 You can see your name, but not your... As often times I get booted off of this thing, so if I leave the video off, I'm usually better. So, I think I should... I didn't leave the video on either because I wasn't really gonna speak until there was some reason at the point where they're asking questions about, if they wanna ask questions about inspectorial election things. That works for you. You want me to just, I'll just mute and turn me back into a normal person too. Either way. Oh, no, you're more than a normal person. Thank you. Technical difficulties tonight, but we should be starting in just a minute or two and Chris is facilitating tonight. So, I think Sam is just getting folks... Getting the agenda pulled up. Patience. And to take a deep breath. The meeting tonight and I will pass the baton to Jess Hyman. Hi, I'm Jess Hyman of Ward 3 Steering Committee member, live on North Champlain Street and I will pass it to Tony. You caught me muted. I'm Tony Reddington and I represent Ward 3 on the Steering Committee and I'm happy to be here. Bye. And I'm not sure who I'm passing it to. How about Charlie? Okay, so Charlie G here. I'll be taking notes for tonight's meeting. I live on Rose Street and I'm on the Steering Committee. Thank you. Hi, I'm Kevin, Ward 2. I'm up on Hyde Street. Welcome. Anyone else? Barbara, did you already introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Barbara McGrew, Ward 3. I live right downtown, smack in the center of it. And is Molly here? Thanks, Barbara. Hi everyone, I'm Molly. I am in Ward 3 on the Fountain Street. I'm taking... I'm doing time tonight. I'll hold up a little cards. And Patrick, do you want to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Patrick. Ward 2 on Green Street. I'm all set. Who is everyone left? Miami. Is Miami here tonight? Don't see her. I don't see her. So I think that's it. So it's moving on. Hi, okay. Just want to remind everyone that if you have some ideas for future topics for the NPA meeting, you can fill out the form on the CEDO website. I will get that link to you. Our next meeting is scheduled for March 10th and recordings of tonight's meeting and prior meetings can be found on the YouTube or CCTV's website. Moving on, public forum. If anyone has anything that they would like to say in public forum. Liam Noble, please. Hi, how's everyone doing? I'm Liam Noble. I live on Church... I'm sorry, not Church Street, Cedar Street. And I'm here to talk about the Prop Zero, as many of you know it as, the direct democracy charter change petition. So we are looking for signatures and for people to turn out on March 1st. I want to talk a little bit about what it is. So over the past couple of years, a few highly popular local movements in Burlington have been essentially stopped, which has left a lot of us in town feeling kind of alienated and abused from city hall and feeling very much like we're on the sidelines and we don't really have a voice in things. So what we want to do is change the city charter. Much like as Winooski has done, we want to have it so with 5% of the registered voter in town on a petition, we can have a citywide referendum and with 50% plus one of voters on that referendum, it will become a city ordinance bypassing the city council and the mayor, which is where we've run into problems in the past. Keep the part screen, F35 are two examples of that. So what I'd like to ask is for people to check out the website, PropositionZero.org and PropositionZero.org slash volunteer. If you're interested in helping us collect signatures on Town Hall Day coming up on March 1st. Me and Daniel are going to be there at the Sustainability Academy on 123 North Street for pretty much all day, we'll be moving through there and thank you, that's all I got. Thank you, Liam. Did anybody else have any announcements or things that they would like to share for public forum? Tony Reddington. Yeah, hi, Chris, thank you very much. I'm Tony Reddington, Ward 3 and I just wanna speak briefly on ballot item number four which is the Main Street and I call it not so great street vague concept that all the voters are being asked to approve with a $32 million blank check essentially to make changes on the seven blocks of Main Street from South Union where Edmund School is all the way down to the Battery Street. And there's all kinds of things wrong with this. I think some of you know that Jacob Plannick and Alyssa Faber, Faber represented the NPA 2-3 in the two or three year process of doing a Wynoski Corridor Plan. Well, here we have a similar and perhaps even more important section of Main Street, seven intersections to which four are high crash on the high crash list. And there's been no public involvement since 2016. Actually, I went to one of the hearings at Contoy's and I had to suggest to the now planner of the city make and tunnel that there was no that in the plan for the intersections and for the street, there was no safety wasn't being considered. There was never any advisory committee like on North Avenue, the Wynoski study, Rail and Appriate, Sherburne, Shulman, Roundabout, Colchester Avenue studies and so forth. Never any involvement of our own neighborhood planning assemblies. NPA one and eight, NPA, our NPA and NPA five, excuse me, NPA six all board of the Main Street seven blocks we were never involved. We heard a little bit of last month. Safety was never BPP about in the public works priority in any of their efforts so far. There are four high crash intersections. There's 78 injuries per decade, 7.8 per year, basically two injuries per year on each of the four high crash intersections. The climate change words were not spoken in the hour that we all listened to last week in the presentation by DPW. Equity, a word was never spoken and yet we have the city council policy that racism is a public health emergency and public works wants $32 million bank, a blank check for a TIFC with not even a vague plan. So it really is the boondoggle. It's an insult to public engagement. And I hope that we vote this, you know, vague plan that has no content to it down on Tony here, two minutes is up there, buddy. Thank you, Chris. Bye. Thanks. Anyone else for public forum? Going once, going twice. I'm gonna say my two cents here down my USA hockey jersey on tonight. The American team won the ice hockey match against China this morning. But more importantly, February is Black History Month and I've got this cool book that I've been reading here. It's called Black Ice. It's about the contributions of black players to the game of ice hockey. It's a history of the Colored Hockey League. It took place in the Canadian Maritimes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And a fun fact about that league, that is where the modern day slap shot originated. So check it out if you have an interest in hockey. It's a little bit of a different topic for Black History Month, but I thought I would share and put that out there. Any last call for public forum? Okay. Moving on to the funding vote for the various projects that we heard about last month. As you may recall, we had some issues with the voting process here. So we're gonna tab that vote tonight. I think I'm gonna turn this, where I turn this over to Jessica, since she's been the person who's been kind of coordinating this for us. Great, thanks so much, Chris. And also just a quick note on Black History Month. If folks aren't aware, the city's Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging has a fantastic series of Instagram Live shows every day this month at seven o'clock. And they're amazing. They're great interviews with people from around the city and beyond, really worth watching. So tune into the Burlington REIB's Instagram feed at seven o'clock every day for some really good important stuff. So the grants vote. We're very excited to be able to do the vote tonight. And so I hope everyone has reviewed the applicants. So for folks who weren't here last month, just a little recap. So each ward in the city is granted $2,500 from the city to be spent during the fiscal year, which ends June 30th, 2020. So that's $5,000 total for our two wards. $500 of that has already been allocated towards the NPA's, the Citywide Zoom Fund. So that leaves $2,250 for each ward to allocate. And different wards do this differently. Here in wards two and three, we turn it into a community process and have opened it up to community grants with their specific funding criteria that these funds be used to support community endeavors that both further and promote the mission of the NPA's and support all residents and build community in the neighborhood. So we had several applications. And what we'd like to do first is before I'm gonna just give a super brief description of each application and we'll have a poll on the screen that will allow us to vote. But first I would like to make a motion that we vote on the grant funding as wards two and three combined. So instead of having separate votes for ward two, separate votes for ward three, that we combine the funds together and that we allocate these votes together. So you'll see on your Zoom screens, there is a poll there. So please hit your answer. We'll give that just a moment for folks and everyone should be able to vote on this. Folks who are in the attendee list and the panelists list, you should be able to vote. And we'll give it a moment and then Sam will show us or tell us the results. So we'll see if we can go ahead with the individual with the group voting. Charlie seconds the motion. Thank you. Do we need a minute to tally the votes, Jess? That's a question for Sam. I can't see the results. Yeah, I think just like two more minutes, I think. We'll just have a quick moment. Thank you, Sam. Yep. And I'm here at the community center today just in case anyone shows up and there are no people here in person to vote. So all the voting will be happening via Zoom. All right, I think everyone who's going to vote has voted by now. So it was a yes, 18 out of 19 people voted yes. Excellent. And then... Motion carries. Thanks, Chris. Okay, so now we'll go to the individual votes. And Sam, can you remind me, will the folks see each applicant individually or will they see all four at the same time? They will see all four at the same time. Okay, good. So I'm just going to do a super quick recap of the projects. So the projects are funding for Laboratory B, the Old North End Repair Cafe. The request was for $1,000. And the Old North End Cafe is where you can bring stuff and volunteers fix it down at 1222 North Avenue once a month. A team of volunteers has been doing this since last year, I believe, and has fixed hundreds of things. And so the intention is to have on the third Sunday of every month and it saves people money from having to buy new things, saves the environment and connects folks with valuable skills. And so the money would be spent on tools and food for volunteers. The second application is for Food Not Cops for their daily distribution. And Food Not Cops is a mutual aid project based in Burlington here. And they share free food and gear at one o'clock at the Marketplace Garage, which is in Ward 3. And it's a non-hierarchical autonomous network of community members organizing around meeting the individual and collective needs of all of our neighbors. So they have requested $2,500 to be spent on camping gear, medical supplies, phone and phone cards and pet foods and cleaning supplies for their participants. The third application is for the People's Farm Stand, which is providing, which has provided delicious local organic vegetables and fruit to community members. And that's in Pomeroy Park and also in Baird Street in the South End. And they work in partnership with People's Kitchen and have as long-standing ties in the community and is providing a wealth of fresh food for folks throughout the pandemic. And they have requested $1,422 to be spent on totes and bags for the food, a tent, tables, baskets, gloves, chalkboard and sign. And then the final community application is from Shelby Glass for the Braille Trail at 311 North Avenue Poetry Walk. And so this poetry walk was installed last summer and this request is to make it more accessible. So the walk has signs with beautiful poetry that's scattered throughout the trail. And this is a trail off North Avenue next to Cambrian Rise near the community gardens there. And each column is on wood panels and there's a QR code linked to the city website and you can scan the code and listen to the poems being spoken. And so the proposal is to make this site accessible and to add a guide rope along the trail and signage so that people with vision impairments can actually participate in this wonderful community resource and use the trail. And so the money, they request us for $5,000 for rope and sign. And this would allow folks who are visually impaired to better use the trail independently. The other request is for $250 for NP operations to pay for yard signs and flyers and other outreach to get more people participating in this amazing resource. And then there's an unknown amount for the community dinner pending our ability to be able to start that up again. So what we're asking you to do is to vote to either fully fund, partially fund or not to fund each of these initiatives. So the poll will come up on the screen and we'd ask you to make your choice for each of these to either fully fund, partially fund or do not fund. Thank you. And we'll give folks a couple of minutes to fill that out. And so what the steering committee will do is we'll take the results of this vote and put together a funding proposal based on that allocation, on the allocation that you have. And Megan, you have a question. Jessica, I don't understand. If you're the only person down at the event center, why do you need to be wearing a mask? Are you trying to protect yourself? No, it's the Old North End Community Center's policy that anyone in the building needs to wear a mask, whether they're here or one person. No, you're alone in the big cavern, all right. Yeah, Megan, another question. Yeah, so my question, Jess, I thought you said that the rail trail was asking for 5,000, but on here it says 500. I misspoke, I'm sorry, it's $500. Okay, thank you. That's what I was requesting. And the, yeah. Are there any other clarifying questions while folks are voting? Okay, we'll just give it a moment or two more. And thank you all for trying out this new process. Sometimes soon we'll all be in the same room together and we can vote in a more direct way. How are we doing, Sam? Do we have votes from all the participants? I'm gonna share it with you guys right now, just letting it, can you see that? Yeah, we can see it. Okay, perfect. Great, so thank you so much. So we have the majority, it's a slight majority for fully funding, Old North End Repair Cafe, slight majority for partially funding, the Food Not Cops Daily Distribution, slight majority for fully funding the People's Farm Stand, good majority for fully funding the Braille Walk, 100% for fully funding and the operations and a good majority for funding the Community Dinner TBA. Wonderful, good. Well, thank you so much. It's so great to be able to get input from all the folks here and the steering committee will take this information and make the allocations. And we really were so grateful for all the applicants and all the great community projects that are going on and all the super ideas that are coming out of our community and all designed to make us healthier, stronger and more connected. So thank you. Thank you, Jess. Moving on to the next item on agenda, it's a redistricting proposal for a downtown ward from the Burlington Independent Mapping Group. That's me, I'm one of the members. So I'm gonna be putting on my resident hat here and passing the baton temporarily to Kevin, who has agreed to facilitate. Kevin, you're here somewhere, I think. Kevin? Kevin? Okay, maybe not. I guess, Jess, you wanna take the baton here? Jess, maybe Jess's gonna do it. Kevin? Sorry, are you adjusting me? Yeah, I'm gonna give the proposal on the downtown ward. So I'm gonna put on the citizen hat for a moment as opposed to the facilitator hat. So... Okay, what would you like me to do? Just hang tough. Okay. So yeah, I think a lot of folks here have either heard of it by way of the redistricting committee or maybe received an email about it or whatnot. So just to be clear, the Burlington Independent Mapping Group, it's a grassroots group of folks from around the community who have an interest in the redistricting process. Some folks were formally involved in the ad hoc redistricting committee, some folks were not. And the goal of the group was basically to take the feedback that came out of the public comments through the public forum and the surveys that were conducted by various members of the committee to kind of put forth some possible solutions on how to best address the redistricting question here. And I wanna emphasize that we're not promoting this as like the only solution. It is one possible solution out of many. And it's a conversation that the city council will be taking up shortly. And I know that the counselors have, I think, been apprised of this and gotten some feedback in this regard. But basically, as we heard it, the big issue here, the statutory requirements were to balance the population to ensure equal representation. And there was a feeling that we are already at eight words. We didn't wanna kind of add another layer of complexity. And we thought that eight words worked well because it supported the feeling for smaller words, which was a issue that a lot of folks spoke in favor of. There were, if you do the math on the city's population divided by the total number of words, you come up with the, the quote, ideal word population which under an eight word configuration, it's just under 5,600 people. And with the statutory requirements, those districts or wards, the populations have to be no more than, than plus or minus 10%. So the process that we followed was has led, we started, let's try to, you know, get the words as close as possible population wise. And we were successful in that regard. We came up with an initial map that had all of the words within 50 persons of each other, you know, somewhere a little more than fit, somewhere a little less, but no, no ward was more than or less than the 5,600 ideal population. Unfortunately, that map didn't really do much for some of the other criteria that we heard such as preserving neighborhoods and communities of interest, which was another strong thing that had come out of the public forums there. So we started overlaying the other criterias, trying to balance different things. And one of the things that had come up was the shape of the ward eight map. There felt that that clearly wasn't working under its current configuration, but it wasn't so much that eight wards wasn't working as it was that particular ward wasn't working. So we're trying to figure out a way to resolve that issue. And historically, there actually was a downtown ward for over a hundred years from the dating back to the city's founding right up until 1967. And that ward was taken away when the little Italy neighborhood was destroyed as part of the urban renewal in the late 1960s. So when we started looking at the historical maps, we saw, hey, this downtown ward might really work. Downtown's a community of interest. It's unique from some of the other areas of town. And we started kind of drawing the lines along the lines of what the old map worked. And we're like, hey, this kind of seems to work. So, and another feature of that is in addition to the traditional downtown core, which would be Pearl Street to the North, Maple Street to the South, and South William Street over on the East. The King Maple neighborhood was also historically part of the downtown ward. And for those of you who may not be aware, the King Maple neighborhood is Vermont's largest community of color. It's very diverse. It has a number of new Americans there. And that neighborhood has spent split between wards three and five since the last redistricting process. The, I think political term for that is cracking. And so one of the things that we had heard was we wanted to kind of unify the King Maple neighborhood so that that community would have a strong voice and we'd be able to participate, you know, in the public process and have a voice there. We also wanted to make sure that the student population, which was largely represented in the existing ward A, would continue to have voice as well. And coincidentally, the Ewell Bradley Street neighborhood, which is a historic district, home to a large number of off-campus students was originally part of the downtown ward. So it worked out well in that regard and that we could give out, you know, downtown would get a voice. The students would have a voice. King Maple would have a voice. And then the last neighborhood that would get voice under this proposal would be the waterfront. So that was kind of the process there that we kind of looked at. And we felt that there's a number of reasons to do that. So that's the basic gist. I do have a PowerPoint, but I think most of you have already either seen it or heard it and I want to keep the meeting moving along. So I think I would just say if people have questions or, you know, anything about the, you know, they want to talk, I'm happy to answer it in free form, I guess, at this point. Brian, Gina. Is there a place online where we can look at the city's latest proposal for the ward maps? Because I came during your presentation, I don't want to take up time, but I want to see it. I'm going to defer to the city councilors on that and their reports. And what I did want to say, I'll get you maxed, is that we're an independent grassroots group. Our goal is to compliment the work of the city council and just provide them with options to consider. So that's what we're looking to do. I'm not sure where the city is at with the maps that they've been working on. But I think Max, do you want to speak to that for a moment? Yeah, for sure. So there are two sort of parallel redistricting processes happening. There's the ones for state reps and then that's taking place. And then there's also the ward level maps. And we discussed both of those issues at our Monday city council meeting. When we talked about the redistricting having to do with the city rep map or the rep maps, the council passed a motion that said that they would like either all one member districts or all two member districts, because what at least at that point was being proposed was a mix like we currently have of some one member districts and, well, yeah, of one member districts and then some that were two member districts, which the feeling on the council was that pick one or the other and keep it consistent because it's just confusing to have these different allotments sort of similar on the ward district line on the city side. But either way that the council adopted that motion though, there was an expression of desire among councilors, some councilors to continue to discuss that with a further board of civil authority meeting that would only apply to the rep meetings. That didn't end up happening. That may happen on Monday and the mayor is responsible for calling those as chair of the board of civil authority, but I haven't seen that happen yet. So we'll see if they end up putting that forward, that meeting forward and talk about those seats. On the council side, what was discussed was, and this came later in the meeting as part of our regular city council deliberative agenda was the city side of things and it got pretty late at that point. There's been some shifting that took place. The person who had helped with this process in the past has since retired, but the planning director title did help us to prepare staff to do that and identified a data person to help with the mapping process over the next several weeks. But the feeling among the council was that they didn't want to rush this, the city ward side. So we have, there have not been maps that have been generated from the city side. Some residents like Chris and others have been working really hard to try and come up with ideas and propose those ideas and bring them forward, which has been, I think really helpful to just have them bringing those forward. But the council decided not to rush, meaning that the feeling was that we don't need to finish it with this council and that it could carry on to the next council, which will be seated in April. So with the idea that this would eventually be voted up, that the new wards and districts would be voted on in November as part of the November ballot. So that kind of gives a little bit of the city process. I just wanted to kind of give an overview from the council side as to where things are. Thank you, councilor Tracy. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate, I'm part of a citizen led group and there are a couple of other folks out there doing it and we're grateful to the council for being taking an open mind to consider the work that we've put into this. Again, we're trying to complement and give them some options that may not be percolating up through other means. One of the challenges though, that really came out of this so in the Census Bureau did not really do us any favors. They came into this, I was like, oh yeah, this can't be too hard, just move the lines around. I spent some time learning the software. It's really difficult. You have census blocks that are as small as 50 persons and then you have one census block that is 2,600 persons and it's like, you plop that down somewhere, you really have to, that kind of anchors the ward and you have to build around that. So it's really like a balancing act, trying to deal with the statutory requirements of the population piece, making sure that everything's within a deviance but also trying to respect the neighborhood boundaries and natural geographic features and things like that as well. The other natural question that arises out of this is if you have eight wards or whatever number of wards that matter, how many counselors are gonna be on that? That's a matter that's up for debate. There's a number of different ideas out there. Some folks had talked to at large and the district counselors. My recollection from the public forum is the at large and the district counselors were really did not have a lot of support in the public forum. That's not to say that they didn't have support, supporters speak it, but it was not overwhelming support. In our particular case, we are pushing for the old model where you have two counselors per ward. The feeling is that the city population has changed. And if you go back 30 years to 1993, when they had the seven ward map of 14 counselors, the ideal ward size at that time was also 5,600 people. And it's gotten a little bit bigger since then and with the population shift, the math just worked out that eight wards divided by the current population was 5,600 people. And we kind of felt that we had 14 in the past and the increase additional counselors would be helpful from a representative of a democracy point of view. I don't know if the counselors have a different perspective on that being on the counselor. But yeah, that was kind of the thinking behind that. And I don't know if anyone has any questions. If not, we can move on. All right, seeing none, we will move on. Next up on the agenda is representative updates. We are actually running quite a bit on time today. So we'll start off with the state representatives. Representative Cheena, I know you're here. Do you wanna lead us off with the representative updates? Yes, I was fixing my hair. So do we have a time limit on this per person? There should be. Yeah, we're trying to shoot for 10 minutes per group for the Montpellier Delegation, the city counselors in the schools. Barbara, did you have something to add? No, I just said, as you said, 10 minutes per group, not per person. Representative Cheena, I think you're up. Okay, I was looking to see if anyone else was here. There's just so much happening on the state level. So I wanna say before I start that there's no way I could possibly give you an update that would adequately cover everything even in a half hour. So I'm not gonna say everything I care about. So people shouldn't imply as in past meetings that I don't care about an issue because I don't bring it up in my update. So I'm just gonna start, there's just so many things that are facing us and I don't know who else is coming. We didn't have a chance to coordinate. Maybe what I'll do is I'll start with the healthcare committee because I'm on the healthcare committee and that's like what's gonna be freshest in my mind that in the house healthcare committee, we're looking at the state budget right now and we're going through the governor's recommendations and things we've been hearing from community members and workers and constituents, et cetera, about needs in the healthcare system and we're trying to decide what are our priorities in the budget. So we're still working on that but some of the areas of great concern to us in the mental health system, there's massive amounts of vacancies across all pieces of the system in residential facilities, in crisis, we need more primary care providers and we need more nurses. So these vacancies all throughout the healthcare system are causing reduced access for people. And so then we see is if a person is in crisis and they end up in the emergency room, sometimes they have to wait two days, three days 14 days, unacceptable amounts of time for someone to be waiting in the emergency room when what they need is inpatient care and then to get back into the community. So we're trying to figure out ways to address this. One is to experiment with like new approaches to crisis response. In different parts of the state, there's different models that people have been looking at. So we're hoping to learn more about that and really try to set high standards for the quality of care on the state level but maximum flexibility on the local and regional level so that people can tailor these services to what works best for their communities. We're looking at increasing Medicaid rates. Providers haven't been given increases in many, many years. And the hope is that by increasing Medicaid rates for providers and our designated agencies and specialized service agencies that that might help retain staff and also recruit some staff so that we don't lose more people and also so we can get some more people taking these jobs. So I'm gonna move on from that. I'll stop and say, I don't know. I probably don't have time left. There's not a lot of time to talk. So maybe I should just stop and let other people go because there's so much we're working on right now. And I don't know if there's any other reps here yet. So I just wanna make sure there's space for others. Representative Chino, we are actually a little bit ahead of schedule and not seeing any other reps here. We have about 10 minutes. So if you have additional items you'd like to address, I think folks would be happy to hear them. So I'm gonna pivot to another item of concern. So there's been a lot of talk about reform of education funding. And one of these pieces of it has to do with waiting on pupils. And when the state sort of hands out, collects our money, collects our tax money and enhance and then redistributes it to school districts. Part of that process is wait, students having a wait. And there was a study done that recommended that English language learners, ELL students have a wait to acknowledge that there's an extra expense to properly educating those students. And even though there was a study that recommended that, the legislature had a task force meet to look at education funding who then came back and recommended that we don't follow the recommendations of that study. So our school district organized with other ones around the state to resist that because what's best for the kids in Burlington and Manuski and other school districts is that we would follow that recommendation. And so now this is all being debated and explored. And I don't know how it's gonna turn out, but myself, I guess I just should speak for myself, although I'm not the only representative who feels this way that we believe that there should be a wait to acknowledge that extra expense and that the wait should be incorporated in education funding that has equity because the proposal from the task force was gonna be to wait certain kinds of students, but not ELL. ELL would just be like a special grant. And if you look at the numbers, it's clear that certain school districts that are wealthy and that don't have a lot of ELL kids would benefit from that plan and that school districts that are not wealthy and that have a lot of ELL students would not benefit from it. So I wanna acknowledge that because I know that's been an issue in the past. It's not resolved yet. We're in the middle of the process of trying to fight for the ELL students to be given, for us, for the school district to be given the funding to properly take care of ELL students and for the cost of giving high quality education to those students for that cost to be waited and acknowledged in the formulas. So how much time now? I'm looking if there's any other representatives there, isn't yet? I feel like I have a minute or two still. Where's our timekeeper? Where's the referee? We have about four minutes. Oh my God, what is happening with time tonight? It feels like it's just, it's slowed down for once. So our city charter changes, that's something that people might be wondering about. I wish Emma was here because it's like, so basically we're trying to bring forward these charter changes, we're voted on by the majority of our voters, all four of them. We're trying to push forward on them. The airport one, it sounds like in the Senate, they added, they took what we wanted to do and added a person. So that's hopefully all set. The two that are, and it sounds like, so it's once again, like things are in movement. So I might tell you something today and it's not gonna be correct in two days. So it's tricky. But basically we're facing some opposition on just cause eviction and the thermal energy. And so we're trying our best. And I say that, but I don't know if everyone agrees. So some of us are trying our best to stay true to what the voters approve. And there's others who I wish were here because I think they should answer why they're not. So I'll just leave it at that without saying names and you can watch the testimony. If you can watch the GovOps committee and see what happens, I guess, because that's what we're gonna have to see how this plays out. But I wouldn't be surprised if we see changes to our charter changes happening on the legislative level. And we could talk about whether that's fair or not, but that could be a whole, like we could have a whole meeting about that. But that's how the process works. The constitution gives the legislature the power to amend charter changes because the idea is that the legislature is supposed to make sure that all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. But as in any system of power, people can use that power in all kinds of ways. And those decisions in the end may not necessarily, there may be changes to our charter changes that are not exactly what our voters intended. So I see a hand. Yeah, I just wanted to catch what's the name of the committee that is listening to him. Yeah, government operations is the committee. And one of the benefits of this current system is that it's still hybrid, which means you can watch every single thing the legislature does that's on the record on YouTube and go back and watch it, including when people accidentally swear or their dogs or cats walk across the screen or they come on half-clothed. You know, it's all forever preserved. I see another hand, Barbara. Yeah, Brian. So if they amend a charter change that the voters of Burlington sent to them, does that get sent back to us to vote on again or does that- I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know though, because I haven't ever, I don't recall. It may have happened and I just didn't notice. I don't recall any significant changes like that actually happening. But I'd have to think back because it might've been another town and I might've missed it. So, but I don't, this is where it's like, I wish like someone on GovOps like Bob Hooper, who's one of our representatives was here because he's seen many charter changes go through his committee. But I don't think it comes back. I think it either, one minute. I see a one minute sign, that's smart. I like the warning. So I guess we can, Barbara, we can look, we should look into that more, I don't think it comes back. I see Solveig and Home Base. Solveig, go ahead. I just wanted to acknowledge that the House did a really good thing voting for the, the reproductive liberty constitutional amendment for Vermont. That's a very big deal. If any of you are not familiar with what happened, it's going to be on the ballot and I want to just thank you and all the other state reps for actually voting for that. And it's very, it's going to basically help Vermonters to be able to have the right to make decisions about reproduction personally without having to deal with the issue that we're dealing with nationally about world versus way. So thank you very much, Brian and the others. Thanks. And we also passed proposal two, which will prohibit slavery in the Vermont constitution. And there's plenty of time for us to talk about that more because those items will be on the ballot in November. So you will all have a chance to vote yes or no, but maybe we can talk a little bit more about what they are at another meeting when there's more time because the science is time is up. It is up. It's done for me. Cut me off. All right, Home Base did have his question here. What's Home Base's question? What's home base, Patrick? Sorry. But what's your question? I want to say thank you. I'm an assistant director of a small social service agency in Burlington. And we've had a struggle keeping people employed and actually paying them a living wage, which is my push. We actually had to have a GoFundMe fundraiser to compete with the franchise restaurants in around, just to keep our head. So with an eye for the state funding, please help increase so we can compete. It's just so difficult to keep people employed when you're not paying them as much as you are. And what industry is it? Well, we serve clients with developmental disabilities. OK, yeah, OK. All right. All right, well, thanks for talking. Kick me out. I've wanted to do that for a while. All right, this is what happens when you're like, it comes in the way. Bye. Take care, your representative, Tina. Thank you. Next up, we have an update from the school board members. I see that Commissioner Kerry is here. Commissioner Vanderpotten, which of you would like to lead off? Hi. I guess I can go. OK, I was going to start. OK, that's fine. No, you can go. You just weren't on yet. So I want to go right ahead. I can be really fast. OK, just a couple of updates. First of all, just like Brian said, there are so many things going on. We could go on for hours. I mean, we're talking about the elevator in the downtown building, the future of high school issues, PCB level changes, the principal searches. There's just so much going on right now. But the big thing, of course, is the budget. And we are proposing and hoping that the city of Burlington will approve the school budget that will be on the ballot ballot march first. It seems like a lot, but it actually, because of some fluke in funding mechanisms, it's actually the responsibility for individual taxpayers will go down by a certain amount, by 6.89 decrease, which is good news. But I just want to let you know that the budget increases that we propose are only to maintain the necessary habitual increases that we see every year, like wages and health insurance and utilities, and that some of the ESSER funds for COVID relief are being used to augment this coming budget both. So there is a one-page, a two-page handout that I don't know if you've seen it or not. I believe that it's been put on front porch form, but I haven't seen it on mine yet. I'm hoping that you'll see that. It answers most of the questions that you may have. And I would just add that our budget includes the district's desire to end systemic racism and make steps toward that. So it's based on this equity funding that was a result of over 500 community members participating in discussions, and it results in significant additional staff in different schools where the equity issues are most significant. So I can stop with that. And then I don't know, Polly, what do you think we all have to add there? Well, if you want, I could share my screen because I have that two-page or what they call the one-page budget thing. Is that something I have permission to do? Absolutely. Great. Sorry, I was looking up a different question earlier. All right, so this is the front porch forum post that Commissioner Walts put up. And it basically gives an overview with an attempt to explain the math around what's happening here. So we have a budget where there's a slight increase because it's necessary for the things that Commissioner Kerry was talking about. But ultimately what's going to happen is there's going to be a decrease for taxpayers, which is very good news. That's partly a result of ESSER funding and partly a result of how everything gets calculated. There is a $90 million surplus in the Education Fund. And this is the one pager that we're talking about that's linked here and what Commissioner Walts posted to front porch forum. And she does words two and three, just so that's clear to everybody. That should cover it for this. But there is a $90 million surplus in the Education Fund and I'm scrolling down here. This estimate is based partly on the surplus, but it's possible that the governor will decide to use that for other purposes. Ultimately though, it seems that either way, it's going to mean a slightly lower tax rate, which is really good news. And then just as a reminder, I think that this is on everyone's mind. Sorry, I hope this is not too fast. I'm not going to read the document aloud. I just want to show you down at the bottom that there is a BHS BTC timeline that we are planning to put forth a bond proposal this fall, November. And even though the state just again, the Vermont Department of Health revised PCB levels again, we are being watched. We are under scrutiny basically by federal agencies now. So whatever happens with that, we still need to move forward with getting this bond passed and building a new high school. And that's something that's taking up a lot of time and there's outreach for community discussion because getting that in and getting that passed is going to benefit everyone in terms of our public education in our community when it comes down to rights for education and equity and safe and healthy schools. This is one of the most important things that we have going on. So there are lots of other things to talk about but those are the main things on my mind, I guess I would say is and some of the things that Commissioner Kerry talked about with this new rise to allocation of how funding is determined by school, this equitable budgeting model and then the bond that we're gonna need to pass to get a new high school. So I'll stop and I'll stop sharing my screen because if you look for Commissioner Walts's post you will find all this information and then maybe we could answer a few questions before time is up. Taking questions from the floor. And have we have any questions for the school commissioners regarding the budget or any other item related to the operation of our public schools here in Burlington? So could you tell us whether the budget one pager is available please? Yes, there are a few different places. One of them is in a front porch forum post from Commissioner Jeannie Walts. I think that was yesterday and it's linked in that front porch forum post. Another place would be on the Burlington School District website. There is a whole budget explanation page and I could look it up in the interim and bring it up later if you want because I think there's gonna be time for talking about this later and I could show you what that page looks like. So when you're navigating the school district website you can find that. So Burlington School District website or front porch forum post from Jeannie Walts. Awesome, thank you for that. I was actually just communicating with Commissioner Walts. Any other further questions? Tony Rittington, it looks like you have a question. Steven and Apolly, just a quick note. It's sort of like if you voted against the school board budget, the school board, as I understand, the budget would have to go back to last years and that would be an increase in the tax rate. So in a way, it looks to me like you need to vote for the budget in order to decrease your taxes. I mean, that's the impression. Is that sort of the way you folks look at it? Tony, thank you. Thank you. I hadn't thought of it in that light and I appreciate you bringing it up tonight. Thanks. All right. Any further questions for the school commissioners at the budget or anything else? All righty, we'll move on to the city council updates. Councilors Tracy and Councilors McGee. Councilor Tracy, do you want to lead off? Sure, I can do that. Do you see a hand from Representative Chena? Was that for the schools or was that for Councilor Tracy? If it's okay, I'll share info at the end of the councilor's update related to questions people had that I found answers to. Okay, thank you. Sorry, Councilor Tracy. No problem. So there's been a number of things. We've had a bunch of meetings since we last met as an MPA and probably one of the bigger items that's been discussed at council has been the mayor's appointment of acting chief Murad as the permanent chief. That went down as probably many of you have heard in a 6-6 vote. I personally voted against the appointment of making of acting chief Murad the permanent chief. And my reasons for that, there are a couple of them but the primary reason is that throughout the last several years, while he's been serving in that role, I have found him to both be an opponent of and resistant to meaningful police transformation. When I say opponent of, we have fundamental differences in terms of how we see community control of police and police accountability. Our accountability systems have been shown to be deeply flawed in recent years with brutalization of people taking place on a number of incidents and receiving either no discipline or limited discipline. And that is directly a result of the fact that that disciplinary authority is vested in the chief with very little additional ability for actual input from the community. They've added some of that ability to the police commission but ultimately that decision making authority still rests with the chief. There was a board that was proposed that would have been independent of the department that would have reviewed cases of officer misconduct but that was vetoed by the mayor and was not allowed to go to voters. So that's still a very active conversation and a very important one. So that's a key reason as to why I don't support it because he does not support us moving towards that more robust oversight model that would remove that disciplinary authority from the chief themselves. Now, the other reason was also just the resistance that I feel like we've seen from the chief to really call the race-based disparities what they are which is systemic racism. We have systemically racist outcomes taking place within our public safety system currently and to call it anything else is completely is just not only inaccurate but it's unjust. And we have race-based disparities in terms of traffic stops but more alarmingly in terms of how force is used against black residents. We saw force used at record rates against black residents and this is something that the chief has a very difficult time acknowledging. I should say the acting chief has a difficult time acknowledging. And again, that links back in my mind to the oversight conversation. But we've seen it in other places too with resistance to the hiring and full adoption of the community support liaisons and the community support officers. These are unarmed officers who are meant to respond to a variety of different types of calls for which an armed officer is not necessary. We've seen the Kahootz model which is a model that would dispatch different folks to who are specifically trained to address mental health calls. We've seen that continue to that proposal continue to really languish or we just haven't seen it move forward. And I see the chief as being a big impediment to those things. And then the final thing on that is just that I feel that the relationship with the police commission is quite a difficult one. We had a number of police commissioners come to our meeting and tell us that the chief had been incredibly disrespectful and even misogynistic to them. These were commissioners like Milo Grant, Stephanie Seguino, Susie Comerford, people who I have deep respect for and who I really felt like that was an issue that needed to be addressed. So there's just a number of different concerns that might be to not be in a place to support acting chief Murad. The mayor has kept him in place so he'll continue to remain acting chief and going forward. So that's kind of one of the main things that I just wanted to talk about. I don't want to take up all of the time and we do have, I know we have the ballot items so we can talk about those, but that's a separate item. So I guess we'll be able to cover those as well but I did just want to give my reasons for why I didn't support chief Murad. I'll let Joe go. Thank you, council president Tracy. Councilor McGee. Thanks Chris. I was going to cover a couple of points from our past meeting this past Monday. We covered a number of items related to addressing houselessness in the city. This is partly based off of the public engagement process that the city underwent on how we want to spend the remaining coronavirus relief funds that we have, the ARPA dollars that we have. The overwhelming response from the public was that folks wanted to see real solutions to address houselessness in the city. So CEDO brought the first four elements of the initiative to end houselessness. It's a total of about 2.97 million in ARPA dollars to go towards these first four proposals. And the first of those are a community of low barrier shelter pods that will be located somewhere in the city. They're still looking for a location for that. That will include shared bathroom facilities. The pods will have space for folks to sleep and store their belongings. And there will also be a shared community space as well. The second is funding to fully staff and resource and find a location for year round operation of the community resource center which is currently operating under the VFW. This is an essential space for folks experiencing houselessness to access services, mental health services, substance use treatment and access phones and computers and a warm meal. This funding would allow that to continue year round. And so they're also looking at the possibility of co-locating this space with the shelter community. The third proposal that they brought forward was funding for three years for a special assistant to end houselessness within CEDO. This position will coordinate the city's response to houselessness, work with CVOEO and the continuum of care to make sure that we're coordinating efforts and really doing this in the best way possible. The fourth piece that came on Monday night, there's gonna be more I think coming in the future from CEDO with the first four pieces. The fourth piece is funding and resources to CVOEO to increase staffing and also resource improvements to the coordinated entry program which is essential data collection to really understand what the needs are for folks who are experiencing houselessness in our community. So those are the four sort of key pieces of the plan that came forward from CEDO. We passed that unanimously so that work is gonna begin pretty immediately. And so the other piece that I wanted to touch on quickly is that I introduced an amendment to the city's camping ordinance which would decriminalize camping and sleeping on public lands, not just our public parks. And it would also codify protections for folks who are experiencing houselessness and sheltering on public land here in the city. The council voted unanimously to refer that to the CDNR committee. So the committee next month will begin gathering public engagement, talking with city departments, department heads and others in the community about this, what I feel is a pretty essential change for us to make just to make sure that we're holding true to the promise that was made when the city negotiated a settlement with the ACLU in 2019. Some of those promises that were made for protecting folks experiencing houselessness have not been kept by the city. So this would just ensure that it is part of our city law that these protections are in place. So I look forward to continuing in engaging in that conversation and welcome any questions on that, either of those two points. I have any questions out there for either Councillor Tracy or Councillor McGee. All right, seeing none, we're going to move into the candidate forms portion of the meeting. Councillor, or community, excuse me, Representative Chino, you did want to make an update so we'll do that we are a little ahead of schedule. Yeah, well, I'll make it quick. It's just, you know, I try to be as responsive as I can and I wanted to just check the receipts before I said anything publicly because I don't want to like say something and then, and it's totally off. But this is, if you go on YouTube and you look up Vermont House of Representatives, government operations or Vermont House government ops is what I looked up. And you look at today's afternoon recording, you can watch this for yourself, but the committee is discussing amending art and we cannot vote on it once it passes the legislature. I confirmed that that is indeed true. They are talking about amending our charter change for just cause eviction so that it only applies to buildings that have four units or more. And also, hold on, they're talking about amending it with some kind of probationary period. And I got a lot of info and it's hard to like sift through it. And so what had been happening was there was all this pressure about all these concerns about the thermal energy piece, but now people are just like going after the just cause eviction piece. And so the concern is that, and this is all on the record, is that people are worried that the language is too vague and doesn't have enough guardrails. And there's actually people saying that we're being mean to landlords. So you can go watch it for yourself. I will say this, that's happening in GovOps, in House General, a bill that would eliminate no cause eviction statewide is being seriously considered. So as you can see on the state level, there's a lot of debate around the same issues we're having on the city level about how do we preserve affordable housing and how do we take care of people during a pandemic and not just throw them out in the streets for no reason. So I'll stop there, but I just wanted you to like know that if that another thing people should know is that the government operations committee adds things to the agenda last minute. So I looked and it doesn't have our charter change on their agenda, but I'm being told they're going to vote it out tomorrow. So I'm like, what? And you're not telling the public yet. So it may suddenly appear tomorrow morning. So if people are want to watch that you can turn that on the morning. And one thing, one last thing I will say is that if people are concerned about this, you should email the entire government operations committee tonight and say to them, and if you want help with that email me and I'll try to help you, but you can go on the legislature's website, look up the government house government operations committee and you can get the list of names. You should email them tonight and tell them not to change it if you're concerned about that. Cause if they're going to vote it out tomorrow, they need to hear from people in Burlington. And I'm sorry that, you know, we're doing our best to try to figure this out, but a lot happens not in the room. And so then people when, you know, we come into the room and deals have been made and stuff behind the scenes. So, okay, I tried to answer some of your concerns. Hope that's helpful. I'm going to let, it looks like now we're a minute over. Sorry, Eli. Thank you, Brian. All righty. We're moving on to the candidate forum portion of the meeting at this point, waiting for one of the candidates show up. I think we'll, Councilor Tracey, did you have a question? Yeah, on an earlier agenda, I had seen that the ballot items were supposed to be at this point. The ballot items have been moved to the, yeah, there was a change in the agenda. It was posted, I think a few days ago. Okay. All right. I missed that. I apologize. All right. I can wait and stay on it. There seems to be some confusion about that. I just get received for it from candidate Felker that he'll be coming along momentarily. I would suggest at this point that perhaps we could start with some of the non-contested races thinking to start with the Inspector of Elections position. I do see that Solvee Overby is here. I'd like to give her an opportunity to speak to that. I don't need to take much time at all. I think as long as you all know what inspectors of election do, we pretty much help run the election along with the ward clerk. And right now there's nobody else running for that position for the three year term, which is what I am on a ballot for. I just want to make sure that if people are interested and we're always looking for people to participate as assistant election judges, election officials, I have provided a handout for people to understand how the process works. And because of all the craziness happening in the world about whether elections are free and fair, we're very fortunate in Burlington that we have people that trust that the working, the people that are doing the elections, including the inspectors of election, are doing their job to make sure that there's absolute fairness and people can understand the process. So I'm on a ballot. I would more than willing to share with anybody the handout that I drafted to help people understand how the election officials work in Burlington. And we're always looking for assistance to try that and maybe someday run for an inspector of election. So I appreciate your voting and make sure you get to the ballot, do your voting and I'm on the ballot and I appreciate your voting for me. Thanks a lot. If anybody has any questions about that, I'm available. All right, thank you, Solvei. Next up is Julia DiPietro. Julia, if you'd like to say a few words. Hi, everyone, I'm Julia DiPietro and I'm on the ballot in word three running for an inspector of election, a three-year term. And this is my, I've been an inspector of election for the past three years and I've worked in word three polling place since about 2008. So yeah, and Solvei gave a quick summary of what an inspector of election does. And so I don't need to go on too much, go on any longer, but yeah, look forward to seeing you at the polls on March 1st. And thanks a lot. You're muted, Chris. Thank you. Thank you, Julia. We'll move on to the school commission races. Ms. Vanderpotten, you are up for reelection if I recall correctly. Okay, and do we have anyone else here for the word to see if I recall? Commissioner Carey, you are not running for reelection. Okay. No, but there is another candidate. And I don't actually know the totally correct pronunciation of this person's name. It looks like Faizo Hassan, but they didn't know that the, this part of the meeting was going to be happening now and they were planning to come a little bit later. So if it's possible to have some flexibility for that, so they could introduce themselves, that would be great. Yeah, given the confusion here, I think flexibility is certainly in order. Okay, thank you. So I'll just briefly introduce myself and say that yes, for the past two years, I've been representing word three. And I came into this work because I am really passionate about education. I am a public school teacher in a neighboring district. I work in a high school. And I have been teaching for 23 years in various formats. I have a daughter who is in the public schools and I grew up going to public schools and greatly benefiting from them. So I come into it with a lot of knowledge from inside and also a gratitude to the public education that I received. What we have ahead of us is what I alluded to earlier, which is this Burlington High School, Burlington Technical Center that we absolutely need in our city for many reasons that I could enumerate. And then many of the challenges that Commissioner Carey talked about earlier with ensuring that all of our schools are equitable and how we get there in terms of our staff training and our curricular materials and our understanding as a community. And I think we live and breathe that every day in the Old North End, in particular in Ward 3. Last time I checked, it's the most densely populated place in the state of Vermont. I could be wrong about that. And it's full of people from all different kinds of places. So I feel a lot of responsibility in representing these people and their rights and their access to high quality public education. So though I'm running unopposed, I very much appreciate your vote as we work towards all of these great potential things for our schools. Thank you, Commissioner Vanderputten. Not seeing the other candidate for the Ward 2 seat. We will make time if that individual shows up later. I am seeing Eugene Bergman here who's running for the city council seat in Ward 2 unopposed. So I think we'll turn the microphone over to Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Chris. And those of you who are seeing me here will notice Wendy Coe is up there. That's my wife and I cannot rename my screen despite the five times that I've tried to do that. I was successful one time, but no longer. So, but Wendy Coe, I could be called many worse things than Wendy Coe. So for those who don't know me, I was a Ward 2 city councilor a long time ago when Bernie was mayor and Peter Clavel was mayor. In 1998, I became an assistant city attorney and I did that job for 20 years. And I worked primarily on housing and health safety and water and street infrastructure and election administration. I really appreciate what Solve said because I helped in that process quite a bit but did a lot of other things in that 20 years. But since I retired in 2018, I've really tried to use all of these experiences to help community activists pass things like just cause eviction. Thank you, Brian, for highlighting the need for us to reach out on that tonight, as well as the fair and impartial policing policy that migrant justice was pushing and that we passed. And I'm really proud to be part of the group that organized voters to stop the privatization of the church street marketplace, which we did. And now I'm excited to be working with people who are trying to block a new airport encroachment into the Chamberlain neighborhood in South Burlington. That's the neighborhood that's been really ravaged by the F-35s but also try to lower our aviation emissions there. And I'm also working with people to resubmit the community discipline board to voters that Max was talking about. And let me just finally say in terms of the things that I've been doing, I've worked with Councillor McGee and others to make sure that the Sears Lane and the reappraisal disasters don't happen again. And I wanna thank Joe for doing an amazing job in getting unanimous support for that work. I'm excited to expand on this record. So thank you. Thank you, Jean. I appreciate your time here. Looks like we have the other candidates here. I see Mr. Falker, Councillor McGee are here. Councillor, you're the incumbent. So we'll start with you. Great. Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate everyone coming out tonight and joining for another candidate forum. It feels like we're just having one of these not very long ago. So I'm glad to be back having this conversation and joining you tonight is your Ward 3 City Councilor representing downtown in the western part of the Old North End. My name is Joe, I use he and they pronouns. I live on North Champlain Street in the Old North End. And I'm running for a full two-year term on the City Council to continue the work that started not that long ago with my first election to Council in August. As Jean just mentioned, I've been proud to work on a resolution to address the reappraisal and property tax systems, the unfairness of the most recent reappraisal and to really look at whether or not the property tax system or aggressive property tax is the right way for us to continue funding our city services. I'm looking forward to continuing advancing racial equity here in the city, supporting the work of the RAIB office and to continue to push for community control of police. I think what we have seen time and again is that the fact that the chief of police has sole disciplinary power is detrimental to public safety in the city to continue to have officers that engage in uses of force and not face disciplinary action for those is really detrimental to community safety here in Burlington. So I look forward to working with the folks to get that on the ballot and to implement that essential oversight body. I'm also gonna be advocating for an end to qualified community and that work that is happening in this state house right now. So there's a lot of work that's going on. I'm gonna continue to advocate for solutions to end houselessness at all levels. We need more low barrier shelters. We need more affordable housing in the city. We need, we're not gonna market rate build our way out of this problem. And at the same time, we need to continue to have protections for folks who are experiencing houselessness and sheltering on public lands. So I'm excited to continue engaging in these conversations and look forward to the debate that we're gonna have here tonight. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Before we turn the microphone over to Christopher Aaron Falker. I just wanna let everyone know we've been joined by Superintendent Flanagan and we'll be giving him an opportunity to speak here to the school budget during the ballot item section of the meeting which will be followed on the candidate forum. Christopher Aaron Falker, you're up. Thank you, Chris. Good evening. I'm Christopher Aaron Falker, the Republican nominee for Burlington City Council in Ward 3. I'm 42 years old, a husband, a veteran of the United States Navy who served honorably, was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal. I'm a member of St. Justice Cathedral here in Burlington. I studied political science at DeSales University and I have an associates in education. I'm a nine plus year resident of this city. We fell in love with the beauty of Burlington and decided this is where we wanted to start our family and lay down roots. We love the peaceful, relaxing views of Lake Champlain. We love the vibrant, colorful homes that cheer me up on the darkest days of winter. And we truly love the melting pot diversity that is the Old North End. Make no mistake, diversity of ethnicities, backgrounds, beliefs, opinions is what has always made America great. I'm a Republican because I'm a compassionate conservative at heart and in my beliefs. I advocate for civil liberties and the foundational principles of freedom of speech. Yes, even speech that I fundamentally disagree with. I support tearing down barriers to service, promoting equality and proudly advocating for fulfilling our nation's promise that yes, all men and women are created equal, that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. I support our local businesses because their successes are our successes. Ward three includes the church street marketplace, the economic engine of our city. Businesses here in Ward three provide jobs, much needed tax revenue and security to our city. We, I'm running to restore balance to city council. I truly believe that representation matters. And as such, it's crucial for a diverse spectrum of opinions and approaches to contribute to crafting the solutions that Burlington has. It's important to ensure that conservatives, libertarians, centrist, independents alike all know that we have a voice in our local governance and that we are included in the conversation and crafting solutions together. When elected, I pledge to work with other counselors to rebuild our city's police department. We will continue to expand the CSL CSO programs. We will continue to focus on expanding officer training and de-escalation and we restore staffing levels to ensure all who live, work and play in Burlington feel safe. We will hold BPD accountable when appropriate and Burlingtonians are suffering. Many of our friends and families are feeling the relentless squeeze brought on by last year's disastrous tax reassessment. A rate increase with Burlington Electric Department is 7.5% and historic levels of inflation. Add to that, we have a new tax increase coming up on the ballot which will further increase the cost of living here. It's time for a change. Time is up. Thank you. Okay, I think that we've now heard from all of the candidates. We've had an opportunity to hear from them and now we will be going on to the general questions portion of the meeting for the city council candidates because Mr. Bergman is running on a post. We're going to treat this as a panel. So please direct your questions appropriately and try to be brief and succinct. We are actually doing pretty well in time tonight. I'm quite impressed. Barbara McGrew, you have a question. Hi, good evening, everybody. I would like each of the candidates to, I'm wondering how you feel about creating a downtown ward and how you feel about having an alternate proposal that has counselors at large. I just have to share that my feeling about out large counselors is that they're accountable to nobody. So you don't have to share that view but I am interested in knowing how you feel about a downtown district and this issue of that large counselors in the redistricting process. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. We'll go with counselor McGee be in this question. We'll alternate on the next question. Oh, great. Thank you for that Barbara. I am supportive of a downtown ward. I think, you know, downtown is a unique neighborhood with unique needs and I'm proud to currently represent downtown and be responsive to folks when they reach out and do my best to engage folks. You know, I met with folks that lived in the Forty College building when I first got elected. Unfortunately, it's been pretty difficult with the rise of Omicron and Delta to be able to engage with folks in that way. But, you know, I think going forward, it wouldn't make sense for us to have a downtown ward. In terms of at-large counselors, I think that's not the best idea given the way our elections work here in the city. I think it would be an immensely expensive campaign to run as an at-large counselor that would really leave those seats open to folks who could afford to fund their own campaigns. So that is a real concern that I have in terms of equity and access to serving in public office here in Burlington. Thank you. Chris Farron-Falker. Thank you. So I too oppose at-large districts across the city for the same reasons that Councilor McGee had mentioned. They will be extremely expensive. One estimate is somewhere around $20,000 for anybody to run for an at-large seat. The city is on the path for tearing down barriers to service and switching to at-large districts is creating at least one, if not multiple barriers for other people getting involved in government. And so that's the opposite direction that I would go with this at all. I fully support a downtown ward and I also support going back to two counselors per ward to expand, continue to tear down barriers and expand access to government and involve more members of our community. Thank you, Mr. Falker, Mr. Bergman. So Barb, I do not support like the others a downtown ward. It's just too big to run a mayoral type campaign means you're gonna be spending a gazillion dollars and to be able to actually knock on people's doors, I ran for the state house a long time ago. The districts are very large. You just, you can't meet people. You can't know people. So I don't think it's a good idea. In terms of the downtown district, I mean, one of the things that I've heard in the conversation around redistricting is a complaint about the student ward and they have too much power. And I fundamentally disagree with that. Students are a major segment of the population, like 25% of the people are more live in town. Now, I have not settled. I'd like to see a series of maps and maybe there are different ways to draw a district but I am not sure that a downtown district at this point is the appropriate thing. To be quite honest, I have not settled on what the appropriate lines are. And I don't think that a sufficient number of maps have been out there to say what the rights are but the right districts are. But I'm actually not a fan of the criticism that we've created a student ward and somehow that is wrong. And I think it's actually quite exciting to see two students running for the city council right now. I got grandkids and the future is gonna be in youth being empowered and not ignoring that power and energy. All right, thank you, Mr. Bergman. We have Patrick AK, Mr. Homebase Up Next followed by Tony Reddington followed by James Lockridge. Patrick, you're up. This is a question for Christopher. How would you go about ensuring civil discourse at city council meetings, especially when members of the public are already great yelling at the city council, going over their time or refusing to yield. It seems like as a body of underpaid individuals that they definitely deserve a level of respect and conduct by the public can sometimes be a little bit less than respectful. How would you go about conducting yourself in a person who did that to you? Thanks. And Mr. Falco, you're up. Oh, okay. So there has been a stunning lack of civility taking place at Contoy's Auditorium. It ranges from like the caller said, outburst obscenities shouted at council members and the administration, but it's not limited to that also. And there has been a real problem with outbursts from the public shouting and intimidating people who've come to public forum to speak. I've witnessed it with my own eyes and that's where we start to fall into territory where we want to start to try and rein that in. As a public figure, as a counselor, a little bit of pushback is always expected. Yes, we can talk about how we can restore decorum and civility to that body and how the public interacts. And the city attorney Richardson actually came up with a wonderful memo and it was just presented to city council this week. I'm gonna be understanding that this new council coming up, we'll sit together and we'll try to figure out ways to craft new rules for how we can react and respond to outbursts and interruptions in city council. Thank you. Christopher, that was a nice response, but what about your own conduct? Would you like to comment about that during recent city council meetings and how would those rules apply to someone like you in the future? If you were speaking with- Well, at Hounster Freeman is the question over. He's just directed- Patrick, there was one question per person here and we do have a few other people if we wanna circle back on that. I'm sorry. But since I wasn't clear about that, we'll do that here. You wanna speak briefly to that? Sure. So my conduct at city council, yes, there have been two occasions where I have spoken over the time limit, but at no occasion have I ever shouted or degraded any speakers or interrupted any speakers at council. I am absolutely on, I'm well-behaved at city council meetings and I echo Councillor Freeman's concerns that she brought up just the other day. We wanna be careful and tread lightly when it comes to trying to restrict or restrict any kind of behavior because civil disobedience is part of the process. And I came to the council with this request for restoring civility after the two occasions when I did speak over the time limit and I even mentioned in there that I will do better and I ask everybody to join me. So it's a path we'll walk together, sir. Thank you, Patrick, and thank you, Mr. Falker. Mr. Rennington, you're up. Thank you, Christopher. And I have a question about the, I'm sure you're not surprised about the Champlain Parkway. And Ward 3 is sort of unique. Well, it only has one block of the Parkway from Main Street to King Street that you folks would represent as a practical matter. It represents half of the King Maple neighborhood. We've got a lot of discussion tonight about how that neighborhood has not gotten fair representation. So for better or worse, half of the King Maple neighborhood which the current design of the Parkway cuts into raises the traffic by 22 to 37% forces two traffic signals on people of color, children who line up for the bus morning so that they have to either push buttons or be faced with and also be faced with increased speeds from a traffic signal versus the safest for all always stops and also obviously faced a delay in getting to the bus. What is your position in terms of the Parkway cutting this neighborhood of people of color in two? Lowest income, median income in the city and part of that, and we're quoting the current McCormick 32% in his district and Joe McCroinsky's district which is mostly the north of what it includes King Maple 32% of the folks that have no access to a car. Councilor McGee will start with you, is that coming? Sure. Thank you for that question, Tony. I agree that it is atrocious the way that the Champlain Parkway is currently designed to dump this traffic into the King Maple neighborhood. I think, you know, we have to acknowledge the predicament that the city is in that this project could end up costing us much more than it's actually worth that we need to find a way to make sure that this meets the needs of all of our neighbors with multimodal transportation whether that's public transportation access, access to safer bike infrastructure, access to safer sidewalks and safer crosswalks. You know, if the Champlain Parkway is to go forward as planned, I would like to see the real yard enterprise project happen first to divert a lot of that traffic away from the King Maple neighborhood. I think that's essential to ensuring that that traffic doesn't get dumped into the King Maple neighborhood. You know, I am open to engaging with DPW on how we can redesign those intersections so that they're not adversely impacting our families that live in the King Maple neighborhood. And you know, this project has a long road ahead. So we'll continue showing up for those conversations. All right, we'll move on to Christopher Aaron Falker. Thank you, that's a great question, Tony. And I appreciate you bringing it up that I'm very sensitive to the area down in the King Maple district. And with regard to the Champlain Parkway project, a project that predates my existence on the planet and I'm 42, you know, I'm under the impression that if we don't pay, if we don't get this project started and off the ground, we are on the hook for tens of millions of dollars to the federal government to return. And as such, if we have to pay that money back, that money will be pushed off onto taxpayers increasing, further increasing the cost of living. I am told, I met with, I had meeting this week and what was told that the rail yard project, late counselor McGee said, if we can advance that project first and hopefully we can because it's a newer project that doesn't seem to be as stalled. If we can advance that project first, it should alleviate some of the traffic stress that would be dumped into that King Maple neighborhood. Also, for those of you who know me, know that I will always talk about upgrading our sidewalk infrastructures to make our city more walkable and accessible for people with mobility challenges. So it's my hope, Tony, that we can work this rail yard project first and try and redevelop our sidewalk infrastructure to make that a safe neighborhood for walking and pedestrians. And then if Champlain Parkway comes, we'll just, we'll keep it going as best we can. But these two projects seem more pressing. Thank you for the question. Next up, we have James Lockridge. Thanks. This question is for each panelist. I appreciate this. The administration is proposing a 32 million dollar redesign of Main Street while ignoring its responsibility to Memorial Auditorium, our historic public commons. Memorial would cost only 10 million to repair and open again, but the mayor hasn't assigned any city staff to that goal and won't form a working group that could find resources without burdening city staff of these two projects, which would be your priority. We'll start with Mr. Falker on this one. Perfect. Thanks for the question, Jim. I do share your concerns about how the city budgets and allocates funds to maintain our infrastructure and how it ultimately gets kicked, the can gets kicked for decades until things are broken or falling apart or condemned. And then we try to kick the issue to the voters for a bond issue just to put it on a credit card. That's appallingly irresponsible to me and it's very upsetting and troublesome. With regard to the Great Streets Tiff Project, at this point, I am opposed to this for a few reasons. And the main reason is Main Street is one of the main arteries coming in and out of town. Tearing up Main Street for any period of time will have negative impacts on our business and residents that live downtown. Furthermore, I have issues with Tiff budgeting in general because I never trust a government estimate on the front end at all. And I don't think anybody really ever should. The administration seems to be going around talking about how this doesn't get pushed off to the taxpayers. What they aren't saying is it doesn't get pushed off to the taxpayers if the project's on time and if the project's on budget and if they're able to recoup the tax money on the back end. If any of those don't come true, then we're footing the bill. Furthermore, that's where that ravine is in town in that weird catacomb. Can you imagine tearing up Main Street, what they're gonna get into? I'm just opposed to it. So if we're gonna spend the money, let's put it into Memorial Auditorium because we can do better things there. Thank you. Great question. Thank you, Mr. Falkor. We'll move on to Mr. Bergman on this one and then follow up with Councilor McGathey. You know, Jim, Memorial has been disinvested for decades and this administration in the previous bond vote, tried to create a slush fund without any plan and without any real public input. And I am absolutely astounded that they could have done that and thought that we would buy that. And in fact, talked at the city council and public forum about eliminating that funding. I don't know that the choice is between the TIF project and Memorial because the TIF project relates to other infrastructure that has a plan. I'm not really crazy about the dedication of these TIF monies for Main Street rather than other improvements in the downtown. But to be quite honest, I have not been involved in the details related to what the state will accept. And so when the DPW engineers answered that question last month at the NPA, they said that this was the project that they would support. I happen to disagree with Chris in terms of TIF funding. I think it is a reasonable approach to do infrastructure and to have it fall on a, well, to basically not have to use tax monies that would be for the schools. The 70% that would be going to the schools and the school systems are getting state funding, which makes this a pretty viable approach. So I have tended in the past to generally support TIF funding. I'm not really crazy about this particular one, but I would disagree again with Chris in terms of the work downtown. That ravine and the stormwater system that goes from Union Street down to King Street needs to be fixed. It is incredibly old. We need to spend the money to do that. This is gonna allow us to do that. There's other infrastructure that will be helpful. I don't think that they will close down Main Street as you've heard, but given that Main Street is the place that they're gonna be doing it, I'm actually going to be supporting the bond. We're out of time there. Yep. Chancellor McGathey, you're up. Sure. Thanks for the question, Jim. I think I agree with Gene that this isn't sort of an either or situation. Back in November, I voted to put the bond that included 10 million for Memorial on the ballot. I had the same reservations that Gene shared that the administration didn't have a plan for using that 10 million dollars. It's pretty astonishing to me that the administration continues to not put resources into coming up with a plan for getting Memorial reopened. But at the same time, I acknowledge that we need to do things to keep the building stable so that we can decide what we're going to do with that space. And so that's why I supported the bond in the fall and why I supported putting another million dollar bond on the ballot for Memorial on March 1st. You know, I will be calling on the administration to actually bring us a plan for stabilizing and getting Memorial back to a place where we can have that as a community space again. And I will not support a plan that does not have us in a space where Memorial is being used as that community gathering space that is so essential. In terms of the TIF project, I'm supportive of it because we need to make these essential upgrades to our infrastructure. There are stormwater upgrades that will happen with this project. There will be upgrades to our walk and bike infrastructure as well as making sure that we're maintaining a healthy tree canopy. I think we saw that report that showed that Burlington is among the biggest cities in terms of the amount of heat that's captured every year. So I think this is an essential step forward in addressing that and making sure that all of our infrastructure projects are moving in that direction. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. Representative Chena, I think you have a question. I just wanted to announce it looks like candidate Hassan for the school board for ward two has arrived. We will circle back at the conclusion of the city council candidate forum to speak once again about the school board elections. Representative Chena, you're up. Thank you. I noticed that there was on the agenda there was enough time that I thought I maybe could ask a question. I heard one of the candidates talk about the unalienable rights of men and women but not non-binary folks or people who don't identify as men and women. And on the state level, we just passed proposal five which would enshrine in our constitution reproductive rights that include extending freedom to reproduction to all people regardless of how they identify with their gender and how they were born. And I'm curious as the city council you're gonna be responsible city counselors for making sure that all city employees are getting benefits under the constitution. I'm just curious if you can share your opinions and experiences about transgender rights and what you've done in your careers and your experience to either stand up for transgender rights or how you've opposed them. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Chena. We'll start with Mr. Bergman on this one. Well, well, Brian, I haven't had the opportunity in a professional way to deal with transgender rights but in my association at various organizations like the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, I have known a number of transgender people there and always been supportive of their inclusion, their equal participation and the dignity that's inherent in their humanness. So I would continue to do that and to promote city human resources policies that make sure that not only are people not discriminated against but they are embraced and they are valued for the inherent dignity that all people have. Thank you, Mr. Bergman. We'll move on to Councillor McGee. Thank you, Brian. I appreciate the question. This is an important one. I think every elected official should have to answer how they support movements for equality, for equity, for justice and ensuring that we're not blocking access to any kind of healthcare. That the city needs to be vocal in leading in access to not just reproductive healthcare but healthcare for trans folks accessing hormone treatment or other treatment as well. We need to invest city resources in addressing the vandalism that has been targeted against trans neighbors especially in the Old North End. I would like to see us put resources towards that with public works going forward. And that is something that I would be committed to in my next term on the city council. Thank you, Councillor McGee, Mr. Falker. Thanks for the question. So my starting point on the subject of gender identity originates from my Catholic Christian beliefs and that's that all of us are created in the image of likeness of God. I fully support and defend the rights of trans identifying individuals to engage and interact in society with equal rights into the law. And I've said this time and time again, year after year. And that's where I'm at with it. As far as reproductive liberty and the other aspects, I don't believe that any of that falls under the purview of city council in any way, shape or form. So I'll let my comments stand that I fully support and defend the rights of trans identifying individuals to engage and interact in society with equal rights under the law. Thank you, Mr. Falker. We are doing very well on time tonight. We have a few more minutes left. Is there any other questions here? If we don't get it, okay. Looks like Solvee, you have a question and then we have time for one more after that. And then we will move into closing statements. Thank you. I just wanted to ask a question about what the Councillors might be willing to do to improve the searchability of the city's websites and the board docs. It's incredibly difficult for people to inform themselves about upcoming public hearings or meetings and actually finding documents that took place at prior meetings and positions that people take. What can you suggest that could be done to improve the ability of the public to actually understand and find documents and material about the important civic decisions that are being made by city council and other city administrative offices? Sorry, I was communicating with our in-person rep Jessica at the community center. I think we'll start with Councillor McGee on that one. My apologies. Thanks for the question, Solvee. I myself have struggled with the board docs. Trying to remember what we covered in a particular city council meeting or looking for a memo that we were presented. And so I absolutely agree that our websites could be more navigable. And so I think it's a worthy thing for us to look into as a council whether we need to start storing these documents somewhere else. I think it works as a way for us to administer meetings for folks to access agendas for current meetings. But as an overall source for archival information of past meetings, I think it's really difficult to navigate even for folks who use it every day. So I would be supportive of us looking into another way to make that information more accessible and finding another way to share that. Thank you, Councillor McGee. We'll move on to Mr. Bergman. Solvee, it's a question of commitment and money once people become aware. So awareness is the third aspect to that. And I think that it actually goes to the comments related to affordability that we heard previously we cannot make a livable city, a healthy city by cutting, cutting, cutting. So we've got to invest quite simply if board docs is not sufficient to get the information that the people need to be informed about the workings of the government then we need to change that. And we need to spend the money to do that. And it's really that in a way that simple, that straightforward, the implementation of that be sequenced or take some time but we've got to make that commitment. So I think actually this is a problem which is clearly not new. And I suspect that it is not a problem that is hidden. So in the budget process, that's what we've got to do. We have got to make it clear that the current system is insufficient and needs to be changed. And we've got to, if we need to spend the money to fix it it's part of open transparent government that we need to have in the city of Burlington. And I would support that. And thank you for bringing this up. Thank you, Mr. Bergman, Mr. Falker. Thank you. That's a great question. And I've asked myself many times the same thing. I have been extremely frustrated on board docs trying to track down, like Councilor McKee said old meeting notes or trying to cross-reference that with something else that's going on currently. It is a very difficult system to navigate. And I thought that I was just foolish and not complaining to the right people but now I hear everybody is having the same problem. So maybe, what would I do as city councilor? Well, I don't know how to write code but I do know that as a councilor I might have the phone numbers of people I can complain to so that we can try and get it fixed. So I'm right on board with you. We need to make the system easier to navigate so it's easier for our residents to participate in government. So I'm fully on board and I agree with Mr. Bergman. This comes down to budgeting and that's something that we should really focus on is how we're budgeting our money and why are we not budgeting and allocating resources to properly maintain our infrastructure on a regular basis. And that includes our digital infrastructure. So yeah, thank you for the question. I just muted myself. I think that concludes the question and answer portion of the forum here. We'll begin with closing statements. We'll start with Mr. Bergman, move on to Mr. Falker and then end with the councilor McGee. Thanks, Chris. We face, as has been said, an affordability crisis. The high cost of housing, increased taxes, funding of a new high school. It's also a question of public health and safety, what we spend and how we transform the services we use to provide our healthy and safe community. And it's about infrastructure and particularly its relationship with the existential threat of climate change. I'm looking forward to represent ward two to be able to do some fundamental change, to change the regressive property tax system with one that's fair to Burlington residents, having the wealthy pay their fair share. And I'm looking forward to the opportunity to push UVM to build significantly more housing than what they proposed several weeks ago for the Trinity campus because we need to have significantly more housing that working in low income people can afford. And I particularly wanna help increase a home ownership rates for black and brown people who have miniscule home ownership rates. And we can use our housing trust fund for that. I look forward to working with councilor McGee on the homeless or the houseless encampment changes and the reappraisal resolution changes. And I particularly am looking forward to making public safety transformation a reality in this term, including a police oversight. So I look forward to people support. I really appreciate the NPA for raising questions that are serious and need attention like the one on board docs. And you can write me at Gene Bergman for city council at Gmail or can call me at 802-598-3602. Thanks very much. Thank you, Mr. Bergman. Moving on to Mr. Falker. Thank you. This evening we spoke at length about the future of our city. We discussed infrastructure projects redistricting and restoring civility to city council. I believe our city is better positioned when diverse opinions come together to craft solutions to determine our city's path forward. It's been incredibly disconcerting to me that our current city council acts in such a dysfunctional and partisan manner that members of council have insulated themselves into a small echo chamber refusing to engage in constructive dialogue with other members of the community and stakeholders. It has become abundantly clear that city council has been more concerned with social activism than good governance. This petulant partisan posturing on city council has resulted in creating circumstances that are antithetical to public safety. This election, we have the ability to change not to regressively move backwards but to move forward together. To demonstrate that leadership means having the courage to reach across the proverbial aisle to work together to forge compromises and to build a better Burlington together. As city councilor, I vow to be a good steward to the residents, workers, visitors and businesses of Ward 3. I pledge to work together to rebuild our police department, to bring stability to the housing market, to ensure we're maintaining our infrastructure which is vital to promoting accessibility and equality, to promote fiscal responsibility in budgeting and to truly hold the line on taxes that contribute to the ever rising cost of living in Burlington. All our collective dreams, both big and small, to improve Burlington won't be achieved until we have a safe city to live, work and play. I'd like to thank you and the members of the NPA for hosting this candidate forum this evening. I'd like to thank all of you at home who tuned in to watch and participate. If you are ready for change and you'd like what I had to say this evening, I encourage you to go to my website, www.felker4ward3.com to follow, volunteer or contribute to my campaign. I'm Chris for Aaron Felker and I ask you to send me to city council this town meeting day. Thank you. You did it myself again. Thank you, Mr. Felker. Councilor McGee, you're up. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for facilitating tonight. And I thank you to the NPA for very efficient and on time meeting. It's been great to be here for the conversation. And I have been very proud of the work that I've been able to start since joining the council in September, whether it's working on the affordability crisis addressing the unfairness of the reappraisal process with the property tax system, voting to continue to support the office of racial equity inclusion and belonging, continuing to work with DPW to make sure that our streets and our crosswalks are getting the attention that they deserve, joining PTO meetings for the Sustainability Academy and meeting with neighbors and the Old North and downtown to talk about how I can be a better representative on the city council. So I've just gotten started over the last five months. I'm excited to continue working if re-elected for a full two-year term. And as I've said from the beginning, if someone is there to have a conversation, I'm willing to show up and sit at that table and have that conversation. So I'm looking forward to working with you all to continue this important work and look forward to having this conversation over the next three weeks up until town meeting day. So I look forward to seeing folks at the polls. It's gonna be a little chillier than it was on August 17th. But I appreciate you all coming out tonight and please reach out. My cell phone number is 802-279-5513 and my email is joemigiebtv.com. Thank you so much. Thank you, councilor McGee. This concludes the candidate forum portion of our meeting tonight. We're largely on schedule tonight. I'm very happy to see that. As I suspect many other folks are as well. We'll move on to the ballot items now. I know that we have some folks here. I think councilor Tracy was going to speak to a few things. I think we have some folks on the school board. I did see superintendent plan again. He's back, excellent. Looking forward to hearing from him. What about the one-two person? Yeah, thank you. Oh, thank you. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Faiza has been waiting and I was hoping that there could be an introduction. Yes, yes. Faiza Hassan, I am so sorry about that. But yes, I'm glad you're able to join us and feel free to take a few minutes to talk about your candidacy and let us know why you're running for office. Hello, my name is Faiza and I've been in the Burlington School District throughout my whole schooling life, I guess. And I'm just excited to learn and help kids deal with what I went through as a growing up in the Burlington School District. Growing up in this Burlington School District. I'm ready to learn. That's pretty much it. I just want to help people. Well, thank you for that. Does anyone have any questions related to the candidates at this point or we will transition into the ballot items? I think we're back on track. I apologize for that oversight there. All right, without further ado, we are moving into the ballot items. I think that it would probably best to speak to them in chronological order. I'm not sure if these are the correct question numbers but on the agenda it's listed as the 5.5% city tax increase, the capital bond, the authorization for tax increment financing, the sex work charter change in the school budget. Now, anyone have any differing thoughts or are you guys okay with that format? Yeah, that's fine. And I was gonna actually split. Councilor McGee and I coordinated, we're gonna actually split them up. So Councilor McGee is gonna be the first one on the 5.5% tax increase. I'll do the capital bond and the TIF and then Councilor McGee will do the sex change, sex worker charter change. All right, thank you Council President Tracy. So I'll get started. So the tax increase is actually question number two on the ballot. This is a increase to the city side of the tax equation to address a number of budget related shortfalls that we've had due to the pandemic. It also addresses, so among other things, wages and other items related to inflation ensure that all of our city employees are earning livable wage and our expanded investments in racial equity and justice. So these items will be partially funded by this tax increase and also funded by use of some of the ARPID dollars that we have left over. This tax increase would provide for 2.2 million of an overall roughly $7 million budget gap that we have right now. And it's important to know what I think that this increase coupled with the decrease on the school side of the tax equation will actually lead to an overall decrease of 2.6% in the tax rate. Now, I'm happy to answer questions. I just wanna note that I don't think it's the best thing for us to do to count on the school taxes to go down for us to raise taxes on the city side. So I just wanna acknowledge that for folks and happy to answer any questions on that. Do we have any questions on the city tax increase? Councilor McGee has graciously offered to entertain them. Okay, not seeing any questions. We'll move on to ballot number item, the second item on the agenda. I'm not sure if it's the number two on the ballot, but it's the capital bond and Council President Tracy, that's you, I believe? Yeah, I can cover that. And just to go back to that tax increase, one thing that I do just wanna highlight for folks is that there is in fact a budget shortfall, the primary driver of which is inflation. And the key thing to understand here is that if we don't pass this, we will be looking at some very serious cuts. The mayor has said that they will look at all the different departments he's committed to that for potential cuts. And it'll be painful. We'll have to be basically thinking about which city services that we all depend on, that we feel like we can cut. And I don't think that we're really in a place right now, given all of the necessary functions that city government plays in our daily lives to be cutting back on those services, especially now when we're in a place where we need to be really focusing on a recovery. So I'm encouraging people to support that. The other piece is the capital bond, which is a separate bond. This is a scaled down bond in comparison to the bond that we all voted on in December, which is around 40 million. This is more of a 20, this is about a $25 million bond. The key difference being in this case that really scaled it down was taking away that $10 million set aside for Memorial and really scaling that down. That was a big issue for some voters who wanted to see more of a plan and not just have a general set aside, which I think is certainly understandable. So they took that piece out of it and there's only a small amount of money in the current bond for Memorial. And that's really to just stabilize the building. And that's gonna be crucial if we want to redevelop Memorial because it has deteriorated and will continue to deteriorate unless we take action to stabilize the building itself because there's significant issues with the roof, with masonry, with heating and cooling system, with heating systems within the building largely. So if we want to preserve Memorial we need to stabilize those structures in order to give us a chance to even think about doing something with the building in the future. So that that's a piece of it, but there's also a number of other essential community items in this. Things like fire trucks. We have aging fire trucks in our city and that need replacement. We also have to upgrade our city's emergency dispatch system. Chief Locke, the fire chief has let us know that our system has degraded to such a point that there have been some points where there's just been weird things happening with our dispatch system. And that's not something that I think we want. We know that we need to upgrade this system. It's not, in my mind, an optional thing to do. And absent this funding it'll be really challenging to do that. The other pieces are things like being able to take advantage of federal money by having matching money for projects on the local level. A lot of grants require local match money to get a lot more in federal or state money. And so in order to be able to do that we have to have capital money. Other things like fixing sidewalks. We've been fixing sidewalks at a higher rate in recent years than in the past. We want to continue with that. We also want to continue to upgrade our roads and make sure that the roads and the potholes and those kinds of things are fixed. We absolutely need to pass this. And the thing is, is that if we don't do this now that money that'll just get more expensive. Inflation is out of control right now. It is going up at an exorbitant rate and we're seeing costs rise really substantially. So it's not as though these costs and these needs for infrastructure improvements will go away. They'll only just get more expensive. And so I'm encouraging people again to vote on this because these are not things that would be nice to have or luxuries, but these are very much needs to keep our city functioning going forward. So I'm encouraging support for that. So that's the capital bond piece of it. Transitioning and I'll transition to the TIF piece and then can stop at that point and take questions on that on both of these. On the TIF side of things, tax increment financing is a different funding tool. It's not a tax increase that appears on your tax bill or increases your tax bill. What it essentially does is it takes an area, in this case, the downtown, and it draws a boundary around that area. And then within that area, there's the ability to put forward infrastructure improvements and to build those improvements in order to spur further growth in the grand list or the taxable property in that area. And then based on projections of that growth, be able to take on debt that is then paid off with the incremental growth in that area. So that tax revenue that increases within that area. So it is a tool that we've used on the waterfront pretty substantially in order to make improvements to the waterfront. These districts do have a limit on them. So it's not as though in terms of the ability to incur debt. So it's not as though we'll have additional opportunities going forward to, or we would have other opportunities that this goes down to think about using this tool to fund improvements for Main Street. So it is a different kind of funding mechanism that we have in this case to use for improvements on the downtown. And the proposal is to make a major upgrade of Main Street as well as dealing with some stormwater issues that come from having the ravine run under that surface parking lot next to that downtown fire station. That is a brick tunnel that needs to be essentially upgraded in order to support future potential development on that site. The Main Street portion of it would involve upgrading the sidewalks from basically from around the North Winooski area all the way down to the waterfront. So you get substantial increased pedestrian space there, places to sit. You also will have better crosswalks, bike lanes will go through there. It'll be a really substantial increase. And one of the concerns has been making sure that they're gonna be phasing the project better and addressing things like contaminated soils. I think they've learned a lot of lessons from having done these kinds of downtown, large scale downtown projects in the past. And I'm confident that we'll be able to remake Main Street in a pretty major way. If we don't do this, then we'll be looking at, then we won't be able, we won't have a funding source identified or for Main Street and we'll have significant difficulty in providing for additional, in fixing up Main Street, which in my opinion, and I think a lot of folks see it as a street that really could use some love. It's an unfortunate welcome to Burlington in many ways. I think it could be a lot more pedestrian friendly, a lot more welcoming. And I think this gives us the opportunity to create that better gateway to our city. So again, I'm also gonna be supporting this ballot item as well. But I'll stop there and see if folks had any questions on how many of those items. Not doing really well with this mute button tonight. Do we have any questions out there from folks regarding any of the ballot items? I was like, we do have a question from Mr. Tony Redington. Yeah, hi, Tony Redington. I'm disappointed in the Main Street project and the discussion on it because right now we have four high crash intersections. The most dangerous intersection in the state of Vermont is at right at South Manuski and Main Street. And among the four of the seven intersections on that short stretch, there are basically eight injuries a year, 78 injuries a decade. And I have to express my disappointment that in the 10 years that we've had this administration, there hasn't been one of the 20 high crash intersections in the city, the bulk of which are in the Old North and in downtown. Not a single one of those intersections has been addressed by the Department of Public Works based on dealing with the safety of the intersection performance. It took you, Senator Tracy, it took you, Councilor Tracy and the Council to overrule the Department of Public Works to place safety as number one at the Colchester and East intersection, which was certainly a good thing to do because now we're gonna have several hundred students, how is there a lot more students based on the comments here tonight from the Council of candidates at the University of Vermont. The point I'm making is this, we are behind in safety in the city in terms of our streets and our intersections. And we do not have a Department of Public Works who places as our city plan calls for safety being quote unquote critical. And that needs to change and that culture at the DPW needs to change. That's the reason I oppose this project. No public involvement, no discussion of equity, no discussion of safety, no involvement of any of the wards, no advisory committee. That's not the way Burlington is supposed to operate. You all know this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Reddickson. Ms. Overby, Zola. I have a question about for the two counselors for President Tracy and for Councillor McGee about their analysis of the financial viability of the projects that are currently listed as the ones that will be developed as a consequence of the $35 million renovation of Main Street. I've been looking through the documentation and both from the October 25th, 2021 meeting that you had City Council meeting documents presented there and also the ones that were provided just to the City Council last Monday. What is your confidence and have you received financing and information that really would appear to be more financially sound than what is provided in those documents because it really doesn't look very sound like if you went to a bank with that information you really couldn't get it wrong. So what are you basing that you feel confident financially that those projects are actually gonna happen and that money is gonna be available for the tax proceeds in the downtown TIF? I just don't see it from the documents that I've looked at. So maybe you have other information that you can share with us. Yeah. So thank you for that question, Solvee. So because that is certainly a concern because you do need to be careful about the debt that you take on with these projects from what I've under understand, Director Pine who has been managing this project through CEDO has been and has been working closely with the CAO as well as Vepsi which is the board that oversees these TIF projects is that this debt is predicated on very conservative growth estimates. So they're not, they're estimating a very, they're based on a very low rate of growth in recognition that we don't know what's gonna happen coming out of the pandemic that there are real challenges going on but that we do know that there are a number of properties that are slated to be developed in the area, things like the hotel development that's supposed to take place at the YMCA. The former YMCA property, additional housing taking place at the VFW and I believe a couple other, I can't draw them off the top of my head but a number of properties that are already in development. So they're working off of those very conservative assumptions looking at what is actually in the pipeline and basing the debt on those projects alone. Okay, Councilor McGathey, did you have anything you'd like to add? No, I think Max covered it pretty significantly there. Okay, thank you, Councilor McGathey. We have a question from Mr. Tiki. Yeah, hey there. Actually, I don't know as much of a question I had heard some, I heard the suggestion made that no intersection had been improved over the last 10 years in the city that had been previously rated a dangerous intersection and that's simply untrue. Not only have we addressed, and I say we, I was on the Public Works Commission for the better part of the decade that the intersection at the upper pearl where it starts to turn into Mansfield was specifically done to address safety and that longer wait times were the sacrifice made for that safety effort. I could cite that North Ave, the entire stretch of that was redone for the Indian interest of safety. So I don't wanna get into a larger discussion. I just wanted to correct some of the information that was offered earlier. Thank you. Yeah, I would agree with Tiki. I think we have made a number of notable improvements even on the Winooski, on that portion of Winooski right in the downtown section itself. I think this project though, if it doesn't go forward then we continue to keep the same unsafe configuration of Main Street, looking at things like the head in parking. So that parking configuration where you pull in with your head, the head of your vehicle and that's in front of Nectar's that block which is a less safe mode of parking. We also won't see bike lanes going, separated bike lanes going in and then we won't also see, there is infrastructure work that shortens or tightens up those crosswalks that is part of this. So if we don't move forward, we just maintain the status quo which is a street that is both not safe as I think Tony rightly points out but that also is gonna be, that also is just not a very friendly environment or as friendly of an environment as it could be for pedestrian cyclists and even drivers as well. I think it's quite challenging and stressful to try and navigate that section when you have people pulling in, backing in and out and of those spaces in that kind of configure in the current configuration. So I don't see this as the end of that conversation or certainly gonna have to continue to improve that street in terms of safety but I think that it does make some meaningful gains in terms of safety over the status quo. All right, thank you. So we'll be moving on to the next ballot item here. We are getting a little towards the end of the agenda. We do wanna maintain our stellar record of staying on time tonight. So we've covered the tax increase, capobon, the authorization for tax increment financing. I know that there's a lot of folks here that wanna hear about the schools and the school budget. So I'm thinking to move that up and then we can circle back for the sex worker charter change if folks are agreeable to any objections. All right, I do see that there are a number of folks here from the school district and the school board. I know we have superintendent Flynn again. We have a number we have of the school commissioners as well as the chair of the school board. So I don't know if you guys have talked about who wants to lead, but I think I'll start with the superintendent Flynn again. Hi, Chris, thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to lead. And I know commissioners, Vanderpooten, Kerry and Walts, I think spoke to the budget earlier. So I won't spend much time and they can add in anything that I've missed. But thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. And I wanted to just start by saying that the approach that we took to developing the fiscal year 23 budget this year really took in mind the effects of the Burlington High School Burlington Technical Center project that we will be bringing to voters in November, understanding that that is gonna be a big deal. And so we wanna make sure that we're very mindful of that as we are budgeting now. So when we developed the budget, we were very conservative in our budget development process. Essentially we did not add any new programs to the budget that we're presenting to voters. There is a $3.1 million increase to the fiscal year 23 budget from fiscal year 22 to 23. That is because of the increase that in cost of running a district every year. So that's wages, benefits, utilities. And so that just is what it costs to run the district. In addition to that, we have $600,000 in the budget to support improvements to downtown BHS which is where we currently have about 900 students in high school. And moving in there, we knew we had to get in there quickly. We knew we wanted to, we knew we were gonna need to make additions or improvements to that space as we went on. So essentially the big takeaway is that there is no new programmatic ads to the budget. And it's, we are just budgeting costs of living essentially, wages, benefits and utilities. We actually are allowed, we do have the ability to make some programmatic improvements to our school district though, because we have funds from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan. So that's allowed us to put resources toward our COVID operations like masks and filters for the HVAC systems, tests, childcare, summer programming. And then we've also been able to invest in social and emotional wellbeing and academic success. We have restorative practices, specialists we've been able to place at all of our schools and or we're in the process of hiring those people for all of our schools. And we've also been able to put 10 million of that American Rescue Plan funding that we received toward the new high school. So we are looking at this point we have 11.5 million overall that we've been able to identify to put toward the high school longterm. So those are the assumptions in the budget. And the bottom line for the budget is that taxpayers will see what we are projecting what we are projecting to be 6.89% property tax decrease in their taxes this year with the proposed school budget. And that is primarily because there is a healthy education fund at the state level that is supporting school budgets across the state this year. So even though our equalized pupil which is the amount of funding per student has gone up and that's gone up 13%, about 13% the overall budget has gone down. And or the overall, sorry, the overall tax impact we are projecting will be down in the taxpayers we'll see a decrease in their taxes. So those are really the big takeaways. Happy to answer any questions and to take any feedback at this point. Thank you, Superintendent Flanagan. Do we have any questions regarding the school budget proposal? Okay. Do any of the school commissioners have anything that they would like to add? Okay. Then I guess- Chris, if I could just add one idea I forgot one thing and it is about the weighted pupil. This is impacting our budget here to a certain extent but in future years what our school board has done is really taken the lead on advocating at the state at the state house and this is currently being taken up in the Senate Education Committee. The state asked for a review of their funding formula a number of years back. They got a review from Rutgers American Institute of Research and UVM that review said that there's an outdated funding formula. And so we are, and now the state is taking that funding formula question up. We were, it's a critical time right now. There's not, there's some political will to do it. There's a lot of political will from wealthier districts to push against doing that because it ends up weighting our district higher than and other districts like ours like Winooski, Rutland, a couple of other districts that have higher, more students who receive English language support and students who are living in poverty than other districts. We are really pushing hard for that. That will end up changing if they adopt the funding formula that that group said should be that the Vermont should take up that will have a significant change in the way we're able to both resource our schools and in the impact to taxpayers. So I just wanted to throw that out there because it's a big piece of our future success as a city, I believe. Thank you, Superintendent Flanagan. Thank you. Commissioner Vander Putin and Commissioner Kerry do you have anything you'd like to add? I just wanna add that this is what representative Sheena was speaking about earlier tonight that this is something that they've been working on at the legislative level. And that's in part because there are districts that have come together to say that this funding formula really does need to change. And what it comes down to is how much it educate how much it costs to educate each student in a community and how those can have varying rates depending on how homogeneous or heterogeneous a community is and what the needs of that community are. And one of the wonderful things about Burlington is how much diversity we have in this community. And one of the most challenging things when it comes to education is how much diversity we have in. I don't mean that necessarily in terms of cultural or ethnic diversity but also socioeconomic diversity and the different backgrounds that we have. So to make it fair to educate each pupil that's what we're talking about. And the word weight is W-E-I-G-H-T. So the weight given to how much it costs as opposed to the other kind of weight. I didn't know if everybody understood that that's what we were talking about. The weight funding for how much it costs to educate each pupil. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Kerry. Yeah, I would just say briefly that we have a huge system here. We have 10 schools. We have thousands of employees, thousands of students. And what we're presenting to the city of Burlington this cycle is a very conservative as Tom Plannigan said a very conservative and fiscally responsible budget that we're hoping the good citizens of Burlington will support on March 1st. Thank you, commissioner Kerry. Looks like we have commissioner Jeannie Walts who wants to weigh in. See a hand. Yeah, can you guys hear me okay? Yes. I just wanted to tell people if they want more information about this weighted pupil issue, they can go, there's a coalition that's been formed that school board members from all over the state are a part of in advocating for this to be resolved equitably is the key thing here. And by the way, Burlington, when you see the districts that we're talking about that really need for this change to happen not just financially, but also morally. We have gone without for 20 years. So hearing about these districts that are quote unquote pushing back because their funding might be negatively impacted. I just want to put it out there that they have been overfunded honestly by accident. And it is through the study that we found out equitable formulas or percentages or weights that should be allocated to students. So the name of this coalition is the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity and visit their website at CVTSE.org. There's actionable steps that you can take as in who to email about what and exactly what to advocate for. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Walts. Can you please repeat that URL? Just in case folks want to write that down. C as in CAT, VT as in Vermont, S as in CE as in education.org. Thank you very much. I think we have the last remaining ballot item for the sex worker trader change, but it does look like we do have a question from Representative Brancino. I just want to acknowledge the hard work of the school board and the superintendent. It's really hard to balance a school budget and meet all the needs of people with rising costs and trying not to cut things. It's really hard to balance a school budget. So I'm going to acknowledge that the work that must have gone into the school budget this year. And I just want to remind people that when a school budget fails, what it means is that the school board and the superintendent have to scramble to come back to the voters with a budget. And I believe if the budget doesn't pass by a certain point, they continue with the previous year's budget. Like it's really complicated. And when the school budget failed in the election, in which I was elected, the school budget failed, it was really harmful to the children in the end. It really created a lot of instability. And I just don't think this is the time to put our kids through any more stress and considering the hard work that went into coming forward with a fiscally responsible budget. I would urge voters to support this budget and let's focus our energy on advocating for better decisions on the state level around how we fund education. Because ultimately, if we don't address that, it's just going to be even more trouble down the road. So I just want to thank you all for your hard work. Thank you, Representative Chiena. I guess it's once a school commissioner, always a school commissioner. Thank you for your service, everyone. Unless we have any other questions, I think this concludes the meeting for the evening. I think we had a very successful meeting. We did very well keeping on time for most of it. I want to thank everyone for coming out and sharing their thoughts and opinions and particularly the candidates to come out and take questions as well as our elected people to give us updates. So without further ado, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. All right, thank you very much, everyone. We all have a good night. Stay safe out there and stay warm. Take care. Good night.