 So good evening today is September 19th, 2022. Thank you for joining us in person in Contra's Auditorium and online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 6.40 p.m. We're gonna begin our agenda this evening with a motion to adopt the agenda and with that I'll go to Councilor Hightower. Move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. Remove from the deliberate agenda item 7.04, fiscal year 2022 consolidated annual performance and evaluation report, also known as the CAPER Draft. From CEDO and place it on the Consent Agenda as item 6.25 per City Council President Paul. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councilor Shannon. Is there any discussion of that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion to adopt our agenda as amended, please say aye. Aye. If there's any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. Before we get to our deliberative agenda and other Council business, it's our practice to hold executive sessions or expected executive sessions early in the evening. And to that end, the next item on our agenda is 2.01, which is a communication with an expected executive session. This is regarding an update to the network relocation project at Memorial Auditorium. We anticipate that the executive session will last approximately a half hour. And we don't have the administration or anyone else here with us. So we won't be getting any public update, but with that, we'll just go on to the motions for executive sessions. So the first motion to go into executive session, Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. I move that the council find that the premature general public knowledge of information concerning contract negotiations regarding the relocation of the city's network assets would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage with such negotiations. Thank you. Motion made by Councilor Shannon, seconded by Councilor Travers. Any discussion on that motion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Any opposed, please say no. And that motion passes unanimously. So we'll go to the second motion, Councilor Shannon. Based upon that binding, I move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential updates on contract negotiations regarding the network relocation project pursuant to 1VSA 313A1A. And also to go into executive session for negotiating or securing of real estate lease options pursuant to 1VSA 313A2. And for the city's cybersecurity and public safety pursuant to 1VSA 313A5 and 10. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Seconded by Councilor Barlow. And the executive session will include members of the mayor's staff, CIO Scott Barker as well as the CAO Catherine Shad. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. So we expect to be in executive session for about a half hour and return to open session, hopefully by around 7.15. And there'll be a separate Zoom link, Councilor Freeman for the executive session. We'll be downstairs and then we'll come back up. Thank you. So the next item on our agenda is 3.01, which is a work session on the Rail Yard Enterprise Project. For this work session, we have a presentation from the DPW team that are working on this project. That would be Director Chapin Spencer, Senior Engineer Corey Mims, Engineer Olivia Durice, and the City Engineer Norm Baldwin. And then we'll have time for questions from the Council and a discussion on next steps. So thank you for coming and thanks for the presentation. We're looking forward to it. Thank you, President Paul. It's nice to be thanked for the presentation before we give it. I'm Director Chapin Spencer. Really pleased to be joined by the team that President Paul discussed and Greg Goyette, our project lead forum, and also our stand tech, our consulting team. This is a really small project geographically with a remarkably big impact and we're excited to go over where we are with this project tonight. We are not asking for any decision tonight, but we will be looking for your selection of a preferred alternative at your October 17th meeting. So thanks for your time tonight. I'm gonna turn it over to Senior Engineer Corey Mims. So yes, we're here just to give you a little presentation regarding the project background information quickly as well as kind of go into where we currently stand and what we're looking to ultimately have council and put on here in the near future. So just a little bit about the project again as you're familiar and as the memo kind of addresses is really our enterprise project, which is a connection, multimodal connection between the Pine Street and Battery Street. So project team has shape and educated this city's team as well as our consultant stand tech as well as CHA and RSG are all on board on this as we move forward in our analysis underneath a process. So for this project, general purpose you need as many of you are aware, this is looking to develop multimodal transportation, infrastructure improvements to that Pine Street and Battery Street corridor. A few of those main sort of improvements that we're looking to provide in this project are to support the economic development of the area, to improve the livability of the surrounding neighborhoods, enhance the multimodal travel connectivity both between Pine Street and Battery Street as well as general waterfront area to improve the intermodal connections to the Burlington Rail Yard as well as other designated intermodal facility. So this project is a long history as many of you are aware. We both have the initial scoping study that was performed back in 2016 and then a supplemental scoping study which was released in 2020. This is not all the activities, those are just kind of the main results of many years of coordination and work between many members of the community and the government on this project. Initial Pell Study going between initially started in 2012 and was finally published in 2016. And then the supplemental scoping study which was then started in 2017 and ultimately released in 2020. And following Council decision is looking to proceed with what we are doing now with the NEPA process of evaluating the three alternatives and a no-build option for this project to see which one of those would proceed into design and considerations. This project is one of many in the South End and we previously presented the South End Construction Coordination Plan to Council. This was a team effort throughout the city with many projects going on down there to minimize the impacts of any particular project and try to make it a little more sustainable for the South End community to withstand this monumental amount of construction and infrastructure improvement projects that are going on in the area. As you can see, a number of these have been completed or are in near term for completion. We have the paving ramps for I-89 as been completed in 2021. You have the class one paving that is currently underway halfway through and it's gonna be finishing next season. You have the Amatrak projects which has been completed and now up and running and many nice improvements there very close to the project corridor. You have the Shell Machine Roundabout which is very well along the way and was looking to be functional here this winter and be completed next season. And then you have the Champlain Parkway Project initial construction contract which is currently underway. This is looking to be completion date of October of 2024. You have the Main Street Grade Street Project which is also in the design phase which is looking to start construction in 2023. We have this project really our enterprise project which is currently going in the NEPA process and we're looking to get council feedback here tonight or of course the next week and then come back next session for an action item for council. And then finally this project will be looking if we get everything in order and submitted as the NEPA process requires and reviewed and approved. We look to go to construction in 2025. That would also coincide with when we're looking at having the final construction contract for the Champlain Parkway Project also potentially commenced at council's approval. So again, as we talked about before, this whole effort was to minimize the amount of impacts that any particular area was seeing at one time as well as to provide council a little bit more control over the sequencing of projects as they go to construction and look for council approval for award of those contracts, construction contracts. We've done a large amount of outreach as part of this phase of work. We've coordinated this community members with local stakeholders. We've had multiple public engagement meetings both with Duke commissions. Sit here with you tonight City Council. We've engaged on many occasions, many of the local businesses, property owners and we have done community public meetings as well to try to get feedback from residents regarding this project, the alternatives and just to hear what people have to say about this and what their thoughts are as we look to select an alternative. As this project continues, we will continue to have these coordinated outreach to these members, both from the public and the local property stakeholders in order to continue to refine the design once a preferred alternative is selected and approve through the process. Again, the property outreach is both the stakeholders, property owners and the community members for this project and its alternatives. Again, the project area as you're aware is here in the south end. So we're looking to connect the Pine Street to Battery Street and with a connection to Maple Street as well. Or sorry, to South Champlain, south of Maple Street. So here we are with three alternatives. What we're considering at this phase are the three alternatives and a no-build option. So there's technically four options on the table for this project at this point in the NEPA process. Here we have the 1B alternative. It's a more direct connection. It is the connection between Battery Street, Pine Street with a connection to South Champlain Street. It's the minimal footprint and it is the one that we anticipate to be the preferred alternative and we'll go into more details as to why here in a second. The second alternative has three connections to Pine Street. It is more of a grid street network. It has a significantly more roadway infrastructure installed as part of this as well as it butts up next to the Barge Canal which we all know is a super fun site. And same with Alternate 5B. It extends further south, two connections. And it also creates that grid street network and similarly, it's larger footprint, larger impacts. So for the review process of this, we looked at a few different factors in this phase. The solicited input from the public. We have looked at environmental impacts. We have looked at historic resource impacts. We have looked at general costs of the project and we've looked at environmental impacts. So between those things, we have evaluated all these alternatives and we've solicited feedback and we're continuing to do so. But based on that, the alternative that appears to meet the purpose and need of the project as well as provide the least impacts to those aforementioned components and would be the lower cost option of to build something. These three alternatives was the 1B alternative. That is the one that we would look to get Council's input as well as alternatives as well as the one we'd be anticipating bringing forward to Council. If they so see fit for us to do so to have approval for the NEPA process. So a little bit more about the 1B. So the 1B alternative, again, this is one rendering of this at this phase. We are just looking at the three alternatives as a general connection and the specific design details are more gonna be refined and determined at the next phase of this project. So as you see certain items here that may catch your eye, these things are not set in stone. This is just a conceptual drawing of what this roadway alignment would look like and following additional feedback and communication with all parties, we would refine this and come down and actually start dialing in the inches, so to speak. So in this one, we either 1B alternative one. So we're showing a wide connection with Pine Street on this. We show that it would, in here, these orange are impacted structures. So this alignment comes through. It has, you know, impacts the former street department with a little annex building that is currently unoccupied, unused on that facility. It would go through the Curtis Lumber storage shed that is existing on the property. As it comes along, it would have a connection into South Champlain Street with a rail yard access as shown here at this point in time. We would have what is one of the larger impacts for my historic standpoint is the impact to the independent block building through our coordination and efforts. We are looking to minimize that impact. As it's shown here on this alignment, there would be a demolition of a portion of that, which is Southern and had been an added feature. But as a 4F resource, this building still is considered a 4F resource. Now this roadway here at this point really bottlenecks and between the rail yard as well as the buildings and these 4F resources, both the historic rail yard roundhouse, as well as independent block building. You know, this is just the real bottleneck of this project. We came through and as we come up, we are looking to in the many back and forth coordinations and conversations that our consultant has had with the rail yard and VRS. This is what is being proposed at this point is a relocation of what is the horn track for the rail yard. This currently runs along the proposed roadway and through the city right away here, south of Maple and Battery. This realignment would allow us to get our roadway cross section as we have and this conceptual design laid out. It would avoid impact to these other businesses or avoid immediate structural impact to the rambler building with this alignment. We'd have larger access as well for the rail yard vehicles and then it connects into the Pine Street, or sorry, into Battery Street. So of these, you know, of 1B, we have three alternatives. This one shows the Y intersection. Another alternative option shows a roundabout option at the intersection with Pine Street. The remaining alignment is shown as pretty similar and the third alternative would be a signalized intersection or signalized T intersection for this. Now, each one of these intersections and determinations would be determined later, but we're just showcasing what some of the options might be as we look further into the 1B alternative. The cross section for this roadway is shown here generally south of, oops, sorry, West of Pine Street, South of Champlain. You're looking at a generally a 13 foot shared lane with a five and a half foot buffer and a 10 foot shared use path on the east or northeast side of the project limits with a two foot buffer between the shared use path and the properties. As you get closer to the pinch point and near the rail yard, it was clear to us from our conversations that active usage of that rail yard is not the place to be placing pedestrian facilities. So we have the shared use path just on the east side still. And again, the same 13 foot shared travel lanes, variable width of the green belt here as necessary depending upon the right of way and our final design limits. And again, a 10 foot shared use path is maintained and two foot buffer. With our conversation with the rail yard, both the rail yard as well as local businesses felt in order to help promote the economic development in the area, put pedestrians in front of businesses and keep them away from the rail yard. We feel feel necessary that no infrastructure for pedestrians should be placed on that western side of the road. So as far as the next step go, we're here to you tonight. We would look to get your feedback on this as we would kind of want to come back in October 17th meeting to see if we can vote for approval of selection of the one V alternative as the preferred alternative. Then following that, we finalize documentation and submit to the EA document, the environmental assessment in November. And we continue our stakeholder engagement as well as community outreach throughout the winter and into the foreseeable future of the project as we continue to design and detail down the alternative as well as the exact alignment. So that's our presentation. And we just kind of want to get in front of you to let you know kind of where we sit, where we are, what we've been working on as well as what we're hoping to solicit your feedback and input on. Yeah, I appreciate it. Great, thanks so much. You do have an entire team here with you. I don't know if anyone else has any other comments that you wanted to add before we would go to the council for questions. So I would just note that there's significant property rights issues in play here, particularly worth noting is there's a significant portion of this right away for this roadway is within the rail yard property rights that are owned by the state of Vermont. And the city does not have any sort of condemnation rights with the state property. So we are somewhat at a disadvantage in dealing with that. But I will tell you that VRS has been very cooperative in trying to find solutions that not only accommodate, I guess, sharing the burden of the project itself in terms of you'll see in the blue alignment that that is a proposed realignment of a rail spur. So there is, everyone within this process has been very cooperative with us, both property owners and the rail to come to some balanced conclusions about the alternatives. And this alignment I think really kind of tightly fits with the needs of everyone involved as direct stakeholders. Okay, great. So this is a very informative and I had asked that the DPW team come this evening so that it allow the council an opportunity to ask questions before we'd have to immediately vote on something of this importance. I'll go to Councilor Hightower and then to Councilor Shannon. And I have to apologize because I went back through my sent emails to find the email that I sent you only to discover that it was in my draft so you never got it. But I did have just a couple of questions which one of them I think you mostly addressed in the presentation, but I'm curious, I feel good about the alternative one and moving forward with that. I'm curious and you don't necessarily have to answer this right now since you didn't have the question beforehand but if you can talk more about the relative costs and impacts of the other models compared to alternative one. And if there's anything that we're losing in your perspective by choosing one that has less roadways, I think it's great to maybe not have roadways on some of those parts but yeah, just in your mind, relative costs and impacts and if there's anything we're losing, I'll go ahead and say my other questions just so you know them ahead of time. I think you kind of addressed this but I was curious as how the feedback received from various stakeholders informed the choices but it sounds like most of the stakeholders preferred option one. I don't know if that's an assumption but I kind of thought I heard that. And then yeah, on the last ones on the alternative one be one, two and three, I know you said that you would be making the decision later on but curious as to what is going to make that decision and obviously, I know obviously maybe if you've heard enough from me, I have a preference for two and one of the three but I don't know what that's going to be predicated on, so. I would say first for the comparison of the three alternatives and relative to cost, I would, Greg, do you feel? Yeah, all right, address that. So there's not a whole lot to gain with alternative two and five be in terms of the advantages they provide. When you compare that to the cost of what those alternatives would entail as well as some of the contaminated soils issues associated with the Barge Canal Superfund site. So the thought, I think the initial thought between those two alternatives when the previous studies were done was that it forms a nice grid street network and potentially some developable space in between those grid streets. But one could look at it and say, well that could chew horn some, it could limit the development opportunities if you already have that roadway infrastructure in place. So we don't see much, if any, benefit to adding those additional streets and going with alternative one B doesn't preclude those grid streets from being built in the future if someone decides to redevelop those parcels. All set? Oh, there. So for council members, it's important to understand that the Barge Canal is a superfund site and there's significant volume of liability with alternatives two and five B that's at risk. And so we believe that if we were to propose those solutions as a preferred alternative, there is that concern of unintended consequence of potentially impacting that the Barge Canal and its superfund site discharge. So you could have that NAPL be released and then the city would assume that liability. So we're, I think, looking, those alternatives are very concerned about that assumed liability. So we're avoiding those two alternatives for that reason largely alone. And then I would say generally the feedback from stakeholders had been, this corridor, a lot of the close impacted parcels, I mean, alternative two goes straight through the Curse Lumber Building. So this was not really one that they would want by any means as well as any of these alternatives would be pretty much the same way impacting the residents or sorry, the stakeholders as well as the rail yard between Battery and South Champlain. So when you start looking at that, whatever impacts we have are pretty much going to be the same throughout. And so with regards to the project size and meeting the purpose and need, a lot of people have voiced preference for that 1B alternative. Yeah, I think the overall piece is that we have worked diligently to engage all these key property owners and businesses and even 1B is going to deliver some significant impacts. There is no current right of way in this location. We would be needing to acquire that. And I think it's fair to say that there's still significant concern among property owners for alternative 1B. What we have said to them is we can't get into the detail of the design to work through your concerns until we have a clear direction on which alternative we're going to further develop. So by you taking action in October will help us progress further in the design process and get them the answers that they're looking for. All set. Oh, that's a third question. Oh, there's a third question. I know that we're running in. No, no, no, that's all right. I know that we're running into public foretime. The third question was just, I assume that that answers the question then and some of that stakeholder feedback will decide if it's 1B, 1, 2, or 3, right? Correct, and we'll certainly work with the Duke and others as we evaluate the pros and cons of either intersection design. All intersections are projected to reduce traffic in the King and Maple neighborhood. Well, thank you so much. I know there's a lot of projects, big projects you're working on. So thanks for keeping us up to date and coming in. Thanks, thank you, Councilor Hightower. Are there others besides Councilor Shannon who have, okay. So what we're going to need to do unfortunately is it's now 7.35. If you could just take a seat off to the side, we'll go and do the public forum. We have no one who is online to speak during public forum. We have three speakers in con toys. So this should be reasonably, reasonably quick. But we do have a time certain on public forum, which is 7.30, so we'll go to that. Just for the benefit of those who are in con toys, who are going to be speaking, there's a system in front of you when you come to speak. And there's three lights. The first light is the green light that will shine when you begin speaking. The second is yellow when you have 30 seconds left and then the red light will shine when your time is up. We only ask that you please complete your last sentence when the red light shines so that we are giving the same amount of time to everyone. And our only request during public forum is that you please use respectful language and direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table. And please do not personalize your comments. We are interested in what you have to say and we will listen much more intently if you do so respectfully and with decorum. With that said, we normally go to Burlington residents, but this evening we have only Burlington residents who wish to speak. The first is James Lockridge to be followed by Todd LaCroy. Hi, Jim. Hello. Good to have you here. Thank you. On October 5, an RFP will be issued that invites proposals for how Memorial Auditorium will be operated in the future. There's two ways to look at this. One is this makes it seem like the administration has quit from its responsibility for stewarding the building, lacks the administrative skill to manage the city's own property and wants to wash its hands. The other perspective is the city is choosing to commit to the restoration of a treasured historic infrastructure and all the community benefits it has given us for 100 years. The city realizes how poorly it has performed and is now committed to restoring the building and repairing its own reputation for neglect of this public resource. I'd like to think the second viewpoint is accurate, but for that to be true, the RFP would need to seek an operator from the community who is 100% committed to the programming vision generated by the public process in 2018. And the window of opportunity to respond to this RFP would need to be longer than less than one month, which is all the time that is planned for at this point. The city is not likely to completely promote the RFP in that short period of time, let alone expect thoughtful responses reflecting partnerships or financial plans that will take longer for community partners to explore and draft. The short deadline for proposals makes it look like the city is checking a procedural box, not pursuing high quality partnerships or solutions. The short deadline makes the RFP process look like it's meant for the administration to receive a poor response and to use that as an excuse to turn away from the public process that's necessary for us to be true to our commitment to democracy. Thank you for demanding a robust outreach campaign with this RFP and for ensuring the community has a genuine opportunity to respond to it. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Todd LaCroix and our final speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson. Good evening. Good evening, Burlington. I recently watched Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth recorded at the Skywalker Ranch in the mid-80s with my hero as a journalist, Bill Moyer. Not to be confused with Bill, a maher. Now, you seem to have forgotten about the days of honest fucking journalism and honest conversation in the world of Facebook and Facebook and fucking Twitter. Now, let me remind you about the reality that existed even before those days here in this town. Years ago, I had a friend. She was in need and she was fucking hurt. She had broken up with her friend and she was drunk down my art studio down by Perkins Pears and she came with her car and she was drunk and we talked and I tried everything because I had to go to work at Stone Soup the next day to talk her out of drunk driving but she wouldn't have it until she passed out. Then I locked the doors thinking I was a good friend. I fucking shut her out to sleep for the rest of the night, I thought. And then the next morning, before I even go to work, I have the Burlington Police saying, hey, you're alive. We're looking for your dead body in the fucking lake because apparently she drove her car drunk into the lake but here's where the story gets really fucked up. The Burlington Police took it upon themselves to tell her that I was helping prosecute her, that I had told stories, snitches get stitches kind of stuff. Well, I didn't help but they told lies to her. They said I had told them stories and they said I was gonna help prosecute. Thank you, Todd. And then they fucking spread these lies and for 20 years I have been dealing with the damage from those lies, from those police. Thank you, Todd. Thank you, Todd. And that is them being nice. Okay, thank you very much. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson. Our police are trained liars but yet you treat them like they're fucking factual people who are heroes. While they literally destroy our friendships and our communities with lies. Thank you, Todd. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson. So this is again about redistricting and not that it's on tonight's agenda but we are rapidly closing in on the moment of truth on this and so I thought I'd take some time to talk about some stuff. So I just wanna maybe clear up some misconceptions. No new North End counselor that I know opposed a Seven Ward 14 map. I think maybe there's some old North End councils that did but no new North End counselor opposed the Seven Ward 14 map that I know and there's only three of them and so I checked. About the 12 Ward map being taken off the table it never really was on the table. No one has been able to draw a decent 12 Ward map. There are mathematical reasons for that. Problem is the denominator gets too small and the percent deviation is what's the limiting factor. You make the denominator small, you get a problem. Then when one side repeatedly takes plans off the table the plan that's left is really the only plan that they promote. It's not really a compromise plan, it's one side's plan and so my recommendation is that we step back, step back, we put all the viable plans on there and as far as I can tell there's three and a half or four. There's a good Seven Ward 14 counselor plan, a good eight ward plan. How many counselors, something to slug out and there's a good 712 map out there even though I'm opposed to that plan completely. Why don't we put all the plans on the table, let each side take one plan off the table, just one for each side and then we figure out which plan is left on the table. Thank you, Robert. We'll give this another minute or a couple of seconds here if there's anyone else that would like to speak during public forum. Now would be the time, I'm just gonna check online and see if there's anyone who has signed up since we started. There is no one that is online. If there's anyone who's online who does wish to speak at this point, you could just use the raise hand function and I don't see anyone here in con toys. With that, we'll close the public forum at 745 and return to where we left off which was the work session from DPW. Thank you for waiting. We do have two counselors who have questions. At least at this point that would be Counselor Shannon and then we will go to Counselor Bergman and Counselor Travers followed. Thank you so much for this update and I know that for a lot of people, this oftentimes these kind of projects kind of drag out for a long period of time and people don't have the energy to track them for a long period of time so they kind of forget about them and then it seems new when it comes forward and people are surprised. So I just wanna say I am not sure what year we started this project but I remember that initially we had a very large community stakeholder group that included myself, Counselor Mason, representatives from the King Street neighborhood, the stakeholders among all the businesses that are impacted here. I think CHT was part of that and we started out with I am not sure how many plans. I think it was more than 40. It was crazy and every plan had its merits and it was very hard to winnow that down to something that was minimize negative impacts was affordable, was doable with the impacted stakeholders and I really appreciate the collaborative work of this team because without that it doesn't really matter which one we pick, none of them will happen in our lifetimes if we're just fighting with everybody and this is a project which would have been really easy to see that happen. So your work on this is really commendable and I thank you. I know it's taken a long time, longer than any of us would have wanted but I also appreciate you looking into possible ways to fast track this which we couldn't make pan out and be affordable to the taxpayers. So we're going the slow route that has lots of federal funding with it. I'm impressed that we're down to three main alternatives now and I will say that I do like two in that, I really like a grid. If we were building from scratch, I would say without any doubt alternative two is the option that I would choose but given our already built environment, given the barge canal, the buildings that are there that really don't allow it to happen. I don't see in this case of being a viable option and then you add cost to that. I also think it's really interesting when you go from looking at the three alternatives that you've presented to the more detailed alternative 1B1, 1B2, in order to get anybody to take this road, I think that you have to create an intersection that steers them to that road and I don't know that you can't really do that with the standard city grid pattern and so you've provided a number of ways to do that but I wonder if you could and you may have just said this and I missed it but what is the process? You're asking us at another meeting to approve alternative 1B and I fully support that but then how do we get from 1B2 those variations? What's the process for that and what about the, do we have agreement on the Curtis Lumber Storage Building and the independent block that the road runs through? Do you want, I didn't know if you had more questions if you want us to respond. That's all. Okay, so with regards to the alternatives and the agreements and the process so what we go now is we're looking to get the selection of the alternative for an alternative to be able to submit in the NEPA process. We get that submitted and we have to get approval back from Federal Highway that they also concur that that documentation has been done appropriately and that this alternative is the one that we perceive with the design and then that allows us to get into the right of way acquisition phase. I'm sorry, is your mic on? Oh, sorry. Is it me just hearing the echo or? Yes, so this would allow us to go into then once it was approved alternative the right of way acquisition phase which then is the more detailed conversations with property owners and you start doing the assessing and looking at how much land would need to be taken and what those agreements would have to be and that is following the selection of the alternative. So we won't know those detailed designs and the exact, what is exactly gonna be needed to take or compensated for until we start getting that design detail nailed down in the next phase after you, what is that? After we get you council's approval on the selected alternative and then submit the NEPA documentation here this November. Thanks, Councillor Shannon. We have Councillor Berkman to be followed by Councillor Travers. Well, I like 1B. I think it's the correct approach for the time. And as I've said before, I can't actually support the connection of the Champlain Parkway Southern Connect or whatever we're gonna call it unless we have this. So this is good news. I am interested in understanding, not necessarily tonight, but the differences in both cost and safety as it relates to the three 1B alternatives. And I can tell you that I am intrinsically inclined to the roundabout approach. And I don't say that to honour Tony. I say that because my experiences in Manchester, in Montpelier, in other locations where I've gone, including in highways, like going down Massachusetts way, is leads me to believe that it's just a better way to go about it. And I look at the intersection, the furthest south intersection with that roundabout or a signalization or what have you or stop sign. I don't know if there's the third one, no, it doesn't matter. But, and I see, you know, you want people flowing roundabout as a way to get people to flow in and through that road. And that leads me to one other point and just in terms of the design, I sort of don't understand the stop sign approach on South Champlain Street. I mean, it looks nice on a piece of paper, but if there's any sort of traffic there getting across that other, you know, making a left-hand turn going south, you know, and I don't think so myself, you know. So you take that and, you know, I would like to hear some concerns and let me just end by saying it would be helpful to hear how one of the variations of 1B or the, you know, 1B in any of its iterations, your initial thinking on how it is going to deal with the list of things you've heard from the various members that are on your slide seven. So you got a big list there. You say it's premature to talk about them now. It would be helpful to get an indication of what you're thinking is now, based on what you know, knowing full well that things can change. So I, you know, you can put all the caveats that you need to put in for me, but I think it would be helpful so that we can say, you know, this thing actually makes some sense. We can actually deal with circulation of delivery trucks. We will deal with the loss of parking. This is how we've thought about this. And, you know, I wasn't on the council during the time of the North Nusky Avenue thing. I want to avoid a sort of after the fact garbage show. Let's see if we can deal with this stuff upfront and we start by being clear about the challenges that we have and how we're gonna look to deal with them. And if we do that, I think that you'll get my whole heart at support. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councilor Bergman. We'll go to Councilor Travers and don't know if there'll be others, but that's all we have in the queue for now. Thank you, President Paul. I also want to thank you for this detailed presentation and thanks as well for the community engagement that you've done on this, driving around Pine Street. I see the signs out there that you've done for a couple of these projects now to invite neighbors in the community to come and take part. And perhaps before you all sign off, it would be helpful if you could relay again for any folks who are tuning in. If members of the public want to weigh in and send comments your way, I know you all are welcome to receiving that going forward. So thank you for that. Thanks as well for the effort that I know your department has gone through for us to be able to realistically consider this project on the timeline that's laid out in your presentation. There was some time not long ago where the common understanding was that we couldn't even consider this until well after the full Parkway project was completed. So when I saw that timeline for the first time that lines up the completion of the Parkway with this project, it was a great thing to see. And I know a lot of neighbors feel the same way. The way the neighborhood is currently laid out, alternative 1B strikes me as a no-brainer. As I think about the future of Burlington though, I agree with Councillor Shannon that more of a grid developing more streets like an alternative 2 and alternative 5B may provide an opportunity for there to be more development there, more street-facing buildings meeting different uses than what we have there right now. And so I guess my question for you all is while I understand the layout would obviously be different if we went with alternative 1B, is there any reason or consideration on your end that as we look sort of way down the line to a future Burlington that going with alternative 1B would prohibit us from in the future thinking about establishing more of a grid, wrapping around a street there down the line should we rezone that area for other uses at some point in the future? No, I mean as you see that alignment for 1B is pretty similarly held between all three of these alternatives. If you're looking to continue or extend for a grid street further south, this doesn't really prohibit that option. You could reconfigure the roadway to facilitate an additional spur if it were so desired. Okay, great. And this is probably getting a bit more granular than what you're looking for here, but as I look at the 1B, 1, 2, and 3, 1B, 1 and 1B, 2 strike me as being the preferable options if only because it seems that 1B, 3 is going to encourage more traffic from this non-expert point of view to continue down Pine Street as opposed to heading off on the rail yard enterprise project. When it's time to get into these more granular details, two questions that come to mind for me. One is between the roundabout and the signalized intersection. It seems to me that there may be a difference between traffic volumes on the roundabout as to who heads further down to the Maple King neighborhood as opposed to Batter Street as opposed to the signalized intersection, which again, non-expert here seems like that would encourage drivers to more so continue on to Batter Street. So personally, when the time is right, I would be interested in seeing what traffic experts think the roundabout versus the signalized intersection will do with respect to traffic volumes. The other piece that we heard about most recently with respect to the Great Streets project and Main Street is a lot of folks in our community are very concerned and are wanting us to have more protected bike lanes and prefer those to shared use paths. Probably getting more into the details here, but as I look on your slide presentation here, I see that we're looking at a shared use path and I suspect there will be a number of people in our community who will be wanting information as to if that is the preference, why that's the preference over our going with protected bike lanes. Beyond that, the final thing I'll say is I'm very excited about this project. I know, as other folks have said, as Councillor Bergman mentioned, there's a lot of folks in our community that really see this project as essential towards our being able to support the full completion of the Champlain Parkway and its connection into the interstate system. And so I'm very hopeful that this stays on that timeline and do agree that there's a lot of folks in this community who really see that as essential that we line this up. Thanks very much. Thanks very much, Councillor Travers. I don't see any other questions from the council. However, there may be questions that come up and just have a request to make of my colleagues and that is that over the next month, there's a lot of time now between now and the vote on October 17th. Please be in touch with the DPW team. Ask them whatever questions you wish. And the way that we'll work this is the team will then share the answers with the entire council so that we all learn from each other going forward. And it'll give us a chance to be extremely well informed when we go to do this vote in about, in just a little bit shy of one month. So again, thank you so much. And I believe you have this posted, you have this posted on Board Docs. So is there anything else you want to add? Gonna take you up on that offer. Yeah, so again, we ask the public if they are interested in this project, please check out therailyartenterprise.com. You can join the mailing list as well as you can submit feedback. I am the point of contact according to members project manager on this and we're welcome input. Great, thank you so much. Thank you. We've already completed item number four, which was the public forum. We'll go to climate emergency reports, item number five. Is there any counselor or the administration that wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Councillor Bergman. Very quick. As we know, transportation emissions are the highest form of carbon emissions that we face. And Katma is holding a conference on the 18th, dealing with a range of things that and public officials are given a 25% discount on it. I think it's really important that as many counselors and members of the administration departments attend and participate in this. This is a place where we can deal with building the coalitions to have sustainable public transportation, bus, GMT. And that's a statewide issue. This is a place where we can expand the understandings and support for TDM and its relationship with business development. This is a place where we get to deal with all of the transportation issues and the people that are there. So I just wanna encourage folks to take this up and take this opportunity and build on it because time is ticking. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Bergman. Are there any other? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Powell. A couple of things to mention. First, we had the First Net Zero Energy Festival at the Burlington Electric Department on Saturday. And I do think we're confident in saying now it's a first annual event now. It really went great. There was substantial turnout. A lot of folks there finding out, asking questions about electric vehicles and especially about cold climate heat pumps and other electrification options that are available for people's homes. A lot of interest in the Inflation Reduction Act and how that changes and the opportunities that it creates. The BED team was there and forced. The BED team also had all basically just about all of the electric vehicles that we've purchased together in recent years, assembled in one place. It was kind of exciting to see the electric fleet established all in one place like that. I think we have to maybe add a parade in the future versions of it. It was really a really hopeful day. And there continued, if the counselors or others are feeling questions about the festival and about what's going on, there's a lot of information on the BED website to look at. Also want to point out, I don't think this is, I think this is something that is going to be done on the Consent Agenda. We discussed it at the Board of Finance. We are accepting two grants tonight, one for $50,000 for the installation of solar power and $75,000 for, from BED, for energy efficiency enhancements, both for the Elmwood Emergency Shelter. So even for a facility that is intended as a temporary facility, the city team is working hard to bring renewable energy and electrification to bear on what's being built there in the coming weeks. That's what I had, President Paul, back to you. Great, thank you. Any other climate emergency reports? Seeing none, we will close that item and go on to item six, which is our Consent Agenda. And with that, I'd accept a motion to move the Consent Agenda and take the actions indicated. So moved. Thank you, Councillor McGee, seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on the Consent Agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the Consent Agenda and taking the actions indicated, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? Please say no. We have approved our Consent Agenda. So we have a number of meetings this evening and we also have seven items on our Deliberative Agenda and there's a number of people that are waiting for different items to come up on the agenda and so we wanna try to honor all of those people that are waiting for items so that you don't have to wait till the end of our meeting. We have seven items on our Deliberative Agenda for the Council meeting and what our plan is tonight is we'll do the first two items at this time as there are and as there are applicants related to the other meetings, we will go to the meetings where there are applicants present and then return back to our Deliberative Agenda to complete our business on the Council meeting. So with that, the first item on our Deliberative Agenda is 7.01, which is a proclamation honoring Burlington Community Gardens Week and with that I will, we have the proclamation. With that, I'll go to the mayor if you wish to read it or speak to it. It's your pleasure. Okay, great. Thank you President Paul. It is not sure I realized a decade ago I get to preside over both the 40th and 50th anniversary of the Burlington Community Gardens we had a great event 10 years ago, I remember and did think it was important to note tonight's milestone with a proclamation and a reading of the proclamation. Many city staff and community members that are involved in the program are excited about having recognition here at the Council. So I will read some of it, at least to note the occasion. Whereas Burlington Area Community Gardens have for 50 years provided an opportunity for Burlington residents to grow their own vegetables, to save money on food costs, to meet and work with their neighbors, to enjoy a healthy, productive exercise and improve the quality of life in our city. And whereas the city of Burlington through the city council, the Department of Parks and Recreation and other departments seeks to ensure the continuation and success of Burlington's Community Garden program. And whereas the Vermont Garden Network, the Interveil Center and the Winooski Valley Park District Feeding Chittenden and many other nonprofit organizations and neighborhood groups support and cultivate community gardening. And whereas more than 1500 people of all ages and abilities will grow fresh, nutritious produce at 14 Burlington Area Community Garden sites in this the 50th year of the program. Now, therefore, I'm a Rowe Weimer, the mayor of the city of Burlington by the powers vested in me you hear by proclaim the week of September 11th through 17th as the Burlington Community Garden's week. And so I encourage all citizens to support and help improve community gardening opportunities for the people of Burlington. So this was last week of course, but appreciate the opportunity to note the occasion with you tonight. Yes, I didn't realize I have served on the council since you were elected and did not remember that it was the, when the 40th anniversary is and that we're now up to the 50th, I will trust that the event was celebrated in style and appreciate all the work that was done past, present and future to encourage community gardening and all the benefits that it brings with it. So thank you for that proclamation. We will move on to item 7.02, which is a communication for Mayor Murrow Weinberger regarding the director of aviation appointment. Thank you, President Paul. This too is a happy and positive communication. I am excited to bring before you for confirmation tonight and appointee to be the next permanent director of the Burlington International Airport. As we announced last week, I have appointed Nick Longo, who has served as the acting director for the last year and has been a key member of the airport team for nearly a decade. Nick, why don't you come up and have a seat here and we'll embarrass you a little further or say a few more positive things about you. Nick has, you know, this process, we began a number of months ago, the council, we intended to be a robust and rigorous process and it was, the council helped us with that by after as we got started a competitive market analysis raising salaries to ensure that we would have a competitive pool and we did, there were four finalists that were forwarded on to me from the committee that was made up of both members of the airport team, city council president, Karen Paul, we've representatives from Winooski and South Burlington serve in the process as well as key stakeholders. And Nick really emerged through the process as the right person for this position at the right time. He has, despite being still quite early in, relatively early in his career, he has developed vast expertise related to this position and a number, through a number of roles, both roles within the airport and in other organizations that are airport stakeholders. So working for the FAA and he's also worked for a fixed space operator, which is a key stakeholder at the airport, then has come to the city and served in a variety of roles, including as the acting director again over the last year. In that time as an acting director, he has done a number of important things. He's first, after a challenging time for the airport team really studied the ship there and has built very solid employee relations with the group of city employees at the airport. They've been quite engaged in this process. I met with virtually every employee before we posted the position. And there were a couple of employees that served on the search committee as well. In addition, in this interim period when it's often hard as an acting director to make progress on long-term strategic goals, Nick was able to do exactly that. Most notably, he was the head of the team that negotiated this long-term very important lease with beta that should have an impact on the airport for many years to come. The TIP project, this substantial expansion of the airport and an upgrade of the security and gate access parts of the airport is on budget and on schedule to open next month. And throughout his time as acting director, his time at the airport and very much in the committee process, he has shown himself to be an innovator, someone very committed to the aviation industry. He has a great love of flying. And as I said last week, I hope with the council support tonight, I'm very confident that with this joint action together, we'll be putting the future of the airport, a organization that I have been involved with for 20 years now, virtually 20 years. I'm really very hopeful and confident in its future knowing that Nick will be at the helm. I hope you'll join me in supporting him tonight. Thank you President Paul. Thank you Mayor Weinberger for those comments and the communication that we all received. We'll go to a motion on this confirmation for that I will go to Councillor Hightower. I move to confirm Nicholas Longo as the next aviation director of the Burlington International Airport. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. And that would be seconded by Councillor Bergman. Are there, before we go to a vote, are there any comments from that Councillors wish to offer? Councillor Bergman. Well, as some of you might have read, I have publicly said that I would support this appointment and I continue to. I had a very good meeting with Nick and I think what is at the head of where I'm at, most importantly is the support that he's got from the workers at the airport. There was not too long ago that we sat here and watched something completely different. So that is a really positive thing. And this is good, that's good work. We don't do anything without everybody else, all of us together. And it's a real leader that can bring people along. So I'm pleased and to the extent that one can be sitting where I am proud that that's what I am. I believe in the conversations that we've had that Nick is committed to seeing the airport as being part of that neighbourhood. And let's make no doubt about it. The impact of the airport has not been an unadorned success when it comes to the housing crisis in this region. And what I have heard Nick say is that he's committed to protecting the Chamberlain neighbourhood from further destruction and loss of housing. And those are working people. They're families and they're old people and their kids go into that school and they need all the help we can continue to give and to start giving. And I have heard a commitment to be innovative and adaptable and to run the airport in a way which is consistent with protecting affordable housing and neighbourhoods and running a decent airport. And I gotta believe that we can do that. And so because woe is us if we can't. And so that is something that's foundational for me. And I really appreciate that commitment. The climate crisis as I said just a couple of seconds ago is ticking and I am happy that he has also committed to working to include aviation emissions in the city's climate action plan. You can't deal with our impact without looking at all the things we're doing and not turn a blind eye to that. And there are ways that we should do that and we should look at it honestly and make the hard choices that each and every one of us is gonna have to do for me for two and a half year old and one year old that I care for on a regular basis and you all will figure out the people that you wanna keep making this world habitable. And so I'm really pleased that we'll work in partnership on that. And finally that he's committed to working closely with the Duke on these and other issues of community concern. And I think that that connection is really important. So I am happy tonight to be able to support Nick and to be able to work with him and the rest of the administration on these critical issues. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. We'll go to Councilor Hightower. Second, everything that Jean just said, Councilor Bergman and also just congratulations to Nick and it takes a lot to start to create a cultural shift and to win the support of workers as both an interim candidate as an internal candidate and it just seems like you've really done that. So interim job well done and congratulations on the next step. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Are there any other Councillors before we go to a vote? Seeing no other comments, then we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to confirm Nicholas Longo as the next Director of Aviation at the Burlington International Airport, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Congratulations, Director Longo to you, also to your wife who is here with you, Sarah and to the airport team, many of whom are here this evening and as well to the many valued employees at BTV. This is a special night, congratulations. So before, as we had mentioned before, continuing with our deliberative agenda and the remaining items, we have three other meetings that we need to attend to this evening. We have the local cannabis control, the first actually the first meeting of the local cannabis control commission, the local control commission and the Board of Civil Authority. So we will recess the city council meeting at 820 and we'll call to order the local cannabis control commission meeting. The first item on that agenda is item 1. In fact, I need to go to that. The first item on that agenda is item 1.01 which is a motion to adopt the agenda. For that I will go to Commissioner Shannon. I move to adopt the agenda. Thank you. Seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Is there any discussion of that motion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to adopt the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed say no. We have our agenda. So let's see, we have two items on our deliberative agenda. The first is item 1.01 which is the election of a chair of the local cannabis control commission. As we all know, this is the first meeting of this commission and we need to elect a chair. So I'll accept a nomination or nominations for the election of a chair. Councillor Shannon. I would nominate you, Commissioner Paul. So this is a very weird position to be in. We don't normally do this. Normally we don't accept a motion to elect ourselves. However, I believe that you are doing this not really as me, but as the council president. Is that correct? Sort of, yes? We have a number of these boards including our local control board and the city council sits as the local control board for liquor control. The city council is sitting as local control board for the cannabis control board and it makes sense to me that our council president in perpetuity really should chair this board. So I hope we can establish that so that every time we have a new council president we don't need to elect a chair. But for now I will stick with my nomination of you, President Paul. Thank you. I think we probably at some point do need to figure that out because clearly we do not have this go on every year for the local control commission so it would help, hopefully we can do that. So I'm not used to, well, we should also ask if there are any other nominations. I'm supposed to ask if there are any other nominations twice so I will do that again. Seeing none, we will close nominations. Nominations do not require a second. So all those in favor of the motion before us please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. That was really weird. So we have a chair for the local cannabis control commission. So the second and our last deliberative item is 2.02 which is the 2022 local cannabis control applications. And I will go to the chair of the subcommittee which is Commissioner Shannon and perhaps you can give us a little bit of explanation about what we are doing. We also do have Assistant City Attorney Haley McLanahan here via Zoom if there are questions or if you wanted to ask questions of her or if others do. So go ahead please. Thank you. Well, I'll start with the motion. Yes, yeah. I move to approve and recommend to the local cannabis control commission that it authorizes transmission of local approval of the following local cannabis control license applications to the Cannabis Control Board upon satisfaction of all municipal operation requirements including zoning approval and permitting, compliance with signage requirements and passage of all health, safety, building, fire and water inspections and or sign-offs for series collaborative, Green State Dispensary, Stash Farm LLC, Grass Queen Incorporated and I ask for the floor back after a second. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Is there a second to that motion seconded by Commissioner Travers, Commissioner Shannon, you have the floor. Thank you, Commissioner Paul or Commissioner Chair Paul. I just really want to commend our city staff for their diligence in trying to figure out what it is we are supposed to do in order to get businesses licensed in time for what the state has designated as opening day on October 1st. It has been extraordinarily difficult. It's required a big team effort on behalf of largely Kara Al-Naswari, Megan Tuttle, Laurie Oberg and our city attorney, Haley McLeanahan. And one of the people who participated in our last meeting sent me an email afterward thanking us for our efforts to build the plane as we fly it, which is really what we have been doing and we've been getting different information along the way. We've been lacking information from the state that we need in order to do our jobs at this level. And one of the things that has happened in this process is that the state has told us that we have confidential information that we cannot share that at one point included the name of the businesses, the ownership of the businesses, the addresses of the businesses, which resulted in our board docs applications being completely redacted and meaningless. I do not see this as a way, I honestly don't know why we would have a local control board if we have no way of allowing the public to participate in any process whatsoever because they have no information except possibly the hours of some business somewhere in the city, it makes no sense whatsoever. The state is using, they're using the standard language that applies universally to businesses in order to keep this information confidential. And that is, and I will quote it, the following record shall be exempt from public inspection and copying under the Public Records Act and shall be confidential. A, any record in an application for a license relating to security, public safety, transportation or trade secrets, including information provided in an operating plan pursuant to subdivision 881A1B of this title. This is standard language, it applies to all businesses including other businesses that we license but we do not hide this information from the public. But given that as the directive we've received from the state, it's put the city in a bit of a predicament. And in order to rectify this, I am wondering, Commission Chair Paul, if we could ask the applicants to come forward and share with us what information they can about their businesses, certainly not looking for anything confidential but things like what you're doing and where you're doing it might be good advertising. And on a voluntary basis, we're advised by our attorney that we're not allowed to disclose this information but they are. And if they would be willing to come forward and share some information with the public, I would be grateful and far more comfortable in approving an application that we could identify who they are, where they are and what they're doing. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. So it is my understanding that all four of the applicants that we have just mentioned in the motion are here. Don't all have to run up all at one time and you are under no obligation to do so. But as Commissioner Shannon did mention, it is perhaps a little bit of good free advertising and we as elected officials do feel in the interest of some level of disclosure to the community are making this request. So again, if you are willing to do so, we have two microphones up here and as I say, don't all have to rush up at one time but if you would like to come forward and let us know something about yourself, we would be delighted to hear it. Thank you so much. Go ahead, please. And you just need to press the green button. There you go. Yes, hi. I am Russ Todia. I'm the COO of the series Collaborative. I'm with Meg Delia who is responsible for government affairs. And I'm happy to tell you where we're going to be. We're hoping to open up an adult use store on 190 College Street. We currently operate a retail location in that exact, at that address. That has been basically selling CBD products. So we are looking to transition to adult use. We intend to be open daily at least to start from 10 to eight and look forward to being just a responsible corporate citizen here in Burlington. And happy to answer any questions about our operation or the businesses that you might have. Was there anything you wanted to add? I would just add that we are only looking for a retail license here. So all other facets of our organization will occur up in Milton. Okay, thank you. If there aren't any questions, I mean if there are, counselors will certainly raise their hand and let me know. Thank you, thank you so much. Are there any others who would be willing to share some information about their business with us? Thanks. I'm Brooke Jenkins. I'm the Chief Operations Officer at Green State Dispensary and Upstate Elevator Supply Company. We are located at 699 Pine Street in the Queen City Printers Building, the Green Buildings, across from Zero Gravity. We have operated a retail store on Pine Street since 2015, Green State Gardener, selling gardening hard goods and CBD products. Green State Dispensary will be our THC-facing business. We are applying for retail, wholesale, and a tier one cultivation license, which is a very small cultivation that will be located at Pine Street as well. I'm happy to answer any other questions you have. That's it and in nutshell, we've been working really, really hard to get through the Burlington permitting process and all of our work is completed and we feel ready to open, waiting on the Cannabis Control Board licensure, but we're very excited and it's been waiting a long time to do this. Great, thank you, thanks so much. If there are any others. Hello, my name is Jehala. Grass Queen is an all women owns, majority queer owns cannabis company. We have a small grown Plainfields. I'm from Burlington and moved out to Plainfield a while ago to get ready for this and I'd like to come home to open a dispensary. We'll be located between the Wallflower Collective and Felinos Pizza, 71 South Union. It'll be a small spot. I'm really trying to build an inclusive environment for cannabis users, trying to get older users that maybe have not felt comfortable to use for Burlington to be one of their spots. So yeah, and any questions, security questions, I'm all for it. Great, thank you, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you. And if there are any others. Okay, sure. Is there anyone that's online who would, I don't know, I don't have hosting abilities so I can't really see but is there anyone who has either has their hand up or is one of the other, doesn't appear, you don't see anyone. Okay, yes, of course, Commissioner Shannon. And by the way, thank you. Thank you all so very much. This was really what we were hoping for. Go ahead, Commissioner Shannon. Yeah, I wanna thank each of these applicants for coming forward. You have all acted like top-notch professionals through this difficult process. And I think that, which I think everybody can see, having you all come forward, I don't think the state is doing anybody any favors by trying to shroud businesses in secrecy. I appreciate you're all very proud of the businesses you are currently running and hope to run in the future. We look forward to hosting you in Burlington. And thank you all for being willing to come forward and share. So with that, we have a motion and a second. Are there any Councillors who wanna speak to the motion before us? Seeing not, I'm sorry, Councillor Barlow, or Commissioner Barlow. Commissioner Barlow, thank you. Commissioner Paul. I had a question. I thought Councillor Shannon's analogy of trying to sort of make the plane while we're flying, it was a good one. And I had a general question. One of the locations, the Pine Street location in particular, it seemed fairly close to Champlain Elementary School. I actually drove down there on Saturday and I'm sure it's over 500 feet or we wouldn't be entertaining this application tonight. But I just wonder, we haven't as a community really had the conversation about any additional ordinance that we may wanna shape around the cannabis control in this city. And so I guess my general question is is we're approving licenses. If we approve these licenses tonight and then we have, we for instance, extend the buffer zones from 500 to 1000 feet like the state I believe will allow us to do, would these businesses tonight that might be within a 500 foot or greater than 500, about less than 1000 foot would they be exempt from those ordinances? I guess it might be a question for this city attorney. Yes, Hailey, Attorney McLenahan, if you might be able to answer that question. Sure, Councillor President Paul. So I think I understand the question is is it within our municipal authority to extend buffer zones beyond what's already in state statute? In my response to that would be, is that under Title VII which outlines cannabis control in the state and also our municipal authority for controlling cannabis within Burlington? There's really three sort of silos in which we have municipal regulatory authority. The first is we can regulate cannabis just as we would any other business in terms of zoning regulations. So anything under Appendix A, we can apply to cannabis establishments. We can also regulate signage under both state law and our own zoning ordinances again. And then we can also regulate public nuisances. And so we would in order to extend the buffer zone, we would really have to have a conversation about where does that proposed extension fit in one of those three silos? Off top of head, I would say the most likely place it would fit would be within public nuisance. However, where this is an arena where the state has already kind of spoken around buffer zones, we'd really need to have a sort of in-depth legal review as to whether or not we could expand that. So there's a possibility there for extending buffer zones. However, I think our office would definitely need to do some additional research as to whether or not we could come in and supplement what the state has already done in that arena. Thank you. And I'm not asking that your office do that research. I'm just suggesting that we as a community are sort of rushing into this cannabis licensing business because of the October 1 opening day. And it would be good for us to have a more robust conversation in the community about any additional regulation that we might want to put on this. But I'll support these tonight, but I'm just a little bit concerned about that aspect of this. Great. Thank you, Commissioner Barlow. Commissioner Bergman. So I'm sorry that I'm not up to date on the regs and the statutes with regard to cannabis. So what is the license term or year? I mean, for example, we've got in liquor control, it goes from May 1st to April 30th. And that's generally what the license goes. And I would say, based on my past experience acting as a city councilor and not as your attorney, that if you grant a license with certain conditions, you can't retroactively take away that, right? It's a property right. And so I think we would have to condition the license. So, and it's not just Pine Street, to be quite honest. The North, the South Union Street is on the road to Edmunds Elementary and middle school. And I go to the Y and ride my bicycle and at early in the morning and see lots of children coming by. Now that I don't think that we're selling cannabis early in the morning, but I think that probably in the middle of the afternoon, that's a different subject. So it's a live question for us. Thank you, Commissioner Bergman. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul or Commissioner Paul, for I guess we're still in this. I get to serve as a commissioner with you on this board. I just do want to remind everyone that, you know, this is not something we're rushing towards. We've been the council pastor resolution at the beginning of 2020, asking the city, the administration to work on this. We have given you updates on that work over time. And you have recently, you know, in recent months gotten memos from the city team and making it clear that we had considered the question of additional regulation and we're not recommending further steps along the possible lines of authority as laid out by the assistant city attorney a moment ago. For my perspective would be, I think we have discussed and come to this conclusion together. It's something that there probably are some avenues for revisiting, but I just want to make sure that we're all clear. This isn't sort of some blank slate at this point. We're pretty far down this road. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Seeing no other comments from other, Commissioner Berkman. I'm sorry, because I blathered on, I had asked actually a question which I do not know the answer. It wasn't rhetorical. What is the license term? Councilor, commissioner, commissioner Shannon, did you have that answer? The forms that we have for everybody look exactly like our liquor control license forms which says 2022 local cannabis control application, new application, there's also a box for renewal. And so if somebody from the city can correct me if I'm wrong, my assumption was that this was an annual licensing, but also this licensing has to be done by that we make a recommendation to the state and they license them. Thank you. With permission, I'll jump in. Commissioner Paul. So my understanding is that it is an annual licensure. The workflow that we've been operating under currently is that the state sort of, it's still in flux as to kind of when the materials are going to be reviewed by the state and by us as the municipality, but the state is actually the one who is waiting on our approval before they will issue a license. They give conditional approval and then they go ahead and issue that license once they get the approval from us. So it is an annual license, but as Commissioner Shannon pointed out, it comes directly from the state. So they will be waiting on, as the renewal cycle gets closer, they will be waiting on that sort of renewed okay from us in order to reissue their license, of course pending their review process that occurs annually as well. Councillor Bergman, was there anything else? I would advise the administration to get absolutely clear on this. The workflow as everybody knows with liquor is intense and it's in a set period of time. And if I get a new establishment today, I get a license until the end of the term. I don't get a license for a year and therefore causing there to be staggered licenses all the way around. So I think that it is gonna be worth my while to vote in favor of these licenses tonight, but that answer and the system that we have in place has got to be looked into by the city or we are just biting off much more than we can chew. Thank you, Commissioner Bergman. Seeing no other comments from commissioners, we do have a motion on the floor made by Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Travers. So we will go to, do you wish to? Yeah, okay. I'm sorry, we won't go to a vote quite yet. We'll go to Commissioner Shannon. I just very quickly wanted to say because I felt a little bit like that comment maybe would make people in the city feel like they hadn't, they have been working so hard at getting answers to so many things. And I completely agree with you, Commissioner Bergman, that you've identified another thing that we do need to get the answer to. But this, we have not been given really the tools that we should have to succeed. And that was not through any fault of anybody in the city. So, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. So with that, we will go to a vote on the motion before us. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. And thank you very much to the applicants for being here. We really appreciate it. Seeing no other business on this agenda and without objection, we'll adjourn the local cannabis control meeting at 845, 846 with thanks to Commissioner Shannon and Traverse as well as Planning Director Megan Tuttle, Director of Workforce Development Cara Al-Nazwari who have played an integral role in this and as well to our licensing clerk, Lori Olberg. This is new territory for all of us and we're all learning together. And thank you to all of you for making this a smooth process or as smooth as we possibly could on the first go around. We'll call to order the Local Control Commission at 847. The first item on that agenda is item 1.01 which is a motion to adopt the agenda. Commissioner Shannon. Move to adopt the agenda. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda. There are five items on our deliberative agenda. The first is item 2.01, which is a first and third class liquor license application for J. Bruce Gies. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 first and third class liquor license applications for J. Bruce Gies, LLC. 247 Main Street with the following conditions. All city permits need to be closed out contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to item 2.02, an outside consumption permit application for J. Bruce Gies, Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 outside consumption permit application with the following conditions. All city permits need to be closed out. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. That motion is seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously as well, which brings us to item 2.03, a first and third class liquor license application for Fatou A. Anyo doing business as Pasqualo restaurant. And with that, I'll go to Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 first and third class liquor license applications for Fatou Amano, DBA Pasqualo restaurante with the following conditions. All city permits need to be closed out, contingent upon fire marshal approval, and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes, which continuing with the same applicant, the next item is 2.04, which is an outside consumption permit application for Pasqualo restaurant, Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 outside consumption permit application for Fatou Amano, DBA Pasqualo restaurante with the following conditions. All city permits need to be closed out, and with CSM commission approval. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. That motion is seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously as well. And the last item on our deliberative agenda for this meeting is item 2.05, which is a first class liquor license application for Lazy Lightning LLC doing business as Pizzeria Ida. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 first class restaurant liquor license application for Lazy Lightning LLC, DBA Pizzeria Ida, 662 Riverdale Avenue with the following conditions, contingent upon fire marshal approval, and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. That motion is seconded by Commissioner Traverse. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, as made by Commissioner Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. And that motion, and the last motion on our deliberative agenda passes unanimously. So with no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection, we'll adjourn the local control commission meeting at 8.52. And we will turn to the mayor to preside over the board of civil authority meeting. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. And we call toward the board of civil authority at 8.50 p.m. First item on the agenda is the agenda. Can I have a motion to adopt it or amend it? Thank you, Councillor Traverse. Is there a second? Second. Second by President. We actually have to read it. Just to clarify the motion, I'll move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. Add to the consent agenda item 2.02. Communication Sarah Reeves, Executive Director CSWD regarding polling locations for the special election, removed from the agenda item 2.01, resolution designation of award for polling place for state general election per Councillor Barlow per CAO Shad. Second. Very good, motion has been made in second in any discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to vote all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. It brings us to the second. I'll move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated. Second. Second by President Paul. Just making sure the agenda hadn't altered that. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. That brings us to adjournment as the deliberative item has been removed. So without objection, the Board of Civil Authorities adjourned at 8.52 p.m. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. So we'll reconvene the council meeting at the same hour, 8.52. We have, and returning to our deliberative agenda, the next item is 7.03, which is a resolution reorganization and update to staffing structure of the Office of Business and Workforce Development and the Department of the Church Street Marketplace from the Business and Workforce Development Team. We have with us Director Cara Al-Nazwari to give us a presentation on the plans for this department. Before we get to the presentation, I'll look to Councillor Travers for a motion on the resolution, please. Move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Seconded by Councillor Barlow. So we have a motion, we have a second, but before we get to all of that, we have Director Cara Al-Nazwari. It's a pleasure to have you with us. The floor is yours for your presentation. Great, thank you for having me. I'm happy to answer any and all questions. I've spoken to some of you and I did obviously speak to Board of Finance. So as you know, the bulk of this work that my team and I have been doing, we've been doing since COVID hit and through various resolutions that has expanded. The budget for these positions was approved in the fiscal year 23 budget process. And a lot of the work we are doing, three of the new positions I'm proposing are support level positions so that, actually you can leave it there, that's perfect, thanks. Let me start by sort of going through this slide. The Office of Business and Workforce Development encompasses the Church Street Marketplace, which as noted here has a separate budget as per charter. It also encompasses business support city-wide. We run the Micro-Business Alliance. We are launching a $500,000 BIPOC and Women-Focused Revolving Loan Fund to support our small businesses. And we provide a lot of direct training and technical support, including our recent discussion for members of the community who are looking for cannabis licenses. We're working to connect them with the social equity supports that are available through the state and working with REIB to give them as much support as possible. We run the markets, the summer market, the winter market and the one world market. We use those as business incubators. It allows people to have access to a customer base they normally wouldn't. We have arranged for the summer market. We provided grants to the, to business owners, micro-business owners who were unable to cover the fee to be in the market so that we could clear the path for them to have access to a customer base that if they had a home-based business, for example, they wouldn't normally have access to. Also in this office, we run the Early Learning Initiative. We've been doing that for over a year now. We just added 16 new childcare centers. As you know, many childcare centers have reduced capacity right now due to the labor shortages. So we're trying to expand our reach there. And we are about to start launching our second workforce training, which is in the childcare field, which we're really excited, hoping to get that off the ground in January. Some of the work we've done, we've dispersed last year 180,000 CDBG small business grant support. And we recently wrapped up $100,000 in reopening and expansion grant work. And 90% of those recipients were BIPOC members of our community. And so some of the positions that I'm creating are support positions to relieve some of the staff I have so we can work on more policy initiatives and they can have some more support, especially with the level of technical requests that we receive in the office. I would welcome questions. I will say in terms of funding for these positions, they were funded for already. Under the guidance of the mayor, however, what you don't see in front of you, but I did produce a four year budget projection because some of these positions are partially funded through ARPA due to the work that they're doing and we know that that won't always be there. And there's also obviously a desire to provide some financial relief to the general fund and not burden it too much. On the table for revenue sources are obviously these markets. We definitely have corporate sponsors who are interested in our Love Burlington, which is one of the brands we run that work. In addition, we will be looking at the DID, the Downtown Improvement District, as a source of funds for the work we do to be able to support these businesses beyond the Church Street Marketplace. Great, thank you. Thanks so much for that presentation. Are there counselors who have any questions or comments before we would go to a vote on the resolution? Councillor Berkman. Busy day for me. So you and I talked, I really appreciated that time. And I think that I would like, it's not, I don't think appropriate tonight because I don't think you have the information, but the longer term funding plan for this expanded office. So that's critically important. I should let the mayor and others know that, I've had property tax payer worry about the expansion of more and more positions in the city and its impact on the property tax. And I really sympathize with that, although I believe that austerity kills and that there is great opportunity to building community wealth and a solidarity economy by doing these things. But that requires us to have real plans to make sure that it's not either temporary, that it is sustainable, and that it is to the greatest extent possible, not on a regressive property tax. So I look forward to getting more details from that to the full council as well as, although I'm not on the CD and our committee to work through those things. The other thing that I would like to say and I actually need, I would like to hear a response is how this fits with the remaining economic development work of CEDO. How do, just what are the connections, what is still there, et cetera. Sure, absolutely. I have a standing weekly meeting with the director of CEDO and most of the inquiries that CEDO receives right now that are related to business support, that the CEDO team sends them to my office. And if we have projects that overlap, we are in constant contact with one another. Thank you. It would be helpful to have on a more global sense something from you and director Pine that lays out the economic development strategy of the city of Burlington and the way that our offices are interrelating on that. It could be in the form of a written communication from my standpoint, even on a consent agenda, at least initially, but I think we're needing that and just do. Thank you. And I do, I would like to address that because I do understand the need for that clarity. I do feel like that clarity exists internally and director Pine and I did both, we sat down for several hours together, each of us with a staff member and a long checklist and by each item, we decided who would be the main entity responding to those issues as well as discussing a larger global vision and we have on the books to do that again to keep doing that. But I think the results of that meeting, I'd be happy to share with you. Great, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. We'll go to Councillor McGee now. Thank you and thank you, Cara, for I missed your call earlier, but I appreciate you reaching out. I just have one question that's sort of come up to me, come to me during our conversation of board of finance and our meeting now. So I apologize for not sending it forward sooner, but I don't know, it might be for the mayor as well or President Paul, but to the extent that CDNR would, assuming I would assume CDNR would still be the committee that would oversee the work that you all are doing and have those conversations about items coming to the council related to that work. Yeah, I don't know if the mayor wants to answer that. So Councillor McGee, I think that's a question we should probably talk about further. Certainly the foundation of a lot of Cara's work and remains worked at there is a great deal of engagement, community engagement with, through the church tree marketplace commission. I look forward to the presentation. I think certainly there should be significant time in next year's budget presentation about this multi-year plan and how, I share the concern raised by Councillor Bergman, the intent of this department is not to put a substantial drain, drag burden on the general fund and that's been the history with the church tree marketplace and the Cara's a plan that basically would, as the ARPA funds go away, replace them with other revenues that are generated through local activity or through potentially an expansion of the district that is paying fees that supports the church tree marketplace. So in terms of like the primary oversight of this business and workforce development, department, I've certainly seen that taking place through largely through the marketplace or an expanded district to the degree that I do think, certainly there, I think Cara has presented to CDNR with the early learning initiative. That's something that I, she and I haven't spoken in detail about that recently, but it's certainly think that, so I think it's a little bit be as with other departments, there may be some, some topics may be addressed by different groups. I think a lot of what BWD is doing, the oversight should continue to be through the marketplace. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Councillor McGee. If there are no other comments from the council, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion made by Councillor Traverse and seconded by Councillor Barlow, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion to the resolution passes unanimously. And with it, thanks so much, Director Al-Nazwari for being here for your presentation and we're all excited for the next chapter and the city's commitment, furthering the city's commitment to business and workforce development. So thank you and thanks to your team. Our next item 7.04 has been removed from our deliberative agenda. It's now consent, it's now consent agenda item 6.25, which we've already approved. So we will go to our next two items, which are entertainment permits. The first is 7.05, an indoor entertainment permit application for Jay Bruski. I'll go to Councillor Shannon for a motion, please. Move to approve the 2022-2023 indoor entertainment permit application for Jay Bruski's LLC 247 Main Street with following conditions. All city permits need to be closed and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Councillor Travers. I don't think there will be much debate over this, but I would just like to note that the applicant has been very patient and is here. So if they would, if they want to take the opportunity to talk about their project, I certainly would want to make it available to them. But if they just want to see this approved, I would also understand that as well. So you're good. All right, we'll go ahead then. You certainly could have come forward during the local control commission, but we're happy to have you here. So thank you for being here. With that and seeing no other comments from the council, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion as made by Councillor Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, which leads us to item 7.06, which is an outdoor entertainment permit for Jay Brucekes, Councillor Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 outdoor entertainment permit application for Jay Brucekes LLC 247 Main Street with the following conditions. All city permits need to be closed out and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Councillor Shannon. Just briefly, I wanna say that we are reminding applicants that particularly when they have an outdoor entertainment permit that they do still have a responsibility to their neighbors to making sure that they're working with their neighbors to assure that they're not creating any kind of hostile environment in the neighborhood. And I'm confident that this licensee will honor that sentiment. Great, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Are there any other comments before we go to a motion or go to a vote? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion is made by Councillor Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. And again, thank you very much for being here and being here all this time through all of these meetings. We have just two items left on our deliberative agenda. The first is 7.07. We're being asked to approve the hiring of a newly created position that we approved in the FY23 budget, which is for the Burlington Police Department, a police recruiter and hiring coordinator. And there is a motion on that, so I will go to Councillor Barlow for that motion. Thank you, President Powell. I move that the City Council approve hiring the police recruitment and hiring coordinator a regular full-time, non-exempt, non-union grade 16 position. Thank you, Councillor Barlow, seconded by Councillor Shannon. So with that, we do have the CAO, Catherine Schad, who is here as well as Acting Chief Murad. And I don't know if there, perhaps you could just give a brief overview of this for the CAO if you could do that. And then if there are questions, either you or the Acting Chief could answer. Thank you. Sure. As we know, this was a position that was created in collaboration with the Council as a part of the budgeting process. And now this has been fleshed out, working with the Public Safety Commission. We envision this recruiter and hiring coordinator to work not only on helping us to get more police officers, but also to help with community service officers, community support liaisons, as well as dispatchers. And it's not a person that will work alone or in a silo just with BPD. We've already started working, they'll be working with HR, as well as the REIB department. But we did feel like it was important to have one key person who has that main core responsibility at BPD who can liaise with the others. Great, thank you very much. Are there any questions? We did discuss this at the Board of Finance meeting this evening and also wanted it noted that this was a collaborative effort with the Burlington Police Commission who did offer input to this process. Are there any Councillors who have any questions or comments before we would go to a vote? Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. And I just wanted to reiterate the comment that I made at Board of Finance that I'm grateful for the extra time that we had for commissioners to be able to weigh in on the job description and just hope that we can build that into the process going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Are there any other Councillors with comments or questions? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion is made by Councillor Barlow and seconded by Councillor Shannon. Please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, please say no. No. The motion passes. We are two, four, seven, seven to one. And the motion passes. Thank you. Thanks very much and thanks for that overview, CAO Shad. We have one last item and a person has been patiently waiting to give us the presentation on that item. And that is 7.08, which is a presentation of the annual report of the Burlington Police Commission. And we have one of the co-chairs of the commission, Commissioner Jubilani Gamash. Thank you so, so much for being here and for waiting through all of this to the very end. And if you wanted to give us a brief overview of the report and we've all had a chance to take a look at it and then we'll go to any questions that Councillors might have. All right, yeah, sounds good. Thanks for having me here. Only a two-minute walk, so it's quite easy. So I believe all you'll have a copy of the report and I will just quickly summarize some of the bigger things in there. So in terms of commission activities for FY22, we passed one, sorry, commission finalized one policy and that was the body worn camera footage release policy. The 24th of 2021, we also were working on updating and reviewing the role of the Burlington Police Commission and reviewing complaints against BPD employees and that started in earnest about a year ago and that's still ongoing and that's probably gonna take a little time to complete. And while doing our due diligence with, sorry, with investigating the complaint last year, we started to update DD 1302 and DD 1303, which are interacting with persons with disabilities and interacting with persons with diminished capacities respectively and that's ongoing as well. Couple resolutions that we passed last year, the first one being asking the Mayor and City Council to mount the Mental Health Summit and the outcome of that was we held said Mental Health Summit a couple of weeks ago. I was able to join for the first day and those were quite productive but I was unable to join for the second day but I'll be hopefully tuning in and seeing how that worked out. We also like to thank REIB office and CSL Lacey Smith for their all the time and effort they put into that. We also passed a motion to advise BPD to develop skills and focus on increase of diversity within BPD so that the composition better reflects the community or better yet what the community would like. That motion called for the creation of a group of community advisors to participate in the networking effort to assure that there's a diverse set of applicants and that full motion can be found in the appendix of the report. The outcome of that motion, we requested a word in response from the acting police chief on these recommendations and we still have yet to receive a response on that and the third resolution that we passed was asking city council to fund two additional community service liaisons and a public information officer that also can be found in the appendix and the response to that was that was adopted by y'all in July 2022. We issued a couple of reports this past the year. The city council passed a motion in 2021 that altered the role of the police commission and police oversight and based on the resolution, the city attorney developed a draft ordinance. City council sought the commission to put for the draft ordinance and we provided a pretty lengthy list of comments noting where the draft deviated from the council's resolution and that had been approved by the mayor. Currently where that is that I believe that is, I know that was being worked through but I know that got held up when city attorney Dan Richardson left the city attorney's office and I'm not quite sure where that is within their queue of task to complete. We also received a data report this year from the city innovation's office about previous year's traffic stops, arrests and use of force with analysis to identify racial disparities. Upon receiving this report, the commission issued assessment of the data report summarizing key findings and making recommendations to BPD based on said findings. The city's data report can be found on the commission website and we highlight some of the key points from that report and this report. We tried to change up this year and include in our monthly meetings training and education pieces of within our meetings just to kind of give the community a better idea of really what fully goes into policing in town here and some of the things, some of the pieces we had involved topics with mental health first and Kahoot's campaign in Bernalton, alternatives to arrests, policies to reduce racial disparities in policing, police mental health, trauma-informed police practices, BPD narcotics operations, police training on de-escalation and several others. And I think with that, I'll open for our questions for Rial. Okay, quite an extensive report. Thank you so much. Are there any questions or comments from counselors? Counselor Hightower. Start with a comment and go to a question, which I think is just first of all to say, I think at various times the city council has struggled with some of the boards and commissions being somewhat performative. And I think not that that was true with the police commission, but it definitely is a radically different police commission than it was two and a half years ago. And I just, when I joined the council much less before that, so I just wanna say a thank you to you and the other commissioners for putting in many, many hours of work to kind of re-envision what you wanted to be in your role and then doing the work of making that happen because it takes a lot of proactive work to get the information, the training and everything else. So just wanna commend you on figuring that out and moving forward on it. And then thank you for the report itself, which is great to have. I don't know when we get anything that's comprehensive from any of the other boards or commissions. So this is very useful to have. And then I guess my questions are on some of, it sounds like there's a lot of work that you're doing. There's also work that you're a little bit stalled on. Again, not necessarily through any fault of your own. And so one, I guess the question is like, is what would be most helpful from the city council in terms of your next step? Is there anything specific? And I didn't ask you this question before, which I apologize for. I could have warned you that you need. And then in terms of stalled work, if there's anything that you would like us to address to the administration in terms of helping make that happen. More hours than the day, more days than the week. I would say, I think some of our biggest interests right now is just, just I think the time that's required to put into this commission, it's a lot of hours, it's a lot of time. I'm struggling with that right now very much so. And I'll get into another point after this with that. But yeah, it's just the time, it's a lot of time. And most of us have a job or two in addition to families and all that stuff. And so it's really just time. All things considered, we do feel pretty well supported from city council. Generally, things that we've asked, we've received. I'd say that I would echo that for the administration as well too for the most part. And so it's sadly it's time. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Hightower. Are there other Councillors who have questions or comments for Commissioner Gamash? Well, I think we have one from Councillor Bergman. Go ahead, please. Thanks, Jibu, for fronting this great report. It shows a depth of work. If we could all get more time, it'd be great in the day and more support. So, you know, this clearly shows that y'all are worth it. It really, I'm particularly pleased that you were as clear as you were in the report on the things that you've asked for and you haven't gotten. And my answer to the question that wasn't asked me in terms of what could you want from us is, you know, that there should be responses. And so Mr. Mayor, let me just say that there are requests that have been made as identified here and there are allegations. I'll try to be fair here instead of starting with a big stick and that indicate that there have been no responses or declinations. And I think that's unacceptable. And without belaboring that, expect that there be substantive responses to each and every one of them. So I guess I'm not asking for one tonight. We don't need to get into a back and forth or a debate or what have you tonight, but it would be really appropriate if there is a good reason why the commission has not had a response to the request for the group of community advisors. I think that was on like page three. Number two, something like that. You know, we'd like to hear, I think they deserve a response and we deserve to understand that. And so the plan to eliminate the missing data is another item, the no explanation as to why they declined the Center for Police Equity and the name called training. Those are the things that I identified here where there is no response. Silence is not golden and they deserve, and all the work they're doing is just incredible. So they deserve a response and we as a city deserve that. And I would like to get that in substance as soon as possible. Sure, go ahead council. I'm sorry, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. There has been a fair amount of discussion as my understanding about these items at the police commission. So there has been response to some, but I, the administration will be responding. There's some characterizations and statements in the report that the administration does not agree with and some that we find inaccurate and we will respond in writing to clarify and correct the record. I appreciate the commission's commitment to this community, to police oversight and to working to eliminate racial disparities. And I do certainly see and appreciate how much effort has gone into this report and certainly the commission's commitment to the community. I can't say that I share the reaction to the report that a couple of counselors have expressed so far. And I say that because to me, this report is there's a very substantial disconnect between the report and what I'm hearing from the community on a daily basis. The concerns that I'm hearing and that I believe you all have been hearing with increasing intensity over the last two years and the commission has heard is that the loss of 40% of our police officers, the significant rise in numerous types of serious crime in many areas and a concern that our public safety is deteriorating. This lengthy 13 page report is virtually silent on these dominant public safety and policing issues. Further, the commission's six goals for FY23 and beyond do not include any mention of rebuilding the department, reducing property crime and gunfire incidents, reducing homelessness or reducing drug overdoses. Rebuilding our police department and restoring confidence in our city's public safety is gonna require a collective community effort from all of us and certainly from the body that is appointed to help manage the police department, which is what the police commission is charged with doing. I remain committed to working closely with the police commission to moving the community forward. I tend to continue to personally meet with police commissioners every month to achieve this. This is something that I don't do with any other commission, but I've made that commitment with this commission and we've stuck to it for many months now. I must say, however, that it is disappointing to see so little alignment between the stated priorities of the police commission and the very serious public safety challenges being articulated by the community. I sincerely hope this changes dramatically and quickly in the months ahead. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Councillor Bergman, you had the floor. Did you want it back? I think I heard the mayor say that he was going to respond substantively and so I do not need it back. Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. We'll go to Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. Thank you, Chair Gommas for sharing the report and we know we've had some for some time and I appreciate the highlights so much of the important work that you all have done not just in the last fiscal year, but since the commission has been tasked with implementing so many of the transformations that we hope to see in public safety here in the city. So to the extent that you all are doing that work, I'm very grateful. And as chair of the Public Safety Committee, I look forward to supporting that going forward and that includes inviting the Center for Policing Equity to the committee to have a conversation about services that they can provide in terms of missing data and addressing racial disparities in the department. I think what we have heard from the community for a number of years is a serious concern around racial disparities in policing and a real desire for alternatives to status quo policing in Burlington. And I think we have seen the pendulum swing back to status quo policing as the response to the issues that we face here in the city without a serious conversation about prevention or a serious conversation about the alternatives. Or we have had plenty of conversation, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that we haven't had any conversation, but we have gotten away from those conversations to our detriment and to push alternatives and prevention goals out of the spotlight in favor of returning to things as normal, a normal that was so broken and was not working, I think is sorely misguided. And so to the extent that the commission has not received responses on these items and continued to make progress, despite that, I hope the administration will show up to the table and have that conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. We'll go back to Councilor Hightower and to be followed by Councilor Shannon. I just have to gush on the commission a little bit more. I think that to the extent that they've been invited to have discourse and give comment on some of the ways that the administration and the council and that we have collectively worked to rebuild the police departments such as giving reviews on recruiting positions and new positions that are being offered, the community service officers, the much bolstering of the police department that has been done, they have done so very kindly, very quickly, very timely. And more than that, I think that Burlington is not alone in trying to staff up its police department and that's gonna be something that's gonna be very hard to do without public trust. And so I think that the groundwork that the commission is doing on reestablishing the public trust with real information and making sure that it's there with transparency and with accountability is the most important work that we can do to rebuild the police department. So a huge thank you to them for doing work across the spectrum on the police department. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you, Chair Gamash, for coming here and presenting this very thorough report. And I do appreciate your work on the commission and I know that commissioners put in extraordinarily long hours and have been working on a lot of different issues as this report demonstrates. I am concerned though based on really being, I would say bombarded by public concern about public safety in our city that there's little focus on public safety in this report. But also that sometimes there is a flurry of the work that may be happening and isn't presented in the report. But I wondered if you can share, if you feel that the commission is hearing the public outcry and public concern about safety in our community and what's happening. And if you are hearing that, if the commission has any ideas or plans to be responsive to that, and I certainly think we all bear primary responsibility on that as well. But also a concern about the worker morale, about how the trajectory for public safety where we are going with regards to stabilizing our police force. Are you tracking expected resignations based on years of service, based on information that officers have and do you have good communications with the working staff so that they can come to you, that they can feel they can come to you with concerns about the department or maybe through the union perhaps. Thanks. With regards to, who'll come to us about the community in the city. I mean, I live in, I bartend right across the street over there. The night before my wedding, when there was a shooting and those blows went right over myself, my fiance's head. The one of the shootings a couple of weeks ago, that struck my friend who then shattered his leg. You know, when that happened, I was like, do I tell people my bar, do what do I do right now? I decided to walk the door from the outside. People would still leave where they wanted to. And so I, in addition to hearing it from the people in the city, I live it every day. Every night I work downtown, am I something? I mean, I don't get to where I'm like, am I gonna make it home tonight? But there's always some concern. And so, I mean, I mean, so yeah, I think we're all pretty plugged in and pretty aware of what's going on around the city. And to Councilor Hightower's point before, it's not just Burlington. The problems we're dealing with here are happening nationwide. We're not used to those problems here, but this is where we're at. Unfortunately, the pandemic, I think, sped up to where we are at right now. I think it accelerated that timeframe because I think we were trending in this direction. And depending on what kind of made that go a lot faster. While we don't track vaccinations per se, Acting Chief does keep us abreast in his month report of where we're at with officers. He'll generally let us know how many people are up for retirement and things like that. So we have a very clear and very sobering picture of where the BBT is at right now and where the department would like itself to get to. So I mean, this isn't easy. I wish I had better answers and easier answers for you, but this is hard work and we need everyone wrong in the same direction. So I hope you continue to listen to your constituents when they reach out to you. And I hope you also listen to us when we give you what we're seeing on the ground. And from what people tell us. Great, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. So we have two others in the queue. Councilor Freeman, I see that your hand is up and then we'll go to Councilor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you to the commission for all your work and for this report. And I just not to completely judge up completely judge up all the conversations, but I think as we've been having this conversation and as I've been listening to the commentary, it does bring up for me that the conversations that we are having about an oversight board. And I think given the mayor's comments and some of the counselors, I'm just struck by how much there, to me it seems obvious that this is why, and I understand that maybe we should just have one commission that does oversight. But given the requests that were just made of this commission to look at things like who's retiring in the police force and what is the status and the morale of workers and these kinds of things, it just really kind of like lit a light bulb for me in terms of why an independent board for oversight is so necessary. And I know that this is somewhat of a straying from the conversation that we're having about of the commission's report, but I just want all of us to sort of be present to that for a moment in my line of work when we have issues of misconduct that raise to the level of potentially, at a certain degree, there are independent boards that review elder abuse and neglect and I just, I really appreciate the work that the commission's doing. I think that I really want to hear what they, which I will only said about the fact that we're putting so much work on them and I don't think that it's sustainable. I hear the need from counselors and from the administration to have all that work happening and to have, and I think all of those have a place in city governance and in our local governance, but I think that, I don't think that we should just kind of say, oh, well, it's not, yes, we all need more time, but I think it's a very legitimate, it's a legitimate thing that's being raised and I think I know that a lot of people are digging really into the sort of substance of the report and I appreciate that and I hear also a little back and forth going on around priorities in the city and I know that we all have a lot of opinions about that right now and a lot of nuanced perspective and I'm not going to get into it, but I did, it just really struck me and it really did put a light bulb on for me about the need to, why there were so much advocacy, not just on the local level, but from national organizations talking about what an independent oversight would look like and I think it's because of those comments that were just coming back where it's saying, well, why aren't we looking at this and why aren't we looking at that and it just really struck me as a moment to reflect. But again, I really appreciate the work of the commission. I understand that some are feel that the, that there's not enough priority or emphasis being put on the issues that we're having in the city right now. I really think that Councillor McGee put it well and that it doesn't make sense to fall back and sort of like rest on the old status quo. I think there continues to be a need for a lot of imagination and creating new systems as we move forward along with a lot of other people who are saddened and frustrated by any sorts of violence or the mental health issues going on in the community and all these things, but I don't think that that, it's too easy to use that to fall back on an old system that I think as Councillor McGee said, just was really not working. And I think we need to be really creative right now and figure out what we're doing going forward. So yeah, thank you to the commission. Thank you for letting me have a little aside for my thoughts on the independent board and yeah, thank you. Thank you, thanks, Councillor Freeman. We'll go to Councillor Barlow. Thank you and thank you for the report. You know, I wasn't gonna speak, but I just feel like I need to respond to the notion that's been put forward about how this is a problem that's going on everywhere and it's not unique to Burlington. But I think it's obvious to anybody that one of our biggest issues right now is that we don't have, we can't resource the police department in a way that they can respond to the events that occur. We have the priority response plan, which is essentially a triage plan because we don't have enough officers. And I have to believe if we had a bigger presence of public safety personnel, armed sworn officers downtown while many of these events are happening if we wouldn't have a deterrent effect and wouldn't be able to respond to things more effectively. We can't enforce the rules we set for ourselves downtown right now. What I see going on in City Hall Park and on the marketplace disturbs me. And you know, I've lived here for a long time and I've never seen it as bad as it is right now and it's concerning to me. And I know that when we talk about the mental health response when we had the mental health summit on the first day, I think it was someone from the Howard Center said that there's not enough sworn officers essentially, there's not enough to respond to the, to help within the response to, you know, when the street outreach workers have to engage with people in the street, they need sometimes the support of sworn officers. So I think a lot of this boils down to just a resourcing issue. And if we can commit to rebuilding the department, I think we're gonna get out of this a lot faster. And if we continue to villainize the department, it's gonna take a lot longer. So I'm hoping that we can all get behind the council, the public, the police commission and support their rebuilding of the police department because we desperately need it in Burlington right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Barlow. Councillor Bergman. I just gotta say that this council has done everything that we've been asked and I've voted for it and support it. You talk about resourcing more officers. Well, you know, like the money's there, the recruitment officer was just approved. You know, time is gonna take. What the commission is really talking about is what Joe was saying. All of the pieces that we've got to build to do it right, we've gotta be working on. And there are a lot of things that they're asking for here. Maybe there are good reasons for it, but I don't know them as to why there hasn't even been a response to those things. So this is, you know, we're part of a whole system and we gotta be playing together in a really comprehensive way. And the people who are in charge of the operation is the administration in terms of that. And they have come forward with things and I have supported them when they've made sense and will continue to do that. And I'm hoping that this report will point to things that have not been done that should be done and that we then do them. And if we're gonna, and we could have a good debate if there are, I anticipate a good debate around particulars. I can hear the inklings of them, but let's do it with information that's provided and then try to do the job that needs to be done, which is a very comprehensive approach. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. We'll go to Councilor Shannon and perhaps we can wrap this item up. Go ahead, Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Powell. You know, Councilor Bergman is right. We've done many things and with support of the full Council to try to support our police department. But I think that we have to recognize that we can't improve policing when we have no police, when our police officers are constantly stressed, when they are overworked and their numbers continue to drop. And I think that we have to recognize the work environment that we're all providing. And it's not, it is not just the administration. It is not just the police commission. It's not just the city council, but how are we treating our police department? It's, we've made it extraordinarily difficult for police officers to do their job and to be successful at that job because as the CNA report pointed out, when police officers are just running from emergency to emergency, they cannot do the, we want them to de-escalate. We want slow policing. We want them to be calm and respectful to our community members when they engage with our community members. But how are we all, as a community, all of Burlington working to create that kind of environment? And I remember Chief Shirling talking long ago about the covenant between the police and the community and that there will never be enough police to police everything that happens. It doesn't work that way. It's actually the community itself and that covenant with the community. And I appreciate that events happened that have broken that covenant but it's essential for us to rebuild that as a community. And I don't, we know that when people take a job, it isn't just about the money. And I think that the city council has, and the following the lead of the administration and the police chief and working with the unions, we have provided a financial package that I think is, it should be attractive but ultimately job satisfaction and the reason particularly, this is an employee's market. And that comes from job satisfaction. And I think that that's what we need to be working in our community to improve. And it's probably a bit of a chicken and an egg question and we have to get beyond that to lift ourselves out of the hole we're currently in. And I hope that we can all work together on that. Thank you. Thanks, councilor Shannon. We've sort of, we have sort of strayed from the agenda item which is not an unusual thing to do when we're talking about public safety. Councilor Travers has not spoken yet, so we'll go to him and then we will go to a motion. Well, if I could just briefly bring it back to the agenda item, I wanna thank you, Chair Gommash for being here this evening. I spent, I think three years as chair of the parks commission. I spent five years as chair of the housing board review. We submitted annual reports like this every year of those eight years and I was never asked to come before the council as a deliberative agenda item to speak to it. I certainly understand the important work of your commission and appreciate it and I appreciate the importance of this issue. So I understand why it's on the agenda this evening. But thank you for taking the time to come down. Thank you for your volunteer work on the commission. Thank you for your comments about your own personal experience. Yes, there are certainly some public safety concerns downtown, but most nights when you come downtown, I still see a thriving Burlington and it's in large part because of folks like you, your bar, other Burlington businesses that are committed to our community and are making downtown still a great place to be. It gives me a lot of faith that you're the chair of this commission, not only because of your lived experience and professional experience, but because of the experience that you've had over the last couple of years and in making the commission what it is and the dedication of you and your other colleagues. So thank you for everything and for this detailed report and we'll look forward to having you back, but hopefully not too often. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Travers. So I would entertain a motion to simply waive the reading and place the communication on file. Thank you, Councilor Bergman, seconded by Councilor Hightower. So we have a motion which has been seconded. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously and like others have said, Chair Gommash, thank you so, so much for being here, for being here with us until the end of our deliberative agenda and extend our thanks to the rest of the commission for your efforts. Well, as a bartender, this is midday for me, so. I would be remiss if I didn't say that I co-chair with Stephanie Ciguino and while we gave input for this report, she is the one that crafted this report, so she deserves most of the praise for this body work right here and the rest of the commission. So thanks for having me here and see you around. Thank you, thanks very much. So that completes our deliberative agenda which brings us to item eight, which is committee reports. Are there counselors who are committee chairs that have or want to offer a committee report? Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. The Tax Abatement Committee is having our organizational meeting tomorrow, September 20th at 5 p.m. in the Green Mountain Conference Room. We'll be discussing our mission statement and reviewing web page content related to tax abatement and financial aid programs. Also want to say the redistricting working group will be meeting on Wednesday, September 21st at 10 a.m. in a virtual only meeting. The Zoom link and the meeting agenda on board docs and on the city calendar. Great, thank you, Councillor Barlow. Any other committee chairs who wished to offer a committee report? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to item number nine which is city council general city affairs. Are there counselors who wish to offer comments on general city affairs? We just met one week ago so we probably covered that last week but even so it's been a week if there are any who have comments on general city affairs. And if not, we will go to item number 10 which is council president updates. I only have one and that is we received an email from the chair of the ad hoc reappraisal committee. We unfortunately lost a member of the committee and we're in need of a member who is currently a renter. If you, so to the viewing public, if you rent your dwelling and are interested in serving on the committee charged with reviewing and impacting change on the future reappraisal process which is a pretty important process, please reach out to me or to any city councilor and to my colleagues if you know of anyone who is a renter who might be interested or if you're willing to post on Front Porch Forum that would be helpful as well. So we don't want their work to be delayed because they have lost a member. So if you know of anyone, please let us all know. With that, that'll bring us to our final item of the evening which is item number 11, updates from the mayor. Mayor Weinberger, the floor is yours. Thank you, President Paul. I just have one item tonight as well which is just to address one thing that was on the consent agenda was discussed at Board of Finance. The contract with Champlain Housing Trust to manage the Elmwood shelter, emergency shelter was approved by this body tonight. Appreciate the council's longstanding support on this issue going back for the last year as we've been working on it. And by the time three weeks from now when this council meets again we should be getting very close to opening this new important emergency facility. Wonderful. Thank you very much, Mayor Weinberger. So that brings us to the end of our agenda. We'd ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Made by Councillor McGee and seconded by Councillor Berkman. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. That passes and we're adjourned at exactly 9.59 p.m. Thank you for joining us this evening. Our next meeting is Monday, October 17th. Hope you have a good week and we will see you in October. Thank you.