 Good evening folks. We're at time so we are going to get going. We've got a lot to talk about this evening so we're going to try to be diligent about keeping to our time schedule this evening. But so the first thing I'd like to introduce myself, I'm Jeff Kompstock, a member of the Four and Seven Steering Committee and the last several meetings we've actually not done introductions, but because we've got a lot of new faces this evening we are actually going to go around and do introductions so that we can get better acquainted with each other. And so the basic ground rules that we try to manage at our NPA meetings are that we listen to the person who's speaking. We respect the agenda and the process, share your opinion politely and treat one another respectfully. And so with that, Birgit is going to manage the microphone for us and we'll go around and please introduce yourselves and then we'll get going. Matt Hurlpert, I am Ward 7 and a member of the Steering Committee. Jeff Clark, Ward 4 and Steering 20 and I'll be timekeeping tonight. So yell into that mic as much as you can. Hi, I'm Lee Morrigan, pronouns are they, them, I'm a Steering Committee member. I'm Frank Bosek and I'm from Ward 4. Kendra Sowers, North District School Commissioner. Monica Ivancic, Ward 7 School Commissioner. I'm Annie Lawson, I'm in Ward 4. I'm Amy Malnowski, she, her and I'm in Ward 1. I'm Tyler Pastorek, he or they and I'm in Ward 8. Cliff Cooper, Ward 4. Ellen Cooper, Ward 4. David Kirk, Ward 7. Sarah Carpenter, City Councilor, Ward 4. Okay, I guess we are going to get going and we also try to carve out a few extra. Okay, Jeff, Jeff, can you manage the folks on Zoom please? We'll go next. Bob Hooper. Bob Hooper. Ward 4, state rep. Olivia Taylor, Ward 7. Steering Committee member. Steve Hamlin, please. Steve Hamlin, Ward 7. We have Sam and Adam, please. Adam, if you could introduce yourself and the ward you're in please. We'll go to Margaret. Margaret. Margaret Royal. Ward 5. I, Sylvia, if you could introduce yourself. I, Sylvia. Tell Sylvia. Can you hear me now? Your ward, please. Steve Hamlin, Ward 7. We have Sam and Adam, please. Adam, if you could introduce yourself and the ward you're in please. We'll go to Margaret. Your ward, please. Ward 7. Sylvia. Thank you. Adam, we'll try you again. It's got problems with the mute button apparently. Hi, everybody. Me, the grant Ward 3. And I also currently serve in the police commission. Thank you. Hi, I'm Mark Barlow. North District City Councilor. Word for. All right. I think we made it through the roster. Thank you. Sure. So, Kendra, if you want to come up and get comfortable here at their presenters table. Oh, Monica. Yep. So are there any announcements that folks would like to make before we get started with the school board presentation? Any, it looks like you have a question. We don't actually have a formal public comment period here. We've our announcement community announcement has kind of doubled. Is that if there's something in particular you would like to add. Please. Yes, it would be. Yes. Okay. I think we are ready and with that, so. One sec. Jeff looks like Sylvia has something. Okay. Thanks, Olivia. Ready. Sylvia, go ahead please. Yeah. I put something in the front porch forum this afternoon. It has to do with pesticides and integrated past management and schools. It would be. I would. Could be related to the school budget. And I, it would be interesting to know if anybody. Talking about the budget knows about the. Integrated pest management plans at schools. I'll leave it at that. Thank you. One new addition. And then I'll keep the microphone. Please and your work. Hi, my name is Scott Rogers, a community development manager with the. Thank you. Okay. So, uh, yeah, just to, uh, we've got kind of a dual format, uh, this evening. So for this part, we've got kind of this. Sort of this standard moderator and I'm going to turn this part of the presentation over to you and. Set you off on your own. So take it. All right. Thank you, Kendra. Uh, my name is Monica Ivanchich again, and I'm the ward seven, um, school commissioner. I'm also co-chair of the diversity, equity and inclusion committee on the school board. Um, so as many of you might know or might not, uh, the school board approved the, uh, fiscal year 24 budget on January 17th. So just last week. And for the second time, uh, for the second year under the leadership of, uh, Tom Flanagan, we are using it using an equitable budget and staffing model. Um, and this equitable budget and staffing model doesn't have to do with an increased budget or decreased budget. It just has to do with how the pie is cut. So the pie is cut in a little bit differently. So more resources go to students who need them most. Um, to do this, we have what we call the rise allocation and rise stands for recognizing injustice and seeking equity. Um, and to figure out, uh, so, uh, there's about 1.5 million dollars that are allocated for this allocation. And we use a weighted student formula. Um, and the funds go to schools in that have more needs. And you'll see on the second page of the one pager, uh, we do list the different schools and how much each school gets. Um, to figure out how much each school gets, each school forms an advisory group and the advisory group is formed of school leaders, some teachers and some parents. Um, and then they plan how to spend the school's rise allocation. Um, so you have the money amounts per school here, but you also have listed for the elementary versus middle versus high school how these schools decided to spend this money. Um, we also, our FY24 budget had some guiding principles. Um, we wanted to be, uh, responsible, responsive to staff, staffing changes, um, sorry, to enrollment changes. So we've had a steady decline in enrollment, particularly at elementary schools over the last 10 years or so. And so we want staffing changes to reflect this. Um, we are definitely limiting budget growth due to increases in wages, which were about 6% benefits. Unfortunately, health insurance goes up an astronomical amount every single year, 12%. Um, and then there's the BHSBTC costs. Uh, the other thing is that we want to ensure funding to meet the strategic plan objectives. Um, we recently developed a robust strategic plan for the next five years, runs from 22 through 27. Um, and there's five, uh, pillars to this plan. So, um, you can find this information on the district website. Um, but essentially we involved a lot of community members in developing the strategic plan. So, um, we want to, also on top of that, we want to continue to provide robust programmatic offerings and, uh, consider multi-year impact of changes and minimize annual disruptions. So not like budget year to year, but look ahead and see what decisions we make now would affect our schools, you know, within the, within five years. Um, I will turn it over to Kendra, who will talk a little bit more about the numbers. Okay, good. Um, so again, I'm Kendra. I'm your North District School Commissioner. I'm also the co-chair of the Finance and Facilities Committee. So education spending and developing a tax rate, as we know, is kind of complicated. So I just wanted to start with a little, um, overview of kind of the four variables that make up our education tax rate because the school budget is one of those variables. And I'm going to go deeper into our school budget and what that looks like, but I also want you guys to understand what the other variables are because it's important to know how we came up with what we're looking at as the, um, tax rate of 4% that will impact your taxes. And I just want you to understand the difference between school spending and how that is part of the formula and how that, um, leads to a 4% tax increase. So there's four variables that go and make up, um, the education tax rate. So the first variable is the education spending. That is the one that your school board controls. It's how much, um, we spend here in the district. I will go in through that a little bit more, but for this year, we have a 6.5% increase of our school budget at the district level. The second variable is the equalized pupils. So that is a weighted number of pupils that takes into account things like poverty in English language learners. So it might be that one student is counted as, like, 2.5 if they are English language and poverty. So we have in our district, um, 3,702 weighted students. And that's a decline from last year. Monica mentioned we have enrollment is, is decreasing and it's been a trend for a few years. And from last year to this year, we lost 3.5%. And what that means is we just, we get less money from the state education fund for every student that we lose. So that is a downward pressure on our taxes. Another variable, the third variable, is the homestead dollar yield. And that is, that's a state variable that reflects the amount in the state education fund. So we have a very healthy state education fund, which is wonderful, and that will help to decrease our taxes. And then the last variable is the common level of appraisal, and that's a measure of our property values for each community. And so last year we were at like a hundred or just over a hundred percent. And this year we are down to 95.33%, means our home values of what we're, we're paying is a little bit, um, they're worth a little bit more than what we're paying in taxes. So every year that number goes, usually goes down a little bit. That's an 8.7% decrease from last year. That's a significant jump down. It is in alignment with other districts and areas in this, because we did look, because we were surprised at that number. And that does increase our taxes. So you can kind of see how these variables all come together and create our 4% tax rate. I just wanted to add that last year, remember our properties got appraised. So a year ago for our budget, that CLA increased by a large amount. Yeah, it was over a hundred percent. So those are the variables for the tax rates, to come up with the 4% tax rate, which you're going to see on this one page flyer. Okay, because that's under the tax impact estimates, which I know is what people really want to see, like what am I going to see on my tax bill? Those are the variables that go into it. I do want to point out that the Equalized Pupil Count, we are hoping for next year, because we worked really hard at passing student weighting, which brings more. They hadn't changed the formula in over 20 years, so that should bring more money for Burlington, because we serve a lot of students who have high needs. We serve a lot of English language learners, and we have a lot of students who live in poverty. So those numbers should change next year in our favor. Okay, so that's a lot to go through, but I just wanted you to have a little bit of a picture of how the whole taxes worked on your education tax bill. So a little bit more into our budget, and how we came to our budget. As Monica said, there were some pressures that we knew right away. Wages were up 6%. The benefits are up 12%. That's health insurance. It's statewide. We can't do anything about that. The BHSBTC borrowing is in this budget. That's super important to know. So when we talk about your 4% tax increase, that includes the borrowing for this year for BHSBTC. So I just wanted to let everyone know that that's not an additional amount on top of your taxes this year. We also have some federal COVID funds that are going away. So we entered this budget season knowing that we had those kind of financial challenges to overcome. And the school district and the superintendent really took a deep dive into a lot of the programs. They took a look at the trends in declining enrollment. They looked at staffing. They looked at resources. They looked at programs at each school. We had the help of an independent firm because we really wanted to look at the data for all of our schools. It's super important. And really what the net result of that was was a net reduction of 6.8 staff. So because our enrollment is going down, there was, we believed and the district believed, a necessity to have our staff in better alignment with the declining enrollment. So that happened this year. And we also looked at our BHS, I'm sorry, our BTC tuition. So our tech center serves a majority, just over half our Burlington students, but we have sending schools that send students to BTC. And that tuition has, we raised it 18% this year, which is a lot. But we do believe that our sending schools should pay for some of the rental costs of the programs and having it not be shouldered by all of Burlingtonians. So that is also included in this budget. So we were trying to look at things that we could to kind of reduce some of the tax burdens on Burlingtonians this year. So with that in mind, our budget, as I mentioned, increased by 6.57% this year, from the previous year. And let's see, of the total amount, if you pick up your little sheet now, I hope this makes a little more sense because this is what I'm in this long-winded way of looking at our budget at a glance. So our total, the total budget is $98.2 million. That's this year. That's FY23. That's right. For next year. This is for next year. Coming up. And we have increases of health insurance, wages. You can see the debt services, utilities. And then the BTC borrowing is all part of that. So that all leads to a 6% increase in our budget. So the total is 104.1. Yep. So the total of their school spending, that includes federal and state grants, which has not been listed on here. The federal and state grants are about $6 million. So you're kind of wondering why those numbers don't add up. It's because federal and state grants are added into that number. So you look at the 6% and that's our budget increase. And then when you take the four variables that I talked about in the beginning of the presentation, you come out with a second chart, which is your tax impact estimates. So using the four variables, your projected increase is 4.03%. If you are an income sensitized taxpayer, we gave an example of somebody who makes $50,000. There's quite a few people in Burlington who are income sensitized. You'll see a .07% increase and your taxes will go up by about a dollar. I believe that's like 85% of our population. It's a big, I don't know the population, but it's a large, it's a big percentage of Burlington. 70%. Yeah, it's a lot. Burlington are these two words? Burlington. Yeah. And so that's helpful to look at. We do have additional tax charts that we have on our website that you can look at if you are looking to see where your income falls and how much projected tax that you would pay. So I hope that is a bit clearer. So our ballot, of course the vote is on March 7th. You will be getting early ballots and I do hope that we can ask for your yes vote for the school budget coming up. And just as a reminder of the 4.03%, 2.75% of that is related to the borrowing for BHS, BTC. So we really tried to hold the line on taxes as much as we could while still providing the students with the resources they needed and taking care of our teachers. So with that, I'm sure you guys have lots of questions or maybe not, but we wanted to give plenty of time for questions to you all. David. David, do you need a microphone? Sorry. I understand you have $2.1 million going to BTCBHS for the coming year. That's in our budget. I'm a little confused. Is that you're borrowing it out of the 165? Yes. So it's almost like your mortgage. You know how you took, if you took out a $300,000 mortgage, but you're not going to, you're going to pay in monthly an amount. That's the amount we're paying monthly for the amount we're borrowing this year. So it's not that we're taking only $2.2 million out of the bond this year. We're borrowing in a certain amount and the estimated amount that we pay back monthly is, yeah, great question. Okay, I understand. So are we projecting surplus for the fourth year in a row now for our budget on this budget? So we're going to redirect funds again towards BTCBHS. Thank you for that question, too. The surplus is about $2 million. It's about 2% of our budget. It's what we really like to have. We need a little bit of a cushion. 2% in our budget is a good cushion. We do not want to underfund. So yes, we had about 2.1, 2.3 million dollars this year for surplus that is rolled into this budget already. Right. Was it rolled into the budget or was it sent and put aside and voted on to move to BTCBHS like the other surpluses were? This one was rolled into this budget. Okay. So we only still have like $7 million in surplus for BHSBTC from the past years? We still have what we promised. Yeah, what, yes. I don't actually know those specific numbers, but we have already, I believe, used those for BHSBTC. Well, and I think that's over the next several years while the school's being built so that every year we could pour it into... I'm talking about the surpluses from the past years. Right, because the surplus Kendra's talking about is from FY22. I understood that part. Okay, great. Jeff. Can I revisit the income sensitized data? Absolutely. I didn't catch it all the first time around. So when you said that 85%, is that... 70%. I was wrong. Okay, is that of the Burlington population or property... Taxpaying population. Taxpayers, but not necessarily property owners. Property taxpayers. Prop. Okay. Right. Right. Taxpayers. Excuse me. Because who own property? They're not paying the property tax, they're paying income sensitized taxes. Okay, yeah, I was just trying to figure out whether we're actually talking about property taxpayers or all of the taxpayers as part of the population of Burlington. I believe not renters. Not renters. No, no, I understand that part. So if there's two separate ways to pay our taxes, right? Yes. Right? But if your income is on a scale that's a little bit lower, they do have income sensitized ways to pay in order to try to make Burlington more affordable for people who have, I believe that's the reason, who have lower incomes. Yeah, I understand. So they pay less. Thank you. Yeah. Sarah? This is on the same vein and actually... Hold on for a minute. I'm going to actually ask the question of Representative Odie to take her by surprise if you're listening, Carol. There's been discussion that the income sensitivity formula may be need of updated, particularly in communities with high property values. It's a little bit of a black box to figure it out and it's a ratio of property value to income. And I'm just asking Representative Odie, do you think the legislature is going to look at that at all in this next year? Well, I think we should look at it. So I thank you for bringing it up and I'll talk it around. Okay. I just think that's important for a city like Burlington because we haven't caught up with ourselves yet and I actually expect our CLA to drop even more next year. So that's just something we need to think about. Thank you so much, Sarah. Brigitte? I have a question. Can I have the prerogative of the microphone? Okay. I have a quick question. Yes. Has there been a conversation on the board about the nexus of your school budget and Burlington's housing policy? Is our enrollment down because we are just not making children as we used to? Or is it we don't have enough housing, appropriate housing for families to move into Burlington which would increase our tax base? And maybe why could I ask Kendra? I could start and then I'd love some help because I don't really know about birth rates. I don't either. But I will say that I know with our policies on immigration we had seen a declining trend for that for a while now. So that has affected our enrollment. Especially under Trump. Yeah, so that has been down. So for about the past eight years we've seen slightly declining enrollment. And then of course with COVID we couldn't really look at that data and have it be clean data because some people decided to homeschool and pull their kids out. And so the data was really, that was kind of those blip of two years. But we did see from last year where we considered it normal to this year we did see that decline of three and a half percent in our enrollment. And some of it was also high school students. You know, when we went to Macy's people put their kids at Rice or tried to get them into neighboring districts. But somebody could speak more on the housing part of that than I could. Matt? I'd be happy to speak to housing. I'm a real estate broker with 28 years experience. This evening there were nine single family homes for sale in the city of Burlington with a population of 45 to 50,000 people. And three of those nine are $1.2 million in buff. No, there's not enough housing and no, there is no effort by any stretch of the imagination by any part of the city of Burlington or its zoning department even though they attempt to claim to make efforts there's no effort. The effort starts with working with builders and encouraging construction and there's none of that. So in the school board's defense yes, there is a shortage and no, there's no direct solution. In the state and I think Burlington is even part but I'll agree with Matt. We're not producing multi-bedroom housing which would be attractive to families and we have a real dearth of home ownership opportunities which might be more attractive. So I think it's the combination. Our market for better or worse is single bedroom or one bedroom apartments. We have a city full of 22 to 32 year olds and that's who's renting. As a little antidote out here my neighborhood had a couple turnovers. Two of our single family homes which were high priced but they sold interestingly as second homes in a residential neighborhood. So there is another little phenomena going over. Okay, we are time's up for this panel. We still have five minutes. Okay. And if you are looking at us wondering what's the buzz? Why is everyone talking to each other? It's because our moderator is lost and we are trying to get her here. So we apologize to Kendra and colleagues. And to our audience and residents members but that's the buzz and take it away. Any other questions? Please feel free to check out our website. If you want more information about the budget you can go right online. There's a link right off of the district website called budget that you can get any more information that you're looking for and you can always reach out to us as well or any school board member. So thank you guys. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thanks. And if anybody needs a hand out let me know. So what we're going to do is managing this meeting on the fly is because our assigned moderator went to the Champlain College Miller Center on Pine Street. If I may I would sort of hope that the free press reporter would read the fine print on the agenda but... She is a reporter. I'd just say it. So if I can invite our Prop Zero panelists to come up to the presenters table and make yourself comfortable and in the meantime, Birgit is going to act as our stand-in moderator. So thank you. While we're all getting seated Jeff, can you remind folks on the Zoom and the people here where can people actually read these petitions in these ballot measures? Okay, so the interesting experience is today I actually did a Facebook post to remind folks of the link and I tried going to the city council agenda page and that actually didn't work when I posted in Facebook so I went back to the city clerks so if you go to the City of Burlington webpage and you pick on the Clerk Treasurer's Office and then on the sidebar there's an Elections tab so if you click on the Elections tab under the Clerk's Office down at the bottom of that page there's a link to a document that has all of the ballot questions in it and it has the complete... the full version, 18 pages of the ballot questions so it has both the language that will appear on the ballot and the full supplemental language that will be in the voting booth when you... if you go to vote and quite honestly I'm not sure if the Clerk's Office is going to mail this document to everybody that chooses to vote by mail. No. No, okay. Our city councilors are telling us no. Just last night we adopted what's called the short form language that's what you're going to get with your ballot we had a specific discussion about making sure that when you are mailed your ballot you have a clear reference to where you can find it acknowledging that it's not easy to find now so we'll try to follow up with Katherine Shad to make sure that it's clearer and maybe in an easier place on the website because that is something we need. Yeah, but if... so yeah, like I said I started with the city council page that you had worked on from but that document is readily available on the Clerk's page now. Okay, thank you. Councillor Bergman? I can do that Charlie. So just so everybody knows this is a polling place so every polling place has to have the full ballot posted on it as well as like the checklist so they should at when they get ready there's a certain time frame so it's not going to be like now but it will be before the election they will be posting the ballots and also I think the long forms in this building as well so people will have access without having to drag yourselves down to City Hall which is very good. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Madam Moderator. Alright, first of all we have a question from one of our panelists. Well I just want to let you know if you want to see the petition language for the two ballot items that are being covered tonight there are a couple copies on the table back there so if you like want to sneak over and grab one you can definitely do that. Okay, ladies and gentlemen let's start. My name is Bridget Bozek for those of you who do not need to who do not know me. I'm Ward 4 and I'm a member of the Steering Committee with this group of people and I'm going to be your ad hoc moderator. I wish I had done my homework but I'm not better, go ahead. So we have actually we have a great panel is Bill on the Zoom? No, Bill succumbed to the weather so he decided not to travel and apparently hasn't made it on to Zoom yet even though he was invited to do that. Okay, and our other moderator is stuck in a snow bank somewhere. So we have two panels this is going to be the first panel and we're going to talk today on this panel about what is what is called Proposition Zero and Proposition Zero I'll just read you the three lines shall the Burlington City Charter as amended be further amended to grant voters the powers to initiate ballot questions propose enactment and repeal of ordinances by majority vote the substance of which is outlined below and read it for yourselves. We have designed these panels to have four speakers to supporting the measure to not supporting the measure. Bill Koff was supposed to be here today he is unable as you just heard and I would like to go down this panel and starting with you please Farid and introduce yourselves and your affiliation to the petition. Hi everybody thank you for having us here my name is Farid Munarsha I am a resident of Ward 5 in the South End and I am a volunteer with Proposition Zero campaign. Hi I'm Emi Melnowski I'm a resident in Ward 1 and yeah I helped collect signatures. Hi my name is Chip Mason I'm a resident of Ward 5 I served for 10 years on the City Council chair of the Ordinance Committee for 10 of those years which I think is one reason I was asked to come and present my view on Prop Zero I'm not affiliated with anyone other than here as an interested citizen. Thank you. The rules are going to be the following and it's going to apply to both panels we're going to start with each of the members giving a four minute presentation followed by what I call a five minute lightning round I haven't decided what that lightning round is going to be I could ask the question and give each one of you two minutes to respond or which I think is probably what you want to do is ask each other a question for two minutes but let's wing it let's have a good conversation and Farid I would like to ask you to start please. So hoping for a coin toss because to us and from our experience collecting the petition this is a no-brainer like everybody is like very supportive I would say like 95% of the people we spoke to and we had to gather over 2,000 signatures almost like across the board with the exception of former or current officials like elected officials people are in support of this petition it's something that's it's one page long you can read it for yourself there's some physical copies over there we copied like the language from other cities other municipalities charter and this is such a proud tradition of Vermont of having grassroots democracy of like town hall style democracy and grassroots decision making process I would really like to hear about why not and I'm kind of like shocked that we're sending Bill Kehoe and Chip like to be on this panel and I want to know I want to hear what the objections are so I'll give the rest of my time all right well Wendy why don't you go second then sure so I guess the thing that I would say is that the powers that this ballot item proposes exist in every other municipality around Vermont just not in Burlington and so what is that power it's the power to propose amend or repeal ordinances by majority rules and for most of the places that's happening through the long-standing tradition of town meeting day but as Fried mentioned both Burlington and Winooski like we don't have a town meeting day where we gather not a tour I mean we can do this kind of thing right we have the ballot so Winooski in 2015 actually passed this exact same language it went through like the voters passed it it went to the legislature the legislature vetted it and passed it and we are just stealing it from them and we are trying to do the same thing so what I think this is really about is well to say what those three powers are the first one is it enables you to propose things that you want to change about Burlington and I think this is the most exciting part to think about so let's say you have an idea something you want to change about Burlington I don't know what you're dreaming about and you get 5% of voters to sign a petition saying I think that's a good idea too but just Fried mentioned that's about 2,000 voters which is someone who has canvassed a lot of hours like 400 plus hours it is a lot a lot of work so it's not an easy feat so if you do that then it creates a situation where the city council and the mayor need to respond to that petition and they can either choose to pass it yay or they can say no and if they say no instead of it just like dying there which is the current situation things would just die right what it says is it gets to go on the ballot and Burlington gets to have the final say you showed enough of Burlington has interest in this you put in all this work there's enough interest we should get to have the final say so that's the first power which I think is the most exciting the second is that you're able to repeal so this is actually not a new power we're actually already granted this through the Vermont Constitution we're just surfacing it so that people know we have it but that's saying you know if you didn't like something that got passed by city council then you could put a referendum to repeal it and have it reconsidered and then the third one is that you can ask advisory questions on the ballot so this isn't binding it's really just like getting a temperature check so in the past for example there's been advisory questions about you know how do you feel about the F-35s that kind of thing it doesn't actually do anything but it allows us to get a temperature check of what our neighbors think so that's another piece that we have access to through this so what I think this is really about is it gives more power to the people not in a really radical way but in a proven way that the rest of Vermont has been experiencing for a really long time and we're just bringing Burlington City Charter up into alignment with the charters of other municipalities so really in essence I think it's about continuing a long-standing Vermont tradition it's about recovering a proven balance of power where right now we have more unchecked power compared to other municipalities around Vermont and it's about giving pathways for Burlingtonians to take action on issues we care about that doesn't mean we're going to flood the ballot with things but if there's something that we all really care about we should have some pathway to make it possible if we can prove enough of Burlington really want something Did our moderator arrive? Oh yes! I'm so sorry! Not at all! So, oh please, please sit Alright, ladies and gentlemen Why don't you sit for a little while there, Burjit? Pardon me? For the overlap? I'll get her an agenda too Alright, so Chip We're in the middle of our four minute sort of opening presentations I think the expectation which I didn't know was two minutes back and forth So, the pro has already gone Thank you, Fareed Do you get double the time? I don't think I'll need double the time but if I bump up against that let me know Thank you, Fareed and Amy for the explanation now that I'm no longer on council, I'll be honest I'm not paying as close attention as maybe I was when I was on the council this is the first presentation I've heard in terms of the why's of Prop Zero and I think it was helpful I sort of looked at the referendum this afternoon and sort of agreed and I think it's, I appreciate the reference to other municipalities and it being done but our system is a little bit different and I think we need to acknowledgement you know, we have a mayor a strong mayor system which you know, not many other of these small towns have we also have an elected council which serves as a check and balance you know, on the mayor between the two of them that is different than many of the small towns Jericho, you know, where they have that sort of town meeting day check on the authority of the zoning board the other thing which I think Amy was alluding to that this does change there is currently an ability to put any advisory question on but the guidance from by the Supreme Court and the legislature is that you know, you are required as the council to put that question on the ballot only if it's a power reserved to the voters so I'll use a specific example the most recent one that came up was City Hall Park, you know, there was a group that wanted very much to put, you know, the plans if you will on the ballot put it to the voters and the council in that determination because it had that authority made a determination not to put it on the ballot and I want to walk through this this proposal would change that such that anything that was presented to the council must be put on even if under existing state statute it would not have to the reason, or one of the many reasons I voted, I won't speak for others in terms of not putting it on the ballot if there were very real consequences to delaying that action in order to take a temperature of the voters we had a construction contract that was going to be delayed the numbers were going up we had a contractor lined up who was threatening to pull out if we did not move forward at that time and we were also trying to deal with the farmer's market so I appreciate an isolation of course it's a good idea to go and check with voters but I think we need to be mindful that there are very real consequences to delay the other new piece relates to the ability to put ordinances through a citizen process directly on the ballot let me, and I think I want to explain the public process that an ordinance goes through before it actually gets adopted because I'm not sure the public is aware of what I would say is the exhaustive process that we go through as a body leaving aside those sort of longer terms initiatives that I served on that literally took years and hundreds of meetings before something is put forth whether that's short term rental housing reforms that were just proposed those went through years of public process and meeting I would be a little fearful about the ability to remove all of that just put it to the voters and let the voters vote on something those are exceptional ordinances the typical ordinance process any ordinance that's introduced has to go first to the council for a first read assuming it gets through the first read it then gets referred to the ordinance committee for an additional public hearing it also then has to go before it can be adopted has to go back to the full council for a second read and potential adoption if it's an ordinance that requires that touches zoning it also has to go through a separate public process at the zoning board as well as referral to its own ordinance committee through the process of all of those hearings we not only hear from the public but I think the other piece that's missing is experts some of this is including our own city staff much of what comes forth isn't just because a councilor has an idea or a constituent it's put forth by the administration who are really experts in many of these areas after typically a public process where input is sought I have concerns about this proposal to sort of short circuit all of the authority and the public process that has been built in and simply put it on the ballot and let the voters decide I don't have experience I've never lived in a location that has this direct democracy as opposed to a representative democracy but as someone who stood for election you know multiple times I did feel that I was accountable you know for my vote and that I was sort of tasked with representing my constituents it is a challenge as an elected official sort of who do you listen to and how many people contact you and it's not as simple or at least it was not for me as keeping a running tally and making a decision I've had more people contact me in support of something that necessarily that you know voted in opposite or contact to be in opposition we all know that not everyone has the ability to reach out and contact us on matters and that has to be factored in the other piece that I somewhat question is I think the belief is this will you know through this process we will somehow empower ourselves with getting the majority consensus of the electorate I asked someone to sort of pull you know turnout results over the last 10 years to get a good sense for what the turnout has been and it is not a majority I mean turnout has been as low in the last 10 years as 12% and as high as 40% in the middle of COVID thank you I have a distinct pleasure to introduce the moderator for the rest of the evening her name unfortunately has been misspelled on your agenda and that is on us to my left is Lily St. Angelo she's with the Burlington Free Press she's the urban change reporter I like the title and she covers city government public safety development and a my rate of social issues and she is going to be our esteemed moderator and I will get out of your hair we're at the 2 minute lightning round all right thank you for the patience I had some car issues I'm sure everyone can relate to that so we're at the point where we go back through everyone and we have two more minutes each to maybe touch on things that other people have said or to make any closing remarks you didn't get to make in your first 4 minutes so we're going to start with Marie and we'll go from there okay so I want to address some of the points that Chip raised this public process that you speak of I mean we know in reality it's not really public members of the public always have problems because they are scheduled during work hours and if you ever show up in any of this public engagement process we know it's like only people who can afford to miss work or like are free during that hours are able to attend and I think Chip's point is valid in that like not everybody turn out to elections but is that because they don't care or is that because there's nothing that matters if we don't have any power anyways what difference does it make and that's at the bottom of it to me is about power because we the people have no real power in this city we elect people who are experts to make the decisions for us but there is no way for us to hold them accountable we have a strong mayor system sure but are we also a one party government like the city council can pass something and they have the mayor is able to veto and so do we want that much power especially if the city council is members of the same party as the mayor that to me seems like a problem but at the bottom of it is I think the NPAs that's like a result of this kind of grassroots decision making process with real power so let's revive that and provide some check and balances thank you alright do I get to respond to that or no I think we're just doing two minutes you get to respond in your two minute part sure I'm sorry but there on one side do we want to do back to Chip thank you Freed I hear that a lot in terms of public does not have an opportunity not my experience as an elected official I you know feel whether it's through the NPA whether it's through front porch forum I feel and I've seen it you know counselors are available and you know do are contacted by a great number of people I appreciate part of the frustration sometimes is I contacted you but you didn't do what I want and my response always to that is I'm always going to annoy someone with my decision because I never am contacted where everyone is in favor of something and just because I didn't vote in the way that you wanted me to doesn't mean that I didn't hear you but I had to make a decision we are not I was not an expert nor with all due respect are others on the council you know we are all parties who hear from our constituents from people with knowledge and then try to make the best decisions that we can on the accountability if anyone who's watching I mean the last election mayor election was within 200 votes the council has changed back and forth in the last three years from I don't know what's going to happen this election from dem control to the prog control so I do feel there is accountability for each elected official based on the decisions that they have reached are made thank you alright Amy did you want to say are you Amy? I am do I get two minutes? yes you do am I in the last two minutes? you are then I get my two back go ahead you can do it by the invocable voice you can do that there's no real understood go ahead so yeah I guess some of the things I just wanted to respond to is hearing some pieces around there's so much that goes into ordinances and I just want to re-emphasize the point that Winooski has already gone through this process it's been cleared by the legislature there are processes put in place to make sure that the city attorney is able to review things get everything clear in terms of legalities before these things come on the ballot so this is something that is pretty thought through and is already in practice and being used to Winooski and the first thing they did about that was made it so that all residents could vote in local elections you know, once they're able to pass this and so I guess I also just I think a theme here is this piece around power and power balance and I think the thing that I have continually heard when I spent hours talking to people on the streets about this across the spectrum really bipartisan like having unchecked power is not good it's always good to have some balance of power and that this really does give just a pathway when there is something that we're not a lot of people care about but we're not seeing action taken on behalf of city council or the mayor whoever that this gives us a path and so that's something that I think really resonates with a lot of people and that talking to our neighbors is good this encourages that I think it encourages our neighborly deep rooted like town hall democracy that is so celebrated in Vermont and continues that innovation in terms of how we practice direct democracy just like first place to really do NPAs first place to really implement land trusts from municipality like there are ways we have continued to be innovative compared to the estimation this is just one other way that we are doing that and we're just bringing ourselves into alignment with everybody else in Vermont if you were a visual person and you're like I want to see a map of this you can go to everyonebutvermont.com everyone but Burlington.com and you can actually see a map where all these are in Vermont and what ours is thank you alright that is that panel thank you all for joining us well we're going to do a Q&A oh yes that's right a Q&A next yeah so the rules for the Q&A for this panel and for the next panel we're going to go to our Zoom attendees first priority will be given to residents of Ward 4 and 7 because this is your NPA needless to say and so Jeff are there any questions right now here's we have a question from Evan Litwin hi thank you this is a great panel I really appreciate all the speakers and bringing attention to this issue and I do maybe think Chip should have an opportunity to say something else but my questions are really mostly directed to the pro side folks Fareed and Amy I'm sorry if I misheard so the two questions I have are one is would the city attorney's office or any other legal entity be able to review proposed changes for legality including constitutionality I guess that's a concern of mine and then the second question I have is could this methodology be used to recall elected officials or change other forms of kind of power dynamics one of the things that you mentioned was that there can veto a vote or on an ordinance and I sort of wondered is this something that could be used to recall folks or shift power to say that and maybe you did say that and I misunderstood but you talked about unchecked power and I wouldn't mind hearing what you think the unchecked power is so that's a three parter do you want to talk the piece around reviewing for constitutionality so the language of the petition itself actually sets a role for the city attorney to make sure that what is being proposed is lawful and so you can't propose anything that's against the Vermont constitution for example if you like have an ordinance that would discriminate on the basis of you know like color creed or race or religion that's not constitutional so it wouldn't be lawful and initially our hope was like that we would have a city council that would work with us and to directly answer your question is no it doesn't have those provisions we're hoping that the city council could work with us and look at what Winooski is doing so that the petition process itself is more streamlined so like before people can even go out and collect signatures they will have to talk to the city attorney first and have to be certified signature taker so you can just pay like some other towners to collect you know bunch of signatures the way the California system works so Winooski actually has figured out a good system where all of these concerns are addressed so and as far as like the recall this I don't think this will give the authority for recalls so I don't know if elected official is something we are definitely looking at and we found that there was previous effort by Councillor Shannon and Councillor Wright when Bob Case won his re-election they went around gathering petition signatures to change the charter and we would very much like to pick up that effort and that would be our next campaign project Wendy do you have a second? No I want to, for the public's benefit I want to explain how an ordinance or any resolution gets introduced because I think there may be a misunderstanding what it takes to get something on the agenda is a Councillor to introduce it period full stop so I'm a little baffled if there's a proposed ordinance all it takes is one Councillor to introduce that and it either gets voted up or down so I'm not I appreciate the privilege and the power but if a constituent comes to me with something that I am prepared to move forward I would do so otherwise I'm happy to make a referral to someone else on the council who may be interested so it is not a challenging process to get something before the council I think the public often thinks there's some vetting process because sometimes there have been controversial issues and people will say why are you doing this and it's because I didn't introduce it I don't have the choice and we have to act on it so just want to make sure we all understand how simple it is to get something on the city council agenda thank you we have another question on the zoom Margaret Joil are you unmuted yes thank you I want to raise the issue that I am not award four or seven resident and if somebody else has a question I would want to yield to them because I think it's important that people who live in these wards have an opportunity thank you for that sentiment that's important we'll go to Carol Odie thank you I appreciate the panel I agree with former city councilor Chip Mason that this is not a good idea for Burlington I worry about the influence of money in politics and I think that it would be I could just imagine instead of a deliberative process where there's testimony taking public hearings made and votes of the city council and the mayor putting a question before the public that it could be just whoever's got whoever's got the money to push an initiative might win rather than a deliberative process so I'm very much opposed to this I think we have a representative form of government and this just to me does not want to say that all right we have one more question I'll take from the zoom audience and we have at least one question from the audience so we only have a few minutes left and it is Ali Jang thank you for the panelists and for everyone before being here and contrary to representative Odie I completely disagree that I believe that this is a great wonderful idea and here is why you remember when we slashed the number of the police department through attrition from nearly 100 to 74 you all remember you also remember that when I brought a resolution to the city council so that we can put this ballot as an advisory ballot to the voters representative was also opposed to that so it seems for those opposed to this what I'm hearing is once you get voted into office then we're moving the people away from any deliberative process if we had proposition zero then I believe then the voters of Burlington will be able to bring back the staffing level of the police department this is a great idea and whoever's listening please vote yes thank you all right we have one from the audience please give your name and your ward Cliff Cooper from ward 4 I have a question I'm not totally familiar with this but it sounds like the devil is in the details of it if we have 47,000 people in the city and you're just going out and getting 2,000 signatures that percentage is 4% of the population around there the devil's in the details the idea is you're going out to get a minority to try to do a majority and I don't know whether that's fair and I think if you bring it to one of the city counselors whatever your idea is if it has merit I think it has legs to stand on if it doesn't have merit anybody here can go out and get signatures on any proposition you want to go after the trouble is you don't want to bring 180 questions to a ballot and I can see this thing getting out of control and out of hand real simple Wendy? can I just clarify just to clarify so it's 5% to make it so then the city council and the mayor need to respond to it and address it either pass or fail why isn't it 20? so 5% is what the Vermont constitution sets as the minimum and so that's pretty much what it is generally used in other parts of Vermont and so but I would say so two pieces there one yes it's only getting that amount for the initial part but then if city council doesn't they go through the deliberations they do all these things that Chip's talking about yes they pass it great all the experts wait and whatever but if they say no then at that point it goes on the ballot and then the majority of Burlington plus 1% has to say yes so it's not like just anything will end up getting passed like you still need at the end of the day most of Burlington to be on board with this and turn out to vote on it and to get 5% I know that can sound small some people are big some people but if someone is campus it's like it's a lot of work I know there's a couple more questions but I'm going to give the next the microphone next to our city councilor Sarah Carpenter thank you I just want to make a distinction that's I think important we talk about stand up binding initiatives initiatives are broader like the legal citizen voting that's very different than putting a fully worded ordinance on a ballot councilor Jane talked about the racial justice thing there were 21 items in that resolution that got adopted that's a lot of work in vetting and subsidence ordinance we just used a lot of ordinances are zoning and they're 8, 10 pages each with drawing those are proposing those in a in a voted item is exceedingly difficult and one of the problems is the wording can't be changed so it makes the ability to put into law complicated when we pass resolutions at the city council level we really we have our one or two or three pages and then we subject to ordinance because there's so much detail this would allow you to put all that detail on the ballot and you can't change it if you make a mistake you got to go back to the voters so it would be an extremely cumbersome way to govern and having had the pleasure or not of doing a lot of zoning housing development ordinances we just passed one on minimum parking it was nine pages it took councilor travers tons of negotiation with all parties to get it down to eight pages that's a hard thing to put on a ballot thank you Margaret on zoom thank you I had a couple of questions it's my understanding that South Burlington and Barry at least all cities that have direct ballot initiatives as part of their charter all have city councils and either town managers or mayors is that correct could one of the panel yes could you clarify yes or Barry has a town manager in South Burlington so my point is that when Chip started he talked about small towns that have really town hall meetings what we're talking about and none of those cities have gone down in flames the last I heard I think my comment part since I grabbed the mic was this is not an initiative to take away the city council's ability to do their business that will still continue we will still have the need for zoning ordinances project review ordinances and on and on and on and I think it really is important to remember that what happens here is that the citizens of Burlington gather 2,000 votes which is I think a significant amount of voting residents of Burlington and that comes back to the city council to consider to make suggestions about to review this is not a some wild idea where you get a bunch of folks together and we say okay this is on the ballot now that's not how that works and so I really do think it's important for us to consider what the facts are in Prop 0 and in the surrounding cities who do use it as opposed to the I think the fear so that's what it was thank you and we have just a couple of minutes left and I'm going to give the mic to Chip because he's been doing the Yeman's work for your side of the argument just to clarify I think a few comments and then give sort of a closing statement Amy made the statement that you know if you got the 2,000 voters or 5% it would have to be approved by a majority of Burlingtonians it's actually a majority of those who vote a majority of Burlingtonians and in many elections fewer than 10 or 10,000 people or fewer voted in general elections these a lot of these would also be special elections that's a further which looking at the data on special elections you know that the turnout goes through the floor so just a level set that also to address Margaret's I'm not familiar with Barry's structure but south Burlington's town manager is not a direct elected official he's appointed by the council so it is a very different system than Burlington's the last point and I appreciate representative Odie for making it what the experience in California has been which has had over a century of direct democracy is that in large part it is run by special interests and an ordinate amount of money is dumped into these ballot initiatives regardless of whether we have this or not we've all talked or been witness to the special interest groups that pop up either in support or in opposition whether it's bike lanes on North Ave or city place a lot of money gets dumped into addressing the pro or cons of these elections and I do worry that some issues that we have avoided would not necessarily be able to be avoided and would be you know engaged and potentially I don't want to say rip apart I want to over dramatize but you know further the community in terms of pro and con of some of these issues that could be put forth by special interests so thank you very much for this opportunity I lied there's another question from the audience I have one second to respond to the question about money in politics that was can you do it in 30 seconds we already have money influencing politics the city through the city council they are able to put anything they want on the ballot like as long as like majority of them support it so that is also our worry like this is why we started this work is we are worried about influence of money in politics and there is nothing stopping the city council from setting up this like level of like making the city attorney available to review before people even go out and gather signatures Burlington is the right scale we're not talking about 20 million voters here we're just talking about our neighbors you're good with that Amy okay one last question what's your name in your ward I feel like Phil Donahue hi my name is Corey I'm not going to lie I don't really know what ward I live in okay he says I live in Ward 2 but I'm a reporter actually in the area and I more so have a question for anyone I don't really care who answers it somebody mentioned fear of I guess financial bribes or something and I'm just trying to understand how exactly that would work and like the fear of money kind of controlling which way this goes because I don't get that that was the comment I think from Carol Odie Carol oh well Amy wants to reply to that and have you noticed I'm using your right name I get so you know I was like but 30 seconds I mean just quickly reply to that I think what a lot of people are often referencing is like in California actually in San Francisco for a while you will have people come up to you and they'll be like can I get your signature these are people who are paid to go out and they get paid per signature and so this is how a lot of money can get entered because if you want to make something happen in San Francisco then you can just like pay funnel tons of money into people to run around and get signatures you'll eventually get out of signatures right Winooski is already making amendments and things in place working with their city council to make it so that you can create criteria around who is a person to get signatures right so we can make sure that that is not happening here so we can make sure that it's Berlin Tonians getting signatures for issues that Burlington cares about and it's not people coming from out of town and just like funneling a bunch of money in for whatever special interest they care about I don't know if Freda is more sure Remember the DID, this is what the city council came up with 18 pages of gibberish nobody could understand so whatever standard you're asking of us will also apply it to the ballot items that they come up with Please Lovely, thank you and that completes this panel Thank you so much on behalf of all of us, on behalf of Lily and the audience and fact checkers Can I just ask there was a question in the Q&A chat and I don't know if it got addressed it was from someone named Trish at 8.08pm and I just wanted to point it out in case it didn't I didn't hear it get addressed so We're moving on to our second panel I apologize We are time constrained I think their second panel is all Yeah, we're here Lily, over to you Great I'm over here Next on our list we have a panel on the community oversight of the police department, that ballot item It is specifically about a community oversight board I'm going to read a quick overview of it but there's a lot of intricacies to it that I'm not going to totally get to, but I'm sure our panelists will, so Yes, is this not It doesn't project to the wrong Alright, so this chart of change was petitioned to be on the ballot by the group People for Police Accountability If passed, it would establish a community oversight board of the police department, which would investigate complaints and handle the discipline of officers including having the power to dismiss officers and the police chief Currently, discipline is decided by the police chief and only the mayor can remove the chief The police commission, which people may think about when they when they're reading this ballot item does not have the power to discipline currently There are many intricacies as I mentioned and I'm sure we will we will get into them, so On this panel we have Tyler Pastorek Oh, no, no, we don't I guess I'll introduce myself I'm on the panel instead of Tyler, my name is Annie Lawson Annie Lawson Any other any title to that Okay and we also have Jean Bergman and you two are supporting the ballot item, correct Okay, and we also have acting chief John Murad and we have Mark Barlow and he is one of our city counselors, of course so we will we're going back and forth right Okay, I didn't see how it started last time, so Each person has four minutes Each person will have four minutes to start with and then we'll go back to everyone and have two minutes to do rebuttals or final comments We are going to start with you Jean Bergman and let me just say before my time starts that every single charter change the long form not only can be accessed at the polling places where they'll post them but right now at the clerk's website so if you go to the city's website and you go to the clerk treasurer's office and then you go to elections and then you go to the sample ballot item on the left hand side there you will find them all so you can look at them all in bloody detail Yes, that's a very good point Thank you Very good point So there you go Okay My name is Jean Bergman I'm the ward two city counselor and I am a former assistant city attorney for the city of Burlington and I did that for 20 years and enforcement was a prime responsibility of what I did including work for the Burlington police department throughout the entire period and I want to touch on three areas fairness composition and selection and if I've got time on why this is needed and it's a good fit for the city so let me talk with fairness the mayor and others are wrong the proposal is unfair and biased against officers and the proposal in sections 189 and 190 of the charter make it clear that discipline can only be based on the finding of just cause the listing of just causes is exactly what is in the charter right now in fact the board's focus is on the extraordinary abuses that have brought us to this point in the first place excessive force, abuse of authority unlawful arrest stops and seizures abuse of authority no I said that other unlawful acts and there's another couple of them there must be an investigation and proof has to be brought to a hearing and that is open and transparent proceeding just like in court the accused officer has the right to defend themselves the input of the chief and other command staff is relevant and can be brought by either the prosecutor or the accused and there's the right to appeal the right to appeal to the Vermont Superior Court who will look at whether or not the accused got due process and an impartial and fair and unbiased hearing now this proposal creates a fair process and indeed when the National Association for Civilian Oversight Enforcement, NACOL reviewed the original council proposal that was vetoed in this regard it is the same and they pointed out that it was thorough and they made a couple of suggestions for changes but not one of them related to the fairness of the process and they said that many communities that they're working with are actually trying to get to the level of authority that this proposal gives to a community oversight my conclusion is that this board and this proposal is fair and unbiased talk turning to section to selection and composition I believe the mayor and the others are wrong to complain about an unelected board having investigatory and disciplinary powers first thank you the mayor admitted over two years ago that giving the chief near absolute power to impose impose discipline under the current charter is an aberration in our democratic system and it contributed significantly to community distrust and we were likely to face continued disputes over the future of disciplinary actions until the issue is addressed but they haven't been meaningfully addressed in the last two years and that's why over 2,000 voters petitioned for this proposal second the mayor and the city council selects groups comprising the selection committee of the board and they also have two of nine positions on that board and the range of groups selecting representatives for the committee exactly the range that I think that we need groups with an interest in civil rights and disability rights there's another listing there but they also need to care about the safety of the city and the fairness of the criminal justice system death just this month let me finish let me just give my last concluding sentence here we live in a country not a bubble and trust and mistrust are affected by the lived experiences of people everywhere and that's why black parents have to give their kids the talk it's something that I never ever thought of having to do with my two boys that's white privilege and that's really why we need to move this forward I look forward to finish the points that I couldn't get to thanks thank you thanks council right okay and thank you and thank you for having this panel tonight I want to start by saying I think virtually everyone agrees that we need more police in Burlington more sworn officers and we need to reform police oversight so the police the chief does not have sole discretion on disciplinary matters both of these goals are widely held even the Burlington police officers association acknowledges this I don't support the community control ballot measure for three reasons the first I think it's going to work against other measures we have implemented to rebuild the department and may likely worsen the attrition problem we've had during my time on the council I think we've had broad support for rebuilding BPD including increasing the sworn officer cap back to 87 creating retention and hiring bonuses when we ratified a new contract this year and we approve regionally competitive salaries but economic measures alone are not sufficient incentives the employees at BPD need to know that they are not at a greater risk of losing their job or career over a complainer incident in Burlington than they would be working for other law enforcement agencies in the state I've said this a lot about a lot of issues but Burlington is not an island and in this case government professionals have choices about where they work especially in this job market I'm not fear mongering on this this is just a basic fact about risk versus reward behavior in a job market with lots of opportunity and I've heard this sentiment when I've talked to current and former employees at BPD the rebuilding effort will slow and attrition may increase if a community control board as defined in the ballot question becomes a and I'm against this proposal the community control board as specified on the ballot will be given broad jurisdiction and will prevent people with law enforcement experience from serving the proposed control board will have the authority to and I quote review and make findings on any incident or complaint against an officer unquote and discipline or remove the officer when they are quote found to have become incompetent, inefficient and incapable from any cause is or has been negligent or derelict in their duty is guilty of any misconduct in their private or official life and for any other just cause and that's pretty broad the ballot measure also states that no member shall have ever been employed by a law enforcement agency think about that for a minute I served on the school board for four years and we always had people with a background in education serving on the board when making decisions impacting our schools and teachers other professional oversight boards don't have this exclusionary provision either excluding people with relevant professional experience excuse me from serving on this board especially with the broad discretion the board would have only as to the concerns I have about this proposal lastly my third reason is that we already have a police commission whose role has been expanded and could be expanded further with ordinance and charter change to allow for greater disciplinary oversight the simplest solution is often the best one and rather than having two bodies with overlapping responsibilities for police matters a commission and a separate control board we should instead make the changes necessary to allow the commission to take on this greater role it is less complicated and likely less expensive we passed a resolution that began this work back in November 2021 and proponents of this ballot measure might argue that we have not moved fast enough and I'll agree that the process has taken longer than we intended but the process outlined is still the best approach to achieving the community oversight goal without jeopardizing the BPD rebuild thank you thank you now I'll turn to Annie thanks hi everybody my name is Annie Lawson I'm the resident of ward 4 and I've lived in Burlington for 10 years I am a community member a social worker and a mother of a toddler I got involved with this issue for many reasons but the main ones are trust and safety trust and safety I believe trust between a community and its police is imperative for a safe community an objective oversight board for police is an important part of rebuilding trust in our city this is not a radical idea all other high stakes professions are governed by this kind of structure including mine as I said I'm a social worker and I provide mental health counseling to individuals and families my work with clients begins with building trust I start every session with a new client by explaining to them how I am governed by an objective oversight board I'm accountable to the office of professional regulation within the secretary of state's office I explain to folks what their options are if they experience any kind of abuse or misconduct by me I tell them how they can file complaints this is something that I am legally required to do but I'm also happy to do it because I feel that it is critical to establishing a relationship of trust therapists have a lot of power we support folks to process some of the hardest parts of their lives we support them to work through experiences of abuse and trauma we sit with them in their grief and their loss we sit with them when they live with thoughts about suicide unfortunately some therapists in very rare cases do abuse the power and trust the clients place in them people who experience this kind of abuse can go to the oversight board who investigates and, if necessary determines appropriate discipline for the offending therapist and I make sure clients know about this oversight board and so I think they feel more comfortable placing their trust in me that trust is absolutely necessary for me to be successful in my work the same should and can be true for police people call police in moments of crisis when they are at their most vulnerable they need to be able to trust that the people who respond will not abuse the power that we bestow in them and police need the communities trust to be successful in their work in my role I use words to do my work and people trust that I won't use this tool to cause them harm the tools that we give police officers weapons guns are lethal tools and we authorize them to use force in their work as someone who works with words if I am accountable to an independent oversight board to protect the rights of the people I work with shouldn't the police officer who uses a gun in their work where the stakes can be lethal shouldn't they be accountable to the same kind of oversight board in 2020 when body cam footage showed an officer abusing his authority city leaders agreed he needed to leave the force but the current city charter prevented this so the best city could do was pay him to resign to the tune of $300,000 of taxpayer money and the mayor himself acknowledged that the charter is a real problem gene quoted and I'll repeat the mayor said such monopoly of important authority is an aberration in our democratic system we are likely to face continued disputes until this issue is addressed but that was two years ago and we have still seen no action from city leadership to address this problem when my daughter enters Burlington school district I will be able to trust that her teachers are accountable to the school board and to any parents who are listening I would ask would you place your trust in a school that refused to be accountable to an oversight body what about a daycare a therapist how about a police officer asking the police to engage in this step toward rebuilding public trust is completely reasonable and furthermore it is productive and it will increase the overall safety of the community for instance let's say you are out of town and your neighbor sees somebody trying to break into your garage but they don't feel that they can fully trust the police they're not going to call the cops but when the whole community feels like police can be trusted the entire community becomes more safe this is about neighbors feeling safe enough to reach out for help when it's needed to protect and take care of each other that's what community is about this community needs a community oversight board to repair the trust and to increase the safety of our city thank you thank you Annie now we'll go to chief mirad thanks and thank you for putting this together and everybody for being here I know that there was a lot of work that went into this night and this panel and here we are in a big snowstorm and everybody's here I could talk about the deficits of this petition the lack of professional experience as a component the notion that oversight boards of therapists have therapists on them I could talk about the fact that it is not objective oversight that is planned by this the notion that there hasn't been any action since 2020 is untrue there is a mayoral executive order there's a strengthened relationship in two different documents with the police commission we are more transparent than ever I could talk about the layers of existing oversight that exists the multiple ways in which officers do have oversight through the courts through the Vermont criminal justice council through the mayor and the city council I could talk about the existing process for complaints and the ways in which we are incredibly transparent about these and in which we facilitate people to make complaints even though they only make about 45 of them a year and about half of those are invalid on their face because they're for places like Burlington, Iowa or they are clearly mental health issues but the fact of the matter is that the most pressing problem is not officer discipline it is not an imaginary horde of dangerous cops who are going unpunished you know that's where just about 100% of this debate has been it's not 45 complaints a year half of them have been valid it's not about uses of force where we make them fully public nor disparities that we confront and address when they stem from officer actions the most pressing problem is a collective community failure to provide outcomes and support to the population that needs it and a community oversight board doesn't do anything to address those I arrived in Burlington in October of 2018 and part of what brought me here in addition to wanting to come home where I was born was a reasonable reform oriented ahead of the Curve Police Department we had body worn cameras Comstat, Perf iCat which is a de-escalation tool and the ERV that big emergency response vehicle we'd reduced traffic stops and eliminated the disparities in those in the past two years these were all hallmarks of a cutting edge agency in my time as chief in the past two and a half years closing in on three I've kept all of that going except for Comstat I regret to say most notably I've expanded our already tremendous data transparency but let me tell you that this is not what we need to do over the next five years these are things we have going that we're working on hard over the next five years we need to rebuild this police department and the mayor and I are starting to deliver on that we're starting to feel real momentum on that unreasonable reform will significantly damage those efforts what we really need to do is address the needs of the community that we're serving and it's not about police reformer oversight it is much much bigger this is what about our need to to do as a community for the people who need help and not who those who are affecting our community in ways that we know are not good we log about 25 thousand incidents a year and I'm working on distilling some of this but I don't have a data analyst but there are maybe four hundred people about a percent one percent of Burlington who cause a vast vast number of those 25,000 incidents here's one there's a 34-year-old white woman she's got 304 Valcor incidents 50 of them since July of 22 alone and before that there was a six month low only because she was held somewhere there's these are calls like assaults and trespass there's 30 trespass notices in her file meaning just about every downtown business has trespassed her but that's relatively meaningless on paper welfare checks disorderly conduct and what I know is that as a cop and somebody who used to be a street cop it is frustrating to respond to the same person again and again addressing her and others like her is what's next police discipline is not the problem and it's irrelevant to this person what has to be next has to be a more systemic effort and even the crisis team that I'm hoping to build not fast enough I admit isn't enough we need a new com stat and not for opioids but for this collective community failure that has everybody on board BHA DMH the department of mental health cuts steps Howard the university and the medical center fire DMTs the state's attorney the mayor and legislators and yes even cops we need caring resources that I know we have in this community to work together to deliver those outcomes that I hear the community wanting this is not a tool for that this is a tool for diminishing what we have built and what we are on the cusp of rebuilding in the momentum we have and it doesn't address any of these issues thanks chief alright now we go to the two minutes each for a rebuttal or any other comments you'd like to make so we'll go back to councillor Bergman thank you you know I agree with the chief on a number of things not just now but regularly I voted as such so I agree that we need all these other supports there's not this contradiction between them I would also say and I speak as a real proponent of this because I think it is necessary but according to NACAL it's really important that we don't think that this is a solve-all an overarching solution to every problem we have around public health and safety so I don't disagree with that in fact I have supported all of these efforts to recruit and retain to get nurses, mental health and other social workers and I will continue to do that but what I said about the Kathy-Austrian case which I cut and pasted today and what I know from the Melly case from the Grenion case from the Brunel case from the Bennington cases is that we have a serious problem with distrust with that with an oversight body that is independent and is based in this community then we will not get to the level of support that will allow us to fully do everything and I'm glad if there are only a few of these incidents but they're important and I would defer to Commissioner Grant Milo Grant who's here with the commission and the administration because I don't really think that they're that rosy and I don't think that the numbers in terms of the disparities and the other issues that we've got have been as solved as nicely as the chief has said thank you thanks Councillor Barlow thank you I just I don't need two minutes I don't think I want to emphasize that I'm not against oversight I'm just not for an independent board other than the police commission to provide that oversight and so I just want to make that distinction I do think there is reform to be made in how we do disciplinary oversight I just don't agree with this entity as the place to vest that authority thank you we'll go back to Annie thank you I want to address some of the things that my representative and the acting chief have have raised first of all chief you raised that social workers and therapists are not allowed to serve on on the boards of government I would question that social workers are in an advisory role and ultimately the people who investigate complaints are housed in the state's office which is not full of social workers the other point I would raise is that this is an opportunity as Jean said this is an opportunity to repair trust other accountability bodies may allow folks from within that profession to join like the school board the challenge about applying that idea to this one is that if you are really dissatisfied with your school board you can put your kid in a different school if you I use myself as an example if you are really dissatisfied with your therapist you can find a new one but you cannot just choose another law enforcement system to engage with and so because the structure of policing is so unique we can't just choose to step away from it we can't just you know decide to be exempt from those expectations because that system is so unique the oversight system needs to be just as unique and if a body is full of folks who are being investigated it's not going to repair trust this is an opportunity to do that lastly somebody adjust something about the police commission and saying that that should be sufficient I will note that members of the Burlington police commission have resigned in recent years citing the lack of teeth in the commission as the reason and stating that they are not willing to be part of a body that looks like it is providing oversight when it does not require someone who resigned for this reason they said at that time it was my opinion that the police commission was an apparatus that just served to present a perception of oversight and I would also invite folks as Jean said to check in with Milo Grant who is a current and acting member of the police commission and Milo is it accurate to say that you endorse the oversight board? Yes, which is a change for me my position has we'll Milo let's wait until the I just want to say that we are times yes this is someone outside the board the police commission saying it should be sufficient versus people within the commission saying no it's not we need more alright so we'll go back to Milo later alright well this is my first moderator experience so alright we had the two minutes from mirad? we're back to mirad alright chief thank you so I don't think that anybody believes this is a solve all but it is a I believe that it would be a harm I believe that this would be harmful I think that there are opportunities for continuing to evaluate we've been making them over the past two and a half years we can continue to do so this is a very narrow and very specific definition of that and I think one of the challenges and frankly something that I see possible is that a well meaning and overall progressively oriented public is going to read a ballot item such as this and say oversight community oversight that sounds good to me without understanding the real specifics of this and I think it's in the details that we run into a problem that is meant for this community this basic plan was presented in 2019 it only garnered three votes on the city council at that time the world obviously shifted in 2020 and it became something that was re-evaluated in 2021 it was vetoed by the mayor and now we have it on petition I think that we are looking at something that has been looked at by the public and the public has seen issues with it in the past I certainly think that there is going to be an impact on this momentum that we currently have with regard to rebuilding the police department I don't want to diminish that momentum I want to also note that I think that the notion of social workers that my panelist made actually is my case that you can have those professionals on boards and this one specifically prohibits that and the prohibition is such a prohibition that actually indicates that there the board is meant to be comprised of a philosophy that ultimately isn't about public safety is an afterthought even in the ballot item itself and I think ultimately there are ways we can continue to move forward as a community we've been making I think very good progress I've been incredibly confident over the past couple weeks about where 2023 is going to go this is something that changes that sense in that momentum so we're going to move a little bit away from the rules because I know that Milo has a few things but Milo I will ask you two minutes because we are now bumping up and we have a bunch of questions from Ward 4 and 7 you have two minutes Milo because we are almost I'm asking you I'm asking you and I'm respectfully saying I'm going to need I'm not going to just go on and on okay and you'll have your chance sir I'm not going to take away that opportunity for you the time that you're wasting arguing me over time what is going on here what is going on here what is going on here we could take a little more time okay then why don't you allow me to speak I'm going to talk about the complaint process and I will use that as an example if you have a complaint about a use of force incident or anything that you deem inappropriate and a problem with a police officer and you file that complaint and that complaint goes to our police commission for discussion and we determine that there were policies and procedures violated we cannot tell you that is transparent as mud there were many other inaccuracies that acting chief mirad just mentioned I was not initially for this I went to meetings I participated in the conversation because I like to get out into the community and see what people are talking about and there is no question in anybody's mind that public safety issues are extremely important to everyone in this city including myself but what we have here despite some advancements that we have made an oversight and despite the training and best believe people can be trained in matters of oversight and they can bring other things to the table other than being from law enforcement anybody please reach out to me mellowgrantedgmail.com and I am happy to engage you in the conversation it is clear that the mayor does not have a clue on how to proceed he is stonewalling the chief does not fully support the goals of the commission's time for oversight and what the commission is trying to do and because I have to follow rules about executive sessions and what I cannot talk about and I am not allowed to reveal the mayor and the chief have both participated in giving information to the public that is wrong thank you we have five minutes we are going to take more questions from the audience who is from ward can I just ask it looks like mellow grant is walking off and there are residents here of ward 4 and 7 who would like to ask questions I wonder if she wants to hear the questions we have to ask or if she wants to walk off we want to get food in the back there is food in the back all she did was grab a famosa I don't want to wait it looks like it I am on zoom you win we have five minutes we can get a little more I am confused it sounds to me like you want to get rid of the police commission and put in another governing board or do you want to elevate the police commission and not have a need for an oversight I don't see the person who need you are talking about 9 to 12 people on that council how many people on the police commission how many no but how many 7 7 plus 9 is 16 if the members are right as an oversight to a police force of 68 so Cliff I understand that you don't so let's be clear if there is much in terms of oversight beyond discipline everybody I think would agree with that there is monitoring and auditing approaches what are the policies what is the training all of the operational things but at a high level the review of the reports and how things are doing all of that under this proposal I got it here would still stay and would stay in the existing police commission all this does is it figures out the discipline process and creates a 7 7 to 9 member board to address that well the answer you need a charter change regardless but it's my position and honest people can disagree that the monitoring auditing work is sufficient to take all of the commission's time which is all volunteer the other thing about it is it creates familiarity biases when you get close to people and I know I worked with the city for a really long time I love a lot of officers I worked for them and defended them in court against accusations and assorted things you get familiar and that leads to a certain amount of bias I personally think that having an independent body just to deal with the discipline is the appropriate way it is not there are many ways to do it Nacol says that we need a best fit approach for us and for every community not a best practices approach I happen to think something that has two bodies one that focuses on the other makes the most sense and I see my time is well up but it's complicated stuff I totally appreciate the question but the devil is in the details we have a question on the zoom audience Deb Belton I hope I've got that name right you did actually thank you I just wanted to say I'm really torn on this issue a lot I agree with Chief Murad and I think you should be the chief that's what I'm going to call you you know and everybody else I mean mental health has to be a priority and I also agree that public trust is really needing to be restored and I have a problem with the proposed commission or whatever we're calling it would not have a representative of the law enforcement on it I think that's a huge shortage but I feel like if the process if this proposed panel is corrected in my mind to include some law enforcement on it to make it clear about an appeal process to grant officers the right to appeal that they feel confident in whatever I frankly don't know that I would want a police officer who wouldn't want to be on the force because of that you know so I mean that's one thought but I guess I would address a chief question to you which is what has changed in terms of discipline firing ability whatever since these incidents have really come to light not what the proposed plan is but what has changed sure thanks more power to discipline so yes there have been a number of changes I think first and foremost we created in June of 2020 the most comprehensive and progressive use of force policy for the state of Vermont and that ultimately was actually adopted by the rest of the state as a statewide use of force policy it talks about a number of things that weren't in the former use of force policy and whenever a directive has those tools it gives credence and lends additional ability to any oversight personage in this case the chief of police to say that those tools were violated or were not performed properly I think there was you know council Bergman mentioned a horrible horrible evil incident that occurred in Memphis and those officers have been fired because the chief of police had tools around excessive force around duty care around duty to intervene and was able to use those to fire those officers we have those tools now and did not before those tools also exist in the state use of force policy that was largely cribbed from the one that I wrote with the police commission in June of 2020 that's one mechanism another mechanism is the mayor's executive order that is from September of 2020 it outlines a review practice for him I also report to him on every single issue of the police commission there is a much more elaborate document that guides our relationship with the police commission around all citizen complaints not just uses of force that came from August of 2020 in August of 2021 the police commission and we agreed to release body cam footage proactively and just today I did it for the very first time we have a redaction specialist now which allows us to keep up with the volume of work I released the very first use of force in January 2023 that applies to this it's a use of force that involves the use of tools that is firearms being pointed and we're putting that proactively no other agency in the country I believe does that and that is something we're doing we make every use of force public through report as well and now a select number of them will be made public via body camera those are just a handful of the things that we're doing that are indicative of a changed posture on oversight and collaboration and transparency for the public so that it can see how we address these and how we discipline them thank you and you can fire I don't know if the police yes I can and I have fired police officers we're going to wrap up this panel it is nine o'clock the Robert E. Miller center is pretty stringent on that Lily thank you very very much we appreciate you coming down here we appreciate all the panelists who came panel one and panel two thank you for all of you who have you know come out in this snow sorry and I'm wrapping it up and if you need the petition language you know where to get it it's the details are in the devils are in the details but thank you very very much and this wraps up our NPA meeting okay can I just ask for people who are ward residents who didn't get the opportunity to ask questions during this panel but Milo Grant who's running for city council doesn't live in this ward did where would be the best way for us to send emails will be the best way for us to direct questions for those of us who did not get to speak on this very important topic thanks thanks for raising that that was actually the point I wanted to make it seems like there's a lot of participants on zoom I would love the chance to keep talking about this because it's a really important question you know 10 minutes 40 minutes of time I'll take a maybe questionable move and give out my email address and encourage people to email me directly with questions people can also look up information Jean I'll let you give our website because I'm having a I'm having a thank you people for policeaccountability.com it's all one word people for policeaccountability.com if you want to email me I'm a member of this community it's maybe a risky thing to do but send me an email you're my neighbors I want to talk to you and answer these questions my email is Annie.Elizabeth.Lawson at gmail.com I'm going to trust folks are going to use that wisely and just respect me as a community member and a neighbor thank you and also so you can get me and Mark if I could be so bold is at so I'm G Bergman at Burlington and Mark is M Barlow at BurlingtonV.gov and are you the same? I'm not I'm BPDVT.org every single one of those letters sounds the same it makes it hard to hear but that is available online at the Burlington website so yeah so please ask questions Deb I'd love to answer your question in terms of that that piece there and I'll talk to you about my father-in-law but that's another subject