 We'll give people a couple of minutes to trickle in, and then we'll get going. People in this meeting that aren't our time, Scott. Let's see. We're going to get perfect. Yeah, it's still early. And is Marianne on already? She's not here yet, Andy. Yeah, so we'll see some familiar names popping soon. Have you been in touch with Marianne by text or just calling or just email? We emailed in the last 24 hours or so with the link. We wait a minute or two, and then I'll kick off with it to get settled. We can always start with public forum and move the agenda around a little bit. I want to thank everyone for joining us here. Sometimes on the steering committee here, we come to these meetings so often. We lose sight of the fact that we may have new people joining us for the first time. So let me take an opportunity to welcome you all to this neighborhood planning assembly, the NPAs. We've been around since the 80s in Burlington. The best way I can describe them to people is pretty much every other town in Vermont has a town meeting every March. Of course, Burlington, because of its size, doesn't have a town meeting. We just have a standard old election in March. But the idea behind the NPAs is it brings that town meeting flavor to each of the wards. Each of the wards here in Burlington has its own NPA. Of course, we're the Ward 5 NPA. I serve on the steering committee of the NPA. My name is Ben Travers. Also here this evening from the steering committee, we have Lucia Campriolo, Scott Pavek, Andy Simon, Nate Lantieri, Shirsten Bohm, Joe Derry, and not here this evening, Gillian Kirby, and Billy Clark. On the steering committee, we are responsible for putting together the agendas for these meetings. But of course, if anyone here has any ideas for a future meeting, more than welcome. And of course, we welcome you to come back to these meetings, which are on the third Thursday of every month, and to bring other folks along with you. The agenda that we put together for this month, last month was September, of course. And we focused that on the schools and had a great presentation from our new superintendent, Superintendent Flanagan. This month is the last meeting we have before the upcoming election. So this meeting is very much focused on the issues of the day. The agenda up here, Joe has it up. We have Mark Hughes from the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance of Justice for all Vermont coming. We have an update from our city counselors, as well as a candidate forum for our Chittenden 6-5 house race. So looking forward to all of that. We've also, in this virtual format, developed this nice tradition of bringing in local people here from the neighborhood to kick off our meetings with some music. We had Marianne Samuels scheduled to be here. She may be having some technical issues at the moment, which I think Joe may be working out with her now. But while we're waiting for her to come in, we begin all of our meetings as well with a public forum and opportunity for you to speak to your neighbors about whatever issues may be on your mind. So if you are interested in speaking at public forum on the Participants tab at the bottom of your Zoom window, if you click on that, there's a button within there to raise your hand. So if anyone in the attendees section would like to raise their hand and speak in public comment, Joe will be able to promote you here, and we'd love to hear from you. Joe, I saw Laurie Smith raise his hand there first. Could you go ahead and promote him? Hey, Laurie, can you hear us? Hello. Hey, we can hear you. Well, good evening, everybody. And my name's Laurie Smith, and I am the a representative for the Citizens for Responsible Zoning, the CRZ group that has been working to try and ensure that higher ground moving to the Burton campus will happen in a way that does not disrupt the lives of the neighbors that live in close proximity to the venue. Just wanted to give you a quick update. The Burlington Development Review Board approved the conditional use application for Burton. They did so with a number of conditions. Some of the conditions will really help mitigate some of the impacts, but many of the issues were not addressed in the conditional use application process. The CRZ has filed an appeal. Burton made an effort to get that appeal dismissed at the Environmental Court. The judge overruled that dismissal and encouraged Burton and the CRZ to be in conversation and try to work out the issues. We've been in conversation with Burton in the past and our attorney had a conversation with Alan Newman from higher ground. And so far, they have indicated they are unwilling to enter into any kind of binding agreement that would hold them responsible for violating terms of agreement that would be put in place between Burton and the community to ensure that they are, in fact, good neighbors. And they have told us all that they're very interested in being good neighbors. It's a little hard to understand why if I'm going to be a good neighbor, I would have a problem signing an agreement that holds me responsible for being a good neighbor. So we have filed an appeal, the process is continuing. If anybody is interested in this issue, we'd be happy to hear from you either at my email address, which I posted at the beginning of this meeting or at southendbtv at gmail.com. And there's someone else who's gonna speak this evening about the bike walk issues and some of the issues that exist around this facility. So that's what I had to say unless anybody has any questions. Thanks, Lori. I really appreciate you being here. I really appreciate your group continuing to keep the neighborhood updated with respect to what's going on. And thank you as well for giving us your contact information there for people to get in touch with you. Any questions from your members? Any questions from anyone here in the steering committee or up on the screen? Linda had asked to talk. I don't know. It was about the... Yeah, Linda's following up for my conversation. All right. Well, Lori, why don't you just sort of hang tight there and we'll put you back on mute. Linda was the next person who raised her hand. Joe, if you could promote Linda for the purpose of public comment. And then I would encourage you that if other people had comments or questions for even people who spoke previously, please raise your hand as well and we'll do it that way. Great, thank you. Thanks, Lori. Linda, it looks like you're unmuted. Can you hear us all right? Yes, I can. Okay, thanks very much for being here. Go ahead. Thanks for allowing me to speak. My name's Linda Patterson. I live in the Lakeside neighborhood and I've been following since its inception the issues with Fertin higher ground development and been feeling very supportive of CRZ trying to help in whatever way I can. And they have asked me to share a public statement concerning what Lori mentioned about pedestrians. So the statement is that Burlington, as many of you know, has plans to build a hub on their Industrial Avenue property to include a 1500 person, 500 vehicle concert venue. Burton once said this hub would be, quote, the likes of Ben and Jerry's in Waterbury, unquote. However, the Burton venue site does not abut a major state road such as Wood 100. It abuts Home Avenue with all its stop signs and Queen City Park with its one lane bridge. And these streets lack the infrastructure to safely manage the onslaught of drivers, bikers and walkers that this venue would bring. The DRB unanimously approves Burton's conditional use permit without requiring any new traffic infrastructure. They essentially turned a blind eye to the safety needs of bikers and walkers. They quietly overlooked the structural upgrades undeniably necessary for this venue to become anything less than chaotic. That the DRB accepted Burton's traffic study is either foolery or indicates it was not read thoroughly. Burlington knew it didn't have funds to pay for improvements of sidewalks, bike lanes and crosswalks. Hence, rather than wait until they did, they chose to push Burton's permit through without stipulations. This is in total disregard of its constituents who travel on foot or by bike. And the elephant in the room is that Burlington chose profits over people. This enormous concert venue must not open until Burlington can afford to build the necessary infrastructure needed for safety that was shockingly not flagged by the DRB. I also urge you to require concert goers to be bused in from a major artery. This would alleviate congestion, heavy traffic and parking on streets that are ill-equipped to handle it. It would deter loitering of concert goers in nearby areas, thereby reducing police presence and disruptions of residents. We do not wanna train wreck here. Slowing this process down to mitigate the long-term consequences is the right thing to do. And there are solutions. And I and the committee urge you to slow down and consider the neighbors in this process. Thank you. Thank you very much, Linda. Is there any other attendee with a public comment? If so, in the participant tab, there's a raise hand feature that you're able to use. Yeah, there were a few other, I think Tom and Janice at one point or another, but. I saw the hand go down. If there's anyone else, however, that does wanna make a comment, please do go ahead and raise your hand. All right, and to Lori and Linda, if your schedule permits, I would encourage you to hang around. We do have our city councilors joining us around 745 as well as Jiton and 65 candidate forum. And I would encourage you to hang around for that if you're able to. I do see, actually, Joe, I do see Janice raised her hand. Janice, you've been promoted now if you wanna go ahead and unmute yourself. Can you hear us? Janice, I think we can hear you. It just sounds like you're very quiet. I don't know, can you hear us? It's just incredibly quiet, Janice. I hear a whisper on your head. Sorry, Janice, we're not able to hear you just now. Janice, if you wanna try logging off and logging back in again, we can come back to you. Is there anyone else on the attendee side who wanted to make a public comment? All right, Lori, Linda, thank you very much, Janice. If you're able to come back in and get your microphone working, please feel free to raise your hand and we'll come back to you. Marianne, I see you there. We'll go ahead and close public comment now, having not seen anyone. Thanks very much for your patience, Marianne, and the technical hiccups. I suppose I should also mention before turning you to Marianne, we thankfully have Morgan Doherty here from CEDO who's a great partner in putting these NPA meetings together. We also have town meeting TV here and they are live streaming this meeting right now on YouTube as well as recording it and it will be available on the Ward 5 NPA website on a later date. Marianne, you may have figured out that we shifted things around a little bit and did our public comment period. Are you ready to go ahead and play in the rest of our agenda here? I am ready to play, yes. I think you can see the instruments. I'm going to play the hammered dulcimer which is over here and I'm going to play a set of tunes by the Irish composer, Turlacal Carolyn, who lived from 1670 to 1738. So I'll just keep playing and then I'll be done in about seven minutes. Great, thank you so much, Marianne. Thanks very much, Marianne, that was awesome. Hope you can hear it all right. The sound came through great. Yeah. Do you mind, just in a minute or two, tell us a little bit about the instrument and how you got into it? Oh, boy, yes, I've been playing this since 1979, so pretty long time. I had played what's called the mountain dulcimer before that and it's a little lap instrument that usually has three or four strings that you can strum and play. And there would be festivals with both kinds of dulcimers. So I saw this one and thought, oh, that looks like fun because you get to stand up and hit strings. So yeah, so there I picked this up way back then and have been playing. This past summer I got to play with my friend who plays the harp. She plays a folk harp and we played a lot of these O'Carolin tunes for Wake Robin and for other different folks around. Well, it was great. And a lot of this virtual nonsense has been a downer in many ways. Missing people in person, but I think one of the great things has been that we've been able to introduce this music piece and to highlight some of our neighbors and their talent. So I really appreciate your joining us tonight. Okay, well, thank you for having me. Thanks, Marianne. I also know that Lucia on the steering committee is keeping notes. And I think she actually is in the minutes going to link to some information on your instrument there, Marianne. So if folks wanna check it out, they can do it there. Joe, it looks like Marianne's video is spotlighted here. We're gonna move to the next part of the agenda now, which is really grateful to have Mark Hughes here tonight, co-founder and executive director of Justice for All Vermont. Joe, are you able to highlight Mark's video? Hey, Ben. Mark, we see you there. Hey, thanks very much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us why you're here. Sure, before I do that, I really hope that Marianne provides us the names of those two tunes, especially the second one that was kind of snappy. So hopefully we can get that pass back across to us. So good evening to everyone. And first off, thanks for having me. I wanted to first just give a shout out to the folks. This is my first time here at your meeting. I guess I've been missing something. I didn't realize you guys were doing music and all that stuff. Those guys over at 2-3 are missing out. Yeah, I just want to give a shout out to the representatives, Donovan and Sullivan, I believe, who are, I think, collectively represent this area here. And also I want to shout out to Joan, Consulperson Shannon and also Consulperson Mason, just acknowledging those folks and hard work that they are putting in. As Ben had just said, I am Mark Hughes and I am the director of Justice for All. I'm also the coordinator of the Racial Justice Alliance. So I've been doing some work here in the community. I reside in Over in Ward One. I have been on an effort to reach out to all wards. This is the third ward in as many as three days, I think, maybe, that I've attempted to reach out to and this is the ward that I was fortunate enough to land with success. The first meeting was, I just think they just ran out of time. I had to get on to another meeting and then last night I just completely dropped the ball. So my relationship here is just really the Racial Justice Alliance in coordination with some of our counselors and the administration put forward some very, I think unprecedented racial justice policy that's currently being implemented. I came to talk to you about what some of that is and more importantly, just provide some updates. I just wanted to provide you some updates so there's nothing actionable. This is just informational. I'm gonna probably spend here about the next eight minutes or so, no more than 10 minutes, just giving you a few updates about what is actually unfolding, the work that we're doing because there is work underway. For those who are not familiar with the topic, just if you recall the work that was put forward about a racial justice alliance back in June called Operation Phoenix Rise, it manifested itself in the form of a resolution in June 29th and there has been work that has been ongoing and continues underway as we speak. I wanted to let you know too that I'm gonna stop in time to answer a few questions or maybe a couple of questions so I'll make sure not to just run on and on and on. So again, I'm from Ward 1. This is about some city-wide stuff that's ongoing, the topic is racial justice and some of the work that we're doing and it's all about Operation Phoenix Rise. Operation Phoenix Rise, I think it's important to understand was born just in the wake of this existing racial reckoning that I think resulted largely, an intersection of COVID-19 in the murder of George Floyd. A lot of that work started here was actually ongoing here in Vermont and also in Burlington prior to the murder of George Floyd. A lot of it was accelerated as a result of it and what the racial justice alliance, the bold statement that we put forward is is we put forward a mission statement to transform the lives of black and brown people by investing in their lives and holding space for their culture, providing them opportunity and also ensuring the equity they deserve to thrive. From that, what we did is we put forward this Operation Phoenix Rise restructuring public safety, R, I, Implementing Cultural Empowerment, S, Securing Equal Opportunity and E, Expanding Racial Equity Belonging and Inclusion. What I really wanted to come to update you on is mostly the I and the S and E today, because I think that largely from what I've seen is you've probably been getting a little bit of overflow, a little bit of information overflow on the other areas and I think in all fairness, I wanted to spend more time in talking about these areas that you may not hear so much about. So I'll just start with the I, which is the Implementing Cultural Empowerment, give you an update there. The vision was is what was envisioned was is Implementing a Community, a Cultural Empowerment Center and what that was is we envisioned a structure within actually it would be over, this would be probably in the Northeastern or probably maybe we talked about King Maple, that area there. Similar to something like the current King Center, this would be focused on, specifically focused on those communities of descendants of slaves, black descendants of slaves. We're talking about cultural empowerment. We're talking about youth activity centers, community center. We're talking about centers of excellence, education and arts, economic development and community partnerships. And then with that intelligence it had a lot to do with adult basic education, people development, STEM development, entrepreneurial cultivation and technical assistance. And I just wanted to update you on where we are on that. I'm sitting down personally with the mayor on a weekly basis in Tyesha Green and others in the current administration are working through some of the details. There is an RFP that's out right now for what we're calling it a strategic analysis or a strategic plan. Because what we decided to do was before we move forward with all of this, the strategic plan would inform a feasibility study. But first what we'd like to do is try to lay out just all of the details surrounding this and other work that we're gonna be doing. So I just wanted to update you on that, that RFP is out. And I think that should probably be closing out next week. That strategic plan will lead into a feasibility study that would look at brick and mortar and so forth. Moving over to the part about securing equal opportunity. One of the things that we were looking at is what does it look like to implement a minority owned business procurement apparatus within city government as well as additional economic empowerment and capital access apparatuses and business to business mentoring to be able to incentivize thriving business to be able to reach back and pull forward those minority owned business that could be those businesses that could be struggling in technical assistance. So that work is gonna come from the strategic plan. The strategic plan is gonna map out that work. And then I think some of this stuff is probably gonna bleed over into some of the things that are happening and then the CEDA will still need to figure that out. So you can see we're still kind of edging along trying to figure out how we're going to get some of these things accomplished but certainly making progress. And this is the last thing I'll tell you and I just wanted to just step back and just grab those questions. Like I said, I told you I wouldn't be long. Is this the expanding racial equity of belonging inclusion and belonging. I think this is where we've made the most progress. I know that there have been some ongoing I think almost closing out in fact, interviews at the CUI level, Tyesha is gonna be as well at the end of the day we'll have hired a couple of folks to come in as analysts to get her heavy load done. If I'm not mistaken, I think that process closes out next week too, maybe three. I think folks are gonna be coming into that office. I think there's also, we've also been able to get approved funding for a training management platform. And I believe that there's also funding that's been put aside for a full citywide assessment. So that is it. That is the update. I tried my best to try to stay out of the bushes, stay out of the weeds if you will to, I think what's important to us is definitely progress. I just as one alibi fire, I would say that it is important that as this works going on that yes, we're still working with various partners not just across the city, but across the county on the declaration of racism as a public health emergency and putting together what we're doing is working on plans on how we could, how we continue to coordinate and collaborate and put forward strategies whereby we continue to make progress in those areas. And of course, the reparations resolution, I believe all five of those appointees have been selected and I believe the mayor's announcement on that is imminent. So with that, that's where I will conclude. I do appreciate having the opportunity to come in and share that brief update with you. I'll come back and share more with you as I get additional information. I just wanna make sure I know everybody's not always attending those city council meetings. I just wanna make sure that you're getting the information that you deserve in understanding what's happening with your tax dollars. I'll take a question if anybody has any, Ben. Yeah, thanks very much. And of course, again, thanks very much for reaching out and coming to meet with our NPA here. We're really grateful for that. It's really my pleasure. I appreciate you inviting me. As I mentioned earlier in the public comment period if folks do have questions for Mark, if you go in the participants tab in the bottom and click on that, there's a raised hand button at the bottom of the screen. And if you hit that, we can turn to you for any questions. Lucia, I see that you raised your hand. You were already promoted as a panelist. You wanna just turn on your video and unmute? Yeah. Hi, Mark. My name is Lucia Gabriello. I live down in the south end obviously down on Pine and Lyman. It's really nice to meet you. I don't think we've crossed paths yet before. Thanks for being with us tonight. So where can we go if we wanna find out more information and what are the best resources to stay updated on the work that is moving remarkably quickly, I think, as you mentioned. And obviously it will be ongoing and with us for quite some time, which is incredible. So what's the best way to keep up to date? Sure, the question is where can we go to get more information? And if you go out to vtracialjusticealliance.wordpress.com vtracialjusticealliance.wordpress.com vtracialjusticealliance.wordpress.com There are websites out there. You'll see some updates coming out. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That's awesome. I will include all of those links and details in our minutes so that folks can access them easily. Yeah, totally. Lucia, while you're out there, folks who go out there, you can just go ahead and sign up to get on our mail unless if you wanna just get ongoing updates as well. And I would also say that you will get stuff from the, you will see stuff trickling in via updates on the city console meeting as well. And I don't believe most of what I told you is very far from Chip and Joan. I'm pretty sure Chip and Joan would probably be able to answer almost any question you might have about the work that's underway. I got quite a bit of confidence in them. They stay on top of stuff. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your leadership. Thanks for your question. Thanks, Lucia. Again, there's a raise hand feature on the participants tab. Anyone else have a question here for Mark? Hi, everyone. Hey, Mark, how's it going? Thanks for coming. Good to see you. Yeah, good to see you too. So I guess my question's kind of like the continuation of Lucia's and it's how can people get involved or what kind of involvement are you looking for from the general public? And yeah, just basically that. I mean, I assume it comes in the email blast, but it'd be good to hear directly from you. So thanks for coming again and... Absolutely. Nate, thanks for that question. How do we get involved? Where, how do folks get on the bandwagon? Because there's a lot of folks who wanna get to work, I'm sure. So again, you know, same answer. Go out to the website, vtracialjustisalliance.wordpress.com. We're gonna change that. We actually have the domain name and I think we've just been too slothful just to get it in there. And there is opportunity for you to go up and there's a place out there. I think it's called like a supporter. No, partners or something. I haven't been out there in a while, but I think there's a way in which you can get out there. Like I said, you know that mailing list, there's a partner agreement that you can fill out out there as well and you can send that over to us. There also, once you get yourself on those emails, you'll see that there are a number of things that the Alliance is doing, many at the statewide level involving policies, some community, outreach, education, organizing and so forth. You'll see webinars and so forth coming up as well. Things that may not necessarily be related to Operation Phoenix per se, but definitely ways in which you can get engaged. So again, I would watch those three outlets for the social media. Things are kind of a little bit quiet right now, but you know, it's probably quiet before the storm. Definitely watch Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and get out there and get your name on that mailing list with the Racial Justice Alliance. Great, thanks. Thanks for the question. Any other questions from Mark either from any of our panelists here or on the attendee side? Again, you can hit the participants tab and raise your hand that way virtually, of course. All right, Mark. Well, again, I really appreciate, or Andy, I see you turned on your video. Is that you with a raised hand? Yeah, I do have a raised hand. Hi, Mark. Hi, Andy. Thank you. Thank you. I'm curious about the reparations piece and wondered whether you could talk a little bit more about that, what your expectations are and what your goals are. Absolutely. Great question. Curious about the reparations piece. What's the expectation? What's the goal? And I would just back up a little bit from that because as we know, HR 40, the reparation bill that's been in the United States House of Representatives has been there for 31 years. It's been introduced every year for the last 31 years was initially introduced by the late John Conyers. We also have a reparations bill H-478, which was introduced two years ago in our state legislature. It died in house government operations after being on the wall for two years. Each of those bills are similar in a way because they come for a task force. They come for a task force to study, to study the implications of shadow slavery as it pertains to this particular location and to come back as appropriate as they did necessary, if necessary, with an apology as well as maybe a proposal for reparations. In terms of expectations, that's it. That was the expectation. I think we've got to acknowledge that it's a very sensitive discussion. It's a pretty difficult conversation for a lot of folks to have. And I can tell you that 95% of the questions that I feel have to do with how much money is it gonna be? Who's gonna benefit? How do we know that they're qualified to benefit and so on and so forth? All of which I believe must be answered through this task force. So I don't really have anything to offer in terms of what my preferences are or what my expectations are specifically pertaining to reparations. But I could, outside of the fact that my hope is that, and I suppose my preference is that we get on with it, that we do, that we get a group of qualified folks to sit down, take a close look at this thing and come back with some of the answers for some of the questions that I just put out there. And more. Does that help? Thank you. Thank you, Mark. That was really good. I wanted- I'm really welcome. I'll just throw in that there was a piece this summer that was in the New York Times magazine called What Is Ode? What is Ode? What is Ode? Yeah. And I just would encourage people to track that down as a resource because it really puts, it was a very clear, concise, I think, explanation of reparations and what is owed is what the subject was. That was a good one, Andy. I, it's a long one. So I want to give you all a heads up because Andy's going to bait you in and you're going to start reading and you're going to get mad at him because it's really long. But it's a really well thought out, incredibly well orchestrated piece. The other piece that I would add to that is I can never see his name. So somebody help me. I think his name is Tosne Coates. Oh, Tana. Tosne Coates. Tana Hassi. A hero wasn't called The Case for Reparations. I would encourage, now I want to, transparently I haven't read it. I've seen parts of it. But I think it's helpful to try to frame it. I'd also encourage you to maybe at least keep your finger on the pulse of what's happening with HR40 on a national level. I'm afraid I've gone over. And Ben, Andy, thank you so much for your time. Ben, thank you so much for allowing me to come. And I know there probably could be more questions but just being respectful for your time and other folks that are coming after me, especially the folks who are coming to introduce themselves for candidacy. So I would just bow out. And if there's other questions, if you can just get them out to me. Great, that sounds good, Mark. And thanks again for sharing your contact information. Again, Lucia's doing the minutes. After this meeting, we'll be putting the minutes up on our website, on the CEDO webpage. So folks will have your contact information there as well. And really appreciate you reaching out and being here again, Mark. Thank you so much. Thank you, it's always a pleasure. And thanks for having me over at five. I'll come back. Awesome. Take care. You too, Mark. All right, so that then takes us to the next part of our agenda. Joe Dare, who's been our tech wiz. I don't know if you're able now, Joe, to highlight the videos. It looks like we have our city counselors, Chip Mason and Joan Shannon here. Yeah, thanks. So we could bring them up. I see Chip and I see Joan. Joe, it looks like your video is highlighted now. I don't know if there's any way to highlight Chip and Joan or go back to a gallery view here. All right, I see Chip highlighted now. I don't know if there's a way to get Joan up there on the screen too. But why don't we, and there's Joan. I don't know if there's a way to get both of them or just go to a speaker view here, Joe. But I just want to make sure we don't have one person in that tiny window and one person in a super big window. But while you're figuring that out, why don't we go ahead, Joan and Chip, thank you very much for being here, board five NPA. If you could just sort of introduce yourselves. I know that perhaps for many people here, you need no introduction, but if you could introduce yourselves and kick off what's happening at the city council level, that'd be great. Looks like Joan just left. So I'll start. My name is Chip Mason. I'm the ward five city councilor coming to you live from Scarf Avenue basement. I don't know. I can't see Joan. Is she on or is she not? She's on. I just got a text message from her saying that she's having microphone trouble. So she had to take care of her moment. I'm sure that Joan will figure it out here. Of course. Councilor Shannon and I had a brief conversation about sort of who is going to tackle what, at least for initial topics of conversation. She will all let her talk about the things we decided she would talk about. I sort of wanted to just update people that were sued. These are two sort of non-policy, but things you may have read on front porch forum or seen some activity about sort of stuff that's happened in ward five. One of them relates to there was action taken by the city council and the mayor under the COVID emergency authority that the governor has given mayors to sort of move forward with the opening of a new place at the Champlain Inn, which is the, I don't know what to call it, yet somewhat used hotel on Shelburne Road after sort of the rotary mart. That action which the council passed last Monday will allow a new place. There you are, Joan, will allow a new place to open a 50 bed low barrier shelter at that location. For anyone that's been following it, it's been a bit of a scramble honestly to find a low barrier shelter that would meet the COVID requirements in terms of separation and also the needs of our community. The old facility that they had on the corner of South Anuski simply does not work with COVID. It was one large room. So the city working with the new place, NCHD and others has been scrambling to find a location and this literally came together at the last minute. A new place did have a number of meetings with the neighbors and at least the reports back and really no one spoke at the council level were positive and enthusiastic about being able to meet this community need at that location. The other sort of, you may have seen some chatter on the front porch forums relates to an encumbrance permit that was requested for the unauthorized skate park on the Champlain Parkway. I would say, I don't even know now, maybe two months ago, there was significant concern being raised by those who lived on South Crest Drive hearing construction noise and other activity on the parkway. A group of skateboarders had basically got together and decided to build a quarter pipe. For those who've ever walked on it, there was sort of a smallish skate, unauthorized skate park that was there but this really took it up another level. They brought in 75 bags of cement, a water truck, power materials, et cetera. Unfortunately that because of all that activity, I won't say unfortunately, it was brought to the city's attention. No permits were obtained. DPW then went in, took a look and advised those who basically had now put that up that they had one of two options, either remove it or if they wanted to ask for an encumbrance permit, which is allowed. Anyone that wants to put a basketball court or any permanent structure on a city street can get permission from the city council. So though the skateboarders came to the license committee seeking an encumbrance permit, there was testimony from concerned neighbors. There was positive testimony from the skateboarders, but at the end of the day, it became a little bit of a legal issue because the city was aware of this. Its insurer was now aware of it and the insurer was demanding that the organizers be able to produce a million dollar liability policy because of the activity and the organizers simply were not able to do that. So based on that, without getting into the merits of whether a skate park was a good thing or a bad thing, the license committee recommended to the full council that the encumbrance permit be denied. That was put on consent agenda and the council did not take action. So that unauthorized skate park is scheduled to be removed by DPW over I think the next coming weeks. There has been some chatter back and forth on front porch forum as to whether this was a good thing or a bad thing and the city should be doing something to allow this to continue. But literally the insurance requirement was an impediment that no one could get over. So those are just two brief things. I'll turn it back over to councilor Shannon to maybe introduce herself and talk about something she's working on. And I know we're short on time. I could fill up 15 or 20 minutes but I'll let Joan speak now. Thank you. Thanks, Chip. Joan, I think with the previous speakers we had it in a spotlight view. If folks still see one of your other videos spotlighted they can go up to the top and switch it to gallery view or speaker view again. So I have it back in gallery view now. Everyone's video sizes are equal size. And so if you could go ahead, Joan, that'd be great. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And I'm glad, can you hear me? My microphone wasn't working before which is why I started running around like crazy. But I think we're all working now. So I am chair of the Charter Change Committee and there's been a couple of things going on there. Interestingly, you may have heard that there was a protest at my house. The protesters from Battery Park came to my house and there were a couple of things that they mentioned and as to the reasons why they were there and I did want to talk about that in the context of what's happening at the council. So one of the things was that I didn't support racial justice but I did support sending the... There was a proposal that we look at police oversight bodies for our police department which currently the oversight is the police chief is the one who makes disciplinary decisions for police officers and that's not an uncommon model. But there are other models out there and we wanted to look at different options. And so that is something that is currently in the Charter Change Committee that I have been working on is to kind of look at the different models that are out there. And weigh them against our community values and what we're trying to accomplish with different oversight methods because you can, of course, you can be dissatisfied with the current oversight method and then no more satisfied with a new method, right? So one option is that the commission could be the ones charged with disciplinary matters but there's pros and cons to each and every option. And so the Charter Change Committee is currently wrestling with that. We were supposed to have a Charter Change Committee meeting tonight but I canceled the meeting because it was brought to my attention that there was kind of a technical Roberts rules issue with the way I had done things and so we're gonna reconvene that meeting next Tuesday. The other thing that was mentioned was my record on reparations. And so I do wanna go at the protest. They were faulting me for my record on reparations but I thought that that was odd because I supported reparations. And I just want to say I've had debates with people about reparations, about whether or not reparations are fair and I really believe that reparations are fair and I think that the challenge is, as Mark had alluded to, how do we distribute reparations? Like who pays? How much? How do we distribute it? Who qualifies? Those are difficult questions but I believe that black people, descendants of slaves have been discriminated against in this country for generations. And while my ancestry came to this country more recently and it's not part of my personal history, slavery is not part of my personal history, I have benefited from the ways in which black people were denied access to wealth. And even though my people were also discriminated against, it was at a very different level and ultimately they were allowed to obtain wealth at the expense of others. And I think we all need to be cognizant of that and that's something that I believe in. And I will continue to work on this and reparations is another topic that is now being worked on in a council committee though not a committee that I serve on. The other issue that's in the Charter Change Committee now is just cause evictions. This particular proposal is recommending a charter change that would make essentially your lease could not terminate. It would kind of be a perpetual tendency where at the end of the lease the landlord does not have the right to terminate the lease or actually the landlord doesn't have the right to terminate the tenancy. I think the lease terminates and I'm unclear as to what happens when the lease terminates but what the Charter Change does is says when a lease terminates, a landlord cannot evict the tenant just on the basis of the lease terminating. And the other thing it says is that the landlord also cannot increase rents by and I forget what word they use but you can't unjustly increase rents but that's not defined whether unjustly is a dollar or $1,000 or 10% or 50% that is not defined in the Charter Change. And I will say I am a landlord I own the duplex next door to me and I am concerned about the idea that when things go wrong either between tenant and landlord or between tenant and tenant which sometimes happens that the tenancy can't be ended. And we have heard testimony in the Charter Change committee about a situation where a female landlord did not feel she could go into her unit and fix it because she was being sexually harassed by a male tenant. And I think that the idea that you have to continue this tenancy until you can prove your just cause is concerning. So I think generally landlords do have reasons that they don't randomly just end tenancies. Landlords want to continue a tenant who's paying rent and taking care of the property and living within the boundaries of their lease. Landlords want to keep those tenants unless they're selling the property or unless they need to move into the property. So if the lease is terminating there is usually a good reason but the idea that you would have to prove that good reason is going to be quite challenging. So those are things that we are wrestling with now in the Charter Change committee. I'll leave it at that. All right. Thanks very much, John. We started the meeting a few minutes late because of some technical hiccups in the beginning. So we're sort of on time with at least the time frames within our schedule. So we have a couple of minutes for some questions now. Folks have them again. If you go to the participants tab at the end of the, at the bottom there's a raise hand button if folks have questions for either of our counselors please raise your hand. All right. I don't see any raised hands but Joan and Chip just personally, I know that tomorrow is the grand opening of the new city hall park. Maybe it could either of you sort of speak to that a little bit at all. I know that there's a lot of big things in the parks world that are going on here in the city over the coming months. I don't know if you want to speak to that, Chip, I'm happy to speak to it. Go ahead. I'm sure we're going to relay the same information. The park is opening. Yay. It's very exciting. It has definitely been a struggle. I think that our parks department deserves like a huge applause and everybody should send Vijay Komai and his team flowers because despite COVID and budget cuts our local parks department stepped in and did a whole lot of planting that they weren't planning on doing to try and keep this project within budget boundaries and new budget boundaries. And so the work they've put in is just amazing. I've heard it called different things. The fountain, the splash pad, the pop jets, whatever it's called, it's all working. I have been able to get a tour of the park and I recommend that everybody go in and take a look. The idea that we were cutting down all the trees, I think that a lot of people who go by or into the park will ask, when are you going to cut all those trees? Because you will find a park that is full of mature trees and a big canopy and plantings and stormwater drainage that is going to really help the city's overall drainage system in that area to help us not be having overflows into Lake Champlain anymore. So it's not just beautiful, but it's environmentally functional. So I look forward to that opening tomorrow and thank you for the reminder, Ben, to share that great news. The only thing I was, and I don't have the schedule in front of me, there are a series of activities scheduled starting at noon tomorrow, running all day Friday and Saturday. So for anyone who's interested, please check the city's website and hopefully you can come to a COVID safe event at the park. It literally, it's beautiful, it looks spectacular. So enjoy it if you can. Great. And you can find the full schedule on Burlington City Arts website.org on their event page. Great. I should also give a shout out to Doreen Craft and the team at City Arts who has also been shepherding this project for I think probably now a decade. This project started under Bob Kess and is finally coming to fruition and it's been a long road and a lot to celebrate. Thank you. I think we have one question here from Andy. Joe, are you able to, okay, Andy, there you are. Looks like you're muted right now, okay. I'm unmuted. There you go. Hi, Joe and hi, Chip. I wondered if you had any comments about the questions that were raised by the two people in public forum from CRZ about the Burton higher ground process and specifically they were talking about the cooperation between asked, they were commenting on the cooperation or lack thereof from Burton with community groups and also specifically about the pedestrian and bike facilities that will be or will not be available for people to cut down on the, what they call the chaos of concert days. You have any comments about that? I apologize, Andy, because I was at another meeting up until I signed on to this and I missed that part and sadly I also missed Mary Ann Samuel's concert. So sorry about that, Mary Ann, I wish I could have been here. We have not, I don't know if Chip knows something but this has been in front of the DRB at this point and it's not something that has been in front of the council in any way that I'm aware of but perhaps you're aware, Chip. No, I would agree. I mean, I think the question was, and I've seen some of this on social media, frustration about the lack of pedestrian and bike access to the proposed new facility. I recall a response from DPW. I'd have to, I don't remember it though, Andy, off the top of my head. I'll see if I can dig it out and if I can find it, I will share it with the steering group. I did my bike down there with my dog attached today and the friend I was riding with noted how nice it will be to ride bikes to the venue. So I don't know what's planned but yeah, it would be nice for us to be able to ride bikes there. My understanding was, thank you for answering that. What I understand from what their criticism was had to do with the fact that for instance, on Home Ave and on Queen City Park Road that there really isn't enough of a sidewalk facility or a bike lane facility to make it actually safe in the context of all these people coming and going for bikers and pedestrians. It's really nice to bike down there now but imagine a sort of post-concert scenario in the dark. And I think that that was the focus of their criticism. And also Laurie Smith had to do, had some words to say about the cooperation from Burton and feeling like the fact that Burton didn't wanna sign a binding agreement with the community groups seemed to be a sticking point. But I'll let you investigate that on your own and I'll let them communicate with you directly. Thanks, Andy. And Jeb and Joan with respect to folks communicating with you. Again, I suspect that they can find you pretty well on the city's website, but is the best way for people to get in touch with you directly or your city email addresses or do you have a better means that you could relate to folks here? City email works well. Okay. And Jeb, you're muted, but I saw you nodding. Is that same for you? Oh, that works. Sorry. Great, yeah, no worries. Okay. I think we're about to. No, yes. I mean, the city website has both our email contact as well as our cell phone. So, give a call or shoot an email. Great. Well, I really appreciate your joining us here at the NPA. I don't see any other questions and I do wanna make sure we're able to move to our candidate forum here. Both of you, thank you very much for your service, not only on the Monday marathon meetings, but also every other day in between. Thank you very much and look forward to having you back at the NPA. Thank you. Thanks, Jeb. Madam, I'm gonna deep promote some of our steering committee so that we have less clutter on the screen here. Yep. I think that that's the right thing to do. And of course, promote our house candidates, Gabrielle Stevens, Tiff Bloomley and Tom Lakata. Thank you very much all of you for your patience as mentioned at the meeting started a few minutes late because of some technical hiccups but wanna give you your due time certainly here. So hopefully you can stick with us for some time. Again, welcome back now to the Ward 5 NPA. I know we have the election coming up here in a couple of weeks, hard to believe, but it'll be here in a couple of weeks time. And why don't we just jump right into some questions? The steering committee here pre-prepared some questions. I think if it's okay with you all, we'll just sort of go in alphabetical order and give each of you an opportunity to respond to the questions in turn. And then we'll, Gabrielle, I know that you're last in the alphabet. So we'll switch things up in order. So, okay. But if you could each start with just sort of a minute or two, just introducing yourself and letting us know sort of when and why you decided to run for this position. Tiff, could we start with you? Thank you very much for being here. You're muted, Tiff, sorry. Yeah, I'm muted. Okay, there you go. Okay. That's right, you have the controls. Well, so thanks for inviting us and for this opportunity. You know, when I was a kid growing up, you know, kind of what you learn in classroom is that the way to change things is through political involvement. And that really, you know, to my mind, because of what we were learning was about running for office. And so it was something that I think I thought about at the time because I was always very engaged in student government, but also protest. And I found a love of teaching and I have worked as an advocate and I've been doing that work for about 20 years. So it was only because of a confluence of things that I was prompted to consider and ultimately run for office. First was the retirement of both of our legislators. Second was a sense that I think that there was a really new political will to have new conversations, bigger conversations about a lot of different issues that I cared deeply about. I felt that I was recognizing an opportunity to affect the process by which we make decisions as well as advancing policies that affirm human dignity and opportunity. And I think I recognized after having conversations with some friends that my role wouldn't be about knowing everything because I definitely don't, but it's about being curious and asking questions and making a deliberate effort to solicit input and integrate new people and voices into the work that's done in Montpelier. So my, and I, and finally a sense that my experience in working across a raft of state agencies, across sectors with service providers in a lot of different fields and with Vermonters who've really struggled could be helpful now. Great, thanks very much, Tiff. Sure. Tom Lakata, thank you very much for joining us. If you're able to unmute yourself and introduce yourself and let us know sort of when and why you decided to run for this position. Okay, can you hear me? Yeah, we can, thank you very much. Okay, great. So my name is Tom Lakata. I've been in Burlington for just about 25 years now and I've always enjoyed getting involved in the community. When my kids were very young, I coached baseball, I ran the Cub Scouts, I organized black parties and we hosted fresh air fun children and we hosted overseas kids as student exchange with our high school student exchange program. So I always enjoyed getting involved in the community and I decided to jump into politics because I think that Vermont isn't going in the right direction. The economy is stagnant. We're seeing population decline and we actually have more deaths than birth in the state. So there's something that's going on and I think we need more balance in Montpelier. Thanks very much, Tom. Gabrielle Stevens, thank you for being here this evening. Could you introduce yourself please? Sure, thanks so much for hosting this. My name is Gabrielle Stevens. I clearly live in the south end. I have a three year old who I cannot wait to be out of the diapers and I have a 10 year old at Champlain Elementary. I apologize for everyone who's heard this story too many times but I also have two aging parents and so I think as many of us are struggling with how much there is to juggle these days in the time of COVID, but just in the time of life, I am very aware of our challenges if it's healthcare or childcare and to what Tiff was saying, two years ago, if someone said, we really need to support our childcare workers. Now when you say, oh childcare, people say yes and same with the people who are working at market 32 or price chopper or whatever you wish to call it. I feel like now we're at this place where perhaps we're willing to look at the challenges that we have been punting and I agree with Tom that we've been punting for a while. I think that the question is though, where to from here? So I am running because I do not think that scarcity is a helpful place to come from. The reality is we have so much wealth and so much richness and so much integrity and intelligence and strength in this state and the question is, how do we think a little differently? How do we break the silos down to say, hmm, we need more livable wage jobs. We also wanna save energy, we wanna save money. How do we connect these dots and develop a longer term game plan that is really one that focuses on Vermont strengths. And for me, having listened to constituents and I'll start with the fact that constituents when they connect, they will inform me and I will listen to you and thank you when you do reach out. Although many of us are too busy to actually reach out but what I've heard from constituents thus far is people care about affordability, they care about justice, they care about criminal justice, they care about equity and they care about climate change and they care about a future that we can all embrace and there is plenty of plenty. The question is, how do we make it more equitably shared and how do we make sure that is a sustainable process and a sustainable plan from here moving forward. So the reason why I'm running is I need that. I need that for my girls. I need that for our neighbors and our community and for fellow Vermonters and we all need that. Thanks, Gabrielle. And if you don't mind, I think we'll stick with you now your comment with respect to listening to your constituents is the next way into this next question. The Chittenden 6-5 district encompasses some of the more diverse neighborhoods in Burlington and by that count, I suspect some of the more diverse neighborhoods in the state. And so if you could, if elected as a representative, what steps will you take to ensure that you're representing all of your constituents' viewpoints, particularly those of our neighbors of color and members of historically underrepresented communities? Well, I'll start with, thank you, Tiff. It's been really wonderful post-primary to be able to coordinate more as we run a little bit more as a team. We did send out a postcard with multi-languages and that was Tiff's effort. But I think the real question is, how do you meet people who are either new Americans or part of the BIPOC community? How do you go to those communities as opposed to expecting them to show up at the NPA 5 or NPA 6 or city council meeting? As chair of Burlington Electric Commission, one of the things that I've been really proud about is that they actually go to some of the, well, this was pre-COVID, the customer service team would actually go to some of the old North End community centers where they knew multiple new Americans were meeting on a regular basis to explain what the energy efficiency opportunities were for people living in Burlington. So I think part of it is making an additional effort to go to where our constituents are at instead of assuming that they'll come to us. I also think that part of it is certainly lingual. I have to say it was pretty shocking. This is my first campaign that I've ever run. It was pretty shocking to realize that every bit of our democratic system is unhelpful for those with less. If you are renting, if you live in an apartment, an apartment building, 30 units in one, it's very hard for me as a person to go and drop my lip in your mailbox. I cannot find 40 different units in one apartment building because there's one door and I can't get in. And there are just so many pieces there or the number of times I would call people who I knew were parents of my 10-year-old, parents of my 10-year-old friends at Champlain Elementary School, I would call them and all of a sudden the two-minute phone call that we're supposed to make became a 40-minute phone call because I need to speak slower and I need to listen more. And I think if we really wanna have a robust dynamic democracy, we need to build that time in and we need to build that into how we structure our communications and how we structure our outreach. Ms. Gabrielle, Tom, making our way back in your direction, can you respond to that question? You repeat the question. Sure, as a representative, if elected, what steps would you take to ensure you're listening to all of your constituents' viewpoints? We heard from Mark Hughes and the Racial Justice Alliance earlier, so I asked all just, all viewpoints, but particularly those of our neighbors of color and people from historically underrepresented communities. Yeah, I was listening to Gabrielle and she was talking about them and the third person using they. I find the question kind of repulsive. I see people as individuals. People are diverse in all kinds of way, color, height, intelligence, interests. So I don't look at people as the question intimates. Okay, thank you, Tom. Tiff, are you able to respond to the question? Sure, yeah. I think that this kind of gets right at my highest priority and one of the strengths that I really bring is that we're all of us as human beings prone to falling back on soliciting the input of people that we know. People in our immediate circle and the pace in the schedule at the state house, I think only exacerbates that tendency and I have seen it over and over again. So good policy is a product of good process and good process hinges upon the involvement of different perspectives. And my operating assumption is I only know this piece of the elephant. So in order to understand, to see the elephant, I need these other perspectives and I can't assume that people are just gonna come to me. When I was a boss, people didn't just, they didn't always come to me with things that they were concerned about that they didn't maybe disagreed with me about. I had to solicit that input. You have to reach out and you have to do it constantly in lots of different ways. COVID has made outreach during this whole campaign really, really hard and we've tried different ways to engage people virtually and we continue them monthly Zoom cafes on issues that are identified by constituents. Tiny polls that are circulated through email and front porch forums, phone calls, translating campaign materials or issue materials, attending NPA meetings, regular virtual or in-person opportunities to meet, scheduled at different times of the day and finally bringing, not just being a conduit for other people's voices but bringing those voices to the state house. We do Zoom now really well. So we can, we don't have to ask people to take off half of a day to come to the state house to offer their testimony. We can schedule our meetings in the evening or we can bring people in through Zoom to make it work for people who are working and can't leave to do something like that. Thank you, Tiff. Yep. Tom, in your introductory statement, you talked about Vermont's population decline and following up on that question, can you speak to what ideas you would propose to create more jobs, more livable wage work in Burlington as well as in Vermont? I would say, particularly for young people. Oh, sure. I think we need to decentralize government that would go a long way in giving local communities and counties more power over their ability to control their business climate. And so I would like to give more power to the city's towns and counties and kind of a depower Montpelier. I think that's a large part of the problem with Vermont over these many decades is the high amount of regulations and mandates as well as the taxes. So that would go a long way in bringing jobs and vibrancy and kind of a rebuilding of Vermont's civil society. Civil society is defined between that space between the individual and government. That space is shrinking as Montpelier's power grows and that's a large part of the problem. Thanks, Tom. Tiff, do you recall the question or? Yeah. Okay, sure. You know, this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I've spent 17 years partnering with employers and state agencies to try to improve employment prospects for Vermonters. And in a state this small, I don't quite understand how it is true but our workforce development system and priorities and kind of economic development strategies are siloed and unaligned. And this is a, you know, you ask a big question and but I'll say we can improve employment prospects for young Vermonters and, you know with at least four strategies. One, promoting career exposure. Most of the programs that when I started my job at Vermont Works for Women, most of the kind of career awareness and exploration opportunities that existed in the state have died. They, because they were defunded lost mostly because they were unfunded. And there is no strategy for helping expose young people, statewide strategy for exposing young people to a variety of careers. Careers they don't even know about because nobody in their family does them. We need to increase the college matriculation rate for Vermont high school students. We've got the lowest, we have the high, one of the nation's highest high school graduation rates and we have one of the nation's lowest college matriculation rates. We're the lowest in New England and significant lower than the national average. A skilled workforce attracts employers. So that's an economic development strategy. And there are a lot of things that would go into that but I'll just mention two other strategies. We got to, we have to make a concerted effort to recruit to more women and people of color to nontraditional fields fields in which they're underrepresented but in which there are major projected labor shortages in skilled jobs, in construction, manufacturing, HVAC solar installation. And it has to be concerted. You can't just expect it to happen on its own. And thus far the state has not made that a strategy but you can bet that if we've only got 10%, only 10% of engineers are women we're missing out on talent. Finally, or the long-term, I think we need a statewide strategy for building a green jobs infrastructure. And Gabrielle speaks to this. We need to invest in electric transportation and the infrastructure that needs to support it. There are reclamation jobs that pay well. We need to clean Lake Champlain solar installation. This has a potential, as Gabrielle has actually pointed out in a lot of different debates of saving the state a billion dollars that we send out of state to buy fossil fuels. These are just four strategies but I think it is one of the most important things we need to address developing a statewide strategy that's ambitious and recognizes how we are squandering talent in this state. Thanks, Tiff. Gabrielle, are you able to answer the question about any ideas you have to create more livable wage work in Burlington and Vermont, particularly for younger people? Sure. So having spent five years working in the state house when I was executive director of Renewable Energy Vermont which is a nonprofit organization but it was a trade association representing all of the renewable energy businesses here in Vermont. Not only do I have a really good sense of what the budget process is here in Vermont which is it's not long-term thinking to what Tiff was saying. It is a year by year approach and basically it's we have this much money now let's divvy it up. That is not a strategy for anybody who's developed their own home family budget. That's not a strategy. Vermont is what 650,000 people. We need to step back. We need to look at what our strengths are. We need to look at where we have entrepreneurial spirit if it's in sustainable farming, if it's in clean tech, if it's in green energy and or ecotourism when COVID lifts. These are the areas that we need to prioritize. We're not gonna be able to do everything but the question is who are we and where can we grow? And from there to what Tiff was saying we do need to break down our silos. Having led Renewable Energy Vermont and I've been working in the clean energy sustainable energy field for 12 years to what Tiff was saying it's actually $1.5 billion a year. We send out a state on fossil fuels on transportation and heating and the I think the starting salary if you Google clean energy industry sorry Vermont Clean Energy Industry Report there've been six. I was at the table when we first started off the first year in like 2013 and we've done several since then you can see that clean energy jobs are currently about 6% of the Vermont economic job sector. These are jobs that you cannot export you cannot send them out of state even when you start you're at like $14 an hour and then you give two, three years of experience and you're over $20 an hour. This is with a one or two year degree which connects back to the questions about what's going on with our state college system what's going on with our community our community college education programs. So there are opportunities to look at some of our current challenges if it's climate, if it's how much money people are spending particularly the low and the moderate income, you know, Vermonters how much money they're spending on energy if we can figure out how to connect the dots how to take that $1.5 billion instead of just spending at a state every month, every year if we can figure out how to reinvest that here train Vermonters in jobs that help Vermonters then we have a win on climate a win in comfort, a win in terms of our buildings in terms of asthma for our children and a win in terms of jobs as well as bringing dollars back to Vermont. So those are the areas that's just one area but also in terms of like criminal justice reform we spend so much money and this is actually TIFF's forte we spend so much money keeping people in jail who haven't done anything wrong except they couldn't show up for their parole appointment. There are so many ways to rethink and reprioritize what we care about and that is what coronavirus and all of the BIPOC and social injustice rallies that we've been seeing for the last several months are highlighting that we have these cracks in our society and we can make a change if we so choose to. Thanks Gabrielle. So our steering committee prepared five questions. We've made it through three. If we'll see if we I think we can keep answers to the last two here to under a minute or so maybe we can actually get to all five and so maybe it's possible, I'll try my best. So Gabrielle sticking with you here and that's a good segue here into this question. Even though Burlington and Vermont relative to the nation have managed COVID-19 pretty well it's obviously impacted all of our lives in so many ways including here we are in a virtual Zoom meetings. If you could name sort of one lesson that you think we've learned through this pandemic that can have more long lasting impacts in future policymaking, what do you think that may be? I can't just say one, but there is one here which is that we're in this together. I mean, that's why I've worked in energy and environmental issues for 20 years. We can pretend that we're in our silos and what goes on over there or three streets over another state or another country we can pretend but that's not true. We're all in one globe, we're all in one country we're all in one state and we're all here in the south end. That is one piece. The other piece that I would say is we know that when the going gets tough we know who's going to be hurt the most and it's the people who have the least buffer. It's the people who have the least amount of savings. It's the people who have the lowest opportunity for good education, for quality healthcare, for an opportunity at a leg up in life. Those are the folks, if you really look at who is really struggling in COVID? It's not me, it's not my husband. I mean, yes, it's a struggle, it's a juggle. Daycare, homeschooling, working full-time, running a campaign. It is nothing compared to so many others. And if we consider ourselves to be human and humane then we need to care about other people. And I really truly think and I hope that that is something that we can remember when COVID lefts that we're in this together and care for one another. Thanks Gabrielle. Tom, is there one lesson that you think we've learned in particular that you've learned in particular over the last few months here that could have more long lasting future policy making impacts? Yeah, but before I answer that I just want to comment on some of the other answers to the questions regarding the economy and bringing jobs. Gabrielle mentioned that Tiff and her sent out a postcard together and they're running as a team, they're both Democrats and I'm running as an independent. And if you listen to their answers, particularly Tiff, if you think that, and I'm trying to draw a contrast here between candidates, if you think that you need more government, bigger government, bigger Montpelier, if Montpelier is not big enough, you should not vote for me. If you think that there's too much power, too much centralization, too much taxes, too much regulation in Montpelier, you might want to consider voting for me. In terms of the pandemic, I think we learned that we could use technology better. We're zooming right now. We're showing that we're more resilient and we're developing patients. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Tiff, any one lesson you're able to identify? I know there may be many. I had so many lessons. And I think that in addition to what others have said, I think we've redefined who is essential to our economy. And now we have to confront the fact that a significant portion of folks who are essential workers don't make a livable wage. They don't get benefits. How are we gonna square this? I think that calling people essential workers calls on us to confront that reality in ways that we have not been willing to before. I would also say that we were able to reduce the prison population by 300 people to reduce health risks. Well, what that means, well, and those people were released to community supervision, which was done virtually. What that means is that community supervision is a viable alternative to incarceration. And we must resist the temptation to build another prison in this state. I'll limit it to that. All right, thank you very much, Tiff. Joe, I know that we weren't necessarily gonna open it up to questions from the audience, but I did happen to see that Bill Pio's here and had his hand raised and Bill, you put it down. I don't know if you still wanted to say anything, but I figured if we made an exception for anyone, it may be you, Bill, who was in the legislature previously and on the city council before. And so I can't pass up on the opportunity to, sorry to surprise the candidates here, but pass up on the opportunity for you to make a comment or question. Now, I got a question about the future of electric cars and the affordability to the average person, if you will. And the other question is with electric cars, how are we going, how do you think we have to be paying into the transportation fund with the electric cars? Thank you. Thanks, Bill. If it's okay with the candidates, why don't we, perhaps we can make that the last question, actually, for timing purposes. Tom, are you able to speak to Bill's question there first? I mean, I guess if you're not, I assume he's implying that there's no gas tax anymore, so we can't get that revenue from the gas tax. So I mean, one option would be mileage. You could tax by how many miles you put on your car. Thanks, Tom. Tiff, do you have, and we'll come around one more time after this to give you an opportunity to make a closing statement, so to speak. Tiff, do you have a response to Bill's question on electric cars? No, I mean, this isn't my area of expertise and I think that the state could do more, read with regional partners, other states, to try to negotiate with manufacturers to bring down the price of electric cars. It, you know, we do that for other things, we could do that as it relates to prescription drugs as well to drive down healthcare costs. I think that the individual, the cost of cars to individuals, and that's a, I think that the cost is going to go down. There have been incentives. If we have a new administration in November, I think that those incentives will probably come back. And I think that we could prioritize certain professions that have to travel a lot to perhaps serve our elders, to subsidize the cost of those cars for people who are doing this kind of essential work. I don't know, I don't know the particulars well enough to have an actual plan, but I think that we should not shy away from electrification of our transportation because of high costs now, because I think it's part of our future. Thanks, Tiff. Gabrielle. So thanks for this question. I'll start off with, first of all, if we simply transition from the way we do life right now, which is everyone has a car that then just sits to everyone has an electric car, that is not necessarily going to get us to our climate goals. We do need to pair our shift to electrification in transportation with denser development, with more park and rides, with more shared driving. And there are actually some great ideas to this. If you Google energy action network, it's a Vermont nonprofit. You can actually find a little bit about some really interesting ideas about how to combine school buses with public transit with transit through our local council and aging entities so that instead of having a school bus sit idle for eight hours a day, it's used for other purposes. And then you also shift it over to electrification. So we have to think not just electrification of our vehicles, which is part of it, but also broader. I'd also say, it's the same old story in the energy world, pay upfront now or pay a lot every month. Right now I'm working on a project in Massachusetts where we found a credit union that over 10 years, we work with low and moderate income Western mass homeowners who basically, whether it's their homes, put up solar and put in heat pumps, they pay the same every month that they did before this project. And at the end of the 10 years, they own everything outright and they don't have to pay any of those energy costs. So they're not stuck in the volatility of oil or propane or whatever natural gas might do in the next 10 years. And those are some of the ways that we need to think about electric vehicles because ultimately, yes, right now, Bill, you're right. Electric vehicles are more costly than your traditional what they're called ICE, internal combustion engine vehicles. However, if you look at what it costs to actually fill them up on your electricity bill compared to going to Cumberland farms, it's significantly less. So again, Burlington Electric Commission, a lot of the other local utilities are looking for, how can we incentivize this transition to electric vehicles? How can we prioritize greater incentives for low to moderate income Vermonters? But ultimately, it's a two-pronged approach. One is market uptake. One is because the more people you have buying something, the more you have demand, and then you start to see the price come down. Another piece is California typically leads a lot of our climate-driven goals. And so the more California pushes on transportation and clean energy transportation, the more we'll see those prices come down. And then third piece is really looking at batteries and lithium ion batteries as compared to other types of batteries and what those costs are. So we're heading their bill, we're not there yet, but we need to get there and it needs to be an all tools in the toolbox. It can't just be EVs, electric vehicles. It needs to be many other pieces, but we will get there. Thank you all for indulging my, taking that a little bit off the rails and entertaining Bill's question. Not only did I think it important because he previously served in the legislature as well as the city council, as well as on the steering committee. But Bill, I hope you don't mind me mentioning this because you allowed for the local news to do a story last year on how old you were then. And if I'm not mistaken, you celebrated your 90th birthday a couple of days ago. So happy birthday, Bill. I don't know if Bill can hear me still or not. Happy birthday. Thanks guys, thanks guys. Appreciate your good work, thank you. Thank you. So we'll take just, we're running way behind now. So thank you very much all for your patience. I think that we'll just take a minute now if you all could give us all a closing statement as well as including if folks want to get in touch with you at some point between now election day, how they could do that. And we'll start with reverse order of how we introduce people. So we'll start with Gabrielle and make our way back to Tiff. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I am grateful to live in this community. And as I've made hundreds of phone calls over the last four months, I'm even more grateful to live here hearing about what you care about. I hope you'll consider voting for me. I'm definitely deeply rooted here with my kids. I also have a long-term game plan. I've worked in a low income women's health clinic. I've taught violin in underserved urban public schools. I've worked on water quality issues. For the last 12 years, I've focused on energy being chair of the Burlington Electric Commission for about six years. I have five years in the state house having worked on clean energy bills. And ultimately I really do understand how we get good bills to pass that improve people's lives. I am not looking for the silver shot. I'm looking for how we can combine multiple challenges to find multiple wins, just like the example I gave in terms of climate change. And I hope you'll consider voting for me. Please take a look at my website. You can get a sense of so many of the areas in which I care and also reach out to me. It's www.stevensforvt.com. Thank you. Thanks Gabrielle. Tom, a closing statement and a way that folks might be able to get in touch with you. Oh, sure. My website is LakotaForHouse.com, LakotaForHouse.com. I did a little thought experiment the last couple of days. I listened to some of the, about a dozen of the incumbents interviews on CCTV, the channel 17 interviews, very similar to what we're doing now. And I was astonished how all the talking points were all the same. Generally it was all regurgitated. And very much so Tiff and Gabrielle sounded like the other dozen I've listened to the last couple of days that they generally are in the same party. So if you, if the viewers, if the voters want to continue to, if you think Montpelier is running fine and you want bigger government and higher taxes, Gabrielle and Tiff both said that they did not think we had a Vermont tax rates went out too high. They answered that question on Vermont Digger. So if you think things are going fine then you should vote for the two of them. And if you think that you might need some balance in Montpelier and maybe a little more different thought process, you might want to vote for me. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Tiff, brief closing statement and a way that people could get in touch with you. Sure. So I came, moved to Vermont with my partner about 24 years ago and we followed my sister who had moved up here to open a bookstore. And we moved here because we, we love the physical beauty of this place. We sense that we could find community and we also sense that this is a place where we could raise a family, a two-mom family. And our children will feel safe and supported and embraced by the adults and other kids in their lives. And that's been true. That has been their experience. And I feel incredibly lucky that we came here. I also know that the experience of living in Vermont has been particularly hard for lots of people. And that is what I have spent these 24 years trying to work on. You know, I am at heart a teacher. And as a teacher, you try to help students ask, learn to ask good questions and question assumptions and look at things from a variety of perspectives. And the role of a legislator, I think is very much the same. It's to be curious, to ask questions, listen carefully and solicit the input of people around your neighbors, field experts and people with lived experience to identify and highlight strategies that are already underway so that we don't reinvent the wheel or duplicate services and help forge the necessary coalitions in order to advance change. That's the way that I have approached my work over the course of my career. And it's what I would intend to do in work at the State House. I'm not a proponent of big government. I'm a proponent of smart government. I do feel government plays an important role. And I think COVID made that very clear. And I think that there are a lot of ways in which there are people in our community who are doing really innovative things that could really shift our reliance on government to the private sector or the nonprofit sector. So at any rate, I just wanted to clear that up because that's what Tom has said is a very kind of broad rush description of who I am and what I stand for. So at any rate, thanks for having us. Well, thanks to all of you for being here and thank you for your patience. So we've gone way over obviously but I thought this was a good discussion. Thank you as well for everyone who attended this evening. And of course, we've been streaming the meeting on YouTube as well and it's been recorded and we will promote it that way if people want to watch this meeting afterwards. I know there's a couple of other things on TV tonight. So maybe people tuned into that instead of this. But we'll certainly get this out there and thank you very much for running for this and this position. And we hope that we'll see you back here at the Ward 5 NPA. For those still tuning in, we hope to see you again. Again, we meet the third Thursday of every month so we'll be back here again the third Thursday in November which is November 19th. And if you have any ideas for our agenda or wanted to take part either in November or later meeting please let us on the steering committee know. Thanks very much all of you. Thank you. Thank you.