 on February 7th and first item on the agenda is the agenda. I would welcome a motion to adopt. So moved. Thanks. Seconded by President Tracy, discussion of the agenda and the amendments needed. Can I just ask Mayor or is it just you, I and President Tracy that are on for this meeting? You're starting with, I have not heard that our other members are not joining us so, but I don't see anyone else on the Zoom yet. Okay, great, thank you. We do have a quorum and figured we can get the initial items done and hopefully our colleagues will join us for the, we have several important discussions. So, and we are trying to be done by 6.30 at the latest trade President Tracy because the work session then. So, so we're gonna, we're gonna move on ahead. We will have a vote to adopt the agenda. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda. Is there any member of the public who would like to address the Board of Finance? Feel free to use the raise hand function. If you are like to be recognized President Tracy, are you able to check that email as well? See if there's anybody who's chiming that way. Don't think so, Mayor. Okay. I don't think I see anybody for that. Very good. Then I will close the public forum and we'll move to the consent agenda. I would, which is just about the January 31st minutes. Are we ready for a motion on the consent agenda? So moved. Tracy, we have a second. Okay. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. The consent agenda is approved. And that brings us to 4.01, which is a summary of our general fund audit results. And here I am gonna end the zoom over to Catherine. We'll take it from here. Go ahead, Catherine. Thank you for joining us tonight. I will just quickly introduce Alina Korsic, who is our lead auditor. You may recall she joined us last year. And she is going to take us through a very high level look at the FY21 general fund results as well as the results of the management letter. So Alina, take it away, please. Thank you, Catherine. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Board of Finance. I'm happy to do a high level overview of the preliminary general fund results. I'm saying preliminary because the final financial statements have not been published yet, but we do not anticipate any changes to general fund. And do I have the rights to screen sheet? I do. So I'm gonna go take you to the PowerPoint. Share my screen. So tonight's objective is, as Catherine pointed out, we're just gonna do a high level overview of general fund and as well as overview of the draft management letter. Again, we can't publish the management letter before we publish the opinion on your financial statements. So it's a preliminary, but we do not anticipate any changes. So with that, I'll go straight into the most important number on your general fund balance sheet, which is your unassigned fund balance as of June 30, 2021. And you could see a history for five years here and you've been pretty consistent between eight million and nine-something million dollars for unassigned fund balance. As you know, the city has a policy which was approved by Board of Finance and City Council back in June of 2015. It targets the 10 to 15% of your general fund operating expenditures. So the numbers here as a percentage of your total expenditures of the general fund as follows. This is also the last five years at June 30, 2021. General fund unassigned fund balance was 13.8% of the general fund total expenditures. You could see that all five years you met your target. In fact, they even exceeded your target in one of the five years at 6.30, 2018. So you've been consistently complying successfully with your policy and meeting your targets. The next slide is your general fund classifications of fund balance. So we start with non-spendable. Non-spendable mostly represents a long-term advance for Great Streets. There was a $2,777,000 deficit at 6.30, 2021 and it is expected that a million of the funding sources will come in in the next fiscal year, meaning the one we are currently in, fiscal year 22. So the difference of $1,077,000 is expected to come in long-term. The funding will come in. I know there are some capital contributions that are long-term. So that's the $1,077,000 is most of this 1.5 million that's reserved in non-spendable fund balance in general fund. Restricted fund balance is basically restricted externally and in your case, most of the restricted fund balance is unspent bond premiums, which are 1.7 million of that balance. And those are just gonna get appropriated in the future to spend either for debt service or capital projects. Committed fund balance is under $1 million and then you have a signed fund balance of about $7.3 million. And the biggest ones from that $7.3 million is your health insurance reserve for $1.5 million, liability insurance reserve, a million workers' comp reserve, $750,000, great streets, Champlain College, $780,000 and early learning initiative grant of $762,000. There are many others, but none of the remaining assigned fund balances are over $750,000. And that brings us to the remaining category in the fund balance, which is the unassigned, as we saw that represents 13.8% of your expenditures, which means you have it exactly where you want it. So in general fund, obviously, you have a legally adopted budget and you follow it every year. This is just a brief summary of the general fund budget versus actual results for the year and in June 30, 2021, the revenues exceeded the budget by 2.3 million. There was a million of that that had to do with your local option tax that exceeded your conservative estimate for that due to the kind of year you were having that estimate was conservative. So about $1.2 million of local option sale tax was about budget. Also the category that exceeded a million dollars was the intergovernmental revenue category exceeded the budget by about $1.8 million. And most of that was CARES reimbursements that were not originally budgeted. Now, there is what's called an other financing source, use of fund balance. That's $17.3 million. It'll never have an actual offset in it because this is not actual revenues that you were budgeting for. This is use of all your prior year classifications of fund balance that you used. It's combined. So it's use of restricted fund balance, committed assigned balance, assigned fund balance, unassigned fund balance. That's how much you used for the year and in June 30, 2021. And so that automatically shows as a negative in a variance column. And then you have expenditures, which were short of budget. So means you were under budget by $4 million. And most of that was in what you call as a non-departmental category, 2.4 million of that. And primarily because of the year you were having. So for claims were much lower than you were expecting. And of course, as a result of that, the city didn't wanna have those go into unassigned because you never know what the next year that those funds can vary greatly every year. And some of the assigned fund balance categories that I mentioned were as a result of claims being under budget and therefore being reserved for in case they go the other way in the future. So that's the biggest category. There were three departments that had over expenditures. Two of them were over 250,000 and the city clerk's office did send an email to those departments to monitor their budgets more closely. And transfers is what's called another financing use. Transfers is really just timing here. It shows 3.9 million unspent transfers. But what it really is is you in this past year booked all the categories of fund balances as a use of fund balance. But there were some categories of assigned fund balance that were really just not transferred out yet for the projects they're assigned for. So the 3.9 million is just really a timing of that. The net is negative 7 million, but you budgeted for a surplus of 1.9. That budget, if you recall last year's appropriation did include 5.9 million in originally fund balance that was gonna be used to offset this year's budget. And then with all the other categories of a restricted assigned committed, that came out to 17 million as a final budget. But the results of actual, of negative 5 million to me, it's really one of the reasons it's negative is because there was 5.9 million dollars that was used to offset the budget, original budget for this year and in June 30, 2021. So the results, the income statement and the journal fund will show negative 5 million dollars. And the results of budget versus actual will show negative 7 million dollars. And as we said, primarily because of use of fund balance. So that's a brief summary of budget versus actual. And now we're gonna do a brief summary of the management letter. Last year, there were some comments that were in the management letter that were really a lot was worked on and a lot was improved. So this year we just have two management letter comments that I will touch based on that were the same as last year and one new one. So the two that were the same as last year were the improved controls of a journal entry and adhere to most formal closing year on process. And the city did improve significantly in that area. What to be noted is that there are still some that were done really late. Particularly there was a tax adjustment for a million dollars and some capital asset entries, the whole capital assets for all funds were not available till January of 2022. And I am just gonna swap to the management letter comments. Oh, we could look at it in summary here. So the capital project fund was significantly improved on. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna swap the management letter comments because the prior year once, this is from the year before. So the prior ones were the improved journal entries and capital project accounting. Those were the two that were repeated this year. So the capital project accounting, the city did great work on that as well. And in conjunction with consultants, there were some great improvements down in that area. Particularly when it came to restructuring in the general ledger, there were new funds, 800 series funds. So it's much better now to see live where the capital project is at because there is a lot more funds now in the general ledger and it's much easier to see. So the only reason this is a repeat management letter or comment is because although there were a lot of great work done and a lot of chat of accounts that were fixed and new procedures implemented, there's still not that position in place that can timely and review these funds analytically. So there could be determined a more timely resolution and to the fund balance deficits and more timely journal entries to correct those. So part of the management letter recommendation, we did make a recommendation that the city could use a capital project fund and a grant accountant that could analytically review balances sooner and determine if there's any deficits and how they're gonna be funded, which brings to the only new comment this year, which is the parking facility special revenue fund. It's not capital project unrelated and it's really a completely different scenario on the reason for deficit. The reason for deficit stems from there was a loan payable that had a debt covenant that was paid off. This past year and that was about $3.7 million to pay it off. And so therefore it showed about 4.2 of losses the fund did for that fiscal year and the June 30, 2021. And the ending fund balance became a negative $3.2 million and that has not been in unspendable because we believe the city has a plan to address the deficit in the short term meaning in the next fiscal year. And I've already seen a memo that went out about the plan to address the short term deficit for the parking facility special revenue fund. And that brings us to the end of the PowerPoint and I'm gonna stop screen sharing. I didn't get to stop screen sharing. Oh, there we go. I'm gonna stop share. And if there's any questions, I'll turn it back to you, Mr. Mayor and see if there's any. Great, thank you for running through all that. Catherine, how certain, I think you'd like to add to that or share with the board and whatever. Just a brief thank you, despite the fact that we do have three recommendations and two were from last year, I wanna thank both Alina and the CT staff recognizing what she said about a lot of work being done on those first two recommendations. And doing all of this in the midst of COVID, it is my great hope that when we are, when I am here presenting this to this body next year that those will not be here. And so that was my hope last year, but I'm glad that we have made this progress and we've had a lot of conversations about how we build on that progress. So you'll see things in the next couple of weeks like a new job description for a capital and grants accountant and some of these very practical things that they've recommended, but I do wanna acknowledge the hard work of all of the people in the CT office. So thank you, Mayor. Great, thank you, Catherine. So this is just to be clear, this is just a communication at this point. Correct, we will come back for a formal approval at another time. Are there questions? Is this really the chance where people ask the auditor questions? Will we have Alina back or this is the... We will have Alina back at a full city council. We don't have the school boards financials, which is part of the reason why this isn't the complete audit, but this is also a great time if you have any initial questions. Great, thank you. Floor is open if there are questions about management letter, the numbers. Councillor Paul. Thanks. The attachment that you gave us that have the general fund audited, unaudited financials and the fund balance classifications for FY 21, that spreadsheet. I don't know if maybe it's... I didn't have a chance to go and do this myself. I had asked last year if when you do the fund balance details that you would please give us a basis for comparison by showing us the FY 20 figures. So in other words, that there would be two columns here. And I mean, I'll go and do that myself by taking the spreadsheet that you gave us last year, but I think it would be helpful if, since there's no basis for comparison, if that was showing on the same spreadsheet, and that would be under the tab that says FB details. And then the only question that I had was just simply, was more just a balance sheet question. And I'm just curious to know the, obviously a balance sheet is a snapshot in time. It's not over the course of a year, it's one day. The two items, the cash in cash equivalence and the investments, we went from an investment of 21 million a year before to three million. And the cash is significantly higher. It's triple what it was on that day. And I'm just wondering, cash I could see could be sort of just a set of particular, just particular circumstances on that day that were different from a year ago, but I'm wondering where that leaves us in terms of the investment. So it's not really an auditing question, but more just simply a question for Catherine. Yes, thank you for that. And Rich might have something to add here as well, because I know this was part of a strategy that he had with our investments. And I will let him speak to that because I believe that you're right, it's capturing the snapshot in time. And I'm not sure exactly what part of time it was in in terms of the various deals he was working on. So Rich, if you could add a little bit more detail to Councillor Paul's question. I know that you and I talked about this, but I don't remember all of the details because I asked the same question. So thank you for the question. What we could find, what we found in the market is that there was no money to be made in treasuries which is what our investment policy is based on. And sometimes it was as low as five basis points or seven basis points, which is one 20th of 1%. So what we did is we pulled our money, we chose not to reinvest it in the market and wait for the market to change. Actually resulted in us picking up $150,000 more investment income based on that strategy. Now we're investing that excess cash back in the market and we're getting in the ballpark of 120 basis points. So we're making 25 times the amount of money by just sitting, waiting to the storm. A lot of pressure for us to buy, buy, buy. We did not buy, we sat and weathered the storm and now we're reinvesting in, the investment returns are gonna be substantially better. So again, it was part of our strategy. The other piece I wanted to make sure of is that due to COVID, there was the uncertainty of the direction that was heading our way and wanted to make sure that we had adequate cash reserves on our hands and we certainly did. So again, as different maturities came, we elected not to reinvest, but now we are reinvesting and I look forward to providing investment performance update probably within the next 90 days. Thank you. Okay. There were a couple of things that I had about variances with the final budget, but they're not audit related. So I'll skip them and let others speak. Thanks and thank you for being here and thanks for the PowerPoint this year. That was very helpful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Are there any further questions? Okay, seeing none, I'm gonna close out item 4.01. Thank you again, Alina and I appreciate the continued collaboration. And now we'll move to item 5.01 which is a V-Trans 2002, sorry, 2022 V-Trans Highway Mileage Certificate Acceptance. I see Chapin is here and Caleb, Chapin, you wanna give us a quick summary? This is an annual report for V-Trans that needs the Council's review and approval. It's administrative and Caleb, but anything else you wanna add? I'll just add there are no changes to our annual Highway Mileage Certificate. Thank you. So the floor is open. How would the board like to proceed? President Tracy. We're gonna take the recommended action in Board Docks. Is there a second? Second by Councilor Hightower. Thank you. Discussion? We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And this brings us to 5.02, another DPW item, authorization to pay transaction fees, Park Mobile parking payment system. Welcome, Jeff. Maybe you could just do a quick summary, remind people why we're doing this and the progress we've been making with Park Mobile. Yeah, so fundamentally what we're headed towards is a gateless garage operation in the Lake View College Street Garage. And this is all stems from some of the communications I've had with the Board of Finance and Council in December and the approvals that I've gotten from Board of Finance and Council to extend our relationship with Park Mobile for a couple of years. This is exactly the kind of thing that I needed that runway to work on is the ability to take the gates off of the Lake View College Street Garage and manage all the parking via Park Mobile. However, to do that, we need to pay some different fees to Park Mobile. And basically what we're doing is instead of paying T2 to manage the gate systems, we will be paying Park Mobile to manage our transient parkers, our monthly parkers and our hotel guest parkers. And to do that, we need to pay transaction fees to cover the hotel parking and we have to pay for a new type, it's called a reservation system. It's not really reservations in the sense that you're thinking reservation. It's really about managing the monthly parkers and we will pay that on a per month basis per transaction. So basically what I'm asking for is to sort of divert the funds that we're already spending away from T2 towards Park Mobile and we'll actually save money in the end. Look at it, $40, $50,000 savings over the next three years and pushing $150,000 over the next five. And it'll also give us a platform to explore new and different types of rate structures, new and different types of products and give us a little flexibility. That's the way it tops. Great, I think that last point is really got a lot of potential to it. I think this maybe can really allow us to finally open up the garages to overnight residential parking that really could have a dramatic impact on housing affordability in the downtown. The need to keep building new structured parking. We have these garages that sit up the overnight. This could really help with our housing policy, I think. So glad this is happening. Any, have the board like to proceed? The floor is open, questions, motion, presentries. So I guess what I'm not clear on is why we would pay the transaction fees ourselves or why the city would pay those transaction fees and why that wouldn't be passed to the user. So the transaction fees for transient parking, so people would just come, shoppers and visitors, they pay the transaction fee to Park Mobile just like you do, that's the normal transaction fee. However, the way that we're managing it with the hotels, they're actually parking their guests, like they're parking for them. And our contracts with the hotels specify the rate that they pay us. And that rate doesn't cover the transaction fee. The way I think of it is, we covered the cost to provide the gate infrastructure. So now we're covering the cost to provide the virtual digital infrastructure. That makes sense. Okay, that does. Thank you for that clarification. Further questions, motion, Councilor Powell. Thanks, I don't have any questions. I'll make a motion to take the action as recommended in Board Docks. Great. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Hightower. Discussion. Councilor Chen, this is 5.02, if you think. You'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to 5.03, which is an amendment request. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. It's an amendment request for the previously approved authorization to execute a construction contract for a continuous monitoring adaptive control valve system with OptaRTC Inc. Who would like to kick this off, Chapin or James? I will have James jump into this. Yeah, thank you. This is a water quality control project that's helping us meet EPA requirements for Anglesby Brook. And we received a state grant for this. It's been a really exciting project to launch. And during the course of initial construction, we found some site constraints that we didn't realize moving into the beginning of construction. So this amendment in front of the board right now is asking for an increase in $7,425 to fund additional costs from the unforeseen site conditions. Thank you. Questions or a motion for the board? Councillor Chen. Yep, I would like to make a motion on the item as indicated on board. Great, thank you. Councillor Chang, seconded by Councillor Paul. And or is that, yes, and further discussion. Okay, I see no, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Very opposed, the motion carries unanimously. Great. Yes, thank you, James and Chapin. So Craig, we have two more items and we got a full hour, which is or almost an hour, which is good, and they are related. The 5.04 is the request for 2.975 million in American Rescue Plan funds to address a millerate homelessness in the city of Burlington to create the position for special assistance to end homelessness. This is essentially three million of the remaining 15 million of ARPA funds, American Rescue Plan Act funds, which we have given you a full memo on the kind of preliminary plan for the full 15 million. And this is a subset of that. So it does occur to me and I didn't really think of this sooner. We have all of Team CEDO that has been working on the homelessness plan here to support this. And we are seeking action tonight, both from the board and then from the council so that we can move forward with key elements of the plan. It does occur to me and didn't previously, just to really like with the, I guess with the board feel is board ready to fully engage with 5.04, would it be helpful to have the broader presentation on the preliminary plan for the full ARPA funding first? Because I think we could kind of call an audible and change up the order if the board wanted to. But there aren't strong feelings on that. Let's go forward with 5.04. So, and I've seen nine heads on that, so great. So Brian, I'll hand it over to you and the team in a second. I just take things off by making clear this is a continuation, this item 5.04, a series of actions related to addressing our homelessness issue flows from the announcements the administration made in December, 10 point housing plan and specifically the points within that plan for addressing homelessness. What I think we are bringing forward now is really a broad and multi-pronged effort to address homelessness in a far more comprehensive way than we ever have previously. This includes the creation of new facilities, the creation of a key new position that really creates essentially a single point of accountability for our efforts to end homelessness that tracks with how communities that are ahead of us in this effort have organized themselves and then key investments in the coordinated entry system, which is a key data system for the week to week management of our housing resources, coordination of our housing resources to make sure that we are really working hard on a sustained ongoing basis to help the most vulnerable members of our community and systematically work towards ending homelessness. Certainly a goal that sounds very large and we've I think in so many ways over decades now become accustomed to homelessness, almost being a chronic has to some degree some kind of become a chronic condition. Increasingly, there are communities that are saying it doesn't have to be that way. There are ways to fully address this issue and that's what we're trying to do with this effort break for tonight. So with that, Brian, do you want to take it from here or should I hand it over to us? No, I will take it and take this opportunity to recognize the amazing team we have assembled at CEDO to work on this because I think we wouldn't have this list of progress in really since the six weeks ago when the mayor made the announcements that he made in December. So I want to just highlight the work of our staff because without them, I think we'd be we would not be this far along at all. So first to highlight, Marcella Gange has been really our leader, our point person doing sort of high level systems work, but also right down to the direct service when needed to support people in moving out of what is probably the most difficult situation people find themselves in, I believe one of the most difficult situations people can find themselves in and her leadership, her tenacity and her compassion are all the skills and all the attributes that have brought us, I think to a place where we are far better off than we would have been without Marcella and her dedication. I just want to call that out because I think that sometimes people do this work for recognition and Marcella isn't looking for the recognition, but she deserves it. And the rest of the team is Katie Kinstead as our assistant director for grants and finance. And Katie has also been applying herself in the work that we do at CEDO in order to ensure that we can make an impact where it most matters in terms of addressing homelessness, not just managing it, not just sort of dealing with it, but really trying to end homelessness as something as a community that we should I think all share that goal. And Katie approaches this work that way as well. And Samantha is newer to our team, but Samantha's been instrumental in helping us bring these efforts forward to you today. And I would say that with her background in architecture and planning and development and affordable housing and finance that having Samantha and our team has really brought some new skills and new perspectives that have been really helpful in our efforts. So I just want to share that piece as well as to say that I think we can all agree that the notion that a community is really only as strong as those who've experienced the most challenges who are most marginalized and that as a community, we've asked ourselves what do we value the most when we look at the incoming new federal resources and what are the things we want to address the most? And so while we see homelessness nearly a triple the rate it was at before the pandemic we also see the public responding to this need in a way that is just, you know I think incredibly heartening. And I think says a lot about this community because as Kara has reported previously from the ARPA survey folks really identify this issue the issue of those experiencing homelessness as among the top concerns. And so with that, you know growing exponentially growing need and the new resources together and you know, the basically the staff capacity that we have internally this is the list that we've come up with. Is it a silver bullet? No, there's, you know we like to say this maybe silver buckshot here maybe we can use a bunch of these strategies to try to chip away at what is one of the most intractable problems facing really facing communities throughout this country. And we've seen progress in other communities who have taken a similar approach of trying to address it on multiple levels and multiple fronts. And I wanna also call out the organizations that COTS and a new place and Champlain Housing Trust, Cathedral Square, Burlington Housing Authority all of those folks together are doing the hard work of trying to ensure that everyone has a decent safe and affordable home but even with their great efforts and their resources that they've brought to bear on this issue we continue to see, you know numbers that are just unacceptable absolutely unacceptable. And I think that these resources this allocation here tonight is really a way for us to advance this issue to a place where we're going to have staff capacity increased within CEDO focused exclusively on this issue. We're gonna have our partner at CVOO bolstering their resources having new resources, new staff capacity there to manage coordinated entry. We're going to have over the next few years a community resource center that serves is not just the place for folks to gather like you would, you know in a living room or a place that you get to hang out with people but place for people to stay warm, charge their phones, check their emails hopefully connect with services maybe even just get a pair of dry warm socks or a pair of shoes to be able to continue. That's the community resource center and the shelter pod community is an idea that has been percolating and these resources would allow us to bring this concept to fruition. So rather than going through each one of them I just wanted to at least provide that backdrop and to open it up to questions. Great, thank you, Brian. Floor is open. How would the board like to proceed on this? President Tracy. A couple of questions. So I'm just curious as to how you see the position itself interacting with folks with lived experience and how those folks will be able to really drive the work that this person does. Yeah, I think the point is one that we share that focus, Councillor Tracy that the folks who've actually experienced homelessness and who are experiencing it need to be meaningfully involved in the process. And so the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance also known as the Continuum of Care provides a forum and a venue for folks to be involved but we think we need to do even a little bit more than that and actually engage with especially those who've made the transition from homelessness to permanent secure housing. There's a lot of research that suggests that there's a lot to be learned from folks who've overcome these barriers and been able to get into stable housing and retain that housing over time. And so part of that is getting those stories, those experiences, those examples of what are the hurdles that need to be broken down and the barriers that we need to remove for folks. That's the purpose of having the position is to work at the systems level but also to ensure that the information loop and the feedback loop is coming right from folks who are living on the streets, who are living outside, who are experiencing homelessness that's very much part of what we're aiming to do. Great, I appreciate that. And then the other piece was also that I know that some of the CSLs have been, have closely been working with individuals experiencing homelessness. And so I'm curious as to how you see this role interacting with people working in those CSL roles. Sure, so those are the folks for the city anyway that are on the front line, if you will, encountering and trying to provide referrals and access to services and resources. And to, I think the CSL experiences on the ground are the ones that help us inform and stay grounded in the reality of what folks are facing. So I think that is a critical link and Lacey and her team have been making I think some really important strides and there's way more work to be done but our staff, Marcella works very closely with them now and that will only continue and probably strengthen and grow in this new capacity. Okay, all right. And then the last question I had was just with regards to sort of the ongoing sustainability of all of these efforts, whether it be the low barrier community resource center, the pods or the position itself, recognizing that we're being asked to approve in the case of the position several years of funding and initial, what I imagine our initial startup expenses for a number of these places, but how do you foresee CEDO being able to maintain these costs on an ongoing basis? You know, it's one interesting question. If you do your work, right? You probably should put yourself out of a job doing this work really. You know, if we're successful, this won't hopefully be a permanent infrastructure that we'll always need, but I think there's always gonna be a need for something and I don't know exactly what to say about how this, you know, what the future holds in terms of two or three or four years down the road. But part of the reason why we wanna have a special assistant within CEDO is our record of attracting new resources to these issues is one that I'm really proud of. And it's the thing I think we probably maybe don't toot our horn enough for, but over the years, CEDO has brought lots of new resources to this community to address pressing issues and this will be no exception. We will focus on ensuring that we have the ability to continue to respond, whether it's with this same model or whether it's a shifting model over time. Okay, I appreciate that and that is true. You're totally right. CEDO has done a great job of being able to leverage significant state and federal and other grants to support operating expenses. So do take that point well. Thank you. Councilor Jang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Director Pine also for this presentation. And my first question is why, you know, the title of basically this memo, why is it like ARPA action plan and why is it not coming from CEDO? So it's not unimportant, but to me it is. Okay, yeah. Yeah, it's actually a collaboration between department heads really. You know, Kara's team is tasked with focusing on the allocation of ARPA funds and CEDO is the sort of subject matter experts, if you will, around this issue of homelessness. So I think we're coming together and the fact that we tried to wrap it all into a creation of a position is why both Karen Durfee as the Department of Human Resources and Tony Berry as our Human Resources Manager are all part of it. So it's really a, it's a collaboration for sure, but that's the reason for it to be sort of a shared memo. Councilor Jang, if I may, I fear you might be looking at our next agenda item, which has the ARPA action plan on the memo, whereas this memo does come from CEDO 5.04. And I'm just here in a supportive role for this. Okay, yep. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, my first inclination is basically what this President Tracy talked about. You know, this doesn't entail a lot of details. That's one and also a plan of sustaining it, you know. And from my perspective, this approach will only raise taxes in the future. If it's not in two, three years, it will be down the road in four, five years. Because from my perspective also, we started, we didn't start slow with only one aspect, right? But we started with like a lot of investment. And from my perspective, this will be costly to the taxpayers of Burlington. We could have just start with one aspect, which is the position and the position also to work on basically how do we apply to grants or how do we get more money? Or also how do we establish new collaboration with entities like surrounding communities in order to solve this problem? Homelessness is not a Burlington problem. It is a state problem. And taking much of our putting it into perspective here will ultimately raise the taxes. And also everyone around the surrounding communities will now look into Burlington for solution. I don't agree with the approach at all. I just wanted to state that. But also can you tell me why we haven't seen collaboration with surrounding communities basically in tackling this issue? I would actually say, Councillor Jang, these are really important points. I agree with you. And I think that we probably have more common ground there than seems obvious. But the other communities around Burlington have really begun to take on the role of, if you look around at the former motels on Route 7 and on Williston Road and in other locations throughout our county, those are places where our nonprofit partners are actually going right out acquiring properties and making them available to folks experiencing homelessness. So there is a significant increased regional sense of ownership of this issue that I think is one that maybe doesn't get as much attention, but there's actually more activity happening outside of Burlington, believe it or not, on acquiring properties and helping homelessness, people experiencing homelessness move into those properties. So there is actually quite a bit of regional responsibility that's being taken. On this particular item, I think what we've tried to do is to say the people of Burlington overwhelmingly said homelessness is the issue to address with ARPA funds, we have seen the need grow from around, annually in the two to 300 range to over 700 people. So it's the growth in need and the influx of new resources. And honestly, what we hope to be able to do is to prove that some of these approaches work and attract additional resources, whether they be federal or state or even private resources to try and support future efforts. So it's not intended to be a new burden on the taxpayer. And in fact, I would assert that when you take folks who are experiencing crisis and are experiencing homelessness and you figure out how to wrap services around them, they cost the society less over time. I think that's an investment that brings returns to us because there's less calls on the police, on the ambulance, on all of the services that are being provided for them. So I think over time, this investment will pay off. And if we do it well, we'll both bring on new regional partners because we'll show by example, leading by example, but also we will bring new resources to the table to address this. So thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yes, but again, I mean, I think, what you said is all true. Yes, the surrounding communities are doing it by pieces and pieces. And I feel like one approach, it's just CVOO, they work for the Champlain Valley. It's more than just even Burlington, you know. And, but I still do not agree with the approach in which we have taken about this issue. And from my perspective, just like how we did it with the housing summit, we could have brought at least that approach into this, where we bring homeless people, those experiencing houselessness themselves, what do they think of all of this, right? And also the surrounding communities, what are their roles, you know? And bringing expert that are in the nation, what are the best practices, and we definitely dig into this. But it seems the decision was made, a plan is put forward, and ultimately this would only raise taxes in the future. That's what I see. I think also another element that is missing about all of this, it seems we are only responding to homelessness. And in this plan, we haven't been talking about how to prevent homelessness. Those who are working, who are paying their rent, and sometimes they just, they have a high risk of becoming homeless. But this plan does not address that aspect as well. And from my perspective, it's a little bit concerning. I'll leave it to that. Thank you again for your work and everyone who's been involved in this. Thank you, Councillor Jang. I'll go to you, Councillor Hightower, one moment. I just wanna respond to several things mentioned by Councillor Chang and make sure we're all, try to maybe get us on the same page about certain things. This plan, what we're bringing forward here, this is a plan grounded in the built for zero approach that is a national movement that has an increasing number of cities that have committed to this approach and that is showing results. And so I just wanna be really clear from my perspective when I announced in December that one of our goals is to end homelessness by the end of 2024, functionally end homelessness by the end of 2024. That is what this plan attempts to do and we're serious about that. And this is an achievable goal. And there are a growing number of communities that have delivered that. And if we deliver that, the ongoing drain and need for resources, we should not be assuming that the current problems we have now are here forever. This is a plan to address this problem directly with significant resources and focus and effort and actually make progress, not just muddle along. There's urgency to do this work because I hope we're all remember what we just went through, the summer we just went through and the clear lack of low barrier resources that we had to address the large number of people who were in desperate need for homes last summer and into the fall. This is a, I don't wanna go through that again. This is a plan and the reason we need action tonight is so that we can go and we can buy these shelter pods and we can start moving towards having a new facility in place this summer that is a low barrier facility that gives us a whole different way of supporting people than we've had in the past. And you can say that's a regional problem and sure it is at some level, but it sure is a Burlington problem too. We feel the brunt of this issue directly and we have responsibility to do something about it. And so this isn't something we can just deal with incrementally and slowly. This is if we wanna have a different experience this coming summer when we know there's again gonna be huge pressures on the housing system as people come out of the hotel program. At least these are actions that need to be taken now. So I don't accept and don't agree. We were very upfront with the last, with the equity commitments in this year's budget that they were gonna have an ongoing tax impact. We are a big chunk of this money isn't going into one time capital resources. And there may, you may end up being right, Councilor Jang, that there are some new ongoing expense that we need to figure out downstream years from now. But we're in a crisis now that needs to be addressed now. And it's not clear that there will be an ongoing burden. I don't think councilor should be voting assuming that's the case. Well, we're coming forward that those are downstream decisions. This is an action plan for addressing a current very serious crisis situation. Councilor Hightower. Sorry, yeah. So this is, I think also seeing we're planning on setting aside around 5 million for houselessness. And I assume that the other two are kind of to help for us to get started with the first three and then to create a plan and spending the next two or wondering if there's already a complimentary thing that's being debated. Just wondering what we're hoping to do with the other 2 million. Right, thanks, Councilor Hightower. The action being requested tonight is that would be kind of a binding action would be on just the first 3 million. We will have a discussion that we're not seeking any action on for the balance of the 15 million, including those 2 million additional and housing dollars. And so we don't have a full plan for you on the remaining 2 million at this point. I think what we can say is, we are in, there's a number of ways that those dollars could end up being used in a way that has big impacts in the coming years. We, and in housing, 2 million dollars doesn't go that far but we're gonna try to leverage those dollars to help accelerate major new housing projects that are being planned. For Burlington in the coming years, we may try, may come back to you with a plan in the future for some innovative targeted uses of those dollars that helps unlock or leverage progress elsewhere. We don't have a specific plan for those 2 million tonight. I don't know, Brian or Samantha, you wanna add anything to that? Go ahead, Brent. I think that's this piece and there's also some additional home funds that we're going to be focused on developing new permanent affordable housing because one of the things we have are people who have rental assistance vouchers. So obviously they're walking around with a piece of paper saying, I can get my rent subsidized but there's no place to go and that is unacceptable. We can have literally almost a couple of hundred people in this community who have vouchers but there's no place to go with it and that we have to address that. So that's part of that has to be done through production of new, both in Burlington and in our surrounding towns. Okay, that's helpful. So it sounds like we're more likely thinking that it's separate from the program that we are planning for the 3 million that it'll be more of a direct trying to get other housing to be, get closer to the Section 8 housing so that we have more housing available for vouchers. Okay, that makes sense to me. Thank you. I just also, if I could, Mr. Mayor wanted to respond to the idea of retention which Councilor Jang pointed out rightly is critical because he can't just get people into housing, give them a key and say good luck and then they lose their housing. So a big effort of the continuum of care and all the members, there are staff people at CHT, there are staff people at BHA, Cathedral Square on literally helping tenants retain their housing. That's a huge focus. I think Samantha's previous employer, has like a whole resident sort of engagement piece which is intended to ensure that residents living in affordable housing don't slip through the cracks and join the ranks of the homeless. So that's an effort already underway. So that's a really important point. I don't want to lose track of that. Okay, back to you, Councilor Jang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Director Pine. I can't just stop saying Brian Pine or Director Pine or Councilor Pine. It's gonna take time. But Director Pine, thank you. And I think it's also important for me to clarify that I am not saying those people that we gave home but those who are just supporting themselves right now. And some of them, most of them are this close of becoming homeless, very close. Sometimes I read people eviction notices because they don't understand what that means. But those type of people, how do we help them? In maybe a grant application through the city to pay their rent for one month or down payment for a mortgage or something, something along those lines. That's specifically what I wanted to talk about. But I think along those lines, it's okay. But I wanted to re-combat to the re-entry funds, $500,000 for over two years or three years, right? I just wanted to also try so you can explain or paint a picture of what that really means, how many re-entry positions already exist currently in the system and also what are the differences of each one of those re-entry and how do you basically strengthen re-entry? What does it exactly mean? I'm not sure I understand the term re-entry in this instance. Is this referring to the work that other housing retention work that's happening or no, is it? I think there is a $250,000 proposal here for over two years to re-strengthen the re-entry programs. Oh, I'm sorry, coordinated entry, maybe, coordinated entry, got it, sure. So coordinated entry, I'm gonna let Marcella speak because she could speak all night about this, I'm gonna ask her to speak for a few minutes because she can explain what coordinated entry does, but it's what CVOEO does and I wanna just give Marcella a chance to share with you. So you're up. Yeah, I certainly can't speak all night on it, but yeah, essentially the coordinated entry program is, it's part, CVOEO manages it, but it's run for our continuum of care, which is county-wide across Chittenden County. And it's essentially a way of gathering data on folks who are experiencing houselessness and ensuring that we are prioritizing the use of resources that we have available and prioritizing access to those resources according to need and requirements. So when folks come into coordinated entry after contact with a housing case, navigator or manager, they do an assessment with that manager and it's an extensive assessment and that assessment kind of gives them a score or ranking within a list of folks who are within coordinated entry and that then kind of moves folks through in that order so that when housing comes up, they'll be in that ranked list for priority. Does that help? Yes, and just for full disclosure, I am a board member for six years now at CVOEO. I know exactly what coordinated entry is, right? And also how many of them coordinated entry position exist currently in the region and their differences and also how they are funded, where the funding come from. But the proposal in front of us have $500,000 to restrengthen the coordinated entry system, right? I wanted to understand what does it mean restreining it? Adding new position and do we need $250,000, $500,000 in two years to do that? The details, that's what I wanna try to understand here. Sure, at a high level, I can tell you, it's actually 250 over two years and it's to augment the resources that CVOEO has to add a staff person to free up the person who's handling tasks which they need to provide perhaps a more of a managerial or leadership role around coordinated entry, sort of really have them focused on what are some of the systems level changes we need to implement to really move people through coordinated entry so they don't just stay on a list but so they actually land in an apartment. And I think what we've tried to do is to pass new resources to industry CVOEO so they can add some staff capacity in coordinated entry. So Marcel, you might know more about how much staffing there is and all that but that's essentially what we're doing. Yeah, so it's augmenting the one position that currently exists. There is a part-time admin position there I think as well that assists. So it's providing another full-time person to assist. And again, this is really needed. We've seen an almost three-fold increase in the number of folks who are experiencing housesness over that since the beginning of the pandemic. So that's the kind of increase of workload that the folks within the coordinated entry system are experiencing. And it's also more importantly to, not just to enable them to really engage a policy level but also to be able to work with our partners in the Built for Zero program so that we can really handle the data that we have better and analyze the data that we have better and understand how to prioritize and bring assistance in the best way. Thank you. And just, I feel like there are actually two positions and one of them you talked about it extensively very well which is the Shittenden Continuum of Care position and I like how you explained that. There is also another position that organizations such as CAHPS, CVOO that they share and that person is specific to just finding people homes and the list, wait list of just housing the people is just big. Overall, I kind of, I don't completely agree with the approach of putting nearly $3 million into this. I feel like it needed, but in a way, thank you, thank you. All right, thank you, Councilor Jay. I'm mindful of the time now. We have just less than 20 minutes left for the remainder of the discussion before the process is supposed to begin. So I think it's like to get a sense is the board ready to make a recommendation on this item or so maybe someone can make a motion on it. Councilor Hytar, up here. Thanks. I move to recommend that the city council approve the attached resolution as found on board docs. Second. Thank you, President Tracy. Is there further discussion? Okay, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Just since Ron's, can you clarify, Councilor Jang, was that a yes, aye or nay? That was an aye, so Mr. Mayor. Thank you. All right, the motion carries unanimously and I appreciate the discussion. That brings us now to the ARPA discussion, the balance of the ARPA discussion in here. And I want to thank the CHEETA team for all the work to put this plan together. I'm sure on a short timeline. Thank you, Brian and Arsala, Katie, look forward to the hard work ahead with our partners. So Kara has really asked Kara to leave this effort as about a year ago, or less than a year ago, is once the, this was last March when the ARPA, American Rescue Plan Act, finally passed through Congress. And shortly after that, I asked Kara to take a lead on this. And I want to let her kind of share the process that has brought us to this point and then walk through much of the memo. And I'll probably, Catherine and I will talk about the reserves piece of the plan here. And again, sort of overarchingly, we are proposing on the remaining $15 million that we're looking and here, we're not looking for further action again tonight, but we are looking for directional feedback on whether we're on the right track with this plan that would have us committing through a variety of different council actions to about $10 and a half million of investments in the coming months, and we'd be holding about $4 and a half million in reserve, recognizing the uncertainty that we're facing economically, the public health perspective, public safety challenges we're facing, setting aside for now about a $4 and a half million of our remaining $15 million. Our thought, it's in the memo, but just to be explicit about it here is that we would check in with you all regularly about the need for those, the ongoing need for those reserves on basically every six months or so basis. And we would look if, fortunately, the economy does recover, the pandemic, there isn't another big wave. Hopefully we would be able to, in future discussions, release some of that $4 and a half million for us to then, at that point, decide where we would deploy those reserves. So that's sort of the big picture plan. Let me hand it over to Cara now and get into some of the details. Good evening. I figured the best way to approach this was to start with our survey. I know I sent you all the public engagement report. I know you all have a lot to read. I wanted to go over some of the highlights of that so you can understand what was a major influence for us as we were working on the memo that we're about to discuss with you. The public engagement process started with when the mayor had asked me to take on this project, the initial task was how to reach out to our residents and try and get some idea, some indication from as many as possible, about how they would feel about our investment of these funds. For though, I hope you all took the survey. For those of you who took the survey, you'll notice it was broken down in categories that we felt were important to the community, but not just that, we're also very strongly ARPA-eligible categories. We translated the survey into eight major languages. We sent mailers out to every private residence in Burlington. You may have seen some lawn signs out there. We activated with the help of CEDO, the trusted community voices. We provided paper copies of the survey for those who did not have access to technology. We placed volunteers, both from the community and city staff in all neighborhoods, from the Miller Center to the YMCA, to AALB in the family room, to the library, Jake's One Market. In addition, we did specific outreach to engage our community partners to make sure that we were getting their input and the input of their constituent base. So that included everyone from Champlain Housing Trust to the King Street Youth Center, to all the local childcare centers, COTS, the Boys and Girls Club, the Racial Justice Alliance, just to name a few. We are very pleased that we had almost 4,000 responses, which is the highest response rate of any city survey. And we were also pleased to say that in our drive to get the most diverse response possible, we had 79% of the responses were white, which indicates, obviously, that 21% were not white and that was, again, a bit of an internal record that we were able to achieve on that. I won't go into all the details of the report and its responses except to note, which was already noted earlier this evening, that addressing houselessness and supporting the creation of more housing were the absolute top two responses. When those responses are broken down to BIPOC responses only, we found that it was also reflective, a minor shift that housing was first and houselessness was second, whereas the overall response was houselessness came first and housing came second. But that's just to give you an indication of basically across the board what our constituent base was feeling when they filled out the survey. In addition, a massive amount of staff time was spent sorting through over 3,000 individual responses. As you know, after every question in the survey, we asked the public for their ideas. We found a lot of repetition in the ideas. One piece of repetition, which I will say had a great impact on the decision you just made on the previous agenda item was tiny homes and tiny home communities was one of the number one written in responses. They're getting a lot of attention nationwide and we really noticed that our residents had been seen what was happening in other communities and was wishing to have that happen in our community as well. From here, I'll move on to the memo that you have in front of you. And so that's to give you the breakdown. What we're talking about tonight is the 15 million, all the previous funds, you all have decided on personally, so we won't go back through those. As the mayor mentioned, our desire is to commit two thirds of the funds to certain targeted areas and the remaining to be dedicated and set aside for reserves, which I'll have the mayor and Catherine address. Mayor, were you looking to? I just want, did you want me to bring up the PowerPoint that kind of breaks down the memo? That's a possibility, yes. Did you or did you want me to? I can't, are you able to? I'm sure I am. Give me one second and apologize that I didn't pull it up first. It's essentially this PowerPoint is essentially the memo turned into a PowerPoint. Which does allow us to, Catherine, I think I can share my screen. Go ahead, Carl, why don't you keep going to the presentation? I have made, I've made you co-host. Okay, we've got this in our city share drive here. All right, we got it. We got it. I think I just finished this slide, the background slide, so we'll move forward. The plan outline, as I mentioned, and as the mayor teed up in the beginning is two thirds of the remaining funds would be for projects and categories, basically of projects that we're about to discuss. And the remaining third would be set aside as reserve, which Catherine will be discussing. As you can see, the rough breakdown in this chart is the five million for housing and homelessness, two million for phasing and equity investments, one million for community infrastructure, one million for high impact targeted projects, 900,000 for economic support, and 600,000 to continue our ROC and outreach initiatives. So of the five million you just addressed to the three million that we are, which we'll hopefully pass through council later. And so this slide is really addressing the remaining two million. And I wanted to address what councilor Hightower said about the remaining two million. What I feel is very important is that we also keep an eye on what's happening in Montpelier and how those funds are gonna be broken down and addressed and how we can best leverage and use synergy from some of the projects that they're planning right now. We don't have all the details on them, but I do think it's important for us to recognize that it would be a good idea for us to understand how they're going to be placing their funds in the community. As the mayor mentioned, two million dollars in the world of housing isn't a lot, but it is a lot if we're looking to leverage and apply for grants, matching grants, things of that sort. So phasing in equity investments is two million dollars. As you know, we have some decreased revenue in the city due to the economic strains of the pandemic. However, there are some issues and projects that we don't wanna stop moving forward. So we would like to phase in some of these investments until we have enough of our normal revenue and the economy is back in a stronger place where we can fund them ourselves without reliance on the ARPA funds. So this includes the livable wage for all city employees, compensation for commissioners and board members so that we can open that up to a broader base in our community. The trusted community voices program has been extremely successful and we want to make sure that that continues and can be expanded as needed, as well as the scope and impact of our racial equity department, including their important work in health equity. Community infrastructure is a lot of municipalities in the city. We've been tracking what they're doing with their ARPA funds and creating space, lasting space that all residents can enjoy has been an important piece of what a lot of municipalities are thinking about at this point and we wanted to make sure that that was on the table for us as well and creating a space where there's music, art, food, discourse, where people can gather. I will note that the BIPOC responses very often track to the general responses on the survey except on the community infrastructure piece. The BIPOC response number one for community infrastructure was creation of a space that all could share. Again, $1 million needs to be leveraged again and we do feel that if we created an innovation grant in the community, we would create an RFP. We know there's a lot of ideas in the community. We've received hundreds of them in the right-hand section of amazing ways to create or to expand upon spaces that we already have in the city. By creating an innovation grant, you can solicit private funds to leverage your public funds to create a space that all can share and we would do that with a structured RFP process that we would obviously hope to have you all involved in. The high impact targeted projects, we'd like to set aside a million dollars for this. We have been approached by many members of the community. We have also received many very interesting ideas that we've cataloged through the survey, everything from innovative ways to substance use disorder, to addressing mental health crises that we're seeing in our teen populations. We've also had recommendations for even smaller investments in our community that could be very impactful. These would be smaller projects. The goal would be to create a committee that could maybe sort through some of these ideas and bring them to board of finance and council to figure out the best ways to leverage these small amounts of funds to really have an impact. I will leave you quickly with the RRC, which I actually feel very strongly about. The RRC lives in CEDO. It's been an amazing resource and tool as a way to connect with our constituents in all languages and all forms, whether it be through mailers, phone, email, we found them relying on it consistently. We also feel that it should build back better bill pass, should the programs that might come down from Montpelier, we would need help connecting our constituents with flow of funds that are coming in addition to answering questions about the city and continuing questions about the pandemic. Quickly, I will pass that on to Catherine. Well, I'll take it back here just in interest time. Thank you, Kara, for that. I think somehow in the creation of the PowerPoint, one program was not highlighted the way the others were, which was the economic support, which includes just really quickly a new concept, but a big idea in there is 500,000 for a revolving loan fund. Could you just really quickly, Kara, give the one or two Senate summary of what is being thought about there? Yeah, so my team and I have been working closely with VCLF, Vermont Community Loan Fund. We have been talking to banking partners, Mascoma, Northfield Savings, Opportunities Credit Union. We have found that through the survey really access to capital is gonna be the best way to keep our businesses afloat right now. We are trying to structure a revolving loan fund with a strong BIPOC focus in our scoring system to allow for access to capital for these businesses, particularly restaurants who have not seen the end of the impact. All right, great, Kara. Really quickly, because we're basically at time now, the reserve strategy, some of the bulk of this we talked about before the $3 million revenue replacement reserve, we talked about a lot as we move towards the passage of the tax rate vote. And that was detailed in those memos and we had a lot of discussion here at the Board of Finance about it. $500,000 pandemic response really just is acknowledging of the fact that we are hopeful that things are gonna get better and we will not face another wave, but we're gonna have a plan for the fall in case we have not seen the last wave and this reserve would be funding for that plan. None of these reserves would be spent without coming back for council approval. And then the million dollars for police department rebuilding as detailed in the memo, the idea there is that that would be set aside until you received a preliminary rebuilding plan that I've asked Chief Mirad to write over the next a little more than a month by mid, mid March, so that to address the, but I think we're all concerned about the continued drop in the number of officers and the need to get back up to go a substantially higher number than we are now. So that's everything. We, President Tracy, I see your hands up. I just wanted to say, Mayor, I'm fine with if we go like another, you know, maybe less than 10 minutes. Okay, I appreciate that. Folks that have initial thoughts because I don't wanna just jump right into council now. So we can do that. Great, I appreciate that flexibility, President Tracy. So with that, Councilor Hightower, the floor's open for councilor reactions questions. And again, just to restate the goal, we're not trying, we're not making decisions tonight, anything except for the homelessness investments. This is a great opportunity to start to get a directional sense if we're on the right track, if you wanna see substantial changes, want substantial more due diligence done in areas, it'd be great to get a sense of that tonight. So Councilor Hightower, over to you. Yeah, I guess maybe not completely surprising. I'm a little hesitant on the one million set aside for public safety, mostly cause I think at least without seeing the budget and understanding how the inner, how we're planning on budgeting for the police department, cause I don't completely understand how we're, you know, have such a large staff reduction and don't have the savings kind of within the department based on that to pay for some of that plan. So yeah, that's just my initial feedback before it comes back to council. I'd wanna see that as a complete picture. So feedback, thank you. Mr. Mayer. That's Jay. Yeah, so I was just wondering for the high impact targeted project, one million dollars, you know, would we be able to access the details before maybe we take action about this? Absolutely. The idea would be to start to collect some more of these ideas and present them to you. We're just sort of telling you that we're setting aside this million dollars, hoping to take some of this community partner input and make some of these projects come to fruition. For example, some community partners have come to us and said, you know, $100,000 would make all the difference in what we're working on. So we wanna sort of reserve those funds for things of that sort. Okay, thank you. And also overall, I like all the proposals that do not need like, you know, more funding as we move forward, such as the making bathrooms available, you know, especially downtown. I love that. Thank you. Great, good to hear. President Tracy. So following on Councilor Jiang's question about the targeted projects, I just wanna make sure that that isn't gonna be like just for people who knew that this was out there or came and knew that we had this, but that there would be a process of application and solicitation before that, that it wouldn't just be people who are in the know because, you know, I'm sure there are probably a lot of great ideas that have already come to the fore that would be competitive, but I just wanna make sure that other good ideas are not sort of are not prevented from coming forward if just for lack of knowledge. Okay, great, yes. I'll take care around that process. Great, thank you. Just President Tracy to that point and I do wanna make sure I see many other counselors are with us and this is a discussion that's open, welcome other counselors participating in the discussion. One, just sort of tension around additional process, that maybe I just wanna kind of put on the table and just gotta be a way to move through this in some way. I do think some of the targeted high impact proposals that we have received are specifically for new interventions in the substance abuse crisis that we are, you know, discussing every month and community staff. I know you're very engaged in those discussions and so, you know, that's another kind of hot crisis that we're facing and I do think there may look to find a way to bring some forward some proposals that would address really urgent matters right now while also having further discussion in other areas. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but I just kind of wanna signal, you know, particularly around, you know, we're losing more people to overdoses right now than we ever have and so if we have good ideas to address that I wanna act on them sooner rather than later. The floor is open. Councilor Hightower, are you looking to be recognized again or is that old hand? Okay. Old hand. Great. I think if there are no other counselors who are wishing to be recognized at this point, please take this as the kind of beginning of the process here. We would certainly welcome feedback by, you know, in other ways as well in the weeks ahead. Councilor Hanson, recognized. Thanks. Yeah. Sorry to jump in at the very end, but on the public safety item, are we gonna get, and I'm sorry if I missed this in a memo somewhere, but are we gonna get a report on the 850,000 of ARPA money that was put towards recruitment and retention and how that was spanned and what the impacts of that were? Yeah, I think that's a fair request. Councilor Hightower's request too. We owe you a kind of stabilized budget of showing where we're at. So point taken with both, I think, if we're gonna set aside, commit more money to this, both those are questions need to be fully answered. And we're certainly not doing that and what we've given you tonight. And I think both of those are, makes no sense to me that we should speak to those explicitly, both what's been done with the money already and what both the stabilized budget looks like, as well as any accruing savings as a result of vacancies. As we've talked before, it's not like someone leaves and there's pure savings and that it does lead to additional overtime work, but on both fronts, I think we need to provide you a lot more detail before asking you to commit further funds. So, agreed. Okay, thank you. Okay, well, I'm mindful that we are past the initial time. Thank you, President Tracy, for the flexibility. Again, you do- Recording in progress. Yesterday, happy to have, really would welcome engagement either offline or in another session if it's desired with the council. And we will incorporate the feedback we got tonight and we'll be in touch about how we're moving forward from here. Thank you again, Kara and Catherine, for the hard work preparing for tonight. And with that, the Board of Finance is adjourned at 6.40 PM and I turn the gavel, the Zoom over to you, President Tracy. Thanks, Mayor. I will call to order the city council meeting at 6.41 and the first item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Councillor Stromberg, may it please have a motion on the agenda. Sure. I move to amend, adopt the agenda as follows, add to the consent agenda item 5.11, communication to Bill Kim regarding objection to Chapter 18 ordinance amendment on short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.12, communication, Julie Marks, director of remote short-term rental alliance regarding submission to the Burlington Public Record for the public hearing on ordinance changes relating to short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.13, communication, BTSRA regarding notice of public hearing of Burlington Code of Ordinances short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.14, communication, Amy Magyar, sorry about that, regarding short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.15, communication, Deb Ward lines regarding short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.16. Communication, Matt and Lita regarding STR, sorry, STR feedback with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.17. Communication, Shanta Eastman and Ian Bleakley regarding in support of continuing short-term rentals for seasonal camps with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.18. Communication, Eric Zawadski regarding Burlington STR with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.19. Communication, Diana Carlyle regarding short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication in place on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.20. Communication, Ann Peter regarding short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.21. Communication, Lori Kodugren regarding short-term rentals, STRs with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Note proposed amendments for agenda item 6.02, ordinance chapter 18, housing short-term rentals per assistant city attorney per Councillor McGee. Remove from the agenda item 6.02 and place it on the February 22nd, 2022, deliberative agenda per Councillor Mason. Note revised version operational policy and updated motion for agenda item 6.04, ordinance parks camping in parks or other municipal lands, Councillor McGee per Councillor McGee. Add to the deliberative agenda item 6.05, communication city redistricting and consideration of next steps and timeline. The city attorney and city planner will address the council on various redistricting issues including timeline of process and consideration of an initial pre-map making steps to gauge the council's consensus on ward size, configuration, number and structure of representation, expected action to deliver feedback on redistricting questions and possible motion directing city staff to begin map making process per city attorney Richardson. Thank you for that very long motion, Councillor Stromberg very much appreciate it. We have a motion on the agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor McGee. Any discussion of the agenda? I would just like to note that there will be an updated motion for item 6.04. That will be posted to Board box shortly. Thank you for that heads up, Councillor. Anything else on the agenda folks? Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting are Councillor Hansen. Go ahead. Sorry, I was just wondering if Councillor Mason was going to just speak to the short-term rental item since it's not speak to the pulling it off of the agenda just so folks know what's going on. Sure, sure. I've seen Councillor Mason has joined as an attendee. Okay, I've promoted him to panelist. I was trying to do that for a while there and it wasn't working. Okay, now we have Councillor Mason with us. Councillor Mason, are you able to answer Councillor Hansen's question? Sorry, I was not on screen. My apologies. No worries. Did you catch Councillor Hansen's question? No, I did not. I'm sorry, Councillor Hansen. Could you repeat the question please? I was just wondering if you could speak to the removal of short-term rentals just so folks know what's going on. Yes, thank you. So I requested that this action on this be delayed for a couple of reasons, the first of which I would expect there to be extreme interest in the public hearing given the involvement of the public throughout the last 18-month process. And it's a little odd how we structure taking, arguably our amendments are supposed to be related to comments we've received in the public hearing. And it seemed a little odd to immediately go into consideration of amendments. Secondarily, I appreciate there was, I was getting questions and I know there were at least two councillors as well as myself who were contemplating amendments and given public involvement, my belief, was it made sense to allow the public to digest those over the course of the next two weeks if that's where Councillor Tracy puts this agenda item rather than move immediately into consideration of amendments that the public had not yet seen. Thank you. Does that answer your question, Councillor Hanson? Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to make sure people knew what happened there, thanks. Sure, okay, anything else? Okay, not seeing anything. Let's go to a vote on the agenda. All those in favour of adopting our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We have our agenda and we'll now move into item number two, which is a work session regarding quorum at City Council meetings. As a part of this item, I had asked City Attorney Richardson to draft a memo to describe sort of a variety of different issues having to do with the running of City Council meetings and keeping that discussion flowing in a respectful way that allows us to hear from a wide range of viewpoints while also conducting our business in an effective and efficient way. And so he has done that and provided us with a lot of great information about that. So I'll kick us, in order to kick us off, I'll have City Attorney Richardson sort of talk us through the memo and what some of the different considerations that he's described there. And then we can open it up for council discussion to really see if there are questions or comments based on what Attorney Richardson has shared. So thanks again for all your work on this Attorney Richardson. I really, really appreciate the thoughtful memo that you put together with a lot of legal case analysis as well as some thoughtful recommendations for us to consider. Thank you, Council President Tracy. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this issue and I wanna start off by apologizing that the memo was posted Sunday. That was in part because I was still revising this memo over the weekend. When you start to talk about public meetings, as you can see, it's not a straightforward, simple topic. It involves a lot of different balancing issues. And so it took me a great deal of time. So I wanna start off by apologizing for the delay because I'm sure it's not an easy memo to digest simply because of the density. And part of the reason I added as much as I did is because it was asked to be a public memo. So I wanted any discussion that we would have off of this document to be grounded in part the legal issues because this is a memo, I think for you as counselors to work with, but it's also for the general public. And it's also for people obviously who care deeply about some of these issues when it comes to disability, First Amendment and public meeting law. So that respect, it was a little bit dense. Let me move into the memo very briefly and I'll just give you an overview of what I wrote and an effort to describe it in short terms as opposed to 15 page terms. There's three sections to the memo. The first section is what I call big ideas. And the reason I put these first are I think these are the animating principles that you as a counsel, as a public body really have to put into consideration behind the legal framework. They start off with the idea of civility and civil discourse. And as it's described in the memo, there is a long, long tradition of civil discourse of being able to express one's ideas in a way that others can hear it. The idea of rhetoric, the idea of persuasion and dialectical tradition. And this is a long tradition that people in society have practiced. But it also points out that we have to be careful when we talk about civility because civility can often be used as a club and as a gate to keep people out of a discourse. And one of the quotes that I include is from the Seamus Kerry, the President of Transylvania University. Civility can conceal behind protocol and pronouncements politicians ignore injustice between slick handshakes and expensive suits, bigotry, stifles, fair opportunity for the marginalized. Justice civility facilitates respectful interactions. It can also preserve repressive customs, deceptive words and clever tricks. So, I think it's very important that we encourage civil discourse. I think we do have to be careful in the balancing of it that it doesn't become some sort of hurdle that stops people from doing public participation because frankly, we can't expect that every piece of civil discourse or every piece of public comment is going to have the rhetorical flourishes of say like a Pericles or somebody who has a certain skill about that. I think we have to expect that some of this is just going to be raw and it's gonna be emotional and it's going to be words that may be hard to hear. The second big idea that I think you have to wrestle with as a counsel is the idea that there is a lot of anger and frustration in the general public sentiment. And some of this is just sort of armchair sociology, but we're seeing this and I've been receiving information from say for example, the National League of Cities that has actually put out an entire pamphlet which I linked to in here that talks about and I think we've been lucky in Burlington in some ways when you start to look at some of the public meetings that have broken down into discord and chaos that people refuse to stop talking refuse to cede the floor which is not to say that there have certainly been issues and they've been articulated by various counselors but we have to take into account that this is a point in time where there is a lot of contention and frustration. The third point, the big idea is that the concept of conducting public business in an orderly and effective manner. And this is an important thing is that we can't, your job here is to conduct the business of the city council first and foremost. And so having the business of city council come first and in a meaningful manner should animate what decisions you make because at the end of the day that's the purpose of these public meetings. They are not public forums in the sense that they're not simply here to collect public information. There's a right of public input as I'll discuss later but it's first and foremost for the city council to deliberate and to be a body that forwards the business of the city. You as put it in very sort of crass terms you have to pay the bills or approve the payment of bills and you have to approve the legislation at your highest end. You have to have these important discussions, these deliberations about important issues that face the city. And the fourth one is freedom of speech. And this is behind a lot of these concepts that we'll discuss in the next section which is to say that when we open this when we open a meeting up to the public we invite the public in and that comes with certain responsibilities and those are embodied in the First Amendment some of the legal analysis that I'll get into briefly but that's just as much as we have to do our business as a council and as a city we also have to make sure that this forum is always open. And I often think of the example I don't know if anyone's familiar with the Norman Rockwell series of paintings the Four Freedoms the one that embodies freedom of speech has a gentleman in a sort of worn jacket standing up at a town meeting about to say something and everybody's looking in awe at what he's about to say. And having been to enough town meetings I can tell you that what he's about to say is probably ridiculous. He's probably about to complain that we need to buy a new plow for a grader because the other one is all crooked. And it may be meaningless it may be not important but the idea of freedom of speech is that we don't judge that. We don't say, oh, this is most important words that have ever been spoken. They are because they are important because the public is participating in that right to participate. So moving briefly along to the legal rights and limitations this is I think the section that really hits upon some of the legal concepts here which is you have public forums within public meetings because open meeting law requires it. And it requires it only to the extent that you can conduct your business. So, what's really important is that the public first of all has two parts to play in a public meeting. One is it's open to the public. So they're free to attend as tonight there's a group of members of the public that are sitting on Zoom participating, witnessing and watching this process. That's under 312A. That's a right of open meeting. Under 312H, there is a line that says the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to express its opinions on matters considered by the public body during the meeting so long as order is maintained. And there are two limitations here. One is that it's not an open forum to talk about everything in the world. If you wanna give a movie review of your favorite most recent movie you've seen technically this is not the forum for that. If you do wanna talk about an issue that may be on the agenda even if it's not like the specific issue, yes, this is the forum for that. And it comes with a caveat that as long as order is maintained. And that defines the right speech here. And that's important because it's not an open forum. And this is where the First Amendment comes in. These are limited public forums and the limited public forums mean that the council has to let the public speak but it's not an open invitation for the public to speak about anything or to do so at the detriment of the business of the city council. And so going through some of the analysis to that point, when you have a limited public forum it comes with certain responsibilities under the First Amendment. And that's basically you can make rules to limit what they talk but they have to be content neutral. They have to be time limits, place limits, manner. But they can't be baked into what we don't want certain opinions or we don't want, we wanna stop anyone who expresses an opinion we disagree. We have to express a significant government interest. And as I argue in the memo, and I think it's fairly easy is that to say that the purpose of these meetings is for the business of the council. And so that business in and of itself is significant. It's a significant government interest. So any restrictions that you put on that'll that to prevent you from that ensures the council business can be conducted in orderly free and effective manner and that the public forum is open and welcome to all members of public and that no one, both counselors and the public is intimidated from participating. All three of those are significant public interests. So as long as the rules are serving those interests and they're narrowly tailored to that, those interests meaning you don't wanna overdo it. You're generally in good shape. And the other, the final piece is that there has a right to an alternative forum. And I think this is a really interesting area which is that with Zoom, you have that alternative forum. A lot of these cases predate the Zoom component. And in the wake of Zoom, public participation as we're all doing tonight is virtual and it's meaningful but there are certain controls we can put on. And then the last section really talks about some recommendations, the ideas of how to enforce some of these civility. And what I tried to do was make a sort of continuum of both, as I say to my son, sticks and carrots. The first recommendation is, and this really comes from Robert's rules of order is there has to be effective enforcement. He was a council and the council president has the right to make certain rulings, particularly if somebody is being disruptive in the moment. But one of the things that Robert's rules of order really emphasizes is that that enforcement piece has to be there, otherwise it's meaningless. And there are different types of strategies. And sometimes it means, we know there's gonna be a contentious meeting, we know there's gonna be disruption. So we make sure to have a security component. And that's typical in a lot of town meetings where they will call the sheriff or the state trooper to come in and be simply president meeting. Some council bodies have a permanent person there, whether it be security, police, sergeant at arms, some person like that. But I think you should really have and think about strategies that will keep an enforcement mechanism and thinking through how do we want to enforce orders? How do we want to make sure that if the council president says, please stop being disruptive and the person doesn't adhere to that direction that the council has an ability to enforce that order? The second is to revisit the layout of the city council. As we start to come back to in-person meetings, there is a lot of consideration being given in a lot of public forms as to, how do we make sure that everybody feels safe? Counselors, individuals. An example that I give is the court system. When I started practicing law, criminal courts had metal detectors, but most of the civil courts did not. They all have metal detectors now. And I'm not suggesting that there should be metal detectors for this council, but it's an example that these institutions have started to think, well, wait a minute, we want to make sure that everybody inside of this public form feels safe and feels that if somebody is expressing rhetoric that is heated or that is very passionate, that it is just simply that. And there may be some considerations so that you as a council can receive more passionate testimony, but at the same time feel safe and to the extent that there's a physical threat, to the extent that it's more of a personal threat or a social media threat. I think in some respects, you have limited ability to control outside social media. But I think at the same time, it's worth revisiting some of the security concerns. The third, and I only have three more, is to develop a formal code of conduct. There are a lot of rules that council president Tracy often repeats to people pursuing in public form. It may be worth the council simply adopting these as more formal and laying it out. And including not just simply admonitions, don't do this, don't do that, but pro components, please be respectful, please be positive, not positive, I'm sorry, but please be respectful of this form and the individuals within it. Those type of aspirational type of terms as part of the code of conduct. Using virtual media as an alternate is something that we really haven't explored as I mentioned before, but I think it's a good alternative. If somebody simply can't be present in person without being disruptive. We now with a virtual meeting component have a way of making sure that they can participate in a meaningful way, but in a way that because of the medium, you can control better. You can mute their mic, which is allowed under the First Amendment if they violated some of the code of conduct or rules. And a fifth is really the carrot is let's model civil discourse, let's offer civil education and civility and how to do discourse to the public so that there are models being put out there and that there is that sort of greater training. And these are in part suggestions that the National League of Cities has adopted, but they're also, I think, trying to be tailored to this specific council. So that's it in a nutshell. I'm happy to have further discussion, but really what I intended with this memo as well is to cede the conversation for you as a council to really discuss this and how you want direction. And I remain at your service. Thank you, City Attorney Richardson. I appreciate it. And that's also how I envisioned this as a way for the council to continue the discussion around civility or not around civility, but around decorum at council meetings and potential next steps. I very much see this as a full council endeavor and one that would benefit from everyone's, all councilor's involvement. And I think a more deliberative process. I think as we see in the memo, it is a complicated endeavor to change the format or the public forum itself. Or at least I think it should be a deliberative matter and something that we don't take lightly or do without allowing for and having discussion amongst ourselves and then also getting feedback from those who would be impacted by it and that being the public. So that's why I've set up this work session and had this memo asked that City Attorney Richardson draft this memo. So with that, I wanna just open it up and see if there are questions, comments from councilors, thoughts about where they'd like to see the council go. Councilor Jain? Councilor Jain. Thank you President Tracy and Attorney Richardson. Thank you again. The memo is good. And I like really the summary of your explanation. There is one aspect that I could not find because members of the public, when we talk about respect, it should go both ways. When the council respect the public, the public respect the council, the body. But the memo did not include some, let's say, accusation from the public to the council in this digital age. When they talk to us, councilors do not turn their cameras on. Could we call that like, you know, being uncivil or being disrespectful to the people that are coming to speak to us? To whom are you directing the question, Councilor Jain? Of course, to Attorney Richardson. Sure, Attorney Richardson. Sure, sure. I mean, you as a council can set rules for your body. You know, what's interesting is that under 312, you know, the rule now allows, now counts as attendance, either in person or virtual. You know, when you have in person meetings. So I think there's a whole, you know, as we're learning sort of code of conduct in Zoom. Etiquette, that's certainly a reasonable standard for the council to consider is, how do we want counselors to participate? Because it's easy when you're at home to turn off the camera, go get a cup of tea, come back. And that may be perfectly reasonable. And you want to allow something like that. But the idea that, you know, somebody can jump on their Peloton bike and turn off the camera instead of listening to the council, that you may not want that. You may want the counselors to give their full focus as if they were here in person. So that's perfectly reasonable. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jain. Are there counselors? Councilor Stromberg. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Attorney Richardson for this. I think there's a lot to digest here and I really appreciate you putting it together. I really appreciate the part of like, open versus public meeting. I think that that's a good distinction because I feel like it's been, there has been that gray area when things do get a little out of hand where like, you don't want to shut anyone down, but knowing exactly like where we stand as a council is gonna be helpful in those moments because things can be said, swear words can be said, you know, they're kids watching. So anything we can prevent is good. But I also, yeah, I respect the fact that we do want to hear from people. And I think Council President Tracey is right that this is something that is kind of like, different parts of it need to be kind of deliberated and measured out. One thing I also just want to mention the camera thing. I personally have like sometimes some really wonky internet. And so I can hear like things don't lag as much if my internet is being weird, if I turn my camera off. So I just want to note that because I'm sure that other people like in work settings maybe other councilors deal with that too. So in case anybody thinks I'm not here during those moments, I am here. I'm just trying to listen. So yeah, thanks. Thank you for that, Councilor Stromberg. Don't have anyone else in the queue. Councilor Mason to be followed by Councilor Schoen. Oh, sorry. I just, I don't have an answer to this, but listening to some others, I mean, I think there's an acknowledgement that additional work needs to be done. I'm not really sure where this goes. It doesn't solidly fit with any existing committee. I don't know if the thought is either a special committee or sort of how this work now gets carried forward. I don't know, not to put it on you Councilor Tracey or President Tracey, I don't know if you have thoughts but I would, I think there's a lot good in here and I'd like to see it carried forward instead of just this memo put in a file. Sure. As would I, Councilor Mason and as I understand it, I mean, as I see it, or as we've done in the past, we had reviewed council rules in a couple of years back and made some meaningful updates to those rules. The process for that was a referral to the Charter Change Committee who then reviewed the rules, came up with a series of recommendations that were then referred back to the full council for adoption. I could see a similar process being in order here to continue with this memo. That seems like the most logical place for it to go. If there was a desire for, you know, a special ad hoc city council committee to be formed that also seems like a decent way for it to go. I think that's the reason that we're having this, part of the reason why we're having this session is to understand some of these issues, some of the recommendations and also to think it through what some of the next steps could be. So those are two potential paths that I could see and certainly open to others if folks have ideas, but I didn't wanna come in, you know, with a specific recommendation on next steps without having heard each of the, you know, heard the council's feedback. Cause again, I see this as a full council decision and discussion. That's helpful. Thank you, President Tracy, but just to sort of take a step back, we're in a work session. So my assumption is we would have to have a resolution of a subsequent meeting, you know, warned that would make that recommendation whether it's a charter change or a special committee. Yes, correct. So we would have to have that. And we could do that at the very next meeting. We wanted to make such a referral. Okay. So, I mean, to speak to the content, this is very good work. I think, you know, it does present a number of ideas that I am hopeful, whether it's this council or the next council, very, I like the idea of establishing clear rules and trying to articulate to the public. I know Councilor President Tracy, you try and do that at the beginning of the meeting, but I feel it would be far more impactful if we're actually rules that we adopted and had something to fall back on rather than an ad hoc speech by the president at each, at each meeting. So thank you for this. And I look forward to maybe next meeting where action is taken to get us working on these. Thank you. Sure. Thank you, Councilor Mason. I have Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilor Freeman. Councilor Shannon, you're muted. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor President Tracy. I also wanted to talk about the camera issue. Not everybody has the same setup at home or control over their environment in their Zoom room. And there are times when there might be distracting things happening behind me and reasons to turn off the camera. But, and as Councilor Schoenberg said, also, you know, the connection can be a piece of it too, but I see that as kind of a smaller issue. However, things go with that, it's fine. I wanted to talk a little bit about what we've, this has been a discussion that has well, President Tracy, I want to thank you for bringing this forward. President Tracy and I have been talking about this for many months and you have, you know, you brought it to Attorney Richardson. Thank you, Attorney Richardson. This report is really thorough and really helpful to us. In the past, we have had council discussions in the form of like a council retreat where we talk through these things. And I remember having one when I first got on the council. And it was interesting because councillors who had been there a while were very upset about a particular man who came to every city council meeting and sang to us. He wrote his own political songs, sang to the council. And for me as a new councillor, this was like the highlight of my meeting. I loved those songs that Ken Lawler sang to us. And others thought this was inappropriate. Our public forum includes everything under the sun that people want to talk about. And I think we should be cognizant of the fact that that has nothing to do with public meeting law. That's not what we're required to do. I think that it has some benefits because people sometimes will raise something to us through public forum that's not on our radar. And when we have, you know, they really have our attention in the public forum. I would say that there are nights when we can absorb those things and some nights when we can't. When we have a really hot issue on our agenda, it's really hard for us to, you know, when somebody comes in with their stray idea in the middle of a really hot issue, it's exceeding our bandwidth to take that in, I think. The other thing that I don't think, you know, I have read this report, attorney Richardson, but I'll have to study it a little more carefully over the coming weeks. I don't think you talked a lot about some of the limitations that other organizations put on meetings, such as having, you know, time slots that people sign up for their time slot to speak. And members of the public have complained at times that two minutes is not enough for them to really make their point. And potentially we could give fewer people more time or just some other ideas in the spirit of brainstorming, not saying they're good ideas or bad ideas, but also making sure we're hearing from both sides of an issue. So you can allot time for those to speak in favor and you can allot time for those to speak opposed. And I think other bodies do that. The other question that I have for attorney Richardson is about when we have somebody who is really disruptive at a council meeting who is intentionally breaking the rules, do we have an ability not, you know, oftentimes somebody breaks the rules and it's very hard to pull that back, but could they not be, could they lose their privilege to speak at the next meeting? So it's not content driven, but if you break the rules, then we have a limited amount of time to hear from people. So you're gonna go to the end of the line or you're not going to be able to get in the line for a certain period of time. I don't know if that is an option, but I would also suggest as an option for this discussion going forward in the hopes that we're going to be able to start meeting in person sometime soon. I do think that that retreat environment where we can all be together in the same room and have a more interactive discussion would be helpful on this issue. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Attorney Richardson, are you able to speak to Councillor Shannon's questions? Sure, I'm happy to respond to those. So the first point about different options, I agree entirely, and I didn't include that in my report in part because I think when you get into those options, there's as many under the sun as there are public meetings. And I'll just give an example. What Burlington does is they condense their public comment to one chunk of the meeting. And it's, as Councillor Shannon correctly notes, it's kind of an open public forum, what's on your mind, which is not what the law requires necessarily, but it certainly is something that the city has adopted and allows and it's not a violation. So it's a practice that you've adopted. Other cities or towns often have public comment on specific topics as the topics emerge. So, for example, you're taking up a short-term rental issue where you let the public comment about short-term rentals occur as you take up that particular issue. And the danger there, of course, is that that kind of conversation can bleed into the deliberative session that the council is holding. And I've seen that where the public feels like a member, not the public, but a member of the public feels like they are the 13th Councillor who keeps jumping in. So there are different pluses and minuses. Certainly if you wanted to limit the public forum or start to build sides, it really just depends on a particular scenario. So say there is a big issue such as, well, we've had those recently. I'll just use the Palestinian and Israeli issue that came up in the fall where clearly the public comment that evening was dominated by responses to that particular hot-button issue. You could in advance and you could build rules to say, when we know we're gonna have this type of issue, we're going to start assigning slots or we will dedicate a very sort of structure of the public forum in a different way. But ultimately you have to build the public forum in a way that makes sense to the functioning of the board. And so you have a system that you put into place that I think has largely worked, but it's not necessarily one that has, that it has to be this way from time in memoriam. And you have a lot of flexibility about how you reshape that. Again, as long as you're not saying anything about the speakers and the content themselves, the idea of two minutes is a small window, but you also allow a lot of people to talk. And maybe if you wanted to trade that off and give people more time to talk, you might have fewer people to talk because you're performing these balancing acts. And to the second question that you had, Councillor Shan, which I think was a little bit about how to deal with a particular disruptive person. You have to balance. So there's a case known as Herminsky versus Vermont that I cite in the memo. And that's a really important case came out of the Second Circuit. I'm sorry, it's Herminsky versus Corzones. And in that case, a Vermont judge banned a gentleman from appearing in courtrooms because he was a completely disruptive person. And I've seen his truck. He had a whole truck with signs telling everyone how terrible certain judges and prosecutors in the state of Vermont were. And he was not there to just quietly listen. He was there to disrupt and express his opinion. And so she banned him. And the Second Circuit said he can't do that. Can't remove people from a public forum. And so I think if anytime that you are removing people from a public forum, even if it's just for one meeting, I think you can, you're opening a very sort of dangerous door, but that's where I think the electronic alternative comes in. Is where if somebody is showing a certain level of disruptiveness for the sake of disruption. And this is something that really hasn't been tested in the courts. But we should be looking to use that technology because I think then you can limit how they disrupt. But the alternative form, the ability to participate, even if a person is disruptive and not welcome at meetings because of that disruptive behavior, that's the beauty of First Amendment is the least of us still have that right to participate. And I guess I would recommend just to be very, very careful. But the idea of putting him at the end of her at the end of the line, at the next meeting, like you speak last because you were disruptive. That's a potentially workable solution. But I think more than anything, you can remove the person from the meeting they're being disruptive in, but it's sort of a clean slate going forward. Thank you. All right, I have Councilor Freeman and I'll be followed by Councilor Chang. Thanks, President Tracy. I think that this was a great sort of presentation or if you were just in and just sort of a collection of thoughts and ideas and case studies. I think my thought on this is definitely at the, like off the cuff or like at the outset is to maybe err on the side of caution, I think when it comes to public discourse, I think I feel a little bit of concern in terms of like sort of over-policing public discourse. I understand that being disruptive and the disruptions at times are incredibly frustrating, though I feel a little bit of concern about how to sort of like it just seems very nuanced. Like it just seems very nuanced. So I don't know how, I mean, I would be curious to look at it, but I don't know how you would make sort of a universal rule that would still allow for things like civil disobedience and people protest and those are things that I think are part of sort of political discourse and they are disruptive. And I think that there are distinctions and the ways that people are disruptive. I think I am probably, if anything, in terms of like the free speech debate or conversation like the least permissive or the least lenient when it comes to like outright hate speech, I would say, and I don't know, your opinion on this attorney Richardson, but the U.S. I would say overall is pretty lenient when it comes to that, but like other, I haven't looked at it so, so extensively, but like other countries like Finland, for example, have are much more restrictive, at least in comparison to the U.S. when it comes to things that are deemed hate speech, for example, though I do, so I feel a little bit torn because I don't love the free speech conversation that sort of turns like a neutral position towards hate speech, but I also don't really want to, again, like over police when it comes to things like civil disobedience and sort of disruptions that can have like a historic nature, a very political nature. I think we saw that a lot in 2020 with the movements across the country around police brutality, anti-racism work and just like in the breath of history, those things really have a role and a place. I think that maybe moving forward, like having some nuance in the conversation, like I think that it's easy to look at everything sort of and just say it's all the same, but I think like if you actually tease a lot of those things out, like people who are coming to be opposed to masks might be part of really different sort of like political and historic positions than people who are fighting against police brutality and that those disruptions, though they've happened within the same like few years are not necessarily, can't really actually be all lumped together. I think, sorry, one more point I'm looking at my, oh and the last, the only last thing that I was just thinking about was that just the question of how much of this is like anomaly, like is this just partially because there has been, this has been a difficult year or sort of lumping it all together, but the pandemic has as a sort of entity of, it's not a year, it's multiple years, but this period has been, and I don't know to what degree, but like the part of the memo that talked about the increase in driver related accidents, I think it was like that's just, that is even though like driving overall was down, like that too, and just like the aspect of like thinking about like the destruction on airplanes and these sort of all these things, like it seems like maybe, I guess I wouldn't wanna like rush forward with something if we're sort of just in a moment, though I'm not opposed to looking at it. It just doesn't surprise, it wouldn't surprise me if there has been sort of like a, I don't know, like a larger sort of wave of like emotion and passion and frustration and like all these things during this particularly, I think tumultuous emotional time in our lives. So I really, this was like a ton of work, I was like, oh, we're talking about Hannah and Ren, like this is so, this is cool. So I really appreciated the memo and everything that was in it and the conversation thus far. I don't wanna take up any more time because I know Councillor Jay has questions and we're about to go into public forum, but yeah, I think that like the civil disobedience sort of aspect versus like making the meeting manageable and like safe essentially is kind of something I am interested in looking up further and curious to talk about and ask questions about further at a later time. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. I'll go to Councillor Jang and then we'll have to go to public forum. Councillor Jang. So out of respect of public forum time, I bypass my question and comment. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. It does seem like we do need to have more discussion on this. So, and as I said before in response to Councillor Mason's question, it does seem that we would, if we wanted this to go further, that meaning committee work or something like that, that we would need to refer that as part of a deliberative agenda. Can I just get a quick sense? Like our people, is that something that councillors would like to see on our next agenda referral of this and council rules to the charter change committee or another committee? Councillor Shannon. My preference would be to dig a bit deeper with the full council. Okay, so put it on the deliberative agenda and dig a little bit deeper. No, no, you know, give it, give it more time. You know, I like the council retreat idea. We might be two months away from that, but I'd be willing to take the time to do that. Okay, if that, whatever. Maybe you can wait, maybe you can kind of gather ideas from people. Sure, yep, I can do that. That's a great suggestion, Councillor Shannon. How about we do that? Just to keep this conversation going, because I really appreciate both the memo that kicked us off and then all of your reflections tonight, great questions. Really appreciate it again, to the attorney for just putting all this work in and giving us a really strong basis to continue discussing this. So with that, we will close that item, but continue the discussion potentially at another meeting or another format. And we will now move into the public forum. So for the public forum, if you're interested in signing up and have not done so, you may do so by going to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. And that'll take you to a fillable forum that you can then complete and submit which feeds into the order. I then read the commenters in the order that they're received, prioritizing Burlington residents first, and then going to those who have responded that they are not a Burlington resident or have not affirmatively indicated their Burlington residency next in the order that they are received. Each speaker will have two minutes. Please hold to your timing and time limits this evening. You will have the timer up on the screen as you're speaking and so please be cognizant of that. When you are at time, I'll let you know that and you will not be able to continue to go over time. We really need to make sure that each person has their ability at the same amount of time out of fairness to each individual who's participating this evening. In terms of public forum content, I would ask that folks please direct comments through to the chair. Stay focused on issues and refrain from personal attacks. And also please refrain from using profanity this evening. I'm trying to find other ways of expressing any frustration or anger that you may have regarding any of the issues that we're discussing or issues facing our city. With that, I will go ahead and open the public forum. So we have a number of people signed up this evening and one thing before we get it started that I just also want to let folks know and I'll be doing this as I did a couple of weeks ago with the charter change public hearings. We have these kinds of funky things that happen sometimes with agendas where we have the legal requirement to hold the public hearing around either a charter change or an ordinance change. And that goes on the deliberative agenda and we are able to recognize people to speak only to that item when we get to that item that we, so we do have a public hearing regarding short-term rentals this evening. And that's item 6.01 on our deliberative agenda. So I will, at that point, when we get to that point on the agenda I will recognize individuals who are interested in that. I do see a number of people who have indicated that they would like to speak to item 6.01. Though what I've done when we've had these setups is I've just checked in with people if possible, if I can locate them to just see if they'd like to speak at the public forum itself or if you'd like to wait until the public hearing. It's up to you as to what you'd like to do in terms of sharing your comments with the board. You can do, it's really up to you. So I'll just ask you if you've indicated, even if you've indicated 6.01 I'll just ask just to check in with you as we get to those items, just to make sure that we're where you want to be commenting and then we can come back to you if you indicate that you want to go to the public hearing and I'll go through those folks again and we'll use the same system. And if you are interested in speaking to the public hearing and you haven't signed up yet, if you could just say somewhere in the comment section that you'd like to speak at the public hearing that would greatly assist me in just facilitating the conversation this evening or the public forum. So I think said all of that, I will read off the first couple of names that we have for tonight's forum. I have the first people that signed up as one signup were Shanta Eastman and Ian Bleakney to be followed by Diana Carlisle, Laurie Koderman, Erica Reddick, Kent Kicella, Christine Freiman, Christopher Aaron Felker, Lee Morrigan, Robert Bristow-Johnson, Andrew Chronichfeld, and Jillian Eaton. So I'm gonna go to Shanta Eastman, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Looks like you're using an older version of Zoom so I'm gonna have to promote you to the panelists which sometimes the software requires us to do to allow a speaker to speak. Shanta, are you with us? It looks like you're muted. Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, I'll just read the letter since I'm not really a public speaker, but so dear esteemed city counselors, thank you for your service and in particular, your attention to the housing shortage in Burlington. I'm writing today to ask you to please take more time to study the problem before taking restrictive action against those of us offering short-term rentals. Please consider a carve out for seasonal properties that inherently cannot address the long-term housing shortage. I believe my family situation is probably not unique and offers an example of how such blanket restrictions against all short-term rentals will not automatically achieve the goal of providing more long-term housing. Ours is a seasonal rental. We open in May once the risk of frost has passed and shut it down again for the winter. There's absolutely no way we or our other seasonal camp neighbors could provide long-term housing. During the winter, our uninsulated camp is freezing cold with no heater water and is completely inhospitable. Some of us old timers on Appletree Point have offered short-term rentals and these allow us to partially defray some of the skyrocketing property taxes and go against the gentrification that we continue to weather as the newer buyers deep pockets of grossly inflated lakefront prices. One important value to our family has been to keep the rental rate affordable. For the past 10 years, we have tried to keep our cozy and rustic Airbnb cabin way more affordable than most hotel rooms in Burlington. We have made Burlington lakefront stays affordable and accessible to regular folk. Please do check our listing. I invite you to check our listing and just so you can get a sense of the type of unique spot that visitors and Burlingtonians stand to lose if short-term rentals are banned. So thank you so much for your time and consideration. So I signed it myself and my husband, Ian, like me. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right, our next speaker is Diana Carlisle to be followed by Lori Koderman. Diana, I have located you and have enabled your microphone. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Go ahead. Short-term rentals is my subject and I'm really concerned when short-term rentals are not owner occupied. And one of the main reasons that I feel that way is when we had a property on our street that went on the market and was bid up and bid up very high and after all was said and done, a young couple with children had appeared to buy it. We welcomed them, helped them, whatever. But as a few months went by, it seemed that when they were ready to move in, they were not going to move in and then a drone appeared in the backyard taking pictures and people moved in with plants and furnishings and said, what's going, I said, we said, what's going on? And they said, this is a listing for what? Airbnb. It's a whole house, short-term rental. No owner will be living there. And sure enough, it is listed for up to eight guests, no neighborhood, no neighbors and the young family that we felt were going to be our neighbors are really part of a group of investors. It's a corporation, it's an LLC, the home is a business or I should say the house is a business. In effect, it's a hotel on our residential street. And this is going to happen more and more. It's a red-hot market, as you know, and when you discover the amount of money you could make with a home like that, it's only going to get worse. And I don't, do we want this for our community, for our city? We need to put some parameters around it and owner occupied whole house rental is to me the way to do it. Some of the opposition say it's not going to affect that many houses. Well, if you live on a street with a house like that, it's not insignificant, it's significant. If you're a young person wants to buy and you're outbid, it's significant. So the question is, do we want to live next to a hotel, which this really is, or do we want to live next to a neighbor? So I ask you please protect our housing supplies. Thank you. All right. So our next speaker is Lori Koderman to be followed by Erika Redick. Lori, I know, and sorry for the first two about the, are you in Lori? Let me just enable your mic, Lori. Are you interested? Are you interested in speaking now or during the public? One second. Sorry, I'm having some issues. Hi, Lori. Are you interested in speaking now or during the public hearing? Yeah, it would be fine. Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. Go ahead. Okay, good. I agree with Diana Carlisle. By the way, what is deeply concerning to me though is what happened at the last committee meeting to discuss the proposal that was the result of a two year process that both the joint planning committee and ordinance committee worked diligently with to collaborate with our short-term rental coalition. And the result of those regulations that came together were a give and take on both ends. And so I was shocked and dismayed to see the results of these tremendous efforts just thrown to the wayside after a 30 minute closed session with a highly restrictive ordinance put in place instead. I don't understand it. I don't know what happened. But I do wanna say that I do believe that for many owner-occupied people, short-term rental is the solution to a segment of us for affordable housing. I know that I own a duplex and I have tenants there who have had very low rent, 1,500 around. And I just looked at rent meter today, 2,600 is the average rent for that particular size home. When the taxes went up $300 a month, I could have shifted that to the tenants, but I was able to raise my nightly rate 10 to $15 a night. So as an owner-occupied, that works. And I have another scenario, but I don't have the time to do it. But what I will say is I would appreciate you to consider the proposal that we all worked so hard to create. I sent a letter off recommending what three bullet points, but basically allow a duplex property to the ST short-term rental if they live on site and to require health and safety standards. We are all not against regulation. Time is up. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Erika Redick to be followed by Kent Cassella. Erika, I've located you. And Erika, are you interested in speaking now or waiting till the public hearing? I would like to speak now. Thank you. Okay, go right ahead. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I would first like to say that if the concern about not having enough housing in Burlington were a sincere reason for why we were going through this process, I would be willing to consider that. And I would be willing to have that conversation or I would at least be more amenable to it. However, it is not a serious conversation because your Mayor Weinberger and your city councilor or counselors, the ordinance committee, DPW and your city attorneys are forcibly removing units from the market. So I, again, I have contacted all of our city counselors in the new North end. None of them will respond to me. My husband called Max Tracy, he did, Max did call and then we heard nothing. And so we lost at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court literally said, yes, this is an illegal ordinance from the city, but we're gonna force you to remove one of the apartments from your building. Even though we have owned this house, it's been in my family for 60 years. There has never been a code violation. There's never been an enforcement action against us. We have always paid our taxes on time. And yet for whatever reason, your, this city council and the people in charge are committed to removing units from the market. I have a friend who had one corner of one room that was a quarter inch too short on the height and they forced them to remove the unit. I know of at least five units that have been removed from the market in the last 18 months for stupid ordinances. We literally renovated the unit, all new floors, new bathroom, new kitchen, new appliances. And now we're being punished and forced to remove it because it was vacant for more than 60 days during the renovation. This is outrageous, irresponsible, and it is clear that the city council does not actually mean what it says when you want things to be affordable. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kent Cassella to be followed by Christine Freiman. Kent, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Thank you, I very much, I appreciate it. And Kent, I see that you are wanting to speak to short term. Did you wanna wait until the public hearing or did you wanna speak now? If you don't mind, I'll speak now, thank you. Sure, go ahead. I hope you've all read and considered the email I sent to each of you on January 27th. I know Mark Barlow did, he responded and I believe I clarified some information. I hope that he shares that with you. I believe a ban on short term rental not only deprives many of us of a modest additional income, but it puts some of our livelihoods at peril. This ban sends tourists without uber wealth out of town. Middle income America cannot afford 250 to $400 a night to house their family of four in Burlington, Vermont. I mean, do your budgets allocate that kind of money to go out on a holiday? I did hear someone say something about out of state interests buying up housing or multi units and renting them out. I have not heard of those personally, but my proposal would address that by licensing short term rentals. We Burlington hosts that the ones I know are local taxpayers that are just trying to get by and personally I'm trying to age in my home and to supplement my retirement, which is not great. Please consider the proposal I had sent to limit the number of short term rentals in Burlington to a set number, continue to collect the meals and room taxes and perhaps add an additional 1% tax to that. Have hosts pay fees and also pay a small percentage of gross revenue towards the city. These funds can be used as I referenced in my email for an additional housing fund. Tourists and families will come to Burlington and it will be a win-win for all of us. They'll ride their bikes to the beach. They'll ride our bikes on the bike path. They'll go to church street and they'll spend their money locally and eat at local restaurants. Short term rentals being banned sends people out of town and those out of town dollars do not come back. I hope you'll reconsider this and give it some deep thought. Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Christine Freiman to be followed by or Freeman to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. Christine, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Christine, it looks like you're muted on your end. Christine Freiman, Freeman. Sorry about that. Are you able to hear me now? Yes, I can. Okay. My apologies. I actually wanted to speak on a different agenda item. The agenda was forwarded to me and the numbers were cut off. So my apologies, I'll withdraw my name. Thank you. So this is for the general, this is the general public forum. It's not the public hearing about the short term rentals. So you can speak to any agenda item at this point. Oh, okay. In that case, I wanted to, I guess, clarify an item that I saw that was addressing camping on public grounds and the possibility of altering an ordinance that currently disallows camping, say in public parks. I would not be in favor of that change. I'd like to continue to disallow camping in public spaces other than designated camp grounds. Great. Thank you for that comment. Our next speaker is Christopher Aaron Felker to be followed by Lee Morgan. Christopher, I've located you. Christopher Aaron, I've located you and have me to do that panelist thing. So I've done that. You should be able to speak now. Christopher Aaron Felker, are you with us? Yes, sorry about that. I'm Christopher Aaron Felker, the chairman of the Burlington Republican Party. And I had notes written up to speak on short term rentals but I'm actually going to submit those to the clerk for the record and let the other speakers argument stand. I think that some speakers had some fantastic arguments put forward. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to see the civility memo. And council president Tracy, thank you so much for recognizing that there was a problem here. And thank you, attorney Richardson for the fantastic thorough memo. Thank you, Joan, for the questions. And Perry, I appreciate your reservations here. I think that as far as civility is concerned, you have a lot of points on wanting to protect some civil disobedience and how that is part of the process. And I do agree. And I think that we should focus some on how it's important to ensure that hostility and public outbursts and personal attacks aren't tolerated towards individuals speaking at public forum. I think that that really does create and foster a chilling effect, which limits interaction. So I'm really encouraged to see the council taking this matter up in the future. And I'm looking forward to see where it goes. This evening, I also am speaking in opposition to 6.03. The use of one-time ARPA funds to start new programs is fiscally irresponsible and directly opposite of White House guidance, which is explicitly advises not to use one-time funds in these manner. And in opposition to 6.04, allowing camping on all public lands is not a housing policy. This is neither humane nor dignified. It's essentially, it's especially disrupting to our neighborhoods and to advocate for such a destructive and degrading policy to address homelessness is ill-advised. We can do better. If we can do better, we should do better and we can do better together. Thank you, Amazon. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lee Morgan to be followed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. Lee, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great, thank you. So I am calling in to ask you to vote yes to send the amendment on camping in parks or on other municipal lands to CDNR and the Public Safety Committee. Two previous commenters are actually speaking to some things I wanted to talk to you about. One caller referenced the current ordinance on public camping when in reality there actually is no public ordinance. I feel that's what's very misleading about the current policy. And as we found out in a ongoing lawsuit, Bereta and Grundy versus City of Burlington, the current policy actually holds no legal weight for either the city or anyone affected by it. The city has used it more as like a PR thing like, hey, like your campsite violates this policy but because it was never ratified or made an ordinance there is no policy the city has to follow for removal notices and there's no recourse for people who receive a removal notice. So just for that simple fact that there should be some sort of policy, there should be some sort of recourse. So if I get pulled over for speeding and I'm giving a ticket, there's like a very super accessible way to seek recourse for that. And so I feel like if we're affording that to people who are pulled over for speeding, people whose homes are being taken away from them, I just feel like that's a very simple thing. It's not allowing like blank and blanket right to camp anywhere. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And a huge part of this is giving people an accessible way to seek an appeal. Currently, the only process is to file a lawsuit against the city. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Andrew Cronichfeld. Robert, I have enabled your microphone. So I'm here to speak to the board of civil authority about the big decision that you're gonna be making tonight about what house district map we're gonna be looking at for the next 10 years. Whatever you decide will almost certainly be accepted by the House Government Operations Committee because it affects no other towns and there's no intercity dispute for them to settle. The, right now that they supplied you with an alternate map which is far better than the LAB majority map, but this alternate map divides many neighborhoods in our city, now Rose Street, Murray Street, Peru Street, School Street, Green Street, Adams Street, DeForest Road, Lakewood Estates, up on Ethan Allen Parkway, the Moore Drive and Gazo Avenue neighborhood. This is unnecessary. You can have a map that has consistency for every Burlingtonian that each of us has two representatives in the House for constituent services instead of some of us having two and others of us having only one representative in the House for constituent services. We can use major streets and large obstacles like shopping centers that naturally divide neighborhoods. We can use those as district boundaries and we can have local concerns such as the King Maple Street neighborhood including the Bob and Mill Apartments. We can have the Moore Gazo and we can certainly have Lakewood Estates, those neighborhoods respected instead of divided. But to do that, to fix that, we need to divide a couple of census blocks. I show how to do it and I justify that with the numbers in the paper that I have supplied to the BCA. And if the council chooses to adopt one of those maps, they can be vetted conditionally so that if for some reason the numbers don't click, you can convert to the LAB majority map. I'll put your timers up. Thank you. Our next speaker is Andrew Chronichfeld to be followed by Jillian Eaton. Andrew, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Yeah, hi. I just wanted to ask the council to vote yes on Joe McGee's amendment. I think one thing I found really shocking after the whole Sears Lane encampment ended was that the police took a bunch of people's personal items and threw them in the garbage and there was nothing that the campers could do about it. And these are some of our most vulnerable citizens and I imagine your only way to make money was your tools and then when the police came in all those of your house they took your tools and threw them in the trash. So I know part of the new amendment by Joe McGee says, police will have to inventory all the stuff they take and then at least people will have some sort of recourse and thanks for letting me talk. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jillian Eaton to be followed by Dennis O'Brien. Jillian, I've located you and have enabled your mic. I have a prepared statement on short-term rentals. My name is- Would you like to speak now or during the public forum? Now would be great, thank you. Okay, go ahead. My name is Gillian Eaton and I have lived in my current home in Ward five of Burlington for more than 20 years. Last year I began renting out a portion of my home using Airbnb. The income provided by my short-term rental allows me to cover my property taxes which have become burdensome and continue to escalate for residential property owners especially for homes like mine in the south end. I strongly opposed the alternate ordinance that has been proposed based on a request by Councillor Shannon. Since my home is currently my primary residence the alternate proposal would not impact me today but it could in the future. Should I decide to move as my four children reach adulthood and move out of the home I will want an option to be able to rent this property as a short-term rental whether or not it is my primary residence. It's counterproductive to overturn the work of nearly two years done through the mayor's housing summit after compromise was reached in that process and it dismisses and diminishes the time invested by many over that period. I agree there is a dearth of long-term rental options in Burlington but I don't agree that limiting current Vermont residents with regard to short-term rentals is the answer. If the concern is out of state investment companies or out of state property owners then focus on that not simply banning short-term rentals in any home other than a primary residence. Furthermore, I suggest the data be collected over the next few years to see exactly what impact the new regulations associated with the compromise proposal would have on the numbers of short-term rentals before the more extreme restrictions of the alternate proposal are enacted. Additional ordinance changes could be considered in the future. I ask that you reject the alternate ordinance which limits short-term rentals only to host primary residences and that you keep the original compromise proposal founded on the work of the mayor's housing summit. Thank you. Thank you. Dennis O'Brien, I think I might have found you under a different name. I'm just going to enable, I think it's Issella O'Brien. Is that, Dennis, are you signed on under that name? I've enabled Issella O'Brien, if that is you, Dennis. That is me, my wife and I share a Zoom account, yes. Okay, great. And I have you as wanting to speak to short-term rentals or you wanting to go now or during the public hearing. I'll go now. Okay, sure, go ahead. Okay, well thanks folks for serving on the city council. Short-term rentals have allowed us to keep our home. Moreover, many of these renters we're getting because we live in our house and we rent out part of our house are people coming to check out UVM or Champlain or they're thinking of moving here or their brother's living here and they want to visit him. And like a previous caller said, the hotels are absolutely astronomical, 400 is light. Sometimes it's 450 for some of these hotels. And a lot of people come with the woman that's here now is from Queens visiting her family that lives down the street. They have a toddler. It's better for the toddler to be in the neighborhood. And what I found, and I was nervous at first is my neighbor's actually embraced this because we have created an environment where in our neighborhood, there's other rentals, long-term rentals that have turned out to be, shall we say, troublesome. So it not everybody's a landlord I guess is what I'm trying to say and I'm certainly not. So I encourage you not to eliminate them but I also want to draw another point like the previous caller said, this may affect me down the road. Both houses on either side of me went up for sale over the last year and they both sold very quickly but they didn't sell to corporations. Each of them sold to an individual person. So they're both three bedroom houses and they're both have one person each living in them. I didn't buy either one, even though I wanted to because I saw this issue stewing. And I encourage you to keep in mind a lot of us spent a lot of time and a lot of hearings working with the ordinance committee and everyone else to make a rule that kind of was fair and that seems to be gone. So I would continue to embrace this revenue source. We refer people to businesses. There's a list of local businesses to go to and our taxes are paid on time thanks to Airbnb. And I encourage you to go back to the original rule. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kelly Cating Davidson to be followed by, we'll switch to non-Berlington residents after that and that will be the next speaker after Kelly will be Dan Goosen. Kelly, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Well, I think a lot of people have already said some of the things that I also feel are important the short-term rental allows landlords to deflect the incredible tax increases, which were promised as the net zero increase but ended up being a 30% increase for us, which was $250 per month per duplex. And not to mention the increasing costs of repairs. If you can even get your slate roofer to call you back expensive to keep the historic buildings in good condition. We have, our rentals are at least 30% below market and if we are not able to use one of our units, one of our five units for short-term rental, we're gonna have to increase our rents. We've had people in some of our properties for like 10 years and haven't raised the rents once. That's the kind of landlords that we like to be. I hate the idea that I'm gonna have to raise rents if I can't kind of deflect with the short-term rental. And I feel like that the growing, this growing negative attitude towards landlords and I'd like to see a little bit more gratitude towards the people that are providing housing for people. Being a landlord is a hard job. It's a hard job. This is Mark Kelly's husband. Oh, okay. Is a hard job. It's real hard to treat, to keep places nice and have nice rentals and the taxes are so high now that if we only have one Airbnb out of all of our apartments which we have used to offset all the tax increase and now if we lose the Airbnb, everybody's rent is gonna have to go up. And if you care about the neighborhoods, this is gonna destroy neighborhoods because people are gonna move out and we're gonna lose a great tenants that have been a long part of the neighborhood for a long time. So from our perspective, total negatives. Thank you. And if multiple people wanna speak, it's helpful if people sign up as individuals or as separate people so that I can just identify you individually when you wanna speak, even if you are on the same Zoom. I did have another Burlington signup come in, Deb Ward-Lions to be followed by Dan Goosen who's non-Burlington. So Deb, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Do you wanna speak now or at the public hearing? I'll speak now. Okay. I believe the current STR proposal before you is extremely short-sighted. You can and must do much better. You cannot say we've had a failure of imagination over the past two years with many broad and informative discussions and ideas shared between STR hosts, community members and the planning office. This highly restrictive proposal will at most gain a handful of housing and cause a domino effect in terms of increased rents, increased taxes from the loss of rooms and meals income and units being taken off the market altogether. The root of the housing shortage is not found in short-term rentals and the solution is not found in this limiting proposal either. Let's look at the data. Only 1.2% of BTB's rental housing are whole unit STRs. Of these 199 units, 95% of the property owners surveyed said they will not return to annual long-term renting. STRs are a new economy that BTB needs to get on board with regarding the housing crunch, build more housing, require UVM juniors to live on campus and incentivize property owners to renovate empty apartment buildings like the multi-unit that just went up in flames on King Street. Instead of Jones proposal, consider allowing property owners to have one STR for one affordable unit anywhere within Burlington city limits. Allowing a duplex property owner to STR if they live on site as previously allowed for B&B permits, limiting STRs to buildings owned for a minimum of three years to stop speculative buying. The current proposal is going after low-hanging proof. Please do better. Thank you. Our next speaker is Dan Goosen to be followed by Julie Marks. Dan, I've enabled your microphone. All right, you can hear me? Yes, go ahead. Great. Thank you to the council, the mayor, the committees and the planning staff who have spent countless hours hearing testimony and trying to come up with a solution for regulating STRs in Burlington. I have a prepared statement I'd like to share. Burlington's a wonderful city. My wife and I grew up in opposite corners of the state. She and Barton and I in Bennington and we met at UVM over 20 years ago and have spent half our lives calling Burlington home. We lived in 10 different apartments over the years and finally we're fortunate enough to have saved enough to purchase a home. We bought a three-unit building on St. Paul Street and spent the next decade living in a two-bedroom apartment there, fixing the place up as we went. When we found out our son was on the way, I got to building an in-law addition on to our unit so that our parents would have a place to stay when visiting. In between visits, we began renting the space out as short-term rental. After a decade of ownership with the help from this extra income, we were finally able to move out of our apartment and put a down payment on our own single-family house 20 minutes away. We now have excellent long-term tenants occupying all three of our apartments, paying well below market rents. We could not afford a single family house in Burlington but this situation has enabled us to buy a real home. In addition, oh, sorry, that addition that we rent as an STR is not the standalone unit. If the policy that has been most recently proposed passes as written, our separate addition will not revert to year-round long-term rental housing. It's my understanding that most of the STRs in question will also not revert to long-term rentals. Instead, Burlington stands to lose a critical tool for welcoming visitors to Burlington and with it, many subsidized apartments whose rents will need to be raised to make up the difference. I urge you to consider some of the proposed amendments which would allow for a limited number of these STRs with off-site owners while also ensuring much needed high-quality affordable housing. You all work very hard on affordable housing and I commend you for it. I just hope that you are able to hear some of the other contributions that have been made and ideas that have been brought up. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Julie Marks. And again, folks, if you're wanting to speak to short-term rentals, feel free to, you can also speak to them at the public hearing on the deliberative agenda. Julie Marks, I have located you and enabled your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Before you start the call, I would just like to know what the difference is between speaking now and speaking in the public hearing on short-term rentals? Is there still a two-minute time limit to speak during the public hearing? We do not usually use a time limit for the public hearings. I think that would have been really informative for you to have announced at the beginning of the meeting and I will wait until the public hearing for my comments. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Lucas Jensen to be followed by Eric and Debbie Hanley. Enabled your microphone? Eric and Debbie Hanley? I thought Lucas was going next. Oops, sorry. Yes, Lucas Jensen, sorry. Thank you. Lucas, I've enabled your microphone. Can I ask, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Can I ask one more clarification? That public hearing on short-term rentals, is it happening tonight or is it the one that's gonna be on the 22nd of February? It's tonight. Okay, I'm gonna wait and speak at that time. Please, thank you. Sorry. Sure. Our next speaker, I'll go to Eric and Debbie Hanley now. Enabled your microphone? Okay, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I just, and I'd like to speak now about the short-term rentals. You know, the planning and zoning and joint committee and a lot of the short-term rental owners worked really hard over the last two years, working on a pretty fair proposal, I thought. And then we've kind of gotten shut out with a new proposal that's on the table right now. And in my situation, I'm not an owner-occupied host. And I would like to see, you know, short-term rentals definitely need regulation in Burlington. And like they said before, it's about 1% of the whole rental market. And I think regulating, you know, the short-term rentals is a great idea. There's a lot of tax revenue that can be generated with the Meals and Rooms taxes. In 2019, Airbnb contributed $120,000 to the city of Burlington. And I know Kent had talked earlier, you know, make every Airbnb get registered of annual fee, take a little more money every year from Airbnb hosts, a little tax. There's a lot of money generated to the city. And it's tough with these tax increases with the city of Burlington right now. People love coming to Burlington, Vermont. It's a great place to come. And short-term rentals are a big part of Burlington right now, and I think they need to continue to be a big part of Burlington. It helps people afford to stay in Burlington near downtown, near the bike path, come up for graduations, go to the Dragon Boat Festival, all this stuff. So I just hope you guys consider, you know, non-owner-occupied rentals. And I have no problem having a, I have a duplex. I have no problem putting somebody in the one bedroom there at minimum market rate rentals. I think that's a great idea too. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Deborah Larick-Bod. Located you, Deborah, and have enabled your mic. Yes, I don't know if I'm in the right place. I need to talk about abatement. Is this the right meeting? Nope. So we'll have a board of abatement of taxes meeting. There is another meeting. And if there is another abatement meeting that we have, there is not a public forum component to that, but I do see that your item is on the deliberative agenda for that item. And so when we do have someone on the deliberative item with a request for abatement, we do recognize the person if they'd like to say something at that time. So it will be tonight? Yes. Oh, okay. So I'll just wait then. Yep. Yeah, I would just encourage you to wait and we'll come back to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, I see one more signup. We have a counselor. I actually see a couple other signups. I see Sharon Busher. So Sharon, I'll enable your mic. President Tracy, I would like to speak during the public hearing on short-term rentals. Sure, thank you. And then I have Barbara Hedrick. I think I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Hello, can you hear me okay? Yes. Good evening. I ask city council to please choose a redistricting map that eliminates a campus area Ward 8. Making Ward 8 compact is not a good solution because a compact Ward 8 will still be 95% students and 5% long-term revenue. I've created many versions of redistricting maps and analyze population data by Ward. The data supports reassigning the athletic campus to Ward 1, which is how it was for 40 years. This will result in about equal number of on-campus students in Wards 1 and Ward 6. If the athletic campus is reassigned to Ward 1, it cannot be called cracking because students will still account for most of the population in Wards 1 and 6. Student voice will not be lost. On-campus students will account for 60% of Ward 1's population. And this will also be true in Ward 6. Balancing on-campus students across Wards 1 and 6 is a way to remedy the long list of problems that have been mentioned by the public with the gerrymandered Ward. The ad hoc committee repeatedly heard from the public that Ward 8 should be eliminated. If city council wants eight wards in total, then please consider maps that put the eighth Ward in a location that does not include on-campus census blocks. Thank you. Thank you. And that was our final speaker for this evening for the public forum section of our meeting. So I will go ahead and close the public forum and we will move to the next item on our council agenda, which is the city council climate emergency reports. Are there any councillors wishing to offer a climate emergency report? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on. Councillor Stromberg, may I please have a motion on the consent agenda? Yes, I move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. We have a motion on the consent agenda. Is there a second? Again, seconded by Councillor McGee. Any further discussion? Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries. So we now have our deliberative agenda, but before we get to that deliberative agenda, I will recess this meeting and we have two other meeting structures under which the council and also in this case, the mayor with the mayor presiding functions, the board of civil authority and the board of tax abatement. So I'll recess the city council meeting to first go into the board of civil authority, give folks a chance, recess the city council meeting in day 21 and then turn it over to Mayor Weinberger who runs the board of civil authority meetings. Thank you, President Tracy. I will call to order the board of civil authority at 821 and the first item on the agenda is the agenda. We have a motion to adopted. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Do we have a second? Like seconded by Councilor Mason. Any discussion of the agenda? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. That brings us to the consent agenda. Should we have a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the action that's indicated? So moved. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Seconded by Councilor Hanson. Discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the deliberative agenda, which is a 3.01 is a presentation regarding the state reapportionment maps. And Richard's and the city attorney has a camera on. Dan, are you gonna take it from here? Sure, I'd be happy to take it from here. So the issue before the board of civil authority tonight is about the state reapportionment for the house. Those maps have been released. And as you'll see from the attached documentation, the legislature has asked each board of civil authority to weigh in on the proposed maps. And these normally boards of civil authority would have until April to give their feedback, but under the house bill that is governing this were required instead to give feedback on the proposed divisions by February 15th. And this is due to ballot requirements that need to be met for the state's August primary date. So I will, let me see if I can share my screen because I think this is the, oops, I do not have screen sharing ability. What if information while we do that, if you could just repeat the deadline again? Sure, so what's happening right now is that, and let me, and I will share this letter. So this is the letter that was sent out to the boards of civil authority. And it was dated January 20th. The house committee on government operations is seeking feedback on the proposed district lines contained in these maps, the BCA proposals to subdivide the proposed two member districts into two single member districts. And BCA proposals on how to divide, subdivide any initial district as listed in the bill as having three or more representatives into one or two member districts. And then the additional feedback. Now the deadline, I'll go right, it's here. And this letter is a bit more easier to read than the actual statutory language, but I'd be happy to go to that if the council would like that or the board of civil authority would like that. But what essentially the letter says is that the government operations committee needs feedback from the BCA to be submitted by February 15th. And so the legislature is considering this proposal for redistricting and they are asking the BCA feedback. As in the next paragraph it says, if your BCA is unable to obtain a majority vote on a proposed subdivision or if your BCA opts to propose a different district configuration, or to propose general feedback, please communicate the information to the house committee on government operations by February 15th so the general assembly can move forward with finalizing the district lines. So again, this is relatively quick turnaround that they're asking for you. So this is the Chittenden map that is being proposed. And as you'll see, there are, it is primarily, I think is one of the public commenters noted, it is primarily a Burlington based series of districts with the one exception being what is known as Chittenden 6-7 which is a two-member district that does contain small sections of Burlington up here on the northeast side. But the remainder of these districts and just so you can understand and read what's going on here is that it talks about the new Chittenden District 6-2. And so that's the name of the district. The 1.0 means there's one member for that particular district and then the amount of people that are contained within it. In this case, 4,542 people and how much that deviates from the state mean. So it's about 5.95% larger than the average mean. The average, sorry, the average district in the state. So you have 6-2 with one person, you have 6-3 with two people. And as you can see the numbers here, for the 6-3, they actually, they have double the amount of voters, the 8,954. And what the legislature has done is if you were following this from the fall, originally the advisory board had proposed a series of single member districts. And so the legislature has set that proposal aside and has instead adopted these two member districts or one member in certain cases. So as you'll see with Burlington, we have a mix of both. So 6-3 has two members, 6-6 has one member, 6-4 has two members, 7-4, which is actually South Burlington has one member. So that's not really relevant as a 7-3 and 6-5 has two members as well. So the city of Burlington has roughly about, I believe in total, it's close to 10, I mean, sorry, 12 members in its district as they're broken down. So there's really two questions that the Board of Civil Authority has to weigh in on. One is, are you comfortable like the Board of Civil Authority with these proposals? And so, essentially you have three options there. You say, yes, I'm comfortable with these proposals or no, I like the single member districts or no, I'd actually like this new configuration that you would either propose or come up with or recommend. And then the second question that you have to answer really is, are you comfortable with these boundaries? As you can see from the map, there are specific boundaries for each of these districts and those are obviously movable. The game, of course, is we'll talk about when we talk about local redistricting is making sure that if you move the boundary south in one direction, that it's compensated in other ways so that these numbers remain relatively equal. And as you can see, six, five, six, four and six, three, they've made these districts that are two member districts but that have that relevant almost 9,000 member seats whereas the 6, 6 and 6, 2 have the 4,500 member district seats. So I mean, those are sort of the questions you have to answer and those are the concerns that they want to know. What I would say as sort of further before I just turn it back over to the BCA to discuss is that at this point in the redistricting process, it's probably best to really have a compelling reason to push back on what the legislature has drawn. At this point now, they're balancing obviously a number of these voting districts and wanting to make sure that there's some equality but again, within the city of Burlington, it really doesn't affect if you change things around within the city if there's a, but I would say there has to be a compelling reason the BCA would want to make those changes such that the Board of, I mean, sorry, the Government Operations Committee would alter this given sort of the difficulty of doing the re-emportionment and the limited amount of time and space that they have to make changes. So with that, I'll just simply stop sharing my screen and that's the presentation unfold. Great, thank you very much, Dan. Are there, I guess before we move to the deliberation, are there questions about the presentation? Councillor Hightower. Yeah, sorry. And I just want to make sure that I understood this correctly because in the map, it doesn't really look like parts of Burlington are incorporated into that East end. And I know that in the current model it is, which I think does have issues with it. So I just wanted to clarify what streets are in the Winooski District, if any, because I thought I heard you say that it did have parts of Burlington. That's right, it's my understanding or maybe I'm looking, no, it does take out that, I believe it takes out that neighborhood and actually I'm sorry, I was looking at that little island there and thinking that was a different neighborhood. And so I apologize for that, but it essentially follows the river. So it looks as if the neighborhood around, let me just enlarge this. I don't know if this is coming over enlarged on your end as well. But you can see the Chase Street and Grove Street neighborhoods do stay in the new Chittenden 6-4, two-member district. And so everything on the north side of the Winooski goes into the Winooski Chittenden District. Great, everything else I have as a comment, so I'll hold off for that section. Okay, further questions on the presentation? Mr. Chang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And it's along those same lines. It seems part of the new north end is not included. This 6-1 is no longer part of the map anymore. Is it in Colchester or? No, I'm sorry, this is in part the limitation of this particular map shows a Metro Burlington area, but 6-1 still remains largely as it was drawn before. It's just there's a larger statewide map that it shows 6-1, but offers far less clarity. Thank you. Thank you. I'll Councilor Macy and Councilor Carpenter. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Can someone forgive me, I've not maybe followed the state discussion as closely as I should have. How did we get from single member or what is the current status of the single member, non-single member, this seems to be sort of a hodgepodge of the in-between and is that just Burlington or what's going on with the rest of the state? No, it seems odd to me to have some areas of Burlington represented by one representative and others represented by two. Hearing, we've certainly heard through our own process, people who feel slighted, I'll say, without having two people. So I don't, maybe Attorney Richardson could speak to what's going on statewide in this sort of hodgepodge of single versus dual member districts. Sure, I can certainly talk about that. The legislature has largely abandoned the idea of uniform single member districts and has kept the mixture of multi-member districts throughout the state. So it's not just Burlington, it's a number of districts throughout the state. Generally my understanding is that if you had a single member district, it has remained so, but there with some exceptions. Thank you. I guess sort of point of order is the mayor, I can't see, is the mayor still on? I don't believe so, Councillor Mason. He just texted that his computer died. So I don't know. We've lost our chair. I didn't think my question was that complicated. He said he's trying to get back on. While he's doing that, I can offer this sort of further piece of information. I mean, because of the tight timeline, you know, the BCA is, and I should say the BCA is under no compunction to make a vote or cast a decision about this to the government operations committee. If it does, it can go in all of the different ways that which I articulated. And if, for example, the BCA said, well, we'd really like to think about this, consider it and come back. It is your prerogative, although it may not be your preference to have a special meeting. To follow up before the 15th to make a decision. But that remains your prerogative. I would say that, you know, at this point, again, the government ops committee, this is something that, you know, as you can imagine, it's a statewide process. It's a very political process. Some of the key decisions as Councilor Mason has noted have been at least initially made at the state level, which is we don't like single member districts. We want to preserve the multi-member district model that we've had previously. And so that is essentially what the legislation has created and what they're putting out to you as BCA members. And I think they're soliciting feedback. And like I said, I think that's really two areas of feedback that you can offer. One is the more general, do you like these districts or the way it's been set up? And then the more specific are the boundary lines, reasonable, sensible to you, or at least acceptable. You may not like them, but you would live with them kind of response, or maybe you love them. And you want to let the government operations committee know that. I see the mayor's back on, so I'll go back to mute. Yeah, thank you, Dan. Sorry about that, I won't just totally cut out all of a sudden. So were there, are you still taking questions on the presentation, Councilor Carpenter? Thanks, I don't know if these are questions or comments, but sorry about that. And I want to start by saying I feel neglectful that we really haven't paid any attention to this. And we're being pushed to this February 15th deadline and if we want to make recommendations, in fact, it probably would mean a special meeting next week. But having said that, I want us to be cautious and make sure we really want to live with all this for the next 10 years. As I understand that now that Winooski's moved, Winooski's moved back to Winooski, we're now in a position where we have 10 house representatives in the city of Burlington, which means we could have two twos or five twos, 10 ones. The current map proposes four twos and two ones. So we have to concur, is that what we want? Four twos and one two ones, would we rather see five twos? And we've honestly not had that discussion. I think earlier back we said we were not particularly in favor of all ones. So that was the feedback we gave in the legislature heard that. So now it's kind of up to us, what mix of twos and ones we want. And so I think we should explicitly decide that. The other thing that I don't think, hardly any of us have done, is really look at the lines. And a lot of the lines are fabulously moved, but they're definitely moved. And I will use myself as an example, which is I live in a neighborhood of 110 homes. My one street is split down, I'm in one district and probably 20 or 30 of us are in one district and 90 are the other and we're a cul-de-sac. And I understand there's probably a dozen of those circumstances in the city, because of how they cut the lines differently. And so I don't know if you all know what lines cut in your own districts, but be careful, because we haven't paid any attention to it. So I guess my concern is we're feeling very rushed to make this decision and are we confident that we want four twos and two ones? And are we confident within that, that the lines the state proposed are where we want them? And I know Dan said this is late in the process as it is, but my understanding is typically if it's one whole community and we're not sharing lines with another community, the GoVOPs committee is pretty willing to look at it because they figure it's sort of an internal discussion. If we were still sort of discussing the Winooski thing, that might be different. But I think if we have opinions or we think we wanna have a more informed opinion, we should think carefully about just blankly approving the alternate map from the state and discuss whether it might be worth, hopefully a short work session. So we all feel confident in what we're proposing to the state. Okay, thank you, Councilor Carpenter. So I'm gonna move us into 3.02, the deliberation formally. So there are, two possible motions on board docs. Councilor Carpenter has essentially just suggested possibly a third action for tonight. I think if the board is not ready to act tonight but wants to try to meet again, that would be another option available to us. How would the board like to proceed from here? Councilor Hightower followed by Councilor Hanson and then Councilor Barlow. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with Councilor Carpenter. I think we have been neglectful of this and to some extent I don't, I don't know if they're using, I know that we had some discussion around if roads were gonna be continuous in neighborhoods behind that if roads were dividing lines. I certainly have some concerns about the East kind of dividing lines and that it's splitting some, I think old North End neighborhoods. And yeah, I think we haven't had that much time to engage or interact with this. I also think that having that, I agree with Councilor Mason, I think having a split of ones and twos is a little strange to have within one city regardless of what the, how we got there. Yeah, and so I'd be inclined to have us take a deeper look at this over the next week. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, thanks. I still, and I know I was in the minority last time we discussed this, but I definitely prefer the one member districts over this mixture of a one and two member districts. I think it's more representative to have smaller districts and everyone have one representative in the State House. So those are my comments. I think I understand I haven't heard many other Councilors sharing that opinion, but I guess having exclusively two member districts would be preferable to me than this mixture, but I think one member is far better than two members. Thanks. Councilor Barlow. Thank you, Mayor. We can't expect that the State map makers have an appreciation for all the nuance and character of Burlington neighborhoods. And they have the whole State to look at, but I believe Robert Bristow Johnson has actually put quite a bit of time into thoughtful alternatives that do a better job of respecting the integrity of our neighborhoods. In the North District, for instance, as Councilor Carpenter mentioned, that the alternative map is cut Lakewood Parkway off from the rest of the Lakewood neighborhood. And we have a similar situation over on Ethan Allen Parkway where Irelain, Warcourt, and Wardrive are grouped in with the village green neighborhood instead of the Ethan Allen Parkway neighborhood that they're a part of. And I agree, as other Councilors have stated, that having the ability to have two representatives for every resident of Burlington is preferable to some having one and some having two. And that's something that's lacking, obviously, in the current map. I would be supportive. I have actually been reviewing this and actually discussing it with folks. And I would be supportive of that, asking the House GovOps Committee to consider one of Robert Bristow Johnson's map. I think the Burlington Five District B9 PDF map, for instance. I don't know how other Councilors are feeling if we need a work session on it, but as he has mentioned in his testimony that he submitted as part of our consent agenda here. And as he's stated in public comment, I think it's a pretty good map, but I'm also open to having an additional work session ahead of the 15 to deliberate further. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Councilor Jiang. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And it seems from the other presentation that we also can bring back the one district map if we wanted to. And so, Councilor Hanson, just so you know, I'm in total agreement with you. That's what makes the most sense instead of two districts map. And finally, I am open also to having another meeting so we can dig into this further. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councilor Jiang. Councilor Freeman. Thank you. Mayor Weinberger. I think that I'm also open to having a further conversation either hearing more reasoning around the one member districts or just the idea of like having all one or all two. I think that I don't know if this is just to me, but these districts have feel at least, maybe this is just me, have felt more cohesive at least than sometimes the council awards. So I think that's why I'm like, oh, it's not. It doesn't like it's, but I don't think that's necessarily very good logic. And I'm very open to making them more cohesive and just hearing out. So if we want to have more conversation about it, I'm open to it. I just think, yeah, just sort of a funny reaction. And then I also had another question about, and maybe this is for Attorney Richardson or whoever is keeping more abreast to the sort of redistricting process happening at the state level overall, but where, like how is this, is there a sort of co, or an additional process happening, I think around Senate redistricting and what is the timeline for that? And how is that going to interplay with this redistricting? If that could be answered, that would be great. Sure, there is a separate Senate redistricting process going on and my understanding is it starts in the Senate, each body getting the first crack at their own redistricting. It has not yet come out. I would anticipate it would come out soon, but it's obviously a much easier lift because there's far fewer Senate districts than there are House districts. It's a smaller body. So I don't know, and I'd have to look further into what timeline there is. If you go to the document, particularly the letter, and I actually just sent the city council a link or the BCA a link to the specific maps, but there is an entire 2022 House of Reapportionment, redistricting website on the Vermont Legislature and there is a separate Senate reapportionment page that is tracking the process, but they have not come up with, they've not decided on their proposed maps or have a Senate bill at this time and it doesn't indicate a date as to when they would start. It just simply says, check back. So I have not been following government ops in the Senate to see where they're at. I presume that once the House is done, they'll do the Senate in part because I think some of this follows with the other, but I do expect them to take their own approach. Although my understanding is that there will be breaking up the Chittenden County single Senate district this time around into smaller groups, but they still want a county-based system as far as I understand. So, all other Senate seats are county-based in Vermont and so I don't know exactly how they're going to break down the Chittenden Senate. Perfect, thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, I've got Councillor McGee and then President Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. I would just like to voice support for us to look at this further and consider either 10 single-member districts or five two-member districts. I think that feels a little bit more in line with my thinking on this right now and would be open to having another meeting discuss that. Thank you, Councillor McGee, President Tracy. I also support single-member districts for a lot of the reasons that have been stated and just wanted to put that out there on the record that I do support the single-member districts and would favor a map that is only single-member districts. Thanks. Thank you, President Tracy. Councillor Stromberg. Thanks, yeah, I would echo that too. That's my first choice, single-member districts. And then I guess my second choice would be the five two-member districts. I just think there should be consistency across the board. So I really don't like the mix at all. So those would be my top choices as well. Thank you, Councillor Stromberg. Dan, I see you're leaning in. Did you want to offer anything further at this point? No, I don't have anything further to offer. I'm just anticipating the next step. Okay, well, the thing I've heard the most support for would be the calling of another meeting before the deadline of the 15th. How the 15th deadline is a, not quite sure what just happened. Here in the mayor's office, something just fell somewhere. So that is a hard deadline for the 15th. That's not something that we get a request extension on or. No, that's actually built into the statute itself. So it is a hard and fast deadline. And I would also add that as you'll see in the letter, there are hearings that are set to be conducted. I believe that there is one coming up in the next week for Chittenden County in which the government operations committee, if anybody wishes to speak directly to them. It is February. No, it has already passed. I apologize. It was last week for committee hearings on Chittenden County. And I should just simply say, this stuff came out really fast. This was not the normal wind up in pitch that the legislature offers us. This was something that they, they're pushing through very quickly. Okay, Councilor Barlow and then Councilor Hanson. Welcome to make a motion in terms of how you want to move forward or I can try to come up something. Go ahead, Councilor Barlow. It seems as though I haven't heard anybody who is supportive on the council of the proposed map. So I'm wondering if we could, if I'm interested to hear what other Councilors want to do, but I'm wondering if we could reject the LAB alternative Metro map and instruct our feedback to be, to create, to be, to have districts that have the same number of representatives, whether that be 10 ones or five twos, you know, is that, is that something that we could move to do? Or would our work session actually, now if we, if we want to have a work session, would we have maps to additional maps beyond ones that have been created by like Robert or so Johnson or, or any others to consider? I mean, between now and the 15th, it didn't seem unlikely. So I'm not making a motion, I'm sort of putting that out there for further discussion. Okay, Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I would agree with Councilor Barlow. I think we should go ahead and just make that motion tonight that we, you know, it's basically that second motion that we reject this proposed subdivision and we give the feedback of either, you know, 10 single member districts or five two member districts. Is that, do you like to make that, is that a motion? I'll make, yeah, I'll make that motion. Do I need to restate that or? I think you do, because it's slightly different than what's on the board doctrine. Okay, so I would move that the Burlington Board of Civil Authority rejects the proposed subdivision of Chittenden 6 as represented by the Lab Alternate Metro Map dated January 20th, 2022, instructs the city clerk to deliver feedback to the House Committee on Government Operations that reflects the BCAs or the majority of the BCAs desire for 10 single member districts or five two member districts. Okay, thank you. Dan, you're inscribing that, okay, you got it? I do. Yeah, is there a second for that motion? Seconded by President Tracy. Are you also wishing to be recognized, President Tracy, to speak or? Yes, Mayor, I do support taking action and making this recommendation tonight. Just looking at the calendar, I'm booked up then other possible evenings that we could have a meeting and I'm imagining that we have MPAs, like our MPAs on Thursday, for instance, I'm sure there are other committee meetings and other things at this point that might potentially intersect. And I just don't think it would be fair for certain members of the Council to not be able to weigh in on this this evening. So I support us taking action tonight generally and would support the motion on the table. Thank you, Councilor Tracy. Okay, I've got a cue going again now. We have Councilor Carpenter and then Councilor Barlow. I guess I hear that recommendation but is that all we're gonna recommend to the state or are we gonna in fact have a work session to look at how the long lines might be drawn and whatever preferences we might have or are we just sort of tossing it back to them and saying you decide? Because it doesn't seem, I think we should decide what we want. We don't want the mixed but is there a preference one way or the other? And more importantly, do we feel comfortable with where the lines are drawn? And that would depend on what mix we have. So I guess I'm asking along with this would we have a work session and is this the only thing we're gonna recommend to the state or are we gonna recommend that and anything else? Councilor Barlow. Yes, was there a second to Councilor Hanson's motion? I believe President Tracy seconded Councilor Hanson's motion. That is the motion on the floor at this point. So one concern I have is that I wouldn't want to suggest that we prefer one over the other. I know some Councilors have voiced support for 10 single member districts and others have talked about five two member districts and I would just like to amend the motion to say we'd like districts with equal numbers of representatives. So as not to indicate that we have a wonderful preference of 10 single member districts. All right, so that's Councilor Barlow's making an amendment there. Is there a second item? Second. Seconded by Councilor Shannon. I believe I can't see but heard the voice. So President Tracy. So I guess I didn't see the motion as stating a preference. I stated the motion that were as originally stated by Councilor Hanson was for single member or dual member districts or two member districts that is. And so I don't see it saying one way or the other. It's just saying even numbers. So I guess I don't see this amendment as being necessary given that that's the case with the original motion so I don't support it. Any further discussion on the Barlow amendment? Chancellor Carpenter. I'm still confused. We have a motion on the floor to recommend or to tell the state we don't accept their map in that we would prefer ones or twos. But I'm still, is that all we're gonna say to the state or is I guess I'm just gonna stick on the process of that? I think, Councillor Carpenter, this is a decision for the body to make here. I, so if you, that could be a subsequent motion to do something further. I'm hearing concerns about scheduling and capacity for doing for that being used for work session have been voiced. So I'm not sure I'm hearing support for other but there's been a mix. So right now the motion on the table is the Barlow amendment to the underlying motion. So I'm gonna take further questions, comments, further discussion of the Barlow amendment. What point of information, Mayor Weinberger, could you repeat the specific amendment that Councillor Barlow has put forth or city attorney, whoever's wrote it down? Go ahead, Dan, if you can restate. My understanding of the Barlow amendment is that he would amend the initial motion to state that the BCA would reject the Proposal Lab alternative and would support even numbered representative districts. So for the entire city of Burlington, somewhat paraphrasing at the end. I saw Councillor Hansen and then Councillor Paul. And sorry, I think I said, I think Councillor, High Tower's hand was up before Councillor Paul. So, Hansen, High Tower, then Paul. Yeah, in terms of the amendment, the original motion stated either 10 single member districts or five two member districts. So I don't really understand what we're doing with this amendment. But to Councillor Carpenter's point, like we could amend additional comments on tonight. I just don't know that we're gonna find any sort of consensus or any majority among the body around specific lines. That just seems too complicated to achieve tonight. So I don't really, yeah, I don't know. I think we can still give feedback up until the 15th. We each, I don't know. I got a letter in the mail from the legislature on this offering feedback. So I think we do have the ability to give it separately as well and kind of put that in. And maybe there's other opportunities for us to do that in the next eight days, in addition to what we do tonight. So I'm gonna try to keep us like, I feel like this is, we gotta move towards some decisions here. There's more of me. So let's focus conversation now on the Barlow amendment. If we wanna engage further work, let's do that either as an amendment or as a separate discussion once we've dispensed with the kind of motions that are on the floor. So I've got counselor Hightower and then Councilor Powell and actually Councilor Freeman and wishing to speak after that. And this is all on the Barlow amendment. I'll wait until we're on hand early again. Okay. Very good. Councilor Powell. Thanks Mayor. I'm not really sure what the point of that is. I guess if it says either or to me, that means either or. It means in no particular order. So I'm not, I don't feel that it's necessary that we put that in there. I think we've sort of said it by what we've said earlier. Thanks. Councilor Freeman. Thank you. It sounds like if I'm understanding correctly that Councilor Barlow's amendment would just recommend the two member districts and it sounds like there is not enough consensus in the body to just make that recommendation. So I guess I am not supporting this amendment because the underlying as other councils have said is sort of broader and is a way for the body to sort of have a broader or sort of a consensus if I'm following correctly. So that's why I would be voting no on this amendment. Thank you. I've got Councilor Barlow and then Councilor Mason. Thank you. Yeah. My intention was to make this process more difficult. It was just to, I didn't want there to be the indication of a preference of 10 ones over five twos. So that's why I made the amendment. I'm happy if that's, if it's the understanding of the body that it's either or and we believe that the house gov ops committee will, would read it that way as well. I'm happy to withdraw the amendment. Thank you. Remind me. How do we do withdraws? The secondary can withdraw as well or sort of rule about that or yes. You can treat it as a consensus withdraw unless anyone objects to the motion to withdraw. Okay. Or the request to permission to withdraw. All right. Are there any objections to the withdrawal? May I just speak? I had interpreted even as being two, not as opposed to an odd number. My concern in voting this down is the practical impact. If we go back without a preference, without addressing the lines, I think we've lost our opportunity and the government ops is gonna do what it's gonna do. So I was supportive on the assumption because we have only one alternative map right now, which is that, which has been proposed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. So my read, and maybe I'm wrong, is if we don't move forward with that, we're stuck with what they've proposed. So I mean, if I don't want to object, if everyone else wants to remove it because what council Barlow's amendment didn't mean was, you know, five two member districts by the use of even, then I guess it doesn't matter. We're back in the same place. I don't know that we'll have an opportunity as was requested by GovOps to provide any feedback on the district lines. And my fear is we've lost our opportunity if we don't do it now or before the 15th. So I am going to say that the amendment has been withdrawn and we are back to the original motion from Councillor Hanson, which makes this, we're back to the original motion from Councillor Hanson. So now any further discussion of Councillor Hanson's proposal, I don't know, Councilor Mason, you wanna, well, sorry, the floor is open, queue's open. I guess my only concern is if we read the letter, GovOps was seeking feet number one, feedback on the district lines. We've glossed over that and we really will have no opportunity if we say we're not sure if we want 10 or we want either 10 single or five double. I don't know who's gonna, my sense, maybe I'm wrong, is GovOps is not gonna go back to the drawing board and seek to redraw the lines without any guidance from those at the BCA. So I mean, I appreciate the desire maybe to equivocate. I feel unfortunately like this is our time. If we don't do something now or before the 15th, we will be, have lost the power to direct what the maps look like. Okay, Councillor Carpenter. Again, feeling difficult about the timeline, but it is where we're at. I mean, do we have a resource that could assist us with our work session on, let's say Monday and put the maps on a big screen, so we all understand them and our duty between now and then understand where the lines are in our neighborhoods and have a discussion about it. But I'm asking this as a city resource question. Do you have someone who can guide us? I am not, I don't know if Dan, you wanna speak to that? I'm not prepared, I'm not able to answer today what kind of capacity city staff could support this. This has not been a city effort and we will be the, I think this would be the fifth council meeting in a, I mean, five, that should be the four straight weeks of council meetings. I'm not sure our ability to organize another fully staff council. I mean, I'm sure we could somehow staff the meeting, what kind of map making capacity and what kind of work can happen between now and then I can look into it after tonight, but it's not something I don't think we have lined up at this point. Dan, do you wanna add anything to that? Sure, I don't think we have the capacity for to create a number of different maps. Now I know that there have been some citizen drawn maps, which would make basically three potential maps. There are the original maps that were drawn by the advisory board. There's the alternate that you have from the legislature and then there's the citizen drawn maps. So those could certainly be sort of projected up and discussed in greater detail. I just don't think that between the planning department in my office that we would have the capacity within a week to draw a sort of fourth set of maps along that line just because of the amount of time it would go into. And I think really the specific direction that I'm not hearing from the BCA tonight as to what those maps might look like. Councillor Craven, the floor is still yours, if you're... Oh, okay, I just saw my question was and this may sound self-serving, but for anybody who has a comment, can we make a specific comment? For example, can I say don't put the line down the middle of Lakewood Parkway? I mean, is that a? Sure. Sorry, yeah, I would say that certainly the only thing that we're deciding by the 15th really is the BCA is a formal action. And that's set into the last part of the statute, but individual comment or other groups that wish to comment will be free to do so to the government office committee up and until they voted out of committee. Okay, I think I saw a hand from Councillor Hightower and that's the only one I have in the queue right now. Yeah, I would really like or I would prefer, I think we should, I like the proposal that we have which is to give feedback immediately saying that we don't like the mixed districts. I think that it's better for us to have another meeting even if it is just filled with comments such as Councillor Carpenter just having on everybody was there. I trust most, like I trust all of us to have a little bit more of a direction for the GOVOPs than they do. So I think any feedback that we could give them would be helpful even if it's not the full body. And I also think just giving, I mean, we just got an email from Leah and I think just checking with some of the folks who were on the word committee, I think every councillor should at a minimum do that and get some feedback from yeah, the citizens who have been thinking about this for a while in terms of if they have any problems with the lines. So I think giving the feedback that we can give today which is we don't want mixed and then to the point that we can collecting feedback over the next week and maybe having one more meeting just to collect that feedback even if not to agree on maps, I think would be helpful. Thank you, Councillor Hatcher. Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with that although it sounds like the city attorney just said that's probably not gonna be staffable. But I think to Councillor Mason's point if we wanna say more, I would be fine with saying that we prefer the, there is this 10 member single district map that we had gotten a while ago. I'm fine with saying we prefer either that or the Bristol Johnson, which is the five two member over what they're presenting to us here. I'm fine with saying that if we wanna get more specific. Okay, the motion on the floor, your motion of course doesn't do that right now and that is the motion currently before the body. So is there more commentary? Are we ready for a vote on that? If you wanna offer amendment, Councillor Barlow. I just wanted to say that I'm supportive of taking this action tonight and following it up with a meeting as well. So is Councillor Hanson correct in that we wouldn't be able to staff another meeting? The city attorney's office can be able to staff another meeting? No, I can be available. Sorry. I just can't draw a new map if I... So we would have the maps. There's a 10 member map that's been talked about. We have two Bristol Johnson maps and we have the state of GovOps alternative map as well. So we have like four maps to look at and talk about and give additional feedback. So I'm just stating my support for the meeting. Okay. Sorry, Councillor Hightower, are you wishing to be recognized again or is that... So the motion, we have the Hanson motion on the floor as well as a request seems like consensus request for additional meeting, which is not part of the motion, but it sounds like there's considerable interest in. So are we ready for a vote on the Hanson motion? Here's who we are. We're gonna go to all those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously, including I get a vote on this one. I was not there too. And as far as convening a meeting, we will, I guess as the chair, I will never to pull together another meeting next Monday. Sounds like there may be Councillors who are unable to attend, but I think that's our best, my senses will go for that. I see nodding heads on that. So with that, if there's no objection, I will adjourn the Board of Civil Authority at 9.17 p.m. And President Tracy, would you like me to convene the Board of Abatement of Taxes? Yes, please Mayor. Okay. So at 9.18, I will convene the meeting of the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. And I welcome John Vickery who sits on this board as well. And I welcome motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Mason. Discussion, amendments to the agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to the motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? That motion carries unanimously and it brings us to the consent agenda. I would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Come on. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Seconded by Councillor Freeman. Discussion of the consent agenda. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The consent agenda is adopted unanimously and that brings us to item 3.01, which is a request for the Abatement of Taxes for 40 College Street, Unit 307. John, I think it's been a while since we've done one of these, but I think typically UT needs up with some summary of the action before the board. I can do that. I just want to set the ground rules. It's usually manifestly unjust, uncollectible or illegal and the folks that are requesting to be heard tonight are, is owned by the Falls Property Corporation and LLC, McGill Lerach and Deborah Lerach-Bad. If I pronounce that right, I hope I did. They are asking for an abatement of $3,691.82. The committee voted to deny that request and there's a notes of finding a fact. The bank account was closed for unknown reasons. And the daughter lives in Florida, one bank account that was closed for unknown reasons. And the daughter lives in Florida, one bank account has an auto data bit, but the bank account closed. So the mail from the city went to the Florida account and the father was in Honduras or out of country, I should say, and elderly and was not able to come to the U.S. due to COVID. Yes, I'll let the owners speak if they want to. The representatives, are they here? Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, he was out of the country. I was, actually I was at the hospital at that time, my husband had a brain surgery and I wasn't paying attention to his mail. So finally I opened the letter and one of the letter had one of the checks. He had three accounts and the other checks went to a different address. So it took a while to get those checks back. He was in Honduras, I was taking care of my husband. I usually don't take care of his stuff. He usually take care of his stuff. Once he found out that they have closed his three accounts, he kind of went crazy and tried for many months to try to open an account. So he wasn't able to later on. So October last year, 2021. Yes, he was able to travel and went to Burlington. And when he went to visit his apartment, he didn't get any notices or anything on the mail. So when he came back, he asked me, you know, I didn't see anything about the taxes. I don't know, he's 83. And I don't know if he didn't remember that he had it on the account or what was going on. So when I started trying to find that, I found out that there was all these payments due and it was because, you know, he didn't know and I didn't know. So I recall that he had these accounts closed. And I say, Papi, you had it closed here and then he immediately wanted to make things straight. I set up the automatic payments. We pay everything that we owe. So we're just asking for forgiveness about whatever we cause the city. And to please, you know, we requested this amount that we owe is on the fees and late fees, I think. And I don't know, there are some fees for not paying for the taxes. Everything is being paid. Everything is on schedule to be paid. So that is the situation. Okay, thank you. And can we clarify, John, the request is for the abatement. Is it, am I reading correctly? The request is for the abatement of the penalties and interest. Yes, that's correct. And can you speak to that further? How do we, I appreciate you shared the standards. Maybe you or I know Councillor Mason has presided over many of these in the past. How are we try to apply some consistency in situations like this? How are policy and interest abatements typically treated when there has been some kind of circumstances like what the property owner described? Well, as I see it, I think the circumstances are a little unusual, but at the same time, because the bank account closed and the gentleman was out of country, but the mail immediately went to the Florida address that was on record and just the mail wasn't being opened up to recognize that, hey, taxes are not being paid and penalties and interest will be applied if not paid. And the committee is recommending to deny because they don't see it as illegal or uncollectible or manifestly unjust. And I think this is a really a manifestly unjust question that I think this committee wants to or should vote on based on the testimony of one of the owners or the representative of the owner. It sounds like a family member of the corporation, the investment property. If anyone else wants to type in. Councillor Mason. Thank you, Mayor. I would just add, historically speaking, the committee has taken a position that would state, absent some error on the city's part, which does not appear to be present. There was a, the account from which the automatic debit was being made was closed by the owner. There was no, the address on file was again, the city sent it to the right address, based on the information on file. These are sometimes hard cases, but we have pretty historically taken the position that absent some type of error by the city, penalties and interest do apply, reminding everyone that in the absence of collection of these fees, in essence, there's a borrowing from the city. It's part of our budget and in essence, those funds are being borrowed. Hence, sort of the penalties and interest that accrue. So my only question would have been confirmation, but it does, it's a specific finding a fact that the address on record was accurate, at least as far as what the city had on record and those notices did go out. So it's unfortunate that the owner did not get those notices, but that's due to no fault of the cities. Thank you. Councillor Freeman. Yeah, I would agree with Councillor Mason in the sense that in my time on the committee, unless in terms of things being manifestly unjust, I can remember if someone is in a situation where their home is like unlivable, so like if their home is burnt down or if they're experiencing partner abuse and can't be in the home, like things that are sort of pretty significant where, and there's no, I think things that we also look at is sort of all these nuance aspects, like is this the person's primary home, sort of is there sort of significant financial duress that is also like a one-time thing or is there evidence that this is an ongoing pattern and there are multiple quarters that they're not going to be paying on time versus maybe one quarter they missed and so they have a penalty of like $80 because there was a sort of sudden thing that was very out of the ordinary. I think those are the kinds of things that we look at. So in that, in this instance, it's a secondary home, it sounds like, the fact that there were multiple sort of instances of not, as was mentioned, the tax bill was sent, it was just not opened, so sort of these sorts of things and we don't really rise to the level of hardship. It is such a sort of bizarre circumstance to make decisions over what rises to the level of substantive enough hardship. It is ultimately, we try to make it as not as subjective as possible and as objective, but there is an element of sort of understanding the nuance of it. So I think that's why in this particular case, it was just ruled that it was not, as previously said, it's not uncollectible, it's not illegal and it didn't rise to the level of being manifestly unjust if there are members of this body who feel otherwise I'd be curious to hear that, but that was the decision that the Tax Abatement Committee came in. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. President Tracy. I just had a, is there has a motion put on the floor, Mayor? Don't believe we have a motion yet. There's a recommended action on board docs for someone who's ready to make that. Sure, I'll make the motion. I move to deny the abatement request of $3,691.82 and adopt the findings and reasons for this recommendation. Seconded by Councillor Mason, further discussion of the action. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Appreciate the property owner weighing in tonight. Thank you, John. If there is no objection, I will adjourn the Board of Finance at 931P, sorry, not the Board of Finance, but the full Board of Abatement of Taxes adjourned at 931. Back to you, President Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. I will reconvene the regular regular city council meeting for tonight at 932 and we'll pick up where we left off on the deliberative agenda, starting with item 6.01, which is a public hearing regarding chapter 18 housing short-term rentals. So if we did have a number of folks indicate that they wanted to sign up to speak in the public forum. I mean, in this item, but the public hearing is open to anyone. So you are able to speak. In order to sign up, please use the same format that we used to sign up before, which is the burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum and we'll be able to get any additional comments that folks have to offer this evening on that. So again, if folks want to sign up and anyone is able to sign up for this item and again, you're only able to speak to short-term rentals in this public hearing. So only short-term rentals and specifically the ordinance that we're speaking of this evening. So just so that folks know that. And again, burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. So I'm going to go back in. Julie Marx indicated desire to speak in this forum. So Julie, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, great. Well, as you all know by now, I am opposed to the short-term rental ordinance that has been warned for this hearing. I did submit two different public comments, which I hope you will, if you haven't already read separately. But I also wanted to say that it's not just me over 520 other people also have opposed this ordinance according to a change.org petition that will be sent to the mayor before your final deliberation. And we are opposed to this restrictive ordinance because all it's going to do is take away people's jobs, take away people's rights and take away the places that people rely on when they come to visit Burlington. The short-term rental ordinance is stripping Burlington homeowners of their rights. How can you tell someone who lives in their home that they can build an ADU in their backyard but they won't be in control of how to rent it? How can you permit someone to renovate a dilapidated garage into a loft and then not allow them to use it as they want? How can you let some people buy a duplex and convert it into a single-family home for themselves and then tell other people that if they buy a duplex they must now become a landlord? Even when the owner doesn't live on the property full-time but has lawfully purchased it as a vacation home for their family or as a place that they need to live in seasonally when their job brings them to Burlington on occasion? How can you possibly think this ordinance is going to magically turn homeowners, especially second homeowners into landlords? Vacation homeowners are not going to become landlords for the city of Burlington nor are they going to sell their homes over this. Therefore, it makes no sense to lose vacation home rentals to this ordinance. The loss in taxes, tourist capacity, hospitality employment would simply be unwarranted. My personal story is that our family renovated our garage into a studio. It was built legally in 2013 for the dual purpose of housing our family and housing short-term guests. My brother still occasionally stays there. I occasionally stay there and we as owners still occasionally share that unit with guests. How can you reasonably tell me that I'm suddenly no longer allowed to use this space that we built, that we invested in, that we take care of that's filled with our own personal belongings that we've been using in this way without complaints or violation for over eight years? How can you suddenly tell me that a seasonal short-term rental of this particular space is unreasonable to the point it should be illegal without any type of conditional review process? Because I will tell you there will never be a long-term tenant in that unit for as long as I own it and I have no plans on selling. I have become a landlord or a housing provider. I would prefer to be called if we could lose the misogyny. But as a millennial housing provider, the only thing that keeps me interested in this occupation and the only way I'm able to afford to provide my other eight tenants with quality and affordable housing is from being able to operate this one small new construction unit in this way. Please avoid making a massive mistake with this ordinance. Amend this version to give owners options and opportunities. You can still impose protections against future adverse impacts such as speculation. The three-year ownership requirement prior to any first-time STR activity on a property that was originally proposed by the chair of your Planning Commission prevents real estate speculation and that was a good solution. While speculation is a problem that the city should rightfully work to prevent, the 200 STRs that have persisted in Vermont's most populated city for the past four years are not a problem. 200 out of 10,000 is actually a very healthy proportion because they also serve a purpose. Don't forget that short-term rentals are a valuable resource for the city. They bring in over $100,000 in meals at rooms tax alone every year, not inclusive of all the other business activity that is supported while visitors are in town. And they're valuable, especially right now, because the demand for furnished temporary housing for remote workers and traveling nurses is just skyrocketing and there's no end in sight. I urge you to shift your perspective and try to use short-term rentals as a part of your housing solution because reasonable use of short-term rentals has already been demonstrated by people like me, by your current small-scale housing providers in Burlington as a critical part of the affordable housing solution. Reasonable use of short-term rentals makes becoming a housing provider attainable for the average person. As part of the housing solution, the occupation of providing housing is one that Burlington should be promoting amongst the younger generation in order to keep the rental market alive and well. You can do that with short-term rentals. And to respond briefly to some of the previous comments about nuisance impacts, this ordinance does nothing to address impacts. The short-term rental alliance and the Burlington STR host coalition have repeatedly requested a meeting with the council to discuss our industry-proven solutions for impact mitigation because we wanna see a responsible short-term rental industry in Burlington too. We have no interest in supporting people who are breaking the rules, causing problems for neighbors and bringing down the entire reputation of the industry. So I'd really like to see this council critically address how city regulation can support short-term rental nuisance mitigation without banning the use entirely. Banning it outright without first attempt to mitigate nuisances just looks like a classic case of not in my backyard and that never looks good politically. Please avoid that and please reconsider this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, I have Lucas Jensen. Lucas, I've located you and have enabled your mic. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, thank you very much. So I had submitted my comments to you guys on January 26 and I'm gonna just kind of paraphrase from some of these comments and make note of some of the important points that are made in there because I just wanna make sure that they are on the record. Unfortunately, the Joan Shannon proposal that's being considered to put limits on short-term rentals in Burlington has been made with complete disregard for data and facts and ignores input from experts, those of us who own and run short-term rentals in the city. Rather, this policy is based only on hunch and hope that putting these extreme limits on short-term rentals will make a meaningful impact on affordability in Burlington. And these are some of the facts that I just wanna highlight to you so that you're aware of it. So a previous commenter during the public forum had said that short-term rentals are a, quote, red-hot market. In fact, that's not the case. After a period of growth leading up to its height in May of 2019, when there was a maximum of 250 whole-unit short-term rentals in Burlington, that number has declined. In fact, today there are currently less than 200. The number of short-term rentals in Burlington is not growing, it's not a hot market. Those of us that have found short-term rentals have done so for a number of different reasons. There isn't been a big influx of people moving into the city to start short-term rentals. In a recent survey that was conducted by the short-term rental alliance, among those of us who do operate short-term rentals in Burlington, 95% of the hosts of short-term rentals, whole-unit short-term rentals in Burlington, said that they would not sign a year-long lease in their unit if they were not allowed to rent short-term any longer. Shutting down short-term rentals will not create more long-term housing. There's been some talk about this affordability thing and I actually looked it up. So if I wanted to book a hotel room in Burlington in July, this coming July, it would be over $400 a night for a single bedroom hotel room in Burlington. Over the last three years, the average cost for a one-night stay at a short-term rental in Burlington in July was just over $250 a night. And most of these short-term rentals can accommodate more than two people. Short-term rentals are an affordable way for guests to visit Burlington, eliminating short-term rentals as this proposal will do, will further limit tourism to only those with economic means and may and will shut out many lower-income visitors from coming to our city. Short-term rentals are an affordable way for folks to visit Burlington. Hotels are really expensive. If Burlington passes the Joan Shannon proposal, Burlington will have one of the most restrictive short-term rental policies in the entire country. Let me say that again. One of the most in the entire country, restrictive policies. This sends a clear message that Burlington is not a welcoming city. Tourism is such a critical part of the city's economy. This message, when combined with other recent negative press is going to make people think twice about coming to visit. Shutting down short-term rentals will have a lasting effect on Burlington's reputation as a great place to visit. This news will grab headlines. There's no doubt about it. The short-term rental, while Burlington's shortage of housing along with its low vacancy rates and high housing prices existed long before the onset of short-term rentals. Short-term rentals have not contributed to the housing crisis and so it should not be expected that eliminating them will solve that problem. Another point that I've, because I think about this constantly, I really do. And I know that there are those of you on this council that are very concerned about the environmental impact of vehicular traffic within the city. And when you shut down short-term rentals, people who do want to come visit are going to stay in these surrounding towns that are actually quite permissive to short-term renting. And when they want to come into Burlington, guess what they're going to do? They're going to get in their car and they're going to drive. And they might come in a few times. They're going to be driving back and forth several times during their visit, as opposed to staying downtown within walking distance as many of our short-term rentals are to church street marketplace and all the other tourist attractions that are in the city. There are many reasons why the Jones-Shannon proposal to limit short-term rentals is not good for the city. And all of these reasons are based on facts, data and expert input from those of us who participate in this market. For the one reason to move this proposal forward, which is the hope that it will improve housing affordability, the hope that it will improve housing affordability. There are no facts, data or expert input to support that this extreme limit on short-term rentals will help achieve that desired income. There, you know, I don't know, there's been some other solutions that have been suggested tonight. I do feel that there is a way to allow those of us that are currently active in this market to continue to do so. Despite what city staff has said, it is possible to grandfather or declare amnesty for existing short-term rentals. Focus on trying to figure out how to limit future conversions, which is what the directive was that came from the mayor's housing summit, right? Limit conversions, not eliminate all short-term rentals. I think that that, I don't know. I think that there, it's clear that everyone is pretty tired of dealing with this. I mean, it's been over two years that we've been talking about this, and I can see that you guys are looking for an easy way out and be able to say that you're doing something about Burlington's housing crisis. But this is not a good solution. This Joan Shannon proposal is not a good solution that's going to help this city move forward. It's going to help the city move, it's going to move the city backwards, in my opinion. On the last thing that I want to say tonight, and I really hope this isn't disrespectful, but I do feel it's an important point to be aware of. I want to add that it's very concerning that the person who is suggesting these extreme limits and shaking her finger at us, saying that we are somehow harming the city that we do so much to support, stating that the city cannot afford to lose even one long-term housing unit, that she herself converted a duplex to a single family's home. Burlington's housing crisis existed then as it does now. Point of order, concentration. Point of order, I'm sorry. Yeah, you can attack. Don't please don't attack individuals. Fair enough, I just, it's concerning to me that that's where this is coming from. I mean, to be throwing shame at us for what we're doing, it just doesn't feel right. And I'll leave my comment at that. And those are the extent of what I'd like to say tonight. So thank you for the time. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Sharon Busher. And again, if people can please refrain from personal attacks, Sharon Busher. Yes, hi, good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. The passion you hear is the passion I heard when I was on the council, when we embarked on this project of trying to address regulating short-term rentals. And I feel strongly that the city needs to regulate them. Having said that, I feel that what you're about to pass is more restrictive than what I think would serve us best. I'm glad it's in chapter 18 because that allows you flexibility to amend. It's not like a strict ordinance where you don't have, you can go back to it every year if you wanted to, I wouldn't recommend you do that, but you have flexibility. I wanted to say that my experience is that there are a number of short-term rentals and they're all sort of different scenarios. And I felt that some people are speaking about affordability. I don't think anyone was really, well, some people might be talking about affordability if you come to stay at a hotel or a motel or a short-term rental. But I think the council and the community was trying to look at affordability of housing. And when you lose housing stock, when you lose units, you then are more restrictive and that is not helpful in addressing the rents, causing rents sometimes to escalate or maintain their out-of-reach cost. So I had proposed something. It took me a long time to come to this was that I had felt that there was a good argument that I heard that some people who didn't live in Burlington who owned multi-unit structures were using a unit in that structure as short-term rental. And what they were saying, this was on face value. It wasn't researched by me, but I believed a number of the speakers because I think they're good people. They said that they used the money, the revenue that they got from the short-term rental to keep some of the rents lower in the other units. Some of the units had been occupied for a long time by tenants and they were able to keep those rents reasonable because of the money that was generated from the short-term rental. They also spoke about the fact that the money that was generated was also used to help them maintain their housing, their unit, their building, excuse me. I think that that's something that we all want. We want well-maintained buildings. We want safe and good quality housing. I think that when you look around and I had reason to do a lot of walking because I now have another job, but anyways, I walked around the city a lot between 2000, 2001, and I would say that the structures that had short-term rentals were better maintained because they wanted to attract those people, the people to come and stay. And so I think that what I was trying to do was find a win-win to navigate through a difficult situation where you allow short-term rentals, but you do regulate them because we don't want to have that number get out of control. And you also have the opportunity to actually have them, require them to keep a unit affordable if they are not, if they don't live on site. So if you don't live on site, you can have a short-term rental as long as you have a unit affordable. I thought that that was trying to balance all of the balls that we have in the air. I know that wasn't supported. It was entertained, but it wasn't supported. It came late in the game because it took me a long time to figure out what to do. And I still think it has value. I hope as you move forward with whatever you adopt that you'll remember that and potentially explore it a little more thoroughly and see if that is something that can work in the future. But I know this is a hard job and this is a hard discussion. And you've heard the passion and I feel for a lot of the people that own short-term rentals right now, but I also want to provide housing that's affordable for the renters in Burlington. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Gray Bereta to be followed by Eric Eretic. Gray, I've enabled your mic. Gray Bereta. Sorry, I apologize. I think my request was timed wrong. I wasn't gonna speak to this, sorry, thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, our next speaker is Eric Eretic. Again, if folks do want to sign up for the public hearing, you can go to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum and sign up that way. Eric Eretic, I'm coming to you. Don't see Erica on any more, okay. Don't see Erica, try one more. I'm gonna go to Abbott Stark. Abbott, I've enabled your microphone. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi everybody, thanks for taking this public hearing tonight and throughout this process over the last, I guess it's been longer than two years now. I've been able to participate in a number of the planning and zoning, joint committee meetings and just planning committee. And also I'm in a number of city council meetings and have just really come to a great appreciation for the efforts that you all put in and for the love of our city. And I've also, I've really developed a shared concern for the number of available housing units that we have. And my story basically is that for 10 years I was a renter in Burlington. Just like some of you on the council, I also went to school here. And then I was married and that marriage ended in divorce. And before that there were financial pressures and we did do short-term rental in a bedroom. And I was really grinding for several years myself just to make ends meet, like changing the bed every day and having strangers into a bed. It was a very small house over on Soushian Plain Street. So it was a very, it was an intimate relationship that we had with our guests. But many of them were here to visit their kids or were considering moving to Burlington. And since then after my divorce, I was back in the renter market and I then was renting out my apartment when I was traveling for work and was able to save up enough through short-term rental basically through Airbnb. And I was able to save up enough money to then get a multifamily house on Monroe Street. There was incredible, I mean, we all know the prices are high, taxes are high. There was a ton of deferred maintenance. There was low-income housing already offered in the house and the quality was just very poor. Literally leaks of plumbing in the basement and people's heaters hadn't been working. It was like heating but not blowing weird things like that that were sort of allowing them to skirt inspection rolls, but the quality was low. The roof was leaking. We had to do tons and tons of repairs. And I'm proud to say that all the renters who are there besides the apartment that I was living in when I moved there are still there to this day. They've essentially had a rent freeze. Two of them are still section eight tenants and the quality of the property has improved remarkably. A weird situation came up where I actually purchased the house in the backyard from a landlord who was elderly and really struggling to serve his tenants. And I was able to create a new housing unit in Burlington, which we all know that everyone is important in this day and age, but I was only able to do that because of the short-term rental income. So I mean, I guess now hindsight is 2020, if we all had looked at that decision together, would we have said, well, yeah, you should create that housing unit and do SDR? It's like, no, don't add another housing unit. I will say that even now SDR is an incredible grind. It's still a lot of making beds. And I do have someone who I pay a livable wage to help me clean, but that doesn't mean I'm not still doing a lot of the cleaning myself. And I've been able to continue to offer those low income units still. So I do think that there is a balance here. And I think that the work that the planning committee and joint committee did, and I think there are some other good possible proposals on the table to continue to allow some kind of a short-term rental for low income, long-term rental trade-off. I do think we're all really aligned wanting to allow for more low income housing and trying to figure out a way to have short-term rental somehow support these sort of middle-income families here in Burlington or middle-income individuals. And I think at the end of the day, we're a very progressive city. And I listen to Marketplace every day. It's an MPR show. They talk a lot about gig economy workers and people who are renting out their cars and renting out their spare bedrooms and renting. Where do we want our city to go? Is like, are we a hotel city? That's really expensive. I know one of the counselors has shared about their experience going to Portland and how there was just no affordable hotel rooms. I mean, yeah, who are we as a city and is short-term rental a part of that? And I think those are some of the fundamental questions that I've personally thought about during this whole conversation but I have certainly enjoyed having the conversation with all of you and thanks for taking my comments. Thank you. I don't have anyone else in the queue and I'm not able to locate Erica Reddick. Still don't have anyone in the queue going once, twice. Okay, I'll close the public hearing. We will then move past item 6.02 as that was removed from this agenda and we'll be on the city council deliberative agenda on the 22nd. That's the actual deliberation on the ordinance relating to short-term rentals. We will now move into item 6.03 which is a resolution regarding ARPA funds to address houselessness. Councilor Carpenter, you're muted Councilor Carpenter. Sorry, so I'd like to propose this resolution and which proposes the use of ARPA funds to serve the houseless and create a position of special assistance to end homelessness within the CEDAW office. So I propose that resolution. Wave the reading and ask for the floor back. Thank you. We have a motion on the resolutions or a second. Seconded by Councilor McGee. You're over the floor, Councilor Carpenter. I really don't have a lot to add outside the memo but I recognize that you may have questions for the CEDAW staff. The city and our committee reviewed this where we're excited about the proposals. I think they're very thoughtfully put together. They're a stepping stone. We all know that the needs of the house sort of create more housing but I think in particular giving us some staff capacity to deal with this is gonna be critical. And so I think I'm very supportive of that. In addition, I've had a lot of years of experience working with the coordinated entry program. And I think if we're ever gonna deal with individual houseless families, we really need to suddenly beef up that capacity. It takes a lot of work family by family, person by person to find resources and that's really what this proposes to do. And then in addition, it proposes a very innovative possibility for a low barrier shelter using sleeping pods. So I'm just gonna pass my support on and I think the committee did and ask if the Brian or others on his Director Pine's staff would like to provide any more information or whether counselors have questions. Sure, Director Pine. Sure, I have a few slides to share but at the hour, I think I'll just say are there questions or really rather than go through the presentation, you all have been working long hour here so. Thank you, Director Pine. Any comments or questions from counselors? Councillor Hansen. Yeah, could you give us a sense of what the salary is for that position? Cause I think it lays out 325,000 in total costs but what's the actual salary? I do not have the salary itself but that's over a period of time. So I'd have to, I think that's actually over three years of salary and benefits. So I could get that for you in a, probably in a few minutes but I don't have that right at my fingertips. So that's not an annualized number. That's a number spread across three years and it's fully loaded to all the benefits and fringe and all of that included. Understood, yeah. I was just trying to get a sense of what that is cause I don't know, it would make me uncomfortable to just given that we're trying to direct this money towards folks who are really in need and a little bit of money does go a long way in these scenarios for someone to be making six figures in this role but I don't think that's the case I think cause as you say, this includes all the benefits as well. So it's probably a lower number for that salary. Director Pine, if I could be of assistance that position was graded at a grade 21 and a grade 21 starts, the lowest level starts at a 72,000. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, don't have anyone else in the queue. So I should just offer that the slides that I put together or I should say, we invited a partner who serves at the national level really and they've worked closely with us on this initiative. And I believe Emma Beers, if she's still with us, I'm not sure she hung on for the whole. Hey, I am sorry. But Emma's here, great. Okay, so I wanted Emma at least to speak about Built for Zero and how Burlington's efforts relate and support the Built for Zero effort nationwide. Thanks. Thanks Emma. Welcome Emma. Thank you for being patient and hanging on with us. Go ahead. Of course, thanks. So yeah, my name is Emma Beers. I'm a strategy lead with Community Solutions. We run the Built for Zero Collaborative, which Burlington has been a part of for a long time and has been kind of a leader in. So the work that we've been doing with Burlington has really been kind of focusing on supporting and getting the veteran system to the point where it's at now where I think it's clear to everyone it's really functional in terms of being able to adequately serve people experienced veterans experiencing homelessness. And I think the mayor has committed to this plan to end chronic homelessness which we're incredibly supportive of and incredibly proud to be able to backbrow into these efforts. And we're looking to support and I would say, I not only have the experience of working here at Community Solutions, we work with nearly a hundred communities nationally as well as working with three other countries. And but I also have direct experience myself. I came from working at the Kingdom of Care in Chattanooga where we got to an end to veteran homelessness as well for an 11 County region. And dedicated staff capacity is one of the things that we see consistently making the work harder for communities. It's difficult for people to take on on top of their jobs. And I know that like people like Marcella do so much already to take on extra work on behalf of the community and to be able to support and advocate for people experiencing homelessness. But it really does take a large effort and a lot of coordination to make it successful. And so I think I would just advocate especially for sustainability of movements more than anything that having dedicated staff capacity is really vital to any sort of initiative to end homelessness. And we will be here to continue to support Burlington for as long as you guys are looking to work with us to support and connect you to our peer communities who have done similar things across the nation seeing great success. So I don't know if there's anything else that I can contribute to or any questions I can answer about the movement. But we're just really, I think really supportive of this and hope that you guys will move forward with funding this. Thank you so much. I saw Mayor, you were wanting to get in, were there any other counselors? Okay, Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Tracy. And I just wanna express my thanks to, sorry, Mayor, where are you going to? No, you're going to express my thanks to Director Pine and Marcella and folks at CEDO and Director Onnes-Raui as well for putting in the work on getting these for initial proposals in front of us to begin to bolster our response to houselessness here in the city. I especially encourage to see that we're gonna move forward with making the Community Resource Center a year-round service that's being provided. I think that is essential to the supporting houseless folks and making sure that we're doing what we can to connect folks with services, especially accessing transitional housing or substance use treatment or emergency housing services. So I'm really grateful for that and also bolstering our low barrier shelter option as we acknowledge that this is a pretty crucial element of our response to houselessness and that it won't be the only thing that we do to continue to address this. So I'm excited to support this tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. I wanted to thank the team that put together this proposal and appreciate MBR's being with us and giving the Council and the public a broader sense of the context of the strategy we're pursuing here and really the national movement and the force of the commitment that we're making here to try to not just chip away at this problem, but to end homelessness over a focused period of time and appreciate having this perspective of other communities that have resourced the effort similar to how this proposal is coming forward to tonight and I just hope everyone shares the sense of hopefulness and belief that we can make progress on this longstanding challenge and actually functionally end homelessness as we've done within the veterans community effectively over the recent years by bringing the same kind of sustained approach and hard work that does require a dedicated staff as we've heard as well as mobilization of resources like we're doing tonight. This won't be the last time we're mobilizing resources to support the strategy. This is progress that we can and won't make. So thank you all, I'm hopeful we're on the cusp of making a big step forward together here. Thank you, Mayor. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to the CEDO team for your work on that and especially Director Pine and Director Alness Raoui as well as Emma Beers. Thank you for joining us this evening and sharing your perspective. Appreciate that. We will now move into item 6.04 and ordinance regarding parks and camping in parks or other municipal lands. Councilor McGee. President Tracy, I would move to request that CDNR by March begin a community review of the proposed ordinance and operational policies related to camping on municipal lands, seeking input from a variety of stakeholders and at the same time, the city attorney's office shall lead a review of the proposed ordinance on camping in parks or other municipal lands and submit to the city council a report on the benefits, precedents and possible concerns about the changes in comparison to our current policies by April 15th and as for the floor back after a second. Have a motion from Councilor McGee. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Councilor McGee. Thank you. Two years ago, the city negotiated a policy with the ACLU, which was intended to provide protections to houses folks seeking shelter on public land. Unfortunately, because it was never acted on by the city council, I judges determined that the policy is non-binding on the city. This determination leaves our most vulnerable neighbors in a precarious position, subjecting them to removal without adequate notice or an accessible appeals process. Tonight I am introducing this amendment to city ordinance 22-7, related to camping in parks and other municipal lands to finally codify these policies and procedures which treat houses folks with dignity and respect. This amendment comes to the council after considerable input from folks who have lived experience with houselessness, advocates and city staff. It builds off and strengthens the sheltering on public lands policy from 2019, incorporates elements of the policy recently passed on pillar and when adopted, this ordinance will set an example for municipalities in Vermont and around the country to protect folks who for various reasons seek shelter outside. As drafted, this amendment has six main goals. It decriminalizes camping and or sleeping on public lands. It states that the city must sufficiently post areas where camping is expressly prohibited. It also prohibits camping in highly sensitive areas taking guidance from the superior policy by defining such areas. It outlines clear procedures for city staff to follow if a campsite is determined to be in a prohibited or high sensitivity area, which maintain dignity and respect for campers. This policy also codifies protections for folks sleeping outside, which include but are not limited to an accessible process for appealing removal decisions. Clear timelines for appealing, remedying, issues or vacating a particular campsite, as well as moratorium on removals between October 1st and May 1st, unless certain emergency criteria are met and the city provides additional support to individuals being asked to relocate. This policy also puts an end to collective punishment stating clearly that campsites shall be treated individually and provided an opportunity to remedy concerns which could result in removal. The investments made in our previous agenda item are crucial to bolstering our low barrier shelter capacity and our ability to meet the needs of houseless folks. This policy recognizes that low barrier options still maintain barriers which are insurmountable to many experiencing houselessness. It also addresses the simple reality that even if we succeed in providing shelter for all our neighbors, the need for a no barrier option that is provided by camping will always exist. This policy acknowledges that sheltering outside is not a systemic solution to houselessness and it reaffirms our stated goal of endeavoring to make houselessness rare and brief. By referring this amendment to the ordinance committee tonight, we will take a step toward implementing a policy which incorporates harm reduction and trauma-informed practices and will begin the process of finally codifying these protections for campers and removing ambiguity for city staff. This policy has initial support from the ACLU of Vermont, though they would like to see it go further, as well as CVOEO, one of the city's key partners in addressing houselessness. I'm grateful to the folks who have provided input to help make this policy, to get it where it is today. And I look forward to continuing conversations to make it stronger. And I hope folks will join me in taking this long overdue step toward codifying these protections for our most vulnerable neighbors. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Councilor Freeman, is that a hand? Okay. Councilor Carpenter. Thank you. I'm happy to support this and begin the conversation that we've been dancing around this. But I wanna make sure everyone kind of understands the perspective. Councilor McGee has done a lot of work on this, but this to me is not an affirmation that this particular proposal is the one we wanna adopt. What we need to do is start getting input on all aspects of it. The proposal as I read it is a significant leap away from our current policies. That's why we've asked Attorney Richardson to do a comparison for us, to really dig in on where we are today and how this relates both to policies, procedures and ordinances. We may or may not need an ordinance change, but I think we've gotta examine that. I will say, at least in my conversations with Attorney Richardson and others, there is disagreement about how binding our current policy is. I understand people view it differently, but it is a working policy of the city. So my point being is we've really gotta get that all out there and start the conversation and work at it piece by piece. And what we really need to do is get input from everybody. We haven't even started the conversation with the appropriate city departments or the city committees. We need input from the parks department, absolutely. And the staff, they have what works out. We need input from the police department and people like Lacey Smith who work on this every day. We need input from the public safety committee. So we've really got a lot of work to do. Councillor McGee in an earlier version had mentioned setting it to ordinance and I think he actually was in his remarks mentioned that and I'm not quite sure if that was intended, but my perspective is we're not ready at all for an ordinance committee to consider this because we've got to really look behind it at the policy and sort of philosophy. In it, Councillor McGee manages the work that the city of Montpelier did and we're fortunate that actually Attorney Richardson and his own life worked a lot on that. So that'll be a resource that we can look at. And I think it's important to understand that we don't necessarily need or want to change ordinances, we need to examine it. What we're talking about is what are the appropriate responses to support people when they find them in their rare and brief position of needing to sleep outdoors. So there's a lot to unpack in this resolution. We need to get it all out on the table and we need to hear from everybody about how that would impact our city. And this will not be easy. It's not that we can't leap to quick conclusions around it. We do have a policy and operating policy right now and I've been assured by Attorney Richardson and the mayor that that's the policy we're operating under. We may or may not disagree in a particular circumstance on it but that is a policy. And then the point of this endeavor is to see, okay, what do we do moving forward? What do we want to change? What do we want to do differently? Where do we need more detail? So that's our plan at the moment. I had proposed that we affirm that the current policy is still in operation and I would actually like a minor amendment to add that into the resolution that at least for the time being, not for time, until such time that we have any changes in policy that we affirm and that we are following the current and I don't have the name of it right in front of me. I'll have to go find it, that we, let me just find it here that we continue to abide by the current policy of sheltering on public lands, outreach and removal of policies and procedures. So I'd like to add that to this proposal as an affirmation that we have a policy and that we'll continue to do that until such time as new policies, procedures or oranges are adopted. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter, that's an amendment. Yes. Okay, we have an amendment, is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Barlow. Do you want the floor back, Councilor Carpenter? No, again, I think it's, I wanna, present this as a sort of a complete package and for people to understand that we have a policy, it may not be what everyone wants and that's the whole point of this motion is to examine what else we ought to do but I wanna make sure that as part of this, we understand that we have a current policy. Okay, thank you. The floor is open for discussion on the amendment. I have Councilor Hanson to be followed by Councilor Freeman. Go ahead, Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I'll wait for the underlying for my general comments on the amendment specifically. I just don't really understand. I mean, I don't understand the purpose of the amendment. I think it's confusing to me what we're trying to say with this because of course existing ordinance is existing ordinance. So I just don't understand the intention behind sort of stating that. Thank you, Councilor Hanson, Councilor Freeman. If I'm correct, this is the current ordinance that the city attorney has argued is effectively not particularly enforceable or are we saying that is not, that there are multiple opinions on that? I mean, and I also I guess agree with what Councilor Hanson is saying is that it's just, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense since I think the intention is to, I don't really understand the amendment to be honest. Why it's, why we would include it, I guess. Thank you, Councilor Freeman. Councilor McGee to be followed by Councilor Mason and Hightower. Thank you, President Tracy. So the current policy that we have is not an ordinance. It was not acted on by the council and as such was rendered by a judge as non-binding on the city. It was called more aspirational than anything else. So I would, I guess ask the city attorney for an opinion on what this amendment would mean for the policy. City Attorney Richardson. Sure. So if the amendment was adopted and approved by the city council, it would be the first time that I think the city council has spoken in regards to this policy, although that may be incorrect and I apologize as it predates. But my understanding is that they have, this policy has not necessarily been approved in that sense. It may have been put before the city council, but I'll let others who were actually here speak to that. The effect of it, and so I'll just go from the point of assuming that it has not, that this would represent a change, it would effectively be the council on record is saying, we stand behind this policy and the policy remains the same. I think one of the points that councilor McGee's proposals change is that, and this is maybe which the court ruling was speaking of as a policy, it's really geared towards guiding how the city functions as opposed to creating rights in third parties separate from the city. And so some of the language that councilor McGee was suggesting in his amendment is that type of language when you adopt an ordinance, you're not only saying that the city is to be bound by this, but this essentially becomes the law. So if it's something the city has to do, there are rights in third parties, whereas a policy tends to be a more informal document where the city may say, we're bound by this, we're going to follow it, but it may not create rights in third parties if the city doesn't follow every single portion of it. Beyond that, I wanna also make clear that I won't, I don't feel that I'm in a position to comment on specifics of this policy in regards to Sears Lane in particular, just simply because that litigation is still alive and outside of executive session, I don't feel like it would be appropriate for me to comment on it, but I'll simply leave my comments with that. Thank you, attorney Richardson. You have the floor, councilor McGee. No sir, thank you. Okay, I had councilor Mason to be followed by councilor Hightower and Freeman. Thank you, President Tracy. I will be supporting the amendment if nothing else that puts the council on record as supporting the policy. I also push back a little bit on the public assertions that have been made that it's not binding on the city. My interpretation is it is binding. The problem is, it is binding because of the settlement agreement that was reached with the ACLU. So they are a party who could bring a claim for breach of the policy, judge whores decision and that case arose out of an individual campers right or assertion of a right to enforce the policy. So I will be supporting the amendment because it will put me and the full council on record for the first time as supporting the policy that came out of public safety. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Mason, councilor Hightower. Yeah, this is just a point of information. Could councilor Carpenter repeat her amendment? Sure, councilor Carpenter. Yes, we've got to find here. Okay, I would move that until such time that new policies, procedures or ordinances are adopted by the council, the city shall continue to abide by the current policy of sheltering, just in quotes, sheltering on public lands, outreach and removal policy and procedures, which is the name of the policy we've been operating under. Thank you. That is all. Okay, councilor Freeman to be followed by councilor Paul. Sorry, I don't have further comments yet. Thank you. Thank you, councilor Paul. Thanks very much. Just wanted to sort of add for those people who, and for the public who may not have been on the council or been keenly aware of this issue when it came up in 2019, the public safety committee, of which I was not a member, but I did go and look into this and ask the former chair of the public safety committee that this was actually discussed at pretty great length. And it was a, you know, it was as councilor Mason has said, negotiated with the ACLU on that was in late 2019. And it came back to the public safety committee in early 2020, in January. I think that, I don't remember exactly, but I think that there was a meeting planned in March of 2020. And then it was in late March of 2020. Well, we all know what happened in mid-March of 2020. All meetings were halted. There was a stay home order. We got all into the Zoom life. And that meeting, I believe, did not happen. And the next time the committees really got together and had meetings wasn't until June. The person who was chair of public safety did not continue on the council. And the issue at the first meeting of the public safety committee, which was in June, it was not taken up at that time. There were many other pressing issues and this was not revisited. So that's, I think, why it was never voted on by the council. It should have been. And I think this is an opportunity for us, at least in the meantime, to be on the record that we do have a policy. So that's sort of a long and short of it. I believe Councillor Shannon was on that committee at the time and I believe Councillor Freeman was on the committee as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Paul. It is now 1031 and we do need a motion to suspend the rules. Such a Councillor Freeman. I'll move to suspend the rules and complete the deliberative agenda. Thank you. We have a motion to just complete the deliberative agenda for this evening. Is that a second, Councillor Stromberg? Yep, okay. Any discussion on the motion to suspend the rules to just complete the deliberative this evening? Okay, not seeing any. So we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of suspending to complete the deliberative, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we'll complete this item and the next item, which are the remainder of our deliberative agenda. We are back to debate on the carpenter amendment to the campring ordinance. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Didn't have anyone in the queue. Councillor Hanson. Great, thanks. And yeah, I was definitely not understanding the implications of the amendment the first time around. So apologies for that. So it is clearly, the amendment is clearly meaningful. And I guess I'm concerned by the city attorney saying that this amendment potentially impacts ongoing litigation because I don't know how that's, how ongoing litigation could be impacted. So is there anything else you can clarify in public session on that front? City Attorney Richardson? Sure, no, I apologize. I may not have been clear. I'm not talking about this current amendment affecting the litigation. What I was referring to is that if there were additional questions about the specifics of the Sears Lane and how this would play, how this particular policy played into the facts of that case that I wouldn't feel comfortable going into those details. But the passage of this amendment does not affect that litigation. And I didn't intend to imply such. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. Any further discussion on the amendment? Okay, let's go to a vote on the amendment. Will the city clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow? Yes. Councillor Carpenter? Yes. Councillor Jang? Yes. Councillor Freeman? No. Councillor Hanson? No. Councillor Hightower? Yes. Councillor McGee? Yes. Councillor Mason? Yes. Councillor Paul? Yes. Councillor Shannon? Yes. Councillor Strangberg? Yes. City Council President Tracy? Yes. Ten ayes, two nays. Thank you. The amendment carries and we're back to the original motion as amended. Further discussion? Councillor Barlow? Thank you, President Tracy. I have a lot of reservations about weakening our ordinances around camping in parks. Before joining the council, I've been involved in leading stewardship and cleanup activities in Luddy Park for the last 13 years. And it's been my views and I've made them known to the mayor even before I was on the council that we should be strengthening and enforcing our ordinances against camping in the parks, not weakening them. Unauthorized camping has been an ongoing issue in Luddy Park for years. And friends of Luddy Park, the organization that I'm part of has run at least one and sometimes two cleanup days per year. And the abandoned campsites in the park have created some of the biggest challenges for volunteer cleanup crews to tackle, including significant amounts of garbage and discarded camp items, damage to the park plants and trees, campfire pits, and hazards like broken glass and needles. And some of the camps have blocked walking paths, created conflicts with existing park uses and users. And all this has been happening within an ordinance that prohibits camping in the parks. So weakening it I think would only worsen that problem. I will, however, thank the Parks Department, Lacey Smith who've been doing great work addressing camping in the parks, immediately as it arises, minimizing the impacts and conflicts with current use and connecting houseless campers with options and services. And so I would support doing more of that, but camping in the parks is never going to be a good solution to solving houselessness in Wellington. So I have real reservations about it and I'll leave my comments at that for now. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Don't have anyone else in the queue. Councilor Shannon. Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilor Jayne. Thank you, President Tracey. I will be supporting the plan I will be supporting this for really one reason and that is that it includes the adoption of a policy that should have gone before this council long ago. And I think that it's a reasonable policy that had a lot of thought going into it. And I agree with everything that Councilor Barlow said. So I won't repeat that, but I am supportive. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jayne. Yes, I wanted to clarify something that I have heard here and I believe that I was on the public safety committee and this discussion started in 2018 and not 2019 or 2020, very long time ago. And back then it was Councilor Roof, Councilor Jayne and Councilor Payne. We were serving in that committee. We may look into city records, whether or not is that policy. And I'm specifically talking about the uncomplement policy. If we find people camping in parks, what is the process of camping them? It just strike me that we never voted on that and was just wondering if we can dig into the records and see if whether or not the city council voted on that. I think that's something important we need to look into and maybe Attorney Richardson and Tim can look into that. And it was a very well thought out policy in collaboration with ACLU. I remember that correctly. I will be supporting this and not for the reason that I have heard from a couple of Councillors here. I'm supporting it because, you know, I think Councilor McGee has demonstrated a commitment of really serving and helping those who are houseless in the city of Wellington. And it's been over a decade maybe that the city is finally starting to pay attention to the homelessness issue. And also for the public to also understand that this is not the council nor the administration do not want to house people. But the only concern that I have, especially about the resolution we just voted on in putting over $2 million about houselessness, I think it would be important for people to look into how do we sustain all of those great, wonderful ideas coming into the pipeline. So Councilor McGee, again, thank you so much. And City Attorney, please look into whether or not we have voted on that, you know, uncommon policy or not. And from my perspective, that's the basis in which we used to make sure that CLM is cleaned out. So thank you so much. I'll be supporting this. Thank you, Councilor Chang. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. To speak to the question, Councilor Chang, I'm trying to clarify the history here. The policy Councilor Chang you were just referring to that was negotiated with the CLU and the city has been operating on there since that agreement. We've looked into this fairly carefully and it was as I think Councilor Powell described that policy never made it to the council floor for a vote. It was, there was review by the Public Safety Committee but the pandemic hit and it never came forward for a vote. So we have been operating faithfully under that policy ever ever since. I do welcome the Council backing the policy with the action that's on the floor right now. I think that will be a, you know, it's always thought to me, I've always thought it would be a stronger, better policy if it had the full backing of the council. The, I also think it's fair to review that policy and for that reason, I'm supportive of the motion as a currently to get significant additional due diligence both that sheltering on public lands policy as well as the current ordinance on camping and parks. And what is laid out here is a kind of multi-prong review that I think is healthy. And I'm supportive of that. I do want to make it clear much like Councilor Barlow and I think other councils have suggested that this motion, this action as I understand it is in no way endorsing the Councilor McGee policy. That is something else that will be reviewed and considered here, but this is not a step towards that very substantial change. You are our current campaign parks policies and one that I think while there may be targeted changes that could support as Councilor Barlow suggested, we, this is an area that I think we have to be very careful about the changes that we make to it, both from a perspective of not impacting other valuable uses of the parks that the public really, you know, expects as well as because it's not a good way to improve our housing of our most vulnerable people in Burlington. The way to do that is through actions like the ones we took earlier tonight. If we want to move towards making housing a human right, making sure that making good on the promise of housing is a human right on ensuring that homelessness is rare and brief, that is that you do that through the hard work of building a lot more housing, building better systems, that is the route. I don't think there's some sort of major change in our public lands policies. Thank you, President Scherzi. Thank you, I have Councilor Freeman, Mason and Paul. Councilor Freeman. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know if it's a great process to have us sort of adopt the policy that mostly on the fact that it sounds like most counselors have not really seen or like have not been able to familiarize themselves with it recently, like freshly. So I don't really like love that it was just added as a last minute amendment. I do know that that policy was created through negotiations as have been mentioned with the ACLU to basically my, maybe in others opinion as well, but to essentially bring it up to the floor of like legality and in terms of sort of the bare minimum protections that we can provide to people. The previous sort of practices were called into question in terms of that. So that was a slight improvement and to Councilor Jayne's question into many, what many folks have said it was not something that was approved by the council, but as Mayor Weinberger has said is in good faith has been a practice of the administration and was something that myself and other members of the Public Safety Committee reviewed and then as has been mentioned, as we all know, timelines kind of got all mixed around and here we are now looking at it. So I will vote to support this. I do wish that councillors had had a chance to sort of look at that particular policy while it was being added as an amendment. I very much support and have supported since my time on Public Safety Committee sort of further enhancing that policy. And I think going through the route of creating an ordinance is a really smart idea. I think that it needs to be sort of officiated or codified or have whatever you wanna call it. So yeah, at this late hour, I will be supporting this. Thank you. Yeah, I have councillors Mason, Councilor Mason to be followed by Paul and Hanson. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I too will be supporting sending this because I believe it is time to continue the conversation and with the reservation and I've relayed that to the sponsor that I do take issue with some of the proposals, but I'm looking forward to the conversation that will occur just I wanna clarify something because if I think if the public's watching this there may be some confusion. We have an ordinance that precludes camping in parks, period. The policy we're referring to refers to public lands, not necessarily parks. I just wanna make sure that at least the public understands that there's been a little bit I think of mixing and trying to explain. I appreciate the sponsor's proposal is to remove the ordinance, preclusion on camping and parks, but that's a discussion that is to be had as far as I'm concerned. So with that, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Mason. I have councillors Paul, Hanson and Jang, councillor Ann McGee, councillor Paul. I just wanted to quickly state that when I was giving that history of how we find ourselves in the place that we are in, I didn't look far enough and I apologize to Councillor Jang. He is correct, the policy was, the conversation was started in 2018. The members of the committee were councillors, then councillor Ruth, Jang and Pine. It was after that that there was a change in the committee and that's when the other members of the committee that I had mentioned had moved that forward. That was in 2019 and that's when the policy was negotiated with the ACLU and so to speak, codified in terms of what the policy was on the part of the administration. So my apologies for cutting the history short, thanks. Thank you. I have Councillor Hanson to be followed by Jang and McGee. We're starting to get into second and third round here so please try and if you're adding, see if you can add, please try and add something, please try not to repeat yourself and so that we can move towards the decision. Councillor Hanson. Great, thanks. And I think I've only spoken to the amendment so far and on the underlying I support this and I appreciate Councillor McGee's leadership and his collaboration with others to develop this and I appreciate that folks are sharing their opinions on it at this stage in the process and I do support the policy itself, not just having the conversation but I do support this policy direction itself. So this is obviously gonna be a debate that we're gonna be having as a council. Over the next few months and I just think, yeah, I agree with what others have said that this doesn't solve the issue of houselessness. I don't think anyone's claiming that it does. I think we all agree that we need to continue to get as many folks as possible into permanent and stable housing but I think this is also necessary in addition to that because A, we're not there yet and B, I think there's always gonna be folks for a variety of reasons that's not gonna work for and are gonna need this solution. So I do think it's something we have to address while we simultaneously try to work on that other front as well around permanent housing. And I have a question for the city attorney which is, does referring this to CDNR preclude, referring it to ordinance until it comes back from CDNR? Not necessarily. However, I think that's a practical question which is if one of the purposes of referring this to CDNR is gather up stakeholder feedback or input sending it to ordinance, the ordinance, there might have to be a stay where that would have to sort of wait in ordinance until the feedback unless it's sort of hard to run the two parallel tracks in meaningful ways together but there's no requirement. It's a discretion of the council how they want to proceed with any referrals. Okay, all right, understood. I'll leave it there for now. This is gonna be an ongoing debate, but thank you. I'm so joined to be followed by McGee and Carpenter. Yeah, it will be fast. I mean, two things or it was three but thank you, Councillor Hanson for that question because it was one of my question. Why CDNR and not ordinance committee? But also wanting to also just make sure that as we move forward, especially Councillor McGee or whoever to consult, to please consult the department heads when an issue is specific is at their purview. Because I was a little bit surprised at this resolution. This proposal has never gone to the park commission or Cindy from director of parks was not consulted so that we keep that in mind as we move forward. But also, I wanted to particularly thank one community member because since this year's land issue, she or he has been very consistent because advocacy sometime is not some when just an issue is in front of us, there is momentum into it but I really wanna appreciate Lee Morrigan for her consistency about this issue since the beginning, just that. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McGee to be followed by Carpenter, Councillor Mead. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanna take a second to say this absolutely has not gone to everybody. And I think that is a large reason why it's going to CDNR before it goes to ordinance so that we can have these conversations in the public setting. I think it's crucial for us to begin to have this public engagement process. I felt comfortable enough with the draft as it is to get it to this point and to start it in this public process. And so that's my intention. I do apologize for not having a chance to send it to every department head who will have a role in forcing this. I have heard from members of the Parks Commission who are very interested in giving feedback. So I look forward to engaging in those conversations as well. And I also just wanna state that the proposal as it is in front of us right now does not expressly condone camping in public parks. But it says that folks can't be arrested for sleeping or camping in public parks or on public land. So I just wanted to make that clarification as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McKee, Councillor Carpenter. Thanks. I just wanna concur. I see CDNR, because this is a huge issue for us, almost in sort of a coordinating role. It absolutely, whatever outcomes come, we have to go to parks. We have to go to public safety. We need to see what the work is of Attorney Richardson and his analysis. So I think it's starting with CDNR and will be the beginning committee to get more input, but it won't be the end committee. And I think we can't hand it off to ordinance until I think we shape the policy behind it. And that's not been done yet. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Don't see anyone else in the queue. Okay. Let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Sorry, I didn't hear folks. Let's do, didn't really hear anyone on that. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you folks, appreciate that. All right, we are on our last item of the agenda, which is the, an item that came to me from city attorney Richardson regarding again, redistricting for this agenda as well. He advised that we put it on this agenda as well, so attorney Richardson, are you able to just speak to this item? Sure, this is the local redistricting question. And I know Megan Tuttle is going to join me for this. And actually I'm going to let her get started because you've heard enough from me tonight, but I'll chime in after she gets started. Sure. Thank you and good evening. Attorney Richardson and I are here in follow up to the resolution that this council passed, I think in the summer or early fall about the local redistricting process, which outlined a number of steps that you wanted to take in order to pursue the creation of a potential redistricting plan coming out of the 2020 census. So between Dan and I and Brian Pine and his team at CEDO, we have helped support the work of the ad hoc committee on redistricting that you heard from at your January 24th meeting, who provided you a memo of the public input that they had collected in response to the questions that were in your resolution and kind of helping you establish guidance for how you wanted to move forward with considering the redistricting process. So we're here at councilor Paul's request to continue this work to follow up with you and to collect your feedback on how you would like us to begin moving forward with presenting you with some maps for consideration. A couple of updates for you based on some things on our end with kind of supporting this from a staffing perspective. When the resolution was passed, I know there was a lot of discussion about a mapping specialist coming from the city and it's our understanding that there was a broad level of support for a city employee who worked for planning and zoning named Jay Appleton who had provided support to the redistricting process the last time the council undertook it. We weren't totally sure what Jay's longterm plans were with the city when that resolution was passed and fortunately for him, he has made the decision to retire from the city and he celebrated his last day just a couple of weeks ago. So we have been talking and we knew that this might be something that was coming. So we did a little bit of work to prepare internally to make sure that we would have a smooth transition and handoff to someone else within city hall that could help support this work. So I just wanted to share that we are proposing that Nancy Stetson who is a data analyst in the planning department is available to help support the work of the council in the map making process. Nancy has worked previously as the data analyst for the police department and now works in planning as a data analyst providing a wide range of support to city departments on a whole number of topics. So definitely very capable and willing to have some time to be able to jump in and help support this process. So just wanted to share that update with you because that is a change from the last time you talked about this. Otherwise when the three departments were engaging with counselor Paul Barlow and Carpenter about the resolution that they initiated, one of the things that we discussed with them was just a change to the overall timeline from what was in that initial proposal due to the deadlines associated with getting things on the March ballot. So we have been working with the understanding that the goal would be for the redistricting plan to be presented to the voters later this year. I think whether that exactly what ballot that is on we can still determine. But I think the interest of the sponsoring counselors was to make sure that this body had the opportunity to weigh in and to consider maps that responded to the resolution that you passed as a body. So counselor Paul has proposed a timeline for us to bring you some draft maps and for your feedback and refinement on those by the end of March essentially. So we're going to work, do our best to support that timeline and to bring you both some initial maps and some revised maps that you can consider over the next several meetings. So I think with that those are the updates I wanted to share. And I think Dan was going to help us walk through some of the questions that we have that you presented in your resolution and that we have for you so that we can get started on drafting maps for your consideration. Thanks Megan. So just as a reminder from a legal perspective this process is technically a charter change. Meaning that the way the districts are set out are by charter and to change it to redistrict to reapportion is essentially a charter change process. So for those of you who've been through the charter process which is all of us at this point know that you're on familiar ground. But because we're doing this as reapportionment and redistricting we do have some other considerations just in how we get to the point of something to present to the voters. So there were a couple of questions I'm gonna walk through them sort of one by one to just outline them and give you a chance to think about them. But these are questions that Megan and I believe are necessary to come back to you in two weeks with some potential maps and ideas to see how you want to go forward. And the first question is really how many maps or alternatives does the council want to consider? In other words, are you looking for us to crew give you sort of minimal changes, maximal changes? Are there a wide variety? And this may be also geared towards how many districts and I'll get to that point in a second. The question, are there areas that are currently divided between wards that the council wants to see united? Are there areas that are currently united in wards that the council would like to divide? The fourth question is would the council like to preserve a ward that primarily accommodates students or would the council want to break that up into reconfigure? And that's essentially the ward eight question. And then two more questions is really the number of counselors that the council wishes to see or the number of wards or districts. And I think that's important and I'll just outline it as a, for example, there was some feedback that was given at the public ad hoc committee level about the number of counselors. Now, if there was to drop the district system and adopt a ward system and keep the number of wards that are existing, but perhaps give every ward to counselors that could double that to 16, which would increase the size of the council. Does the council, so giving us guidance on your predilection on that versus maybe creating bigger wards so that if a bigger ward that had multiple counselors serving it like two counselors but fewer wards rather than eight, you might have six, in which case if you gave every create six wards and had everyone with two counselors you'd still be at 12. These are the points of oversight that we're sort of looking for in drawing up the maps because as you can see, obviously these inform the type of decisions we're gonna make. So sort of going back and this may be the best way to sort of proceed, the question is to you, the council, how many alternatives do you want? Do you want a variety, a wide variety of alternatives or are you rather sort of more narrow, precise in your focus and I'll simply throw that out to the council. Thank you, Attorney Richardson. Are there comments on the questions that Attorney Richardson just forwarded? Yes. Officer Jane. Yes, I mean, I think it's very late right now and was just wondering if this discussion can continue when the council come back again together as part of what we talked about earlier about the statewide redistricting instead of having one agenda item we could have two and also for the city attorney to send out the questions again, all of those questions are pertinent and important and to send it to us via email and maybe people can think about this further and then come with fresh mind whenever we are going to meet to tackle, it's just a proposal that I wanna put forward instead of trying to deliver it right now. Thank you. Sure, I understand that Councilor Jane City Attorney Richardson, is that possible to add that as another item on that meeting? Well, you'd have to warn two separate meetings because the one that you're talking about having next week right now is a board of civil authority. So you'd have to also warn as the city council, but yeah, other than that, there's no problem and I'm more than happy to send out the questions that I've outlined, if that's all helpful. The only thing obviously is that it takes away a week of time that we would otherwise be drawing maps. I will add and this may be, and again, this is a point of policy and by no means am I attempting to throw off any timeline that people have thought out, but you're looking at a November vote on redistricting. And so there is time because what the board, the council has to do is to create these districts and then at least from a legal process. And again, there may be very important reasons, but I just simply wanted to say it's not as if there's a legal timeline that if you don't approve this by tonight, this throws off the legal train of cars. Councilor Jane. Oh, nope. Okay, Councilor Paul. Thanks very much, President Tracy. So thanks, Megan, for the excellent summary and to Attorney Richardson as well. I just wanted to sort of backtrack just a second just so that people have a basis for how we came about this timeline. And that is that the sponsors of the resolution, which were myself, Councilor Carpenter and Barlow did meet with Megan as well as Attorney Richardson, I believe Brian Pine was also there. And we felt very strongly that this was a resolution that was a unanimous vote, which really started us off on the redistricting process on a really good foot. I mean, we felt really good about it and we were all supportive of the process. One of the things that was in that resolution and it was something that was an attempt to consensus that we also reached with Councilor Hanson was that this current council would vote on the redistricting that. Now, honestly, I don't know how important that is. I don't know how important that is to the 12 of us that are here today, but that was part of the resolution. So because of that, we really, we were the ones that really pushed the city staff to try to figure out a timeline so that we could vote on this by the end of March. Now, we're not gonna be voting on this as a community on a charter change until November, but that's okay. I mean, we can vote on this in March and it will, you know, wouldn't that be wonderful? We'd have something that we agreed on and it would be done and we would start the next council year fresh with that behind us. But that's the reason for the shorter timeline is that we really felt that, you know, we had given our word in order to reach consensus that this would be done this year. If that is not a pressing priority for the vast majority of us, then we don't need to be doing it that quickly, but I just wanted to point out why that was done. We just wanted to honor our commitment that we made to all of you so that we, and that may have been part of the reason why we did get a unanimous vote. Hopefully there were other reasons, but that was certainly something that we were trying to adhere to. So just wanted to put that out there and counselors Carpenter and Barlow may have other things to add, but that was the idea behind the timeline. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Paul. Who else? Director Tuttle. Thank you, President Tracy. And thank you for that additional commentary, Councilor Paul on the timeline. You know, I'll speak specifically to Councilor Jang's question about being able to discuss this at a meeting next week if you have one. I'm happy to be there to be part of the discussion and receive feedback about these questions about your local redistricting process. From a staffing perspective, we will not be able to provide those maps for the February 22nd meeting if that's when we receive the feedback. So, you know, definitely we could look at providing that for you at your first meeting in March, but just wanted to express that limitation of being able to prepare them in time for your next meeting. Thank you for that, Councilor Hightower. And I have a question, I don't know if it's a stupid question or not, but what is the possibility of aligning the state maps with the, or even the like positives, the pros and cons of aligning it with the state house map. So, you know, if we are, you know, have 10 or five districts having 10 wards with one councillor each, like what and having them be half of those districts are the same, what does that look like? Or is there a lot of impracticality to that? Well, I can certainly speak to some of that and Director Tuttle may have more to add, but you can certainly do that. And you could take either the single district member map, there may have to be some adjustments because if I'm remembering correctly, the single member districts may not have adhered strictly to city lines. So there might have to be some slight adjustments and tweaks there, but, you know, if the council was wanting to go in that direction, that's certainly easily done. Same thing with the five member, the five ward model. And we can certainly follow, you know, the question of course is, is the state going to follow either of those models in how it ultimately districts the house? But if you wanted to pursue that line of inquiry, absolutely, that's completely on the table. The only thing that I'll add is there was a little bit of discussion about this, that the ad hoc committee engaged in about whether that was something important to the community and I think the feedback that they received was not, you know, specifically directive on that issue because the state process hasn't been completed yet. And so many members of the community didn't know what the outcome of that process would be. So as attorney Richardson said, it's something we can certainly pursue if that's something the council would like us to, but how closely that those maps will ultimately align with the feedback you received from the community about our local districts is too early to tell, I guess. Great, thank you for that. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Councilor Hanson. Just going off of that, do we know when we're going to get the final legislative districts? I will have to check or go ahead, Megan, if you know. Oh, no, so if you look the redistricting process, I think they're expecting it by this spring because they have to have it approved and voted on for the August, well in advance of the August primaries. So I would expect that the legislature would have this completed by late March, perhaps early April. Okay, I mean, this goes to councilor Hanson. Councilor Paul's discussion, but I mean, there could be a benefit of waiting to see where that lands because we might wanna try to align it, but then it would sacrifice potentially, this council being able to decide. So it is a trade-off there. Thank you for that, Councilor Hanson. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Okay, seeing none. Councilor, Attorney Richardson. Sorry, I just wanted to, and I realize that recognize it's late. You know, one alternative, if the council wanted to keep the timeline is for Director Tuttle and I to develop a couple of different maps that we think reflects the sort of public input and some of the considerations. And I would propose probably one that sort of tried to do the most minimum changes to the existing map, one that sort of took into account, maybe doing both a ward 8 as it currently exists and a ward 8 that would not as it currently exists and perhaps distribute some of the student population has been suggested. And one that might take into account sort of alignment close to what we've, what some of the counselors have mentioned would say like either the 10 or five ward system trying to align with the district maps. And we'd be happy to do that as a sort of starting point to save you the work of doing it. This is another meeting. And then treating the 21st as an opportunity for feedback and additional direction, if that would work. Councilor Shannon. I don't really understand the importance of adopting this with this council when this council is not gonna be the council that ultimately has to vote to put this on the ballot. So if we push to get this done now, the most contentious part of this whole process is the map drawing. And it involves a lot of debate and processing. And to rush that through at this point, I'm not sure that that's gonna be fruitful since it could be changed by the next council if even with a small shift in opinion. Yeah, so I am for one, not really married to this timeline. I think that it would be helpful to get more information about what the legislative districts are looking like. That might be informative for us. I'm also interested in potentially aligning with those legislative districts. So that's just my two cents. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Don't have anyone else in the queue. Okay. Councilor Carpenter. Well, I go back and forth. It feels like, and I was supportive of trying to fix this, but it's almost like we need to decide do we really want to get this done by the end of March or not because it's, I feel like we're wafflings. How much information do we need? How much do we push staff to do the map making? And I don't know if we should take a straw poll and ask ourselves that question. I'm just feeling difficult to make a decision. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. Anyone else? Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I mean, originally we wanted to get it, I think on the March ballot, which obviously didn't happen, but I think we should try to get it on the November ballots so that we can get it ahead of the legislative session and have a chance at the legislature adopting. So I think that is really important. I don't, that gives us more time than March, but I do think we should strive to get it done for a November ballot. Thanks, Councilor Hanson, Councilor Barlow. Yeah, I concur with Councilor Hanson. We definitely should get it on the November ballot if possible, and I think that's doable. I'm not married to getting it sorted out by the end of March so much as I'm married to the idea of getting it right. And if we can get it right by then and get it passed, we should do it, but if we can't, we should just take the time we need to make sure we do it right. And I don't know if it'll be helpful to have the legislative districts or not, some of the five district maps I've seen have some of the same contentious, sort of seismic faults that we had in 2013. So I'm not, I'm sort of skeptical that that could be a viable map, but maybe I'm wrong. Thanks, Councilor Barlow, Councilor Paul. Thanks very much. I think what we're seeing here is a fairly broad consensus that even though we went into this with the notion that we were going to endeavor to get this done during this council year, that very, very nicely we have, appears have come together to appreciate the fact that it is more important to be deliberative and get this correct than potentially to get this done in a very short period of time and still allow staff the time to get this, to get these maps done. So it would seem as though, I don't think there's really any need for us to have any sort of motion, but just simply that we would, we will, when we do meet next week, we're not gonna be discussing this because we would have to have a separate, it's not the Board of Civil Authority, we would have to call it a special council meeting and that perhaps we could just simply have an understanding that Director Tuttle and City Attorney Richardson would come back to us with a revised timeline and we would discuss that, we could discuss that in early March. Director Tuttle. I think that that proposed route sounds very workable from my perspective. I was thinking along similar lines to you, Councilor Paul, that we can take a look at the deadlines associated with a November ballot and back into a schedule that would be informative for you in moving ahead with these questions and would give you a bit more time to provide some direction on how you would like the initial map making to take shape. Great. Thanks. Councilor Hightower, were you? I'm awesome. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. We can conclude that item and that brings us to the end of our deliberative agenda. So a motion to adjourn is in order. To move. To move by Councilor Hightower, seconded by Councilor McGee. Any discussion? Okay. Not hearing any, let's go to vote. All those in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carries unanimously and we are adjourned at 11-23. Good night, everyone.