 hospitals, upper New York hospitals. And Fletcher Allen has shut down its network all surgeries for the next couple of days or scheduled. Hitting that way, you might wanna give them a call and let them know there's something up. They were down today, pretty much, phones and everything. Amazing how much this little box that we're looking into has crept in and controls our lives. Any questions for our elected officials, our state reps? Sal? Yes, I just wanted to say that, Bob, I'll connect with you later about the person who wants to work in the polls. Sounds good. TJ? I just wanna personally thank Carol Odie who responded to an email of mine about COVID relief money. Really struggled. I'm a personal LLC and so I've gotten all that in and thank you so much, Carol. I really appreciated your attention to that. You are so welcome. And I'm one of a team of legislators who when the Department of Labor had so many troubles trying to help people, Bob Hooper, Gino Sullivan and I out here in the New North and alone. We joined with Republicans, Democrats, progressives and we helped 2,300 people or more to get that help. So I am so glad that we were able to help you, TJ. I'm really grateful that you said something, too. With that, I don't see other questions. We'll move over to city council. Sarah, do you wanna start us off? Sure, I just wanna let you know that I just heard from Franklin and he is traveling in a no Zoom zone. So he's not able to join us. And I happen to know that Ali had a committee meeting backed up to this. So I'm not, I'm assuming he may come but he may be late because he's in a committee meeting. We had not an emergency but a special city council meeting also just now basically to pass a resolution about our concerns about the transfer of power depending on what happens on the election next week. And as a city, we wanna make sure all know that we have those concerns and we may or may not have to be prepared for that. In terms of this last month, there's actually been a couple of exciting things and it's although it's been sort of a slower month which is good, I don't mind that at all. I hope by now that most of you have been able to get down to the opening of City Hall Park. It's really quite impressive. And I think it's something that we all can be pretty proud of. It'll be I think a go-to place for a lot of tourists and hopefully we'll get tourists back soon enough. So that was exciting. Just on Monday, I went to the opening of the Champlain Inn which is something that the city's been working hard on. It's a low barrier shelter for the homeless and it's a place where folks will be able to go in the wintertime particularly but it's gonna be a year round shelter which is really critically important. And these are folks who may not meet all the criteria for other shelters and in years past we've done it quite short term during the coldest months and the state and thanks to the state legislature have seen the wisdom of putting resources more permanently. Many of those folks were taken care of with motel vouchers which is not really an effective way to serve those folks. It's an expensive way to serve those folks. It's being run by a new place which is a homeless organization in Burlington in cooperation with Cathedral Square who's got a lot of experience in property management. So that'll be a real plus. They're hoping they're working very fast. They've got carousel money from the federal government what they've gotta get open by December 1st. So that's a real kind of rush. You all saw and I all heard about the conversation we had on whether or not to have fire pits during the COVID season. And I can say I got lots of opinions on both sides. We decided at the end of the day to follow the advice of the Board of Health and one of our, there's actually several people from our neighborhood happen to serve on that. It's a very thoughtful world that thing but we are in the process of just getting clarification out to people. Propane fire pits and electric fire pits are allowed and we're gonna get some background from the fire department and get that out to everybody so you know kind of what is allowed and what isn't allowed and we'll get that out too as soon as we get back from here back from the fire department. While I'm speaking of the fire department just today, Representative Hooper and others asked about some updates on the ambulance for the new North End. If you'll recall when we voted the budget last June we made a decision on the city side to delay tax increases. That was not true on the school side. And as part of that, we chose to delay the increase for the fire department but they still are on track and in the third quarter they're gonna hire and train the ambulance staff that will provide for them and they should have all that ambulance fleet online by late spring. Although not really related to that but they actually have in fact moved one of the ambulances to fire station four, I think I almost got them confused because of how tight things are in fire station two particularly around COVID. So they made a decision to sort of spread them out. One thing that's important to understand with the ambulance is it's not really the ambulance vehicle that's the problem. It's the amount of staff to staff it up the cost of the money and where do you kind of put them is a question of the day. I'm not sure if Councilor Jang is joining us. So I'll just kind of keep on a roll here. He hasn't. There's been lots of conversation about city place. We're in a holding pattern. We are in legal discussions on both sides and it is our hope or it's certainly my hope that this will proceed to a mediation and that is actively being discussed. So I'm hopeful soon that it may end up in mediation. That's kind of all I've really got to report. I think the press has kept everybody to date but it's a difficult and complicated kind of issue. I heard Bob or Carol mentioned the TIF extension which is really good generally for the city but there's a significant issue relative to city place because we are so behind and had depended and a big portion of the construction of the public right of ways and the street is needing to be funded by the TIF monies. That's an up in the air factor that is significant. And I don't know how that's gonna play out in the negotiation with whatever new owner group there comes to be. I think it will clearly get raised again in the next legislative season and is something that we as a city need to be concerned about. If the legislature chooses not to extend the TIF long enough to include city place, that will be a problem but I don't have any more details on that. Kind of in that same vein, the mayor let us know that whatever proposals we have Memorial auditorium are still on hold. We simply don't have the resources and don't believe that it would be prudent to bring anything to the voters. Certainly not in this next year. It will take probably some level of bonding to renovate it. And so I think in the short run it's sitting there waiting to figure out going into fiscal year 22 what options might there be. Just trying to think of other items. Kind of that's a laundry list. There's a lot of work obviously going around the police department and I'm very pleased that we're having Kyle join us. So he'll be a lot of update. I see Shareen here with us and she's on the police commission as well as the joint committee and so they hopefully two of them can provide all of the updates that are necessary. I wanted to add one quick thing, which is we Bob and I and the state legislators all of them are going to be doing a domestic terrorism and terrorism update tomorrow at 1230 and with our own Burlington Mike Sherling leading that because he's the public safety person for the state of Vermont. So we'll be ready and formed about any kind of acts of terror over the next weeks. I can't Bob, did you have a question? Yeah, Sarah, following up on the two things actually that the one thing I saw on city place had the old 14 story looking, I hope that's still out. Yes, they are proceeding as I understand it in the planning process and they have a new schematic which is many, I think it's around 10 stories but I'm not recalling. It's a much, I'm gonna call it square building. It really looks nice. It has primarily housing and retail in it as far as I know, the hotel is not in it. They are doing a presentation. So that may be something that we wanna ask them to come and present. It is a very schematic point but the old one is definitely out and I only know what I've seen. They did do a presentation last week to the war two and three NPA. So they're out there presenting it. I think they haven't widely offered to do that simply because they're in this negotiation phase with the city. One of the planning requirements was that they specifically go to two and three because it is in or two or three. So second question, if I might when Murrow first ran for office, the first question I asked him is why we didn't have a fire? Why we didn't have an ambulance out here? And it's been that long but the thing that bothers me is the response usually is about the number of calls and from where they go to where they go. Nobody seems to look deeply into what the calls are for. Like a fight downtown seems to be less serious than a heart attack out in the new north end. I think that should be weighed in the conversation. I put that in a Facebook post that you probably read but that seems to be kind of an important factor in this determination. So when the time comes to move the ambulance someplace else I don't think it should be moved. We got it? We're gonna keep- Yeah, I mean, I have asked about it. It's the staffing that's driving it as I said it's not the physical ambulance. And I am told and I'll try to dig deeper that significantly more calls come from the inner city and not just downtown but kind of as opposed and the upside and the downside of the fact that we have several nursing homes is they in fact have staff, particularly the nursing homes do not housing projects. And in fact, there are more senior housing projects downtown but it's a valid question and I'll see if I can find out some more information about that. Oh, they have to bill it. So there would be a code. Thanks. Yeah. Sarah, would you have a contact for city place presenting at the NPA? Oh, I can certainly, yes, I can. I will, there can, their consultant is a fellow by the name of Jess Glasberg, I'll ask him and Jesse Beck from Freeman French and Freeman is leading or at the minute anyways, their design team. So I'll check in with them. And if you tell me which month I'll or date I'll see if they're available. Okay, and Jeff Comstock, you had a question? Yes, Sarah, can I, I wanna follow up on the ambulance conversation. So when you said third quarter is that third quarter 2021 or third quarter of our city fiscal year? How do we wrap it? Well, yeah, it's actually the fiscal year. So it would be January, February, March. It's not actually not of the calendar year. So in, as I understand it in around about February or early part of 21 they're gonna start hiring and training the, I think it's like nine people to run the ambulance to get them on board for the fourth quarter of the city fiscal year. All right, yeah, thank you. Cause from what I remember of that conversation when we were considering the bond, what, you know, when we talked to the fire chief is that he made it very clear that the city has the vehicle. It's just a matter of hiring and training the additional staff people. Well, but, and what we voted on was not a bond. We voted on a tax increase to pay the salaries. So that's what we delayed is the input. And so they effectively, we didn't call out the tax increase but we chose to budget additional staff later in the year. Out of the city regular budget. Yeah, I remember the mayor saying at his address that he was budget address and he was choosing not to implement the public safety tax increase. Okay, so when will that likely go into effect? That would be July one of 21. So the next fiscal year. Okay, thank you. And there was a couple of other taxes that were all delayed until the next fiscal year. Ed Hurlberg get a question. I do thank you, Jeff. Sarah, I just wanted to ask you real quickly. You're on a small committee that has been working towards a just cause termination for landlords and being a real estate broker. I'm working with a lot of clients right now that are unwilling to consider buying property and brolling to for investment and a lot that are considering unloading with this new law that's really gonna dampen and strip them of their rights to terminate an agreement between a landlord and a tenant that expires. And it will just go on forever and ever. Can you just speak for a second about why you're supporting it? Sure, I mean, it's something, it's a tenant issue that I'm very familiar with. I, in my work with Vermont Housing Finance Agency and Cathedral Square all operate under the concept of cause evictions. There's five states that operate under that concept. There's probably 50 communities. And I know there has been a lot of what I think is kind of not good information or misinformation. So I encourage everyone to look at our, the CDNR website of the city community development neighborhood revitalization website, which will provide you with some update. The concept is that to provide tenant stability and family stability, people really should be given a reason why they're being asked to leave. And it's worked well in the states that have it and it's worked well with assisted properties. It has not affected the real estate market. There needs to be, and I think this is where there's a lot of unclarity. And what I'm personally working on right now is making sure we're clear on adding in exemptions, owner occupied properties, properties that wanna be where you'd want a family member to be moved in, properties that might be taken off the market, properties that have sublets in it. So we had quite a significant meeting last night and we're meeting again next week to try to provide a lot more clarity around kind of what would be in and what would be out. One of the complicating factors in state law versus municipal law is to do anything different than state law, you've got to go to the legislature to get a charter change. I refer to it as asking permission. So the question is how broad or specific should that permission be? The draft charter change was really quite broad. I think with the intent that this would be a long process, so it would take about 18 months and you'd really get the details in the ordinance. I am well aware that people feel uncomfortable with that. So I think the work we have to do in this next amount of time is to provide more clarity about kind of what's in and what's not in. And I'm happy to answer more questions. Really difficult for me to feel questions to property owners when they feel their rights are being stripped, which they are. If they don't have a right, one say leases up, which is a legal agreement between the two parties to be forced into a forever cycle of never being able to ask that tenant to leave for any reason. Why? I just, I'm challenged at being able to answer that question. Well, and I'm happy Matt to spend more time offline. I mean, I think it's also hard for families who just get asked to read, you know, no conservation has been used a lot against low income families, families of color who get asked in the tension in the city of Burlington is if you have a more attractive set of young college kids in your apartment and you just kind of don't like that other family, it really creates instability. Where it has worked, I mean, I think if it's well written, it is not, I mean, many provinces in Canada, countries in Western Europe, it's not such a new concept. I mean, New Jersey's had it since 1985 and it has not affected their rental market. Several states have more recently just adopted it but there's hundreds of communities with it. So I think it's important for people to, and it really is in the hot markets where it, I think it's necessary. Emily, you're a recent addition to our meeting. Do you have any updates from the city councilor side? Yes, a couple of updates. And I think one of them is, have you all voted? Yeah, it's a question, you know? And I think it is everyone at the city council and we just had a special meeting just about that. Yeah, and what I've been doing is just making sure that maybe vulnerable communities are voting and have the right information. And those are things that we do, many people do not know about and we try to bring so many communication. And again, I think the process about voting and the official ballot boxes, you know, why we did not have one here in the new north end is a big problem. And it is a problem that many people in this community have felt over the years that it seemed as if the new north end is always forgetter on important items such as this. And I think we collectively tried to make sure that we have an official ballot box deposit where people can come and deposit that box. And it was a big fight. But finally, we had one. It was limited hours and it's here in the new north end. And I think next year or next time around, how can we strive to do better, you know? And yeah, that's one. And the other one is specific to the bike lanes here in the new north end. And I think soon the cones will be taken away. And there is also a video that will tell a story and the video will be made by a UVM professor who's a cinematographer. And we identified two people who liked the bike lane, but we're still trying to identify two people who did not like the process, who still don't like the bike lane, that will be interviewed. And that video will be posted in, will be housed in many different area. And if there is anyone here, I see TJ raising hand. If you would like to participate in it, you know, private message me and then we'll make sure that you will get interviewed on that. Yes. And I just captured a little bit of this conversation about just cause eviction. Personally, I do believe that the process we establish to get to where we are is already flawed. Already, already, already flawed. And I sent a communication to Sarah, Councillor Carpenter and just thinking about, okay, now what's the next step? The process is not good. And to me personally, this is not how we should do business as we move forward. If it is in front of me tomorrow, I don't feel comfortable voting in it, voting in support of it, right? But it seems on the 27th, we will get another update. And then from there, my vote will be dependent on what we wanna do as we move forward. Yeah. And I think that is it. And I'm sorry, just joining because I just log out another committee meeting to be here. No problem. We wanna make sure that the school commissioners have enough time. So I think we'll jump to them. I see Martine and Monica and Kendra. You guys are up. And we have our superintendent with us as well, Tom Flanagan. Hi, everybody. Hi, everyone. It's great Tom was able to join us this evening. And I was gonna start by talking about, I think everybody is curious, anxious about what's going on with BHS and the BTC complex. So since the last NPA, I believe we've had two meetings that essentially focused on our situation at BHS. One was on September 29th. It was kind of called the town hall. And one was on October 20th. And at our September 29th meeting, we had several state agencies with us. Including Dr. Mark Levine, the Vermont Health Commissioner, Sarah Vos, state toxicologist, Lori Craigin. She's with the Vermont Department of Health, I think second in command to Levine. Trish Copolino, who's with the VT Department of Environmental Conservation. And also Kim Tisa, who was an EPA representative at this meeting. And many of you might be wondering what are PCBs? PCB stands for polychlorinated biphenyls. And they use them a lot in construction materials until 1978, when the US banned them. They are found, so a lot of buildings that haven't been remodeled since that time, 78, which includes a lot of our schools, will have PCBs naturally occurring in air. They are, often it was used for caulking or like ballasts of fluorescent lights. PCBs cause cancer in animals and it's a probable human personagen, but also has non-cancer effects, like it affects the immune system, reproductive system, nervous and endocrine system. And the Vermont Department of Health presents a level of like airborne PCBs of 15 nanograms per meter cube. And so this is an extremely low level. The EPA maximum level for a high school, I think the levels are lower for younger kids, but for a high school, the EPA has a number of 600 nanograms per meter cube. And a lot of us are wondering why Vermont's is 40 times less than that. At that meeting, we learned that PCBs are everywhere. They're in our diet and our blood. They're in rivers, lakes, parks. And the PCB levels at the high school were measured beginning, they were started to be measuring back July, 2019. But then we had Fuss and O'Neill come in beginning of September and measure the PCB levels at the high school. And you folks probably remember we're doing hybrid days. So half the kids went to school the Tuesday after Labor Day. And then our superintendent felt that he had to close the schools. Well, some of the levels were really out the roof. And I don't know if I'm able to share my screen, but I just have a nice graphic that was presented to us by the Vermont Department of Health essentially summarizing the levels in this high school buildings. So on the left, these are buildings A through E and on the right is building F, which houses BTC, I think the daycare center and on top. And you'll see the scale for this F building, it goes up to 6,000. So this is an alarming level. Over 6,000 nanograms per meter cube for one of the rooms in building F. And the average is 2,200. So that, we're not sure what we're gonna be doing with that building at this point, a lot of remediation. But the rest of the high school, the maximum building the maximum PCB level was measured at 300. And the average levels looks like between 50 and 150. So I like this graphic because it puts it there. The Department of Health recommendation level is down here at 15. So this dashed line way down here. When I asked Sarah Vos about other states, what other states have as levels, she essentially said, typically states don't have their own recommendations and they'll go by the EPA recommendation, which is up at 600. We've seen that Europe uses a level of 300 nanograms for meter cubed. So we have issues with contamination at the high school. I think in July of 2019, PCBs were found under the F building elevator pit. And at that point, also PAHs were found in soil, so urban soil. And right now we're looking at doing a pilot project where we'll start removing materials in one area of the building like remediation, like perhaps taking out some of the ballasts of the fluorescent lights and then go in and retest and see what that does to the airborne PCB levels. At this point for BTC, we found locations for in-person instruction and Kendra will talk more about that. But for BHS, all the classes are still mostly online. There are the sports are in-person outside and music is outside, some of the P classes are in-person. So I don't think I'm wrong if I'd say we're desperate to find a place to house the high school students because in-person instruction works a lot better for most of our students. At our October 20th meeting, there was a lot of public comment. There's a parent group that also consists of doctors and local experts that doesn't agree with the Vermont Department of Health Standard of 15 nanograms per meter cube. And, you know, we talked about the strong push to find spaces to house BHS instruction. And let me share my screen again because I just wanted to share with you one slide that we were presented with three options. So the first option is to try to get back into BHS as soon as possible, either by leveling the PCB levels or getting our Department of Health to approve a higher level in air and then continue the re-envisioning project as it was originally planned because I think most of you know, the students were, the plan was to house the students in the building while construction is going on. The other, a couple other options were to move to an alternate location if we can secure one. And there is a space that our leaders are looking at downtown and but this, you know, would cost a few mill, well, it would cost rent and it would cost retrofitting the building so that we could have classrooms in there, but still you wouldn't have like a field nearby. So the attractive thing about that would be that then the re-envisioning could happen without the students occupying the room and it would be easier, you know, to get the construction done. And then the third alternative would be to, you know, move the kids into this alternate location and then I, well, we're not sure about the site, but tear down the building, whatever, build a completely brand new high school. And so that's kind of a far-fetched idea. It would cost a lot more money. We'd probably have to go out to the voters and there'd probably be, well, we heard from Marty Spaulding that it would be like an 18 month lead to get plans for that. A fourth option would be to kind of take a step back. You know, we have the pandemic, the bond was passed two years ago. So this November election two years ago is when we passed the $70 million bond, but since then we now have the pandemic, we've discovered all these contaminants. So a lot of complications. So one idea would be to step back, try to get the kids back into the building as soon as possible, but deal with the contaminations. So we have some big decisions to make in the next few weeks because there's a push for getting the kids to have some in-person instruction as soon as possible. We're aiming for January, well, ideally January at the latest unless we can get something lined up with UVM because UVM students leave end of November and don't come back until beginning of February or at least on Wednesdays, the other schools are empty and at least have high school kids get one day a week in person. So I will let Kendra talk about BTC and then we'll go to the next slide. Thanks Monica and follow up to a few things that you had mentioned. I did wanna let everybody know that there's a survey that we have put out about some of these options and just priorities that you wanna let the district know it's for everybody, you don't have to be a BHS parent. It's also for community members. So we've sent that out to BHS families, but it's also on our website and the deadline is tomorrow. So if you have strong feelings one way or another or you just wanna share your feedback, we'd love to hear it. We really appreciate the support of the community. This is difficult choices and decisions as Monica mentioned. And so we'd love to hear from you. So please go ahead and fill out that form when you get a chance. I did wanna also just say a plug for the other schools is that we're back to four days in person on all the other schools. So I don't wanna just, that's been a huge accomplishment. And so that K to five is back in in-person four days a week. So that is a great success. So while BHS is a struggle and we are really working hard to get those kids in-person learning as fast as we can, we've had had some good success with our other schools and getting that back to four days a week. So I just wanted to also mention what we were doing with BTC, Monica showed you the chart where you saw the levels of PCB contaminations were really, really high. So most likely, I could say almost all likelihood we're not gonna be back there. So we have housed all of the almost 300 students that currently make up the Burlington Tech Center. And really it's a shout out to the new BTC director Jason Gingold and Victor Prusak who's the coordinator of engagement, John Flanagan. A nice team has really worked hard to get those kids the in-person learning and they have all been housed in other locations. We do have 11 sending schools that come to our Burlington Tech Center. I think it's about 11 and we offer 14 programs. So we don't, when we think about technical education it is not what technical education used to be. I mean, we have programs from auto tech to aviation to criminal justice to culinary arts, digital media laboratories. We have design and illustration. We've got our culinary program. We have health sciences, we have pre-tech and human services. So we just got so many programs and I think it's important that we all know this because I know that I didn't know that for a long time that this district offered all these opportunities for our kids. So it was really important that we find spaces to continue these programs. And I have to say the partnerships in this community have been fantastic for BTC. And I'll just give a quick list of, they've been housed at the airport, St. Mark's Church, Cambrian Rise, North Avenue Alliance Church, King Street Youth Center, Community Sailing Center, the East End Auto, the first Unitarian Universalist Society and there's even a couple more. So we're just, we're very thankful and appreciative that these programs could be housed. So that was the first big lift. And the next big lift is BHS. Our Horizons program, we have two alternative programs, is also at St. Mark's Church and our on top program is at Rock Point School. So now it's the question of what to do with BHS. And I'm sure Superintendent Flanagan, you probably have some more things that you wanna say about that. Sure, yeah, I don't wanna take too much time. So just in Monica and Kendra, you all really explained it well. So the only thing I would add is that when we made this initial decision to close BHS, it was at the strong recommendation of both the Vermont Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency together in a room with our consultants saying, it's not safe to go in those buildings. Since then, there's been significant advocacy. I actually, at one of our school board meetings asked for advocacy and I love the outpouring of support from the community. And a lot of that advocacy had originally moved toward questioning sort of the science behind the numbers, the Vermont numbers around PCBs of 15 nanograms per cubic meter. And those numbers are, we just met that open BHS group, members of that open BHS group, just met the day before yesterday with Dr. Levine and learned more about the science behind the numbers and left the meeting saying, we should no longer push to get back into the building. So I wanted to make sure you had that because it's one of those three options. And the options in the survey, we're not asking you to vote for an option, but we're just trying to kind of test where here, where people are. But I wanted you to have the most up-to-date information, which is that the group that had been really advocating for that, I don't wanna say where the whole group is, but members of that group did hear from Dr. Levine and Dr. Vos and Laurie Craig and came away thinking, okay, our advocacy now really needs to be finding an alternative space while we better understand the PCBs. The PCBs are in the air, they're really high in the F building, higher than anyone that we worked it with had ever seen. And so it was pretty significant and they're also in the soil. And now they're testing down into the soil to see how far down they go into the soil. We don't know yet. Fully the answer to that, we should have an answer to that this week or early next week. So that's kind of the current state. We do have pretty advanced conversations ongoing with a downtown space that could house all of our students at one time, all 970 students. That's not the only option and that option is complicated for multiple reasons. And so we are also continuing to investigate other opportunities, like trailers or like mobile classrooms and other things. So I think the big thing is that this is gonna be a cost. I mean, the cost estimates for Macy's or for trailers are somewhere between over two or three years or somewhere between five and $10 million. So it's a big lift for the district and the school board chair, Chair Will and I will be meeting, asking for a meeting with the governor to talk more about this, to really seek state aid to support our efforts here. Because while this is happening in Burlington, many schools in our state were built in the 1960s. Burlington High School was 1963. I think that's the BTC, the Techno Center, that back building with the high levels was 1964. So, you know, it's a bigger problem than Burlington, but we are dealing with it now. In just to provide a little more detail around the work around getting BHS students back into person, we do have about a quarter of our students participating in sports, 295 students or so, which has been amazing for them to come back together in person, but still, three quarters of our students are not involved in those activities. So we wanna get them back in person. We are currently looking at our middle schools and primarily Edmunds Middle and Elementary School, actually, to have to run high school for a day at the middle school and the elementary school on the Wednesday when the elementary students aren't there and obviously doing a deep cleaning before and after. And so that's our immediate planning. We're also reaching out to UVM as Monica mentioned to really put some additional pressure on. We've already asked once and been told no, we're asking again and just trying to move up the food chain to ask for space, they're going away. Students are not gonna be on campus after Thanksgiving. So there's a couple of months there where we could achieve four days a week if we could get the agreement of the university. So we're working on that for kind of a midterm and then short midterm. And then a longer midterm is this alternate space. And then we have this big decision to make about continuing the re-envisioning plan or rethinking the re-envisioning plan. So big items on the table for the city and for the district. We could open it up for questions if people have, I'm sure people have questions. Yeah, we have about 10 minutes for questions. Ali. Yes, thank you. And I have to say, Tom, thank you so much. I think you coming in and grappling with all of this and doing it also with so much grace and including also the community in the conversation is just exceptional. I have to say that, thank you so much. And the first question that I have is basically how do we now treat PCB? Knowing that now it also contaminated the soil. Do we know and also are we thinking about a different location to house Burlington High School for the new construction or what? Those are the first two questions. So the soil, we know there are PCBs in the soil around almost the entire perimeter of the high school. We've known that for a while. And we know that and that happens because there are PCBs in the caulking of the windows. So they're all around the window frames. And what happens is when they get rained on or the weather, they kind of drip down and they drip into the soil. So that's expected. And the question is, are there PCBs in deeper in the soil? So there was fill soil brought in for the construction of the building. And there's a question about whether or not the fill soil could have been contaminated. Not that it was, but we don't know. So that's what we need to really understand is are there PCBs deeper in the soil? And we will know more about that this week or next week. Should be early next week, if not this week. I know many people have questions, but I'll leave it to that. Thank you so much again. Thank you. Jeff. Yeah, to Superintendent Flanagan and the school board folks, have you ventured into the conversation about using the other school facilities in the district like all the elementary schools and the middle school to have school session for the high school students at the other end of the day? Given of all the physiological research we've heard about how well teenagers function at the end of the day, as opposed at the early end of the day, could we use the second half of the day for the high school students at all of the school buildings that are already in session? Thank you. Yes, so we are first of all gonna be using, our plan is to use the middle school and elementary school on Wednesday when those schools are not in session. So we're currently in K through five on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. So Wednesday is a day that we can use. That is step one. I understand that's not your question. Your question is about other days and how we could utilize the building on other days. And I think there are, if we continue to go further down this path without another solution, we are gonna need to consider creative and innovative and different solutions like that. In the very immediate, it is extremely challenging to pull that off because our teachers teach across multiple grade levels. So you can't have teachers necessarily, like you wouldn't be able to have all the ninth graders in one building, all the 10th graders in another building, right? And so it's logistically not possible with the current schedule. So we would have to reschedule the building. And so that's just a really massive lift. Even getting in one day a week on Wednesday is a really big lift that's gonna require me negotiating with our unions and doing a lot of scheduling and planning to get to that point. And our goal is to get there in mid-November. But again, I have to work that out with our labor partners. So I hear that. I think there's, we've all heard or seen kind of a split schedule, right? Where there's been an AM and a PM. And if we continue to go down this road and there's not a solution in a different building and trailers at UVM, we're gonna need to consider those types of things as we shift into the second semester. All right, thank you. Thank you. I'll just pipe up, Jeff. We have three minutes until our next segment. All right. I have a question if I can go. Is that Mark? Yes, it is. All right, Mark. This is Mark Barlow. So I did complete the survey today and for the long range plans for Burlington High School. On option number three, we have an agreement with the city on debt policy that we made when I was on the board and there's, I believe very little or no additional capacity to bond further. We've already proposed bonding of $109 million already. And so I was wondering how we would pay any more, bond anymore for a new school. And secondly, we should look to South Burlington's recent example of a community that doesn't have any more capacity in its taxpayers to pay for additional bonding. So if we wanna build a new school instead of continuing with the re-envisioning project, it seems as though we would need to find the 50 plus million extra dollars that we would need to do so from somewhere other than additional bonding. And I guess it's a comment slash question. Yeah, it's a legitimate question. And I'm, we are gonna need help. I mean, to me, we are in an emergency situation and we need aid. So the long-term push and the reason our taxes are as high as they are, particularly around schooling is because we have an inequitable funding model that disproportionately over burdens the taxpayers. And so that's just a problem that we need to figure out. And there was a lot of traction on that last spring, right before COVID kind of closed everything down and took over everyone's lives. There was some significant traction. So I know there's interest representative Odie and Senator Baruth I've talked to about this. And there's traction on that. I've talked to about this and there's traction across the state because it doesn't just, and I'm sure you know, Mark too, it doesn't just impact us. It impacts smaller districts in the Northeast kingdom and sort of school districts all over the state and different parts of the state. So I think we should be pushing incredibly hard when we get back into session on the weighted funding, weighted, you know, cupel funding formula. The other thing is construction aid. We haven't had construction aid in the state where one of the few states in the country that doesn't have construction aid, our buildings are old and now we have a problem, right? That it seems like it's gonna be not just a problem here in Burlington. So I think that seems like there's not a lot of traction and it's further away, but I think we should be, I think we should be really yelling and screaming about those things. And so, you know, that doesn't directly help your question if we go out to bond, you know, or if we, right, if we have this bonding issue next year and the weighted funding formula isn't for two or three years, it's a longer term issue. So I think you're right, the sort of fiscally prudent decision and maybe the real, one of the most kind of straightforward decisions for us is that second option. I will say too, I just put forth those three options. They're not the only three options. So there could be some, we could flex a little bit off of some of those options, even just the pause, right? So there's been some question about, should we even just pause and like let's see, let's learn more about this site before we make a further decision, but let's try to get into an alternative site as soon as possible. Thank you. All right. Thank you all our school commissioners and Tom Flanagan. And we'll move on to our next topic. We have Kyle Dotson with us tonight from the Office of Police Transformation to give an update. I thought it'd be useful to read from the press release from the mayor about when he was appointed. The mayor announced that he's appointing Kyle the president CEO of Greater Burlington YMCA. We all know him from there to a new temporary position titled director of police transformation to help lead the city's work to forge a new consensus on policing in Burlington. This work will include the oversight of the Burlington Police Department's planning, policy and engagement efforts during a period in which the city is advancing a wide range of transformation efforts. So Kyle, we wanted to hear what your plans are and see if we can offer any input from wards four and seven. Thanks for attending. That'd be great. Thank you, Jeff. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, excellent. Just wanted to make sure. Good evening, everyone. I looked down the list of participants. I saw that I knew a reasonable number of you. So greetings to all and hello to folks who I don't yet know. So I thought maybe I would just kind of walk through a little bit of what I've learned, how I'm starting to organize my thoughts and then leave some opportunities for questions. Jeff, if I'm correct, I think you have me on for about 20 minutes. Yes. Excellent. So the first thing is, Jeff gave you a little primer from the announcement, but let me share a few other things. These are what I would argue are the structural organizational change pieces that the mayor identified when he thought of the job. These are not exhaustive, but amongst them is looking into charter change, meaning looking how the management, I guess, and oversight of the police department is put together particularly as it relates to discipline and looking at what many municipalities and communities across the country are doing with greater civilian oversight. So they have boards perhaps like our police commission, often with more teeth or they are considering such from anything as little as some involvement in police disciplinary issues to exclusive authority. That means that ultimately those situations will flow up through these bodies and that they can hand down discipline where it has historically and traditionally been the chief of police who manages those issues. So we're looking at that here in Burlington. We're looking at new body, camera, footage policies as it relates to most sort of poignantly how we share that footage, how we organize it. You can imagine there's just reams and reams of footage. There's an issue of redacting to deal with issues of privacy, but what is the appropriate level of transparency and then how do you arrive at that point from the standpoint of manpower to review all of the footage and redact it properly? We're looking at that. We're looking at an RFP request for proposal for assessment of BPD and a lot of these things for the record, most of these things were in motion. They did not come on the table when I was hired. Many of them are involving city council members and the police commission and joint committees. So all of these things were already in motion. The chief and the department are heavily involved. The chief's done a lot of the work. So I was brought on as potentially a catalyst facilitator and influencer, but these things are in motion. I think it's important people to know that. So we're trying to put together an RFP to ask an outside firm to come in and do an assessment of BPD. That will be in conjunction with a community assessment. That RFP went out already and there have been some vendors have responded. And I believe we're in the process of choosing the actual person will go out and get feedback from the community about what we want from policing. And then this RFP I just spoke about the assessment will say what we're currently doing in terms of policing and public safety. And then we'll put all that in the mix to decide where we want to go. Another piece is looking at people know there was a resolution to decrease the budget of sworn officers that the BPD carries. It was 105, I believe budgeted. We weren't at 105, but that's been brought down to 74 by attrition and the chief just gave a presentation recently, I think we're at 87, but two of those are in the process of leaving. So we're really at 85 of sworn officers and moving through attrition down to 74, which will free up some budgetary money. And then that one of the areas being looked at is community service liaisons or community service officers, but some function of people trained in social work, trained to help us with all of the mental health issues and in theory, picking up work that currently is not always appropriate or most efficient and best use of resources to send out highly trained uniform gun toting professional to do things that don't require that. So that's another thing. Use of force is something that's being looked at, policies that govern how use of force plays out, how you move through a progression of intensified use of force and expectations around that. So I gave all that just to point out that there's a lot in the mix. It does mirror things that are happening nationally. But after I looked all that and I thought about what potential and hopeful skills and value I bring to the table and certainly supporting that work is important, but I don't know if that's the thing that... Yes, can you folks hear me? Yeah, we can. Could DC Murad, thanks. Go ahead, Kyle. Okay, we're good? Yep. And so those were all the... Those were what I am arguing are the structural changes, but as I watch what's happening nationally and inevitably is happening here locally, we have a deep, deep problem of mistrust. There are the trust between the community or parts of the community and policing and elected officials is in a pretty bad place. And if we are going to my opinion is that the most valuable thing that I could help to support during my time is to lessen the chasm that currently exists between those bodies, move it to a healthy, more healthy dialogue, one where there's more trust, more good faith. We won't solve these challenges overnight. These challenges are big. There's a certain degree to which these challenges exist in really intense amplified ways nationally and the energy from those things impact our community in ways that I would argue aren't always things that the genesis or they're nestly happening here to the same degree, but there's a sense of right now I don't think the pain and dissatisfaction in community is bound by geography or time. We're dealing with wounds, particularly when you're talking about the BIPOC community, Black Indigenous people of color community. This is a bit of a cumulative issue. We've been struggling with these issues in America for centuries and each wound is cumulative. And so it's not a discrete issue. It's not what happened on Friday night on Church Street, but it's actually a cumulative issue, which is challenging. And I've spent, I'm embedded in the police department and I get how being held accountable for everything that's ever happened is difficult, but whether one likes or not, I do believe that's the moment we're in. So around that trust, what I'm trying to develop, I've talked at pretty significant length with the chief and I'm talking inside is I think that Burlington needs its own something it can to a truth and reconciliation process. I've done a little reading on it and I'm a little bit of a student of what happened in South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That has been replicated in many places, but for me, it's about healing. I hope that we can agree as a community and a nation that there's a deep wound as it relates to the ravages of racism, the way racism has played out in our community, the particular poignancy of racism when it plays out in policing. It's not everywhere all the time, but it doesn't need to be everywhere all the time to be something that's deeply problematic. And to the degree that we see racism in so many areas of American life, it just seems unreasonable to think that it doesn't exist in policing. Since there's more than enough evidence, we just had the school district, we have an achievement gap, we have a wealth gap, we have a health disparity gap. And when you look at gaps, I would argue that you have two choices. Either there's something pervasive, systemic happening that is impacting Black and BIPOC communities or Black and BIPOC folks are just inferior, predisposed to crime, less intelligent, those are the two options. It doesn't make sense that a group of people would have the outcomes that we're experiencing in our communities, unless there's an outside force that's contributing to it, or there's a deficiency within the community. And I hope that we're clear that there's not a reasonable conclusion to suggest that there's a deficiency within the community of folks of color. So this trust piece is not an easy one, but I hope that in our scale and scope and what we have here in Burlington, the capital we have of so many kinds, the good people we have here, and I think a force, a police department that works really hard and has a lot of good people in it doing good work as someone who's inside. I'd like to think that if we can figure it out, I don't have all those pieces in place, but I feel if we have the will, if we commit, if we are clear that what we wanna do is have a healing process, could have people put it in place. If we could do this healing process, then we can do what I think, arguably is the equally important work, and that is increasing our dialogue and our sense of awareness of what happens in policing. One thing that's happened since I've been in a building is I would argue that police departments are a bit of a black box. Most of us have very little understanding of the real nitty gritty of what happens in policing. I was in a training yesterday, and for the record, the department has been incredibly gracious. I feel welcomed. I've connected with folks. We have really good conversations internally, and there's a sense of generosity of people wanting me to understand what they do daily on a daily basis. So we had a training yesterday full on. I had a gear belt. I had a training pistol and eye protection, a whole thing in the building there. There are places where you can set up scenarios, and we set up scenarios where we went in as officers, there were people in distress, those people had weapons, and we just watched a video about the different ways that you can try to manage a situation like that, and we had to try to manage it. And it was really powerful to see the challenges that law enforcement face. And I think that part of the challenge we have is we don't have a broad enough and deep enough discussion in the community about what the job entails independent of road cops, corrupt cops, racist cops. I think all those things exist because they're human, like the rest of us. And all those things I would argue is this in any profession. So this thing certainly exists. I don't believe it's the majority. And even if we set those people aside, the people who are left, who are good people, people who want to get home to their families into the day, honest people, people trying to do a hard job, we just don't know and we need to do a better job of community of owning the tensions. There are tensions that are really difficult to reconcile. And right now I think it's left to please reconcile them. And when those tensions go unreconciled and something tragic happens, please have to bear the brunt of a problem which I think belongs much more broadly to society. So just to wrap up, and then I'd love to have a conversation is, there are other structural changes, all of which I think need consideration. They're in motion and I'm doing the things I can to support those actions. I think at the end of the day, the issue is a trust issue. And on that, I just want to be clear. There are human beings all around. Police officers are human beings, the community are human beings, but the difference that I see is the police officer are professionals and they have the law behind them and they have guns. And that makes it different than the kind of pain that's being felt in the community at a collective level. At the individual level, when you're out there and you're scared and your individual police officer are human, it starts to, the tables change a little bit, particularly when the person on the other side has a weapon. But at the collective level, the societal level, the police are professionals with guns and the law. And therefore I think it's appropriate that the lead on the healing happens institutionally because the pain is a historical pain and it's happened at the hands of institutions in America, institutions have been unkind to the BIPOC community. And therefore I think that's where the healing needs to begin. So that's about the healing. And then once the healing begins and hopefully we can develop some trust, we can have better conversations about this very difficult job, about how many people do it in a very admirable way and about how we can together think of ways to provide public safety in our communities in a more thoughtful, equitable, and a way that satisfies more members of the community. Great job. Kyle, so let's get to questions. We can probably give 10 minutes of questions. TJ, I see you have your hand up. Not so much a question, just Kyle, I'm really, I really love what you just said. And I was really happy to see that you were the person here to accept that challenge that you've been into. I just feel like it's such a huge societal issue, like you were saying, how can there not be police officers who are white or BIPOC that have biases when you're raised in a society that has bias, right? You would be exceptional to not have that. So I really appreciate everything you've said. Thanks a lot. And I'm really excited to see the results of your and everyone's work. Thank you. Thanks, TJ. And I just have to say, not only thank you, but I love the small community. The last time I saw TJ, we were hanging out at a hot tub in a gunk with Maine. And so here we are on Zoom and our NPA. So nice to see you, TJ. Any questions from folks? Kyle's it's still gonna be a six month period that you're in this position? It is a six month in time, which is a thief has us down to about five now. Right. So yeah, so it'll end in the end of March. All right, well, I don't see other questions. Oh, Carol Odie, I have a question. It's not so much a question as just a comment, which is looking forward to working with you, Kyle. So great presentation. And with anything that we in the legislative end can do. Thank you so much, Kyle. I'm sure many of you are involved in conversations. And I think this issue is an amplified example of my belief that I can only imagine shared here that if we can't figure out a better place and get there together with any number of us having to go out on a limb a little bit, having to extend the knowledge branch, having to take a little bit of leap of faith. But if this small, caring, wonderful community can't do it, our nation is in so much trouble. And I put that to us, I'm serious. I put that as to as a challenge. Let's figure this out. Let's do what we need to do, 40,000 strong, more with income, but relatively small place. I have no idea how Chicago and Detroit and Baltimore are gonna figure this out, but that's on them. But I think we can do something meaningful here in our community. And it's not gonna be easy, but it is doable. So let's get this done. Matt. I'll just add to what T.J. and Carol said, I think you're the man to bring this about, Kyle. You've got a good heart and good enthusiasm in your intelligence. And I think there's just a lot of folks, it's an uncomfortable conversation. And it's conversations that a lot of folks are ignorant about. And I don't say that in a negative way. I will admit I'm ignorant to a lot of things. I don't, in my little cocoon of life, working and running on the durable wheel have a lot of these interactions or negative feelings. So it's good to bring it to light, I think. And somebody with some passion needs to stir the pot a little bit. So thank you. Thanks, Matt. And I think part of what I'm trying to help people, I'm trying to have conversations in the department, I think there's a path through this as it relates to how we own and navigate this issue of historic and continuing racism, right? It's sort of like an inheritance that you didn't ask for. When you have a nation that's behaved the way our nation has behaved, right? There is not long ago, mid-century, where you would have people watching a body hanging from a tree. And there was not on the people's face, there was not horror, or that it seemed pretty regular. You shouldn't be able to see that as a human being. If you can look at that and not be impacted and go home, it's a trauma. That whatever allowed our country to do that and do other things is deeply problematic. And unfortunately, we've inherited that. That's our history. So I think there's a path through this that's ownership and appreciation of being complicit without guilt. It's not an indictment to say that racism is within you. It is, it's just a fact that it is the best marketing campaign ever. Nike and Apple can't hold a candle to the racism marketing campaign. It has been, this is a perverse way of putting it, but it has been a brilliant campaign to demonize, dehumanize, right? And other a group of people. And that's what we're facing. And so we just need to honor that, be humble in the face of that and just understand that we can say, yes, this is happening without saying I'm a horrible person. The white person don't have to, you're not saying I'm a horrible person with mal intent. You're saying you're a human and being impacted by this powerful, powerful force. So if we can figure that out and then just have empathy and compassion and feel for the hurt of other people, you can, when someone's hurting, you can honor that hurt without saying, I'm personal responsible for your hurt, right? That's not what you're necessarily saying. And I think we can figure that out and get some trust. And once we get trust, we can do all sorts of things, right? Communities, organizations move at the speed of trust. That's awesome. Carol, you had a question? Yeah, I wanted to say that I made many phone calls in this campaign season because I can't go door-to-door because of COVID-19. And I just, what I heard at its base was a lot about what you were saying, Kyle, is people feel very badly about racism and they also are just kind of overwhelmed and don't, I would say don't. It's like, okay, it's not my, I didn't do this. You know, getting blame out of it is a great thing to do because that just puts a veil down. And so if we can just find a path forward, a way forward to take constructive action and understand what is systemic racism? What is structural racism? And how is it that the way things have been set up over time has made opportunity not equal for everybody? Because, you know, at its heart, I think Americans want to believe in the American dream and equal opportunity and equal rights for all. So if we can see how it hasn't been equal, we can say, gee, I would never have wanted that. I haven't been a part of setting that up. Now, what can I do to make it better? And I think that that's, to me, that's the key. So I'm glad you talked about it, no blame. Yeah, I think you're right, Carolyn. And once again, it comes back to trust and the ability to speak our truths. And, you know, for me, truth and reconciliation is a metaphor for a type of process. Yesterday, as I mentioned, I was in this training with officers, there were about 10 of us and we had, I would argue one of the best conversations happened about policing, about BIPOC communities, about trust, about the breakdown, and it happened in a place where it was safe for people to be honest. And what it came down to is there's this very awkward phrase that is spoken more internally and externally, but with some of these tragedies that happened, this idea of lawful but awful, right? That police are responding to a situation and within use of force guidelines and within the circumstance, the way they use force is legal within the guidelines, but the outcome is awful. For example, someone is doing a relatively low level crime, they, you know, they steal from a store, but when the police show up, they pull out a knife and now it's escalated and they don't comply. They have committed a crime, it's a fact. And they don't comply and they behave in ways that escalate the situation and you have someone, ultimately, if it escalates all the way and the person approaches and there's none of distance and they create a sense of mortal threat to the police, the police shoot. So you can have a situation where someone's dead and they stole $25 worth of stunt from a store. That happens. That is awful, but often these are lawful. And so I was talking to the police and they were defending these lawful but awful. And I said, okay, imagine you live in a community I wish there are no shortage in our country and you have a situation where your cousin, your brother, your good friend, your uncle, some significant number of people in your orbit have died or been seriously injured in these lawful but awfuls. How would you feel? So we're getting down to how humans behave. And I looked at every officer in that room and I defied them not to themselves have a challenge with the entity that created or what it appears created that situation, which in this case is the police. But I think those police officers are human beings, if they lived in these communities where these sort of things happen more often and it happened to these contacts in their life, they would feel similarly about the entity that was on the other side and would have a hard time having empathy and compassion for whatever the guidelines and rules were. All they know is that these people in their life are dead and for things that did not seem to warrant death. And that was kind of a conversation stopper. The officers had been, had a whole bunch of ways that they were explaining and they just stopped and we all looked at each other. And I thought it was pretty powerful and important moment of that's what we're looking at, that there's always perspectives. And so we just need to talk more as a community, hopefully in a good faith environment where we can grapple with these really difficult issues. We have some really difficult issues even if we can strip away racism and corruption and bias, we're gonna be left with some difficult challenges to reconcile in a society where we want safety and unfortunately crime happens and it's dynamic. And so that's what we're dealing with. We can't make it simpler than it is, it's complex. So we gotta go out in a complex fashion. Well, Kyle, I wanted to thank you and look forward to all the great work that you're gonna do with all the parties and all of the city. So thank you for your time tonight. And it's a great dialogue. If you want to use the NPAs, ours in particular, I think it's a great avenue for getting in the dialogue going like you did. So let us know if you guys wanna come back. Thanks so much, Jeff. Thanks for this opportunity. Thanks to everyone on the call. I really appreciate you listening in and I will say in leaving, please become engaged. Be on the lookout. As I move through this, I'm gonna be, there's gonna be lots of opportunities. One thing we definitely need is we need more Berlin Tonians in on the conversation. Right now, the number of people deeply engaged is far too narrow. We need to know more about what all of Burlington is thinking. So please stay tuned and stay engaged. Have a good night, everybody. Thanks. Thank you. All right, next we have up DPW, Phillip Peterson and Nicole Losh. Hello. Hello, Jeff. I'm gonna share my screen here. Can I do that? Sure. Okay. We're talking about some concept designs for Ethan Allen Parkway and North Ave intersection. That is correct. Let's see here, see if this decides to work. Okay, can everyone see the presentation? Yes, I see Ethan Allen Parkway. Excellent. Okay, I'm Phillip Peterson. I'm an associate engineer with the Department of Public Works, City of Burlington and Nicole Losh is with me as well. Try and get through the presentation as quickly as we can so that folks can make some comments. Nicole has a bit of some background on the project. Nicole? Yeah, thank you. And thanks for having us. You've got some important issues on your agenda tonight. So I appreciate you making the time. We are here with some concepts for the intersection of North Avenue and Ethan Allen Parkway. And this study really came out as a continuation from the North Avenue corridor study and some of the roadway improvements that we've made there over the last several years. Immediately after we reallocated the travel lanes on North Avenue, we started looking at the other recommended projects that came out of the corridor study and we had several intersection recommendations. In the midst of evaluating the corridor changes and hearing from the community about how things were going on North Avenue, after that project, we heard a lot about the section from Ethan Allen Parkway to the high school as probably the area with the most concern. We had these two intersection concepts for both the 127 intersection and Ethan Allen Parkway. But because they're fairly close together, both signalized and see the heaviest traffic volume of the entire corridor. We also have some challenging interactions at Ethan Allen Parkway with the heavy volume of right turning cars into the Ethan Allen Parkway neighborhood, people bicycling, trying to go straight against that traffic and people trying to cross in the crosswalk across the Ethan Allen Parkway. We felt it was important to start with this intersection before looking at the 127 or any other intersections if we were going to pursue intersection improvements. All of that said, we've done the evaluation for some of the ways that we could improve the corridor, sorry, improve that intersection. But one of those alternatives is to do nothing. Maybe we don't actually need to put all of our attention or limited resources into this location right now and maybe this isn't the best time. And so that is very valuable feedback as well. So we did host another neighborhood meeting earlier this month to share this presentation. Good suggestion to bring it to the NPA as well. I know some of the people that attended that earlier meeting are here again tonight. And so just want to thank everybody who has participated in this so far and has provided some feedback. But with that, I'm going to turn it over to Phillip. We'll give a short presentation and try to continue the conversation and hear from more in the neighborhood. Thanks Nicole. So I will try and keep this brief so that we can get to your comments. Here's a brief agenda of what I'm going to be going through. So here are the existing conditions. And this is the intersection we're talking about. North is going up in this particular map. And as you can see from the existing conditions and most of us who live in the New North End, I live in the New North End as well. This intersection, it does not have a normal layout. There are several issues. There are long pedestrian crossing distances. There are some sight line concerns. There's a driveway going into Ethan Allen Park that's part of the turning signal. That's not usually the case with most intersections and road, Little Eagle Bay being excluded. There's multiple turning movement combinations and this causes more chances for conflicts of all road users. And there are, as Nicole already pointed out, some time periods with high volumes of traffic. So those are all things that we're looking at. Again, here's our existing conditions. Our five-way intersection. And one of our goals was safety. There are pedestrians that, there's a lot of interaction between pedestrians going to the park and bicyclists coming from the park. And so our goals were to evaluate how this improvements, how would the cascading effects of this intersection improvement would align with the North Avenue Corridor Study. We wanted to improve the operations of the intersection, reduce vehicle queuing and some safety improvements and also reduce speeds of turning vehicles. In particular, one concern that of note is vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed on North Avenue turning onto Ethan Allen Parkway. That particular movement is one that's of particular concern. So here is our first concept. And the driveway to Ethan Allen Park is now going to be relocated further up Ethan Allen Parkway. There is a drawing for that, I don't have one tonight, but this simplifies the intersection's operation. And what we're doing here is we're going to include Little Eagle Bay in the signal. This work would include adding new signal heads. And I think this one change alone would improve safety from a simplification standpoint. We now have four legs at the intersection instead of the five that we currently have. And all of the roads are part of the signal instead of a driveway. We're reducing pedestrian crossing distances. This is particularly an improvement for the crosswalk going across Ethan Allen Parkway where the entrance to the park has been removed slightly to the South. Basically, we have significant property impacts either one way or the other. So the roundabout option cannot fit within the current public right of way. So it's important to note that turning movements in particular, the models are shown that all vehicle users can make the necessary turning movements in the roundabout. And I guess the big bummer for this particular option is the expense. The estimated cost would be about $2.5 million. So along with the concepts that we've just shown, we've had our consultants create a future traffic operations kind of guide. So just to kind of break things down, there's not a significant change between the alternatives. I think what's important to note is that the improvements at the intersections are safety improvements. Safety improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists in particular. The vehicular improvements are minimal. And in some cases, as you can probably see in the chart here, there's a decrease in level of service. Having said that, there seems to be a safety improvement for vehicles as well. I think a lot of it has to do with the pedestrian interval that does not currently exist. The roundabout experience on the other hand is an improvement across the board. A reduced delay, improved traffic flow, no light to beat, roundabouts are designed to promote a continuous circular flow of traffic. There's low travel speeds and the few collisions that can occur in a roundabout are typically minor and cause a few injuries or even damage since they occur at such low speeds. So as I said, the major downfall for the roundabout option is the expense and the amount of space required to build it. So we've also created this Alternatives Comparison Matrix. Red indicates kind of a negative or no change result and green represents a positive result. And as you can see, the roundabout option hits all the marks except for costs and the amount of space needed. So those are kind of our concepts and our options. At this point, and as Nicole said, one thing that we can look at doing is no modifications at all. Just to summarize, we're just gonna acknowledge from our meeting last week, there's some highlights. Some of the folks that attended the meeting felt like we should give residents more context. Why are we looking at this particular intersection? But there was a general consensus that safety should be the focus. And so people seem excited about that. And also some of the feedback is there's an interest in more outreach to get more input from residents in the New North End. So with that, take some questions or comments and we'll take notes and see what we can do. If anyone could chime in with a question because I can't see everybody for hands with the presentation up. I have a question. Philip or Nicole, in a lot of areas where there's broad access to a public highway, the state has forced the people that own the property to change their access point. My experience is a lot of the problems at that intersection developed from people coming in and out of the Little Eco Bay. Can't they be sort of instructed to do something different with their access point? So they're not coming out right in the middle of an uncontrolled intersection. In the morning, particularly, it's like dangerous, but you already know that. Yeah, that's a good question. And I think we would be a little challenged to put this back on that neighborhood in particular, since years ago, we permitted that development in this location. I mean, the intersection was already there. So I think at this point, our best option would be to just integrate their driveway into the signal. I think that's one of the biggest challenges is that it is effectively an uncontrolled driveway and in the middle of a signalized intersection. We haven't heard from many or any people directly in the neighborhood. It was part of this intersection evaluation, but in the corridor studies, we were developing that and thinking about some of the improvements near their driveway. We definitely heard from them and acknowledged some of the challenges that they have not being included in the signal. Everything from trying to turn left, northbound across that heavy flow, the left turn lane, as you can see and the graphic that's up now is so far away from their driveway that if they miss the signal, they're kind of sitting in the middle of the intersection and confused. So I think the signalization part could be a great benefit to some of the issues that you raised. I don't know that we have a path forward to just put that cost and the design work back on the neighborhood though. Well, they used to have two access points there and they closed down one of them, right? They did. I think they could move it up a little bit more. So that would be all you'd have to do is hang a new light, not necessarily do a lot of. Thanks. Thank you. I have a question. Go ahead. I think recently you've made some improvements to that intersection just with painting and the timing of the light. So I appreciate that. I'll sometimes walk north on North Avenue and typically on the east side. And a half a million dollars seems like a lot of money to me. And I guess the entrance into the park would be further up Ethan Allen Parkway which then those nice walls that they put up a long time ago for it would kind of be pointless. But my concern is with the crosswalk. I see you made it shorter to cross over Ethan Allen Parkway but you also made it further in. So like right now, if I'm going north on the east side I can look behind me and see if there's cars coming and hopefully they have their signal on and see if they're actually gonna turn right on Ethan Allen Parkway. But when you put the start of the crosswalk so far in I can't, I'm not gonna be able to see oncoming vehicles. Yep, I do see your concern there. That's good feedback. And these are just conceptual designs. We could definitely take a closer look at that crosswalk alignment if we were to move forward with that. But good to know the improvements that we've made so far have made some impact. So thank you for that. Before we would construct something we would definitely be tracking for sight line issues things like that during design phase if something was moved forward from concept which this is to engineering design phase though those things are definitely looked at. It's great input. I am typing down what you had to say there. Okay. And I, Wenuski Avenue that must have gotten repainted within the last week. Pretty close. Yeah. It's exciting. I have some questions in the comment. If I may go ahead and Matt. I feel that the biggest unimprovement when the improvement was made two years ago was the loss of the right hand turn lane traveling north for vehicles to move on to Ethan Allen Parkway and it slows traffic. When I look at the design with a roundabout if we consider Wenuski's Indy 500 they have two lanes all the way around the racetrack. This only has one little narrow lane and I just don't see how traffic is gonna move and not just come to a standstill. Right now I would say pre COVID when people were moving about life normally coming home from the city between five and six traffic already backs up to the high school and it's stop and go bumper to bumper and it never was that way before. So I think it's gonna be even worse if we consider the roundabout. It seems like a good idea in principle but I just don't see how it's actually gonna work. I would say the only real improvement would be your notion of putting back a right hand turn lane and I think it's a really good idea to relocate the driveway to the park. I don't know how Little Legal Bay would change but with this intersection with some new lighting and right hand turn lane it seems like that would incorporate Little Legal Bay with a signal and a right hand turn lane and traffic will move and I don't think that will be at risk of safety for pedestrians. So Matt, what time of day is it bumper to bumper? The five o'clock return from home is what I have seen not during COVID but when wind before COVID and it was. Okay, I mean, I live on Birchcourt so I get the whole stretch and I guess even prior to COVID or even now I haven't really had that experience. I haven't had any since COVID but I also haven't been out. Me neither. But take away COVID. I mean, literally the few times that I was in a normal pattern of going home and everybody else was I literally feared that there was a terrible accident. Each tricked me and the further and further up the avenue I would go in my vehicle the more I would realize this is just one lane on North Avenue. It's nothing to do with an accident. It's just the road design. Is there a reason not to include the intersection that's a hundred yards away and the one that's a mile up the road at Plattsburgh Avenue in this discussion? Those are definitely in the queue for future evaluations. We definitely don't have the funding to construct three intersections all at once. So we have to start with one. We do have concepts so for the other locations and in terms of the 127 intersection that is so close to this one. Similar to some of the concerns that Matt shared when we started thinking about again focusing on this section of the corridor where it had the most traffic if we were picking between those two intersections we had some concern that if we looked at an intersection improvement plan for the 127 that did really help some of that congestion and capacity would the traffic even have any way to go at Ethan Allen Parkway? So should we look at this intersection first to see if there were some improvements we could make to streamline the whole corridor? So that was the main reason for starting at this location and then coming back to think about the other intersections. Jeff. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Jeff. I've got some queue notes that looks like Shereen Hart, Sarah Carpenter and Carol Odie are in the queue. Okay. Thanks. Shereen, would you like to go first? Hey, everyone, this is Chip, not Shereen. I didn't just have to change my pronouns. She knew that I would want to see this presentation and I'm grateful to DPW for doing this. And just a quick perspective. I grew up in the New North End. I've lived out here, except when I was in college now for 50 years, I've also been working Winooski for 20 plus and I was there before the roundabout and I'm there now and I've driven into the North End, into Winooski thousands of times. And I will tell you, Matt, on one hand, I will agree with you. I think the traffic challenge is the loss of the right hand turn lane. But I'm personally convinced that a roundabout would eliminate this issue right away because someone would get to the roundabout and they're not going to be blocked by someone going around the roundabout, except for really occasionally. You can debate the finer points of it, but we can talk about it later, but I'm actually convinced it would have a substantial positive impact on the flow. My questions are this, or let me also say before I ask quick questions, I also agree with Monica. I think you are going to have to watch where the placement of the pedestrian crossing is on Ethan Allen Drive. I've crossed there hundreds of times on foot and on bike and you have to look as you're going north, you have to look over your left shoulder very, very carefully and have a car in the distance. And if we hide a pedestrian around that corner, we're going to need some room, but you have all kinds of engineering fun challenges, especially with the private property, I realize that. My question is two-folder. It's the same question, but with two spots. I know that you can't, we obviously can't address all three of these intersections at once. But one thing I wonder is, let's pretend for a moment that we come up with a way to move cars through this intersection going north and south really nicely. Let's say a roundabout does it. Do we know what effect that will have on the 127 light in particular going south? Because one of the things I'm afraid of, I live on, I come out of Village Green. And as most of us who come out who live in that neighborhood know, you can't. You go down to Saratoka, all right? And one of the things I'd be afraid of is that enough traffic now gets through the Ethan Allen intersection and 127 gets backed up. So the consequence of opening up this flow, I wonder if it gets backed up further down. One thing I do know is people are challenged by the Winooski roundabout because change is difficult. And even though I think it's awesome, that makes all the sense in the world, one thing that we might wanna teach people coming out of, for example, the Village Green neighborhood is they can now easily, instead of waiting, we saw in front porch forums, someone claimed to wait 10 minutes to get out of that neighborhood, which is not true, but it's just not. But they can now easily just take a right. And you can take a right and be around the roundabout and going south in 30 seconds. And that might be a way to look at what happens with the flow as well. So in any, but so my question is, do we have a sense of what the impact the additional flow will be on the 127 light and for people who are trying to turn left out of the Village Green neighborhood? And you may not have that now. I'd be surprised if you did actually. I just wanted to put that out there as something to look at. Yeah, it's a great question. And you're right. We haven't dealt into that level of detail yet. Before we really got too far in the design work or the evaluation with any of these alternatives, we did want to come out to the community and really see if there was that much interest. That said, if the roundabout was the alternative that we wanted to pursue, we may, we may, well, we would definitely look at how it would potentially line up with a signalized intersection of the 127, because as you said, we wouldn't want to construct something this location that's just going to cause cars to spill back into the roundabout from the 127. The only time that the Winooski roundabout fails design-wise is when the northbound entrance to 87, all the way up by Costco, gets backed up all the way down the hill. Then the roundabout stops and the original design of the roundabout for the first couple of weeks, they did have two full running lanes and it actually worked, but they changed it for some other reasons. And so now that's the only time it could get backed up. And that's the thing I wouldn't want to see. We dump all these cars south of this potential roundabout and it gets backed up and everyone here will never hear the end of it. Yeah, it's a great question. And just to be clear too, the recommended concept for the 127 intersection was also to evaluate a roundabout. Oh, well, that's awesome. Yeah, so. You have space there too. Yes, we definitely have less property impacts at that location since we have closed two of the turn lane ramps that used to be there. And so we do have a lot more space, but that could be a solution to that concern about. Okay, all right, thank you. I appreciate it. We are going over, but if others want to quick questions, Sarah, I know when Carol has one and I see TJ, is that it? And then we'll call it a night. Thanks. A comment and a question. I hear you don't talk at all about Lakewood and maybe when we need to be louder, there are more people that live in Lakewood than live in the Little League Bay. And if you add Leonard to that, so there's a lot of people who really struggle to try to go north. So just in your signalization and any of your concepts, I just encourage you to make sure that that's taken into consideration. And I, my first reaction to a roundabout was that would make it even more difficult. Chip has a valid point. I guess you can go south to go north, but my other comment, just as my city councilor had the $2 million additional price tag at this point in time would weigh heavy, certainly on me given our capital needs priorities. So I would be thinking long and hard about, is this the right time for that kind of investment? Thanks. Carol? Mine is just that four years ago when I was going door to door and the issue of the four lanes to two lanes was a very big issue. I had many comments about concerns about people on bikes. And it turned out when I would follow up with where did you find the most problems? Almost everyone identified places not in the New North End except for one place and it's at this intersection that we're talking about tonight. And I think it is when the person was coming out of Ethan Allen road and wanted to take a right to go north on North Avenue. And the bicycle was gonna go straight which was across the road and they were gonna go right. And that they almost got in an accident there. And that was one story and there was another story and I don't remember exactly what the points were on that one, but the bicycle thing was a big, the biggest thing that I heard about them. That's all I wanted to say. And TJ? Thank you. So Matt and I have lots of these conversations and I actually disagree with you Matt here about I like the idea of a roundabout a lot. I'm originally from New Jersey and there were tons of roundabouts but I also travel around the state of Vermont a lot because I've worked in lots of different schools and there's one roundabout in particular or maybe two in the Montpelier area. One is near the Ford dealer. I think that might be group five maybe but it was a nasty intersection and it's the smallest little roundabout but it's so effective. I've never once, any time of the day ever driven through there and been backed up by traffic. Never once. And I used to remember sitting at that light, it was awful. So I fully support roundabouts and I really liked the idea of moving the entrance to the Ethan Allen Park. It seems like a really poor placement although I like how you incorporated like bike path walking path to keep that stone wall but otherwise it seems like a bad place for that entrance. So those are just my comments about it. Thank you for this presentation. It wouldn't be a complete Ward 4-7 NPA meeting without asking when you're gonna pave North Avenue. I think actually we may have some good news on that. Last, this did come up at our last meeting too. Did. We checked the schedule at least as of now it is in the schedule to be repaved next year. Obviously we'll have to check after winter deterioration to see if some other route fell apart more than North Ave but currently that is. Oh, there can't be. I don't know about that. We'll be taking the waiting pools out. Yes, they did some drainage evaluation survey work this year to try to solve some of the drainage problems when they repave next year. Excellent for the bikes. Yeah. All right. Thank you everybody. It was a great meeting. Thanks for participating. Let us know what you'd like on the agenda or please join the steering committee. Have a good night. It was a great meeting. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you for organizing. Thanks guys. Have a good night. Thanks Jeff for facilitating.