 of what you're saying. As far as I know we're about halfway through the seven-year plan and I just learned that it's about to go through an update process so I recommend you take a look at that website and I what you're saying. If you want to I have some info I just got an email about today on when those meetings will be happening and what the options for public input are because I agree with you we need to do better and I think there's a broad consensus around that so I was happy to see that there's some updates being made. Yeah, that's definitely heartening. Thank you for sharing that. I'll definitely be making my voice heard during that process. Yeah, thanks very much. Thank you so much again and any additional public comments? I'm Nick Anderson. I work at Samplain College so it would behoove me to say that there's a couple of bathrooms right here if you need it. Exits are down the hall and to the left right here or you can go out that way so wherever the fire is there's plenty of ways to get out. Second is I just wanted to give this committee and the neighborhood an update on an upcoming construction project we have going on hopefully starting at the end of this month and it's kind of what we call a summer slammer. The limited amount of time when there's not students around is when we're trying to do this renovation but it's actually a relatively small renovation in the center of our main courtyard right here so you actually probably won't be able to see any of the construction from a public way but maybe hear it but we're just doing a we have a small kind of vestibule or addition on the front of our Joyce Learning Center and we're just going to make that a little bit bigger so that it connects into the neighboring building so it'll kind of have more connectivity between the two buildings so it's just a small bump out of an existing vestibule but some of you neighbors might have already got a DRB notice in the mail for a public hearing on the 14th. Our anticipation that it's pretty pretty benign pretty simple construction project but I wanted to put that invite out there if you want to know more information or you want to see some pictures or some plans definitely reach out to me nanderson at champlain.edu is my email and yeah happy to kind of forward any of that information I'm sure that information will also be on the DRB website too for the for the packet for the meeting. It's exciting for us so it'll kind of like provide a bit more connectivity. There's three classrooms in that building right now but if you want to go to the bathroom you have to leave the building and go across the courtyard and into another building so by connecting the two together it might make things a little more functional so so yeah as I say that it's kind of right in the in the dead center of campus here but happy to provide more info if you're curious that should be coming up this summer and we should in the flash of an eye we'll have students back in the pool and be using that space. Thank you thank you we're always curious so thanks for the information. All right so we're going to move on to if there's no any additional public comment we're going to move on to the sole eclipse they'll take it away. So I am not the expert on this there's a group in the city called Obscura BTV and they provided us with a ton of materials some of which are here and some of which we would love to have people take home with them. They wanted to let us know a few things that I'll kind of read through just to give people a sense of the information. First off they're saying that they expect this to be the largest natural phenomenon ever viewed. They note that 31.5 million people live in the path of totality which is like three times as many as lived in the path of totality from the last total eclipse which was in 2017 and an additional 150 million people live within 200 miles so that's a lot of numbers but anyway it's going to be a big deal not just in Burlington but across the country. They wanted to let us know that there's an emergency response center that's going to be open with the fire chief and the police chief closely coordinating and preparing for this along with neighboring municipalities. There are going to be crossing guards downtown to ensure safe pedestrian access. There are going to be a lot of streets closed including route 127 which is um what do we call that? That belt line thank you which is going to be used for parking and is going to have shuttle buses coming off it with shuttle stops every quarter mile. There are there is parking in the downtown garages. They are adding bathrooms downtown with five porta-potties on Cherry Street near Church Street three porta-potties on Main Street near City Hall. Those are all going to be serviced on Saturday Sunday and Monday. There is a bunch of programming that I'm not going to try and summarize but we will put all of this information in our meeting minutes and I think it's all available on the city's website and there are viewing sites at Battery Park at Waterfront Park at Perkins Pier at Oak Ledge Park at City Hall Park at Roosevelt Park and at Letty Park and all of those have bathrooms available. They also gave us materials and I want to just kind of point this out. There's these informational signs that are back here that I hope folks if they're interested will take time to read or if you're like me and don't feel like reading them right now take pictures of them and read them when you get home. They gave us I think a thousand pair of glasses. I didn't actually count but I think they're like rubber banded packets of a hundred. So please everybody here take as many as you think you can use or give away. We have already given a hundred pair of glasses to the King Street Youth Center which isn't technically in Ward 6 but which a lot of Ward 6 families make use of. We also offered glasses to the Lund Family Center but they had already been donated glasses from somebody else and if anybody has any ideas about what else we could do with these glasses we don't want them to go to waste. For each time I'm down here at church. You know? The assistant living room. Yeah behind Decker Towers. They may have already gotten to it's like there's a lot of this stuff around but that's a great idea and that actually reminds me I had meant to check with Ruggles House which I walk past pretty regularly and maybe I'll just take some and drop them off there. Anyway but please like really take as many as you want. There's also little informational sheets there that I think would have the website that would have all this information that I am not going to try and read right now. The city also gave us a solar spotter which we couldn't really figure out how to use in partial appreciation of Champlain College making this space available to us. I asked Nick if he thought that Champlain College could use it and he said yes so he's going to figure out how it works and have it available for their event. But you said you were going to geek out on it. That is a direct quote. Like laminated wood it's cool. Yeah it's a nice looking thing anyway and then both Champlain Elementary and Edmunds Elementary expressed some interest in getting that they're not open on the day of the eclipse so they didn't have a way to make use of it that day but they expressed some interest in getting that after the fact because it can be used not just during the eclipse but during other for other I don't know solar observations I guess and I'm so glad that Tom picked up the camera filters because in addition to the glasses we've got I think about 10 solar camera filters they're not for use with fancy cameras I don't think where you would want to have like the kind of filter that you know attaches to your lens but if you're taking pictures with your iPhone I think they're the thing and so if anybody would like to grab one of those tonight please do yeah. As a local resident who's a geek I have a physics degree the issue is you don't want to look at the sun while it's partially obscured when it's fully obscured for the three minutes you can take the glasses off and look at the but you have to know exactly when that time is and yeah. 826 to 329. Even if you have a nice camera those filters work you just black tape them around your your lens and they're fine. Awesome. Any other additional information that people have or questions or comments or ideas about what we can do with this stuff? Locally Church Street College Street will from from Church Street all the way to the waterfront will be blocked from traffic so that's the pedestrian corridor for us. Yeah there's a lot of road closures I've seen them out all the road closures. Yeah but handy. All the roads are closed down near the waterfront but what is what is Champlain College doing and what's UVM doing? Trying to avoid it as much as possible. No so classes are technically still in session but our faculty have been given the opportunity to choose I think 95% of our faculty have said online classes today folks you know just so they don't have to come into Burlington if they're from outside of Burlington we're we're planning on hosting some things to keep the kids busy during that time so you know setting up some things like that and glasses and all the all the good fun activities but um the one thing I wanted to kind of mention too is that while there's plenty of closed streets in Burlington that day from what we're hearing I've been in emergency meetings about solar eclipses all day and what we're hearing is that every road is going to be terrible right it's just going to be gridlock no matter where you go so the advice is find a spot stay in it for eight hours whether that's home or wherever or ride a bike or ride a bike or walk definitely get out to the Burlington things and enjoy them but that the worst traffic is likely going to be from 5 p.m onwards so don't expect to try and get anywhere at 7 p.m for dinner 5 p.m on after everyone's had their privility no I mean well that's when everybody's trying to get now it's not going to be able to handle 50 000 cars well they're saying that northern from from Montpelio north they're expecting up to 200 000 people so Burlington itself and they'll be using 89 and Burlington itself you know would see a good chunk of that people so yeah don't expect to go anywhere after the eclipses just so we know uh councilor Shannon is joining us online councilor go ahead hi I don't know if you can make me a participant so then I could see you but um I wanted to let you know that CSWD had posted something on front porch forum about collecting the glasses afterwards um oh looks like I'm being made a panelist thank you for that um hi hi welcome um yeah so there are collection points they listed uvm I don't know where at uvm but they're collecting the glasses at hula at the parks including waterfront park battery park Roosevelt park leddie oak ledge all have collection sites for the 1000 glasses being distributed by every npa um they told us they were giving npa's 500 glasses dale so I don't know if we just we were told 500 and I already took a hundred to give to king street and then we got our box and it has a thousand I just I mean I counted like a package of 100 and there's 10 of them yeah I planned early myself I bought 60 um but uh whether they're used or unused these collection sites they will they are for reuse so they're not actually for recycling um they they will be shared and used again so if they're brand new it's still a good place to bring them yeah good point thank you for reminding us about that thank you counselor so we're going to move on to the counselor updates thank you yep yep go so just a couple things um charlie can you just introduce yourself so I'm charlie g I work for town meeting television and I'm a long-standing npa steering committee member in the city so um one thing has to do with town meeting tv so we're going to actually going to have like four or five crews out making basically recording people's responses so if you see me walking around or travis or steve or whatever feel free to just like walk up and say hello or what you think of the event or whatever because that'll become part of a permanent record for the next thousand years so you're perfectly welcome to participate in that the second thing is about what to do with a lot of these if I I don't know any myself but if I if I knew anyone from westford like the westford school district or northfield or putney or something they probably I'm going to assume some of the smaller towns probably are not providing these that's that's just my assumption and so if you really wanted to if you had a connection in a small town nearby like milton or something you might just want to call the school district and say do you have any of these do you want me to bring you up a hundred of them or something and I guess it's a little late in the ballgame to do that but that's just a thought that I had thank you thank you all right so uh we're going to be moving on to city council updates we have city councilor like a brown mcnight and city councilor a rather district councilor jones shannon uh we're going to start with what six councilor yes like a night here okay well hi everyone thanks for having me it's exciting to be here at the first npa since I was sworn in on when was that monday which is feels like it was three weeks ago so yeah I am just getting started and I've really been spending a lot of my time getting to know my colleagues the progress in the progressive party and as well as city staff and learning a lot about how everything works here in burlington we've also received our committee assignments so I'm excited to share that I'll be joining councilor shannon on the ordinance committee which is a committee that has a pretty large purview around the city it includes work on neighborhood code as well as a lot of initiatives that intersect with sort of the rules around town and certainly public safety and a lot of other topics there and I'll also be chairing the parks arts and culture committee which I'm really excited about I think of that committee as a lot of the fun stuff that happens in town like a lot of the eclipse programming is under that sort of would intersect with that committee and the third committee I'll be serving on is the REIB racial equity inclusion and belonging and I'm really excited to dig into that work as well I know today we were asked to give an update on neighborhood code and I think Joan will probably touch on this more so I won't give a ton of details but overall I just want to say I'm really glad we took that historically forward to address the housing crisis in my view I had wanted to take some more time to get it right which I'm glad we ended up doing by I don't know if everyone is aware but there was an amendment added that delays permitting on the second structures that are allowed until October so we have six months because a lot of the community's questions and concerns around neighborhood code had to do with that second structure and so we'll have a chance now to get those questions some good answers and work things out with the planning commission I just learned today that the planning commission will be taking up neighborhood code next on their agenda on April 23rd to start discussing what kind of remains as well as there's a whole phase two of neighborhood code so mark your calendars if you're interested in engaging at that meeting there's if you're also there's a form online that you can sign up for to get specific alerts on neighborhood code and planning in the city and I have a list of questions I will be taking to that commission mostly I think we have a serious need for a forecast or projection of the number of expected units that we you know that we think will be built each year so that we can all have a sense of both you know the impact that additional housing will have on our neighborhoods as well as how effective it will be to these changes will be to actually solving the housing crisis which is the intent and then I also think getting a forecast of the number will help inform things like wastewater storm water and all the infrastructure needs that go along with it and I also have a lot of questions around affordability and perhaps home ownership incentives so that's a little bit of what's on my list I want to hear from all you here and kind of get more robust list to have questions to get answered around neighborhood code that's all I had Joan can I pass it over to you or Romeo you're running the show here so and then absolutely we can have the engagement thereafter perfect go ahead counselor okay well thank you and I'm thrilled to be serving with Becca and you have big shoes to fill Becca um with with Karen Paul stepping down and I thank Karen too for all of the work that she has done and I always say there has never been a city counselor that has provided the level of constituent service that that Karen did um and we all owe her a lot for that as far as neighborhood code um that is probably the the topic of the moment I'll also note that police oversight is now in the police commission um it was referred there after we did a lot of work on it in the charter change committee but we really didn't get input from we got police we got input from the police commission along the way but I don't think we really heated the input very well and they didn't when we came up with the final product they hadn't really weighed in on that and the police union and chief really had not weighed in so we sent it to place the police commission so that they could both add their input as well as consider the concerns that were raised by that by the union and the chief so neighborhood code started out with a concept that we needed to most municipalities if not all municipalities need to make changes based on to their zoning based on the legislative initiative called the home act and the home act requires that a duplex be allowed to be created under the same dimensional requirements as a single family home this is uh this will be a change for Burlington because a duplex has required a larger lot than a single family home so uh we we are making that change in addition the state legislation requires that four plexes be allowed in all districts that are on public sewer lines which is really all of Burlington and our residential low district in theory allow doesn't allow more than a duplex in fact and by that I mean in the use table it says that multi families are not allowed that single family and duplexes are allowed multi families are not in the RL but in fact you can get a triplex and even a four plex in the RL because there's an exception to that rule that allows you to add an additional unit if you meet other dimensional requirements so we are changing that to allow people to to create a four plex with very few barriers to to doing that we're increasing the lock coverage the allowable lock coverage in both the RL the low density zones and RM the medium density zones in low density it's going from a 35 lock coverage plus 10 for things like driveways and walkways and patios and pools to 45 plus that same 10 and in the RM it's going from 45 plus the 10 percent to it was going to 60 percent and we pulled that back through amendments to 55 percent there are many neighborhoods that were previously in the low density that are now in medium density and in ward six that is mostly the area around south union street so south union street is becoming a residential medium district those side streets like spruce street and kingsland terrace those also go into RM and then st paul street and shelburn road become corridor districts which allow the most intensive zoning and so it's a it's a very significant change even without the secondary structures it's still a very significant change for everyone um and hopefully it's going to allow for the infill development that I think we say we want we have had um when it was warned somebody applied for a permit here in lakeside and I think that that kind of enlightened us to what was possible and maybe what is likely and it caused concern among neighbors because the what was proposed was changing what is a triplex to a to a four unit building and and the whole neighborhood is on the national historic register and the second building was going to be larger taller than the than the front building and there was going to be a try it was going to be three units with two bedrooms in each unit in the secondary structure and no additional parking so that raised a lot of concerns because we have not with neighborhood code but but a year ago or so we eliminated all parking requirements and that maybe one of the biggest concerns for the neighborhood is the number of cars that will be added with the um with the added units and no parking spaces for them so um now the secondary structure is going to be on hold until until October 1st and the planning commission and I expect the ordinance committee will be discussing um if we want to make changes to what's allowed in the secondary structures but also right now we allow planned unit developments on lots of two acres or more and the neighborhood when we did the neighborhood code we didn't get to address planned unit developments but it's expected that we're going to be allowing planned unit developments on much smaller lots and so that discussion is also going to be happening at the planning commission and I'm not sure if we're going to be doing a joint committee with the ordinance committee or we'll go to the planning commission and then come to the ordinance committee but that discussion has not been yet so that's kind of a lot I don't know if people have questions about it thank you councillor any questions for the councillors or I have a question Mills Forney I'm the steering committee for board six I'm just curious um thank you so much for your review um Jeremy Becca in terms of the uh when we're talking about adding additional units is it going to be primarily by building additional structures on the properties or is it going to be taking an existing structure and bumping it out just a bit to have like one additional unit so a triplex to a four unit or a duplex to a triplex I would say there's multiple ways that those units could be added um you could take a single family home and turn it into a fourplex and that will be easier to do because we don't currently with a few exceptions we don't really allow you to turn a single family home in the RL to a fourplex um lock coverage often comes you know in order to do it you you probably need to build new stairways and access points it's probably going to involve some bumping out here and there you're going to run into the dimensional standards which include setbacks uh lock coverage and we've made it easier in terms of setbacks the setbacks are much less than they were we've made it easier in terms of lock coverage in some places much easier in some places a little bit easier in terms of those dimensional changes um and as well as building additional units which we've now talked about having a secondary structure um but in addition to that you may be able to build multiple structures on not just one secondary structure but you could build what they call a cottage court you could build so attached units or detached units with multiple structures that's the piece of the conversation we haven't really had yet accepting concept we haven't worked on any of those details thank you can you just introduce me yes my name's Bob Lighty I live on Tower Terrace which is behind a Champlain College dorm which is infill from 1941 and one thing that people don't talk a lot about is that people that live in infill are the nicest people and very friendly and get along really well um infill is a wonderful thing think about the people as opposed to the the you know that we're going to be providing homes for uh and relative to parking next door to me is a zone to required because there was once a business there a house that had to have 12 parking spots put in because the zoning required it and now those 12 zone 12 parking spots just sit there empty all day it's a waste and when you talk to developers which I have they know who they're selling and renting to and if they're selling or renting to people that need cars they put in parking if they're selling and renting to people that don't have cars they don't have parking because it's 50 000 bucks a pop to put a parking spot in so you know putting it in zoning code and requiring it ends up with a lot of extra parking that uh is not a great thing for our our environment or our communities thank you one thing I'll say I think that the 50 000 numbered is for structured parking and I also believed that that would be the case that you know that they need to meet the market demands and one thing we're seeing in lakeside is that that unfortunately hasn't been the case here thank you counselor any additional questions or comments my name is Tim Stevens I live on south union street um I wanted to speak out in support of the neighborhood code generally um I seems like housing is really the the fundamental problem in burlington right now I mean everything we talk about public safety the brain drain um housing affordability um it's it's it's the issue at the moment in in my view um and it would be great to have the opportunity to say like build housing that I could put my friends in you know as someone who's fortunate enough to own their own home um I'd like to know if there's ever been any consideration for taller buildings um when considering this so right now the the height limit from the neighborhood code is three stories as far as I know um why not why not four um why not five even as the um the the the fire codes are are soon to be updated they're being looked at right now in vermont right now to make it easier to build single staircase buildings that can have um that you know that can be that can be taller so you know why not it seems like if we have um uh stormwater concerns or um you know concerns about green space and preserving them then really easy place to build housing would be in the sky that was considered by the committee particularly on the corridors and I am forgetting at this moment exactly where we settled but I think we did um we did make the corridors denser and I think taller than was originally proposed um but there were also the idea behind neighborhood code and what was really promoted to the residents when we embarked on the project was that it would you know it would be infill development that fit in with the neighborhood that was you know was similar to what was in the neighborhood but allowing more of it and allowing allowing that to go into backyards and why not build a tiny house in the backyard so there was also some pushback when we you know so for for a butters to the corridors where the taller taller structures and more dense structures were being talked about but there definitely was that sentiment presented and I think it was about finding finding a balance between interests really I'll also add that um as I've learned more about this it's become clear that you know this is one this is the first step in the neighborhood code and so whether it's needing to look at height whether it's needing to rethink the number of structures or add in green space requirements or add in affordability requirements you know that's all change that can come uh in the future and it would be sort of an amendment to what's already there so it's um it's meant to be updated as the needs of Burlington change ask another question so also mindful that the housing stock in Burlington is pretty old are there any are we as there have been discussion around requirements for new energy efficiency levels things like that for any new buildings or units that might be added or would it be kind of consistent with what's already there I don't know that those those discussions were not part of neighborhood code but we have had we we we have um greatly increased energy efficiency standards and particularly with regards to heating types is is one area where you know new construction needs to be electrified um and I can't recite all of those changes now but I can just tell you that that has been a very strong focus for us separate from the neighborhood code and many initiatives that have been put forward as part of the net zero the roadmap to net zero energy program through BED thank you councillor um do we have any additional comments or questions or I just have a kind of question kind of comment not about neighborhood code okay um but because we have our first new city council member for a long time yes um and and also while Joan is here I just want to express on behalf of the npa that um we on behalf of the steering committee I should say that we want these meetings to be um useful for you as a way to learn about resident concerns as a way to solicit information and opinions from us as a way to you know ask questions of us um and also tell us what you're doing and tell us what you need opinions on so um we talked about this at our steering committee meeting we just want to make sure that you know that we are here in in no small part to funnel opinions up to you and encourage you to contact us with questions that we can put on the agenda um or anything like that at any time great thank you thank you Dale thank you Dale and I think we're gonna come back to you as well again we're going to now if there are no any additional comments or or questions for the councilors we I want to thank both of them for being here of course you have one more small announcement if we have time please go so I just had a meeting with the department of public works and I learned a lot and I asked them I said if they're so department of public works is in charge of our roads our wastewater systems our parking um and even more even more than that but that's the basics and the person who's in charge of storm water said that so I said is there if you had the opportunity to make a request of citizens of Burlington to make your job easier better for the environment and the person who piped up said that if everyone installed a rain barrel collection on their property and a low flow toilet for which we have a rebate program available uh it would make a big difference in our um storm water and our lake quality so I just wanted to pass that along thank you councilor again and uh we're going to move on to the NPA NPA rather business and in this case it's going to be a review and vote on the proposed new NPA bylaws and uh I'm going to move I'm going to hand that over to Dale. Thank you. So we have a number of copies of the proposed bylaws in the room my icing folks around here have them um I don't know if those will clean them later yeah looks like they were still here okay good so um just to explain what's going on here um all of the city's NPAs have been asked or required by city council to update our bylaws to ensure that we are operating in a respectful welcoming and non-discriminatory way. This is not to suggest that we've been doing anything that wasn't welcoming respectful or non-discriminatory in the past but they wanted us to include some new language in the bylaws that addressed that and made clear what the expectations were so um the city also gave us sample bylaws to use that includes that language we as the steering committee review the sample bylaws and we basically want to propose to um adopt them in place of our existing bylaws the only thing that we did that is different from the sample that was given to us from the state uh from the city rather was to add this statement of purpose that's the very first paragraph on page one um this is something that is in our existing bylaws and we thought it made sense to continue just explaining it and this is kind of it was sort of in the process of reading this and talking it through that that led to the comment that I made to Becca and Joan just before about um about what the NPA is intended to do in terms of helping the city get citizens views of city's needs and helping provide citizens with the opportunity to participate in making recommendations with respect to government decisions things like that so we thought that was useful to keep here other than that this is um basically what the city recommended it steps forth um how we meet how we provide notice um what's a quorum which is 10 people and that's what we have already and luckily we seem to have that many so we will be able to vote on these tonight um setting the agenda um responsibilities of the steering committee members and that's kind of about it and the non-discrimination that that I mentioned that was kind of the reason that we are developing new bylaws here so I don't know if folks have questions or comments now I think basically every NPA is doing this at this point yes I mean folks could probably tell us better and we might be behind because city council actually wanted each NPA to have this done by a date that has already passed but we got behind okay yeah I can just speak to that um briefly but basically the city council resolution that was passed was passed in October of 2023 and it asked that the NPAs make these changes to their bylaws by the end of January so January 31st 2024 or as soon as practicable um and so words 4 and 7 for instance they've been doing special meetings to really update their bylaws they looked at the sample bylaws had many additional meetings besides the regular NPA meetings so that they could can put together a version of the bylaws that that they thought was good for their NPA and they'll probably be voting on those at their meeting this month um so that's the most work I've seen done on the bylaws personally um for the NPAs but yeah I think according to the city council resolution the idea is that the PAs are are working on this on these changes and should make them as soon as possible let's go have a question has there be any updated deadline there is no updated deadline as far as I know um but yeah the deadline technically passed no I think from what I've heard from those who sponsored the resolution the idea was that they wanted the NPAs to at least start the process in January and so CEDO kind of put together some sample bylaws working with the city attorney's office to provide kind of the NPAs with some guidelines on on what was required to include different language to use and we put those together before January and those have been available to the NPAs so um yeah the idea is to to make those changes as soon as possible I believe any other questions or comments in that case um I think we just put it to a vote yes to uh yeah does it need to be moved or I don't know what year um it doesn't say that in our bylaws right okay doesn't say Robert's rules or anything like that so I think we can just put it to a vote um and we can put in the minutes that Romeo moved I also want to second to her I second back a second that I'm typing the minutes as we speak um and so voting is open to all residents of ward six so if we have any guests here who aren't from ward six I would just ask you not to vote and uh other than that all in favor please say aye aye anyone opposed okay unanimous can we just um make sure that we count the votes online so do you mind just calling the vote for those online just to make sure everyone can see yes so they can raise their hands if anyone's saying yes or those online would you mind uh raising your hand in favor I actually said yes but then I realized I don't live in ward six I'm not eligible to vote I don't I don't want to get sued for voter fraud okay postcode we're you're able to see that is there anybody opposed online and it's going down that's good okay thank you everyone thanks thanks for checking that yeah it's I think it's not sustaining but uh okay so um I'm actually gonna just go out of order here uh one other thing that I was asked to report out on was that I served as the ward six representative to the community development block grant advisory commission and um this was just really um it was a lot of work but it was also a lot of fun so the city gets like 650 000 dollars yearly from the federal government to spend on um uh to spend on projects or programs that will alleviate poverty basically putting it in the most simple terms um and so the city solicits applications from individuals or businesses or organizations mostly in fact organizations um for either public service projects which are things that address early childhood education and child care economic opportunity housing and homelessness and health projects that's one bucket of money that this year was roughly a hundred thousand dollars and um we had like 12 or 13 applications all really interesting really worthy projects um and we had to choose only five because the hundred thousand dollars had to get divvied up and they don't want to just give little amounts of money they want to give amount of money that will make an impact and then we have like more than 500 000 dollars to spend on development projects and those are used for public facilities and improvements as well as affordable housing I will say it was a little bit frustrating that there weren't even um enough worthy applicants to use up all of that money now more applications may come in over time um but I sort of just wanted to let people know that this is something that happens that the federal government gives us this pot of money the city has a process where it sets our priorities for what kind of projects to spend this money on and then it calls together people from each of the different wards in the city as well as some representatives of city government representative from education and from the state agency of human services and we review all the applications and so basically I want to thank ward six for giving me the opportunity to participate in this process and if anybody wants to see the final list of applications and awards I can give you the website where it's posted on the city's website so that was my report out on that we include that list in the minutes actually good idea we will do that yeah um and then the last item of business Mills maybe you're the one to do this happy to spend our money I think um yeah we we had uh we've been raising this in our within our past few meetings actually we have a small budget that's allocated to each npa on an annual basis um fast you can check me on this but I think it's coming up it's it's June 30th right the end of the fiscal year um for the city and we haven't spent much for money um it's I think it's $2,000 $500 thank you um and in the past we've used this to purchase pizza for npa meetings so anybody who came to a meeting just like this one we had food available which was great but we actually found that not many people were really eating it or were interested and maybe there was a better use for that money so one idea that was floated was the idea of doing something like love ward six day and we could solicit ideas from this group from other members the community on something fun we could do or something great we could do for our community to apply that money to so it could be something as simple as running a food truck you know for a day right or a cleanup day yeah um we don't have any parks in ward six but you know just a street cleanup or if we had maybe a non-profit that we wanted to help out and do a beautification project for so we really wanted to throw it out to people as you know what what could we do that would bring people together and um help our community can I throw something out well it's just going to quickly say yeah would be process are you looking for ideas tonight or over the next period of time or I think both um here we have uh we have a link to be included in the um the newsletter that goes out we can send around the minutes as well if you want to share ideas afterwards we'd love you to do that but any ideas here tonight as well we'd love that but um counselor Shannon and council want to go ahead um I was contacted by Bruce Wilson um who who works a lot with kids and has an organization um that does lots of good things in our community and he's organizing a graffiti cleanup and he was soliciting funds for the graffiti cleanup and I could share that information um I don't uh maybe with you Romeo should I send that to you yes I think it would be a great place um if if both the NPA wants to give money to this effort but also for the NPA to be coordinating with Bruce not because there it's going to be an all-volunteer thing the money just goes to um the materials that are needed to do the graffiti cleanup I believe that's that's that's that's the kind of thing that's a great example of the type of project that we were looking for I wonder if we could do a graffiti cleanup that leads into a food truck celebration we would draw people then yeah you know spend the morning cleaning up and then we have a little fun right yeah right maybe we close a block down and or you know an ice cream truck or something something like that yeah that's great yeah I'll reach out to him and include everybody yes do you ever have a uh more kind of like a block party or or whether you have a food truck I mean it's kind of one the same idea but to get the neighbors to know each other I was going to suggest the same thing oh and I know exactly what's going to be used yeah which one excuse me I don't have the wellers can that's great can you move to the microphone so people online can hear your suggestion thank you um please just introduce yourself Wendy Hacken I live on 352 south mnusky and um what I was suggesting is having a oversized block party which would be for ward six so the neighbors would get to know each other and then the gentleman here had an idea of which one which oh yeah my name is neck and I think we should do that block party idea and we should do it on south willard street when we should block off to vehicular traffic and let people walk on it and experience what that could be like because it's something that I think we're all we can all agree is going to where we're going to get to in the future so let's bring the future a little bit closer yeah I'm on the walk bike council that and we're working on how to get the streets closed on a more expedited basis it's really hard to do it takes like five days of work to get through the city process to shut down a street so you know it's it's just hard work to do we want to make that simpler and make it doable one proposal that we're making is to we're going to have September 22nd is no drive day nationally and so if anyone's interested in working on this with me we would like to have groups of riders and have shut down streets to go through town on on september 22nd you're in absolutely all right perfect perfect any additional comments for the budget we should okay i'm charlie again so the thing with your money is about to run out so if you're going to do something this spring you've got to get all your recent your receipts to the city buy like as close to june 1st as you can because they still have to process it but if you go beyond that you're going to lose whatever you didn't use and then starting on july 1st you get another twenty five hundred dollars so if you don't get it done in this narrow period of time you can still start over from scratch so other things you could use the money for like let's say you wanted to you could buy something like a speaker system a couple of microphones and a speaker like mords 4 and 7 is about to do so they're improving their audio in their large space block parties are great so a lot of the things that the money got used for in the past really wasn't all that connected to the mpa's which is originally what the money was supposed to be for it was supposed to have something to do with the npa but if you do a block party you can do an npa info informational thing so that's an easy one but like mords two and three we've spent that money to do really strange things like we helped to beautify a path through the cemetery one year other times we've done sidewalk art or graffiti art that kind of thing so you can use it on all kinds of different things but you might want to just bear that in mind that technically it's supposed to be used to somehow support your npa in some fashion again in the past it really hasn't been used that way most of the time but for instance you could provide food here for your meeting which is what most of the npa's do now this room's kind of small so i'm not sure you can yeah and uh you're kind of outgrowing your space here but because food will bring in more people to your meetings and i'm not sure um you're getting kind of close to your limit here um but those that's the thing we've got a bigger room when we're ready for it okay that's good um but yeah it's like so you gotta get your receipts in if you're gonna do something and you want to use your don't you don't want to waste your money because oh that money just going to go back into the general fund so that's where it came from so that's where it's going back to thank you charlie so i have a little bit more information on the graffiti and timing if if that's helpful sure yeah please um so the graffiti cleanup is going to be april 27th from 4 p.m to 8 15 and the way it is structured from 4 15 to 5 there's a graffiti removal demonstration from 5 to 6 you pick up graffiti materials from 6 to 17 6 to 7 15 you clean up graffiti um and then at 7 15 you return unused materials get swag bag and enjoy a live dj i sent the email that i received from bruce wilson to a few of you that i had emails for which is romeo becca dale and bob and um because it's april 27th i think that if the npa wants to designate money for that you're not going to have another meeting before that event and um if you want to uh maybe identify i i don't know if the steering committee wants to work on identifying some sites in ward six and coordinating volunteers for that or just putting something out on front porch forum um but wanted you to know that there's not going to be another meeting for further decision making before the event so um one other option we have is possibly coordinating with bob if there's a subsequent day i mean if if um we can get the training on it some people can get the training on the 27th and organize the subsequent day after the 27th um i don't know if that would be an option it's a good idea but we look into it i think these are uh really fantastic ideas so thank you everyone and we would love additional thoughts i feel like to share them um and we can look into each of these a bit more and then maybe we can come back to the next meeting with so we can vote on with some dollars and have what we could do potentially if that works um once i wonder like i don't know how much graffiti removal equipment costs but i wonder if even that we have a quorum here if we want to get an okay to use at least some chunk of that funding depending on how you learn about this and because do our second vote in one night which i'll i'll entertain that that we designate up to six hundred dollars to be spent on this depending on maybe in the discretion of the steering committee depending on what we can learn based on the information jones sent us i second that we have not wanted this vote is that in the bylaws that we just passed oh that's probably means a lot right okay yeah because the last one the vote on is right in here right no thank you for keeping us on as fosca yes okay so we can't do that again but we can probably learn more and i'm sure we can support this type of effort you know even if it's not this particular day yeah i think it'll be ongoing and maybe uh maybe letting bruce know that that we're going to be voting on this at a warned meeting would be helpful to him because i do need the i think they need a lot of materials and i think it would be really meaningful to them that sounds great so the new the new bylaws do say that one of the things the steering committee is supposed to do is oversee the allocation of funding from the city including soliciting and vetting community proposals and presenting a slate of proposals to the npa for voting so um so thank you fosca for keeping us on track darn good thing you're here otherwise i'd get us in trouble okay can i say one last thing so you can actually start spending your money in july so you can have a discussion in july about all the money you wanted instead of waiting until the last minute yep right so yeah as long as we warn we make that determination and allow sufficient time for people to vote on it um okay so we'll take that action for the next we'll get ready for the agenda um one um thing that i do want to mention with this is we're getting into things that are going to require more probably coordination so we're going to be looking for volunteers from the throughout the ward to help pull this together and make it a success thank you nazi all right are there any additional comments or questions for the counselors or any subject matter i just wanted to make one brief comment i i spent a lot of time in berlin they have tons of graffiti there and when you talk to them they said we've tried suppressing speech and it didn't work out for us so uh you know graffiti's a great expression and but when i talked to a a fellow trinton born muralist that works in the old north end he told me that what we're looking at is there are some people have some talent but most have almost none they need to be mentored the people that are doing it are a bunch of suburban kids that are coming in and and messing with our town and he thinks they should be removed if you want to see really nice graffiti the new champlain parkway goes uh buy some buildings on the backs of buildings that are just gorgeous there's some really nice graffiti in town and hopefully there'll be more of it that is uh allowing people to express and relative to becca's work with the art council there's going to be art on the new main street uh project and i would strongly uh suggest that we put uh some slate down there that allows people to express themselves we need public expression that is positive and and uh allow for it we we should embrace that slate's a great material that vermont's known for i've seen it in charlesville virginia and it's extremely successful in terms of allowing people to express themselves uh it would be great all right if there are no any additional comments we're going to adjourn this meeting at uh seven forty three p.m. tonight and just a reminder people please take classes please do yes and i think i got everyone but if there's anybody who's passing signs in um