 Okay, welcome everybody. It's time to start the meeting. You could all wrap up your conversations. I'm so sorry to interrupt. If you could all wrap up your conversations. It's time for the NPA meeting to start. Welcome to the ward two, three NPA meeting. It's so nice to see so many of you in person and have such a good meal to start off the meeting. Thank you again to all of our volunteers in the kitchen for making it possible. Yeah, so I'm Molly. I am going to facilitate this meeting tonight. Hopefully I will make it run on time and it'll be interesting and dynamic. I am a ward three steering committee member. We have a few other steering committee members here in the room with us. Charlie Giannone is running the camera. We have Roxanne taking notes. Jess not only does community dinner, but is also on our steering committee. We have a few other members who aren't able to make it here tonight. We are always looking for new steering committee members. We welcome everyone who is in ward two or three to join us. We are particularly interested in any ward two people because we only have a couple who are representing the ward and more more person power would be awesome. We are currently having a, our grant applications are open and we are extending the deadline to hopefully get a few more applications. We have money from the city to allocate to things that will strengthen our community and bolster the NPA. So those can be community projects. We've had in the past, we've supported efforts like community art installations, music, music groups that bring community members together. We have supported the ramble. We've supported other types of community block party events. We support the community dinner typically. So anything that you can think of that would strengthen community, bring people together, support the NPAs. We'd love to hear your ideas. We're accepting grants with a limit of $750 with the ITIS spreading more of the resources around. And we're asking for applications. I should know this on the top of my head, but I have to look it up. The deadline is October 31st. So you have to the end of the month. You'll, we would ask you to present your idea at the next November. NPA meeting and we'll be voting at that meeting on how to allocate our funding. So please send us your ideas. Feel free to speak to any of the steering committee members to learn more about the grants. We always welcome agenda ideas. So please. If you're a community member or email us, if you have requests for what we should cover at a community meeting, you can always view our meeting recordings on CCTVs. Website or on YouTube. We currently have a survey to get a better understanding of what folks want to get out of NPA meetings and why you come. So if you could please fill out that survey that would be really helpful. And if there's links to it on our website. We didn't print any, any agenda though. And I apologize for that. Yeah, we can email, if you, if we could email you the link to the survey, if you speak to one of us. And finally, as Jess said, we are running a raffle tonight. If you stay to the end of the meeting, we'll draw someone's name to win. So please stick around. Yeah. Yeah. So Charlie's just reminding me that we all, when we speak, we need to come to the microphone. So one of these two microphones. If you'd like to ask a question or make a comment during the meeting, we'll need it not only for room amplification, but also so that the camera and zoom can pick it up so that our participants joining us on zoom can hear us. And then also the recording can capture us. And if you speak, please identify your sales, yourself, by your name and your ward. Okay. I think that's all of my announcements. So we'll move on to public forum. If folks have anything they want to share a comment, a concern, a announcement, we'd love to hear you. If you could limit your comment to about two minutes. That would be appreciated and we'll run this until. Six 50. So yeah, please go ahead. So maybe we need to start doing some. Supporting the police department also. And, and the crime is a little bit, a little bit thick these days. So. I need. Some help getting some basic things. So we can make our community clean. And take care of. And support the unhoused. The pod housing is going very well, by the way. And we just got to start. Start not bearing everything under the snow when everything happens in the winter. So if we could start all getting. Helping out churches, get needle boxes that there. We will have a better life so far. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Anyone else for public comments? Hi, my name is Carol Zeena. I live on Myrtle street. I actually had a question. I know that there is a renters handbook. I'm wondering if there is a landlords handbook. Or a. Just general neighbors handbook. I know that there at one time was one to assist UVA. Other students. To be good neighbors. Does anybody know if there is one. For the general populace, not to students. If not. I would like to. Suggest that we work in that direction. To get one. But there are things going on in my immediate area. That seem to be. Not in keeping with ordinances and. Things that are on the books. When I went to look for the information. It's, it's in there. It's in the city website, but it's buried so deep. And it's so complicated to try to find it. Then it's, it's really inaccessible. So my idea is to come up with. Some kind of a booklet that's sent out or. I mean, it doesn't have to be that long. A pamphlet perhaps that goes out with the city taxes to. Taxpayers. About. I don't know. There's an issue in my backyard having to do with the whole backyard being covered with gravel by my neighbor. Which is an impermeable story. Against ordinance. It just makes so much more work for planning and zoning. And it seems like if people knew what was allowed and not allowed. There would be less work for them and happier neighbors. Getting along with each other. So. I'm interested in working on something like this. If anybody wants to help me. I guess I would also want to work with the city departments to make sure we can pull together all the rules and guidelines that I know are out there. Because they're using them. Planning and zoning. Anyway, that's my idea. I'd love some help. I'm also interested in some grant money to get that thing published. Yeah. Thank you. Hi, I'm Jeannie. The mic is working. I live on Cedar street and I wear quite a few hats in the community. I mostly have an announcement, but I, I. Well, two announcements. I want to shout out for folks that are. So one of the things I do is I help orchestrate the Ramble. And for sure, if somebody is looking for a venue. Or a place where whatever it is, they are applying for an NPA grant for. Please consider the Ramble. A shoe in to do whatever you want it to do. Like, you know, the booklet that could be the unveiling of the booklet. I also work at Rock Point School. I work at Rock Point School. I work at Rock Point School. I work at Rock Point School. I work at Rock Point School. I also work at Rock Point School. And next weekend they are having a 5k race. It's called Uki Spooky. And it's a costume 5k race. And it's super fun. And it's on the grounds of Rock Point. And it's a fundraiser for the committee on temporary shelter. So. I can get you the. Sign up the registration information. Thank you. Anyone else. My name is Chris Statz and I live on Decatur street. And I just wanted to sort of make people aware that one of the issues that we are starting to see in our, our small street is housing and being shifted from. Rental housing to short-term Airbnb housing. And so we've been meeting about that. And I'm just wondering if anybody else is seeing that happening on their streets and if we can come together and sort of. We're trying to clarify exactly what's legal and what's not legal. And trying to get through to the mayor and in terms of the new ordinances and stuff. So if you have been seeing this, definitely let me know because we all met the other day and are trying to figure out the next steps for this thing. Great. Thank you. They tried talking to here. Is that working? Okay. Because. My partner will see me on TV and say, where's your mask? My name is infinite called pleasure and I'm going to be on the ballot. I'm running for state Senate in Chittenden County this coming November. I've lived in this neighborhood for about 30 years now. All over the old North end and did a bunch of community organizing in the Burlington and Winooski schools. Work with the progressive party for a little while. But I'm not going to talk about my candidacy tonight. I actually want to clear up something that I heard. A rumor that I heard this week that I wasn't in support of the school bond to build the new school. And so what I want to make clear is that with lots of reservations, I support the school bond. I wish that I could unequivocally say unequivocally say yes. But I cannot because I've worked in the brother school district for about a decade now. And I know that the new building is just the tip of the iceberg. Right. That there are some really deep things that need to be worked on in our brothers in schools. So with high reluctancy. I do support the bond to build in the school. And I hope that we go a lot deeper than just this new kind of, you know, state of the art shining building that we put up. Thank you folks. Thank you. Yeah, Brian. Thanks. I'm Brian Pine. I live on Crowley street. I work for the city at CEDO. We're holding a volunteer day on this Saturday and this Sunday and maybe the next Saturday and Sunday at 51 Elmwood Avenue for sort of creating more of a welcoming place for folks who will be staying in the Elmwood shelter and folks can sign up. The only way I can think of sent is go to the CEDO website or send an email to CEDO FD as in front desk at Burlington BT.gov. And we need volunteers to paint basically is what we'll be doing, trying to really create some color. If you see the little pallet shelters, they're all white and they're not going to stay white for very long because we want it to be a more just welcoming, colorful, kind of fun place. Thanks. Yeah. Hi, I'm trapfire ward two. This Saturday is the repair cafe at laboratory be where you're funded by the grant from the ward two, three grant. So that's at 12 North street this Saturday from 11 to three. Anything you can carry in, we'll help you repair. So if you have clothes or bicycles or computers or lamps, anything you can bring in will help repair. And if you want to volunteer, there's free food. It's every third Saturday. 12 North street. Thanks. Anyone else zoom. We will move on to our agenda, which is representative updates. We're shifting things around a little bit, but we're going to move on to our agenda. So we're going to move on to our representatives to go first instead of last this time. So we'll hear from our city counselors, our school board, our state reps and our state senators, if they're here. And I'd like to invite our school board to maybe start. So we have genie. Do we have anyone else? Don't see anyone. Not in the house, but Joe and Jean are here on zoom. Hi, guys. How about we have you guys go second after our school board? Unless you think they might be showing up later. I'm okay with. I'm okay with whatever it is. Okay. Oh, maybe I'll have you go last, just in case they're able to show up. Did anybody else just would know somebody else. I think I might be flying solo today. Okay. Yeah. If you want to give, we have 10 minutes for, for school board. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll fit with you. This is a very exciting update. This morning. Jeannie, you're not coming in on, on the zoom, maybe the other mic that you had for public form would be better. Is this working? Okay, great. So yeah, very exciting. Update today. Yeah. The Burlington school district is suing Monsanto. Yeah. So when the building was first closed, when we were told that we could not use it. And when I say we, I, I am referring to the school board members. It was probably the second or third. And I think Kathy all well suggested that this is something we should do. And we all kind of looked at each other like, how do we start that? Because that is really a good idea. And it, and it took a while. It took, you know, this is about two years ago. And we did some research. There were schools that tried to sue Monsanto in Massachusetts and they did not win. And we knew that we needed to find a firm that had both experience, obviously with winning and ties to Vermont. And, and that came together. I think probably about, I can't, I'm not. I feel like it's more than a month ago, but it might be less than two months ago. I'm not exactly sure. And, and honestly, I don't know if it's, yeah, I think it's a done deal because we announced it today. So it's really hard to tell like what's happening behind the scenes. Who's signing off on this and that. Part of why we haven't had to just discuss it too much is because the lawyers are not asking for money. They are doing that thing where they will recoup their fees. Percentage wise, which actually I wish I could remember what the percentage was because it was incredibly low compared to some other scenarios that we had researched. And this is a very, I, you know, I just want to put it out there. That it's going to take years for this to happen. The legal counsel feels very confident that we have a good case. And it, and part of why we're being told we have a good case is because this is about the displacement of our students. This is about the costs that it's going to take to remediate the PCBs. The fact that we have had to retrofit and, and matriculate high school students have had to be in this downtown Macy's building. You know, I want to be thorough, but at the same time, I don't want to be super repetitive and bore you guys to tears. We haven't really done like question and answer, but my main point is that is to tell you, we still need to vote yes on the bond. And I'm going to tell you why. We don't actually have the money to start any construction right now until that bond is passed. We cannot begin to build and it is going to take years to rebuild. And the sooner we start the less time the kids are in Macy's. We're, it's very, you know, I love the term aggressive timeline. But it is thus far it's going very well as far as the benchmarks that we have what you need to the domino effect of this needs to be here before you can do the next thing. And we really want to break ground in before, you know, the next year late, late December, early January. And that is what we really need to do as far as getting those kids back into a building in the fall of 2025. With the, I just want to also put it out there. This idea of swing months Santa was not like, okay, we're hanging our hat on that. We, there's no way we're going to bank on it. And there's been tons of work behind the scenes. Pursuing state federal avenues for funding. When I say avenues, oh, maybe this is an opportunity that's about stuff about technical school, the supporting future workforce. You know, this is a grant for that. This is a grant about watershed problems. There's tons of different avenues in which the district might be eligible for grants that will support this project. So the, for sure. The idea of leveraging funding to offset the ask of the bond is happening. And the way that the bond works, you don't borrow it all at once. And you only borrow what you need. One more minute. Okay, that's, that's it. Vote yes on November 8th, please. We have a, don't they want to have any questions about her genie about the school board? We have a few minutes for questions. Okay. She'll be here if you, if they come up, you can ask. Okay, let's go to our city counselors. We're going to get an update on city council stuff in general. And then we're going to have a, we're also going to have an update on, um, resident voting that Jean's going to give us. So the two of you have 15 minutes. If you'd like to go ahead. Joe, why don't you go first? All right. Thanks, Jean. Hi, everyone. Sorry. I couldn't be with you in person tonight. I am taking a trip down to, uh, New Hampshire tomorrow to meet my three and a half month old nephew for the first time. So, uh, I have a couple of updates. We haven't had a city council meeting, uh, for about a month now. So we'll be meeting on Monday. We'll be talking about redistricting, uh, the rail, rail yard enterprise projects. And a few other important items. I welcome input from folks on that. And I'll try to get something out on the front porch forum. Uh, in the next couple of days. So folks are informed about that. I think we're all considering, uh, two eight ward. Uh, options. Um, I think if folks remember earlier in the process, we. Uh, had seven more options. We had 12 board options. None of them. Were quite, uh, They all had, uh, issues. The seven more option, especially, you know, from my point of view, I would have, um, Split a large chunk of the old north end off and, um, Group two with the new north end. And, uh, so I. Reshatch a lot of folks and, um, To make sure that, uh, We were keeping the old north end, uh, together as a neighborhood. Um, and these a word options, uh, accomplish that. So I will be getting an update on that. Um, Monday evening. Um, This past Tuesday, the board of finance met and, uh, We discussed several airport items. Uh, some public works items. And we also, uh, approved a $69,000. Uh, maximum amount for the police department to. Contract with Vermont state police for, uh, Optional shifts for troopers to, um, Sign up for overtime shifts. To provide additional foot patrols downtown. Um, I supported that, that item. Uh, I am still committed to us finding, uh, Alternatives to policing and, uh, Investing in, uh, Unarmed resources and mental health supports. Um, but I also acknowledge that we are in, uh, A really challenging time right now. And, uh, we need that support. So, um, Uh, I welcome any feedback from folks and, uh, Recognize the gene has a pretty significant presentation to give. So I will, uh, Give over the floor to him and welcome any comments after that. Okay. Sounds like, uh, At least two city counselors are doing a lot of baby work, uh, This weekend. I'm sorry. I can't be there, But I'm down in the Dan B Vermont area, uh, With, uh, Wendy, where we, uh, Do a child care for a two and a half year old and a one year old. And, uh, I think this is why I do politics is for, uh, For the kids of the future. Um, People touched on police and the single and the short term rentals. And I know we're going to have a, um, A presentation on North Winooski Avenue. All of those areas. If I get a little bit of time, I can, uh, Talk about them more. Um, But I want to focus on the charter change work. Uh, That was, um, was alluded to. Uh, we have got three major charter changes. And I mentioned the first one, um, Last month that are at the meeting. Um, But they are making their ways, uh, through the, uh, The charter change committee of which I am the chair. The first is all legal resident voting in local elections. Um, this is an item that was adopted in Winooski and in Montpelier, they have, uh, Withstood two, uh, challenges in the Vermont, uh, Trial courts, um, with regard to their constitutionality and their legality. Um, we have, um, Adopted a proposal, which, um, Is basically the same as, uh, The Montpelier and the Winooski items. I think ours is a little bit tighter, um, and, uh, and clear, But we've done that. And what basically this means is that any Person who is legally in the United States on a more than Temporary basis. So this doesn't mean a, A visa to come visit Vermont in foliage season. But anybody who's here on a permanent basis would be allowed to Vote in local elections. And, um, This is, I think, um, as my, um, Message in the North Avenue news in August mentioned something About really building our democracy as fully as we can, Uh, trying to give life to what Abraham Lincoln said is a Government of the people by the people and for the people. And fundamentally that's because, you know, People can be here for decades. And they can work, they can own homes, But because they are the legal resident of Canada, Of England, of an African country, A Latin American country, an Asian country, regardless, Um, they, um, are not allowed to vote. And, uh, at least, and they're not allowed to vote if they're not a citizen. They, the United States Constitution and state law do Not prohibit municipalities, um, From having people, uh, vote in local elections. If they are legal residents, um, in the United States, And that is what we are going to be proposing. So if a person registers to vote, They would be able to vote for mayor. They'd be able to vote for city council. They'd be able to vote on the school bond. If we had this in, think of all the kids that are, You know, they have come here from all over the world that we've opened Our doors to, to, uh, to support leaving horrendous activities, Living their own Holocaust. And I speak as a person who lost family in the Holocaust. Um, and so it's very important to me personally to be able to open up The, um, our voting so that the people who are living here, Who are paying taxes here, who are affected by the work that we do, To get a chance to, um, Get a chance to vote and get, And a chance to represent people, uh, in our community. So that is the first thing. Um, all of these charter changes must be adopted. The language needs to be adopted by the 12th of December. This, this coming December. So all of these charter changes have been working their way through the, Uh, the charter change committee and we're pretty well set on the all legal Resident voting in local elections. The second item, which we're going to be bringing is one that really Relates to redistricting, which is the flexibility, The siting of flexibility in the siting of polling place. So right now we are required to have polling places within the wards. And anybody who has played with the maps. And knows the restrictions that we have in terms of an appropriate place To hold a an election knows how difficult that is. We just don't have that many places in the city. And yet we have to draw lines that will accommodate, um, Voting, um, places at least right now. What we are proposing is that polling places be allowed to be either In the wards or in close proximity. To the ward. So what we're thinking about is, um, Say you have, uh, wards four and seven. They would, um, Ostensibly we would be able to have a single polling place. A polling location that had two different polling places in the Burlington high school. We could have them. Maybe in the Miller center there. Memorial auditorium where you've got the, And this is really difficult where you've got Ward eight, Ward six, Ward one. There's lots of, um, The boundaries can be very close and it redistricting can make a Lot of sense. Um, If you can have a, um, A polling place in the, uh, In same memorial and not memorial. I, I'm sorry. I misspoke. I meant to say Edmunds. The memorial is unsafe. So please forgive me. Uh, one day we'll get a memorial auditorium that, uh, Will be worthy of a polling place. Maybe. But right across the street from that is Edmunds. And, uh, Edmunds is a, uh, is a place that Ward six has, But if we tweak the, the district lines, It's quite possible. And there is enough room for wards eight, Which right now it has a very tough place in Fletcher library. And Ward six. And that, that would really work. Um, because those are two wards that have a very different Sighting of, uh, polling places. So a polling place for a ward would still be distinct within a Building. But if it was in close proximity to the ward, Um, the proposal would be to, um, Allow that to, uh, to occur. And let me just go back and say that charter changes are Stated. Um, That would really work. Um, because those are two wards that have a very difficult Sighting. And what we do is we put them to the voters. If the voters support them. Then, uh, they go to Montpelier and Montpelier. Emma's there. We'll get a chance to, uh, To weigh in on, uh, whether they accept them. I think both of these items. Uh, would. Stand a very, very good chance of passing as is. Because actually the flexibility for polling places. Is similar to what state law has anyway for most municipalities, most municipalities actually have a single place where people vote from all over, even if there are districts. Um, in them. And of course, uh, Montpelier's and, uh, Wenduski's for the all legal residents was, uh, supported by the legislature. Thank you, Emma, for, for, for doing that. Um, And the last one is related to rank choice voting. Last year. City of Burlington overwhelmingly adopted, uh, rank choice voting for city council elections. And we are going to hold such an election. Uh, on December 6th. In the East district. And what has been proposed. Is that this be expanded to the mayor and the school board races. Right now the, actually the, the, the, um, The language has just the mayor, but if we've been asked in the charter change committee to expand that to the, uh, to the school board as well. And fundamentally what we would be doing is, putting in place the same rank choice voting that we have for city counselors. As we do for mayoral. Elections and rank choice voting is, I think most people, um, Have, uh, Have, have learned is a way that you get to, to vote. And if your first choice person is, uh, Does not go through to the next round. If there isn't 50%, uh, Voting for one person, 150% plus one, uh, Then the, A person, uh, The last person's votes get, um, Shifted to their next choice. And you keep running the election like that. Um, Interestingly enough rank choice voting. Um, Of this sort occurs in, uh, in the, uh, The primary system in, uh, in Vermont, When, when the nominating caucuses are happening, I happen to stumble across that, uh, the other day. So we actually have, uh, this, uh, This system in Vermont generally, but, uh, Uh, we have overwhelmingly passed it and it makes no sense To many of us that the mayor's, uh, Race is excluded from this. Uh, the last mayor's race obviously was a three person race. And was, uh, Uh, The mayor was elected with significantly less than a majority. So this is, um, Something that if we, um, are, um, Fortunate in the, uh, The city council to get it to the, um, To the voters, then hopefully we'll be, uh, Be voting on it. And, uh, this coming March. So charter changes would get set by December 12th. For, um, Getting on the March town meeting ballot. And, uh, the city councils. A charter changes. Committee will be meeting on the 19th. Of this month, um, to, uh, uh, To go over both the rank choice voting and the siting of polling places. We're pretty well set on the language for the all resident local voting. So, uh, happy. Yep. There we go. Thank you so much. Does anyone, we have time for one question. If anyone has a burning out, Jake about the question. Hey, I'm Jacob Ward three. Hey, uh, Jean. Thanks so much for all those. Um, and, uh, I would say I want to say I want to support that idea of flexibility with the polling places. I also want to say I really appreciate my local polling place. There's a bunch of folks here that have worked on it and I, I like working at the polls and, um, While I want to give the flexibility to the city, I hope, I hope we do keep as many local polling places as we can. It's, it's, uh, it's a nice way to keep the community together. So just want to put that plug out there. Thanks. Thanks, Jake. And, um, just to let people know the decisions would be made, not only by the city council, which they're done now, but they'd be made in consultation with the elected ward officials. So when you're looking at, um, Keeping things together, like people in Ward three. We'll be consulted. The people who are running the election, the people who are running the election, the people who are running the election, the people in Ward three will be consulted. The people who are running the elections, the ward clerks, the inspectors of election will all be, um, Look, well, I'll be asked and consulted with. And, uh, I see no way that a city council would, um, vote to put a polling place in a place that the election officials themselves didn't think was, uh, was in appropriate ways. Um, Mostly it's for these more tricky areas where we just don't have, um, great places for them. Great. Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Joe for joining us. Have a good trip. Um, so we have two state reps with us. Um, I'll let you decide who wants to go first, but we have 10 minutes for updates. Great. Thank you. And you also have a senator who has arrived. You can get your full zoom. Yeah, we're fun. We're a fun time here. Hi, everyone. I'm state representative Emma Mulvaney. I represent Chittin 17, which is the renumbered district just to the west of park street. And then it runs up all the way to the new north end. Uh, it's about Letty park and Ethan Allen park. Uh, you know, it's every time I come in off session, I try to think of something interesting to share because we're not in session. We meet January to May. Uh, and it's obviously election cycle as well. So I thought I would, um, share time mostly with my colleagues here and share a little bit just on the ballot because we're in our second general election cycle where the state now mails every registered voter on file a ballot. So hopefully everyone in this room has received their ballot by now and maybe even returned it. Um, but there's a couple of things to just keep in mind since this is a new system. Uh, one is you can, uh, you can put it back in the mail. Um, that's obviously very easy to do, but do so by November 1st. That's the recommendation. Seven is in 10 days, but prior to the election to make sure it gets in, you can check it out that it's received and process on the secretary of state's website by looking up your name. You could also use one of at least three, if there are four drop boxes around the city and at least in our district, um, it's behind the farrier station. Number two in the back of the building. There's one at city hall. There's one at the Miller center. I think there's one at DPW, right? Chapin. Yes, as well. And those are open and accepting ballots right now. Um, and then of course you can also bring it right in on November 8th. If you want to go to the bake sale at SA, for example, you can still come with your ballot and vote right then and there. If you lose your ballot or, um, you've made a mistake on your ballot, you can also bring it on election day and still be able to vote. The election workers will help you, um, to, through that process. Uh, if you have not received your ballot, so anyone in this room or watching, you can still have time to request it because some of the time you moved and you haven't updated your registration. So simply call the clerk's office, which is eight, six, five, seven, zero, zero, zero. Um, they can get you a new ballot. There's still time. Also, if you've made a mistake and you want to go in and just, um, correct your ballot by now. You can go into city hall. The last piece that's new that didn't exist two years ago is we passed last session of ballot curing process now, which means if they used to, if you made a mistake, you didn't sign the ballot correctly. The envelope, you didn't put it in the inside envelope. When you mailed it, the ballot was considered, um, was considered. Oh, what's the legal word? It was considered. Infected. That's like a D word. Thank you, Charlie. A defective and it wouldn't count. So we changed the law to make sure clerks have to notify if there's enough time. The, the voters that this was the case, you know that you can have another go at change, you know, updating your ballot and making sure it gets counted. So if that happened to you, the clerk is required to contact you. We left it up to the, with a couple of different methods. So I don't know if anyone knows the city's official way of contacting, but it would be their bite phone, email or mail. Um, and again, you can go to the secretary of state's website to check the status. If you've returned your, if it's your ballot's been processed fully or not. And again, any questions at all, you can still go in on November 8th with your ballot and, uh, and still vote. I can go into other things. The other thing I just want to say, I'm not expert on this, but there's a second ballot on November 8th for the Chittenden County solid waste district. I am not an expert, so don't ask me a question. Please on this. Um, but it's a bond question. That's a separate ballot that they were not able to put on the general election ballot. That did not get mailed to people. So if you would like to participate with that, you must request that. If you want to buy mail early by that same number I mentioned eight, six, five, seven, zero, zero, zero. And if you, if you have not voted yet, you can of course go on November 8th and fill out just that bond question. It's for modernizing, I believe the recycling facility, but that's about as far as I can tell you on what the topic is. But I want you to know you did not get that ballot and there is a second ballot. Okay. It's not for you. It's my several times. I couldn't be. I couldn't get a hold of them. For the clerk's office, you mean? Based on the whole new perspective. I had a part of it. Really. I gave up on it. No one was answering. No one was talking about it. I couldn't find it. And I listen to you guys. I was, I was sitting up here. There is a good amount of information on the CSWD website. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I totally hear you. I am not a representative for CWSD, but it would be something. If they're watching, they should be sure they're doing outreach to make sure people understand the ballot question. Pass it over to Brian. Thank you. How much time do I have? So there's time for Senator Chittenden. Six. Six minutes. So those of you who know me, I'm known to do interpretive dances at this MPA to show you what we're going through. But if I did it, I think it would cause secondary trauma for you if I did that because of my experience over the last year as a healthcare provider. Certainly, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to say that I've experienced over the last year as a healthcare provider. I'm serving as a legislator. Today, I attended a training for people working with those who are unhaused on how to explain to them, how their benefits are going to be taken away. And I can't. Express how demoralizing it is to be a worker right now. In health and human services and seeing the suffering that that the pandemic just pushed us over the edge. The legislature took bold action in the last session, and Representative Mulvaney-Stanok could share better than I, the investments in workforce development, but it's too little, too late. And we're seeing 40 to 60% vacancies in the healthcare system. I met with the police social worker, the head of police social work to talk about how to collaborate and work together more in this time where our police are stretched in. And what's interesting is the exit interviews of the police say the same thing that the exit interviews of healthcare workers say, that they don't feel valued. Like our public safety workforce does not feel valued across the board. And it's, it's, it's our pay, it's our working conditions. And it's also the fact that we are given this, this insurmountable challenge. The cost of living is out of, is, you know, inflation is out of control. I'll be a little bit funny and quote, I can't remember his name from New York who said, the rent is too damn high. I don't know if you ever seen that video, but it's true. The rent is too damn high because when we treat, treat real estate as an investment versus as a right, you know, housing is an investment versus a right. That's what happens. And so I, I don't know if the political will is there, but I do hope to go back to the legislature with some ideas around how to use what they call carrots and sticks in the legislature incentives and, and taxes. So that people might charge a fair amount for rent instead of just hiking it up over and over and over again, which is driving students to be homeless families, not just people with disabilities, but people with disabilities get it worse as do people of color and queer people. So we have a lot of work to do. We've, we've done a lot. I don't know how much time I have. I have like a minute. Oh, oh, oh, three minutes. So I'll take a breath. So, um, wow, my sense of time has become completely distorted with the pandemic. So, um, so I think, you know, we, the state took a lot of act. And if anyone wants to talk through the complex housing bills, I'm happy to do that later. You could look up, um, S 210 and S 226 and read the act summaries. Um, we took some great steps forward. It's going to take a while for those investments to play out then and including like the pilot project that would create a lot of, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of people have heard of the future in the state looking at new affordability ratios. But the reality is that what we call affordable isn't truly affordable for people. And we have people languishing, um, struggle. The housing is one of the social determinants of health. There are many others. Access to food, access to healthcare, education, structural conflict, which is the conflict people have with the world around them with society. And I believe this is part of why we're seeing violence nationwide 20 to 30% everywhere is higher because this is what happens when, when, when people are suffering and when people are in pain and when we react to pain with punishment instead of compassion. So I'm hoping the governor, um, he suggested a 10 point action plan. To address violence. He appointed a task force and I agree with the premise. I think we need to redirect police resources strategically using data like we did with comm stat to target violent crime. And we need to hold people accountable. We need to clear up the clog in the courts and prosecute people when they actually commit violent crime. But if we punish people in a way that further traumatizes them, we are not solving the problem. And when I was going down to Sears Lane before the eviction, almost everyone I spoke with said jail didn't help them. That the break sometimes was an opportunity that failed. But if that break, if jail, if we go to corrections and we reform corrections, we have an opportunity here to turn the tide. And I'm going to be pushing for us to look at the Norway model in which we treat inmates as neighbors. And just to bring it to the micro level, I'm really happy that the city is trying to do this work with the new pod village where the city is empowering neighbors who exist existing neighbors to meet new neighbors to, to build relationships to garden together to celebrate life together when they move in. So from the start, there's people are treated as neighbors. They're reintegrated into society. We don't other people anymore. And we need to do that in all our institutions. And if we do that with, with our prisons, then when people go there for violent crime, they may come out with a new look on life instead of feeling like yet again, they're worthless and that they, and that they deserve punishment, which just makes people more angry and makes them act out more. So I'll just end on that note that we really have to commit ourselves to the bigger vision of improving the social determinants of health. Like this is our chance. Like people recognize there's a problem. We're going to be looking at these investments and what comes out of them. And we have an opportunity to, to build on those investments and keep working towards a society where everyone belongs and everyone has a chance to recover. And we're instead of violence, reacting to violence with violence and hate with hate, we react to hate with love. Thank you. I don't think I'll be nearly as eloquent or as in depth. That was really, really inspiring to representative China. I'm Tom Chittenden and I'm sorry I haven't been here in person before. So I have been on zoom a few times and I want you to know I've always had this on my calendar, but tonight Brian representative China and I both raced across from another event. There's always a lot of events, but I'm really glad to be here tonight. I don't have as much informative things to offer, but I, what I did have as a short list of some things that I'm thinking about for the coming session that I'd love thoughts on one of them has to do with one thing that I want to make sure that in the future, if they need to hold a bond voter of another district entity, that they can in fact put it on to the same ballot that gets mailed to everybody's home. I know that is a loaded question and there's some aspects to it that would need to be worked out, but I just think it makes sense. They were well prepared. And so that that question I would argue should be on the ballot that got mailed to everybody's homes. And I think that's worth taking up this coming session. I've been attending a lot of the sessions as well to try to stay connected with the issues. One thing that keeps coming up that has to do with the I'm looking at ways I'm intrigued by finding ways to have property tax pre-bates or rebates for commercial properties that are rented to qualified and certified childcare providers. I think that'd be an excellent way to extend the same types of tax recognition that we have for our school infrastructure and our nonprofits. And it would create a really, really productive relationship between landlords and tenants that provide childcare. I think there's something to look at with kindergarten entrance agents. So in Vermont, we are one of 11 states that has, allows each local education agency. Choose the entrance age between a four month window of September 1st and December 31st. I just want to give the parents an agency and, and allow for parents to, or at least have some consistency. Cause right now, I think that's a good idea. I'm going to give the parents some agency and, and allow for parents to, or at least have some consistency. Cause right now I have many constituents that are, are clarifying or stating, and I can relate to this first, first hand that whether or not they have to put their child in another year of childcare is determined by their zip code. If they live just across the line, that community allows their child to enter kindergarten that year. But in their community, they have to wait a whole another year, which has a nine to $15,000 cost and it's creating pressure on our childcare system. In no means do I want to force kids into kindergarten. I just want to have some consistency across the state to allow parents to choose for their children when they enroll during that four month window that we currently allow local education agencies. I don't know how much time we have but I definitely on the bonding question, and since 2008 the state has had a moratorium on school state bonding capital infrastructure, we need to revisit that. There are so much deferred maintenance on school buildings across this entire state and I want the state to take a very systematic I work at the business at the University of Vermont Business School and with my favorite econ professor who here's in the room she works across campus. And I love data and what I love about what we did pass this past session is we are evaluating systematically the school infrastructure across the entire state, and I want to see the state direct the resources and reduce the cost of capital as much as possible. By granting the districts and most need Burlington with the cheapest access to capital to facilitate the school infrastructure that we need to invest in. I could go on about land use regulations I think interim zoning should be reconsidered when it can be enacted related to housing projects I think interim zoning is a great bylaw to have but I think we need to have carve outs because I've seen it. I've been in South Burlington over the last 22 years South Burlington has enacted interim zoning four times and I would say I would argue that it hasn't been used in the way it should be used, especially when we have a housing crisis which is creating pressures that you were speaking to so eloquently. And I also want to see more sewer infrastructure investments to also address the housing crisis and on the South Burlington City Council I'm serving my third term I've been a repeated advocate for a rental registry I keep looking to Burlington to what you all do and that's what I want to see in the future and I supported it also statewide with those efforts last before I'll stop there and let's take questions. Awesome thank you so much. We have time for a question or two if anyone has a burning one if you could come to the mic that'd be great. I hear about all these great ideas. But my only concern is, I like to see the accounting. We're bringing out a million here and 12 million there and four billion there 5000 year. And what I'm not seeing is the accounting. And we're all relying on grants and proposals and federal, if the federal government didn't step in when they did, we would not have any money in the state. So I don't see the accounting. My only concern is, if we were to keep in track of maybe we could take 1000 near if we take if we could figure out where the money is going, I just as a conservative I would just like a little bit of accounting. My male colleagues are, I have black phone. I would just all I want to say is, check out the work of the state auditor that the state order, the state auditor has investigated the spending and found some interesting things about the spending of money. And I'm happy to connect you with those reasons. Well, I was just going to, I actually literally was going to say that if you haven't been on auditor Doug Hoffer's website he has a lot of really insightful deep dives into a lot of aspects and again we're from state government of course those on state government issues. We're on the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee, and we spent a lot of money with that federal money for business support during COVID and he did a lot of good deep dives into that angle when we talk about millions of dollars and where it to go and was that actually needed. We asked those really critical questions and I think the key though is that legislators then take those really good recommendations and apply them in a thoughtful way when we're asked either to refund certain programs that the governor wants to advance, or, or what we're going to go back to I mean we all came in two years ago, right yes. So we haven't actually even been legislators when the usual budgeting process which is really in my opinion, governed by austerity measures but anyway, we haven't been through that hasn't been such an influx of federal cash so I think we're have some critical conversations and we need to have some real transparent conversations around the priorities for the state, and looking at resources like the auditor's office to say where is our money best used where is it best accounted for where is their accountability for how how money has been sent so far by the agencies. Thank you. Anyone else have a burning question. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much for coming, especially coming in person. That's awesome. We're going to move on to our next agenda item which is to hear from the police commission we have Milo grant here with us. And if you could get you, if you could speak for five or 10 minutes and leave at least five minutes for questions that would be really great. I'm really going to try and do that, but it might not happen, but there will be. There'll be a lot of information, kind of changing my presentation tonight based on having attended a different NPA meeting last night and hearing some questions that were occurring earlier in that meeting around public safety, and I ended up kind of going into detail about the chief's report. And I want to do that tonight because I'm really astounded by the fact that not a lot of people look at this document and it answers a lot of questions. So as previously announced my name is Milo grant I'm two years into a three year term on the police commission police commission meets once a month usually the fourth Tuesday. And when you go to the city's website and click on the government meeting calendar you can click on the information for where you can attend which we now have in Contways auditorium. One of our first suggestions in terms of public engagement was to move it out of the police department itself. And so we have been meeting in person at Contways auditorium and the meetings are hybrid so you can attend via zoom. And you also have the option to watch it later at your convenience on town meeting TV, our boards and commissions do a lot of work, but the police commission during these times it's really important there's a lot of important information that people really need to avail themselves of and especially with all the different disinformation that's been going around. So with regards I want to do a shout out to see click fix who I'm pretty sure a lot of you are familiar with. Another reason it's extremely important in our awards, we see a lot of needles just being thrown around all over the place. See click fix is the best way to report the location of these needles. So that someone can be sent out to safely and properly dispose of them. And if you don't get a response, you can follow up with them and you still get a response let me know please drug tips. So if you see dealing going on in the neighborhood. And you call dispatch, you're not going to get an officer to come and take care of that. And it's been that way for a very long time. To the point where we now pretty much have an open air market in City Hall Park. But these incidents do need to be reported. And there is a specific tip line when you go to the city's website. Click on departments choose choose the police department. And then right on that homepage under the modified BPD priority response plan, which you should read if you haven't had a chance to. So reporting any and all suspicious activity helps to solve and prevent crime suspicious or drug activity. It'll say call dispatch, don't call dispatch. You're not going to get an officer dispatch is shorthanded to. So, and we already know that there've been some pretty publicized cases of people calling for help not getting help and then then the denial that a call was made only to find out that it comes to drug activity. Submit the tip online, please. These tips are important because the department looks at this information in order to make determinations as to where they should focus investigations. Unfortunately, if investigations are going on. We don't know that until a rest are made and that's to protect the integrity of these investigations, but what we report to them via that tip line gives them information that they need to track activity throughout the city. So if you do make a call and you're not getting any response, don't be frustrated, but do submit the tip online. If you have information about people's names. Some of us unfortunately live near houses, trap houses, drug dens, whatever you want to call it. If you can safely take license plate numbers if you're noticing cars going in and out. This is type of information that could be helpful. With regards to the police commission meetings itself, we review all types of crime and root causes we provide the police, the chiefs report from acting chief Merad, which will go over in just a moment. We do any updates regarding varying oversight projects that we're working on this could be the complaint policy policy reviewing updating directives. We have speakers and presentations that discuss public safety in our area discuss policing in general. And they can be very interesting. They really can be review use of force incidents, although most of our conversations about use of force are in executive session. So even though the department does say that because I know some of y'all who do watch the meetings know I can get a little salty. We have conversations we're not allowed to talk about. So yes, do we review use of force we do, but do we agree with everything we see. No, we don't. But it's still important to see the type of incidents that generate use of force and the type of use of force that is used and sometimes it's not use of force sometimes it's, it's verbal responses and how people that are observing certain cases treat it so all good information to review to know what's going on. We also have review any commendations that we receive so we definitely encourage people who have positive experiences with our police force to report this and and and submit a commission, because we need to be talking about these things in order to create a more positive environment for the officers who are staying and we need to support these officers. This commission's annual report, please, please, please, please read it it was maligned, pretty viciously by the mayor, saying that we were out of touch with the community and some other stuff. Talk to me about it afterwards. If you're, you're curious but I really encourage people to read it to see the information that's in here has statistics has summaries of our speakers summaries of the directors we worked on summaries of our recommendations. I'm still recommending that the department takes some services from the center for policing equity in order to address racial disparities that do continue. So it's a very, very important document it's not that long, I'm going to be sending it to the MPA crew so that they can post it with the meeting link of the MPA meeting and the minute so you'll be able to review it at your leisure. One of the recommendations was that we needed a mental health summit. There's been a dramatic increase in mental health issues. They are driving a lot of crime, the increase in certain crimes, I should say. So when we talk about crime numbers. Overall, the number of incidents are down, but two things can be true at the same time. We have certain incidents that are up. So when we talk about the mythology of what policing can and cannot solve mental health and drug issues is to the things that are affecting crime, but we need to have a holistic approach to addressing them. This mental health summit this occurred on August 23 and fourth there were over 65 attendees. These were a combination of city officials citizens the spectrum of direct service professionals from clinicians to peer support specialist on this report of a summary of the takeaways there'll be a listing of all the people that were involved. I think this is a really excellent document this is a really excellent event it really took a look at how our system is working, or not working in some instances, and what types of stronger coordination needs to be going on between the city the department mental health the agency of human services specific issues identified that is affecting us statewide identified need for advocacy to address local mental health partners and community level barriers need and for coordinated communication to the greater community about initiatives and decisions within the mental health system, and more so there are questions that groups that they broke up into that they addressed it is very very interesting reading and it really gives us an idea of where we need to go. Oh my god I don't have enough time okay there is a great report from presentation we had from Vermont interfaith action of Vermont guide to community engagement with local police departments. Please read this it's very interesting it talks about oversight and talks about community engagement which is something that we desperately need here in Burlington. Could you pull up the chiefs report for me and I'm going to bravely go through this so we have the chiefs report each meeting. Thank you if you go to the next page. The first page talks about our status with regards to our officer head count which unfortunately continues to go down the next page please. This is the revised priority response plan this is really important to read if you haven't had a chance to do so so it's going to tell you which types of incidents what priority they are. It also has some information you see some items that are highlighted yellow. These are items that CSO is going to be sent out first before a swarm police officer is so that page has a lot of interesting information. The next page covers incident volume. This is as of September 15 so when we see the trends for incident volume. They've actually been decreasing year to year now for 2022 there is an increase year to date from 2021 2022 we're in our new normal, we're pretty much coming out of covid so that is not unexpected. Next page please. The selected Valkor incidents Valkor is a system that's used to track calls that officers go out on. There's one day I'll do a presentation on my data issues with Valkor there's a lot of stuff that's that's not captured. But we can see certain types of incidents over the last several years have remained the same. But when we talk about what everyone is concerned about of course, gunfire. That's a big concern because gunfire is scary. And we have gone from 033 1012 now 23 year today. I wanted to talk more about the root causes of gunfire, especially with regards to our youth. We also have several instances where drug activity is involved so we, if we can address the drug epidemic in our community which now unfortunately and includes we can address some of these gunfire incidents and not just gunfire incidents gunfire is scary but there are other violent incidents. Someone sent me an email said that you know somebody's got almost beaten to death by baseball bat why isn't that on the news right we have other violent incidents going on so we just want to be careful about if all the gunfire instance stopped tomorrow we still have we still have issues larceny look at that number that's a big jump that's a very big jump. That's drug activity. That's activity when think about cars being broken into and not even really broken into people you got to lock your doors, you know still so much going on with doors not being locked things being left in the cars we can't do that I'm not victim blaming. I'm just stating facts these are little things we can do to protect ourselves so reminder for yourself for your friends your neighbors, someone comes to visit you did you lock your car door. If you get a cup of coffee in a convenience shop do not leave your car running with the keys in it please please please. Because that's a big chunk of why we're having two larger percentage of stolen cars and when some of these cars are found they've got drug paraphernalia in it so once again, driven by drug use overdoses have gone up. Next page has a five year average of the various types. So mental health issues, the increased 35% overdose issues 167% gunfire incidents. There it's a small number but because we're used to having almost none it's a dramatic increase of 283% stolen vehicles 485%. Next page please this page is super interesting please look at it it's it's the gunfire incident. A gunfire incident known to be at a person a gunfire incident where a person was struck and then unfortunately, incidents where people were killed. Next page is a summary of the total number of officers available and the number of officers that are available for patrol we are keeping detectives in their position because we need detectives working on various other cases so we do get asked sometimes why aren't detectives on the road at this time it's not appropriate. Next page please, building other capacities currently have six CSOs and three CSL as of this slide we are we need more CSOs we need more CSL CSL is really effective in dealing with mental health issues, and they allow a officer to go on and do something else so if they're it's deemed that it's physically safe. They can work these, these issues, and take more time work more resources and officers are able to pursue other things. Teared response on the next page of recruiting with community partners. Training I haven't an issue with this training this training is meant specifically to address the constant call for additional training regarding racial disparities. The report mentioned that there was missing documentation proving who had what training that is still a big issue. The Doug Hoffer when he did his report he did an audit of training that's required by police department straight statewide to keep officer certified and many many other departments do not have proof that this training was going on so that's been an issue with our department as well. And I was a little bit concerned that there wasn't any recent training and then the last page is talking about a new contract with the new starting pay is and with the hiring bonuses. They're really part of this rebuilding plan is to include and go after lateral transfers right we don't want to only have new officers coming out of the Academy we do need people with experience being part of the mix. But we're not going to get lateral transfers if we don't make an honest attempt to address why officers are leaving and that goes back to not feeling appreciated, but it is a two way street and I do believe that there are things that the department can be doing to assist in that improvement of trust, such as accepting help from the Center for Policing Equity that would be a great start. Thank you so much for listening. I will also include this report to the NPA crew so they can upload that. This is a report that I think everyone in the city needs to be looking at once a month right because we hear all this these things about the drugs, all mental health. This is all related to homelessness as well. If you have a drug addiction, your life is less stable. If you have mental health issues and don't have proper support your life is less stable. You're more likely to be homeless. All of these things are interrelated. And do we have any questions I have time for any questions I know that was afraid we've run out of time for questions. Maybe if you could hang out, you know, for a few minutes now people could ask you questions. I will be happy to do that. But we really appreciate you coming out for service to the city. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. And my email address is m e grants at Burlington vt.gov and the list of all the commissioners and our email addresses is on the city's website. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Wonderful. So now we're going to pivot to talk about infrastructure projects. We're going to talk about North Manuski Avenue, and we have some city staff here from the Department of Public Works to talk about it. We have Commissioner Chapin Spencer. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. And I am going to make this short so most of this can be q amp a. Thanks also for everybody's patience during the construction season. We're excited to still be underway with a number of paving projects, obviously Alan Street right out front, North Avenue. We've had a good season with paving and next year North Manuski Avenue is on the state paving list and that's part of the reason why I'm here so I'm Chapin Spencer director of public works. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be here. So, back in 2018 2019, we kicked off a plan for looking at ways to improve the north and south when you see the whole when you ski Avenue corridor, or all modes of transportation we had a advisory committee, a number of you were on that committee came up with recommendations that the council voted on in 2020 and supported those general recommendations. We started moving from the north when you ski Avenue section to have additional process around the concern of parking loss. And so there was a parking management plan initiated. So we started moving on implementation on other blocks, such as the downtown blocks, you saw the transition from four lanes to three lanes that occurred in the fall of 2020. There was a parking management plan, again a number of people in this room serving on that committee. Thank you. Who went through a deliberative process about the proposed lane realignment between Pearl and Riverside on North when you ski Avenue. The committee did great work and at the end of the process the committee had very significant concerns about the implementation of this effort, and how it could be done in ways that best worked with the residents businesses in organizations along the corridor. So they in a four to three vote voted not to proceed with the project and laid out a number of things that they wanted to see the city do. The staff brought that back to the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee and the city council where they recommended proceeding with implementation with a number of conditions, many of which came from the parking management plan. They said, let's slow this down, let's wait a year and do additional work with the constituents on the corridor. Number two, they wanted to do a $15,000 grant program to businesses to help with the transition. Number three, they directed the city to make the city loop GMT bus fare free if GMT reinstated fares for they directed me and my staff to find ways to maximize parking along the corridor. So we've moved on many of those. The $15,000 grant program was released, I personally went door to door with the businesses and proposals came in. They're being reviewed by Jean Bergman's committee the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee we have a draft recommendation will be finalizing awards at their next meeting. I'm currently working with businesses and property owners to try to find shared off street parking. I know that is a significant interest. There are some small pockets of parking that I have coordinated between the community health center and adjacent businesses who have some ample parking. Some of you may know a lot of part a lot of employees and customers of the community health center are really using heavily that northern section of North Windy Ski Avenue. And there's great interest in helping the community health center find parking that serves their staff and customers. And I'm working closely with Kim Anderson Community Health Center they are exploring off street parking that they develop in partnership with an adjacent property owner or to that work is in its preliminary stages but they are talking to to adjacent property owners about developing parking for the health center off street, and I am continuing to work with them and other owners up and down the street. The Department of Public Works will be engaging the business community another time this winter on how they want to regulate the remaining parking on street and which spaces should be long term spaces which spaces should be for loading for anti-cap accessible uses. And we will probably look at time limited shared spaces so that there might be a loading zone in the morning and then public parking in the afternoon so we don't lock up a space all day for a use that's only part of the day. With that I really want to open it up to folks here and have dialogue. Thanks. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for leaving so much time for dialogue. Who has questions, comments, concerns. Yeah, trap. Hi, thanks for the update. Do you know when or if there will be planting more trees along north of Nisky Ave. I remember I asked early on in the process and they're asking for feedback and I said well, I was told that that was coming later in the process. Did you know at what point that will be because we could use some tree canopy on the quarter. Great. Good question and we rely very heavily on our friends at parks department. We do a great job with gray infrastructure and they do a great job with the green infrastructure. So, yes, we have talked to them about incorporating North Manuski Ave as part of the tree planting effort. I'm pleased their arborist is great we're planting bear root stock now which is cheaper to plant than the big root balls. And so parks is planting hundreds of trees a year instead of dozens and so I don't have direct timeline for you but I can follow up if you give me your name and email I will get you an answer this week. Thank you. Go ahead. Good evening director Spencer how are you doing great. The government's been really working hard on that southern connector project and I've been following along and I appreciate the work that you've put in but my question is regarding the Raleigh art enterprise project. Now I'm kind of curious I am aware that with regard to that project about 90% of the funds will be covered by expenses will be covered by federal or state funds. That's great. I have concerns just because I have concerns I don't know what the total estimate is for that project I don't know if that. I'm curious if that estimate includes costs of remediation rail yards tend to be very polluted areas so remediation could be very costly, even if the city is on the hook for 10% of this, which is a good deal. And to have those funds, the school bond will limit our general obligation bonding capacity for the next seven, eight years so are we going to have what's the cost of this real year it's important by the way to this rail yard enterprise project is what will redirect traffic out of that maple king neighborhood, which is exactly what I believe everybody in this room wants to help make sure it happens so how much is going to cost, are we going to be able to afford it, and can we get it moving in a coordinated fashion with the aforementioned southern connector project. It's a bunch but I hope great. Thanks for all the questions the short answer is yes coordinated south end construction coordination plan is on the website, we're coordinating over $100 million of improvements in the south end. We want to minimize impact so yes coordinated to total estimated cost of the project is around $20 million currently. Soil management is always a wild card in Burlington, and the 9010 split 90% state and federal 10% local is on eligible expenses soil management is not an eligible expense. So we are looking at a city contribution northwards of $2 million. We have budgeted, or at least identified the cost in the capital plan we have a multi year capital plan. I will say it is very stretched, we understand there's probably not going to be additional borrowing for general fund infrastructure at least not significant borrowing. If the school bond goes through, given the cap on borrowing so we're going to have to be judicious, but we are confident by working with our partners. We have a lot of public momentum for this project, and for anybody who's interested, it is going to the Council on the 17 this coming Monday night to select a preferred alternative. We are proposing the simplest build alternative, which is the simple connection between pine and battery, and not building a bunch of additional grid streets at this time. The grid streets go really close to the pine street barge canal. That creates a lot of more environmental risk for the city and a lot more cost at a time where we don't want additional risk, and we don't want additional costs. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for the update, Chapin. As someone has been watching this closely as you know for many years. I really think that if we can't identify a significant number of new off street parking spaces that this project is going to inflict a lot of hardship on people and businesses. On the northern end of North Muske Avenue. So I just, I think that the strongest possibility I've heard so far is the community health centers ideas, which may be financially very challenging for them. I hope that we would be open to any way that the city could, could help that out. I mean, one might argue, well the city can't do that because it's a private entity. However, the kind of the problem that's been been created, in my view, for people along that resident that the corridor is the result of some, you know, city decisions over over the years. The project, the community health center was able to get their permit with a certain number of parking spaces that I think has proven to be not enough parking spaces. And then this decision to remove the parking from one side of street on top of that, one could argue, I think make a case there that there's, there's, there's a, an obligation for the city to help solve the problem that it contributed to creating. That's a great comment and brings forward a talking point that I was hoping to hit the director pine over at CEDO and I have talked about that we are seeking to find money and support the community health center in their efforts. This should not be solely a community health center responsibility, and we are evaluating opportunities for funding for them. I've been thank you for coming to provide an update and I understand that some spaces were negotiated with Burlington Housing Authority, which is really great to hear so thank you for doing that. I guess I have like three questions I had to write down because my brain is pretty fried probably not as fried as yours but one, the one very specific question I have is that I was reading the grant proposals for the 15,000. But there was only one grant proposal from an immigrant owned business so Hong requested money for a bike rack and I thought that that was kind of disappointing that the city wasn't just going to provide a bike rack anyway like that has to come out of these grant funds so I am hoping that they don't have to use their $2,000 for that. Should I ask all my questions or that sounds like a quick response, a quick response is that the plan was that the city would give them a bike rack and that instead of each business who asked for a bike rack trying to source their own that the city would buy at a reasonable price and give them to each of those requests. Another question is a kind of piggybacking on what Jane was saying I think more specifically conceptually I'm wondering if the city is going to be receiving money down the road from the infrastructure. Whatever it's called the IRA which I can't help thinking of as an investment retirement account with the infrastructure bill. So, my question is that we have one city department and set advising us to buy cars that are going to need charging infrastructure, and then we have another city department, taking away parking spaces, which are needed for those cars that one city department has to buy so my question is, is it possible the city could build a small parking garage or work with the health center to create more of a public parking garage with infrastructure charging infrastructure at that end of town. To kind of acknowledge the fact that many of us, as we age or become less functional physically will not be riding bikes in the winter for six months, and will be relying on our cars. But that we all want everybody to share the road, could it be possible that you would put in the next EPW plan a small parking garage at that end of town. I think the quick answer to that is we've offered conceptual, our engineering help to the community health center should they want it, they have procured their own engineering folks, we do not own land in the old north end proximate to CHCB, but we are interested in wanting to help them. If they say that they or another area of business wants the city to look at structured parking there, instead of parking to serve the community health center exclusively. I am open to the conversation. And that brings me to my last question, which is really about whether there is some timeline at which the city will stop working with the corridor to try and solve the parking problem, or can this, you know, evolve into a longer term transition as Jane was saying so that we continue to mitigate the hardship and find, you know, kind of new opportunities to, you know, maybe it's not a prank garage just for the health center but maybe it's leasing land and sharing, you know, public private benefits of parking all kinds of vehicles that need to be charged. Yes, I want this to be a success. And I want to be a partner in what has North Moisey avenues become your contributions on the parking management committee, your conversations of just transition have not been lost on me. And I think we owe it to this community where we are trying to fit multiple different priorities in a constrained corridor to be good stewards through that transition. So let's keep that conversation going. Thanks, Chapin. Can you talk about the bicycle and pedestrian improvements plan is going to bring to our community. Yes, so I probably didn't touch on those as I would have been helpful to do thank you. So I think North Winooski improvements as part of the corridor plan discuss bike lanes continuous along Winooski Avenue all the way from what used to be shy guy gelato and the south end of five corners through the south end through downtown, and North Winooski Avenue. This is the last missing link between on North Winooski Avenue between Union and Riverside that will create a direct link to the Winooski bridge and right next to the city of Winooski. This is really the trunk line of north south by travel that the city is trying to achieve through planned BTV walk bike. The city did just successfully apply for and receive a $24 million grant to overhaul the bridge between Winooski and Burlington, the bike and pedestrian accommodations on that bridge or are terrible. And so the plan is full separated bike pedestrian accommodations on both sides of a new bridge, which with this connection here will give you continuous bike facilities, all the way from downtown Winooski through the south end of Burlington. On the pedestrian front, not only are the bridge facilities helpful for that, but we are looking at each intersection and where we can narrow crossings improve the crossings. There's consideration for many roundabouts at various intersections on North Winooski Avenue and we will be looking at those in the coming seasons. Thanks for the prompt. Other questions. Any questions from zoom, Sam. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. I'm always able to be reached cell phone is 316 0006 my emails on the city website. Always happy to engage and answer questions. Thanks. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming out. Great. So moving on to our last agenda item we have some developers for city place here to give us an update on the project and take questions and comments. So thank you so much for coming to our NPA and if you could just have a seat up here. We'd love to hear your presentation. We have about 30 minutes for this agenda item. So, if you could leave some time for questions, that'd be great. Somebody to kick off the city role should be clarified. Sure. Brian, Brian, the director of the city's community and economic development office for three residents. The three something. And my comment really is just clarified in the city role here as a community and economic development office is really been through the public. Can't hear you. We cannot hear you. Hang on. How's that? I think it's been like this. How about that? No. Here you have that. Yeah, that sounds better. Okay, so just to clarify the public portion of this project is the public improvements of reestablishing the streets and sidewalks and all the public infrastructure that goes with that. So think of the curbing and the street trees and everything that goes from what is now St. Paul where it meets Bank Street goes through the block to Cherry Street and is on Pine Street where it goes the same section from bank to Cherry. So it's reconnecting those streets with a pretty heavy emphasis on pedestrian and bicycle utilization cars. To some extent and delivery vehicles to sort of reconnect the community that was disconnected 50 plus years ago from urban renewal, which was a city and federal initiative. So that's the city's role. We're not the developer. We're not the private development taking place, but the way the city is financing those improvements. This is the key thing is through something called tax increment financing where we're using the growth in value so the new taxes will be generated by the development will fund those improvements to make that public investment so that's the city's role in the project and I just want to these guys here we'll talk about their progress where they are now and we have these three folks and their and one more member who's not here tonight but they're the new owners their local people, they own what you think of as the pit. So that entire property, they're the proud owners of a pit in downtown Burlington. And they're, and they're all local people, unlike the previous owner of the property they are very invested in being having us be successful so they'll talk about that I just want to note to that the legislature took some important action in 2021 they gave another year to the time when the city and other communities that have tax increment financing districts can borrow money to make these public improvements that get repaid through that new tax revenue that I talked about so that's the whole concept it's important we have until June of 2023 less than a year away to borrow the money to build the public improvements. So that's why this is all so critical the other piece that has changed is litigation that was hanging like a cloud, the litigation is gone there's no litigation remaining that was settled, and we don't need to talk much about what was settled and how it was settled but they settled it so the public update will occur at the city council this coming Monday to be followed by an expected executive session with the city council will hear an update from the administration about how we are working through the issues and what's called the amended and restated development agreement like to call the Arda. Arda 2.0 since it's already been amended and restated once before. So, that's it I just want to also add, not a dollar has been borrowed. Not single dollar has been borrowed from for this project from the city so when people say the city has wasted money on this I think you just need to know we have not borrowed any money to build any improvements because we have to wait until they have a $50 million construction contract in order to give us the city the ability to issue the bonds that allows to pay for the public improvement so that's the quick high level from the city's perspective and now you guys can introduce us. Okay. Hi, I'm Dave Farrington one of the, the partners in city place, along with my partner, Al Seneca, and we're missing our third partner tonight because I think he's still out on a job site somewhere out on the highway. So, as Brian had said, we, we were also partners with Don Cinex midway through his journey through this whole city place saga. And it got to the point where we had some disagreements and discussions over the schedule and how to proceed. And everybody agreed that if you guys are so smart, go do it yourself. So we took on that challenge and we parted ways we bought him out of his shares. We're still partners with him in the, the rest of the old mall and what's known as the LL bean building and the Macy's BHS high school. Those are future phases that we're not dealing with right now but so we've the last six months since we've closed our deal with with Don. We reengaged all the architects and engineers, the whole design team, we've been working with the CETO office, Department of Public Works Chapin's office has been great. We've nailed down all the details on the new roads, the reconnecting of pine and St. Paul all the improvements that are going to go on all around it. We're very close to making the final adjustments on this development agreement, and we've got our plans going into DPW or the, the initial permit on the foundation and site work, maybe as early as a week from now. And so we're really excited. We're going to, we've got a plan and schedule where we're going to be starting this fall, working on site work, mostly utilities, some foundation work as the plans from the project which kind of gotten delayed over the last couple of years. And that was one of the kind of disagreements we had always wanted to advance the plan so we were ready to go when we're ready to go, but the managing partner disagreed on that tax. So the architectural plans and all the engineering plans never got completed to the point where we pass it on to the city for approvals. So we're working through that now. The design is following up quickly with our schedule, but we are going to be getting after this thing very soon. We get the development agreement signed the permits in place and then we're going to see some yellow iron down that 130 Bank Street. So Patrick. Sure. Yeah, we're in the process right now of partnering with Champlain Housing Trust to provide manage and own the piece that's required by the city statutes for the affordable housing component. So I think that the statutes call for 15%. We had negotiated a 20% a little bit more. So there'll be 85 units of the total 425 or 27 units that will be managed owned by CHT and perpetually affordable. And then I think Patrick's brought along a little couple of pictures and this is Patrick O'Brien is one of our project managers and I'll pass it off to him and I'll give you a little brief overview of where we're at construction wise schedule wise. Thank you. My name is Patrick O'Brien and as Dave suggested, I'm kind of wearing two hats. I am work for the sd Ireland companies. And also I'm here representing city place partnerships which is the Ireland's Dave Farrington and Alsenacle here. I think Dave did a good recap as to what we've been doing the last six months basically pulling all the pieces together so we can start construction on this thing some point in November and December. What we have in front of us is, if for those of you that have been around. We've probably seen what this thing is going to look like what it's not going to look like is this 14 story building, which was the original which was originally approved. This is this has been shortened and approved as a 10 story building that is basically going to consist of a new city block. And what Dave is holding up is just basically an elevation view of what it's going to look like once it's constructed. You will see there's a red outline on that elevation drawing that basically shows the part where the housing trust is going to build their units. So what to expect in the next two or three years. Certainly, a lot of noise. Right. A lot of trucks a lot of employee traffic. It seems like it's going to take forever to come out of the ground which it will. This is a big project. And you know obviously, you know, we are realists so we're not going to paint some fancy picture that's not going to happen. You know, this fortunately is not our first rodeo. We deal with heavy construction all the time. We have built similar foundations for other developers in the city. Well, how cynical has been in construction development is entire life as as as as David Farrington as have the as have the islands. And so, we are ready willing enable and we're going to start, hopefully within a month or six weeks, you won't be impressed when we're working through the process because again it's going to be smelly noisy loud. Traffic is going to be probably a nightmare on certain weeks. But that's what it takes in order to get a project built, especially in the center of a downtown. The good thing is, we're experienced. We have my co workers, especially on the site work side of things have been dealing with traffic, pretty much their entire careers. We know what it's like to put a traffic traffic safety plan together. And that is the other illustration that we brought with us tonight. Part of this process that we have to work through is working with my co workers in conjunction with consultants, we have to put together a pretty hefty traffic plan. And part of that traffic plan also has to show what portions of the public right of way ie the sidewalks in the roads that we are going to encumber in other words what areas are we going to have to take over for short periods of time. In order to make this work. We are going to be taking portions of Bank Street and we're going to be making it a one way. We're making portions of the sidewalks along Cherry Street and in and moving out the parking and providing new parking. What are we going to do when school is in session with the high school that Macy's well, we've got a plan for that you know we're going to be manipulating some of the current sidewalks, some of the current crosswalks, some of the current signage, and we are going to be making sure that everybody is safe because obviously, safety is the number one goal here. We have a division of safety directors that will be on site throughout the process. And this plan in front of you which we can go through in detail if you wish does show where some of those new signage and crosswalks. One way traffic, etc, is going to go this plan was brought forth last night in front of the licensing committee because we need to get in conference permits from the city and that plan was approved last night. The plan will change, you know when you're doing a project like this even a small project, things come up and what you what do you do well you, you get everybody together. You talk about it you make adjustments. But what we do know is that when we start this is the plan we're going to go with and this is the approved plan. Let me see what else can I talk about we talk about noise it's good it's going to be noisy. We do in accordance with our zoning permit have hours of operation that we have to work within that those hours are from 7am in the morning, until 7pm in the evening. We are not allowed to work on Sundays or national holidays. I have to tell you, there will, we will probably break that once in a while, mostly as it relates to, you know, having to deal with something unexpected. So I expect that I'll give you Dave's call Dave's phone number so you can I'll call him but but we do expect that unfortunately there will be periods of time, you know that we have to get down there a little early, staying late, not likely but but but getting out early, whether it has to do with dealing with snow removal, or something like that so people can get in it out. There will be there will be times that we, we won't break the rules but we'll have to massage them a little bit. Certainly not intent but it'll be dealing with unexpected items. One rule we do know with our trucks are larger trucks. We will not be crossing church street. So, you know, there are certain truck routes in and out of the city the main one being Main Street. So we will manipulate our traffic patterns to head over to Main Street and up and out of town. Ironically, it's also possible that Main Street might be under construction. So again, that's one of those things that we'll put our heads together, and we'll figure out alternate routes you know thankfully we do know that we could always go out the avenue we could always go down route to to Shelburne Road, or Pearl Street, it's you know Main Street is not the only exit out of the city. You know, I guess I'll stop talking. We'll answer some questions that you may have, but I just want you all to know that these three partners in their, their companies are committed to getting this project done, and we appreciate your support in the business of support as we work through it. Yes. So, when you're done, the whole project looks really great. Will there be charging stations for cars in the and around this area. Yeah, we're still working out the plan on the whole garage access we know how we're going to get into the garage. There's going to be, it's going to be multi user, there'll be the tenants in the building that will have access to it to park their cars while they're home. There will be monthly rentals for people working downtown just like the old garage used to do a monthly rental for office workers around town, and there will be transient parking for shoppers, visitors, tourists, whatever, and we're working out all the details on, you know, the pain display and the kiosks and the gates and all that stuff. But yeah, the parking garage will be accessible to the public. There will be parking stations in there. I think the ordinance called for 5%. I think we're charging stations. We're going to have more than that. And we're making sure we have the capacity in the electrical service when we install it initially to be able to expand without having a big problem. So there's going to be an oversized service to the garage. I've been talking with our electrical engineer and also Tesla who's very psyched about being in town and they've actually offered us some free equipment to install. And there's some real good state-of-the-art charging stations now that I'm not sure I don't have an electric car how they work, but we're told they're great. Correct. Yeah, all the plans, almost everything that we've done is publicly available at the CETO office. You guys have a website that we're continually going to be feeding them new information. We've updated plans, the full set of plans so far that was permitted, and we are building this project as permitted. There's a lot of talk about, oh, maybe they're going to try to switch this to a hotel and they're going to do condos are going to do this and that. Right now, the plan is we're building it absolutely as it was approved by the design review board. 427 units total. It's kind of grouped into three buildings. There's the affordable component piece. Like we talked about CHT, there's 87 units there. The rest of the north building which kind of fronts up against Cherry and has little flanker wings down the New Pine Street and the New St. Paul. There's going to be 70 more units there. Those are going to be market rate apartments. And then the south building, which was originally proposed as a hotel is just going to be more residential units. And that's going to, there's going to be 70 units there. The entire project all the way around all four faces of the block, bank, pine, cherry and St. Paul will have retail components. There's a whole variety of different shop sizes all the way around. Full exposure to retail. And then there's going to be a few utility type entrances to the garage to a loading dock. So there's going to be a trash dock. There's going to be entrances pedestrian entrances to the garage and pedestrian entrances to the upper levels of the residential. But everything's going to be on file. Soon as we get some updated plans to Brian. So you can go to the city website, take a look at the plans take a look at our, our encumbrance permit, I guess we'd be on there a link to it at least. And every detail that we know you guys can access. And I'm in the process, I'm not very computer literate my daughter's going to help me but we're setting up a website and there's going to be an email address info at building city place calm. And if anybody's got any questions or problems, you just shoot us a note and we'll get right back with you. And my phone number will be on that. That link somehow. Thank you guys and just wanted to express appreciation for what you're doing. And that's finally happening. And I see all kinds of great benefits like the impact fees will help the schools and the taxes will help the schools. So in the long run. It's great. It's a great timing for this to come along. I want to ask and also stress as a strident bus patron and a former Green Mountain Transit employee that the I am afraid of the bus schedule getting impacted on Cherry Street and I'm sure you have a million things to talk to think about and talk with people about, but it is easy to underestimate and undervalue the importance of the bus schedules being screwed up, it just has a huge ripple effect throughout the county. And that is the ground zero. You know, as you know, so I just hope that one takeaway tonight is, you know, really having like between you guys and the city and Green Mountain Transit which is going through major transitions and challenges to to please keep the buses at the forefront of everybody's mind or whoever's in charge of transportation. Thank you. Thank you. We have 40 and comments and acknowledging the bus traffic. Like, like Patrick said, if, if they're, I mean we've done our best to address it. If there are issues, we take a little time out and we coordinate with DPW and we'll get the bus people involved. We did have some discussions with the bus company, specifically about once the project's up and running like our pickup and delivery for trash because it's right on St. Paul Street the new St. Paul, and that's going to be there, their runway out of out of their facility so we've got that coordinated we've we've got it scheduled so it's off the busy time. So there's been a lot of thought there's been a lot of stuff going on the last six months. Everybody wants us to go as smooth as possible. We're going in with the best intentions. As Patrick said, there might be some hiccups, but we're not going to ignore them. We'll deal with them. The city's going to be watching us. We're going to be watching us. It's going to, you know, we're going to give it the best shot. And I'm real confident we're going to do a good job. Yeah, this is very exciting and it's thank you for coming. My question is about the affordable housing. So when we started on the first development agreement way back when we really wanted the affordable housing mixed in with the higher end housing. So you can talk about how why that has evolved somewhat differently. Thank you. Great question. I think it's something that doesn't get discussed enough. And this project is the latest example I can point to three for others. The first project in Burlington was a redevelopment of the former TD Bank which is now I think, well actually it's TD Bank now it was called Howard Bank or something bank north. So the block downtown which has, it's a cross from pizza very tall on one side and it has the armory which is the comedy club on one corner. So that redevelopment was the first time of developers said listen why don't we, we're permitting this whole thing. Why don't we do the affordable with Champlain Housing Trust since they're in the business, and they can bring rents even lower than what the city ordinance requires, so that when folks were saying and Tony rest in peace would often say, these are not too high for people with section eight. That's not the case when Champlain Housing Trust is involved. They bring rent levels down to a level where someone with a section eight voucher can live in a brand new unit on the top floor, looking at Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks, even though they're living with a section eight voucher so that's, that's the benefit here which would not be achieved. If we had for an interspersed the other thing is the financing that Champlain Housing Trust has to get access needs to build affordable housing. You can't do it interspersed throughout a building you've got to do a building basically. In this case when you look at that plan it doesn't show up as its own building, but it will be a very clear delineation a wall that separates it from the other building so it'll have to that's really the way that the financing works in order to make it possible. I believe we have a question on zoom from Patrick. First, Brian to to your original statement that the city hasn't wasted any money on this yet, and then in order in an amount of time and energy and city staff has gone into previous project. I don't think it's it's money in terms of the infrastructure and Tiff, but an alarming amount of time of the denizens of this city has gone into this. You know, I would just disagree with you respectfully. We're pulling my real question is we're pulling our kids out of a toxic environment, and we're about to put them right back into a new one. Clearly, I heard from, I believe Patrick that there's going to be noise there's going to be dust it's not going to be comfortable there's going to be noise there's going to be more dust there's not to be comfortable. And yeah, right next to a school, if I was a school kid, I do believe it would be really stressful from seven to seven. And I believe this is not the construction, you know, their responsibilities to cities responsibility to protect the kids. So what is reasonable to ask air monitoring noise monitoring to ensure that we don't continue to degrade the value of education in Burlington. Thanks. So there was, I think to that was a two part question Brian do you want to. The second part is a good question. And it has to do with basically the impact on the school children. But I'd first like to point out that if it wasn't for the gentleman planking me to the left and the gentleman thanking me to the right as well as Scott Ireland and Don cynics that that the school would be in more peril. These gentlemen didn't step up to the plate. But the good thing is that before the school agreed to come to Macy's and occupy Macy's their major concern had to do with the current quality of the building. So both inside and outside, as well as what was going to be happening in the future, as it relates to the construction of city place. So there was numerous studies done. Third party studies, mostly relating to noise and vibration. And those studies satisfied, not only us but more importantly, the school board. So it's a great question that you asked, but thankfully the it was asked early on before the lease for Macy's was signed. And Patrick I just want to clarify my comment was that we didn't borrow money we didn't issue a bond to cover city staff time so yes you're correct and I know you didn't support the project. But that is not what I said I didn't say we didn't spend staff time I just said we didn't borrow money that's what I wanted to be clear about. I'm just pointing out is the application fees that have been filed for applications for the project are intended partly to offset city staff time spent on the project. No study, the noise study I was there when that was being done. We brought in an engineer and they set up equipment in the building, and we literally brought dump trucks, rollers bulldozers, and we ran them on the site. Right next to the building, and all of those studies proved out that there was sufficient. There was not not enough noise to even register on the scales so and in the school department and everyone involved in it accepted those studies so that was done right. I'll just say, I, my construction company built the high school temper high school that's there, and we spent a lot of time working with this acoustic engineer to detail that common wall which used to be the two entrances from Macy's to the mall. We filled it in with a system of metal stud sheet rock insulation, a special acoustical panel, and this new, the latest technology on sound abatement. It was a, it's called a mass loaded fabric, which covers that whole connector where the the old mall was to the new Macy's building. And then, as, as Patrick, their Al said, we ran construction equipment outside back and forth, bang tailgates revved up bulldozers. We had a third party acoustic engineer, interior to the building with microphones all set up, recorded everything and then reported back to Mr flan again and Marty spalling from the facilities, and it was up to them to decide if it was okay to to proceed with the project and they did. And so, again, we're hoping for the best. If there are problems will deal with them as they come up. Great. Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. Anyone has a burning one. Not seeing any are there any more on zoom. No. Awesome. Well thank you very much for coming in and speaking to us we really appreciate the update and we look forward to the project. Thank you. Awesome. We have a raffle to finish. We have a last order of business. So anyone not get their name in here. No. Okay. Okay. Okay, well then live gets the honor of drawing. Okay, the winner is Max liquor. Max. Max liquor is still here. Oh, Max went home. Okay, we're going to have to get a new one. Megan. This shall be still here. It shall be still here. Oh, okay. Another one. Al Seneca. Okay, great. Al Seneca. Which one is it? I guess they can now. Yes. Yeah, I got it. Yeah. I'm going to work with you on a show. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to work with you on a show. I'm going to work with you on a show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.