move on to our next topic um we have an update from the ad hoc redistricting committee um i know that uh jeff is here um and um we have robert as well and any other representatives i know jeff you invited some other folks yeah can i ask that we can ask that we maybe give bob hooper a minute of his two minutes that he would have had earlier today um before moving into the ad hoc regarding what robert well he's our um state representative along with carol odi for district six one right see what's left at the end maybe although i might have input on this redistricting thing too i'm good with that okay um i'm going to go through this sort of try to do this fairly quickly so the the ad hoc redistricting committee that the city council put together last fall the the ad hoc committee filed or presented its report to the city council at the last meeting in january on january 28th and our january 24th excuse me so i think what i would like to do is just uh go through a short list of some of the priority concepts that the committee recommended to city council to consider when they make their mapping criteria decisions so the big ones at the top of the list was that uh folks really wanted multiple representation per ward so there wasn't necessarily any number assigned to that and that would kind of depend on how many wards we ended up with but definitely multiple representation per ward and that's really coupled with a dislike of the district concept so going forward uh perhaps the the district the north south you know uh central etc district concept would go away and we would go back to potentially two representative two city councilors per ward the other sort of major concepts or is that uh in an attempt to equalize um population among the uh among the wards uh but well yeah there's a as robert would tell you that the target is uh that the population should be evenly distributed among the wards within a 10 percent uh deviation so so yeah so equalized population is a goal also uh a very strong recommendation to maintain neighborhood uh continuity neighborhood characteristics are really important and to use uh significant natural boundaries whether it be physical boundaries or roadway boundaries in terms of trying to divide separate existing neighborhoods and the other major outcome was in the acknowledgement that ward 8 in its current configuration uh really isn't serving the city very well um because it's uh primary you know it turned out to be a very student heavy ward and as a functioning ward it really hasn't worked very well because uh with the 2020 census it actually had it actually had the highest one of the highest population wards and yet as a functioning ward it has the lowest voter turnout of any of the wards in the city and the npa's in the wards one and eight are actually having a very different difficult time functioning because they're not getting enough uh full-time resident uh participation in those organizations so so the so the goal would be to uh one of the goals would be to reconfigure the ward that ward and redistribute the student population among the some of the neighboring uh wards so as far as the city council's uh role going forward one of the major objectives the city council is going to have to decide for itself actually what's the the appropriate size of the council going forward do they are they going to uh look at going back to a seven ward map which has odd consequences or reconfigure an eight ward map so that you would either have a 14 or 16 member city council and in a lot of ways uh that's the priority decision for the city council to make is what is the appropriate working size for themselves one in terms of being an effective functioning body and also how many members do they want to divide the work amongst themselves going forward so uh okay so then so this you know mark and sarah might want to chime in on this if they've had uh some discussions uh recently but the other important thing i want folks to know is that uh originally under the original resolution the aim was to have this project completed by town meeting day and put on the ballot for folks to consider and so it's important to recognize or that the council has recognized that this job isn't going to be completed by the current sitting council and will have to this work will have to continue with the new council so as far as the schedule for interested people to be aware of is that uh the city council will have to propose a draft ward map and then boundary definitions ward boundary definitions sometime in the spring which will require a fairly robust public hearing process for people to participate in so that's going to be in the spring another opportunity for public input and comment and on potential map boundary or ward boundary revisions and then whatever proposed charter change will be revised over the summer and most likely appear on the november ballot coming forward so with that i guess i would like to offer uh uh robert you or um mark and sarah any sort of insights on where the city council is and currently in terms of considering these mapping priorities well we're behind in which is pretty knowledgeable so we had a quick conversation today with um the city um and the plan is for uh we've asked megan title to propose and we've talked there about um a new timeline and schedule so it this would have to be agreed to by the whole council but the presumption is on the 7th they will propose something that would likely start up again in april probably start with a work session with the new council um or new members of the council and the current members of the council reviewing what you've just reviewed but in a work session setting and then go from there you know what we probably need to make an end decision by mid july so we would have from mid april to mid july to work out all the public hearing in the mapping the city's mapping specialist has retired um so there there is a replacement but there's some catching up to do so that's really all i need to report is that we don't expect to do much in the month of march we will it'll restart in april with some sort of work session at which time the city the sitting sitting city council will um try to make up our minds on um those questions you asked mark i don't know if you have want to add yeah i'll just add that yes the council is committed to having this on the november ballot um even though we couldn't um meet some of the earlier deadlines and director tuttle has suggested that we would have to have maps ready for council approval by um our july 18th or august 15th meetings in order to meet that timeline and we still think that there's plenty of time but um like sarah indicated we need to have um we need to sort of discuss as a council you know when we're going to have a work session and start and begin that work and i and i do uh i do concur with um the just assessment that with the first the first consideration is how big is the council and and you know once we determine that and determine you know whether or not we'll have districts or you know whatever then maps would flow forward from from there along with other considerations but that's where we are we are behind we acknowledge it but we'd rather do it right than do it fast so um we think that the november timeline is is uh achievable i mean the November ballot uh is achievable may i add a point of information sure okay so there's no chat on this uh so i was unable to point post any links so what you have to do is go to the city council site the board docs and go to the uh january 24th regular city council meeting and it's item 2.01 and uh there's several documents on there but there is the um the memo from the uh redistricting committee to council that is i think what you should read um and i don't think that that memo is particularly bad uh some people were unhappy with it but i'm not um and i did add an addendum to it um and i won't go into any of the details but i went into detail in my addendum that's all i wanted to say thank you all right jeff all right so bob um can you shed some light on this from the state side um maybe i should start with an apology because it felt kind of the last minute uh we threw a big wrench into the works by throwing burlington 11th representative to the uh government and you know on on the eighth i got called into a meeting that basically i'm paraphrasing but it said we've got an extra person that we don't know where to put uh we're thinking about and i gave it a thumbs up pretty quickly uh barbara rachelson's district up by uvm the ward uh kind of ambiguous thing is going to be expended that'll be a two person district there's one incumbent one empty seat so that'll be something that'll be taken up um and pretty much the rest of the wards in town except for those that that bump up against that particular uh district will remain the same ours both six one and six two here uh will remain the same um that's sort of the the quick nod okay i guess this is a quick follow-up to that i just want uh folks to understand that um that the ad hoc redistricting committee is specifically focused on the the ward boundary jurisdictions within the city and and bob's committee at the house government ops is is really dealing with the report from the legislative apportionment board which deals with the the state representative boundaries and uh when these two processes conclude this year or next then we will all have to get used to uh a new set of overlapping boundaries between our wards and our state rep districts so we can go back to being confused all over again about where we're supposed to vote or who knows you might all just come together unless city council decides that they want to have 11 counselors and have one ward that has a single counselor ward then we could have identical maps but i would not want to be in that ward that has only one counselor oh i guess i should add sort of in closing that the other concept that was um pretty widely rebuffed um in the ad hoc redistricting process was the concept of at large city counselors where city counselors would be essentially elected citywide and everybody that participated in this process was really much more interested in maintaining their representation uh affiliated with their local neighborhoods quick questions from mark and sarah um this is more just a comment two other things that are i think more minor but floating around in possibilities with the charter change would be a charter change that would allow the city the next time to do the redistricting without having to go to the legislature there's a number of communities that do that um and we can't do it until we get a charter change so we can't do it this time but when we're all around here 10 years from now or or less um not having to do not having to deal with the legislative timeline would be very helpful and that's what got us a little bit in trouble now because we we we have to go to the legislature and then the other thing in somewhat even more minor than that but is um the potential of maybe being able to combine polling places um so that we don't have necessarily to have one in each separate board but they could be more joint so and again we haven't discussed that at all but i want you to be aware of that i'll be super quick um and i appreciate i want to say i know robert called himself a shrub earlier but i we appreciate your advocacy and your expertise on on all matters redistricting and with regard to the legislative enforcement board maps bob is there still wiggle room now to to massage out any of the warts or are we done or was that date of the the 15th of february a hard deadline we're not clear on that and would you take comment from individual counselors i know i i've suggested that um that i like the map but there are warts as robert's pointed out and do we have an opportunity to correct any of this um robert sent the the work list in it was reviewed by a couple of the people that were intimately involved in drawing the lines and i think the consensus sort of was uh good enough and locked it in and moved on at this point we're starting to write the actual bill that will go so i i hate to say this but i will say this probably too late to be putting any uh word x on any maps okay thank you and i have a couple more things to say if you can give me 30 seconds not about this okay okay um we done with redistricting jeff robert we're good bob you got the floor i'm good okay i'll hit this real fast over the last two days i've sort of shepherded just cause and the thermal uh charter changes through the legislature both passed and are off to the senate now i have a note here that driving down north avenue is like being a fullback trying to get up through a crowd of defensive players and that's just a side note um they mentioned in the school presentation about lack of teachers on friday if you want to tune into something we'll be discussing a bill and gov ops that will allow teachers who have retired to come back into service for up for up to a year um without sacrificing their retirement benefit and the only thing that remains of the last uh meetings charter changes is uh rcvi cv whatever cv it happens to be being called and at this point we have no schedule to take it up at all um so it might get snuck in someplace between finishing on what we're doing with redistricting and a couple of other things that are kind of high on a priority thing but i'm i'm not seeing it jumping right to the top of the heap and i think it's going to be complicated no more right thank you bob hooper any questions for bob all right we went over a little bit um thank you everybody for your time and um being part of your npa um we need new members um and i'm talking to you deb i know you were thinking about it deb buton um and i did see burget earlier and i know she was thinking about it and i know you have others but if you think of anyone or you would like to become involved let us know yeah thank you system i'm in system overload right at the moment um but maybe you soon thank you appreciate it jeff thanks thanks good night everybody night thanks everybody thanks guys