 to talk with all by myself. No one to walk with me on the shelf in misbehaving, saving my love for you and you and you. For certain, the one I love, I'm through with flirting, it's you. In misbehaving, saving my love. I check on the secrets I was waiting. I don't stay out late, got no place to go. I'm home about it, just me and my radio. In misbehaving, saving my love. I check on the secrets I was waiting for place to go. I'm home about it, just you and my misbehaving, saving my love. I'll let you guys get started now. Sorry, I can't hear what this is being said, if anything. That was awesome. Oh, thank you. Thanks for letting me play. I really appreciate it. It's really hard to find places to actually play in front of people, even if it's just over here. So I do appreciate the chance. So thank you very much. And I also appreciate your involvement in local politics. So thank you for doing that. Sounds great. Thank you. And yeah, Sam, that was awesome job. That was really awesome. Appreciate you, man. Thanks, Kevin. Absolutely. All right. So on to the meeting. Let's pull up the agenda here. Okay, so who on the steering committee is present? We've got Patrick Johnson. We've got Barbara McGrew. We've got Tony Reddington. We've got Jess Hyman. We've got Molly. And we've got anybody else. I think that might be it. Yeah, so we are the steering committee for wards two and three. We put this thing on once a month. And if you'd like to be part of it or have any questions about it, please feel free to reach out to any of us where all our emails are on the agenda. And that's that item. And then our next meeting will be Thursday, March 11th. We meet on the second Thursday of every month, most months we usually take off in the summer. But it's a pretty good rule to go by recordings of this meeting can be found on channel 17, aka CCTV, their YouTube channel or the website. The link to both of those are on the agenda, which is hosted on CEDOS website. And also a heads up that we are off. We are allocated the same amount of money in our budget as we did last year, which is $2,500 per ward. And we are seeking applicants for these community grants. It's it's a reimbursement based grant. So check out our website. We have the or CEDOS website for the guidelines for what qualifies and apply. The deadline is looking like it's going to be by the next meeting or or something to that effect. Basically, next month, the details will be on the website. I don't have the exact detail on me. Kevin, it's going to be March 26th. Thank you. A month and a half for folks to come up with proposals. Cool. So you'll have some time after next month's meeting to get those applications in. Yeah. And I'll pop the link to the application in the chat. So folks can click right on that if they want. Cool. I didn't think there was a chat this time around. There is no chats tonight. You can email me at L-D-A-U-G-H-E-R-T-Y at Burlington.gov. I'm going to put my I'm going to rename my CEDOMPS as my email so anybody who's viewing this can check that out. Awesome. And no Zoom bomb in this evening for us. I'm not sure what this item is referring to about the translation funding request. Jess, could you take it away? Sure. So as folks remember last, sorry about that. So there's been a request from all the NPAs to help support the translations, the interpretation that happened at the last, the AllWords NPA that was earlier this week. So there was a mayoral forum and a ballot discussion that was done through the AllWords. And Carol Livingston and Aidan Hajji had put together a team of interpreters to do live interpretation of that, those discussions. And they're seeking funding from all the wards to help pay for that because interpretation can be costly. And so the wards two and three contributed money for a similar service that they provided before town meeting day. And so they've requested funding from the NPAs to help support the most recent translation efforts. And Carol, I don't think, is Carol on the call or on Zoom tonight? I don't see her. She sent a little bit of information that I'll share and then we can, someone can make a proposal to see whether we would like to support this with NPA funding. So they had six interpreters who are being paid $60 an hour for four hours translating at the forum. And this was a live translation. And so the forum was, the AllWords NPA forum was live streamed. And so they did some simultaneous translation and those were also recorded so people could view them later. And so this was the only election forum in the cycle that was offering translation services so as providing an opportunity for non-English speakers to get more information and become more engaged in the political process. So Carol is requesting some funds. And I think for the last time that we supported this, I think the request was for $200 from each ward to support this. I'll just put a proposal out that we provide $100 from each ward to help fund this really important service. Tony. Hi. I'm a resident of ward two, Tony Reddington. And hereby make a motion that ward two, you know, allocate $100 for the translation purposes and that efforts be made to just to promote the availability of that, those translated, that translated forum to our residents here in ward two. And I'll do the same thing for ward three. All right. So I'm not sure how to conduct this in any way more comfortable with putting on the mic. Tony, you live in ward three now, not in ward two. I'm sorry. I meant ward three. Okay. I was in ward two. You're correct. Thank you for correcting me, Barbara. I live in ward two. I will propose what Tony said from ward two. Okay. And then if it helps, we would then move to discussion if anybody needs any clarification or discussion on the items and then those present. I guess we could vote on it, but I'm not sure how that would work would zoom and open. Yeah, especially like each person can raise their hand using the raise the hand function at the bottom of their screen. That's the way that I've seen some people do it. Or you can unmute them temporarily and take a voice vote and see if there are any objections. Anybody can unmute themselves in right now in this context. Okay. Okay. Raise their hand feature. Do you want to just vote on it then? Sorry, Kevin, I don't mean to. No, please take the mic on this one. Move the agenda item on. If there are, how about this, are there any objections? We're approving $200, $100 from each ward to pay for translators. All in favor. You can either raise your hand or raise your hand on the click button thing. And then that's good. I think one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five. Yep. We got most people. I see no objections. Would anybody like to object via the raise hand item? They can do that now. That would be fair. Okay. We will wait for the receipts and then file them to CDO for or the proper authorities to pay. Kevin, sorry. No, no, no, sorry. No apologies needed. That was, thank you for taking, taking care of that. All right. So we are a little bit early for public comment, but we can just get that rolling anyway unless anyone else on the steering committee has an announcement that we want to put out there. Karen, if you don't know, it was announced this afternoon that the written, written variant of the coronavirus is probably here in Burlington. The way the wastewater testing shows that they're going to confirm it, but we just all have to be doubly careful. That's all. All right. Okay. So let's open it up for public comment. If no one objects, please raise your hands, either physically or with the Zoom function. Got two minutes to say whatever's on your mind, whatever you want to communicate to the group. Leah? Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. I've been saying this at all the MPAs. The way that we're running the MPAs right now is to just move anybody who's not a participant or a panelist, someone that would be talking like a presenter, in the attendees list. For any Q and A's, they can use the raise their hand function and all unmute them. It brings them right up on the screen and they can talk to y'all. But just in the interest of Zoom security, that's what we're doing after the speakout time. So the speakout time is everyone is able to talk and then I just move them over to the attendees for the meeting. Great. Cool. Cool. I mean, the chat will be missed, but it's better than the wall of Mexican hacker text or whatever that was. I forget what they called themselves as a group. I think it was something like that. Anyway. Yeah, so we are still early for public comment. I really don't want to move on from that before at least that time, just in case anyone shows up just for that part and then to leave. I think that's kind of a typical move I've seen. We could, if we were moving along, we could go back to it if someone specifically chimed in later. Try to accommodate. That's a good point. Good point. You're the boss though. Jess? I'll make a quick comment. Just I wanted to draw people's attention to the fact that Channel 17 Town Meeting TV has a great collection of candidates' forums, ballot item forums, and other election-related videos on their website for viewing. And so we'll be talking about some of these things today, but to dig deeper into any of this content and to get ready for Town Meeting Day, that's a great resource. So I just wanted to put a plug in for Town Meeting TV. Cool. Anna, that's a good call. Thank you. And Barbara? I just wanted to say that if you have Comcast, it is no longer Channel 17. It's 1087. And it took me a long time to find it. So 1087 is now Community Channel 17 TV. All right. That's a lot of channels. 1087? Wow. What else is in that band? Wow. I don't know, but it goes up to the 8000s. Wow. That's wild. I guess one more thing before we move on. We can always come back to public comment, but I really want to just reiterate for anyone who's listening in the future to this recording that the purpose of the NPA funding grants is for if you have any idea to benefit your community and in some way could also promote the NPA, that's you would be the ideal candidate for this money. Apply for however much you need or would like and it goes to a vote and we decide as a group where this money goes. In the past there's been, I mean, last year was really the first year that we had this significant amount of money that could go to anything other than the dinner. And it went to, you know, just ordering and distributing masks. It went to, I was the one that Trav Friar did, if anyone remembers that one. He had some events and he also promoted the NPA. He did a repair. I think electronics repair thing. Yes, that's right. The vendor has traditionally gotten money to help feed, which we hopefully will do something this year outdoors in the park. Of course, we're going to play it by ear. A good thing to remember is we don't pay an individual. We try not to pay an individual. It is for a project specifically. If somebody was going to make posters and stick them around town, great thing to do. Jeannie was doing the ramble, the North End Ramble. We contributed money to help that because that actually is, dovetails nicely what we do at our NPAs promoting it. This year she's going to actually ask for a bunch more because they're going to become their own independent organization separate. And we will be needing a lot of, I think we're going to end up taking over our own space when we get back into it as an NPA, which means we'll be buying a sound system and so forth and so on. So things like that, if the people present want to know what they can do with the money, what it is intended for. And it is only really intended for wards two and three. Activities within that that help promote public participation in NPAs specifically. If I'm not correct, feel free. Anybody who knows better than I, Joe. That sounds right. And all the guidelines, Molly put up on our website and it's on CEDO's website and it's everywhere, but I just wanted to verbally just extend it and you put it well. So 645, public comment going once, going twice. Tony? Well, we do not want to let it go by. We get our two minutes. I want to talk a little bit about North Street. A long time ago, and far away, the Arts and Business Network of the All-North End was talking about North Street. And at the time, we were in the middle of doing a corridor plan on North Avenue, which was completed in 2014. And then the next priority is, I think, most of us know, was the North and South Wyniske Corridor. And that has been, that study was completed. And so what I'm going to suggest is that we talk to among ourselves and to our counselors about seeking a corridor plan for North Street, specifically beginning at North Avenue and certainly going over at least a North Union Street, if not a little beyond. The reason this is worthwhile, the questions back in those days were, what could we do to make the streets safer? What could we do to make it so that it would be more business friendly, that there could be more social activity? Of course, we have the Barnes School there, and we have a lot of other activities. So anyway, the nutshell, I think that's worth doing. What we found in the Champlain Parkway Environmental Justice work, which is still ongoing, we found that you can take, we found that the safety and the walkability of the street has very much to do with the intersections. And that we can now, since we have new technology, we can make the intersections, which are now really unsafe. We have high crash locations at North and North Avenue, North Champlain, North and North Union, and I've missed one of them as one other one, where we have at least an injury and a half every year, and other property damage crashes. So anyway, I think that's the next thing. After the election, maybe we can get going and get a study of our shopping street or institution street here in the old North End. Done. All right. Thank you, Tony. Anyone else for public comment? Barbara? Patrick, a public announcement. The amended Burlington Town Center, or whatever they're calling it, will come before the Development Review Board on March 3rd at 5 o'clock. So if anybody's interested in going to that hearing, that's when it is. Will there be any opportunity for public comment there? You know, I know that John Franco was intending to comment, but he's, you know, we have a case and maybe he has some special status. I'm not sure how they run their readings, but I think so. Good to know. Thank you. Anybody else before we move on? Go on, it's going twice. Okay. So next up on the agenda is Jenna Olson with the Water Works, I believe. Water Resources Division, yes. Water Resources, yes. I was being a little bit playful, but yeah, please take it away. I am not allowed to share my screen, which I need. Oh, we can take care of that. Yeah, just one sec. You should be able to share now. Thank you. Okay, so my name is Jenna Olson and I am the City's Water Resources Policy and Programs Manager. I'm joined tonight by Jessica LaVallette. Jessica serves as our Customer Care and Finance Manager in the Water Resources Division, or the Water Works. We came to all of you in the fall of 2019, as you may recall. It feels like it was a lifetime ago by now to talk about this water rate affordability study and, you know, where we were headed. We were planning on coming back to all of you in the spring of 2020, but obviously the pandemic hit and everything got kind of put on hold. So we are revamping our outreach efforts to bring our next phase of this project to everyone, presenting to the NPAs and letting everyone know sort of where we landed in terms of an actual proposal for our rates and fees and what to expect. So for a bit of context, the impetus behind this project was that, you know, we have to steward our water resources infrastructure, right? You know, the pipes, the pumps, the plant, all of those things require some level of stewardship and there's a cost associated with that. And that making sure that we're providing that level of stewardship is securing access to clean water for everyone. But as the costs of that stewardship increase, that money has to come from somewhere and that can negatively impact the affordability of our services. And so when we started this project, one of the first things we asked ourselves was how much does it really cost to provide water service in Burlington? Who is using the water and is everybody paying their fair share of those costs? And so our distribution system has to be sized at a certain level to provide adequate flow to all of our customers. But each customer class is unique and doesn't place the same demand on our water system. The infrastructure to provide the basic level of demand so that innermost circle you see on your screen, that's just normal residential and commercial water usage. Now our pipes would be a certain size and all the fixed costs for the chemicals, the electricity, the pumps, all the things needed to provide that clean safe drinking water would also be finite. But what happens when we add things like watering lawns and gardens or, you know, peak demand from commercial users? What we can see is that our distribution system then has to be that little bit larger, so that second circle in order to provide water for both that basic level of demand and those extra capacity flows. Now the final circle, the biggest circle you see, represents fire protection and that's how larger system has to be in order to provide flow for all of the private fire services in the city if needed. Now all buildings have all buildings have a dedicated water service or domestic water service to provide flow and that pipe is typically one or two inches in diameter. However, a pipe that size wouldn't be adequate for most institutions, commercial buildings and large multi-use unit residential buildings that have fire protection needs. So they either have a separate larger service pipe to provide fire service and retain the small domestic service pipe or they have one incoming pipe that's sized for the fire protection and then the domestic water service is tapped off inside and reduced down to the appropriate diameter for those base level needs. Now as we mentioned before, as the size of our pipes increase so do those fixed costs and going back to our original question, are all customers paying a proportional amount of the cost to provide their property with water? The answer today is no because everyone pays the same rate even though certain customer classes require our distribution network to be inherently larger and they're the ones who benefit from it. So I'm going to hand things over to Jeff since she's going to go over some of the proposed or all the proposed rate and policy changes for now and then I will loop back at the end and just talk about our next steps and other opportunities to participate. Hi thank you Jenna. So we have six proposed rate and policy changes that are all considered standard best practice within the water utility industry. Additionally these changes support our goals of ensuring the affordability of water while improving the financial health sustainability and revenue stability of the funds. The changes are meant to help ensure our customer classes are paying for services in a manner equitable to the burden they place on the system. You're going to notice some items in green here these are changes made to our proposal since last March in an effort to mitigate the impact on commercial customers while still maintaining the affordability benefits for our residential customers. The first one here is fixed charges by meter size. We are proposing a fixed fee for both water and wastewater that escalates based on meter size beginning with five eighths inch meters up to our largest size of six inch. We have always assessed the fixed charge on meter size at one inch or larger but this will be the first time since 1996 that five eighths and three quarter inch meters are proposed to receive one. The five eighths inch fee is currently proposed to be three dollars and thirty four cents for water and four dollars and sixty eight cents for wastewater. Here is a modification from the spring where we were able to achieve a lower charge for most meter sizes by modifying the calculation basis and reducing the percentage of our cost recovery. The second item is the lifeline rate tier. Currently we have a uniform rate structure so where everyone is charged the same amount for hundred cubic foot which is equivalent to seven hundred and forty eight gallons. The introduction of a residential lifeline rate is allows us to define the water needed for essential life activities as four hundred cubic feet and charge less for usage under that threshold. So the current rate for water is four dollars and forty four cents and we're proposing a tier one rate of two dollars and forty nine cents for consumption less than four hundred cubic feet and a tier two rate of six dollars and twenty three cents for usage over that threshold. We chose four hundred cubic feet because it's the median usage in Burlington and in calendar year twenty nineteen fifty four percent of Burlington customers fell into that usage category. The next one here is Jenna discussed earlier as class based rates. The stream each customer class puts on our water system is inherently different so it doesn't make sense to continue charging everyone the same rate. This change allows us to recognize that difference while still providing support to our residential rate payers. We are proposing that multifamily mixed use and commercial properties be charged a rate of four dollars and thirty six cents which is a midway point between the residential tiers. This does provide some relief because they are typically larger consumers and would actually pay more of eligible for the lifeline rate tiers. Our previous recommendation did have mixed use and commercial customers at a higher volumetric rate but we've decided for the upcoming fiscal year to leave them at that lower rate to mitigate any pandemic impacts. The wastewater volumetric rate is proposed to go from six twenty to six oh eight for everyone. This rate is the same for all customer classes because volume is not a primary cost of service driver for wastewater however the strength of wastewater is and that is why we can assess a monthly surcharge when an industrial user exceeds the with strength set in the city ordinances. Up next is irrigation rates. We are proposing a higher rate for water use solely for irrigation or cooling towers but have allowed an exception for community based gardening initiatives like BACG in the interrail. Private fire protection charges. This change introduces a monthly fee for customers with a private hydrant or fire service that escalates based on pipe diameter. Conceptually this goes back to our cost of service analysis where we are paying more to have a water system capable of serving should those properties need it. As you can see in green we have decided to phase this fee in over five years instead of assessing the full fee in year one. The water resources assistance program so this is the change that I'm personally most excited about because it has the potential to really make a difference in the lives of our customers. We are proposing to waive the fixed fee entirely for residents of single family properties who can demonstrate that they are at or below 185% of the federal poverty level. Here we also see a modification from the spring where we've expanded the eligibility to include any senior citizens living in single family homes along with nonprofit housing developments providing affordable or senior living units. Next slide Jenna. So this is a quick snapshot of the customer impacts of the new rate structure. It's important to remember that future bills will be will vary based on a variety of factors like the actual consumption the final approved rates the eligibility for assistance programs but we did create a model that uses consumption data from 2019 to calculate the estimated financial impact for every account and to go along with that we developed an account impact summary request form for customers to fill out if they'd like to receive that projection. This will allow us to have a discussion about why a bill might be higher or lower but also this customer is an opportunity to learn about our available credit and review programs and the related eligibility requirements. Initiatives like applying for a RAP or stormwater credit along with requesting a meter sizing review or implementing conservation strategies can all be considered and completed in advance of the proposed rate changes. We will also be including data on our post post COVID consumption trends in our responses because the pandemic has significantly altered how water is being used. We've seen an average increase in residential consumption of about 10% and a decrease on the commercial side of about 30% when compared to the previous year. Next slide. So this is an overview of the customer assistance program we're proposing. It's going to be the very first rate pair assistance initiative for water resources. We intend to leverage existing state and federal benefit programs as our qualifying criteria in order to limit the administrative burden associated with developing our own income verification process. So this means that rate pairs who already participate in a program like Lifeline, Three Squares, rental assistance through Section 8 can apply and just simply use their proof of enrollment to be qualified for RAP for one year. Or in the case of senior citizens providing proof of their age will meet the eligibility threshold. We're open to accepting other programs so we're hoping to get feedback from customers if they don't qualify for one of those but they're already enrolled in something else we can definitely take a look at that and use that as well. One of the more difficult challenges we face with implementing an assistance program is how to provide relief to renters who don't receive a water bill. Ultimately there's no way to guarantee that a landlord would pass any savings along and we're certainly not alone as many water utilities struggle with how to reach tenants in a meaningful way. We may not have an answer for that problem today but we certainly aren't giving up and hope to address it with future initiatives. Speaking of future initiatives we've begun developing some other assistance programs that address infrastructure and conservation needs. These proposals include offering grant funding for condition assessments of sewer laterals, availability of no or low interest loans for replacement of water services, or sewer laterals and along with availability of real-time water data to monitor usage, get text message alerts if your bill is higher than you think it should be that sort of thing, and providing free tools to implement stormwater management or practices like rain barrels. These are not all going to be ready to roll out in July but we're actively working towards them and we'll welcome also ideas about other things that people think would be good for the infrastructure and conservation assistance programs. Back to John. Great, so we did we did have to scale the presentation back a little bit just in consideration of time. It looks like we will have a little bit of time potentially to answer questions at the end but just to go over the next steps. So we'll be doing our outreach between January and March of this year. That will be all of these NPA presentations. We have been we've gone to the the Board of Finance took the DPW commission and we have one more NPA to reach and then we will be hosting an open house public meeting for all of our ratepayers in mid-March so stay tuned for that announcement. We also have a really thorough website right now so that link is at the top and I can make sure that it goes out with any ward meeting minutes. We'll be doing our continuous improvement work between March and July so drafting our Water Read Affordability program policy and making any needed ordinance changes, excuse me, incorporating feedback from all of our stakeholders, you know, and making it all the required updates to our billing system. We'll be seeking our city council and mayoral approvals of our rates and you know the wrap and the rate and fee structure between April and June and then the the new rates and fee structure are set to become effective July 1 of 2021 meaning they will be reflected in Residence August bills. So again we do have looks like a few minutes for questions. We can take one or two questions maybe if the the Steering Committee is okay with that but otherwise feel free to reach out and ask questions to us directly or visit that website. Beautiful yeah and anybody have any questions we absolutely have time just raise your hand either either physically or with the Zoom function. Can you stop screen steering so we can see each other? Sure, thank you. There we go. Tony? Quick comment on the wastewater. I talked to a lawyer who was involved today in the various efforts to control phosphorus going into the lake and basically the cities and the state ran away from the whole issue. So Burlington along with other municipalities are throwing heavy loads of phosphorus and we are basically destroying the lake but other than that life is fine. It's not entirely accurate. I'd be more than happy to talk about that more in another venue but we were actually going through our long-term control plan today to address combined sewer overflows and are in the process of finalizing our integrated water quality plan which is an extensive cleanup plan for Lake Champlain and it includes substantial upgrades and changes to our wastewater treatment facilities and our infrastructure. I must say that that's not relevant. The point is that the state withdrew its regulatory oversight of this so it's not what Burlington does or doesn't do it's the fact that the statewide policy for all municipalities and for the load of phosphorus going into the lake is essentially uncontrolled. Okay, I'd love for you to clarify that at another time because I'm not sure what policy that you're referring to because there are still extensive regulations so I'm not sure. So we can talk about that elsewhere if you'd like. Yeah, absolutely. So Tony do you have contact info? I don't need it. I talked with the Conservation Law Foundation that was involved in all the court cases and they've specifically pointed to Burlington as getting a full exemption from any requirements. Anything that's happening at the city level is pretty much self-directed but is not connected to any overall scheme to control the amount of pollutants going into the lake and that the state ran away from that regardless of what the the current discussion is at the city at the public works. Thanks. That's an accurate statement but thank you for your feedback. I appreciate it. Yeah, you should connect in some way. It sounds like there's some unresolved stuff. Molly, well that's not Molly but yeah. Please go. Oh, okay. Hey, it sounds like fire protection is a huge driver and cost and I'm assuming that a lot of commercial buildings are required to have this fire protection to meet building codes. Do you guys have any information about that? Is there some way we could make it so commercial buildings could have a fire protection system that's less impactful on our water system? That's a good question for Jess. She may be able to Is there a way for it to be less impactful? I mean, I think typically a building has a pipe that's sized in order to protect it from, you know, if there was a fire. So I think what we're trying to do is, you know, develop a fee structure so that it is a little bit less impactful to those commercial folks. So they're not having, you know, such a burden if they do have that fire service. Right now we have about 500 accounts that have fire services in Burlington out of the 10,000 and we're still like going over that data right now. But in terms of, you know, if you have a fire system, we still have to be able to provide you water. So the distribution system has to be, you know, big enough to be able to handle that sort of thing. And maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, but if you want to. And I guess the other the other thing I would just say is that the fire service lines are sized based on engineering calculations to provide a certain amount of demand. So the system has to be sized a certain a certain way based on the number of residential units, number of bedrooms, things like that. So I mean, it's certainly something that we can ask our engineering team about. But I think typically there is an there's an engineering basis for how the fire service is sized. Other questions. Right. Yeah, we've got time for one more. Yeah. Barbara. All right. This is not apropos of the presentation. But my water is coming out cloudy half the time. And do you know anything about that? I'm assuming it's not harmful. Typically cloudiness in the water is air in the lines. So when you draw a glass of water and let it sit, does the cloudiness dissipate? Um, I don't wait. I put it back in the sink. Yeah, I mean, you might want to try that. I'm certainly happy, you know, offline or if you want to contact us to get to your address and see if there's been any work in the area, if there's been any main breaks or things like that that would have contributed. But typically it's air. You would want to if you see that just draw that glass and let it sit for a minute or two and see if it actually clears out. That would be the most common reason for cloudiness. I don't know if you've noticed any other changes in your water quality, where you are, pressure issues, anything like that? No, and I thought it was that. But this is my first winter in Burlington for a long time. And I thought it's a winter. Sorry. I would definitely try that. And I'm happy to you know, speak with you more if that doesn't take care of it. We can go over some other, you know, investigative things that we put you touch with our water quality operators as well. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you guys for your time. We appreciate the spot in the agenda. And again, if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out to us directly, but we will be in touch with information on our next public public comment opportunity. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah, thank you for being here. I would struggle to find any other service that's more vital than water, maybe air, you know. So thank you for doing what you do. And it's also a breath of fresh air to not hear about rates going up for the average fault amongst COVID-19 and everything else kind of going up. It's cool that like a very vital thing is being looked after. So thank you. Absolutely. Have a great night, everybody. Take care. You too. Okay. So moving on to the next thing, which is the mayoral and city council candidate forum. So who do we have here this evening? We've got Perry. We've got Kevin. We've got Will. We've got Tiki. And anyone I'm missing? So Kevin, this is just an opportunity for those candidates who didn't participate last month to introduce themselves. So it's an opportunity for Kevin and Will and Peg should be joining us. Kevin, I don't know if he's the only other person here from the mayoral race. Mind if I win first, Kevin? Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Okay. Listen, hopefully this isn't redundant because I just found out I had five minutes and so I wrote a little bit. You know, I write all my own speeches and stuff like that. So let me do my best. All right. This is the most important election of your life without a doubt. I've been around here for a long time. Vote for who you want to win. Don't let anybody convince you to vote for who you think will win or along a party line just because I'm here by calling a live in person debates immediately and have notified all new stations. I'm willing to debate all the way until elections. Lack of stat reporting and true environmental respect takes this city. Follow your money. You'll find out it's buried in the pit in a Superfund site. Many have heard about the amputees I've interviewed this past weeks, including the president's president Biden. I have been around since refugees and immigrants migrated here from Bosnia Vietnam. Many reside here from both sides of conflicts within their own countries to call themselves natives to the soil that we stand on. Cubans taught me how to buy wriggle free shirts, for instance. Over the years, old Burlington became much more diverse and the need for further language interpretation rose. For that reason, I hired a religion and culture major to babysit my son. She explained to me the struggle she was having starting comfort business. With her drive, I have no question she'll be successful in her endeavors. Yet others have struggled with how to cooperate in a city in a recession and a pandemic. It's not the reason we got here. With vacant rental housing from out of state residents who have vanished, whereas leadership is mainly focused on rental properties, businesses go through the roof for people that actually reside in the citizens. Yet businesses that share responsibility for the quality of life have no customers left so they shut their doors. Now the people that have desired to own properties and save what little to have to start a business to make this city thrive and flourish once again are stuck looking for overpriced rentals. That's how homeless is done. Whereas high schools, the high schools have been targeted to pay rent until cows come home. This could all be changed through the leadership that desires to take us out of an intentional downward spiral and into a place where communities know each other regardless of faith and ethnicity. We attend the same gatherings. We trade ideas. Money's raised. Tax base shifts from the renter to the surplus of funds obtained through positive business. This is how the poor got rich. Not everybody wants that for you. In a cult-like leadership, be careful who you're voting for. You're not voting for the same candidate in a different suit. The sense of community that so many people from all over the world come to enjoy will return. Nurses, fire department, public works, police security, doctors, teachers, professors, students, homeless, bus drivers, bus riders. The sense of pride you take in working to enjoy your leisure time will be returned to you, the rightful owners of the city. I'm sure that I'm the most qualified for that job that, aside from food and a small rent, I'm willing to work for free. I seek to strengthen bonds. If you feel like you've been wronged by the city, there's no question that I will advocate for you. Advocacy work is in my blood. For employees, businesses, patients, at-risk youth, these are strong suits that I have a long history and they build communities. When businesses leave, tax burden goes to citizens. When activities slow, youth become at risk. Right now, I see homes being assessed at the worst time. It takes a village, and when vacancies disappear, communities will resurface. Crime is reduced through activity in a positive light. Whether your business is Sudanese or Ukrainian-owned, we encourage that diversity in ways previous leadership pretended to. Brazilian-owned, Cuban-owned, we need food, health, exercise, and reliable business owners who feel they are getting a fair shake. When expenses are paid by private kickbacks as tax payers, one way or the other, you are funding the bill. Affordable housing, local employment, eat more local organic garlic from the city market co-op, and the good workers over there. Stay healthy. Bring rents down by soliciting currently residing Burlington residents. Champlain EDU students, UVM, will enable the people to start businesses and own homes. This is our citizen base. Think about why a beautiful Burlington High School would be targeted for transit over to a building you should own but don't. My finance reports are simple. I've paid for my own campaign, about $1,200. There will be plenty of community building events to support community growth. Music and arts, the population is extremely diverse. I intend for leadership to finally reflect that value, appointed leadership. Burlington has become exclusionary rather than inclusionary. From the lake to the closing of the memorial auditorium to the destruction of everything we value, I intend to clean it up. The education system will flourish for me as I have extensive paperwork on how to assess those children in need as it's as simple as asking for help. Taking a good look into the mirror, remember this is your city. Take it back and vote. In person, wear a mask. Willem is on a path to ownership and actual proven leadership through extreme education. Working with colleges, hospitals, municipal workers, people that have gone neglected and shipped to the next town over. Those are the homeless Puerto Rican and Native American Greek gentlemen, the amputees that I interviewed. This is what I specialize in. I know that I hear a lot about education, yet we consult everything out need for having an educated mayor, which I am extremely educated, but we consult all of these things out. We need a leader that knows how to communicate in ways we have been failed in recent years. I will bring that to the citizens. I care for so dearly. And I'm at IG Twitter. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Will. And let's stick with it. I cut it close. Oh, that was, yeah. Yeah, right on the money. That was my best one yet. Thank you for your activity, all your contributions. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I have definitely been involved around here. And please note, guys, I've definitely called for debates in person. I've notified every news station. Thank you. Things are a bit crazy right now. I was just in person with a bunch of customers next door. I hear you, man. Thank you, guys. You got it. You got this time. So let's stick with the mayoral race. We've got Kevin and we've got Patrick here, it looks like. So I don't flip a coin. Say, Kevin, I'm going to be a little name favorite. Okay. Yeah. I grew up with the last name starting with W. I'm used to being at the end of the list. My name is Kevin McGrath. I'm a longtime resident of the third ward and I'm running for mayor. And the focus of my candidacy is going to be governmental reform and social justice reform in Burlington and how it relates to achieving a better life for all the citizens. So I'll read you my brief mission statement and some of my platform. The purpose of my candidacy is to work for the establishment of governmental systems of equal protection, respect in there, and then attempt to ensure that these citizens work for all citizens and residents of Burlington, Vermont. And I think that's important because in my opinion, the state of Vermont and the state of Burlington does not equally protect all citizens of different classes and different ethnicities. My goal as mayor is to create continuous improvement systems of merit, direct democracy, and critical thinking that actually solve problems. Create an atmosphere of racial justice that works for the good of the entire community. Work to create livable neighborhoods and end the unaffordability by design policies in the city. For social and criminal justice reform proposals, I'm proposing a statewide legislative ban on the use of out-of-state and for-profit prisons to house inmates from Vermont. The demilitarization and de-escalation of tensions between law enforcement and the residents in the city of Burlington. Changing the concept of law enforcement more to a public safety force to ensure the respect of all residents. Work for a grandfathered residency requirement for law enforcement so that they live in the communities that they serve. That's a big problem. For governmental proposals, reform proposals, I'd like to propose a Burlington city charter change to a full-time city council. I think this is very important. I think we need a full-time city council paid, full-time city council that has half as many people as now, seven people, that works with the governor, with the mayor. The mayor actually sits on the council and decides ties. We really need to look at reforming the planning process in the city and the community and economic development processes. These processes are currently controlled by special interest. Address the issues of special interest to corrupt government processes. Government, less ad hoc government, more direct democracy and less adjunct government. That's why I'm proposing an actual full-time paid city council that can work with the NPAs and things like that. Work for social justice and the rights of dignitaries who rely on earned income from the negative effects of excessive wealth concentration, which I think is a major issue in Burlington. Basically people who value work and work for a living are being, their lives are being stripped mind by people who are just interested in concentrating wealth. I'd like to see some education reform in Vermont. I'd like to see a statewide state university, Vermont State University that works closely with high school students and gives Vermont better skills and opportunities to create a stronger Vermont. The University of Vermont does not provide any skills. It's essentially a private college. Use the moneys from Vermont State Government that go to the University of Vermont and redirect those to a Vermont State University. Vermont also needs property tax reform. The president plan has been a complex disaster that greatly favors wealth over earned income. That's a theme in my my candidacy is that Vermont and especially Burlington favors people of wealth over people who do work. Act 60 needs to be better in Vermont, not just more expensive. The problems of Act 60 we're supposed to address, they still exist. Act 60 is too complex and too convoluted. It's more about the concentration of power by special interest groups that is about education. We really need to come up with simpler solutions, more direct democracy. Convolution breeds corruption in my opinion. As far as a charter change? Okay, thank you. Excuse me, point of information. Kevin, I just want to say one thing. My email address is Will Emmons at gmail. Will Emmons from air at gmail.com. Could you hit me on an email so I have your contact information? Yes, I will. Will Emmons from air at gmail.com. Thank you, Kevin. And I have to say that I agree with a lot of things that Will said tonight. Thank you, Kev. I think we're on the same page about a lot. I look forward to speaking to you in the future. All right. Thank you, Kevin. And Patrick, wait. These are in five minutes. Talk about whatever you like. I probably won't take the full five. I tend not to be too wordy, but I did write something up. Thanks, Will. Thanks, Kevin. It's kind of funny that the three people with the most common sense are the only ones here tonight. I like that, honestly. My reason for being here is because I see Burlington headed towards a downward spiral. Our current administration lacks any sort of transparency and accountability. Our mayor is so against abolishing the police but can't stand with our officers to veto the proposals that actively destroy the police force. Now he argues with Max back and forth, blaming him for the bill that he allowed to pass. Max on his website promises to aid the elderly and children in the community but doesn't promise them protection. Burlington in the last year has been in the news for a sex trafficking ring, a police chief who hides behind fake social media to harass citizens with the approval of the mayor, and now an active shooter situation. And even after all of this, our city leadership refuses to consider that dismantling our police force is reckless. These are the two front runners of our mayoral race right now. One who has a shady history of obfuscating financial issues, covering for wrong doing, and a primary focus on fixing things that aren't broken. And another who keeps running on a platform of complete hypocrisy with the intention to put in place well-meaning policy that will inevitably only work to increase the cost of living and barriers to housing. Ali, on the other hand, I agree with on many things. I respect a lot of his views but we do disagree on one key thing. That major thing is moving the F-35s from Burlington. Not only could this hurt the economy but the chance that the Air Force packs their bags and takes their emergency services and airport funding with them is one I just don't want to take because that could mean losing the airport. These are the issues we should be debating. We shouldn't be sitting here humoring the arguments for and against the problems that the very people in this race helped to create. The first step in problem solving is identifying the causes. Why aren't we discussing how the gentrification of City Hall Park was made a priority over fixing our roads? Why are we hardly discussing all the businesses and residents that haven't found a home in the pit? Because our mayor whose background is in development failed to see the project through while still adamantly refusing to admit that we're losing revenue because of it. To top it all off, literally millions of gallons of raw sewage a year are dumped into our lake. A decade and yet no solution just grand promises of funding received. Violent crime and policing issues are receiving national attention right now and the city blames our police force then ensures more problems down the road by crippling their funding instead of providing them with more resources. When it comes down to it the reason I'm here is because I want to see Burlington succeed and I want to see Burlingtonian succeed but honestly the longer I run and the more people I talk to I see a lot of people that don't seem to want to see positive change. They just want, they want nice promises of possibly good things in the future. Thank you for having me and I cut this a little short so that I have some time if anybody has any questions. All right, does anyone have any questions for Patrick? I wanted to say one thing Patrick and the citizens here I've mentioned this on several debates. Fake Instagram account started in my name almost immediately when I gave the mayor's office my email address was willemansformayor at gmail.com my Instagram page was started willemansformayor. I'm not surprised. I reached out to them before I found out some of my information was on some paperwork and they won't they won't get rid of it so some of my information has just been released out there. I'm really not surprised. Yeah I've been hacked a lot under this. Believe me guys it's very very really happening in Brooklyn. I can believe it it's it's there and it's uh it's the way it goes. Peggy I saw your hand up the way it goes. I would like to say something about the F-35 switch I I have opposed for a long time and there's no reason to to think that we would lose the guard base because we lose the F-35s. There's there's not that there is a mission for the guard that is separate. We have we know that that that um that the Air Force itself in its in its environmental plan decided this wasn't the best place for it but Patrick Lay he was insistent that it be here and of course all the guys stick together as a congressional group when they do that and I I found it horrendous that Bernie who'd always made affordable housing his issue was willing to let go all that housing so. So is there a question for Patrick? I actually wasn't aware that of Lay Lay he's influencing that so I'm thank you for that. All right uh well his his time is actually up so unfortunately Kevin you should you too should just connect at a later time. Oh I just wanted to say something about what Peggy said about the F-35s okay. I think I I think that would be more appropriate for for another time. Okay fine yeah that's all right. We got a full agenda unfortunately I really don't want to get too lost in that we've we've spent a ton of time talking about the F-35 at this NPA. If you if you've had any uh any experience it's uh it's a well more topic. Yeah I understand that was a done deal from the beginning so anybody who thought that that wasn't going in is naive. I'm not I'm just I'm just saying that. Yeah yeah cool all right so um moving on to the city counselors that are uh that are vying for the central uh central district I believe. We've got Peggy and we've got Perry is here and tonight we're just making time for Peggy to introduce herself. Just Peggy okay cool I was just just listening off everyone everyone here but uh looks like yeah cool um well Tiki is here as well so so is Tiki night I thought um I I did speak last time so this is not my night this is for Peggy. Peggy was a late entry and we're just allowing people who did not have the opportunity last time. 10-4 sorry uh miss the memo uh Peggy please uh five minutes. Okay I am I'm Peggy Lures I've lived here since 1977 in the Old North End I am running to represent my neighbors and not a party I I would have to say my two main concerns are that the city be more aware of the future and plan for that that we not be doing the same old stuff of gentrification and and the kind of plans that everyone thought was the way to go and increase the tax space because we are going to be facing some tremendous um climate changes and and economic downfalls and a lot of things and I'm very concerned for ward three because this is one of the poorer wards in the city and I worked in the city for 10 years I was the head of the Burlington Women's Council and at the time that I worked for the city when I started burning was the mayor and then it was Clevelle and there was a Republican mayor in there and um there was a lot more concern and help afforded to this ward knowing that it was a ward that could you know use some assistance uh and relief uh for rents and so on so I'm very concerned that we that we take steps uh particularly in the built environment we're not being very forward or thinking or progressive on this level at all for example the city of Chicago demands that all large buildings have green roofs um we don't do anything like that I'd like to see a lot more emphasis on that and I would like to see I do like um I don't I'm not thoroughly familiar with it but I do like um understand that max had some ideas about um uh changing the tax space so there would be a more progressive tax basis like I mean even I I love that the water system is looking at it that way and and talking about you know decreasing some of the rates uh for some people over here who have less money I wish we'd do that with tickets too because I feel like a fine of seventy five dollars for some single mom on on welfare is like means less food whereas you know it makes very little difference to somebody who who makes over a hundred thousand dollars a year or something is not so I don't think that's a fair system um what else did I want to talk about I want to do just practical things that I have seen done you know just helping helping the neighborhood out like uh I think this was done during Clevelle's time of just bringing a great big dumpster to the neighborhood and telling people that they can come and and and and take care of things because it's a big deal uh and and expense getting rid of things in this town um and um I worked for 10 years in City Hall I uh during that time I helped we we got passed in ordinance to bring women into the trades uh because at that time we had looked at a we had a jobs and people study that looked at who were the poorest people in the city and they were and the top on that list was single moms so we were looking for ways to bring women out of poverty and um the trades were one of them and I happen to have a background as a carpenter I also have graduate studies in ecological design which I would bring to the table I have 10 years experience running and the women's council in City Hall and we did a lot of things we uh we we did helped get step up off the ground and we worked a lot with the CEDA office we got housing built for for single moms who are you know not built I'm sorry we got a place where single moms could have a two years of you know to get on their feet uh we had regular forums we ran a diversity film series to educate the community about the different kinds of people who are here and we always had people from those communities introducing the films and being part of it um what else could I say about what I want to do I care a lot both about the equity issues uh and income also racial justice I did work with the police uh during that time and one of the things that I thought we managed to do that was pretty amazing was we managed to get a person into the police department who looked over how the police dealt with domestic violence and that could be a model for you know having somebody check you know having somebody specifically designed to look at the racial um problems that we have had with the police but my main thing around the police would be to militarize the police for example when I did work in the city it was like we were doing what we were doing in Burlington we were also having a begin we also worked with the people who got the training change that the police uh academy because I think we have to demilitarize the police they have to have a different uh approach to how they're doing it and I also think we could diversify the budget so that some of it went to social workers or other people more equipped to handle people having mental illness and other breakdowns like that that don't need somebody to show up with guns thank you Peggy um yeah looking forward to you know voting day thank you for thank you for presenting and thank you for uh you know being here thank you for having me shoot you absolutely um let's uh for some reason there we go um all right so moving on we've got Brian Pine here to talk about uh the ballot items that are going to be on the ballot that's either going to show up in your uh in your mailbox or when you go to uh go to your voting place um he's he's our he's our city counselor and he's uh here to answer your questions and to give a brief overview Brian take it away okay great thanks Kevin uh thanks everyone for being here um I am the only uh war two three elected official that's not on the ballot um I was elected uh reelected last march uh and so I was uh I was vested with the um job the task of going through the questions that are on the ballot um I won't dwell on any of them but I'm prepared to talk about any one of them or or several if needed so there is a tax question number one regarding the schools I'll talk about each of these in more detail but I'm just gonna list them right now uh there are four charter changes there is one question to opt in for retail cannabis sales and there's one advisory question sort of about energy justice I guess is how I would describe it um the school tax increase is a um is one that is is spelled out in the language that's on the ballot is what is required by the Vermont Agency of Education so that is is worded in a way that I find very um opaque or obtuse it's really quite hard to understand what's what's actually happening when you read this question um because it does say that the uh equalized per pupil spending will increase by uh x percentage which is 0.89 percent however the tax increase for most taxpayers is is actually 6 percent that's because a full 5.1 percent of the increase um is is due to the fact that our city has not reappraised property since 2004 2005 and that puts us out of compliance with the thing called the common level of appraisal and I won't get into explaining all that detail but let's just suffice to say that we're basically that we're paying a penalty through the through the taxation for not keeping up with reappraisal once you fall below a certain level it starts to hit pretty hard and that's what we're paying for uh in that tax increase so that's part of what's happening with our request uh the request on the ballot question number one regarding the school tax the next four questions are charter changes and for those who aren't familiar their charter is really like a municipal uh constitution whereas the code of ordinances is um those are your laws and basically in Vermont because we are what's called the Dillon rule state and that's just a term that um means that you have virtually no home rule you have no local control except for those issues that the state legislature has already given you authority for so you can only adopt things that the state legislature has given you approval and therefore we need to go to get their approval and essentially establish new state law for each one of these provisions i'm about to discuss so there's four charter changes without going to the voters and then to the legislature the city council could not take action on these items the first one shows up on the ballot as question number two it's essentially adds a position on the on the airport commission uh from Winooski which has sought a seat for quite some time and it has to add another Burlington representative so that there's an odd number of commissioners rather than the even number to avoid perpetual tie votes that that stymie the ability of that board to do its work i would just note that the airport commission like all city commission serves an advisory capacity the director of the airport is a mayoral appointee but that they review policies procedures they do review their budget they provide feedback on the performance of the general manager at the airport but they are advisory and that's the changed question number two regarding the airport question three is a question that is regarding regulation of thermal energy systems which i presented this information last night to some a group of constituents and someone said could you explain what is meant by thermal energy and i guess the best way to describe it is it's heating and cooling and so it is the the energy that is used to do space heating to do water heating and to cool buildings that's really what thermal energy systems are and essentially what happens in this question is it asks the voters shall the city have the authority to regulate thermal energy systems in both residential and commercial buildings and then it says to essentially through the amendment of a certain section of our code and it goes into exactly what this would include which is assessing a carbon impact or alternative compliance payment for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the city and then it goes on to say this is an important piece that i think has been lost in the debate you'll see an article i think in seven days today the print issue no assessment of carbon impact or alternative compliance payments shall be imposed unless previously authorized by a majority of the legal voters of said city voting on the question at any annual or special city meeting duly worn for the purpose so in other words plain english there isn't going to be any fee or tax or anything like that imposed until it is debated and brought to the voters again for a vote this is simply shall we have the authority to regulate thermal energy systems in residential and commercial buildings the main impetus for this is to move us toward our net zero goal which we are quickly running out of time and that's literal in on the planet but also in terms of taking our buildings and finding essentially the the political will to require that all new buildings essentially move off of fossil fuels no more new fossil fuel connections would be allowed under under what i the city council and the administration would like to see that all new buildings be essentially electrified and there's a lot of good reasons for that which i'm hopefully you're familiar with but if not we can talk more about that question number four i do this in the right order yes that was number three number four this is rank choice voting so it essentially just for city council would go into effect in march of 22 and a quick synopsis of rank choice voting is it's a voting system where when there is well first of all if there's only two candidates running for a seat rank choice voting doesn't come into effect and if there's more than two and any one candidate comes out of the election with 50 plus one rank choice voting doesn't get doesn't kick in it kicks in when there's more than two candidates and no one reaches the 50 threshold you then start going through and retabulating results and if i could do it simply i'll just say if there are three candidates seeking a city council seat like there are in this race today in our in word central district and i'm not going to use names because that just might make you know try and bias people but i'll just say candidate a and candidate b are the top two vote getters uh candidate c is the lowest vote getter candidate a and b stay in the race now this is when you have a runoff no one has gotten uh the 50 percent candidate a and b stay in the race candidate c is knocked out of the race but their ballot the ballots that the voters for candidate c chose candidate c as candidate is their first choice their second choice uh votes get counted retabulated and that determines the winner so that's that's sort of a quick you know quick and dirty description of how instant runoff or rank choice voting they're really the same thing we used to use the term instant runoff voting uh the purpose of this is to require that anyone who wins an election has have majority support what a concept so rather than allow someone with 40 percent of the vote plus one vote to essentially win when in fact uh you know nearly 59 out of every 100 voters preferred someone else this requires that the person clear the 50 threshold you know that's that's the purpose of rank choice voting only for city council in 2022 i believe if it's if it's adopted and goes through the legislature there will be a proposal coming out soon uh for the next mayoral race which would be 2024 but also have rank choice voting but that's that's down the road question number five is one that i've spent a good amount of time on myself as a counselor is just cause eviction propose charter change to provide protections for residential tenants from evictions without just cause um i would say in summary there are um a few just causes i would include and give you what those are uh non-payment of rent breach of lease breaking state or municipal law refusing to sign a new lease with reasonable changes um disturbing the piece of of others in the building or neighbors there's a number of things that qualify as just cause uh what are what are not going to be um just cause uh examples would be i just don't like the person i don't agree with them i don't i don't think their beliefs are um are beliefs that i'm comfortable with those are not reasons to um evict you need to have an actual just cause uh in order to perceive that eviction and you can't just tell someone your lease is up you need to move so that's that's a key part of just cause that um folks need to um to understand and think about is it essentially says once you're in an apartment as long as you follow the rules pay the rent and don't disturb the piece um you're going to have a level of protection that is currently only afforded to people who own property and that's a that's a big shift uh i know some folks think that's um perhaps a bridge too far uh and that's an area where we made you know part company but um at least from my perspective it's a level of protection that i think is warranted because it does provide residential stability the benefits of that accrue to both the household living there and to our community when people have um the stability of being able to set down routes keep their kids in the same schools or go to the same um clubs or religious organizations or go to the same parks that they've been um accustomed to there's a lot of benefits to this and i won't tend to be uh impartial um but i would say we did add some exemptions to sort of make this a more flexible more accommodating for property owners really uh if you have a multi-unit building of three units or less and you live uh in the building uh you would not be subject to this provision uh if you have in-unit rentals in other words you have a house and you have people living in the house with you this does not you're not subject to this provision as well and if you're taking a unit off the market or um moving a family member in or a unit needing some substantial rehabilitation would not be covered by uh by just cause under the proposal this will go to the voters and then of course going to the legislature that's a whole different story the Vermont legislature is not known for proving anything proposal any proposals that extend more rights to renters very very friendly to property rental property owners it was once proven that over 60 something percent of legislators in fact uh own rental property and so uh it has a very uncertain future once it reaches the legislature but a very strong showing from the voters of Burlington um will improve the outcomes um the next two questions uh one is very unusual i don't know what to call it it's neither an advisory question nor a charter change but the legislature passed a cannabis um law and one of the things they said and that is local government needs to ask their voters whether they would like to participate or opt in to this um uh retail cannabis sales and so that's question number six if you think Burlington should get into the uh allow for businesses to uh to open selling cannabis and cannabis products that's that question question seven the last question on the ballot is um an advisory question regarding climate justice in building decarbonization and what it says is i'll read it and then i'll try and give a cliff notes version shall the voters of the city of Burlington advise the city council and the mayor's administration in its regulation of thermal energy systems in residential commercial buildings to create policies programs and incentives focused on delivering the benefits the transition to clean energy to low and moderate income burlingtonians the black indigenous people of color and to otherwise disadvantaged community members so the idea there is let's let's transition but let's do it in a you know a a just way sort of the concept of just transition let's make sure that as we make this transition we're not leaving people behind or imposing undue financial burden on them let's do this in a way that that you know really lifts up and elevates the needs and voices of um those who are so often marginalized so i think i've run through the seven questions and uh kevin you can take it from there i guess or open it up right on that was awesome uh yeah anybody have any questions for brian patrick brian do you know of any examples where irv is currently working and in place as well as the the just cause eviction sure thanks patrick just a little bit of background so these aren't completely uh new ideas proposed in burlington yes absolutely um i'm really glad i listened to this radio program today actually it was about an hour long and it was a debate between paul burns from the month public interest research group also known as v perk and kurt right and they were debating the merits of uh rank choice voting and uh on came the um uh an advocate for rank choice voting from main who described that main is now using it for um all statewide races that they're for which they're allowed to use it and he actually said that when you add up all the municipalities that are using rank choice voting it's over nine million citizens are currently living in places that rank choice voting is the way uh elections are held so places that come to mind are cambridge massachusetts um i know that cambridge has it for all local elections um main there is a there's a rank choice system in effect in new york city but i have to admit i think it's quite nuanced and it has a a bit of an unusual wrinkle to it it may be just in in the primaries i don't know why that would be but it may be something that is done in primaries i'm not sure um the new york one but i do know that it's in effect and and it's been successful and is quite popular um in a number of places where it's been used um you know the local history i think is people often who felt like the mistakes that an administration which was successful in winning an election in in irv back in 2009 i think there's a conflation of what they thought was wrong with that administration and the voting system was used that allowed that that person succeeded in i think there's i think it's correlation but not causation and unfortunately too many people make that link that i don't think should be made i think that's a problem um just cause though is a policy in effect in new hampshire the province of kebec washington dc the entire state of oregon california um a whole slew of individual municipalities i would add um we used to say all of northwest new all of northwestern europe has this as national housing policy i think it's all of europe now um so it's a policy that it's been in effect and been practiced elsewhere we have a long ways to go to figure out how it will actually be implemented but we've laid out the framework in the in the charter change that i think gives people an idea of where this is heading just one quick so the charter change as proposed will come back to us the city council will fix all those nuances to make it work for um landlords and renters in burlington so the final product will be unique to us which will be in the next couple years if it is approved by the legislature i would say so patrick that's um important point is uh what's on the ballot is the floor you can't take any of that stuff away you can only add things to it so what we put on the ballot which once it goes to the legislature i i should clarify legislature could take what we have passed as a community and totally change it it becomes their bill which is really strange but it becomes state law and so the legislature could look at our proposals or our what are the voters approve it even if it's 70 percent approval and say we don't like this this and this we're going to change that and then they send it back to us that's the way this works that's a really important point i'm glad they came up yeah that's true for all of our charter changes by the way and they turned us down the voters unanimous overwhelmingly approved gun control several years ago with the legislature said uh we're not having it you're not doing any of that and back in the 80s speculation was rampant where people would buy rental properties and basically put a new coat of paint on them and maybe some shutters and some carpeting and flip them con you know there's flipping what's happening so rapidly property values were driving up and so we passed an anti-speculation tax to do to stop that and legislature said no the voters of brunton you don't know what's best for brunton we're going to tell you you can't do that so they stopped us from doing it polished turds became the norm yes oh man that's that's that's good history that's that's not something that you that you read about often um anyway uh any other questions from the crowd raise your hand either physically or with the zoom i hope we got one uh one hand raised in the attendees oh elissa elissa favor yeah i i think maybe it goes along with that i'm wondering why ring choice voting is just for the city counselors and we didn't add in the mayor candidates but maybe that's part of the floor you're talking about brian to get it passed actually elissa that's a that's a point that i should have added um that was a plosive compromise this this process of getting things on the ballot requires sometimes you have to get to seven votes to get on the ballot and then if you want to prevent a mayoral veto you need eight votes so we really needed extra votes so we did we did take the mayor out of the mix um in order to get enough votes put it on the ballot to be a that's just one hey progress right hey exactly sometimes you have to crawl before you can walk and run and yeah but uh it's a it's a really important point is it really should be for for the mayor's race as well any other questions i know i have one but i want to jump in ahead of anybody uh so in the meantime brian i'm wondering about the um i haven't really read into the the thermal energy regulation question um and i did a quick googling um and i couldn't quite tell what it meant by the city would decide is that is that the the city council and the mayor together deciding on those matters like to regulate you know private and uh you know commercial uh buildings like what what body within the city would would be deciding this what's the process what's the yeah um and you're referring i believe to the to the actual charter change not the advisory question yes yes okay um so the wording is um it would permit the city council uh to regulate thermal energy systems so we'd give the city council the authority to to regulate the systems in our in our ordinances but okay uh if we were going to impose any kind of financial penalty if you will or penny you can call financial incentive no i would say penalty assessing a carbon impact or alternative compliance payment which is basically a way of saying if you're going to stick with fossil fuels and we our policy is we want everyone off of fossil fuels but you're going to stick with them we're going to charge you a fee to help fund the conversion of other buildings to to non-fossil fuel sources because we feel that's so important to do but that would have to come back to voter so that we cannot move forward on a fee any kind of fee structure um often call the carbon tax that's a simple term for it i don't think that's the best way to describe it that's how people often refer to it would have to be brought back to the voters that would not be able to be approved by the council gotcha cool so it's it's you know city council not just city that's exactly yeah yeah it is cool cool cool it's not just like you know i was wondering just with you know the word city like is that like just the mayor making a call is that like you know council but that makes a lot of sense so thank you cool you may notice people if you haven't yet if you haven't seen anything but there's a group of folks associated with the republican party and the fuel dealers of vermont we're sending out information we got them as text somehow they got our cell phones and they sent us texts about this but uh it's it's complete obfuscation and misinformation going out it is it's yeah it's bad thanks any uh any other questions from the crowd for brian going once going twice oh we got yeah we got one uh we got jake hello hello um so if the the one about regulating thermal energy always passed would that make it easier for the city to um develop a district heating system as well as electrification um and how sorry i hope you can hear me um and how would that work if it was like implemented would individual like units be required to poke up to the district heating system or would it just be for like large consumers of thermal energy um do you have any input on that um jake that's a great question i nobody has asked that question you're causing me to think quickly here on my feet and i'm not even on my feet but um i believe that the relationship between the district energy and this question is is a correlation question there's not a whole lot actually connected here but it's an interesting question because the district energy system takes waste heat out of mcneil and it pipes the steam up to the institutions that's what's happening under the plan that's going forward and actually i should just mention it is moving um to its next stage in implementation which is phenomenal um and and yet it doesn't go to any other it doesn't go into neighborhood so it's not a it's not a source to heat your building yet but if it became available that would be a way to move people off of um the existing um i believe it would i don't know i have to ask some of the other experts it still is you know it's trees but it you know so it's is it a fossil fuel jake no it's not a fossil fuel so yeah i guess that theoretically that would be a way to help property owners uh wean them off of fossil fuels is through a district energy hookup to a building which is cost effective only when you have a big enough building to do it to because it's a very capital intensive cost to install a pipe and then have that pipe go into your building when you currently just have natural gas lines going into your buildings but uh i think there's things we don't even think about today that will be coming down the pike hopefully before too long good deal it's uh you know one of the horizon possible yeah good deal yeah that's something that i've been hearing like you know hearing about for quite a long time and it's cool it's good to hear that that there's some progress being made on it yeah the update hopefully we'll get a chance to touch on what that update is but there's some great news on that sweet all right uh anybody else before we uh before we move on oh go ahead hi my name is sherry molly's mother-in-law um just on the question about the the parental stuff there's one just one word in there that i'm wondering about and that is on the the part that mentions reasonable changes on a lease i think that's a really subjective word and i wonder how that would be dealt with if a tenant and a landlord disagreed on what was reasonable uh change in a lease and um i am a landlord i um totally behind everything else in this uh it actually wouldn't affect me because i have a home owner occupied unit but um i just wondered about sort of the subjectiveness of that word and how that would work if there were a disagreement about that sherry that's another tough question um i have jess hyman on this i see her on this meeting so i'm going to see if we have not spent much time getting into the detail of how to define that and that will be part of process of creating the local ordinance will be having folks participate we won't be doing zoom anymore by then hopefully and get real about what it is that we should do to provide that balance that sort of delicate balance for the owner of the property and the person who relies on it for the place to live so that's our i'd say it's kind of a weak answer but it's like commitment to charting a path that gives us that balance and jess what do you think about that yeah so that that's a really good question um you know my my thoughts on it are since the ordinance you know when it gets approved by the legislature and comes back to burlington and the when we're developing the ordinance we have the opportunity to to define what that means and one example one thing that could happen was maybe the housing border for review could mediate some of those discussions or you know in some cases there might be a role for legal aid but i think they're they're really good examples from other cities of how they've set up structures to help make sure that those types of of of of potential conflicts can be mediated with a focus on reconciliation and a focus on on making sure that is that both parties can get their needs met in the in the fairest way possible because you know the goal is to increase housing stability and especially to increase housing stability for people who are traditionally subjected to housing discrimination and who have a tougher time in the housing market in general and so i think that those types of things would be worked out once it came back to burlington and there's a really good opportunity for a lot of a lot of public input and engagement and how how reasonable gets defined all right thank you jess thank you brian um any other questions we have we have 10 more minutes on this spot on the agenda but uh if no one's got a question i think we can move on i think that's it thank you brian that was that was a really that was a really good run through that's perfect thanks a lot that's a lot to handle for one individual yeah i knew you'd be up to thank you thank you for yeah thank you for nailing it um what is next i think it's my memory serves as the school board yes so gene waltz is here and steve is here steven all right cool uh take it away want me to start jeannie okay okay well i just thought you were actually steven so yes i have uh information that i will share and i i'm you know i'm still on a learning curve about the budget and jeannie's really good at detail and yes this is a black and blue under my eye it's a ski pole accident not not anything nefarious you know but anyway you know there's a there's a document that i was looking for today on the website it's called we call it the one pager on the budget development and i was on i was under the impression it was going to be made available today to the general public i looked for i couldn't find it but it's something that you should definitely look for it's uh basically two sides of one page and it gives a lot of more detailed information that i'll go over tonight but um definitely look at that the other thing i did include it um um just does have it okay it was it was embedded in the agenda it will be put in the minutes are you wanting just to share the screen and pull it up would that be helpful i don't think you have to it's just a reference in case you want to look more carefully at it has everyone on on the screen now seen it have people see the general public hasn't seen it yet i don't think right well i did something along and it was there was a link in the in the agenda included a link okay and i can just screen share it if you'd like well you can if you would i don't think it's necessary right now but um but i was looking on the web on the bsd site for to see if it was out available i was looking on french porch forum because i think we talked on tuesday night about it being made available in those two places and it isn't there yet i don't think but anyway you know um and the other thing is the npa the sneak peek pardon me we're giving our npa the sneak peek of this yes yes definitely and the other thing we give you the sneak peek of is the 2020 annual report which i don't think you've seen either right but genie may have made that available and it's it's really a very interesting document do you need to read through it uh it's very informative it talks about the the annual report does it talks about the the leadership transition the coronavirus impact capital improvements that we've made you know this has been such a crazy year that it's uh you know i forgot all all of the things that we've been accomplishing this year in terms of capital improvements i'm just gonna if i have time i'll talk a little bit about that later but it gives demographic data and budget information in detail there's a nice narrative in the annual report about the process of the budget development this year which is very informative and you know i was looking at that today because even though i was part of it it's hard to remember all the permutations that we've undergone regarding budget development it also gives as you know if you've seen before annual reports student and staff highlights among other things but basically you know the fiscal year 2021 budget that was last year's budget was 91.5 million this year's budget the upcoming budget for 2022 is 95.1 so it's a two it's a 3.6 million dollar difference which represents 3.9 percent and i think people need to understand that a lot of that money is committed already so we don't have we don't have a lot of money to work with basically we're committed in terms of health insurance wages debt service on money that we borrowed for different projects and then a very minimal strategic investments which and then and then we were hit with this increase due to downtown bhs which was 2.4 million and the beat burlington technical college relocation which was 460 000 so those were unpredicted you know bills that we were hit with this year so the original total was 97.2 million which is a 2.1 million difference between um that what the budget actually is hoping this is making sense because it's it's fairly complicated so what has happened was when we saw that 97.2 million um leadership needed to make some decisions about what was going to happen and so basically they came up with 1.36 million in reductions these are non instructional reductions that they were able to find and then we've been promised by the state from some support for the bhs relocation to the tune of 720 000 this year and for the next two more years so a total of over three million from the state we're pretty sure is going to offset um our school budget here in burlington so the total what has happened is the total from that 97.2 million has come down to 95.1 and that's where that number comes from for the total for the 2022 budget which again is an increase of 3.9 percent it's a complicated story how we got there and i don't need i don't think i need to go into those details i might be able to answer some questions about it but um you know the um the tax increase the tax increase is really tax increases are really beyond our control and they have to do with common level of appraisement dollar yield per pupil weighting uh weight ratings and so we are proposing a a bsd budget increase of 3.9 percent but the state um adds onto that as a way of thinking about it the small increases that we're adding and the state bigger increase translates to a 6.88 percent increase in tax property taxpayers this for this year the income taxpayer rate is 6.47 percent and the the truth behind all this is all this information was a was compiled at the end of december because we had to go to the city council i think early january to come up to give them a number to put on the ballot and um since december there's been some news regarding the um the dollar yield has changed and the due to a change in the common level of appraisement which is favorable for the burlington taxpayer however there was another mistake made regarding per pupil weighting which it has to do with the the money that we get from the state too so they didn't really balance each other out it looks as if it looks as if burlington will benefit from future in the next couple of weeks we'll learn that that 6.88 percent increase may be lower than that but that's where it is now and that's what we have to plan for um i was just i would just mention genie i know you know about this too the um the total reductions this year is 1.36 million that we cut out without losing any direct pupil services these were positions and um and and positions that were not filled so no one is being fired from the district positions that were not filled are not being funded this year and that's a significant um savings the the minimal additions that we're adding are for the multilingual liaisons which we desperately need and it's um and a strategic plan implementation to progress forward on the plans that we have as a district and the totals of those two additions are only 220 000 so out of that um 3.9 percent increase only 220 000 is what we're spending in addition to what where we've done in the past past year if that makes any sense and you know you're an english teacher and i'm an art teacher so the math like what we're actually asking for percentage-wise i think maybe between the two of us we figured it out was less than two percent and of a 95 something million dollar budget what the school board is sincerely adding to this budget is a blip on the radar yeah and also is so overdue and so morally correct and everything about it i i you know i i want to answer questions and i hope that you will see the value in supporting those additions because that's really the only thing the district is asking everything else we have essentially had to we we've had to incorporate into our budget from the state yeah we've more or less level funded and made a very slight addition that we needed with the multilingual liaisons um and then there's been a lot cut you know and when we first found out these we initially thought we're going to have to have a 13 percent increase because of all kinds of factors that were planned in in play this year because of COVID and everything else i mean there's been so much going on in burlington this totally free to sound in the beginning of this process the state basically had us on high alert like you're going to have to deal with the 13 point something increase no matter what you ask for please be prudent yeah and that tone has changed and we were prudent and we still had a seven over the last one the last time we met in january we were projecting a 7.15 percent increase for burlington taxpayers and we've since you know took some other contingency money actually we we saved a lot due to COVID because of money that was not spent like heating and bus transportation and all kinds of things that we didn't realize it was that much going to be that much of a savings so we put that into reducing the number from 7.15 down to 6.8 a which we felt was more reasonable for the taxpayers and again i mean that could be lowered and most likely will be lowered a little bit more between now and voting day cross your fingers yeah and i'm hoping that that would come from the state that has nothing to do with the city that would come from the state yeah i'm hoping the citizens of burlington can support this it's very conservative budget um and we and people realize what's been going on with high school in downtown and i'll ask so miraculously we're at this point where we're looking forward to the inhabiting the downtown site and the construction of the high school is still you know not solidified because we're still looking at testing data from the soil but um you know things are moving along believe it or not and uh i don't know if you have any questions i don't know if i can answer them or genie can answer them about what we've said about the budget we could talk about that but i have other things i can talk about in terms of what has happened that's been really positive this year from my perspective do you have any questions i mean uh i i do have one question but i want to open it up uh to to the crowd if anyone if anyone has a question for regina steven uh brian had his hand up earlier uh brian chena and brian do you have a question i don't have a question i was just letting you know i had arrived oh cool yeah thank you thank you brian hello everyone should support the school budget because when you don't support the school budget it it hurts the kids yeah and make sure you tell your friends and the less legislators do your friends to support the student waiting people study although i know it's going to the senate at this point so hobnob with them put in a good word hopefully he does um so yeah i have a question uh just about the budget um you know it it pains me uh a couple different levels to to you know for the city for for the public to be paying uh those developers for for that for that building on college street at or cherry street rather uh but i understand y'all did what you had to do i'm not i'm not holding any anything against you uh but i think you know i'm looking for like some kind of silver lining which you which you alluded to um that there's progress being made on the high school i haven't i haven't read anything about that yet so like you know i was probably borrowing from your your future uh segment here but like you know what's what's been going on with that what can you tell us are you aware that there are local companies that are now involved in that development situation i am but it's still you know cenex right he's still part of it he is he is he is one part of it he's a manager partner he's he's still half right essentially he's half yeah in terms of downtown high school the classes begin on the third awesome it's on fifth well on thursday the third the first class is on thursday the fifth oh the fifth that's right it's the fifth sorry because it's in service first um you know it's a hybrid model like other schools in the district so it's not full day full classes the classes are still divided in half because of the social distance requirements it's nothing different for it won't be different from what's happening in other high schools right now it's not school that we know of of school that we want but it's at least the kids will be with their teachers in a new space it's pretty exciting to see what it looks like and um you know we just hired a new principal we have lauren mcbride who's been the interim principal has now been hired as the principal until we find a replacement between now and next school year and then we have a hired assistant principal her name is gail botello she's been working in the district as the um the personal learning plan coordinator for the district and i think an academic coach as well and they've both been in these positions so when principal green left in january these um two employees were able to fill in uh with a pretty much um you know a smooth making a smooth transition for a very difficult difficult process that we're and we're undergoing and they just speak the process just for the record they are both interim positions principal and vice principal interim yes and so we opened up the search for the new principal just this week and it turns out that this is a good actually a good time in the school year to look for uh administrators because it's when administrators think about what they want to do if they want to leave so that people around the nation are looking maybe for other places and of course we call love burlington i think it's a great place to be so we're hoping that um we get some excellent candidates from different parts of the country wherever so that's happening um you know the seahorse pride boosters uh helped pack up the high school i think it was over the weekend they went to the classrooms they put all the material that the teachers need and they put them in boxes and they shipped them over to the new site so that's in progress right now and then uh actually if you're interested in getting and joining the seahorse pride group which is the boosters support group the next meeting is march eight that's six all these are zoom meetings so the high school i'm excited about the high school i think it's a great place to be we have uh didn't we we just signed permission to rent the spaces janey for the um btc for downtown as well and it's going to yeah there are two additional spaces that are really close to um we're not going to call it macy's anymore okay i call it bhs downtown um yeah there are two spaces industrial size that hopefully will be able to house the berlington technical center programs so the idea of it's not just this hub at macy's it's actually kind of a campus that is now developing downtown yeah and we we were pretty psyched that um we could find a space for the high school downtown but now to the thing that we are going to find the additional spaces literally the street and upstairs um i don't know what the word is the word is oh jean i don't know about anybody else but you're breaking up over the kids are you breaking up for some reason yeah jean are you there your video is frozen as well i can't hear you oops bye bye any video is gone okay right off my video that makes it better i'm totally gone your voice is coming back your voice is back yeah okay so you sometimes when you turn off the video you can get better bandwidth can you hear me yes yes crystal clear you can't okay so i'm just going to say in in essence we're we're looking forward to having more of a campus fun these two others that become play ctc low okay only within across the street down from bhs downtown it it's pretty much special if you ask me if that can happen that'd be really great yeah i agree i think there's great potential for the uh and i said that before i think last meeting that with the kids downtown and becoming a more dynamic part of the city on a daily basis i think it's going to really bring some life and excitement to the whole downtown scene and even though we're socially restricted right now wait until next year when things really start are really start to roll down there it's going to be i think exciting and wonderful and again we have we have a lease for three years you know and depending on what happens at bhs campus with the reconstruction that state space will you know it's possible that the high school will be back in its original location maybe next year or the year after but we still have the downtown high school site to use and the plan is the gold and the silver lining more or less is that that will be a burlington school district site that can be used in other ways for instance when i a a there's a capital plan to work on i a a when that needs to be done if we can move that whole school down there easily the school will be up and functioning it'll be an easier thing to do than to try to house them in different places around the city that's happened in the past so in one way it's kind of it's going to be good for the district as a whole as we advance with some capital improvement plans that are in the works over the next couple of years and i'll tell you that the city can be very proud of the work that went on this year even though you know it's been an incredibly crazy year for everyone i would remind people that phase two of the edmunds complex was completed this year if you haven't seen what edmunds high edmunds school looks like it's it's amazing just to walk in there and see the beautiful new reformations that's happened in the entranceway even the landscaping the gym the cafeteria just the hallways and everything it's a beautiful beautiful job and then at hunt we have we few people funded the city of bronze and funded two new bleachers but that were last they were built in 1957 there's been kitchen kitchen plumbing and flooring and and all that that has been repaired at hunt the locker rooms are now ADA compliant at hunt in sat smith cp smith there's a new folding partition for the gym that allows for multiple use of that one space at bhs we have new bleachers in the gym that were built in 1964 now we have new ones there there was a parking lot pavement project that was completed the re-envisioning bond you can see in the information in the annual report about how that's changed you know the the the bond has changed in terms of what the final um school will look like um and it's still again up in the air but you can see the new plans you know um based on the revisions that have had to be made but we still have the 70 million ready to go with that so that was that's good of course the pcb testing and all that still drives the decision and the financial part of that project what else there are some things planned to bhs re-envisioning early ed three three center iAA building there's this envelope that needs to be happening at iAA and the hVAC you know the air quality and uh at iAA and Edmonds and um has to be re re replenished redesigned re what's the word i'm looking for uh in the next couple of years and then a Champlain drop Champlain schools drop off site so all these things are still capital improvement plans that are still on the books but i think we've accomplished a lot this year uh even though most of our attention has been focused on the high school and the renting and the new superintendent and uh you know the new principal coming up there's been all kinds of crazy things but we're moving right along at the helm and steven i did i did share the a lot of what you just talked about is in the report yes it is it give jess a link to that and hopefully it will be in the notes yeah please look through it especially read through that um that narrative i think it's page 14 or something on the budget development it gives you a grasp of of the process i don't know if there are any other questions i mean there's there are lots of there are lots of questions that we all have for sure uh barbara you're muted i asked this question once before now it's more pressing before everybody is vaccinated what are the testing protocols for students and staff and teachers um coming downtown now they're not going to be isolated out on north avenue they're going to be in stores there are seniors around um how are they going to be tested well barbara i'm going to point out that they have not been on north avenue they've been online they they've been so in general genie in general that's where the high school was it's not there anymore so they're gonna they're they're gonna be coming um downtown and downtown is a population center and so what are the plans for testing teachers students and staff right now the the the testing that's going on with teachers is voluntary i don't think it's actually legal to mandate anybody be tested um i i mean you can mandate students be tested the university why can't you mandate students teachers and staff be tested i mean i i actually feel like it might be harder to mandate minors over over adults but barbara i will look into that and get back to you i'm very concerned about it yeah we haven't talked specifically about that barbara at a board meeting um i know that you know in other schools i i've sub at south broonton you walk in that your temperature is taken immediately and um there there are um forms that you fill out like kids coming to our schools the parents check in every morning electronically with um a series of questions that they that they answer um as a way to oversee or monitor any kind of symptoms and uh i know at south broonton i think this is true in broonton schools as well anyone showing any symptoms is encouraged not to come at all um they're encouraged not to come yeah they don't they're not if you hear sniffles or any kind of cold you stay home and you stay online for that day because classes are happening in two different ways more than encouragement they have to be required not to come i think that's the implication yeah good yeah you have to be honest on the on the format you know you can't you can't have a sick child and send him to school anyway but uh so far it's worked i mean we've had many cases you know in broonton but i think only i think i think only one has been transferred in the school everything else has come from outside i think at this point i'm currently i'm concerned about that too especially with the older teachers who are perhaps more susceptible um and the vaccine is is coming but it's still a long way off so i don't i don't know really how to answer that question it's very disconcerting to me as well well perhaps you know look to the university and what they're doing and see if you know what what of it is transferable yeah i know one thing the district is working on having a dashboard that has pretty much a covid dashboard very similar similar to uvm um to inform the public as in you can go to the burlington school district website and see whatever information at the time is relevant in the district i'm just saying it's it's a different story now that they'll be coming we're into an area where there are a lot of people shop eating walking around oh yeah barbara they haven't actually been going to school it's not even just like they're downtown is that they're actually gonna go to school but they're they're going to be yeah they will be exactly yeah i'm agreeing with you barbara okay all right so i think unless there's any other questions for uh for steven or jean going once going twice i just thought i just saw it turned to 835 and i thought it'd be a good time to transition on if that's okay with y'all right steven jean yeah that's fine cool thank you for being here and thank you for filling questions and and doing what you do thank you kevin you're welcome thank you cheers uh so moving on to uh our state reps and our city counselors for uh further updates um so for city counselors just to take stock of of who's here we've got brian brian pine and we've got oh perry was here earlier um yeah so and then we've got brian sheena and also i got a video from emma uh movanie steinick and uh i can play that it's about five minutes i think she said um but uh but brian how about how about you go first and uh or uh sorry brian brian pine and then uh and then i'll and brian sheena and then i maybe we can close out with uh with emma's video if that sounds okay with y'all cool all right brian pine take it away yeah thank you um kevin i think i want to follow up on what we talked about earlier with the um district energy system advancing to um a really critical next phase this has been really envisioned since uh mcneil was built in the 80s so um this has been a long time coming and the final plan now is um move to the next level because of an organization um called evergreen and that's a hyphenated name ever and green is a non-profit entity that will be operating the system um and they will secure financing so the bd in the city don't have to actually incur any debt to make this happen uh the the host or should say the entity that will benefit from um from the district energy system is the uvm medical center um and the plan is to continue to pursue additional institutions and buildings but that knowing that the medical center is the biggest user is um is is a critical first step university of vermont would be an ideal next institution to sign on and that would really allow for a more full build out of the system um vermont gas is actually stepping in which is pretty unusual for a fossil fuel based utility to step up and they've essentially signed a purchase agreement uh for the full output of the system um including both the thermal energy and the renewable energy um attributes that come from the property so i mean from the uh from the system um so they basically get the renewable energy credits which is a good thing because it allows vermont gas to um you know essentially diversify their portfolio and bring in another um source of uh energy for a major customer so that's a that's a huge piece of progress that i think um there is a hope to be highlighted um i want to just touch on what the council did on monday regarding police assuming people would like to hear about that i'll be very brief there was a three parts to the what the council did on monday part one was to add um i'm going to get these terms i have to say them myself community support cso's community support officers there we go a community support officer handles sort of motor vehicle type issues um animal control fairly basic issues council freeman's here she can they can probably help me explain this better but um the community support officers are um unarmed officers that are housed within bpd and uh this this first step was to add six community support support officers to um assist the department taking some of that burden off of the police force that they currently duties that they currently have uh debt delegated to them so this would allow for you know essentially non-uniformed officers to carry out these functions we also added three this is another term i have to say first community support shoot yes community support liaisons the terms are quite similar to each other so i have to sometimes say them and write them out before i um say them that position a community support liaisons is um is a more involved uh in sort of the human needs of our community in terms of folks experiencing substance use disorder mental health crises you know responding to those things that really require specialized training but not law enforcement training um so those are two big accomplishments the other one that the administration sought from the city council was approval to raise the cap on officers 75 to 80 i'm sorry 74 to 84 and that did not have support that was not approved and then there was a proposed compromise to raise it from 74 to 79 and that failed um uh on a tie vote so that issue is um at this point is rather than move forward on changing staffing levels the focus is we've got a process underway with a consultant that hopefully will start very soon and that consultant is um expert at analyzing what are the needs of the community for public safety broadly and what needs to be carried out by officers armed officers and what can be done by alternative uh providers how can we create a system that is more kind of holistic if you will and not just you know one size fits all um you know you you if you have a if you have a chainsaw you can cut a branch off a tree but you don't need a chainsaw to cut a two by four so really right sizing your response to what your problem is you're dealing with is the idea and um so that that is where we're at and uh that's a free we could probably talk to there's a process that is community engagement process and there's some meetings coming up fairly soon that will be a community engagement around redefining and revisioning what we expect and what we think we're going to need for public safety so i'm going to i'm going to pass it off since it's getting late and councilor freeman's with us so i'm back to another meeting um is my audio i thought it was that quick yeah so we um have contracted with talitha um and those some of those community engagement um forums will be coming up in the next few weeks um and we are also this is in the joint committee um that we have been doing that work and then we're also contracting with another consultant um as brian just discussed about the sort of more audit of the department um and that my understanding is that we might start to see some initial results from that in april um and you know sort of further out from that um yeah that's my that's my only update on that so far um you know we talitha's come to the joint committee um on a few um i think twice now and so far it's been from my you know impression very positive so i'm looking forward to how that um engagement project works and um and yeah and further for the audit so and you know if i don't know if we're doing q and a right now or people want to ask questions specifically i'm happy to also just keep that open since i missed some of what was already discussed and um that's about it for the update cool thank you peri um i think just for like the q and a i think just you know both city counselors and state reps you know would would give their updates and then just do q and a and all on one one batch that's cool with everybody just so you know everyone gets their time and we can fit it all in so uh so brian take it away i appreciate it because i've been on zoom since 7 30 this morning with barely any breaks and i would just like to give my update and then shut the camera and relax unless i'm called upon so thank you so um since i'm on the only state rep i'll just take the remaining 16 minutes um just kidding so i find that a little bit of humor in the zoom world goes a long way these days so i'm gonna get serious now though so i'm gonna start out with a question what is public safety what is public safety too often public safety is shorthand for the policing and criminalization of human behavior yet these approaches have failed to keep the public safe and these approaches have neglected to address the real reasons for people's behavior and in many situations our approaches to public safety have only intensified stigma pain suffering disparities and the inequities of our society so what would really keep the public safe the progressive caucus of the vermont house envisions public safety as a framework of transformative intersectional policies that build equity and fairness into all of our institutions that would guarantee access to health care housing and economic opportunity and that would redirect our justice system away from crime punishment and trauma towards accountability healing and restoration of the social fabric the public health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the public health emergency of racism we must take swift action to create equity in health care and to reimagine public safety by building an emergency response system that sends people the right assistance in their moment of need whether that be mental health and substance abuse services universal housing options economic resources all of these things should be delivered as part of a continuum of universal health care and we want to start with universal primary care we don't need to police each other more we need to take care of each other better this week in the house health care committee we took up bill h2 10 an act relating to addressing disparities and promoting equity in the health care system like i said earlier the public health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year has amplified the inequities of our health care system that are associated with the public health emergency of racism which has gone on for 400 years in this country or on this continent although the ethic of medicine traditionally stated premium no no cherry to first do no harm the health care system has created harm and has reinforced the suffering that many people have faced in our society who are black indigenous or other people of color lesbian gay bisexual transgender questioning or queer people with disabilities for hundreds of years many of us have had to learn how to take care of each other ourselves and when the system has failed us so in the context of this pandemic we've taken a long hard look at the inequities and disparities that exist and we ask ourselves how can we make the system better the wellness committee of the racial justice alliance has presented this bill h2 10 that the health care committee is now working on and in this bill we are seeking to establish an office of health equity establish the health equity advisory commission issue grants for the promotion of health equity collect data better so that we can understand better the health disparities in vermont and require additional education on cultural competence and anti-racism in health care field so um that's just you know my update this week was focused on health care i am on the health care committee and we are in a public health emergency of not only covid-19 but also racism and i'll just end with an announcement that next tuesday night from seven to eight p.m i'll be working with decriminalized nature to do a national webinar where we're going to be talking about efforts to decriminalize medicines plant and fungal medicines that are used for spiritual medicinal um uh or entheogenic purposes so if people are interested in that topic about the decriminalization of nature and the decriminalization of people having access to traditional plant and fungal medicines um feel free to join us for that webinar and i'll post some information in the chat and i'll stop there so that there's time for questions or if any other reps showed up so thank you for giving me a few minutes to share my update tonight absolutely thank you brian um there unfortunately is not a chat uh tonight but if you um you know maybe send it to any of us on the steering committee we can put it on the website we can send it along to to cito we can we can get that out there uh that sounds good you could also let me share my screen and trust that i'm gonna show you after i saw that other mpa meeting and i was scandalized um but um i could i'll send you the slides if you want to send slides out to people that have information about um the webinar so send send me the slides to share my screen or i'm not sure what you want oh i was joking about sharing the screen and you could let me share my screen and i would legitimately show you the like rated g slide about the the webinar i was just joking because i said it and then i was thinking you probably don't make that as easy anymore after what happened in that in the ward for seven mpa it really went it really went down quickly but you know we know it's you so it's fine and you know it's all it's all more controlled uh liam are you uh able to to hook that up or oh wait can i do it can i do it your screen as of right now i'm a little embarrassed sharing the slide because i has my picture on it but i'm gonna do it anyway so oh it's letting me do it do it so that's that's the slide so you can see on there we've got like the zoom info down here if anyone wants to take a screenshot or and we will have strict security so don't try any pull any fast ones um but there's our slide hopefully that was long enough for people to see it i'm gonna sit down now um so feel free to join us if you want to talk i think the specific medicines we're looking at decriminalizing are um peyote and mescaline containing cacti silo-sybin and silo-sin mushrooms um ayahuasca DMT containing plants and um and um ibogaine so those are the plants that we're looking at asking that they be decriminalized as part of this national movement to to decriminalize nature and allow people to have access to these medicines that are birthright as humans so anyway thank you right on thank you brian uh yeah anybody have any questions for brian perrier brian going once going twice quickly brian is latin your first language because that was really a good uh do no harm although to latin i think you did some harm so we're only able to see a little bit of uh public feedback that went to city counselors about the uh multiple police resolutions and and uh policing resolutions that you guys voted on could you give us a better sense of what the community what you were seeing foreign against i don't know if you keep track or if that's appropriate councilor freeman why don't you you want to take a shot of what you're hearing and seeing sorry i thought that patrick you said brian but it's also because i have something on the stove that's like exploding so i'm just going to go turn off my stove okay yes i will answer yes to both of you yeah okay the um i think it's pretty clear that the the narrative that was created that says if we don't do exactly what the chief and the mayor requested we're we're putting the city the residents of brolinton at risk was a very powerful persuasive narrative that was accepted as um not just a supposition and an assertion but as fact and um i don't think the evidence and the data support it but um it took on a life of its own and uh i would say in the ward three uh i heard from very few ward three folks urging that we um that we increase the cap but i did hear from people in other primarily the south end who saw a front porch forum post that urged people to contact all the city councilors that was a very uh shall we say it was it was a catalytic front porch forum post it resulted in dozens of people from the south end wards five and six contacting us about the subject but it didn't it didn't spread beyond the port for the front porch forum post neighborhoods that were that were hit by that post and i never actually got to read it i have plenty of things to read i don't get to read other counselors post that often and i don't really need to but um i know the gist of what it said because i asked someone what inspired you to get involved right now i'm just curious what got you going and she said oh here here's what got me going and sent me councillor shannon's post and so that's what inspired a lot of people to get pretty concerned essentially what it said is if the council doesn't do this we will have much less safety and we'll have a part-time police force and neither of those are those are assertions those are suppositions those are sort of unfounded claims but they became sort of i hate to say it but noam chomsky calls it manufacturing consent that's what they were they were manufacturing consent exactly what they were doing yeah i would say that's um similar to what i've seen um especially considering that some of the forums this summer about reducing the size of the cap um you know had between you know maybe 700 to a thousand people contacting us in support of that um i have not seen um yeah basically yeah i just haven't seen anywhere near that volume um in terms of supporting raising it and um but there were like those few dozen emails that um were i think from um some folks and primarily actually not the not in boards two and three although there were a few um there i this is something i've really wondered about because um i hate feeling and i and then this might also be some of the product of covid and being feeling more isolated it's i hate feeling like i'm in an echo chamber as someone who wants to represent really the entire district and hear all those voices and so i i just wonder how um to hear that feedback because you know obviously there are like broad um you know sort of a pose or a get like support um you know maybe um voices but there's also just so much nuance that's been coming up um in these decisions and so i've i'm really trying to figure out how um to hear more feedback about um those the nuance of of the decisions that we're making um so so yeah i that's something that i've just really i've been i've been wondering about as well um one of the things i have heard i'll just say really quickly that does um feedback that an opinion that's bothered me a bit is um there there have been some comments around um specifically around domestic violence and around um the actions that the council has been taking um being somehow increasing domestic violence or or lacking support for um folks who are are experiencing domestic violence and also in a way i think pitting um pitting racial justice issues against women's issues in a way that also really doesn't um understand the intersectionalism of also women of color who experience both um which i think is really is really problematic so um that's just something i've been thinking a lot about lately um that's been something that i've heard in terms of opposition like um if you if you make these changes women will no longer be safe in the city they won't be able to walk um walk through the neighborhoods at night and um that's something i'd like to um be able to have more conversation about because i don't think um that's the right response around how to um actually keep people safe in terms of intimate partner violence and and domestic violence um or violence against women so um but yeah thanks for the question all right um yeah if nobody has any questions for brian perry or brian uh i have i have a video from emma another state representative i i i can play and then i think we can call it a wrap all right i'll uh i'll share my screen and uh play that um and then go from there there we go share you're muted you're muted ah dammit it's not a zoom meeting if someone's muted when they're not meant to be i can look read translation if you wish it might not be accurate did everyone see the video of the the cat the zoom yes i'm a human guys i'm a human people i'm a human just so you know that's what you said when you were yelling oh they're in mute i'm not a human i'm not a human so all right so all right can you hear can you hear me now we heard you we couldn't hear emma okay that's weird um it might be an interpretive dance video and not a not a speech it might be because of the headphones kevin you might have to take off your headphones and uh just play it through the speakers all right has a little bit of an update on my work in the state legislate can you help can you hear that yep okay cool play chair so let's get right to it because i know there's a big long agenda tonight and maybe you're watching later on so i introduced my first two bills in the last couple weeks the first one being h163 in case you want to look at up about the Vermont legislative website it's an app relating to enhancing equitable learning and workplace environments and public schools in Vermont and the purpose is to really require and fund state partial funding like 50-50 match from state to local anti-bias professional development training for every single person in the school meaning all educators all staff and all school board members so that we have high quality anti-bias training um anti-bias professional development i should say because it's more than training for folks that meet school districts where they're at and really moves the conversation tour around equity everywhere in the state because not every school district is working on equity in the same way my second bill is a labor bill numbered h239 it was just introduced today actually and this is an omnibus bill which means a sort of like a catchall for a few different worker protection concepts there's three things in here to help stabilize jobs for workers it first requires employers to provide reliable schedules for employees this would be a great benefit to folks who work in the hospitality and restaurant industry as well as retail who often get work schedules days a day or hours even before they're to begin and it creates great instability and ability to find child care that's reliable as well as work other jobs and just really um uh live lives that are not tethered to what the work schedule might be and the second thing in this this workers bill is granting workers the just cause termination rights which means that workers when if they were to get fired would have to be um they would have due process and ability to have um not be fired for any particular reason but to have a defined reason why um they were being terminated so they had sort of uh rights in the workplace and um better protections around termination and the last piece would be requiring employers this idea actually came from a constituent here in chitin six two a few weeks ago but would require employers to reimburse workers for certain home office expenses if they're working remotely there's actually six states that already require this including our neighbor new Hampshire and so this would be um important um adaptation of early relays as we look to um continue to live through this pandemic and after the pandemic when there might still be remote workers out there um just a couple other things to just highlight for tonight um and that would be that the house commerce economic development committee for which i'm a member of is starting to dive into the budget around um allocations for running around economic development uh worker workforce development um looking at issues that um for programs that v-sac funds for example looking at community development efforts that comes to the agency of community and economic development and so i'm really always trying to bring an eye towards equity and really trying to center folks who um had trouble accessing resources so far through the pandemic um who own small businesses who might have started a business who might have businesses that don't have formal you know financial departments to help them um uh advocate and access grants and loan programs that have already been offered through the federal and state government so i'm bringing that eye there and in particular if you if you're a small business owner if you know folks especially women and bi-pop businesses that had trouble with the first rounds of pandemic related grants or loans please put them in touch with me because we'd love to incorporate that perspective into testimony and decisions around future grants that the state might put forward to help businesses recover and most importantly by extension help workers recover and um whether this pandemic and then the last thing i just want to end on is this very big issue of unemployment um data breach that some folks in june 62 have unfortunately experienced where the department of labor sent out incorrect 1099 g tax forms um it is uh something that impacted only for monitors who used two of the pandemic related unemployment programs the lost wages assistance program and the short term supplemental program um the department labor is getting better but they're still needing to improve a lot of their communication with folks i know this i've been hearing from all of you um to make sure for monitors have what they need to understand what you need to do and what the state's doing to remedy this problem so there's now a fairly decent f.a.q um site up on their webpage i've been told they're working to translate it i keep pushing them to make sure that they're communicating more frequently with um impacted for monitors and making sure that language is accessible to everyone and not just rely on email to push out information to folks because this is way too important um it's not an email about what people need to do but the most important thing if you're one of the folks who are impacted by this data breach is to know that the state will now offer you free credit monitoring services for a year again free to you um but you also should take steps to freeze your credit and look into the steps that require to kind of monitor um your identity so that there isn't identity theft out there so i'm going to leave you just with one resource to call if that's all strange to you or you've never done it before um because the attorney general's office state attorney general's office through the consumer protection program cap can help you through all of that um and they are also a free service to every remonder so you can call them at 800-649-2424 or email them at ago.cap at vermont.gov they also have a website which you can google but again you can email them at ago.cap at vermont.gov or call them at 1800-649-2424 so do be in touch if you have any questions feedback ideas i'm always open and i'm really trying to prioritize constituent emails over anything else in my legislative work so you can reach me at evolvanystanek at leg.state.bt.us or give me a call at 802-448-0838 so thanks neighbors i hope you had a great mpa meeting sorry to miss you and take good care thank you all all right so with that i think we can call it a wrap um thank you everyone for being here i have a question for emma i'm just kidding just kidding hi everyone thank you thank you bye thanks leah