 and we'd like to roll right into the Smash of Bank polka. Name of the next one. For Rocky Dixieland Edition. Work it in there. You can sing the lyrics to We Will Rock You to this next song. Here's a tune that is played in a lot of different ways. And we know it as a folk dance called Zodiac, also known as Mizzudio. I think we have just enough time for that. Can we have time for one more? OK, well, that calls for a changeover. So that's a sing-along and a clap-along. And the clap-along part is, the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. The prairie sky is wide and high deep in the heart of Texas. And being a Zoom meeting, this is going to look really funny from our perspective. OK, I'll set. One, two, one, two, three, those stars at night are big and bright. That was awesome. Thank you. Thank you both. That was awesome. Good work. I love the banjo. All right, what do you call that, ukulele? Ukulele. Awesome. Good folk stuff. I like it. All right. What's the agenda here? All right, so steering committee members present. Who have we got here? We've got myself, Kevin Duterman. We've got Jess Hyman. We've got Barbara McGrew. We've got Charlie G. And another Charlie. Cool. And we've got, is that Molly? Where's she at? Yeah, there she is. Molly and Tony. All right, I think that's everyone who's next. If you're interested in joining, we just put together this meeting once a month. And we share responsibilities and try to put this thing on. Just reach out and talk. So the next meeting, there's no meeting in August. But was that the second Thursday of July? July 8th? Yes, it is. Wow, that's the early one. So July 8th, we are planning on having a candidate forum for the Ward 3 seat that's been opened from Brian Pine stepping down to pursue a blanking on the position. But anybody help me out? The head of CEDO. That's right. Very exciting. Yeah, pretty sweet. But yeah, so we're going to be having a special election in August in case you didn't know. And we're going to be holding a candidate forum for people who are looking to be on the city council. I think there's at least one here who wants to introduce themselves during public forum, which is coming up next. Is there anything else? Yeah, only other thing is that this meeting is being recorded and will be on YouTube and on CCTV's website. And with that, we'll start public forum. Who of the public would like to forum? Raise your hand, either physically or preferably with a little raise hand option if you can. Cool. Let's just start from the top. We've got Ryan Adario. We've got two minutes. Let's go ahead. Hi, everyone. I'm Ryan Adario. I think I saw Joe on the participants as well. But I'm running for the seat that you just mentioned, Ryan Pine's former seat on city council. And I thought the meeting was at the ONE Community Center in real life. So I came here, which I used to work at Champlain Housing Trust and did a lot of work fundraising for the building. So it was a fine field trip because I see that it's in great shape and doing well. But I just wanted to introduce myself. I have lived in Burlington for eight years and was a big fan of Ryan Pine. I'm excited to jump into the race. Put down roots with my partner on Main Street about four years ago. And I'm running because I love my life in Burlington. I enjoy all of the incredible amenities here. But my professional work has been in affordable housing and domestic violence advocacy and also teaching dance on the side. And through that work, I've just come to realize how out of reach the life that I get to live here is for so many people that I share my block with even. So I'm running to try and change that. And I've only been a politician for a week so far. And it's a lot of work, but it's exciting. And I really, really would love for folks to say hi to me. So please tell me what your concerns are, what your questions are. Ward3Ryan at gmail.com or RyanIsRunning.com. You can learn a little more about me. But thank you so much for having me. Cool. Thanks for being here. And nice to meet you. We got Joe McGee is next on the list. Go ahead. Got two minutes. Hey, everyone. My name is Joe McGee. I use he and they pronouns. I have been a resident of Burlington for the past eight years. I currently live on North Champlain Street. And I just want to share my gratitude for Brian's years of service to Burlington and my excitement for his new position at CEDO. CEDO is going to be vital as we recover from COVID-19. And Brian's leadership is going to be crucial in that effort. So really excited to have him leading a department where his skills are really going to be put to great use. I grew up in the Mediver Valley. I came to Burlington to attend UVM. And I'm running for city council because I want to be a voice for working families in City Hall. And I, like many, am a renter who's faced the struggle of finding housing and employment that you make it possible for me to stay in Burlington. And I think for a long time, the city has responded to the concerns of wealthy folks and the well-connected. Well, the burden faced by working families is grown heavier year after year. And I think it's time we reverse that trend. And I really look forward to the next week up until the Progressive Caucus. I am running the Progressive Caucus. And if I don't get the Progressive Endorsement, I won't continue on. So hoping to earn support for those who plan to caucus with progressives and look forward to talking to a lot of folks over the next few weeks about the race, concerns about where the city is going, and concerns about what's going on here in the Old North End. So thank you all very much. You can learn more about my campaign at joemigiebtv.com. And you can email me at joemigiebtv.gmail.com. So look forward to talking to folks. And I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Got Tony Redington up next. Go ahead. You're still muted. Maybe this will help. You're muted, Tony. OK. There you go. OK. Can you hear me now? Yes. OK. I can't see anything, but I just got a call from Representative McCormick and Kroinski saying they're having trouble getting on. They're going to keep trying, but if they don't make it, it's not because they weren't around. Hopefully they will make it. OK. Two things. First, I was going to talk briefly. I hope all the candidates have spoken that I'm going to. I was going to talk about North Street, which I am dubbing with the name of our street of malignant attention by Department of Public Works. We have four high crash intersections, and they haven't lifted a finger yet. So our street of malign neglect continues. I'll talk more about that next month. But what struck me, it was the housing action that's going on. All the candidates that we've heard so far are talking about housing. Well, the city council in New York City did a landmark stunning act a couple of weeks ago. And some of you know about this. They basically dedicated 6% of their entire city budget this coming year to section eight federal type voucher monies to fund thousands of units of housing and apartments for low income. And so I took a look at the city budget here in Burlington. If we took, you know, we have a penny for parks. If we had a penny on the city budget for section eight, 30% income max rent units, we could fund 100 units for every one penny we dedicated. And I'm hopefully one of the city counselors between now and when the final budget is set and concluded, we'll propose that change. And I think we could do away with homelessness overnight here. A couple of cents, 200 units would make a huge difference. We have 1,000 on the waiting list at the city housing authority. And there actually is something we can do. And what was important about the action in New York City by the council? It was veto-proof. So the mayor of New York had no choice. And our city council, if they did the same thing, would be running the show rather than the mayor who hasn't bothered to budget one unit of such help since he's been there for 10 years. Thanks. All right, thanks, Tony. And anybody else, last chance for public forum? Jess, go ahead. Thanks, Kevin. I don't think that Jeannie Walts is on the call. So on her behalf, I will announce what I'm sure she would love to share, which is that the ramble is happening this year. So July 31st, the last Saturday in August, Jeannie and her amazing team of volunteers is pulling together the best damn neighborhood festival in the state. So keep your eye out for more information and get ready to ramble. And ramble safely based on whatever health restrictions we have at that time. And it will be splendid. Thank you. Sweet. It's awesome. Good to hear. Anybody else? Last chance. Going once, going twice. Any public want to forum? All right. So we are moving on to the next item, which is representative updates. So let's go in the order that they're listed here. So state legislators, density counselors, and then school board members, if that works out for who's here. If not, we can change it up. So we've got Brian, I see. And everyone raise their hand. There's a state legislator. Tom, that's right. Brian, how about Tom? You go first. Great. I'll be quick, because I think you don't have very much time. But I'm happy to take questions afterwards. And I'm googleable, thomas.chittenden at gmail.com. And I don't want to endorse anybody. I want to stay out of things. But Joe, it's good to see you running. It's been a while. You've been so active in so many campaigns. I'm looking forward to watching the race. So good luck. And I don't know you, Ryan. My apologies. I'm not weighing in on the Burlington Council race. But I do know Joe. And I'm glad to see I'm running. So I'm a first-time legislator. I'm in the state Senate. I'm on the Transportation and Education Committees. Happy to answer specifically about things I worked on. But one thing I'm particularly proud of that the Transportation Bill, what's called the T-Bill 433, added a section when it came over to the Senate on transportation equity framework. So we're requiring the agency to consult the Regional Planning Commissions to undertake a comprehensive analysis on looking at how to advance mobility equity, which is how the transportation system can increase mobility options, reduce air pollution, and enhance economic opportunity to remonters in communities that have been underserved by Vermont's transportation system. So looking at how our transportation through an equity lens is, I think, a useful thing for V-Trans to commit to. On the education side, really happy S-16 pass. That was Senator Romsville. I think she's going to be here tonight. She'll probably speak to it. Happy to have been on the Education Committee, fully supporting that great work. S-13 is an exciting topic. It has to do with the equitable funding of our schools and the waiting formula. So some of you might be aware of that. But that's very important to the city of Burlington. And I expect a great idea. It was just appointed to the task force this summer to come up with an implementation framework for it. So if you're aware of that topic, happy to talk to you more about that. That's going to be committed a lot of my attention over the coming months. I don't know how much time we have, Kevin. I'm happy to answer any questions. But I'll stop there. And thank you for this time. I figure on you, Kevin. So we've got 30 minutes for every state legislators, state counselors, and school board members. So roughly, it comes out to three or four minutes each person, I think, is the general guide. And then Q&A for a couple of minutes. I think we can just open it up to anyone who has questions for Tom. Then we'll just go person by person, do it that way. So any questions for Tom? Can we save questions for the end so that we don't get sidetracked too much? Because I'm afraid that's going to happen. Yeah, absolutely. Sure. Brian, go ahead. Well, while I have your attention, Jill Perwinsky and Kurt McCormick were having a hard time getting in. So if someone could just check on them, I just got a text. So does Emma want to go first? I wasn't trying to jump in. I just was. Oh, Brian. I appreciate the sharing of the space and that. OK. I appreciate that. I was going to suggest the speaker go first, but she's not here yet. So for the sake of time, I'll. Yeah. What's that? She was on for a second, but actually I don't see her anymore. Yeah, froze for her. Well, I'll just say something short. I'm not trying to take up a lot of space. But I'm on the health care committee right now. Just so you know, I'm in the South End. I'm out of our district. I'm here with the People's Kitchen. And we're preparing to bring food and diapers to a community housing location. We do this on Thursdays. So you might hear some noise in the background. But on the health care committee, we did some work around health equity, created a Health Equity Advisory Commission, and which we'll be looking at setting up an office of health. I'm actually going to walk a little bit. You might hear background noise. So they'll be looking at creating an office of health equity, looking at health care provider training to improve cultural competency and anti-racism and cultural humility. They'll be looking at spending relief money, as well as the regular appropriations of the state in ways that will improve BIPOC, LGBTQA, and LGBTQ and people with disabilities wellness. The legislature also passed the resolution declaring racism as a public health emergency, which was a nice gesture. And so now it's time to hopefully go back next year and look at the recommendations of the Health Equity Advisory Commission and look at the appropriations of the state and find ways to make sure that we're gearing appropriations of the state towards those goals, because I do feel like we did not do enough in this budget in that area. So that's a little update on health care. And just so you know, I just got a text that Curt and Jill are having a hard time. So if someone could look to help them, I'll pass it off to Emma and I'm gonna see if I can help them too, so. Hey, I'm just in trouble shooting that right now. So just everybody, I'm on it. Thank you. All right, so Emma, go ahead. Okay, great. Hi everyone, I'm Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. I'm the state rep for the west side of the Old North End. So Ward three and then the district goes into to onesie district that goes into the southern portion of the New North End. This is my daughter Ruby, whose favorite Zoom meeting is the MPA. True story. She did a great portion of you all last time. She's working on something different tonight. I'll show you later. I thought I'd give just two brief updates towards the end of the sessions, two issues in particular. I was taking some leadership on. I serve on the house commerce and economic development committee, which deals with a lot of economic development issues and workforce development, but we also get the unemployment issue. And I know I gave updates along the way. There was a moment where the bill that was finally, it's actually one of being S62, but the bill numbers sort of, unless you wanna look it up and geek out on it, which you are welcome to do. The bill numbers sort of irrelevant because a few other items got cobbled together. That's kind of the Frankenstein version of the end of the session where the original bill gets glommed on to other bills and they sort of put a Frankenstein bill forward. But the end of the story was we were poised in the house. We had taken out in this unemployment bill, anything that had to do with supporting workers, folks who were actually unemployed in terms of claim benefits, improving or the process improving or better oversight of the Department of Labor with its management issues of making sure that the state is responsive and has the capacity to manage the historic and unprecedented number of Vermonters needing to access unemployment in the last 15 months. We were poised to do nothing in the house. We had pulled it out of what the Senate has sent over and instead we're focusing on just doing employer tax relief for employers who were going, hold on one second, who were going to see a significant jump. There was no argument there on July 1st because so many people had drawn down the unemployment trust fund, which by the way was the healthiest in the country before we went into the pandemic, one of the healthiest. So we were nowhere near bankruptcy, but it was a very, very business and employer-centric conversation. And so I dissented at that in the committee and I made sure to know that folks know that we needed to do something for workers and then a coalition of folks, which is often the case, continue to persist and make sure workers' interests were put back into the bill, which is what came out in the last week of the session. So now workers who are accessing unemployment, who once the federal provisions end around Labor Day will in Vermont be able to receive a $25 increase per week to their claims, which is a huge deal and it's not enough. I just wanna be clear. It's a huge deal because we went from nothing, as I was just describing, to something and something I will continue to look for and work on with colleagues. Next session is how we can really look at modernizing our unemployment system, looking at who's not even eligible for unemployment and making sure we have an economy and safety nets like this that actually support Vermonters and don't penalize folks for archaic and outdated reasons and just qualify folks. The second thing I just wanna say before Ruby clearly has something else to add is just on the Burlington Charter Change Items. So I was leading the crew of House members here in Burlington who all supported the Charter Change Items. It went in and introduced as one bill and it did not get over the finish line. All four items were not able to make it. The House did pass the airport commission, a configuration item over to the Senate, but the Senate did not take it up yet. And I know the speaker can certainly speak to this a little bit and some folks have different views on it, but just know your whole House delegation was in support of those items. I know several senators were as well and it was more of a time issue than it was the items but the items Burlington sent are a little bit more complicated than your average bear kind of Charter Change Item. I mean, there's just cause eviction. It just remind people thermal energy ability to do some financial regulation around thermal energy issues, rank choice voting. So these are big ones and it will go probably through a couple of different committees in order to be fully vetted but I'm hopeful that all four will prevail and move in the beginning of the next session so that Burlington voters who overwhelmingly supported all of those items are heard and that the legislature works in partnership and not in opposition to the way that Burlington has expressed those. And I bet Representative Rom will speak to Charter Items that are up as we go into our veto session which is in a couple of weeks, maybe 10 days now, but we'll take up items where the governor has vetoed. I think we're up to three or four bills at this point to our other Charter Change Items for the city of Whenuski and Montpelier, which I think are important ones to watch in terms of equity, but I don't want to steal anyone else's topic so I'm happy to answer questions if the other legislators don't cover that. Thank you, Ruby, do you have anything to say to folks before? No. No, great, thanks. Cool, thanks so much. Next up, yeah, Kisha Ram, go ahead. Thank you, thanks so much. Oh, did I meet myself? No, I didn't. Hi, I'm actually in the Old North End right now I was doing my wedding dance lesson at the Santo Dance Studio. Really nice to be with all of you and I came in as Representative Mulvaney Stannick was really queuing up her great work on the unemployment insurance provisions. Really grateful to the house that ultimately we were able to get that through with a bump for workers at a time when the rest of the country was going in the opposite direction and taking away unemployment benefits for unemployed folks after an incredibly devastating economic downturn. Looking ahead, I will just say one thing I'm proud of that might not get mentioned otherwise is I have been working since 2014 on trying to reduce and end the use of suspension and expulsion as a behavioral discipline tool in schools and it felt like that was never gonna go anywhere six or seven years ago. And I think the House and Senate Education Committees really met the moment this year around equity and what it meant to hold children through a crisis and we ended the use of suspension and expulsion for six and seven year olds. I know some people are thinking, wow, I can't believe we ever did that. But that was a huge step as well as looking at having a task force that will look at significantly reducing suspension and expulsion in other contexts. So grateful that that has passed and been signed by the governor. Looking ahead at the veto session, I don't know if anybody else is on government operations who's here. We are three for three. All three of the veto so far have been our committee's jurisdiction. One, F-107 is on juvenile records. It came up because there's a lack of clarity around when an incident with a juvenile becomes a public record. And if it's the police department or government's responsibility, essentially, to release that information to the public and the press. Whereas normally, if it is a juvenile matter that stays in family court, that would remain confidential. If it becomes a criminal court matter, it would then become public. And there was a very tragic car accident that called this to question and a lot of confusion. So what we did was match what we're doing in other areas of judiciary and government operations and trying to increase the age of juvenile consideration, acknowledging that the brain development of a young person continues into their 20s. We have been working with the governor on increasing the age at which someone is considered an adult and tried at a greater level in those convictions. And so, I'm just getting to the Senate, but other senators feel like it came out of left field a little bit that the governor's questioning the definition of juvenile in this sense, because it would include 18 to 19-year-old confidential information. A little complicated, not sure what's gonna happen on the House side with that bill. I think the Senate will probably be successful in its override vote because we have a majority of Democrats in the Senate. The other two, as you probably heard a little bit about, are the Winooski and Montpelier charter changes that would allow all residents to vote in those communities in Montpelier, all residents to vote in their municipal elections, and Winooski, all residents to vote in their school board and municipal elections. And an interesting twist that I just heard from the Montpelier city clerk is the notion that in fact, with school board matters, a school district could decide to with the community's electoral administration support to have all residents vote in school board elections regardless because they're not controlled by the city charter, which is a decision that ultimately comes to the legislature. So at any rate, the Winooski and Montpelier charters are very almost identical. And if you take out the school board consideration, they're essentially identical. And yet we are worried that, you know, there may be the votes for the Montpelier charter and not the Winooski charter. And, you know, if you ask me as a woman of color, the first woman of color in the state Senate, it's very concerning that we might pass Montpelier's charter, where there are relatively few people's color and new Americans, although a very important part of the community. Whereas in Winooski, families who identify as English language learners make up almost half of the school district. And you're talking about in municipal elections, increasing the voting population by 10%. We rarely make those kinds of gains in enfranchising voters and creating access to democracy. And at a time when the rest of the country is trying to strip away voting rights, for us to take this step, I think it's really critical and meaningful and changes the national conversation. So I really hope and believe we can get both of these charters across the finish line. And of course, you know, both chambers have to pass that by a two-thirds majority of those present. Our veto session is beginning June 23rd and probably lasting a couple or a few days. So that's, you know, what I thought I would talk about since it's really present for all of us. And thanks for having me. Thank you. Next up, Janie Lyons, would you like to give an update? Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry, I was a little late. I got caught in traffic. I'm just kidding. I did have trouble getting on my Zoom. But thanks for having us all here and it's great to see you. I'll give a very brief update. The important work that we did in our health and welfare committee and in other committees really was a result of being embedded in the pandemic. You know, this is the first legislative session where we started on Zoom and we've ended on Zoom and we're continuing until we have some reassurance that we can get back into the state house. I don't know if anyone's talked about that up to this point, but at this time, we're looking at opening the state house up and giving committees some larger rooms so that we can have the press and citizens involved in our debates and we'll also be continuing our use of electronics. So we'll be continuing the use of Zoom. So it's gonna be a new hybrid process for working in the Senate as we go forward. The Senate chamber itself will remain as it is. I don't know whether we'll have electronics trans sending out everything that we're doing, but the public radio streaming will continue in that way. The work in the Senate has been outstanding both in terms of helping people bridge the gap economically and then also working to help people to build some community to provide food, to provide healthcare, and of course, telemedicine has expanded and we've already passed some rules that will allow for telemedicine to continue. We've put in place a committee to look at how we can continue audio only support for appointments for physician and other appointments so that people don't have to get in their cars and drive or have fear of the pandemic. I think the biggest reason now for extension of telemedicine is that people understand how much easier it is to get help and support and work with their practitioners without getting in the car. And it does save, it saves time, it saves childcare, it saves a number of things. The childcare program is something that we really looked at very intently. As you know, when the pandemic hit, childcare was one of those things that came out as absolutely essential for businesses to continue and for people to get to work. So we have put in place a number of things. I won't go into all the details, but one of the things that we've done is to expand our workforce development scholarships and loan repayment for childcare workers. We've also done that for some of our healthcare practitioners, everyone from LPNs to docs and advanced practice nurses. So that work has been absolutely key as a result of our understanding of the gaps from the pandemic. We've done a great deal more. I think that I will let others talk for now, but I do want you to know that we are very committed to looking at the lessons that have come out of this pandemic and try to make some changes and transform everything from childcare to business support. So I think that we've all learned lessons, not the least of which is that while we love Zoom, we also would like to be together and in a room and not in the Zoom room, but it has been extremely helpful to have Zoom around. I can go into other details about what we did in our healthcare committee. There is one very important task force that is going to be looking at the affordability of healthcare. Our concern is the high price of insurance. Our concern is the high cost for out-of-pocket and other expenses that people make before they get their insurance coverage. So I'm looking forward to that task force. In fact, I spent yesterday a couple of hours with the National Council of State legislators talking about what we need to do to make healthcare more affordable. And you'll be very pleased to know that some of the bills that I was happy at least, one of the bills that I introduced had a lot of the little things that the national organization is saying are the most effective in helping to reduce healthcare costs. So I will follow up on some of those, but I'll also be interested in what our consultant will share with us about healthcare costs going forward. I'll stop there. One last comment. Equity has been key and important. And I know that Senator Ram has talked about that a little bit and we're looking at, we are looking at equity issues and we have declared public health an emergency, equity emergency. So I look forward to continuing work in that area as well. So thank you all again. Thank you Senator. Max Tracy, go ahead. Thank you. And just wanna thank our musicians again for that great intro. That was awesome. Best part of the day for sure. So thank you for providing that. Really appreciated that. Also super excited, Junia. They made the announcement that the ramble's happening. So, so excited about that. Nice shirt. Yeah, that's incredible. So good. So just wanted to update folks on some of the city issues. We're in the thick of budget season. So working on finalizing the city budget, we've been in budget hearings. They put out a survey on the budget and have taken some counselor feedback and in response to that feedback, made modifications heard from the mayor and CIO today that they're gonna be delivering their recommended budget, which they're required to do by June 15th to the council tomorrow. Given that it's coming, the final package is coming just on Friday. Doesn't look like we're gonna vote on that on Monday. At least that's kind of what I've said is that I don't know that counselors are ready to vote on that. So it looks like we'll push that until our last meeting in June, which is on the 28th. Within that budget, we've seen some shifts take place. One shift that is positive and that directly applies to this body is the $1,000 extra in funding for the wards to three NPA for the coming year in response to counselor feedback. So that was a nice change. So you get $500 additional per ward or $4,000 total. So we'll be able to all decide how we wanna use that money in the coming fiscal year, but that's I think a good change, especially as we think about getting back together in person. So really excited about that. Some other changes in the budget based on feedback were $15,000 for community bystander training. This is specifically regarding sexual assault and harassment. This was some feedback that I had provided to the administration seeking that community resource to be provided. We also have heard lots of frustration around traffic calming and how that doesn't happen. So just responding to what Tony was saying in to some degree and DPW has shifted that from a sort of first in first at first in in terms of request model to something that is more data-driven, but even still it costs about $150,000 per street in terms of traffic calming. And so they were only thinking of doing three streets. We said that really was not meeting the demand and the community feedback that I was hearing and then I know others were hearing. And so based on that, they've allocated an additional $450,000 for traffic calming. Some other areas that are seeing significant expansion or we're continuing to expand the office of racial equity inclusion and belonging specifically hiring on anti-racism trainers to do bring that training resource to city employees and really operationalize that throughout how we work as a city and continuing to build out other positions related to that office. I know that policing has been a particular interest for folks. The current budget does not have additional armed officers beyond the cap that was set by the council last year. So that cap is still in place. We're going to continue to fund the unarmed officers or the community support officers that were approved in February. And then with some of the savings from that drawdown also there's a $400,000 set aside for bringing on board additional mental health workers specifically to support our community in those ways. So that I think is a positive change and we're going to have to have additional community conversation around what that looks like. I think there's been significant and I think important debate around whether we go and have those workers come from the Howard Center or we bring them on as sort of their own separate entity. There's still work to be done in that regard but I think that that's the thinking in terms of how we're going to be shifting those resources going forward. Couple other things that I just wanted to mention also so that's the budget and I also heard your feedback Tony and I can bring that piece back to them as well as new CEDO director Pine and kind of get a sense of their thinking on that. I do also want to highlight that the council will be making boarding commission appointments at this council meeting. So we'll have, we had a great set of applicants we're always so lucky to have so many people who want to volunteer and work on boards and commissions. So we're going to be making those appointments at this coming council meeting. We're also at this coming council meeting going to be having a conversation or work session at the beginning of the meeting on our transition back to in-person council meetings. We're not a hundred percent sure as to when that's going to happen but we want to start the conversation around what elements of pandemic life or pandemic remote work we'd like to bring into council and then based on that work with city staff to bring those, make those technological and logistical arrangements so that when we potentially go back which this point might be July for our July meeting we have those in place. I very much view this as an iterative process and something that we're going to continue to have to evolve and take feedback on but certainly am open to ideas and trying to implement and bring forward some of these opportunities that have expanded participation in this era. The other thing I just wanted to clarify relates to Councillor Pines having left and now being appointed as CEO director so I'm going to be picking up Councillor Pines committee assignments which were the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee as well as the community development neighborhood revitalization committee for the time being and then the ward three councillor who is elected to fill that space in August will take on those roles as well as the public safety committee because councillor Hightower was actually appointed to Councillor Pines seat on the board of finance so councillor Hightower stepped up to fill that role which is just fantastic really appreciated her doing that and then the special election for that seat itself will be on August 17th, 2021 so put that on your calendars though you don't necessarily have to do that because we have a resolution on the city council table for this meeting where we're going to be sending out mail-in ballot approving the sending out of mail-in ballots to all constituents in ward three so are all registered voters in ward three so if you aren't registered in ward three yet make sure you do that and you can do that online super easy but again, they'll be operating off the same mail-in balloting system there will still be in-person options as well but just want to clarify that for folks. Thanks Max. Next up, let's do Jean. Jean Walts, you ready? Yeah, sorry, I didn't get to actually personally make the announcement about the Rambo I was on a Zoom with the coalition for Vermont student equity which our representatives can attest to S13 which is about the weighted pupil study being honored in a way where there is now going to be a task force assembled to actually implement the idea of looking at how looking at how our tax monies educationally are allocated accurately and hopefully referring to a study done at UVM so that was a huge push and just let you know two of your my fellow but two of your school board commissioners spearheaded this effort to rope in other school board members across the state, form this coalition, hire lobbyists and just in and date I'm sure as people on the line right now in and date their emails their inboxes with lots of advocacy and that happened as far as meanwhile back at the ranch we're looking at 52 Institute Road and what its future might be hold and the most and I know that's probably on people's minds the most so I'm gonna talk about the BHS, BTC where we are right now so the district has hired a white and Burke real estate advisors to essentially give us a comprehensive list of potential sites for a new school. Just off the bat I can tell you the minimum that we've been told would be viable is eight acres and about two and a half of those acres would be somehow devoted to parking I also am so happy to hear that BTC so at one point the re-envisioning project after us asking and getting a 70 million dollar, oh my God, what's it called? Not Grant, not Lean, that's Bond, Bond what came back to the drawing board literally the drawing board was that we can factor in Burlington Technical Center in re-envisioning project so all of that BTC is now back on table so that to me is very important and I really hope we all, I know I've been saying we have no idea what a gem we have in our community with BTC I've been a part of being able to see what they're doing and their studios, their teachers, everything they're doing by the way they're winning awards and this program is not like what we think about as CTE in the past is not what is now we're talking about kids going through these programs and having certifications in addition to college credits while in these programs so I'm really happy to hear that we are moving forward with Burlington Technical Center being a part of this forward plan but with that said, this is where we are we are waiting to hear what might be out there for us and but in the meantime, the board has been tasked or has been given requirements and from getting feedback from both mostly from the staff and administration but also from community members what are the priorities and how are we going to weight them in actually coming to a decision so essentially we're creating a rubric what's our priorities, how much of that is a priority and yeah, we're moving forward with that and also we will probably be moving to open meetings I know at the next meeting is the 15th next Tuesday and we will have a discussion if in that time we have to have a open meeting I am sure somebody is prepared to host a physical place for that for us to comply with open meetings but obviously we're gonna have a further discussion about getting back in the in-person saddle and yeah, if anybody has any questions, please email me but I'm sure Stephen has more to add. Christy. Thanks, Jeannie. You pretty much covered everything I just wanna point out the names of our two commissioners who were responsible for getting the ball rolling on that S16 and the weighted people setting that was commissioners Sauer and Fisher and they did a fantastic job, we're much thankful for them and also for Governor Scott for getting that going so we're looking forward to a fairer way of distributing state funds to different school districts Burlington will benefit, no doubt but as usual, there's much ado going on at the school board and in the district itself with the graduations this week VHS is tomorrow at 10 o'clock. I believe it's at the campus although I couldn't find a specific reference to that to that today on the website but I believe it's at the campus on Institute Road. It is, it is and it's decorated, it's outdoor, feels, it looks super cute and I'm not like a huge fan of large events besides the Rambo but this looks adorable. But I'll just reiterate what Jeanne said too about the process of the high school re-envisioning processes ongoing again and we are gonna get information hopefully for three potential sites and there's a lot of discussion about what those sites will be will it be Institute Road, will it be downtown, will it be somewhere else? Are there other schools in Burlington that could host the building of a high school? Are there other spaces downtown that could be perhaps be used like the lot next to the firehouse behind the Memorial Auditorium was brought up in one of the discussions. So it's really all up in the air and there will be some decisions made I hope on Tuesday night next week the 15. We'll hear more information from this real estate firm that's doing the investigative work about the sites and the costs and the practicality of it all. I just, you know, we were thinking originally that November might be the time for the bond vote because it is gonna be another bond for sure. It's gonna be an expensive proposition. It looks like March will be the more reasonable time to put that forth for the public support hopefully. And that's all I just wanted to mention. That's all I wanted to mention tonight. If you have any questions or other things there's so much going on. Perhaps I could or Jeanie could answer them. I'm curious to know what people feel about the different potential sites in Burlington for at the high school because there are strong feelings in many areas for different sites. There's also the discussion of should BTC and VHS be combined should it be on one side or should be in other sites? So there's everything is up in the air actually. That did Jeanie think for now? I do know that the group that I was with we were in separate groups, Stephen, with whatever, White and Burke real estate firm. We asked for a comprehensive list of sites that were vetted because after all is said and done and even before, even all along people have been like, well, what about this place? Well, what about that place? And of course, they're not the first person that has thought of that. So I really see all of these places which maybe woulda, coulda, shoulda and why not in the end? And that's one thing. And the other thing about BTC I'm also working, I don't wanna say working, we just had our last meeting as part. So Burlington Technical Center went through a, every two years by mandate, they have to have some kind of re-envisioning CLA. I can go into it more, but for the past probably about four months, a group of at least 20 people from not just their infrastructure, not just their staff, but also outside, sending schools to BTC have been meeting to talk about the future of BTC. And it definitely is on the table about like how are we going to better serve students and geographically what might make sense. So that stuff is still out there. And there's also other things burbling up which is probably, once again, going to be an effort to advocate legislatively for the kind of funding right now. The funding that goes with attending a technical center is your school sends you there. And that tuition, the idea of an FTE and also now within Chittenden County, there's more than one tactical center. So there's a lot of, and just like the weighted pupil study kind of thing, this conversation has been going on, the weighted pupil study was like 20 years. This conversation has been going on for 10. And I really hope it's not another 10 before taxpayer dollar-wise and equity-wise, this doesn't wait to get addressed. So I don't know. Just in terms of the high school again, we can think of a March of 2022 bond vote, best case scenario. And even if we move quickly, occupation of a new high school, September of 24, those are optimistic projections. It means that the kids in the high school right now downtown will, that will be their high school experience, the downtown site. And there are mitigation, son mitigation plans to be constructed this summer to make it more appropriate because that's one of the big complaints right now. But again, there's so much going on. Jeannie and I've just touched on some of the factors, but we appreciate your ears and support for sure. Thanks. Thank you both. And unless I'm missing anybody, I think it's time for questions. Does anyone have any questions for any of these recent presenters, any of our representatives? Just raise your hand, either physically, I'll look for you or a little emoji. I'm sorry to interrupt, was this around the time for the presenters, for the grant presenters? I didn't want to come in too soon or too late. I think you're a little too soon. We're still on the agenda items for like, sorry, just checking. Totally, all good. Yeah, so any questions for anyone who just spoke? Not seeing any hands, anywhere, so going once, going twice. All right. Thank you all for coming and updating us all and we guys got going. Thank you. You for doing what you do. So we don't have to. What's next? Pull up, there we go. All right. Yeah, so community grant funding grantees given their updates, just a brief, how long did we say? About three minutes each, if you'd like, but as short as you'd like to. So who is involved there? We've got Roy Truth, we've got who else? Who else got grant funding? Brian, okay. And anybody else? Just those two. And Kevin, I have something to read from Trav Fryer from Lab B. Cool, why don't you go ahead and sort of that? Oh, okay, great. So Trav apologizes, he couldn't be here today, but he wanted to give a quick update on the repair cafe. So he says, hi NPA, Lab B is very thankful to have received a grant again this year. We've used the money to purchase a pop-up tent so that the repair cafe can continue to happen outside with shade, as well as a city market gift card so that we can feed volunteers. Our latest repair cafe on May 15th was a great success and we look forward to our next one in two weeks on June 19th, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 12 North Street. We invite everyone to attend, bring anything, and we'll do our best to try and repair it. Bikes, clothes, computers, furniture, electronics, you name it. If you're interested in volunteering or just being on the email list to be notified for the next one, please visit us at laboratoryb.org slash repair cafe. So the next repair cafe is June 19th, from 11 to 3 at 12 North Street. Thanks Brad for sending that in. All right, Brian, you wanna go next? Okay, thank you. So we did the performance at the beginning of the NPA and that was a good example of a young man, Alden, who is taking lessons with me privately, but he's learning how to express himself and play music in the community. And he's gonna be the voice of the community. And the whole idea of the Old North End neighborhood band is to make sure that young people have the option to make music together. So there's a lot of feeder programs, a lot of ways in which we try to get kids involved. And so I do a lot of work at the Integrated Arts Academy and in various other contexts with very young kids just so that we can start working on the relationships and the musical skills, which will allow them to join together with other young people. So the specific grant program that the NPA very generously funded was a series of concert workshops, basically jam sessions at Roosevelt Park. And that happened on a number of Wednesdays and Fridays between 6.30 and 7.30 PM. And it was me inviting former members of the band and anyone who wanted to join to play music together. And there was some, it wasn't like huge, but every kid who was involved with that was a really important connection which will begin to weave that network of young people making music together. So, and that was both long-term students of music but also some of the younger kids who I knew from their early days at the Integrated Arts Academy. And because of the sort of skill set that I've developed of making sure that people can play music together, we were able to get all of these kids together playing, singing the songs of the community, even some pretty esoteric songs in languages, not other than English. Here's the book, The Music of the Old North End. And it's a repertoire book which we're distributing. And I've actually, there's a physical copy of this which we're distributing to kids throughout the neighborhood. And also I've kind of totally kneecapped my operation by distributing the PDF version free of charge. So that's available downloadable on my website, BrianPerkinsMusic.com. And that includes songs and tunes from myriad different cultures that have had an impact on the Old North End. So I highly encourage you to go to my website and download your free copy of this book. It's about your neighborhood. It's about the people in your neighborhood both presently and in the past. So we had to kind of rush this thing together because of the nature of the grant funding. But we front loaded it with two sessions a week and we decided to keep going with that throughout the summer. So every Wednesday and every Friday at Roosevelt Park, 6.30 to 7.30 jam session, playing the music of your neighborhood. Very cool. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, it sounds awesome. Roy, are you true? Are you still there? I don't see your video. Roy, are you there? I'm here. Sorry about that. Yeah, tell us about your event. What's going on? All right, sorry for that at the moment. Thank you for those who are for the patients. And just to get off into a good start, thank you so much for the Neighborhood Planning Association for this grant. So to get into it, I really had a big of an impact personally going through the last year and a half going into through the shutdown, through the pandemic, at various parts in both communities. Right now, I'm currently in Winooski right beside the O'Brien Center. Currently, I am assisting Karubo. If you're currently, if you're familiar with the artist Karubo, I'm assisting Karubo with some background vocals for the next performance that she has for Jazz Festival. But one of the main things I've been doing is providing not only my skillset as a musician, as a sound personnel, and just a community engager. I'm using that talent and that skill to amplify what's going on, not only with the NPA events or the NPA going on, but what's going on in the community. So I decided to put on something that is gonna be recurring and the start of it will be the first multicultural, the community multicultural festival. I called it a festival because it's supposed to be just a gathering of many people that live in the community and it's supposed to be a bridge between not only Burlington, the Old North End, but also the other communities that come to Burlington specifically to Battery Park. Just to hang around, just to engage in conversation, a lot of the New Americans are there as well. So having lived beside Battery Park for about seven going on eight years, I thought it would be great to host nothing out of the ordinary than just amplifying what's going on so that everyone knows what's going on, whether it's a performance, whether it's a recap, whatever it's the agenda that's coming up to let people know that the NPA meetings are here. Pretty much what was requested from the grant saying that it should amplify the going on to the community. So I received help, a lot of help from community engagers and I do see that Max Tracy is on this call and I do wanna thank him just specifically for being an engager with me also. I don't wanna go super deep into the actual actions point by point, but from the- It's a quick update, we already have time for a board show. Yeah, just a quick update. So the quick update is the equipment that I got that was earmarked from the grant. We had to do a bit of a switching because of how we were getting that equipment. I got help from the Racial Justice Alliance Group which is earmarked or headed by Mark Hughes and he took over the sponsoring of that equipment, that major equipment and that's the only major change about what the grant process was going to. What the grant, the actual, the monies that we're going to went for the actual infrastructure of the one piece of equipment that will help tie all that in together. The apps, the applications, the scheduling applications and also the sound application that runs the sound system that we procured is all done on an iPad. That iPad is actually gonna be what's gonna run the core of agenda and what's agendas, the agendas for the NPA, the NPA meetings or what's going on in the community and also the one second, one second. Got to love the F-35. That one is not an F-35 but if you know the F-35 sounds, you know that this would be a lot longer than that. But in a long short, I got help from the community engages that represents even the endeavors that we're doing right here, amplifying everything that has to do with the community and the multi-cultures and the multi-cultures in the community. So it will be me doing a, I amplify myself as a storyteller in reference to my podcasting and my ability to represent through the various organizations such as the Clemens Family Farm and also for the Racial Justice Alliance. And I'll be hosting a marathon of sorts, a podcasting, introducing members of the community to one specific app. And that app is called Stereo. That app is a community building app. It allows everyone to be on a platform up to five people and it has connected myself currently to different, not only just in America but outside of the US. So I'm using and the age range to be on this app is 17 and older. And that's the perfect range for the individuals that are in the community right now. So I'm using that marathon, that talkathon to introduce those members of the community that day for eight hours as a part of the first introduction to the multicultural festival, which I will have continuously as often as I can get to hold the space in the in battery park, which is often because I'm not charging for this. This is something that's supposed to by what's going on in the community. That sounds awesome. Thank you. And once again, thank you so much for this opportunity to have this grant. I really appreciate it. Got it. It sounds like a really cool thing. Thank you for the update. All right. So what is next? Grace for people for police accountability. You've got 15 minutes. Go on ahead. Okay. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Grace File and I'm here on behalf of people for police accountability. So I'm gonna talk to you really quickly. Hopefully we'll have a little bit of time for questions at the end, but I'm gonna kind of go sort of fast. You're always welcome to reach out to us and our contact information is on our website, which is peopleforpoliceaccountability.com and I'll show all of that stuff again at the end. I'll share my screen. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about community control police. We're doing this campaign, community control police campaign right now. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what's in the actual community control police proposal, where we are in the campaign and then we'll circle back at the end for questions. So people for police accountability is a group of concerned community members and we're organizing specifically around community control police and the creation of an independent community control board with diverse membership and disciplinary and investigatory powers over our police department. And our goal is to get community control police on the ballot for the special election in November through the petition process. And so I'm here with you today to just make sure that, hopefully if we collect all the signatures that we need to get that on the ballot and hopefully we all have the opportunity to vote on that in November, I'm here to just make sure that we all have the opportunity to make the most informed vote possible. So if you're gonna vote yes for this, we want that to be an informed yes. And if you're gonna vote no for this, we want that to be an informed no, right? So community control police is a proposal to change the city charter, which is basically like the constitution of our city and create an independent community control board with investigatory and disciplinary powers over the police department. So currently if you experience unfair treatment or police violence or misconduct, you have to report that misconduct directly back to the police department who are then tasked with investigating themselves. And there's very little transparency into the investigation and adjudication of complaints of misconduct. And we also know based on personal experiences and based on data that the police department has collected that the police department disproportionately pulled over arrests and uses force against black members of our community. So black drivers are four times as likely to be pulled over 366% more likely to be arrested. And almost all of the violent high profile use of force cases we've seen here involve someone who is either black or someone who is experiencing a mental health crisis. So even though we pay the police to do their jobs, all of our tax dollars go to pay the police department and we grant them special authorities, we don't actually have the ability to directly hold them accountable. We fund the police department and then we also have to pay for settlements and buyouts of officers and use of force cases. And then ultimately none of us, not even city council or the mayor can directly hold police officers accountable. So we pay for this service, right? And then we also receive this service, but we don't actually have a, we're not stakeholders in this organization that we're funding. So the community control board would be made up of to the extent possible folks who are most directly impacted by policing. So we're talking about BIPOC members of our community, LGBTQ folks and folks who have experienced addiction and houselessness and mental health issues. The board members would undergo extensive training and the board would also have an independent investigatory office to receive and investigate complaints of misconduct. And the board would have input into hiring criteria for police officers and the police chief. And they would also review complaints and hold hearings and then discipline or remove police officers, including the chief. And the board and its office would also issue regular public reports to allow for as much transparency as possible. So that was kind of a lot of information, but I just wanna share three things that I think are really important to understand about community control police. So police officers would continue to have a right to do process. That right is protected and maintained in this proposal and the police department would still be able to investigate complaints that the board chooses not to take up. So that could be, you know, lower level infractions like tardiness and uniform violations and things like that. Another thing that's really important to note is that the community control board and its office are only conducting investigations when there has been a complaint of misconduct. So they're not searching around for things to investigate. They're only investigating based on a complaint that they receive. And additionally, the community control board would not replace the current police commission. We feel that the police commission has an important role working with the police department to craft policies and directives and to have an overall advisory view of the department. So these bodies could exist alongside each other and exist together. And it's crucial that there be a body that is fully independent from the police department that can investigate and adjudicate discipline. So across the country, there's over 150 different models of police oversight in cities of all sizes and all demographics. And this Burlington model is based off of existing community oversight models. And our proposal also directly aligns with the criteria for effective oversight of police that was created by the ACLU of Vermont. So we took that criteria and that's directly what this is based off of. Community control police has also had extensive input and support from community members and is supported by the ACLU of Vermont and the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, as well as local grass roots organizations, including the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, Migrant Justice, the Women's Freedom and Justice Initiative and the Battery Park Movement. And finally, the process of changing our city charter. So this whole process that we're talking about that we're trying to do via petition right now is actually something that was initiated by city council. So last summer, after the murder of George Floyd, we experienced some of the largest uprisings around racism and police violence in this country's history, right? And some of the largest protests around police violence here in Burlington. So in response to that, city council unanimously passed the protesters in public safety resolution and the racial justice through economic and criminal justice resolution. And both of those resolutions tasked the city council with exploring public safety alternatives and the protesters in public safety resolution specifically requested that city council review or that the Charter Change Committee review options for who makes and reviews disciplinary decisions. Community control police was actually passed by city council back in December, but was vetoed by Mayor Weinberger, which blocked community control police from being on the ballot during the March election. So our goal now is to get community control police on the ballot for the special election in November through the petition process. So currently we are on our way to collecting about 2,000 signatures from registered voters in Burlington so that all of us have a chance to vote on it and so that we can collectively decide as a city if this is something that we really want. So I'm gonna share just our website and our email. So folks can get in touch with us. Please feel free to reach out at any point if anyone has questions. And I don't know where I am for a time, but I would love to answer your questions if folks have questions. We've got some time, you know? You started at around like 7.35 or so. Great. Yeah, kind of like, yeah, under 10 minutes or so. Awesome. But so for questions, Els, Ryan, go ahead. Yeah, I was just looking for the website for Mr. Truths, for the Battery Park Arts that he's presenting because I'm in the neighborhood so I wanted to know what was going on over there more. Okay, I could dig that up in the emails. I'm sure it's there somewhere. Probably in his grant application. So I reach out and one of us will follow up with you. That would be great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Because there has been so much more music in the neighborhood and I thought, well, maybe this is him. Maybe I need to pay more attention. It's nice. It is good to see. I agree. Thanks. Cool. Of course. And actually I have a question for you, Grace. Is this like proposal based on like any existing framework for a police accountability group? Did you work off of a template, essentially? Yeah, so I actually initially became involved with this at the end of last summer. So we've been working on this for almost a year at this point. And my initial role was just to do research and to look at other models in other cities and to try to figure out what would work for us because we knew that we needed a model that was going to be specific to Burlington and specific to our community. So the two models that we kind of started looking at and pulling things from were the Chicago, the model in Chicago and then also the model in Madison, Wisconsin. So we took kind of the best parts we thought of both of those models and then combine them together and then also used that criteria from the ACLU to directly inform the things that we thought were really important. Very cool. All right, I'll have to look into those. I haven't heard of those. So Chicago and Madison, you said? Yeah, and I'm happy to, or if you want to shoot us an email too, I'm happy to just send you both of those, the PDFs of their models as well so you can see them. Awesome. I would separately, I would like that, but also are those available on the site for anyone else? Yeah, I could put them on the website. I don't think we have direct links to them. There's also a really great document that the Cine Attorney put together that is kind of summaries of a bunch of other models as well. And then that document that she put together also has public comment synthesized in there and then also recommendations from the ACLU. So that's all in one document that she synthesized all of those different things. So yeah, and I'm happy to send those to whoever is interested in them. Yeah, cool. That's my jam. I love that kind of thing. That's awesome. I know that exists. Cool, thank you. And Tony, Tony has a question. Go ahead. Yeah, hi, Grace. Hi, Tony. Where can we sign? Where will the petitions be where I can do a signature? Yeah, that's a really great question. So we are currently in the process of going and knocking on doors and also trying to set up stationary events and pop up things in neighborhoods where we'll be to be able to collect signatures. I think at this point, the easiest thing might be to sign the online version of the petition, which is on our website, on the front page of our website. And then we'll connect with you to get your physical signature. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Tony. All right, anyone else have a question? Go on one, go on twice. All right, that's about time, so that's perfect. It didn't see me. Oh, I'm sorry, Jane. Go ahead. Got a question. I just wanna let you all know that the Ramble is an ideal platform for any kind of advocacy. And I'm not saying, you're welcome. I'm saying like, oh my God, please. Please, please, please forge a relationship with the Ramble, be a part of the Ramble, be a staple of the Ramble. I mean, Brian, you know you are, but I, yeah, any new faces, any new efforts, 100% please. Cool. Awesome, thank you so much. Ramble is a good way to be. I love the Ramble. Well, cool, thank you, Grace, for being here and for your presentation. Appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate you being here. All right. Thank you. Yeah, of course. What is next? NPA goals and priorities for the 2022 year. Yeah, so I mean, normally this is where we'd have a big giant posted note on an easel at the front of the room and we'd raise our hands and gather round and shout stuff and frantically write things. So I actually, I don't know what the plan is for doing that here or how we wanted to conduct this item. I could use some help from somebody. Jess, what do you got? What's happened? Yeah, well, I think that since we have a small group live on the call now that this is an opportunity, and of course, legions watching out in the digital world. It's an opportunity just to introduce a couple of things. One, that we wanna get back in person and we're looking at September for back-to-community dinner. Yay, Janet and her community dinner team and in-person meetings. And we wanna, between now and then, we wanna hear more from everyone about what you want the NPA to be because the NPA is all of ours. It's a platform for any community issue. So thinking about what sorts of discussions, what sorts of presentations, what sorts of actions do we all wanna see happen through the NPA? Who else wants to be part of it? There's room on the steering committee. We need more people involved. And so this conversation tonight where we invite people just to pop in, say what you're thinking, say what you want is just the start of that process. And then we'd also have a survey. So more people can participate. And then over the summer, including, I would think at the Ramble, have an opportunity for people to weigh in on what they'd like to see at the NPA in the coming year. So that's, this is just the beginning. Very, very cool. Yeah, so for contact info, I don't know if I blanked through that. There's our Ward 2 and 3 NPA, Google Groups email that you can send to. And I think we had discussed like maybe sending out like a Google form, right? I think you mentioned that one. But yeah, any of our emails that are listed as steering committee members, please send us your thoughts. And yeah, that all sounds good. Sounds good to me. What, are there any other things? I see we have 15 minutes allotted to this. Is there anything else that, other than just like opportunities for raising hands? Was there anything else? Cool. Yeah, so anybody, anyone have any thoughts for aspirations for next year? Tony, I think your hand is just still up from the last speaker, right? Or do you have something new? Okay, Brian? Jean, you're on the wings, Jean. Brian, go ahead. Yeah, so all, since there's time to say this, I would just say that coming out of the pandemic, I feel like the social fabric's been torn, you know, by this like sort of collective trauma we've been through and we're gonna need opportunities to heal. And I think the best thing is gonna be to be together in person. And so I'm hoping that we can use NPAs to bring more people together once we can be in person. So I don't know how to do that, how to make it more appealing. I think music and food has been a draw like cranky shows or whatever they're called, you know, puppet shows, art. Like I really think that we need more of that to get people out. I think the political stuff can like turn some people off sometimes. So maybe focusing more on community building and less on politics. But I'm hoping that the NPAs could be a place for us to heal as a community coming out of the pandemic. And I miss seeing everyone in person. And I, you know, it would be nice to see you all and to meet new people. Cheers to that. Thank you, Brian. Els, what do you think? I was next. And I have to go next because what Brian said is totally in line with what I wanna talk about. I, all the, yeah, food and art are what feed our souls, right? And I believe the old north end arts and business network. And when I talk about businesses, you know, we're talking about lots of foodaries, eateries, restaurants, I believe the old north end arts and business network needs to get some kind of support from the NPA. And if it could be established in whatever way, I just believe it would serve our community so well. Especially post pandemic. Seconded. 100%. Els, what are you thinking? Well, I'm just thinking about the demise of the old north end arts thing and the incredibly painful process, which I just very peripherally know about the group and about what happened. But what I do know is that there has been a lot of pain. There was a lot of silencing. There was a lot of hiding. That's a different organization. You're talking about. No, I know it's not you. That's why I know that's not you. No, what I just talked about was the old north end arts and business network. What you're referring to is VPAL, which stands for the Vermont Performing Artist League. But sorry, Els. Okay, no, I did know that that was not your organization. And I appreciate your wanting to make that clear because I did not know the correct name. I just want to also make it clear. I've been associated with both organizations and pretty much anybody who has done any kind of works with the arts also has. And I'm not defending or condoning. What I'm saying is, please speak. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to clarify. No, no, no. Well, you know what? Your response is telling me what I really wanted to know about having a conversation. And what I'm feeling like is, it's way too soon. People are still processing and people are still hurting. And I'm on the edge of it. So I'm just going to say, I want to be supportive. And maybe that means just not even being there to bring it up. But I'm really sorry. I did not mean to cause pain by bringing it up. Not at all. Alice, if I was here earlier and could make an announcement, and we're at eight o'clock now, but I want to let you know that VPAL is dissolving and their board, which is a new board, did vote to give the ramble back the money that they had been managing for us at the top of their list. So I've been in contact. I just want to say, as far as entities, that I know I'm representing an entity that has been harmed, in addition to personally, and knowing other people who personally have been harmed. And I feel I have been a part of the process in which we are healing and processing and having really good conversations. Good. I feel like I have personally gotten through to people. I feel like I am being validated and I am being cared for. And as a community, I feel like even though this board is kind of like Ben slapped together, as far as I know, as of now, they're doing the right thing. Good. No complaints about the process. And yeah, I'm still really sad about it. And I'm having a healing with a hopeful physical umbrella for the ramble. And but also what I would have said is that it does look like the ramble has to be from their own nonprofit. And what that's gonna mean, as far as us getting paying talent for the show, might be a pain in the ass, but we're moving forward. I know we're over time, but I just wanna thank you for sharing that and also for the work you're doing because I do want the good of the work that has been done to be carried on, absolutely. And I wanna support people for going back into the fire there. And thank you very, very much. That's all I wanted to say. All right, thank you, Els. And Charlie, did you have a call? Is Mr. Truth still on the call? No, he's not. I honestly feel like his efforts are going to be a part of filling that void. So that's why I'm in huge support of his effort. Good. Charlie, G, did you have anything to add for aspirations? No, since I'm on the steering committee, I'm just basically listening. So there are things that I'd like to discuss, like C-click fix, which I spoke about recently and whether or not that should be retained by Burlington. I think the NPA should take a look at that. But yeah, I'm just here to listen. So if anybody else in the community has any ideas that they'd like to see the NPA, they should take the time, not me. So. Gotcha. I just saw you on my way, I'm sorry, I assumed. That's some wicked feedback. That's weird. Anyway, Charlie, Messing, go ahead. Oh, you're on, yeah, you're on my, yeah, sorry. You're talking about putting on a show and needing talent and needing money to get the talent. A few minutes ago, you were talking, talking about it. Who was, Gene or Roy? I don't know, Gene, but there, I don't know. Some people were talking about arts and performers, so I don't know. Something to raise money, I thought. Was it the Ramble, would that be Gene? Could be, could be. They're talking about having bands and people playing at the Ramble and finding room in the budget. Were they, were they doing that? One of the grant, one of the grant applicants is talking about having pop-up type performances at the park. That's totally separate from the Ramble. But if they want to do that at the Ramble, that's a shoe in. But that, that reference, it was Mr. True who is applying for one of the grants. Am I correct? Yes. Okay, yeah. Okay, well, I remember, I remember him anyway. If you need help finding entertainment, I could help. But I think things are, what's that? But I thought you said something real quick and I missed it. So, yes, I think these are all, these are all good plans and there should be somebody overseeing the police, definitely. And Tony has great ideas about roundabouts. And there are some people who think they're expensive. We should tell them that they're not and that anything else is just as good. Or you should let them know it's not. That's about it. I'm happy to see the NPA again and look forward to in-person. Me too. Here, here. She's here. Yeah. So I think with that, I think we could move on to the next item. Unless anyone objects. All right, let's see. Let's see. So next up is talking about the bylaws and where we're at with that. For a while, we went without bylaws completely. I got kind of put on the back burner and kept getting put off and put off and put off. But we finally got together and made a set of bylaws that we all agreed on. We refined them and there are appendix three in the agenda. If you all are there, it is a lot. But we mostly just took from other NPAs bylaws and just kind of made a combination that we liked. I don't think we added really much at all. We kind of modified some to be a little bit more specific in a lot of cases. Yeah, I don't know what else to really say about that. I'm not sure how many of you took note of their existence in the agenda. They're kind of down there and they're long. It's not easy reading, but yeah, everyone on the steering committee came to a consensus and worked it out and I'm happy with them. And I don't know what else to say about them. I'm not sure. Go ahead, Jean. What's up? You're muted. Sorry. I should have asked Kesha about S27, which was a bill that was hopefully going to support multilingual liaisons between schools and municipalities. Am I right that the NPA is kind of like a branch of city government or am I wrong? But regardless, even through maybe CEDAO getting a grant for multilingual liaisons to help translate or at least at some point, translate materials like, so when we taught, looking at, the only thing that stood out to me was access, minutes and recordings of all emails, of all meetings, we know that that's not going to be in different languages. I'm not saying we're going to solve this problem. It's really hard. I mean, some languages are not written. You cannot translate in word, meeting minutes in every language. So just putting it out there that I hope at some point, our entire city comes to grips with how we don't actually have a way to equitably communicate to our entire city. This is public meetings. Right. I think one nice thing towards that effort though is like all these online tools. I mean, it's amazing what like, not just Google, but like other organizations that have developed these translation tools, especially for any typed out. It's amazing what's capable of now. And that's huge. You know, you have to hire several different people to translate different pieces of material to just get it out to people. It's copy-paste, it's pretty awesome. Jess, what was that? Yeah, agreed on Google Translate, amazing tool. And Jeannie, you're totally right. And that's one of the big gaps in how the NPA operates is everything's in English. And people who don't speak English don't have a voice in the NPA process. And so that's something in terms of priorities for next year, that access piece, I think should be right at the top. And there is, so the city does have a language access plan that they've been developing. I'm not entirely sure how that applies to the NPA, but that's a great question we should ask because they're looking at city departments and city functions, but anything that we can do to support the NPAs in that is great. And especially since, and that was wonderful news from Max that the NPA allocations are being increased. Perhaps we can devote some of that money to interpretation of important materials and agendas or minutes or the bylaws or having some sort of translation function at the meeting. So yeah, thank you so much. We're even finding the places where to share that information with, right? Like we know that we were sharing within our Insular community. And part of the outreach plan is to actually outreach to break that out of that bubble. That's definitely high on the priority list. So yeah, call it, what do you call it? Read in our minds, you know? Yeah, anything else for this item? Anybody? Going, it's going twice. Could I add one more thing? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just wanted to point out for folks who haven't read through them that there are two separate sets of bylaws, one for ward two and one for ward three. They're identical except for things related to each ward. And then the NPAs operate jointly. And so there's a joint operation provision. And so that's a little different of the last version of the bylaws were combined. But since they are separate wards and officially separate NPAs that we choose to operate together because we're one big community of the old North End and parts of downtown, that is stipulated in the bylaws. That's all. Right, yeah, so I mean, these new bylaws cover a lot. I mean, it's like stuff about quorum and how many people that were, you know, what the process is for like getting people on and off of the steering committee, all that kind of stuff. So it's like, it's a pretty important document that we've kind of put off. So this is huge, it's exciting to get it done. Yeah, so I mean, I see vote is part of the agenda item. Is that, you know, is it two thirds? What's the, you know, what's the market there? Anybody with knowledge other than me, I don't have it. Okay, Charlie, can I just hear wisdom? I think we're just gonna eventually have a vote. But so I probably could have, I think I've said this earlier in the year, but in light of the fact that we're expecting such a large community dinner in September and when there's gonna be like a hundred or more people there, I suggest because we put the bylaws off for 10 years, it wouldn't hurt to put it off a few more months and basically just get a bunch of hard copies of it and pass it around at the September dinner and tell everybody we're gonna vote on this in October. And I would kind of like bring the public in and there'll be a lot more people who understand what we're doing. And I suggest that we just get a bunch of hard copies of the proposal, spread them out at the September community dinner and basically have a vote of like a hundred or 150 people in October to either accept or reject it instead of tonight when there's only a few people here. I 100%, yeah, I'm right here. Yeah, and I saw a thumbs up from Jess. Tony, what are you doing? Thumbs up, thumbs down. Side to side. And Barbara, thumbs up, sweet. All right, I think that's at least two thirds right there. Cool, thanks, Els. Appreciate it. Yeah, cool, so moving on. Is that it? Thank goodness. All right, that's it. Thank you for coming out, everybody. It's been a heck of a night. Thanks to everybody. Thank you for everyone for being here. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Tony. Yep. Thanks, everyone, for your hard work. Thank you, everybody. Good night, thank you. Thank you so much, Kevin. Yeah, thanks.