 Good evening, everybody. We have a nice crowd in the room tonight. The biggest I've ever seen. There you go. It is Thursday, March 21st, and this is the Ward 5 neighborhood planning assembly. And we're starting a little bit late. We're trying to get the zoom up and running. Sorry for those who tried to join that way. We weren't able to do it this time. Are we still able to use the TV for the screen sharing? Or I guess I can't put on the internet. We're on this recording very easily for the rest of the people in here. I can read off of it too. So I'll start. I'll just do this verbally while you're bringing it up our guiding principles for this this group. We try to provide a welcoming forum in this, you know, seemingly small conference room tonight. A safe space for people to raise their concerns or talk about. You know, things pertinent to the community. Yeah, so I'm on to we try to make this community forum accessible that would include zoom normally. And just being in a central location, this is 1 of the, you know, the middle of the ward basically here at the Department of Public Works. We'd like to engage with as many community members as we as we possibly can. We we urge everyone to be respectful of cultural and economic differences during the meeting and value all the first perspectives that are brought here tonight. That as an organization, we try to be relevant, creative and fun, the extent possible. And we don't endorse any political candidates during that part of the yearly season. So, I'll just go to the next. That's the steering committee members. My name is Joe Derry. I live on Berguson Avenue. We also have most of the steering if not everyone rivers from look stairs. Roger Brassard, Lyman Avenue, Lane of Greenberg, Maple Street, Jason, Van Driesh, Caroline Street and read who made this beautiful food. There you are. Are you warmed up yet? All right, great. So our, our website where we have the agenda and other materials as, as provided by our presenter is npa5.gov website on here as well. For Burlington, Vermont dot gov slash npa5. And thank you, Frosca, for taking care of us tonight and get making sure that we get this thing recorded as long as as well as Charlie from CCTV. Yeah, he also gave us his personal cell phone number, which is Please don't move the bucket or we're going to get stuck in here. It can get locked in. Yeah. Oh, that's good. It's unlocked. So please don't find a way out. With over 40 people in the room, which is very exciting. We will certainly find a way out, but please do not move the bucket. Okay, it's very important. Thanks for that. All right, I'm going to skip the zoom one. I'll just go through the agenda quickly. We're starting a bit late. So forget about the times, but we'll start off with this little welcome message, then we'll have public forum for around 20 minutes. And we have a few announcements, which are part of this deck. We'll come back to it for the routes of prevention, which is the Burlington partnership for healthy community program. Some town meeting day results and a quick some quick updates from state house pertinent to our our city. As well as we have some solar eclipse glasses you may have seen in here and some other materials related to that eclipse, which is on April 8th at around 320 ish. And finally, we have our NPA election in April. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And finally, after that, about 20 minutes after that, we'll have a discussion about Decker towers. I hope that we have a few people from from there tonight to speak on behalf of situation and our and our hopeful response. So let's start with public forums. Anybody want to start off? Here's the here's the ground rules. Basically, just identify yourself. If you're affiliated with some organization, just mention that and let us know if you're from Ward 5 or if you want what street or neighborhood you're in. Yes. Hey, my name is Sarah Hernandez Tim. I'm the public information and community engagement officer with the Burlington Police Department. I'm not from Ward 5, but I'm making the rounds this month all the NPAs. I simply wanted to highlight a reminder we sent out on our social and front porch forum recently regarding BPD press releases. If you would like to be added to that distribution list, you can email me directly at my email s Tim Tim at BPD VT.org. And I can happily share that with the steering committee. I'll also be here after the meeting if you want to connect. I have my business cards with me. And for those of you who would rather not be on the distribution list, all the press releases are on the city's website on the police department's web page. Thanks. Thank you. All right, anybody else in the room. Yes. My name is Bobby and I am Ward 5. I just want to say a positive thing. I've brought to light a couple of things that have not been so positive about experiences with police department and the dispatchers. And I did want to say that a couple of days ago, I was on the bike path and encountered some people having a loud and contentious argument and it depends on the side of the bike path. And I did phone 911 and was immediately attached over to the BPD. The dispatcher was wonderful. Asked for details, told me to keep my distance and stay safe and the police were there within four minutes. So things are getting better and I feel very positive about that. That's a very different response than when I phoned the police six months ago. So I just thought I would share that we are working as a community to make things better. And that was a really different. Positive that I saw and I felt great about it. Thank you. Appreciate that. Anyone else in here? Yes. My name is Andy Simon. I live on Locust Street and I just was very impressed this election by the tenor of the discussion by candidates, the level of respect that candidates showed each other during the debates and the various discussions that were part of the campaign. I was very impressed by that, especially given the level of noncivility that had been modeled for us on a national level lately. I also want to congratulate the City of Burlington and Ward 5 on increasing your level of participation, the voting participation in this election. I came here a couple of months ago or maybe last month to sort of grumble about the low voter turnout and encourage people to vote. We got up to 46.6% citywide. That's almost 50% of registered voters, which could seem if you were in France or somewhere else, a very low percentage. But for Burlington and the United States, that was quite good. And Ward 5 was over 52% of registered voters. So congratulations. Thanks. So there might be more in the room. I also noticed that Lucia had a hand raised. Will we be able to take that? Okay, let's give it a try. Hi, can you all hear me? Yes. Oh, awesome. I'm sorry that I can't see everybody in the room. It looks like there's a healthy crowd there and I'm sorry to miss you all in person, but hopefully you enjoyed a wonderful meal and will enjoy the meeting tonight. My name is Lucia Campriolo. I live on Lyman Ave in Ward 5 and I'm going to put on a couple hats. One to follow on Andy's high note around election season, wearing my hat as your Ward 5 school commissioner to thank you so much for your incredible support of our school budget. This past election really appreciate the support from the entire city and specifically from Ward 5 voters, particularly knowing that it's a hardship for many of us. So thank you so much for your support from the schools, both as a school commissioner as well as as a parent of two young children in our public school system. So wanted to say thank you so much for that. And also I know this is on the agenda later, but not probably specifically the events that I'm going to promote with a separate hat on and that is of my workplace, which is Hula to encourage folks to check out the events that are happening at Hula around the eclipse. And you can do so on our website at hula lakeside.com backslash totality. One of the things I just want to highlight is that we have a former NASA aerospace engineer participating with us in a couple of different events on Sunday afternoon, April 7, as well as narrating the eclipse itself on the 8 so feel free to check those out. We'd love to see you there. There should be a discount code for folks in the Lakeside neighborhood which really extends to many of us in Ward 5 and I will find that and put that in the chat and get that out to folks as well and you're free to use that. It's a $5 ticket on Sunday hula lakeside.com backslash totality. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks. Yes. Yes, sir. My name is Jason. I live on Caroline Street. I just wanted to say one quick thing about solar eclipse glasses. I read an article in the paper. The other day about how counterfeit solar eclipse glasses are not uncommon and that you can actually injure your eyes with them. I trust that the city of Burlington did their homework and got ones that are certified. So I encourage anybody to grab these but just a pitch to make sure you're getting your solar eclipse glasses from a reputable source because I didn't realize that there are fake ones that look like they work and actually don't and that you can burn your eyes if you don't have ones that are the real deal. So that's all I wanted to say and there's a big stack of them here. Please take lots of them and for folks who aren't here. I assume you can get these at city hall and other places. We can also set up some pickup points around word five. Our steering committee is wonderfully representative of the the north south length of word five so we can make other opportunities if you have friends and neighbors who need glasses. After the fact. Awesome. Perfect. The American Astronomical Society has a list of reputable vendors that you can buy them from. So for ISO. Yeah. Although apparently the counterfeit ones put the ISO seal on it because all they have to do is, you know, download that from the Internet. So just getting it from a reputable source like the city of Burlington or one of the vendors recommended by the American Astronomical Society. That's a good thing. So my concern is that you're going to have a group of young people, like kids or something, and one of them is going to have the glasses. So they're going to use the glasses and then they're going to pass it off. And then they're going to look at the sun. Yeah, that's even a few seconds can cause permanent damage so please take many pairs of glasses we have 500. They are useless after well not useless they won't be useful for a long time after. 10 years 10 years for 10 years 10 years. Center back to China where they were made. One way to test them also is that you shouldn't be seeing anything. That's right. All right. Thank you for that. Before we before we forge ahead. I'm noticing how many people are in this room, and I'm so thrilled to see all of you. I think I speak for everyone on the steering committee. Could we just have a quick humor me quick show of hands if you've never been to an NPA before. Please come again. We'll do everything we can to make it interesting enough that you come again. Okay. Thank you. And the food is always good. All right. So we could move on. If there's anything else for public forum, just raise your hand or shout. All right, I think we're ready. So, I had the next thing that we had was just a few announcements. And I think they're just further into this slide show. That's that's one of them. Yeah, we could. Yeah, I'll start with that one. That's a good one. So next month, we're going to have the meeting also the 3rd Thursday, which is April 18th. And we'll have the steering committee election. We have to do that every year because we have a 1 year term. And I think we can have up to 9 members right now. We have 6. And we'd be glad to have your help coordinating these meetings and. Doing everything else as far as getting folks to come in and talk about their. Initiatives and projects and and everything else going on for award. So, let us know if you're interested. Our. Our, I'll just do our email address later, but you can get to our website more easily and PA 5.org and the email is on there. And you can also just show up at that meeting and say, hi, I'd like to be on the steering committee. You can nominate yourself. So there's nothing elaborate required to get involved. And just a brief overview of what's involved on the steering committee. This is a volunteer position. We get together once a month, usually to come up with our agendas. Often it's a mix of figuring out who has said we want to present at the NPA and bringing up topics that the community hopefully will be interested in making sure that we have food. And it's about an hour or an hour and a half of meeting. And we do some front porch forum posting and we put out signs and. In the summer, sometimes we coordinate events that are not on the 3rd Thursday to get people together in another contact. So there's room for creativity. If you like to plan events, if you're excited about bringing people together, we'd love to have you on the steering committee. And then we host the meetings. That's it. Thank you. So then we had, we had a request to make this announcement on behalf of Evan Litwin. Who's another in another wards steering committee. He's court. He's a member of this Burlington partnership for a healthy community. Which is a substance abuse misuse prevention coalition. And you know, I put up their sort of mission statement here. I'll just, I'll just read the rest of it. We collaborate with the network of partners and public health experts on initiatives that address the root causes of substance misuse. We take action to help embed wellness into the community culture and create protections to help youth thrive. So it's a youth, youth focused group trying to prevent substance misuse. I think is a great thing. So the next slide is about the awards that they have every year. They've done this for many years now, I guess I'll come in 15 years. The roots of prevention awards is an opportunity to pause recognize and thanks change makers who have had a direct positive or transformative impact on the health and wellness of our community and neighborhoods. And often that work is difficult might lack recognition and it will go above and beyond expectations. During this event, the awards event that's we're referring to here in a few months, we gather to recognize the people and programs and organizations doing that important work. So at the bottom I have their website and the forward slash little sub page for this roots of prevention awards. So it's Burlington partnership.org as one long word and roots dash of dash prevention. If you'd like to nominate person or a group or organization for that. If you're passionate about protecting young folks from negative impacts of drug use now is a great time to call the governor. There's a bill that's just passed out of the House and Senate that would ban flavored tobacco. So flavored tobacco use is very high among young folks it's very hard to get unaddicted once you've been exposed to such an early age so passing this kind of legislation goes hand in hand with efforts like this one. Trying to call Phil Scott. I don't have his number but probably has an email address easy to reach. So I quickly had a little ward 5 result town meeting day page put together here so our inspector of election. I believe was the incumbent as well. Francis Brock. We reelected our school commissioner Lucia who you heard from a few minutes ago. And we reelected our ward 5 counselor next year. The South seat will be open or up for reelection. But Ben Travers was reelected and I just put actually put the numbers on there which I can make my eyes cross a little bit but all of the questions passed in our ward with decent margin. The school budget was a little bit less understandably because it was a lot of money to spend but you know we do need to build a high school but my opinion. So appreciate your support to all those initiatives last or earlier in the month. So this is that we are going to do a whole topic on this tonight but our state representatives are in the middle of the sort of crossover that they do and it's quite busy I guess in the state house right now. So they weren't able to join us tonight but we did want to talk about a couple of topics really quickly. There's a bill that's at least gone through the house now. To establish sort of changes to the law that would enable a overdose prevention center to operate in the state. That includes immunity from liability for I guess the center and the people that are using it. So they don't get arrested for that drug use while they're there or while they're in the media area that sort of thing. Also this establishment of a needle exchange program sort of you know legislation around that and also the pilot program which of course this hasn't passed yet but there would be I think what I read was there's $2 million for that pilot program to start and this area was one of the ones that they had been looking at you know anecdotally. That's not official yet so that's just an update on that important topic for you know protecting health here. We don't want any more overdoses. So I also had something on Ed funding you we've had quite a lot of talking about school budgets and funding in the last few months. And there was an update there. There was a cap that had been included in Act 127 from last year that had an unintended effect of causing a lot of districts perhaps to spend more money. There were some things driving that money spending besides that but they would basically could spend more money without being actually taxed more because of that cap. But eventually that sort of catches up with everyone and everyone's going to have to pay whatever the cost of all the education for the whole state is. So they repealed that cap and replace it with a different mechanism that was a little bit more targeted and that was signed into law on the 22nd of last month. And I just put in here the estimate of what our tax impact may be here in Burlington. Don't know if this is going to be exact because it's sort of dependent on all the other spending that happens in the state ultimately and how all the other budgets which a third of them or something failed. So you know this may change a bit. Hopefully it won't go up. It's about 15% right now for a level property tax. If you have an income based tax, it doesn't increase as much but still double digits at almost 11. So just an update on that quickly. Is there any questions? There's a lot of people in this room who can answer questions just looking around. So yeah, Brian. I know that I'm going to say representative and I don't represent this. Representative Burlington for the Old North and East District. So I know I don't, you don't elect me in this ward, but I do have leftover town meeting day reports. I'll pass around if anyone wants to take one home and get my perspective and it has my contact info if you ever want to reach out. But you have two great state representatives, one of them who is on appropriations and they are staying late to crank through the budget. So, but you can also I'm sure they'll be responsive as well. But since I'm here and I have these, I figured I might as well offer them. So I'll pass them around. If there's any left, I'll grab them at the end. And if anyone has questions, I can, you can pull me aside. I don't want to take up more space. Brian Cina. I didn't say it already. Representative Brian Cina. Chittin in 15. Nice. Thanks. We also have questions. This is a meeting for all of us. So if you feel moved to talk. I did go through a lot of stuff quickly. Appreciate that. You don't have to shout. All right. Oh, I did create one more slide because I thought this was a great little map. This is from NASA. It's for the solar eclipse and we might have other, I don't know if we have some materials from the obscura that we would want to. Pass around or whatever, but the eclipse is going to happen. Apparently we've calculated it down to a very fine resolution here and it's going to happen at about. Between 325 and 330. PM Eastern time on the eighth, which is coming up pretty soon. The Burlington schools is closed as our most of, or maybe not, maybe all of the Chittin County schools at this point. So, you know, it's going to be a pretty chill day other than all the folks coming into town trying to see this. So maybe you want to kind of check it out from wherever you live because it's going to be above you. I'm at around 330, but a little bit before 330, don't go out at 330. Go about before that. So yeah, we have all these eclipse glasses. I don't know. There was some other materials that you can check out maybe, you know, whenever you want, but they're around the room here. And I was kind of, I heard about these telescopes things that I never really saw what that looked like to come up with a plan for what we do. I have it at the house and then bring it because I had already one box to bring. It's a small device that you can put a triangle in the middle of it and adjust it to the sun and you'll get an image at the bottom of the thing. So everybody can come around it. Well, I don't know how we're going to, that's what, you know, I was going to show you guys what it looked like. And then figure out how we want to do with this because you only got one. Should we do something? Anybody have an idea? Should we set it up in Callahan Park? Bring it to Oak Lodge. Anybody not have plans for the eclipse yet? And you want to facilitate this telescope? Well, let us know at some point. Yeah, you know how to reach us. All right. I don't work for NASA. Any questions about the eclipse or city prep? I don't know if we have too many answers to those questions, but we could try to get them. Yeah, Milo. I would come over. Thank you. I would add that there's going to be a lot of plans. Oh, my apologies. My name is Milo Grant, city councilor for the central district. Hello everyone and special shout out to people's kitchen. I love it that you all get their food. I wanted to add that traffic and parking is going to be a massive issue on this day. So you do need to have a plan. Walk bike if you can, but you need to have a plan. For those of you don't know, the Beltline a.k.a 127 is going to be closed for parking. And also to allow easier access for emergency vehicles. The city has a website, which I am a space spacing out on, but it's going to have all the information on all the streets that are going to be closed. So definitely look at that ahead and have a plan. And hopefully I hear it's 20%. That'll be a absolutely sunny and beautiful day until it isn't. One percent chance. I prefer not to look at that. Thank you. All right. Nice save. What we do wrong. This one has a hurt foot. Well, Either way, we should get Milo a seat because I think we're about to transition. I think that that was maybe the last thing that I had in my announcements. Can I mention one more legislation? So there is a bill that's currently in the legislature. It just passed the Senate today and is going to be in the house in a couple of weeks. And it's called the Vermont kids code. And I thought of it when you were talking about prevention. It's not substance abuse related, but rather it's about. Basically the online world and its impact on kids. And it's Vermont is taking a leading role nationally. There's only a few other states that have implemented basically a code of conduct for online platforms and services that kids use. Anything from Instagram to Google to YouTube, you name it. And that's where basically they have to put in place much more stringent standards to reduce danger, reduce the sort of engineered addiction of platforms. Whenever kids are using them. So I think it's super important and it's past the Senate, but not the house. Anything that's of concern for folks in this room, the impact of the internet on kids mental health, contact your representative. The house will be voting on it in the next couple of weeks. And again, it's called the Vermont kids code. Thanks Jason. Thanks. All right, so I think we're ready to move on to our next item, which was a discusser discussion about Decker towers. Thanks, Milo. Milo requested the time on the slot, but we have a few folks from Decker litter here, right? Yes, we have a resident and we have a not a resident of Decker towers, but someone who lives in a building that's like right behind them. And this guy's a warrior. He won't admit it, but but he is. I wanted to come tonight. As some of you know, I previously served on the police commission currently serve on the public safety committee. So I care a lot about community safety issues and what's been going on in our city. And I had been hearing some things about Decker towers. I'd been talking to the fire chief chief Lachance about some of the things that I was hearing and I was trying to get an idea of what, how often they were having to go into Decker towers. And he called me and he sent me an email. He said, we're going in on Monday morning because of issues within the stairwells and that we've been asked to go to. So I went there, got there a little bit before 7 a.m. with fire chief Lachance, the fire marshal, someone from Burlington housing authority and a couple of other people and really, really got an eye full. And I talked about that was on January 15th. I talked about what I saw at the city council meeting on January 16th. I was shocked. I was saddened. And I just said, we have to do better in Burlington. So I was kind of calling it out because I wanted to get more help. So since that has happened, some things are, are happening, are happening and not where we need to be right now, but getting toward, you know, getting these homes to be, to be safe again. I think these residents are incredibly resilient. The compassion they have for people that are coming into their space is knows no bounds. But at the same time, I think as Kathy put it, once you have a home, you don't necessarily want uninvited guest in your home, right? Because you have a right to your home. You have a right to privacy. You have a right to safety, et cetera. One of the things I was thinking about is in the old north end, we have something called, for those who don't know, we call the old north end the one. And we had something called one mutual aid. And it was started by a group of volunteers to help people out in a variety of circumstances. So sometimes it was money. If someone had an unexpected car expense, they couldn't handle and they needed their car in order to get to a job or transport kids or something like that. Sometimes there are people who can make their basic expenses but need a little help to buy a birthday present and a cake for their kid. Sometimes, especially during COVID, if people were working full time but didn't have PTO or sick time and they got COVID or they got sick and it would put them behind in their monthly expenses. It might be cash. And then a lot of other times it was groups of volunteers saying these are the skills that I have. I can offer my time or I can offer my time and help out with a particular skill. And people would ask for help with certain things. So it made me think about maybe in the south end, people in the south end could think about creating something similar. You'd have to have a core group of volunteers to organize the request and to organize a list of what people are willing to do. So you'd have... There's two forms that are primarily used in the old north end mutual aid, one of which is a form that people submit when they have a request for some type of help. The other form is something that people submit to say I have the following skills. I have the following equipment. This is what my availability can be. And I was thinking about it because one of the things that we've been discussing with the residents, and I'm going to turn it over to Kathy and Andrew, but one of the projects they'd like to do is to repaint inside the building, for example. They're not looking for people to do it for them. They're looking for people to help them. They want to be able to beautify their space. They've gone through a lot of trauma, with a lot of damage being done to the building through no fault of their own, but through the fault of people that are coming in and staying and doing various types of destruction. And I was also thinking maybe we could get together artists in the community. They could donate artwork. It's a great community room where they do community dinners. And I love the way they create community and they really support each other. So that's kind of what I was thinking. And I will let Andrew speak a little bit and then Kathy speak a little bit. And then if y'all have any questions, thank you. Thank you, Milo. Thank you. I'm a basement pastry chef person. I'm not used to speaking to crowds. My name is Andrew. I owned what was formerly Monarch and the Milkweed on St. Paul right on City Hall, a former pastry chef of Hen, Hen of the Wood. And I live on Church Street, the last house on Church Street across the street from the Converse home. And I park in the Decker Towers parking lot. And I think it's interesting that I've lived there for eight years. And the first time I entered, 230 St. Paul, which is Decker Towers, was less than six months ago. I think it's interesting that the tallest building in the state tends to be the most invisible. And as you drive by it, especially, I don't mean to accuse you, but I'm speaking for myself. Even, I mean, I've got the top floor of my house that overlooks the lake and Decker. And for seven and a half years, I wished that that building didn't exist so I could have a little bit better view of the lake. And then a lot of stuff happened to our town. Regardless of our political opinions in this room, we can agree that we've had some challenges that have been dire, that we've not succeeded on yet at all. And my block that includes Decker, and it also includes a handful of other Burlington Housing Authority properties, CHT properties, very few for market, my house is a private entity, is the epicenter of what is happening in this state. And it happens to contain likely the most vulnerable population of our state, half of the residents of Decker. I've been inconvenienced. I've been assaulted. I've been robbed. I don't walk my 14-year-old dog outside anymore much. Not only is it unsafe, but it's unsafe for him. I don't have Narcan in my backpack because of myself. I have it because of him. At least gave it to me for him. All of these experiences and traumas and, you know, I thought for the past year and a half I would say I've been going through stages of fighting, normalizing this, thinking about moving. I have business partners here. I'm very involved in this community. I'm not moving. I'm digging in. In fact, I met with my landlord and his family a month or two ago about, and he's quite old, late 90s, and I plan on buying my home at some point. I love his family, his good man. I'm not going anywhere. And when I realized that, I started understanding who my neighbors were, including the people who were injecting in my stairwell, external stairs that lead to my apartment. Trying to break into my basement, my car, people robbing my business. I'm nowhere close. I've got a close to a degree in forensic psychology. I'm one paper away from that. I don't think I'll ever finish it. Who knows? John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, and then became a pastry chef. I won't go into that. But I'm nowhere close to understanding this. I don't think our town is close to understanding it. So I started to only focus on my block, and there's plenty of complications right there that includes Decker and my home. I got to know my neighbors. They are a loving community inside Decker Towers. That is their home. Just like all of you have a home, Decker Towers is a home. There's 161 units in there, currently about 145 humans who reside and call Decker Towers home. And it's been infiltrated by the problems that all of you know exist in town right now. Mainly the economies of fentanyl and heroin, crack cocaine, meth, and all the peripheries that are involved in those economies, and the laws or non-laws that govern it. Became quite close with Steve Murray. I think he likes me. I like him a lot. He is a wise... I'm sorry, thank you. Steve Murray is the Executive Director of Burlington Housing Authority for... He just hit his two-year mark on March 7th. He came here to be the Executive Director of Burlington Housing Authority for the next decade and retire in our beautiful state and city with his wife. He's been married to for eight years. I don't mean to speak for him, but he's got significant experience in addiction and recovery centers, overseas, Kuwait addiction centers, homeless shelters, private business. And I started reaching out to him to nag him about basically to complain as a neighbor when some of his tenants, I won't say exactly where for obvious reasons, but there's some pretty big-time crack dealers who don't make my life better. So I got to know Steve through that and then talk into him how BHA is structured and being long-winded. I get it from her. Decker Towers is a home filled with 145 people who need some attention right now, and they're getting it. Thanks to Derek Brower in the series of seven days articles that we all helped contribute to, and he, in my opinion, wrote beautifully, and he continues to stay in touch with every detail. He admits he can't keep up with it at all. I speak to him almost every day. I'm in touch with the Burlington Housing Authority management, including Steve. Kathy is the President of the newly formed resident council of Decker Towers. She's the head of a board that speaks for the residents, and that's the first resident council board in Burlington Housing Authority history elected at Decker Towers. And there's layers of solutions that we can consider. Probably the most obvious, maybe the most important, I might be misspeaking, but law enforcement, American justice, securing Decker Towers physically. Those things are being worked on thanks to a lot of attention that we've helped bring to this topic and this geographic location by the city council. I've gotten tremendously close with Karen Paul, Milo, Ben. Again, regardless of your political opinions, I think every city councilor now and in April loves this town the exact same. They're pouring their heart and soul into it, and it's been an honor to get to know everybody and work towards solutions. And one of the solutions, you know, we're trying to make Decker better, a home. And in your home, you celebrate things. It's safe. You have beautiful things that you cherish. And at Decker, there's very little of that right now. And Milo brought the idea to me of a mutual aid program, and I've seen the format of it, like she talked about in the Old North End. Keyword is mutual. There are residents at Decker Towers that need attention, help, whatever you want to call it right now. But in return, and I'll speak for Decker, I'll speak for our block, we have skill sets too that we can offer in return. And things and cars, and I make cannabis gummies. You know, whatever. We're all humans, and we offer this world different things in different capacities, and we want this to be mutual if it takes off in any way. I appreciate the format of the Old North End Mutual Aid Group. I know very little and have very little, if any, experience in mutual aid, but I think it's pretty standard, basic, effective. I tend to get bored with those adjectives. So I want a beautifier block. I want the community room at Decker to be a place where we might have a meeting like this one day. I want there to be commerce on the ground floor that doesn't include cash, fentanyl, and stolen goods on Facebook Marketplace. Steve knows all this. I want to help organize and paint the halls and wallpaper the elevators, just like my best friend Giovanna has at the Karma Bird House. They are my best friends, Michael and Giovanna Jagger. I've got people ready to step in and help beautify that building. Kathy works for Gardner Supply. One of my biggest partners and investors is the RAP family. We've got resources that we can pull together, and instead of driving by Decker when you're waiting at the stop sign to go downtown and sort of just like whatever, it can be an actual place. It can be the tallest and proudest building in Vermont that we can be thankful and celebrate. And to start with the basic format that Milo showed me, we don't have finished solutions or examples to show you tonight. This is about engaging with you guys and wanting your opinion, so I'm going to give you my email address, and then we can build something. There's a lot of momentum at Decker that is not going to stop. And I want to take the basic format of a mutual aid program and maybe turn it into an Instagram page. Tend to be pretty good at that. I've got 14,000 followers. I know how to manage that or a Facebook or both. And also a newsletter, a paper, probably a two-pager that's folded. A lot of the residents at Decker towers aren't, not most, but enough, you know, they're settled into their ways and appreciate a paper rather than a computer. I hope I'm not being offensive. Kick me if I am. So a newsletter, a social media page that would engage with the community focused on Decker to start, but not opposed to obviously growing in this whole ward but elsewhere, who cares? Let's go. I think we need more participation in this town. There's a lot of people that complain, including myself. And I started extremely actively participating. Would you say two months ago? I think, I mean, with the city and the city. I brought the entire city council into Decker towers with the mayor on the mayor's birthday. Bing. He had to show up. Yes. We've gotten a lot done and it's because I started participating and Kathy has started leading the residents and the residents of Decker have started participating. And it seems that the more we participate, the better our community might be. So in the format of a social media presence, an email form, a newsletter, I think we can start to engage with each other in a way that might help those who need help. And that doesn't exclude anybody in this room. Could I suggest that we have a few words from Kathy? Yes. And then also, and thank you for everything that you're covering because I think it's really important. And thank you for sharing your story because I think it's a real teachable moment about participating in our community. And given the limited resources that we have in our police department right now, we need to be doing more of ourselves for ourselves and for our neighbors. So I'd like to have Kathy say a few words and then any questions or comments. Hopefully that'll be okay. Thank you, Kathy. Hi, I'm Kathy Foley. And I am a resident of Decker Towers. So, you know, we live it every single day. And just by show of hands, how many people have read the seven days articles? Yeah, okay. So you've seen the pictures. You've read the article. When Milo came on that Monday morning, she got the full movie. And it was pretty nasty in the building that day. And really we started, the residents started about a year ago. We organized, I organized a group and we started documenting things. And we started working with BHA, complaining to BHA, but we really didn't have the traction. We finally got some traction after talking to our state representatives. Some of the city counselors, the congressional delegation, Bernie and Peter and Becca have been very instrumental in helping us, Tiffany. And, but it wasn't until Milo showed up with the fire marshal that we really started getting traction and Andrew had started becoming involved in the group. And he's got a lot of connections and got the city counselors. So we really have made a lot of progress in the last two months. Decker Towers, within BHA, they call it the Tower of Terror. That's the inside joke. But it's not really a joke because that's, that is what it is at some point. And over the winter as the city closed down the homeless encampments on Battery Street and near Memorial Auditorium and all that, those people had to have a place to go. It's cold out. So they came to Decker Towers because the doors are handicap accessible and they stay in. And a good portion, 60% of our population are elderly, over 62. And if you're a 30-year-old homeless drug addict and you want to get in where it's warm, there's not much. A 65-year-old lady is going to do to stop you from coming in the door. So we've been inundated. But because of the work of Milo and Andrew and the residents themselves, we've made a lot of progress. The building is getting safer. We now have 10 security patrols per night through the building that has disrupted that homeless population. We're very close to the city helping out with money to get a security guard at the door at night to limit people coming in. The hallways are cleaner. But the building, and I'm just going to be truthful, it's a dump on the inside. Doesn't look so bad on the outside. You drive by it and you think, I've been a lifelong Burlington resident when I wasn't in the military and I've driven by hundreds of times. And from the outside, I thought that I looked at a building. But when you go inside, it's a different story. And so we're doing a lot. And this mutual aid that we're talking about here, we want to become more a part of the community. We want the community to recognize Dekker Tower with 160 apartments residents. If you put them all flat, we'd be two blocks of the neighborhood. And it is getting safer. And the residents want to do that. We have a number of residents who are multi-talented from excellent cooks, musicians, artists, that have things to offer to the community. And I'm sure the community has something to offer us. But when you read the article in seven days, how many of you really want to come to Dekker Tower? Nope. You know, and we want to change that. And we want to change it by starting this program that Milo and Andrew have thought about. And we've talked about, I've just presented a plan to Burlington Housing about how we would paint the inside of the building and spruce it up. They've got a new cleaning crew that they've hired that's doing a lot. And it's going to change. It doesn't mean that the homeless people aren't going somewhere else. But as you talked about earlier, with maybe safe sites for them to use and the city starting something like that, there are going to be alternatives. And although we don't want them in the building because they cause trouble and they're dangerous at times, you know, these people are people and it's cold out, you know? I mean, we kick them out sometimes, but sometimes we don't. And in our community dinners, we feed them. And I think one of the things they'd like to do and we'll make a some way, either through this newsletter or whatever, we want to invite you to the community dinners and have you come in and see what's going on and meet us. Because when I got there, I had never been in a situation for low-income housing or anything. I grew up in the New North End. But here I am, low-income. And I needed a place to go. Decker Towers was the only place to go in Burlington. And when I got there, I said, I'm not going to have anything to do with those people. I'm just going to do my year, get my Section 8 thing and move somewhere out. And now I'm like Andrew, I'm not moving. Because what I found was a group of people that are really nice but vulnerable and didn't know how to advocate for themselves. And I'm a pretty good advocate and fighter. Spent a career in the Marines. We don't give up. And so we're fighting back. We're not the vigilante group that you might see WCAX. They talk about the neighborhood watch. The head of our neighborhood watch, Michael Neal and myself, we're committed to not having a vigilante group. What we are going to be is the eyes and ears of Decker Tower to help the security guards, to help the sheriff, and to work with the people that need help that are in there. We're not going to beat them up. You've seen the pictures. We have stun guns and pepper spray. And it gets you sometimes at a necessity. I don't think anyone's ever been stun gun, but we have used pepper spray in a defensive mode. And unfortunately, there was an incident where it wasn't defensive. It was defensive. It happened right in front of my apartment. But when he sprayed, he sprayed indiscriminately and it is a person got sprayed and that got a lot of attention. But that's an anomaly. It's not an everyday occurrence. And when it has been used, it's because people have been attacked. We've had people stabbed. They've been robbed at gunpoint. So I'm not going to lie and say that, oh, it's a perfect, safe place. It's not, but it's getting better. And as it gets better, Andrew wants to open a coffee shop. You know, but we want it so that the community can walk in on let me open a coffee shop at Decker Towers. So we want it where the community can walk in and not be afraid to walk up to Decker Tower or to meet the people. And so we're going to, and I'm going to make this brief. I'm going to cut it off real quick, but we're going to be back here to the NPA. I'm going to bring more people back. You'll probably see me jump on that steering committee. And so yeah, we're going to become part of the community. We want you to become part of us. Yeah. I guess, again, we don't have any official pitch to you tonight, so get ready for us to ask your participation and get ready to ask us for our participation and any ideas you might have. I'm Andrew at monarchandthemilkweed.com. I'm also monarchandthemilkweed on Instagram. I'm very, very available. You can get ahold of me. Andrew at monarchandthemilkweed.com and I might need Milo and your help for contacts or email lists or whatever as we get this series of balls rolling. Yeah. If you say monarchandthemilkweed or just andmilkweed. Andrew at monarchandthemilkweed.com Yeah. And if anyone's interested in coming to Decker Tower now, even though we're in a transition period, you can contact me or Andrew or Milo and we'll take you through Decker Tower and make sure that you're safe while you're there but can see it firsthand and meet some of the great people that are there. Got a question or a comment? Just a thought. My name is Jason. I live on Caroline Street a few blocks up and I work for Front Porch Forum which is a local business based here in Burlington operating all over the state and I just wanted to mention it because I think it could be a really useful platform for what you're trying to do for two reasons. One, 20,000 Burlingtonians are members of Front Porch Forum, 7,000 in the south end. The hardest part of anything like this is getting people to sign up and on Front Porch Forum they're already there. And two, it's already set up for mutual aid. There's categories for all kinds of things sell stuff, buy stuff, give stuff away, whatever. We've long had a category of seeking assistance and people ask for help on there. When the floods hit back in July and so many towns around the state were just hammered we started getting a lot of posts that didn't have a category which was people offering assistance and so we created a new category for that and now you got both of those and so it's a really nice way to do I think exactly what you're talking about and you tend to see a good result because of partly there's a lot of people on it partly it's organized by neighborhood so the people who see what you post aren't those 20,000. It's the couple thousand who are right nearby and partly because you know Frenpurch Forum isn't perfect but it's built up a reputation of trust over the years because everything that gets published is looked at by a human by one of our team of professional moderators before it goes out so it might be a good way to save yourself a lot of work of trying to build a list and just get right to the work of connecting people with the stuff that means to happen. And I would be happy to help with brainstorming, strategizing, whatever is necessary, Jason at frontpurchforum.com. Thank you. Do we have any other questions or comments? Hi. Here we go. Hey, hi. My name is Sean. I live at Flint Avenue Co-op Avenue. I think I'm very sacked about a mutual aid network and like an official mutual aid network in the south and I think that we really need that. I have some thoughts that come up thinking about like Frontpurch Forum thinking about like some of the kind of like commercial endeavors that are kind of getting wrapped into this conversation and to kind of just like speak to mutual aid as a practice is like generally approached as like kind of an anti-capitalist approach to exchange between communities and within communities and I think that's a concern that comes up for me is like not turning into like a security and gentrification project and thinking about Frontpurch Forum, those concerns come up as well. The trust in like the moderators from like kind of community to community and from demographic to demographic and there are a lot of people that are banned from Frontpurch Forum for you know speaking you know friendly by some people's judgment about really intense community issues. There's a real dominance of property owners in Frontpurch Forum and there's a real dominance of the narrative of calling the police and a focus on property securing property which I just think would be a shame to see the kind of organizing energy miss the kind of solidarity work that we could be doing between low income people and unhoused people and the rest of the community who could very easily kind of side with you know it's very easy to kind of want to pull into some of the I don't know the process of gentrification as we kind of like trying to avoid some of the collective pitfalls of the economic crisis that we're all involved in and some of us are benefitting from and some of us are being crushed by so like maybe we want to make sure that the mutual aid is about the people who are being crushed and not the comfort of the people who are benefitting from what's already happening. Thank you very much. Any other comments or questions? We started a mutual aid group in the old north end many years ago. I don't know how long ago like 17 years ago or something called is good Isham street gardening and other optimistic doings and we garden with neighbors to make life better and unintentionally reduced crime rates and we're working with the UVM class right now to solidify the infrastructure of our existing garden way and then work with other sites around the city to explore projects. So I'm sending you a message right now with a presentation I gave this NPA in the past and maybe you can share with you and then I'm also sending pictures I drew of what we could do with Dekker Towers one night where I showed how much more housing we could fit on that site if we wanted to and integrate them into like community gardens. So I'm going to send this to you and I have some friends who live there already so maybe I can come visit you all. That's what I'm saying an email to you but I figured I'd also say it to you Kathy, is that your name? Kathy and also if anyone else is interested thanks. Sorry I don't want to break it. The taxpayer money Well thank you really appreciate everyone's time this evening and letting us come and speak and talk about the situation and I love the reminder about building solidarity because that is definitely part of it. Thank you. Last minute items. So thanks everybody for joining us tonight. The sun is set. We're paying attention to that. We still have plenty of food left here in the room and so this concludes our official meeting for the March 2024. I hope we see you again next month. Thanks Joe. At least most of you. Thank you all for coming.