 So I will go through the participant list from top to bottom and ask people to introduce themselves, and everyone can, at least for the time being, has the ability to unmute themselves. So if Perry Freeman, you say your name and your ward. Oh, sure. I'd sorry. I thought we were only doing it for speakers. My name is Perry Freeman. Oh, sorry. I'm just here to attend the meeting. What ward do you live in, Perry? I live in Ward. I live in Ward 2. I'm the City Councilor for the Central District and I'm here to attend the NPA for the New York. Thank you. All right. Thank you for coming. Franklin, your name and your ward. All right. Franklin Paulito, North District City Councilor Ward 7. And Alex is going to join us soon. He was having some trouble logging in. No, we, you're just doing introductions now. Okay. Allie's here. Gotcha. Okay. Let me just get out of the list. Matt Hurlbrook, if you could mention your name and your ward. Okay. Okay. He's Ward 7 and he is on the steering committee. Okay. Carol Oda. Hi, I'm Carol Odie Ward 4 and I'm the State Legislator. Okay. Jeff Clark. You've already introduced yourself. Nancy Komsack. Hi, I'm Nancy. I'm Nancy Komsack, Ward 7. Okay. Sal Millicamp and Bernie Carver. Hi, I'm Sal Millicamp, Ward 4. Bernie Carver, Ward 4. Thank you. Sarah Carpenter. Sarah Carpenter, Ward 4 City Councilor and Ward 4. All right. Allie. Yep. Allie Gang, Ward 7. All right. Devin Bates. He doesn't have his last name. No, Devin. Allie did. No, it says Allie's iPhone. But let's just go with the introductions right now. Devin Bates, which ward are you? He looks muted. I think he's muted. He cannot mute himself. He's from Channel 3. Okay. He needs to put his last name. I think he got off. Okay. Sheeran Hart. Matt, Ward 7, and she's here in committee. Okay. Sheeran Hart. Yeah, it's Sheeran Hart. I'm Ward 7. I'm speaking later and I will try my best to fix my lighting by then so you can actually see my face. All right. Thank you very much. I'm sorry for mispronouncing your name, Sheeran. No problem. Elizabeth Göringer. Hi, Elizabeth Goringer. I'm with the city of Burlington. I'm a transportation planner with the Department of Public Works. I'll be speaking on the last item. All right. Thank you. Emma Mulvaney-Sanek. Hi, all. I'm Emma Mulvaney-Sanek. I'm a former city counselor from the Old North End and I'm running for state representative in Chittenden 6-2, which is why I just want to introduce myself, which is the southern tier of the New North End. So thanks for having me. I have a baby who I probably have to care for in a couple of minutes. So I just wanted to at least say hi. Thank you. All right. Just this list is very dynamically changing all the time. So hopefully I'm not missing anyone. George Rutherford. George, what word are you? OK, I'll go down. OK. George is seven. OK, thank you. Oh, did he just? I think he went out. He's I pulled him out because he didn't answer. OK. I see him still. He is Ward 7. Oh, he's Ward 7. Thank you. Kathy Kalair. I don't see her on. Oh, I do. OK, if she doesn't, I put her in the weight room. Go ahead. OK. This is Monica DuVenic. Hi, I'm Monica Ivancic. I'm the Ward 7 school commissioner. OK. I just showed this record of water and it's not terrible. It's not as gross as I feel like others are. I've taken like six of them. OK, I temporarily had to mute everyone because there was something in the background. Let me just make sure that people can unmute themselves here. OK, let's see. Who else have we missed? Martha Friedman is Ward 4. OK, as far as I can tell, I've Is anyone who's not introduced themselves? OK, Kendra. Kendra Sauer is Ward 4. I'm the North District School Commissioner. OK, Martine Gulick. Martine Larock Gulick, Ward 4 school commissioner. All right. I know Kenan was waving his hand. Hi, I'm Kenan. I'm resident of Ward 7. All right. Judith? I'm Judy from Ward 7, and I'm a resident. All right, thank you, Judy. Jonathan Weber? Or Weber? Yep. Hey, Jonathan Weber, Ward 4. And also here, I'm sending local motion for one of the items later on. All right. Leanne Schulman? Hi, my name's Leanne Schulman. I'm a resident of Ward 7. All right, thank you. I think we've covered everyone's, who hasn't had a chance to introduce themselves? Oh, and Martha Mulpis, Ward 7 says that she's, she just simply doesn't have a microphone tonight. That's why she didn't introduce herself personally. So unless there's anyone else who hasn't introduced themselves, I'll return the floor back to Jeff Clark. So if everyone could use their video, we'll be using, you know, raising your hand to ask a question since we're all muted. And we'll get started. We're going to start off with elected officials. And since I see all the school board here, we'll start with the school board. And get started with them. We'd like to go first. Okay. So that's who. Monica. Martin. And Kendra. So Martin, I just unmuted. Kendra. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Those are the three. Thanks, everybody. I think I will start. I don't think my wifi is super robust. So I will keep my comments quite a brief. I first, I just wanted to thank the community for. Excellent BHS graduation ceremony. Some of you may have seen that there were signs put up around the city. The seahorse pride group raised about $7,000 in donations to put up signs and to give our seniors a really special graduation and an unusual one. They hand delivered graduation gowns to students around the city. And then they did three days of graduation ceremonies on the BHS campus where students drove into the parking lot with their families and did a kind of procession up to a tent where they were basically recognized and then were allowed to ring the BHS bell out front. So it took three days to do that. It took a lot of effort. And the community really pulled together to make it special. There was also a parade. And that occurred, I believe, for almost all of the graduating classes, so fifth grade and eighth grade as well. So thank you to everybody. There was again money raised and folks came out and made a very special. So thank you. I also just wanted to point folks in the direction of reopening guidelines for the fall. If anybody is interested, you can go on the agency of education website and what you would be looking for is a document that was posted on June 17th called safety. And health. Guidelines or guidance sorry for reopening schools fall 2020. Lay down what the plan is for reopening. Again, as you probably all know, this is a dynamic situation that could change. But it is interesting to see what the plans are for reopening in the fall. And it's a, it's a good document. It's readable and it highlights all the important points. Thank you. Hi, this is Kendra. I can go next. I want to welcome Tom plan again to our district. He starts on July 1st. He's already been hard at work meeting with district leaders and. He's been working with the school board members and principals and Vermont agency of education. So he's going to hit the ground running, which is great. And it's also pretty awesome because he is going to be moving to the new North end. So he bought a house and apple tree. So that's exciting for our, our wards over here. So I also want to talk about summer meals. We're having them provided at no charge. And they're also providing a variety of a places over there. Throughout the district. And in the north end, our sites are at North Avenue alliance church from nine to 10, nine to 10 in the morning. And also at North gate on Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 930 to 1030. And we added a supper. are having summer school that is happening and it's a hybrid. Some is in person and some is remote. It's from everything from pre-K through K to 5, middle school, special ed. We have some EL and some community partners are working with us to keep up the middle school for students. So and we wanted to say a hearty goodbye to our last superintendent of course. Superintendent Obang who basically is last last day will be at the end of June, although he's taking some much needed vacation time to get transitioned into his his next job. That's all I have. Thanks Kendra. And Monica Ivancic here, board seven school commissioner. Just wanted to say there was a going away party for Superintendent Obang last Friday at the high school where some commissioners came to say goodbye and district leaders as well. And to add to Kendra mentioned Tom Flanagan. He's moving into the New North End and he has three children. One will be attending Hunt and two will be attending Flynn I guess depending on where Appletree goes. And most of you know that I am part of the diversity. I'm co-chair of the diversity equity and inclusion committee of the school board and I've been in that role for over two years now. And across the country there's been a big effort with the killing of George Floyd to defund the police and to get SROs which stands for Safety Resource Officers out of our schools. So a lot of our community is interested in removing police officer presence in our schools. In our city we have two SROs, two active SROs Mike Hemant who staffs the Burlington High School and Jessica Norris who staffs both the middle schools. These officers also look over several other school buildings and in the elementary schools they participate in the drills, the run hide fights and other safety drills. And so with recent events as you know in the city council, lots of listening sessions, we dedicated our diversity equity and inclusion committee meeting last night to the topic of SRO presence in our schools. The city has had, sorry, the school district has had a memorandum of understanding with the Burlington police since 2015 that was signed by it's an agreement between the superintendent, so Yaobang and the chief of police, Brandon Del Pozo back then. And so in the last five years, we've been following this memorandum of understanding and police are not supposed to use punitive punishment. They're not supposed to touch children. So there's and they're also part of the restorative practices efforts in our district. So it's worked really well, but the presence of armed police at schools is very traumatic for for many people for especially our students of color. And last night, at last night's meeting, we had 57 participants. I got one more minute and then you need to wind up because we have the other officials. Okay. Yep. And so we had 15 speakers, four of which were former students. And all these speakers spoke against having SROs in our schools. And then we had somewhat of a discussion. So the board has not formed a stance on this. We have another board meeting tomorrow evening starting at 6pm. And if you would like to come and give your public comment, we'd really welcome. We want to hear from the community how you feel. And you know, everyone's concerned about safety, but we also don't want to traumatize our students. We would like to have best results. Students. Okay, I'll end there. Thank you. Thank you, Monica. Next, we'll go to the city councilors. Okay. Let me unmute. Franklin's unmuted. All right. Hi. Everybody hear me? All right. Yes. All right. So since our last meeting, we've had a lot of meetings more than you on more than usual. In large part, as I'm sure you've heard, there's been a I would say there's been two things that have been occupying or our time. The main thing being the budget this year, unlike, I would say most years historically is a contested issue where the budget is being used to, I guess, make amendments to it. So, which is amendments that are not, I guess, routine, I would say. So we've had, as I'm sure many of you have heard a lot of public forum. It was like 14 hours about the police department budget. I would say that, you know, in reviewing the last month's meetings, the other thing that's important to be aware of that I've received, I think I'm sure Councillor Carpenter and Councillor Jang will also say that we've received a lot of communication. So I even though we haven't taken action, it's worth discussing is Councillor Freeman. I understand she's at the meeting, the just economy ordinance. And, you know, if you don't know about it, basically, is a resolution looking to explore and send to committee, essentially, a question for the voters that would, voters would vote on different things. And I think many of you, we received a lot of input from, you know, people concerned about the tax for people making over 125,000 as well as selling up homes over 500,000. And I think that people should be aware of that since we have received a lot of feedback on it, even though we haven't taken action on it. So it will be at the next meeting, I think. I'm not sure it's going to be the budgetary meeting or the following, but we haven't voted on it up or down yet. You know, as to the police commission budget, I would say that it's an open question as to what's going to happen. It's really, you know, there's a large group of people calling for 30% cuts. You know, I'm not in favor and I think I've been pretty clear, I'm not in favor of any kind of dramatic 30% cut right now, unless people can show me that somehow an increased public safety. I do think some modest cuts would be. And so I think that's what we're, in my opinion, going to end up focusing on is whether the mayor's already cut it, I think 1.1 million dollars. And, you know, some of us want to see it cut a little bit more. And to be clear, the people that want to cut it, even the people want to cut it 30%, they want to redirect the resources to other programs that they feel might address the needs of the community. So it's not particularly like we're saying, we're going to take the money and put it somewhere else. We'd like to keep it in public safety. Okay, thank you. Who's next? Oh, Sarah Carpenter. Hi. Well, as Franklin pointed out, we have been spending really the last three weeks, huge amount of time trying to get public input on the budget process. So that has that has occupied all of our time. And I, for those of you who are on here, if I haven't gotten back to you, it's because we've been inundated with hundreds and hundreds of calls and emails. So we're listening. I'm listening and we're hearing and we're going to have to wrestle it out in the next next week or so. The plan is to try to make some decisions on Monday night, the 29th or that may carry over to Wednesday 30th. Other issues that I've been working on, I'm on the Community Development Committee, and we've been looking at a couple of issues around tenant protections. One of them is just cause eviction or no cause eviction. And we're just beginning that we've really not done any of the work on that. We hope to start, you know, digging into that in July. We've also been talking about the role of the Housing Board of Review and what they do around supporting tenant security deposit returns and code enforcement appeals. And is there a greater role there? And through those conversations, we've identified, I think, some significant gaps in the system around education for both landlords and tenants, which is sort of a nut we've got, we've got to crack. So that'll be working on that. Some of you also more specifically, who live in my neck of the woods, maybe aware there's been a conversation about some of the stormwater runoff that is near the Legal Bay and Lakewood. And there is actually a meeting tomorrow night at 5.30. It's been out there on Front March Forum with the Water Resources Department to specifically talk about that. And this is part of their integrated water quality planning. And for those of you haven't, I encourage you to go on their website and listen to their little webinar about what they're beginning to do. This is a result of a fairly massive amount of planning to try to clean up the lake. And it's going to take multiple efforts, including all the work on the sewer plant that we voted for. So that's really a good thing. But there's a lot of initiatives that will start affecting us, and they're going to be seeking input on, and particularly as it relates to private property owner activities and responsibility and things that private property owners might be able to do to help water quality. Hey, thank you. Ali. I just asked Ali to unmute. He has to do something on his phone to unmute himself. He's, he's having some trouble hearing, I think. May I have the, why don't we go on? You're muted if you could unmute. Hit your square. There you go. Okay, you're on. No, you're muted again. Ellie, could you hit your square and unmute? Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I am very sorry, but I cannot hear anybody for some reasons. Is it my time to speak? Yep. Okay. Yeah, so I don't know exactly what Franklin and Sarah has talked about, but I just wanted to provide some updates around what's going on in the city currently. And it is all about the budget. It is all about the demands that we have received from Rachel Justice Alliance and trying to work hard in making sure that we pass the budget by next Monday. And just want to take the time to thank all the new NorthEnders that took the time to show up and have their voices heard. And this is an announcement that actually tomorrow at 6 30, we have scheduled another Zoom meeting with constituents in the new NorthEnd to specifically talk about the demands as well as the budget and defending the police and all of that. And it's tomorrow at 6 30. We hope that you all will be able to join us. But so far we have 14 people that are available that talk to us that they will be able to attend. So I think I'll just leave it to that for the sake of time. Thank you so much. And thank you, Franklin, for sending me the link. It's still not working for some reason. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to the legislators. Carol, I see you at the top. Would you like to go first? Okay, thank you. By the way, Gina Sullivan has been trying to get on since the beginning. I sent her two links and she can't get on if anyone can help. Okay, so since the start of the pandemic and the and the emergency orders, people have sacrificed to save lives, businesses have sacrificed to save lives, essential workers have sacrificed to save lives. And now we are trying to help them. We have been given more than a billion dollars by the by the federal government to do that with Cormor really funds. And in the past three weeks, we have figured out how to spend about a billion dollars. We've never done anything like this ever before. The House is now sending that package over to the Senate to see what they think. The today we passed the first quarter budget and the pay act. But most importantly, I wanted to talk today about this morning, I was at the social equity caucus of which I've been a member since it started. And there today with us was Congressman Peter Welch. And he spoke eloquently about racism. And I want to share some of what he said. Racism is embedded in our culture. It is a lack of awareness that racism is systemic. It's not something everyone learned about in school. And because it can be a goal in our lives to be lifelong learners, we have the opportunity every day to learn and grow. Our nation has seen in Minnesota, George Floyd, for whom eight minutes and 1446 seconds completed for his life, called out to his mother and called out that he could not breathe. The same time period in New York City, a white woman whose dog was illegally unleashed in a park who threatened a black gentleman who was bird watching saying she'd call 911 and tell the police he was threatening her. And at the same time in Georgia, a young black jogger was who stopped to take a look at a construction site was shot by a father and son. All of this is just an example of the systemic racism in our country. And all of this taking place at the same time as the global pandemic where so many black and brown Americans are on the front lines providing essential services and healthcare, food processing, cleaning, nursing, doctoring, and they are disproportionately impacted adversely by COVID-19. Now is the time as we learn and grow together to make the deep systemic change that's needed so we can as a nation achieve what our Constitution promises that equal opportunity for all and that all are created equal. Regarding legislation in this area, I believe we can't have only the legislature making all the decisions we need to take the time to engage and listen around the state. And the process will be very important to get to the outcome we need. Regarding the policing presentations on tonight's agenda, I don't know exactly what they'll be saying, but I know that I've been doing research and that I have found that there's a 21st century policing report. It's based on data. It's created by the executive order of President Barack Obama in 2014. And it is an excellent place to start. It's a place that probably the school board is looking to figure out how to deal with school resource officers. Basically, one minute. Okay, one minute. You're almost, you've got to wind up, okay? It's three levels, local level, law enforcement and communities. Big and the local level is creating listing opportunities, funding, the changes that are wanted, conducting community surveys regarding policing and publishing the results, defining civilian oversight of policing and recognizing and addressing the root causes of crime. And there's more. There's a beautiful summary in the very beginning of this report. You can just Google it and it'll come right up. And I know that I will use it to inform the work that I and the legislature will be doing as we move forward. Thank you. Carol, go to Bob. Bob, could you unmute? There you go. You got me. Welcome. Well, thank you. So a lot of the stuff that Carol talked about, we're both involved in, we were both at the meeting this morning with Peter. Good thing. We have literally sent millions and millions of dollars out to local businesses. And a lot of it is going to be eligible to come here. So I think we'll see that as a positive thing. That's the federal money that has come down personally. And I'll go through, I've been on this thing since eight o'clock this morning. So I'm a little fried about it. I'm still working a lot with employment cases that are still coming in, people that are not able to get through to the system or get their benefits. Officially, our work as legislators ended a couple of weeks ago, but word gets around, I guess. The committee that I'm on, government operations is working on the legislation that's dealing with policing and social equity and that whole global perspective of things. Oddly enough, a lot of the individuals that are coming forward are asking us to slow it down a little bit so that we get it right as opposed to get it done, which I think is a good thing because it's a very complicated sort of issue and unintended consequences take, for instance, the defunding the police thing. If you end up defunding social workers or you knock people out that accompany SRS workers or mental health workers doing their job in the evenings, that's something you probably want to try not to do. I'm also involved with a couple of other members from GovOps and a couple of people from the community on trying to get several of the bills together that deal with the injustice of reparations, the whole gambit of those things into one concise bill that we might look at in August. It's kind of an independent effort thing. Coach and Hal and myself and a couple of people from other committees, Brian. Today, we did election stuff, pay act. I know there's a lot of charter change conversation here in town that'll come through our committee. So feel free to reach out to me if you're on a city council and you want to give me a heads up about what might come down the pike. I'm all talked out. Thank you very much. Geno Sullivan just got on. So you're up, Jean. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. It took me a while to get on. So I'm Vice Chair of House Commerce. A lot of the money committee money went to my committee. The last bill I'm really proud of we've got some things in there that so they survived the Senate and I believe they will be very exciting. My favorite was my chair and I started talking about when we're when we're when we're sending out money to businesses, who who's really getting that money? We knew with the Payroll Protection Act, the bigger companies got the money first. So what we did is we created a $5 billion minority and women business owners grant fund. It'll be handled through both Curtis Reed's operation down in Brattleboro, which does outreach to minority businesses and the Vermont Commission on Women will do outreach for women. And the goal is is those two, the minority owned businesses and the women owned businesses tend to not necessarily have as many close relations with banks. They might not have access to a lot of the good programs that are coming out. And we're we got that so that we made sure the two and a half million dollars goes to each one of those groups over and above everything else. The other thing we did for $5 million, another five, we keep throwing this money around, was, and this was just pure luck. My daughter was on the phone with Dave Zuckerman because she's volunteering on this campaign. And they were talking about a really wonderful program that skinny pancake does called ship meals, where they buy produce, produce local farmers, they then pay their workers to make dinners up that then go to the food shelf. And it was wonderful. And they're trying to go to and they were and there was a group trying to go statewide. They were talking to the wrong people. They were trying to get FEMA money. FEMA money has to bet you got to spend the money and then you bill FEMA. So I said, so I we put in five million for them in my bill so that we have an opportunity that they can spend that five million bill FEMA again. And now we've got a rotating five million dollar fund. This will bring small restaurants all around the state who get who can put out these meals approximately anywhere between nine thousand to eleven thousand dollars a month additional income for them and will be buying product from the products from farmers. So that's really good. The rest of the program and the bill that came through my committee was focused on small business as best as we could because the first bill we literally threw money at it. While people are listening, I've been posting on Front Forge Forum. If you are small business, if you have rooms and meals tax or you have sales and use tax in your business, make sure your MyVT tax account is up and operating on the state tax website. They've got 50 million dollars that they're going to be putting out in grants and identify who should apply for those grants based upon the drop in your rooms and meals tax or your drop in sales and use. So keep your eye out and make sure you've got that link ready to go so we can really facilitate you getting money. I, like Bob and Carol, are still working on unemployment. It's tough and today we are working, we are trying to get a special COVID-19 workers comp coverage set in place until January 25th. It's going to be a tough fight. It's to make sure that if you are, say you're a, if you get COVID-19. You need to wind up. Okay, if you get COVID-19 in your place of business, the only way your employer can get out of paying is to prove that they are following to the T what the Commerce Department has dictated for safe opening. It's been a busy week and thank you. Thank you. We'll start off with questions and I see that Keenan has a question. Perry and Jeff Comstock. So we'll start off with Keenan. Hey everyone. So I just wanted to put on, so there's been a lot of talk about police uses of force and sort of like different. I know that a lot of our local reps and state reps are looking into this issue. Just wanted to put on your radar this book evaluating police use of force that came out literally the second week in May. I've provided, I've read it, it's great to provide a little insight to some of our local officials, but if you're interested in doing some work on this, I just provides like a nice primer to sort of use of force law both at the constitutional level. It's supposed to be a question time Keenan at the administrative level. So my question is will you look at this book? Jeff Comstock. You need to unmute. I need to unmute him. He shouldn't be muted. I see Nancy. Okay, he's unmuted now. Is that better? Yeah. Okay, I have two comments and a question. So the comment is to make folks aware that I communicated with Kendra earlier this evening because I was trying to do the MOU survey online and I was having difficulty accessing the survey. So I don't know if and if it supposedly closes tomorrow that sort of limits available time. I don't know if others have had similar difficulty. And my question is actually for our city council folks and I want to raise, I want to ask you your perspective on the distinction between advocacy and public opinion, both in terms of the just economy, charter change, ordinance, and the discussion around the policing funding and the budget. So I'm particularly concerned about the charter change for the just economy because in my reading the schedule in this charter, proposed charter change is a very cynical approach at manipulating voter turnout for specific elections to in an attempt to pass specific charter change elements. So for all the city council folks I would like to follow up on that conversation with you and I am very concerned about the proposed schedule in that charter change. And as far as the police- What's your question? I was asking them for their perspective on the distinction between advocacy and public opinion and particularly concerning because in Ali's email he is very happy that the city council received public opinion from thousands of people from the city and surrounding communities. And I'm, I have a real problem with folks from the surrounding community manipulating the discussion about our upcoming budget proposal. Thank you. City Councilors want to react now or do you want to pick this up with Jeff? We have a couple minutes before our next presenter starts. Yes, if I may, yes. Thank you Jeff for the question and I don't remember sending an email saying that I'm happy about the surrounding community but sending it to you directly but I'm pretty sure those are my words. And of course I think I'm very happy to be in a city at the city council and also to receive for the first time since 2017 thousand people showing up and speaking of this. I think they've been advocating and also they've been providing their perception about the issue itself. Now as city council this is what we want. This is how business should be done when people show up and express their concerns or also tell us just what what they think. I appreciate that but I don't know if that aspect will also change much about my perception about this issue. Now for a couple of things about the police there are things we cannot talk about at least not publicly right now and it is specific to the firing of the three officers and at our last meeting I requested to go public forum I mean to go executive session in order for us to talk about it in depth because it's part of the demands from Rachel Justice Alliance. But me I mean my style is I want to listen and I think we listened for over 25 hours and now that it is about time to make a decision. Now all those people that we listened to I can tell you maybe seven maximum are people from what seven reason why we are establishing another public forum just for the people in the new north and tomorrow and that's where I will leave it as of right now but thank you for the great question. Franklin and Sarah any reaction or answers? Well I do appreciate listening to everybody it is really important. I think the city of Burlington is a key city and we need to understand what all our residents want as well as the people that come and use the services and we needed to take the time to listen to it and then I think as Ali said we have listened and now we've got to make some difficult decisions I think the core of what needs to happen is really really important for us to look deep within and figure out how we can make some changes and some of them are going to be difficult very difficult changes and so I did not mind spending the time listening to people and we've done that and now we'll have to sort out how we're going to take it the next the next steps. It's time to move on I think Jeff. Harry was your question quick can you unmute Eric? Just a moment let me okay. Sorry I didn't mean to raise my hand so I apologize for that. Okay okay all right thank you Eric Farrell we're gonna um can you unmute Eric Farrell now? Eric is a project manager and principal developer of Cambrian Rise here to give us an update. Thank you for attending and um giving an update welcome Eric can you um hit your you're unmuted great. Yeah can you hear me? We can hear you. We can see you. Can you hear me? Okay oh my god maybe I should turn the lights out. No. So Jessica uh Jessica it was uh LaFalle was gonna join because she has some uh images to show you. Jess are you? She's here so well. Eric can you unmute Jessica LaFalle? She's unmuted now. Welcome Jessica. Thank you. So uh well do I have permission for screen sharing? Yep okay but you're here we don't have a video your camera's not on there. Whoops. So you want me so while she's working that out do you want me to tell you what's going on? Sure. Okay so most of you or all of you know we opened Liberty House the old orphanage three years ago 2017 65 units um we uh purchased the old classroom building uh uh in early 2019 started renovating that building built a big addition on it that building just opened that's that's the on North Avenue attached to the orphanage on the south side attached to Liberty House I gotta stop calling it the orphanage um there's 90 units in that building and 20,000 approximately square feet of commercial space on the first floor and we actually moved our office into that building uh last week that was daunting after 14 years. Eric can you hear us your screen went cold gesture back in Burlington finally now I live and work in the community excuse me your screen went blank and we you did check out a bit um you couldn't hear you're cutting out say that again you're cutting out a bit yeah well I check out more and more at my age but so no it's no it's square yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna use it so Cathedral Square is under construction there for seat 70 units of senior housing they're scheduled now scheduled to open in January they're supposed to open uh in the fall but we all got shut down as you know in March we were shut down as well for a couple of months and so I think we're kind of back to you know construction normal at the moment and um haven't skipped a beat in terms of our leasing there's a lot of demand rental demand for people to live at Cambrian Rise that's a good thing and so at the end of um I would say at the end of of this year well we will have built and opened about including Cathedral Square which is going to be right after the first of the year well we will have constructed about 300 units uh all of them rentals uh save one unit uh they're all they're all rentals a year later we will open another 125 units of uh of rentals condos condominiums are a little more challenging because the financial markets are a little jittery right now in terms of financing for sale product although we think we have significant pent up demand um what is a challenge getting the buildings built but we uh expect to start building for sale product either late this year or next spring um and we recently went to the city council and we're approved to up our density limit from 770 to the 950 units it was a cap in our development agreement there's no underlying uh cap in the zoning district so we don't know if we'll actually get to a full 950 but i i i think we'll get close if not there um when we're all done if we get to 950 about 600 of them will be rentals including cht and and cathedral square and 350 of them will be for sale um 25 of everything of course for rent and for sale our inclusionary uh per the underlying requirements in the city ordinance um people ask me mostly oh yeah i'm sorry yeah let's go on screen yeah yeah i thought you were gonna it's gonna run me over with this in any way that which would be okay you got to take uh a year but i told you we'd be well eric you need to shut your video off the eric your video was it might be the video and can it can you see the screen yeah i see the um picture of the whole development with each building from the top oh i got to turn my video off is that what you want me to do yeah maybe that will help you from freezing as much as you are find more bandwidth hold on i know you just want to get rid of me i get it oh that works how's that can you still hear me yeah we can hear you okay so i think most of you or all of you have seen this plan before um liberty house is like right in the middle fronting on north avenue and the rise which is the building we built just opened um last week to the left of the plan that you're looking at is 90 apartments to the left of that across camry and way is senior housing june they call it juniper house and then uh going up the screen to the west is lauren ty department by champlain housing trust and then if you cross over um camry and way again uh to what we call uh sunset house that's the 125 apartments that we will start later this year hopefully in october then we have a boardwalk going left going right again in that boardwalk yeah you get beautiful views of the lake which will remain throughout the development um and then to the right of that uh up against close to closer to the cemetery is our more condominiums and apartments then when you move west on the site there's uh condominiums uh uh on well i don't know jess there's condominiums jess can you get on building i there a point to building i that would be uh what we call workforce housing sort of middle price range condos and then south of that is 80 apartments um and then the three other buildings that are closest to the lake are all foresail condominiums um the one on the southwest corner far the left corner of this plan uh is the first one we'll build hopefully we'll start either this fall or next spring the other two uh the juries out as to exactly one we'll start them at least two or three years out and then of course west of that is the public park the 12 acres we sold to the city and it shows the bike path connection so i'm you know it's kind of a moving target um it's hard to nail down precisely the schedule um it was helpful to get the support of the city council to bump the number of residential units this is what it'll look like on my hopefully on my 80th birthday which is uh not as far away as i wish it was um and i don't know what the next screen is does it oh so another thing we're doing is that uh part of our plan actually we're working in uh closely with dpw we're going to widen north avenue on the west side we're going to enhance the bus stop we're also putting in the nicest although not the largest uh climate controlled bus stop in the city of barlington the city has the largest one we think we'll have the nicest one right on the corner of that building right on the corner of camry and way and north avenue uh it's about 450 square foot climate controlled with real-time monitoring uh in bus stop that'll happen we think next year and we'll add some street parking and the reason we want to do that in particular is that we want to turn this section of north avenue from an arterial road into a neighborhood street with street parking which will you know obviously help the the neighborhood but it'll also come traffic and make it feel uh more like a neighborhood uh not only camry and rise but the the dozen or so homes that are on the east side of north avenue um the next screen maybe jess what's the next one the next one is a blow-up of probably that yeah that's a front and center look at green mountain transits uh bus stop um although i'm tempted to put a kitchen in a bath in there rented out as an apartment because it's pretty nice space but we'll probably keep it as a bus stop and on the commercial uh first floor we hope to have neighborhood commercial uses we're pretty close to making a deal with a cafe and we want to have other neighborhood uses that would support the lifestyle and enhance the lifestyle of the people that live there and the next slide is the boardwalk that i mentioned which is due west when jess gets there can you show the next one jess i'm on the boardwalk now is that no i can't see i can't see oh there it is okay so this is due west of liberty house um right on grade with north avenue but you can see it has pretty dramatic views of lake champlain and we said we wouldn't build any buildings uh above that north avenue grade from north from the orphanage to the lake basically in honor of the legacy of the orphanage so and then there's buildings down the north side buildings down the west side down the south side um that's kind of a really short story i'm happy to answer there's another view of it with burlington and harbour in the in the far ground uh we're pretty excited about the neighborhood we we're able to create and hope you are too and you open for questions anybody have any questions oh you want me to unmute now oh you don't want to look at me anymore i see one from uh jonathan weber hey eric it's looking awesome do you have a timeline for construction of the connection to the bike path the bike path if all goes well eric we heard you up until you said if all goes well are you still there eric he may have to bike path by the end of next year next summer you want me i heard next summer now i'm muting yeah what do you want me to get rid of my video again oh my god so you don't want to look at me i get it no offense fine how's that good loud and clear all right fire away anybody want to buy a condo having a sale no less other uh sears if they see hands i don't now i don't see i'm looking down and i don't see any well if you want to buy a condo call matt looks good though eric thank you yeah thanks well we're we were uh it's a heavy lift a hand up sorry i was saying to jeff clark there's a hand up uh kate has her hand up we got two people with hands up and all he had their hands up eric you want to unmute them unmute kate yep okay uh can you hear me yes go ahead kate oh okay i just had a question um in the landscaping that you have planned around the border rock and all the units is it going to include native plants and pollinator plants as much as possible what's the plan for that well um yes i think the simple answer is yes um we had made a commitment to do a lot of um you know native plants it's a little about my pregrade to know exactly what those are but i think the simple answer is is yes we we have that mandate good i hope so thanks thank you who are the other questions uh all he has his hand up bob has his hand up pick one of them holly holly all right thank you thank you for being here i mean i think i needed to uh it would be good to shed some light around um the north avenue extension are you saying that the north avenue will be losing uh bike lanes because you will be adding some parking on north avenue is that what i heard yes um so we followed dpw's lead in terms of the design because you you know there is the north avenue corridor study this is consistent with that so there are protected lanes um and you know we agreed to pay for it but uh it's really uh the final that we spent months with dpw working out what they wanted for a design uh we were interested in having parking for the benefit of the neighborhood and and to make it a neighborhood street but as far as the bike lanes and the bus stop and and and all that sort of stuff we deferred to to dpw as to what the design wants to be okay but now the question is why then that that altered design was not part of your um proposal when you came to this burlington city council it we it was not even mentioned at all well because it's not part alley it's not part of our permit it's it's it's a public improvement that we agreed to to fund but it's it's really a dpw initiative that we don't have to get permits for it ourselves the only thing that the that i think that the only role that could city council would play in that is that you'd have to be willing to accept a deed for additional land that we that we and um and Cathedral Square would have to grant the city to widen the right-of-way on the west side so we're going to widen north avenue which means the city right-of-way is going to widen but apart from that it's not my responsibility to permit it i don't know what the permit process is for dpw but it's it's really a dpw driven design and we'll follow up with uh uh chappan spencer thank you correct thank you so following up uh what is your construction schedule for the appreciating the lake view that still exists when are you going to put the uh two north buildings up when you're going to start that construction uh the the north built the north buildings that are closest to north avenue correct uh the two buildings north uh that that are on the same grade as the liberty house on um either late this year uh in 2020 or spring of 21 that's our target start date for those buildings and as you can imagine a lot of this just depends on how uh the world turns over the next few months matt hurlbert eric can you unmute matt hurlbert yes again and i know nance is also waiting patiently i'll be just real quick not really even a question just the comment i wanted to thank you eric for doing such a great job so far i think it's a great addition to the city you're adding to the tax base um and you're creating lots of needed housing units so thanks to keep up to good work well i i appreciate it i was as you know is born and raised in burlington so i got my heart and soul in this project okay we've got time for one more question you're up nancy hi um so the the buildings so far eric are beautiful it it can tell i can tell that you're really putting your heart and soul in it into it it looks nice but my question is um sort of along the same lines as all these i thought there wasn't supposed to be parking on north avenue the the we voted on that to remove parking on north avenue i'm not sure how you're going to get that back well in our particular along our frontage there never was uh parking on north avenue so if you voted to remove parking it wasn't in that particular area but we we do want to widen north avenue so that we can add parking that's never been there and and for two reasons for two reasons one to benefit the the community that we're creating in the homes across the street and also to calm traffic and make it more of a of a neighborhood right but we had to remove our parking in order to remove our parking in order to calm traffic so i'm just a little confused by that um i don't know is that in a different section on north avenue i'm not familiar with i i think that's just more of chapeines um smoke and mirrors or whatever yeah but i think they're beautiful building so good job i i appreciate that it's it's a pretty i think it's pretty commonly accepted that traffic that parking on the street does calm traffic i don't know what's where specifically nancy you're referring to but okay i the thing the time is up thank you eric for your presentation i appreciate it as well the visuals work great thank you dad thank you we'll move on um to the burlington police commission report and community input um we have uh charine heart and um we have jablini gamash and i'm sorry if i and um we hope to have a discussion um tonight i know um we'd worked with carol odi a little bit to put this together and we wanted to discuss racial justice in the police department burlington police department and create a path forward i'll turn it over to charine uh eric and i am looking for her on the screen i've found just below sarah carpenter right near the bottom it's the trouble is there's three screens here oh wait no this jablini i've already opened up yep i'll open her i see her okay but bob hooper okay i i presume i'm okay yes you're on yeah okay so um jabu and i spoke earlier today and what we proposed is that i would just give a nuts and bolts background of the commission but it might be that you are since you're all so active that this is way too basic in terms of how the commission is comprised and so i don't know if that's helpful at all to start with that or if you want us just to get into policy i think it's good okay background so forgive me i'm hoping i won't take long and some of it really is going to be pedantic for some of you so i apologize but i started with the most basic so who are the commissioners uh we went from five to seven a couple of years ago so we're a commission of seven and if any of the city counselors hear me misspeak please wake your hands and get unmuted to correct me there i won't be offended um the commission members are appointed by the mayor and city council and we're not selected based on our wards per se so i know a lot of folks assume that i represent you and i have no problem i welcome being contacted but there isn't equal representation for example right now there were three people out of the seven in the new north end two and four and one in seven which is me there's someone in board one someone in ward three and someone in ward five just to give you a sense we serve three-year terms it runs from july 1st to june 30th our former chair so javelinik amash is our new chair brand new uh we're very happy to have him in that role michelle ash who's from ward four just finished the three year term and was our chair and decided to pursue other important uh activities in terms of community involvement and then we have neary myles who is from four her term is ending and i'm assuming that she's seeking reappointment um to be a member of the police commission you have to be a legal voter in the city of burlington and um i believe that no more than two thirds of the members of the commission can be from the same political party and so the applications for the two open seats and when i say two open seats neary is reapplying but it's not a given that you get reappointed as we know from last year um and so the there's a selection committee made up of the city council and the mayor's office and i believe it's max tracy saraya high tower chip mason and jordan um redell from the mayor's office who make recommendations to the city council and then i believe on the 29th the city council is supposed to um approve that those recommendations are not doesn't always happen that way so in terms of um what the court of police commissioners does um we were created by city charter we meet once a month uh obviously now we're meeting by zoom um and if there's an emergency matter like there was earlier this month to work on the use of force policy we will meet at other times we also i caution people if they want to attend our meetings to check the schedule because sometimes we move it around if the police chief is traveling or the deputy chiefs if we don't have availability we won't move the date so i just encourage you if you want to participate to check that um so i think what's really important to understand and i know it's something that we as a commission really struggle with and it really goes to the core of things is that um where our authority is strictly advisory with two exceptions um we exercise some authority with regard to if an officer has a grievance and they want to appeal it they would appeal it to the police commission i'm in my fourth year on the commission and i haven't seen and i haven't had an appeal from an officer come up to the commission and then the only other time where we have authority is to review and approve um department directives so for example last week we approved the amended directive on um use of force jebu please interrupt me if i'm just if you if you want to add anything not a problem doing great and so in terms of what advisory means um if for example there is a um police action a disciplinary action the chief there will be an investigation there might be an outside investigator internal investigation they will then bring the commission in in an executive session to explain we review the case and then they might say this is what we're proposing so we give feedback that's the extent of it the chief could uh accept what we've said for feedback or just say thanks but i'm you know i believe this way we are currently working on that policy that has to do with our review of complaints and so i our expectation is next month we will be making some tweaks to it and and i think making some very good improvements to it frankly um and so lastly as you all know about as you probably know about a year ago city council established a special committee to review committee community policing practices jabu was on it perry was on it i'm not sure if anyone else on the screen was on that committee um but anyway i just want to briefly tell you because i think um what the what the bullet points were for moving forward from that task force and jabu i invite you to correct me since you were much more intimately involved with that so forgive me but there are there about eight points here but these were their suggestions um and articulated policy governing when body camera footage can and should be released to the police it's a complex issue when you've got an ongoing criminal case or investigation so we need a policy on that so that there is consistency uh that committee also recommend recommended that the police department formalized the inclusion on the hiring committee of an employee with training in domestic violence the committee recommended that um bullet bpd find ways of increased interactions with and accountability with the community so the department's interactions and accountability um the committee wants the department to continue the efforts to look more for more continue efforts and look for more creative ways to increase the numbers of women and individuals for minority communities and then the committee recommended that i've only got three more thank you for your patience and the committee recommended that the department develop a plan to expand social services partnerships and capacities including relationship with howards center outreach uh and i know jabu i think you're working on that actively right okay two more um they want the city to hire consultants skilled in survey techniques to determine how the community feels about bpd and what changes the community would like to see one could argue that we got a bit of a survey with the community feedback to city council and to the police commission over the course of the last couple weeks but we do want to formalize some kind of survey to get more feedback and then lastly um well yeah lastly that bpd increase or improve the amount and the quality of anti-bias training that the officers receive so that is some background to um and it was sort of give us some shared understanding as we launch into this discussion that jabu um i will defer to you at this point awesome thank you i'll thank you for that um this is actually my first time sitting in on one of these mpa meetings so i think i just want to kind of take questions from my buddy out there they have to raise their hand for us to unmute them there appear to be a few questions from jeff and from jeff comms i come from kina christensen i saw franklin as well okay why don't you just start eric just start with kenan and go down the list okay kenan hey it's me again so uh my question is um so as we're sort of thinking about some of these reform policies i'm going to go back to this fabulous book that i know you before sorry uh you cut out yeah you hit your mute button there and then you're muted again there we go i'm unmuted sorry uh i you stopped right at the police at the holding the book part so start from there please start so one of the things that the authors talks about in this book is there's sort of four different perspectives and one of the perspective that's it's got to be a question i'm gonna get there there is a question um one of the perspectives that's missing is the community expectation standard wherein an officer's force could be entirely lawful but still violate community expectations and i'm wondering what sort of policy changes you folks have envisioned around how do you balance the potential constitutionality of an officer's use of force with the the community expectation that may view that use of force as improper and appropriate um i think we kind of touched on that a little bit in the our most recent use of force policy that we just put out um it's it is it perfect no but it does exceed the standard of grand v connor um which which is set up you know uh use of which is uh what's what's the term i think it's like set up the legality of what you can use for force so basically what's in there right now uh before there wasn't really a duty to intervene if you do see an officer use excessive force and right now we have input we have uh inserted pieces into these force policies that basically makes it so if an officer sees someone use excessive force they have to intervene um i don't know if that quite answers your question or if shirene you want to jump in on first yeah so i i'll just add to that and i hope i'm answering your question keenan that um what we specified in the in the revisions to the use of force policy is that that constantly um the case to which debu is referring is the floor and that in the policy we um can go above and beyond that with higher expectations so but i'm definitely going to look at the book that you're holding up so can you hold it can you say it one more time okay evaluating police use of force thank you i hope we answered your question franklin um can you unmute eric hi uh i guess it's really for debu since he's the uh that's his official nickname by the way um uh have you got i'm i'm gonna say this selfishly but um it would really be helpful if the police commission could issue a statement or have a brief uh meeting about how they feel about cutting the police um both on a monetary level and on officer headcount um because you guys know a lot more about the inner workings of the department that we may not know um so i would just throw that out there um i think one of the difficult parts that everybody should be aware of which i know you guys are is that it's supposed to be a question not well not a not a statement time okay well i guess my question was will you guys consider either making a statement so much like the school board is issuing a vote or statement on the sROs it would be helpful to know where you guys stand under under for the proposals about cutting them the budget financially or the officer headcount uh yeah i mean i'm happy to give you my personal opinions on that but um i i'd be more than happy to um write up a statement and or at least you know yeah come up with the commission with come up with the statement and then put one out there but i guess if you want my personal opinions uh on it um great now great and my advantage point of policing in burlington is very much centered from like bartending downtown um you know thursday friday saturday night five to two thirty morning so that's that's kind of like my bread and butter when it comes to policing in burlington and i do see a lot of uh room for improvement for where we can absolutely shift um the budget to more social services to deal with you know like uh you know transient homeless problems in that downtown area and people who are suffering from mental health crisis so i i am in favor of uh the cuts that they're asking do i honestly believe that they could be implemented overnight i do not think so um but if i don't mean we have to you know consult with Howard center and the resources we have around town here and talk to them and see how what's the best path forward uh and what's that look like because it's going to involve them and so we need to bring them into the conversation i think right now and i feel like not no one's really asked of uh their thoughts on moving forward so that's where i'm trying to kind of figure that out and how do we go forward from there yep all right thank you yep sorry i appreciate that that's very actually all right thank you i don't have anything else okay appreciate thank you eric can you unmute jeff comstock thanks jeff you're up uh jubani though when you asked for uh general questions there was a fair amount of silence there and um my thought was uh being sort of unfamiliar with this uh what's your question eric uh jeff linda take a break okay i'm getting there okay so jubani you know you're sorry sorry jabalani pardon sorry jabalani jabalani okay so you are asking so you are asking for comments and not really knowing where to start um where are some of the general areas of uh issues under consideration um that the commission is dealing with that you would actually be looking for input um eric aside from some of the the crisis issues that have arisen recently what are your broad areas of concern um i i feel that um all those kind of bring our own kind of unique things to the table and like like i said what i like what i'm working on is is like you know how to improve i guess downtown policing um with that said um other people have a more kind of like holistic whole city approach to like how we can do these things but i feel like my expertise in my most intimate knowledge of the police department is how it works downtown so i guess to answer your question of like broad things i'm i'm not uh i guess i haven't really focused much on like broad broad things but i am looking like i just as i said before i'm looking to see how we can i guess kind of mayor uh not supposed to marry but you know involve um the outreach team a bit more or maybe expand their budget so they have more more people on the streets uh to be able to handle some of these things because for my for my experiences bartending downtown majority of the calls that i see the the officers respond to are you know people hanging out in city hall park drinking city hall park and things like that and i know from you know just talking to someone though and that it's a frustrating thing for them to deal with because they're they don't have the tools to really help fix the problem is kind of like ticket and move and um that's not solving the problem eric can you unmute bob hooper so i just unmuted myself i guess um good evening um so this has to be in a form of question so it'll sound weird but uh do you know uh i would like to sit down with you because we're dealing with all this stuff on the state level and it's going to filter down so that we can sort of all be on the same page in what we're shooting for i mean even the use of force and the hiring and collection of data and all that stuff is going to filter down the city so if you got time you want to sit down absolutely or otherwise i'd be more than happy to do so absolutely um i can send you i i can i can forward you my email address or yeah that's not a problem i'd love to sit down and talk okay cool thanks very welcome any others any other questions leon shulman and alie dn do you have any preferences oh no first one you called out alie thank you and uh linda just so you know i'll make a small comment and then ask my question all right just so that to be clear so uh mr gamash thank you so much for being here and it's just been amazing reading about you lately thank you that's my question and i think this question is specifically for shiren heart who i love and respect also but i just wanted to make sure that everyone here understand that part of the demands is to fire the three officers balaban's coli cambell i always forget the other guy but do you think let me ask it differently i wanted to know the elements in which you use to determine the level of discipline those officers at least the two officers that were involved in use of force with youth of color in downtown but i wanted to know the element in which you used to determine the discipline for those two officers so councillor gen we can't talk about specific employment matters but i can tell you that cases that we weighed in on prior to uh a week ago when we made significant changes to the use of force policy were under it quite a different policy and while this policy is far from perfect that policy was very limiting so we were using a directive 5.0 that's i can't get into the specifics of the cases nor you know in the same way that you couldn't on the city council other than in executive session but i can just say that a review of a case that we review to go a year ago a review currently would be a very different look based on the policies and what was available to us i hope that that helps yeah so now the follow-up question to that is um wait a minute the only usually let you do one question because we still have another person who was waiting alie can you wait i'll leave it to that thank you yeah sorry but we're trying to make sure everybody gets a chance there's one more person okay i'm meeting lienne now hi this is lienne shulman my question is just related mostly to what uh resources are out there for members of the community who want to learn more without perhaps uh reading the sort of legalese i was just wondering if there are resources that you could point us to to help us better understand what the current standards are and also what the current relationship is between the Howard center and the police department just sort of any suggestions would be appreciated honestly i don't know of any resources um that are currently out there or where they would be look located at um i'm happy to um i'm happy to look into that and get back to you but um as of right now i i don't know where you would find those yeah so one thing i would recommend uh and maybe um councillor freeman and tear the mosh will disagree with me but i think for um some for a quick read seven pages i would at least read the report by the special committee to review community policing practices that um the that the task force they committee they were on presented to city council and that those were the items i articulate i articulated before from that document so if you're looking particular to burlington i'm not sure if you were lienne but if that if you're looking particular to burlington i would you can also email both of us or one of us and you know we can get you more but if that if it's burlington you're wanting background on that's where i would start because um i think the committee set out as well as one could uh the powers are lack thereof of the commission any other questions out there we have um about three more minutes so if you want to go back if ali has another question um anyone else um martin gulick could you unmute eric i can do it here thank you i was wondering if jabalani and shireen would be um willing to uh share their opinions on school resource officers yeah um i i'm in agreement with rga demands to remove uh the srl's from from from other schools um in my honest opinion like i i had a great relationship with my srl back uh back in my day but uh you know i feel the community has spoken pretty well about this um i do know henry sparks uh who's the exact exact title at uh bhs but he was there when i was there as well too i know he is in favor of having them in there but he also opened up a dialogue to for he wants input from um you know like parents of us students that go there so me personally i am in favor for removing them um but i'll also listen to people in this one too if there's an overwhelming demand for them to keep them in there i'm not gonna i'm not gonna stand in the way of that yeah and that's exactly how i feel the same way um you know i just had our youngest child just graduated from burlington high school and i know the two officers who have been there um have had great reports with a lot of people but you know i also am aware that there a lot of um students for whom it didn't work and it made them very uncomfortable and so um i agree with jabu any other questions ellie still have your question very good all right well i thank you both for um presenting and um giving us your thoughts and um taking in our feedback as well um appreciate your time shereen spent some time with your dad and thanks thanks for the work awesome and thanks for having me and honestly anybody who wants to get in contact with me any more questions comments whatever please feel free to email me um i'm a underemployed bartender currently in the pandemic so i have a lot of free time in my hand so please uh get in touch all right thank you for having us take care next we have um folks from local motion john weber and who else is um presenting i think chapein you're on as well is it jason there is a bit of a mix-up with the agenda but actually dpw is going to be presenting i think elizabeth uh goranger is going to handle it okay eric could you unmute elizabeth goranger thank you okay hi thanks um yes elizabeth goranger with department of public works um i think also the plan for this item was to have the any available city counselors kick off kind of the introduction to where this item came from and then i'll take the logistical side of things after they introduce it anyone in particular ali are you going to start off yes um thank you and i'm glad janetan you're here thank you robert people of dpw elizabeth all of you chapein thank you all for being here um and i want to particularly thank janetan weber for definitely working with us i'm step by step until here you know it has been substantial amount of communication and uh planning and all of that to get here but i think it will be imperative also to just highlight that how proud i am as a city counselor in the new north end seeing all the improvement on the avenue from bike lanes to crosswalks and now just the love that we see now mon avenue has become now more welcoming and very vibrant at the same time so if this proposal in front of us went through an extensive public process already this is not the first time we're talking about this um there was emails phone calls and then we decided to bring the residents of the new north end and 21 people signed up and participated in a community forum about uh to listen and hear from the dpw as well as from janetan about the proposed bike lane and this proposal was not only for north avenue alone but it was for the city in general fine street and main corridors in the city um and many people were really concerned about adding protected bike lane but i think the presentation we received last time was incredibly informative and many people who were scared and you know really rallied behind this proposal because for two things one it doesn't cost a lot to the city doesn't cost at all any money from the taxpayers of berlington and also it is only temporary we will put it try it out and then move away uh from uh just uh try it out and see how how it's going to happen and um i think consular polino as well as consular carpenter were all very moved by the detailed presentation and also by the people who showed up to listen ask questions express their concerns and i think that's the way we want to move forward as elected official we should not let anyone come here to dictate but when we heard about this proposal we thought methodically about how do we involve the residents of the new northern and they showed up people who were scared about it ended up loving it for the two reasons that i expressed earlier so maybe sara and uh polino may want to add something before we turn it back to dpw and genotin webba thank you very much i mean i agree with ali's assessment and um it really is important i understand we heard from a lot of people who really most specifically want to do something right now this summer in the good weather when everyone is so confined we need to get out we need to get people um safely using the avenue which is the quickest way to downtown truly it is um as opposed to the bike thing so this was generated by local motion as i understand it as really this period in time we need to get people are out and we need to do it safely we heard and i think chepin is well aware of this next year or maybe over this winter there's a lot of thinking that needs to happen about what we do to north avenue permanently and this is not about that um you know the city's constrained a lot of what you might want to do with north avenue can't happen till we get money to repay it so this is really um for this year and then i hope that going into next year um when dpw is ready we'll have another forum about what do we look look more permanently to and a lot of that relates to paving and drainage and things on the avenue that unfortunately we don't have the money to do right this minute hello i'm franklin hi so i don't have much to add on this i mean i think that uh we want to see use this opportunity where people are driving less to see if this could work i know that this is a long-term plan for the city that they've been wanting to do and so we just figured this is a good time to do it for a short while it'll be a volunteer project and it'll really get people i think uh rallying behind um this this new initiative i think it'll bring more people here and and also allow the people that do live here um to commute easier so i don't have anything else if dpw wants to sort of show PowerPoint Elizabeth uh we have a very short PowerPoint and really we want to open it up for questions and explain the process moving forward based on um what the counselors described Elizabeth um can i add one more thing before that and just wanted to add for example if there is any issue this is not dpw or you have to talk to the city council to establish a community process and to get this process to here um don't attack chappan please but attack me franklin and polino if needed thank you we are looking at the drainage issues uh while elizabeth gets set up uh we have a contract right now for north avenue to look at the drainage so that we can set grade and uh include that design in our repaving plans tentatively scheduled for calendar year 2021 uh section of north avenue will be paved this year from a police department up to uh cambrian rise chappan um i sort of leaped ahead but um i'm presuming and we have discussed that um in anticipation of a repaving project next season probably whenever mid summer 21 will we have an opportunity this winter to sort of have a broader discussion on uh what what else we could do at the kind of at the same time i i understand there's not a lot that you would want to do until you really look at it in the context of fixing the draining and the paving first happy to meet over the winter let's do it okay um sorry i was muted before so i couldn't speak i don't know if you guys are able to see my screen the power you can yes okay temporary great expected bike lane great um okay well thanks counselors for team this off um so yeah just as a very quick recap this is a temporary um coronavirus COVID-19 response effort that the city is taking um and this is a resident it was a resident initiated request for additional protection for the existing bike lanes on north avenue to make biking safer um as a response tactic to um COVID-19 because um you know people are not necessarily comfortable uh taking public transportation right now also the waterfront greenway which is sort of a an alternative route to get around the city is often very busy um the north av provides another option for people getting around the city at this time without having to be in a confined space um and as the counselors referenced the new north end city counselors hosted a meeting on june 2nd to discuss options for what this might look like what would additional protection for the north f bike lanes look like and gather resident feedback so with that uh resident initiated request it was brought to dpw and we've evaluated that and determined that it really can be done safely and relatively cheaply and uh it will provide an added safety benefit so um we are moving forward to coordinate a installation of traffic cones um a temporary installation of traffic cones in the existing bike lane buffers so these the cones will go where there's already allocated space for bikes on the road they're not going to be uh in places that are taking up any additional space that doesn't already exist um and so that means that there shouldn't there will be no changes to existing traffic patterns um of course cones will be spaced appropriately around driveways intersections bus stops because we need people to be able to access these areas but adjustments can always be made along the way again we're just using traffic cones so they are uh pretty easily easily moved um and if people do see issues with spacing or uh yeah just gauging space around turns getting in and out of driveways uh those issues and concerns can always be reported to see click fix at the website shown or the um dpw customer service number um and we are going to be working with local motion who is uh recruiting volunteers to maintain and reset the cones on a daily basis or a very regular frequent basis um and we've already been working with them on a on a very similar type of installation this summer the spring and summer on pine street which has worked um has been working really well and um has yeah has been going well and it's a very similar kind of thing so this isn't the first kind of project like this that we've done in in response to covid um and then just in terms of the price uh the cones are we estimate for the number of cones we'll need for this project it'll be around seven thousand dollars however um we already have these cones in our possession because they were purchased for um making the making space for restaurant and retail recovery initiative which is another uh covid response initiative um so they're currently not being used right now so they um they can be put to good use um some of them are being used not all of them are being used so the extras are going to be able to go towards this project um and that cost came out of the city council designated fund for covid 19 response um and after all of this is over um these are just traffic cones they can be reused by our traffic and streets divisions so they won't um they won't sit around unused um and then also we will have some uh several many lawn signs uh that we ordered as informational for people using the the avenue um to kind of help explain what this is and those costs six hundred and forty four dollars um just so everyone can know where we're talking about um these are the areas where the cones would be we'll be getting installed so uh platzberg av to shore road is the top map area and then saratoga av to institute road on the bottom again this doesn't show all of the spacing where they would be you know we would be leaving gaps for intersections driveways bus stops um this uh this doesn't have that level of detail so don't worry about that but um just wanted to um show those general areas so people know what we're talking about um and then as we've referenced many times this is temporary uh we would be looking to get them in as early as this friday and um through the end of october but they would definitely be removed at the end of october um so while these are going to be removed at the end of october we we do welcome and we always take feedback of course so uh my email my supervisors email the customer service phone number are all on the screen um based on how this goes and what we're hearing um we are certainly open to continuing the conversation about uh at some kind of further installation in the future um but right now like this is uh this is a temporary installation and um there's a website with more information about these types of projects that we're doing right now as uh trying to create more space and safer streets in response to the cobit 19 and then just a photo from the pine street similar type of project that we have um up right now um so that's all i have and stop sharing my screen now you've got five minute maybe six minutes and the meeting app automatically closes so if anybody has questions this is the time to do it i did have a question on when that forum was um i didn't see it it was june uh june 2nd and i'm sure the city counselors could speak more to that as they were the ones hosting it elisabeth has a question jeff or eric you want me to oh that was me before i was muted yeah i was trying to get someone's attention well everybody's muted except when we unmute them yes i was trying to present yeah well i don't see anybody else that uh oh carol odie has a question and then matt herlbert okay i just unmuted carol thank you um my question is this when i um have been going i went door to door in my last two campaigns what i heard from people was a desire not to hurt bicyclists and and to have bicyclists know what the rules are that they should be following so that people don't hit them and so i wonder if you've got any plans to have signs up for bicyclists have signs up anything to educate all of us about what the rules are so that bicyclists are safe and cars are you know safe thank you rep odie i'll just uh jump in and say that uh we do need help from our partners in this venture um this is something public works is focused largely on infrastructure uh the police play a role in this the advocacy organizations play a role in this we all need to improve behaviors on roadways and uh roadway design can help play a part in that but to your point there is education that's needed we have put up some wrong way riding signs in the right of way to encourage people to not to ride wrong way in the bike lanes uh but there's more work to do and we understand that and uh i don't know if i represent us from local motion or police department uh could add more uh to that as well said Jonathan Weber Eric could you unmute um just a moment here i found him okay yeah thanks um is a good question education is certainly something that uh local motion takes really seriously and and does a lot of already we have um programs to educate folks of all ages on bike safety and the rules of the road um we have a program called bike smart that goes out to schools and teaches kids how to ride and how to follow the rules we also have um adult workshops and those have been thrown off a little bit by the uh coronavirus but we're certainly bringing them back online and um i can see us doing some education specific around these uh sort of new format protected lanes that are that we've got coming up in the city um so always something that we're looking to do and um i would also echo what uh director spencer said that um you know the better the infrastructure the better the behaviors the better the the following of the rules you'll see matt robert had a question all on me thank you i just wanted to echo what carol asked um mostly based around rules of the road as the increase of bike traffic is encouraged and bikes and cars are coexisting in the same spaces um i feel just from being on these roads especially north avenue that it is critical and i'm not seeing rules followed by bikers i feel like i am um a minority on the road so i can't echo enough carol's question what is being done what are your plans if you are going to increase bike traffic on the avenue and around the city what specifically are you doing to educate bikers and drivers but mostly bikers i they don't in my view often respect traffic laws they don't stop at stop signs they they just flagrantly go wherever they can and it's unsafe they're in blind spots and yes cones will help keep them on their own side a little bit but i think there needs to be a lot done safety was i think we're going to have to wrap up at work it's 901 um i would echo the concerns that we have in the past about north avenue and the potholes and the the water that does pool and not to put a cone on the other side of that pothole because where will the biker go um is a real concern that i have and um we should be mindful of when we putting these cones on the road because there are so many spots when i'm riding my bike on north avenue that you have no idea what's under that water um and you have nowhere to go but into traffic so um i really hope that you're being mindful of that fixing potholes before you're putting a cone right next to a pothole thank you with that um i think we're going to wrap up right linda you said the same yeah yeah this it's going to end and i just sent everyone an email base or a chat basically saying thanks for participating i think it went well we're still learning how to do this and we'll see you all next month thanks guys