 Nice. Oh, I didn't know you were getting one. Yes, you said that. Yeah. Well, they didn't want to be nominated. That's going well. Yeah. Well, no. No, let me, I don't know. Is there a charge? Somebody calls care. And what age? A charge. Oh, really? Oh. None. Okay, so you want, then just tell Joan you're going to call it. So is that the reason? Yeah. Good evening, everybody. I'd like to call to order this regular city council meeting on Monday, January 8th at 7.10. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. And we are getting Councillor Paul on. Is she with us now? She is on. Okay. Councillor Paul is attending by phone. The first order of business is the agenda. Councillor Roof. Yes. I'll move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. Add to the agenda item 2.02. Communication. Item 2.02. Communication. Steven Barraclough, BT, regarding rate, recent rate increase, oral. Add to city. Add city assessor. John Vickers communication to the consent agenda. Item 4.08 resolution petition for redetermination of the city's equalized education property value board of finance per city assessor. John Vickery note revised version of the communication to Jill Remnick acting director Vermont tax department regarding redetermination of the EEGL and CLA which is a part of agenda item 4.08 resolution petition for redetermination of the city's equalized education property value board of finance per city assessor Vickery per Councillor Busher. Thank you, Councillor Roof. Is there a second? Councillor Busher seconds it. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favour of adopting our agenda as amended, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And Councillor Powell says aye as well. So that's unanimous and we have our agenda. Item 2.01 is a report from the police commission. Is anyone here from the police commission? What's the council's pleasure? Do we want to defer and see if anyone shows, attends further into the meeting? Yes. Okay. So we will come back to this if anyone is able to make it. And we'll move on to 2.02 which is a communication from Stephen Behrkloff who's a general manager of BT regarding the recent rate increase. And in light of the fact that rate subscribers did get a communication about the change in the rates and there's been some questions and confusion about it, the mayor and I thought it made sense to just have a little time on this agenda. And I want to thank Councillor Wright for suggesting it as well. So if you could just summarize what's happened and then we can have any questions from the council. Sure. BT's controller who crunches all the numbers from which the increases come. So every year we face cost increases on a number of fronts, be it cost of living, health care, cost increases for people, every year we absorb them. Since 2010 BT's policy has been not to increase prices and that's absolutely necessary, not to increase prices to drive profitability. And since 2010 we've been pretty successful at doing that. The one area that we failed in that is cable price increases. The reason we failed in that is that whilst we're all aware that medical inflation and the cost of health care rises meaningfully faster than the underlying cost of inflation, the cost of programming rises dramatically faster than the cost of health care. And we've reached the point of no return. For many years we absorbed those increases between 2010, 2016, we only saw one increase. That increase was a particularly egregious one that happened in FY15 that resulted in a letter from Senator Sanders and the other politicians in DC to the FCC complaining. We're now three years later and we have a similar situation. The increasing question is driven by the local stations. The stations we get local news from, Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC primarily. Those contracts come up for renegotiation every three years. Renegotiation is a strange term because on the one hand we have a small operator like BT, on the other hand we have a monopolist and the negotiation goes something like this. Here's what we expect, here's what we're looking for. You decide whether you want to continue to carry this if you don't, then you go dark, you don't carry the station anymore. We have the ability to negotiate around the margin and I stress around the margin. We have no leverage. If I quote you a statement from a member of an executive from the Trade Association, the American Cable Association that went out on December 31st on the increases. His name is Bob Schema. He is the Executive Vice President of Member Services. The statement is this round of retransmission consent that's basically contract negotiations has been the worst ever with 400% price increases, demands to carriage of additional stations and agreements to carry unnamed content. It's not just about the price increase for the stations we all know, it's about making you carry new stations, about minimum guarantees of subscribers for stations. It's a very complex situation that we use external counsel to help negotiate, but that was his summary of it. If we then turn to how does it apply to BT? Since December 2014, so in a little more than three years, our costs of those local stations have increased by over 400%. In just over three years. We've tried to absorb the costs where we can. We had an increase in FY 15. In FY 16, we didn't increase our prices even though our costs went up. They go up every year. In 17, we did increase our prices, but by only two-thirds of what our costs increased by. And in 18, according to Dawn's calculations, we've recovered about 98% of our cost increases. I stress cost increases. To give you a sense of how attractive this and how profitable this market is in programming for BT. In 2015, on $1.57 million worth of revenues from programming video packages, we made a gross margin that's before any operating costs of 11.3%. That's much worse than your regular supermarket makes. And that's just $176,000 on $1.57 million worth of revenues. Fast forward to this year and this increase. This year, cable numbers are essentially flat. They have been for years even though our subscribers grow. It's really internet. It's not cable. Cable's a generational thing. All of our kids, most of our kids get it on their laptop. It's all about YouTube. It's not about cable packages. Some flat cable subscribers revenues are now $1.78 million. However, our costs are $1.68 million. We made just $97,000 gross margin on $1.78 million worth of revenues. So over the last 36 months, our gross margin has shrunk from 11.3% to 5.5%. We have nowhere to go. We're at the stage now where had we not increased prices to cover those costs, we would be in a gross loss situation. And that's not a position anybody wants to be in if they want to maintain a business. So much as we regret having to increase our prices, I want to give everyone here the comfort that this has nothing to do with the sale of BT. Our gross margins, minimal though they were, have halved over the past three years. And now, and going forward, we have no option but to increase our pricing every year solely to recover the increased costs. And in case we think there may be a bit of a let-off, there will be a bit of a let-off in the next couple of years. Those prices have gone up more than 400% in the past three years. We're only going up 20% over the next two years. So not only do we get massive increases every contract renewal, but then we get double digit increases every year of the contract as well, 10% plus, just to give you a last context, something that we paid 55 cents a sub for in December 14 now costs $3.50 a sub. It's a situation over which we have little control. I wish we had more. Thank you. Ms. Monaghan, all set? Okay. Questions from the council? Councilor Wright. Thank you for being here and explaining that to us. I know that it came at a very difficult time. I had a number of calls and I've seen some from porch forum issues. And so I'm glad you clarified that this has nothing to do with the sale of broken telecom because I think some people thought that made the leap to think that that's what happened, even though of course we know that they don't even own the company yet. You mentioned how important it is and that you've tried your best to keep prices competitive. How much does it concern you that with this price increase, are we still a good buy in terms of other choices that consumers have? I believe we are still a good buy. We did an analysis of what the incumbent in this market at increased prices buy and we don't see a huge difference. Although the incumbent has some charges that we don't have and some of the increases are buried in those charges that nobody quite understands, whereas ours are straight in your face. So we hope so, but there's no doubt that this will play into the price promotion game of by now pay later, get a great deal for the first 12 months, pay a lot more for the second 12 months. We don't play those games. So we're a little concerned. There's not an awful lot we can do about it. What we are doing is starting to drive people more towards over the top, I cut the cord, cable options again. We have, I think, eight clinics scheduled for the first one, starting this Saturday at our new North End storefront in the Eton Allen Marl. But again, just so that nobody's under any illusion here, the intent of the programmers is you buy it in a cable bundle or you buy it unbundled, you're going to pay the same or more at the end of the day. So there may be some price break somewhere, but they're likely to be promotional in short term. And the biggest increase was $12 or $14? The biggest increase, yes, was $14 on one particular package. Yes, it was. The prices increased between $10 and $14 in 15. The increase between $5 and $12. Interesting enough in 15, that $5 to $12 increase represented a 112% increase in the cost of local channels to us. Now that $10 to $14 increase, which is a much larger dollar increase, is only a 72% increase in the cost of those local channels this time around, just because the costs kept going up and up over the past three years. Thank you. The affordability is obviously a huge issue. It's a huge thing and it's also a generational thing. Local channels are what most people want. They want to have a certain generation. Younger people don't watch them. They won't watch them. I'll get the news out this way. Thank you. Councillor Jang. Thank you, President O'Dell. And I wanted to also say that both you and Miro Weinberger, thank you for doing this, for having you here. I think it's very important. So we are a household cable free. So I did not receive the letter, but I heard that BT did not send the letter, but it's the new owner of BT that sent the letter. Is that accurate? No, that is not the case. There have been, just to clarify for everyone, there have been zero conversations with the new owner of BT about the price increases that BT has passed on to its customers. No conversations, no direction, no comment, nothing. And secondly, I heard also some people receive a $24 increase and you're saying it's only $14 the highest. Yes. That's accurate. And now what does it mean for those participating in the lifeline program, this increase? Well, the lifeline program impacts internet access, not cable TV. And as you know, we have a policy of not increasing internet prices, broadband prices. We haven't increased broadband prices. And in the asset purchase agreement, the new owner has committed not to increase those prices for, I think, a further five years. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Chang. Mayor Weimiger. Thanks, President O'Dell. I just thought it might have been some confusion that what sure as communications did do, they did send an open letter to the people of Braunton that was in the paper the last couple of days. So it's possible there was some confusion. That's a separate communication. And that has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Thank you, Mayor. Now, I am the BT customer and proud of it. And I received the communication, but then I recycled it. So then I went to look to the web page. Is it posted anywhere on the information about the changes in the rates? They are posted on, they've been posted on social media and on BT's website. And there's a fairly detailed explanation on BT's website as well. Great. Does it include some of the information you've shared with us here today? It does, yes. Okay. So the bottom line is that this, that you've gone several years without passing on the higher costs. You've come to the point where you need to pass on the higher costs to avoid losses on the cable service. Losses at a gross margin level, not at an... At a gross, even at a gross margin level. Before any costs. Yeah, before any costs. Okay. Any other Councillor? Yes, Councillor Dean. This is not... Thank you, President Nodale. This is not a specific question for today, but looking forward into the future as sure as communication controls for only the telecom, these price increases do not sound sustainable. What's the future for cable as part of a package that would be in sure as portfolio for BT? Can you speculate on that? I... My only speculation is the way the industry appears to be going and the way the industry appears to be going is more and more unbundling. Certainly generationally, our kids, my kids, people in their 20s, by and large, unless it's a sporting event, tend not to watch cable TV. They seem to get everything they watch on YouTube. I remember a couple of years ago, there would be prognosis, albeit from YouTube. Their view was that by 2020, there would be more YouTube viewers than cable viewers. And I, for one, believe that. I think people will buy more selectively, but while ever there's a demand for cable packages, you're going to pay more and more. And if you don't pay more for content, then some of those that control the content will also have some of the largest ISPs in the country. And if they don't get you on the cost of the content, they'll get you on the cost of streaming it to watch it that way. They're going to get you. And that's why BT and the values we have and the way we operate is increasingly important here. But in terms of our ability to contain prices, it's very hard now because we literally have, we're almost at break-even at this point in time on those, on programming. Thank you. Any other councillor? I assume that Councillor Powell will let Councillor Roof know if she, or just text me, Councillor Powell, whenever you want one in on the conversation. Okay. We're all set. Thank you very much for being here, Mr. Berikoff and Ms. Monahan. Appreciate it. This time I will open up the public forum. We can set the clock for three minutes. And the first speaker is Daniel Peacore. And he will be followed by Dan Yudowicz. Excuse me? Yukawa. Yukawa. Yukawa Yukawa. Hello. Hello. First of all, my name is Daniel Peacore. It's spelled P, E, C, O, R, E. Just to clear up any confusion, you say, oh, I recognize him from, he's someone's cousin. A lot of local Peacores, not many with an E. So I just wanted, I'm just here to address snow and ice removal on sidewalks and recommend that the city use, And I don't think they do use. I looked in the, the Burlington Public Works, snow SOP, and the snow and ice control plan on the city's webpage to see if the city could use, only on sidewalks, a pet friendly salt for ice removal. That's pretty much it. But I know that some other cities have started petitions to use a pet friendly ice removal compound on sidewalks only. And I'm not, I'm not, just sidewalks, just for pet spots. That's it. Great, thank you very much. We will, we will certainly think about that. Dan Yukolowicz, to be followed by Janet Patterson. Good evening, council, mayor. I'm just here tonight, just a little backstory myself. My name is Dan Yukolowicz. My wife and I, Cara owned, Cara Paluzziak, owned Simple Roots Brewing for a very small brewery in Burlington's New North End. We opened in May 2014 and we got a home occupation zoned by this council, thank you very much, in our garage. And we worked enough, worked hard enough to open in the shopping center, Ethan Allen shopping center, in July 2016. We purposely wanted to stay in that neighborhood, this neighborhood where Cara was born, she was born in Rutland, excuse me. This is where she was raised, went to BHS, I taught at BHS. We're from that community and that's where we wanted to be. Since then, we're now in 1,800 square feet. We have a distribution in about a 50 mile radius in the state. We have four part-time employees. We just hired one last week. We have plans with expanding this next year and bringing one of our employees full-time into the brewery. What I wanted to talk about today was the personal property tax. I know you probably have businesses come to you all the time complaining about taxes. We do pay 11 taxes monthly, quarterly, yearly through the state, federal government, and the city, and six license and permits. This tax though, I felt, is arbitrary and unfair in ways that those ones aren't. And I was hoping that the council would look a little bit deeper into getting rid of it, honestly. Especially for small businesses like ourselves who are really scraping by. We pay about $1,800 in the personal property tax a year. That's $150 a month and that could really go. That's an entire full-time employee's salary for the month, period. So also, I've also heard that this is $1.2 million that the city brings in from this tax. We contribute 1,500 of a percent to that tax. We are very small. I understand that there's a small, small business under $40,000, but since we're a brewery, our equipment is well beyond $40,000. So we aren't considered a small business, which doesn't make sense to me. Just a couple more points. I do feel this cancels out the state exemption tax form S3M, which allows us to not have to pay, manufacturers don't have to pay taxes on equipment. We do already pay a property tax. I understand it's on literal property and not on physical property, but I do feel like that's a double tax. And finally, I do just want to say, I do feel like this tax is very arbitrary in the fact that I will not name names even though they said I could. They feel, they've had this tax five years ago and then they didn't and now a couple months ago, now they're paying this tax with fellow business people that I know in the New North then. Sorry, that was. Thank you very much. Janet Patterson followed by Justin Worthley. Good evening. I'm Janet Patterson. I'm part of the Senior Center. And I've come today to ask you to reconsider and work with the Senior Center in revising the area around St. Joseph's School. There was an article in the paper that this was zoned residential medium and it was rezoned to neighborhood mixed. We all have a problem. Those of us who drive to the Senior Center and there are seniors driving. And to get to the Senior Center from various places, we have to park on a one way street. And one of the problems is that the many, many different organizations that are in now the old Joseph's School. There are residents parking. There's many different organizations. And then the Senior Center. I have to, I really want to say, I congratulate the Burlington Parks and Rec for making our move from Winooski to St. Joseph's School. We are occupying the different rooms and having a lot of fun doing that. But the parking is difficult. Around 11 o'clock to time we come to lunch. The question of parking also, there's a big yard, grassy yard, now snowy, and somebody plowed it. And so we started parking there, but there's no, and somebody said there was no parking there. So my question is, who in the city ordered the grassy yard to be plowed? So the question I have for the council, and I'm not sure the quite the process that occurs is could the council review that change and come back and talk to the seniors? For those of us that have difficulty getting to that, to park along the way. It's for those of us who bring people, it's important. It's for the van, this SSTA van to pull up and have a place to park. And there's always somebody in there. And then when the Parks and Rec van go to take somebody out, they have to park in the middle of the street because there's no parking along the opening or the door where the seniors can get in for their trip or wherever they're going. So I know that parking is difficult and more difficult there because it's one way and it is residential, but I would encourage you to encourage the department of planning and zoning to come and talk to us so that we could discuss the need for safe parking and parking that's in front of the St. Joe's, oh, St. Joe's school. Thank you. Thank you very much. Justin Worthley and then Kelly Devine. Good evening. I'm Justin Worthley. I'm from Burton Snowboards here in Burlington. And I wanted to just make a few comments on the resolution around the personal property tax. Excited that it's on your agenda. Little bit of background, Burton's been here in Burlington since 1991. We have 350 employees based in Burlington. It's our global headquarters. We also have operations in 14 other states in the US and six countries, six other countries outside of the US. We're a big fan of this resolution. We've been talking to the mayor about it. We've been talking to counselors in our district. Thank you, Counselor Shannon and Mason for helping bring this up today. You know, as a business, we have no problem paying our fair share from a tax standpoint. We think the property is just straight up. Property tax does that. I sort of echo the comments earlier that this just does not make a whole lot of sense as a form of taxation on taxing computers and chairs and solar panels and snowboard presses and the equipment that goes into our business, the things that we really should be making investments in sort of getting another tax on that just doesn't make any sense to us. And we think, you know, for business like ours, it really sort of puts, the loser is Burlington. You know, it actually puts Burlington at a disadvantage because we have options to make those investments in other facilities and other locations that we have. And, you know, this is a factor that, you know, it's a bummer. We don't like that we have to even think about it and consider that this is a factor in how much money we invest in our facilities and operations here in Burlington and that it actually is a material factor about whether we would spend that money in other places because there's less of a tax burden on that. So, you know, personally, as a native or minor, it sort of bothers me. I would ask for your help to sort of take it off the table so it doesn't add to a factor where Burlington is in an uncompetitive position for a business like ours. I guess, fortunately, unlike some other smaller businesses, we have those options about where we make investments, but this is our global headquarters. We want to be here and we would like to see this sort of go away. Our understanding is it's sort of a relic. There are very few municipalities in Vermont and even nationally that have a form of tax like this. So it seems like it's time for it to go away. So thank you for thinking about it. Just two comments that I'd make in terms of the resolution. One is that it would be great to see a timeframe tied to the requirement to put a report together for recommendations on moving forward. And second, really just acknowledge in the resolution that this is not a common thing. Most other municipalities in Vermont, regionally, nationally don't collect this form of tax. So thanks and I do have written comments. I'll leave those if anybody's interested. Thank you. Thank you. And Kelly Devine. Hi, Kelly Devine, Burlington Business Association. Also here to speak in support of the resolution to take an examination of the business asset tax. We've been working on this for a couple of years. I think there's something about the tax that hopefully the council will consider as they take their review of that. One is it definitely is a deterrent to capital investment. And so when businesses, a good example is switchback brewery when they made that investment to set up that tap room and brewery down in the south and which is the kind of business I think we want as a community. They quickly found themselves in the top five list of businesses paying this tax. The number one business a couple of years ago was dealer.com now Cox. So it definitely is a disincentive for businesses to grow here and to come here. And especially since most of our surrounding communities say for Winooski have long since eliminated this tax. It's pretty much not collected statewide while it remains on the books. There's language in the Vermont Charter to provide for towns to eliminate the tax. The other thing about the taxes I think it's an inequitable tax. Certain types of businesses as the earlier speaker mentioned pay more than other types of businesses. It tends to most heavily impact equipment heavy businesses. One of which is light manufacturing which I understand is a business that we as a city hope to encourage to come into Burlington. So those types of businesses pay a higher percentage of this tax than other types of businesses. So for those reasons we're excited that the council is bringing forth a resolution to take a look at it and asking the mayor's office and the board of finance to take a look. In 2015 I put together an information sheet upon that about this tax. I'm gonna pass that out to the council. Maybe that'll help you guys as you begin to learn a little bit more about the tax. And on the back is the top 30 payers from the year I started this which is 2014. And it's an interesting list because you can see that some of our smaller businesses are paying a higher percentage of that tax. In addition, we have a group of business folks that have been working on this. One of them is Ted Castle from Rhino Foods who was recently in the process of contemplating a significant equipment investment and he has a location in Williston and in Burlington. And I know he did ultimately decide to make that investment in Burlington but I know for him it was a real struggle mainly because of this tax. So he has a statement that he sent and asked me to share with you in support of this resolution. So I'll pass out that to the council as well. We're looking forward to seeing this work move forward. I would ask the council consider that there be a timeline on when the work would be completed maybe in the first six months of this year so we can prepare for FY19. Some communities have actually phased it out so that's something to consider. Thank you. Thank you very much. And that was our last speaker and so I'll close the public forum at 7.45 and look for a motion on the consent agenda. I'll move to adopt the consent agenda taking the actions as indicated. Thank you, Councilor Roof. Is there a second? Councilor Bushher seconds it. Any discussion on seeing none on favor of adopting our consent agenda and taking the actions indicated. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. Thank you, Councilor Powell. That brings us to 5.01 which is a presentation from Superintendent O'Bang, Director of Finance, Nathan Lavery. Lavery, excuse me. And Mark Porter who's the school board chair with the required annual presentation of the school budget to the city council. This is informational. There's no action. It's our opportunity to get educated on this topic. Dr. O'Bang, thank you for being here and turn it over to you. Thank you, President Nodell and City Council. As you said, I'm joined by our senior director of finance, Nathan Lavery on my left and our chair of the school board, Mark Porter. I know that you, can you hear me? Speak, if you stick right into the mic, it's even better. Is that better, testing, one, two, three? Better? That's great. Okay, I'm kissing the mic here. The, one of the challenges at the, you did receive a presentation and we've made some modifications. We'll speak to, as we present the information. That is one of the challenges in terms of our budget process and also communicating with the city, is the timing of it. If we had our preference, we would probably come to you much later when we've sort of done some more thorough analysis with our board and given them the state variables which we just received on Friday, so we can do that analysis. But we do want the opportunity to share with you our process and give you the information that we do have and we look forward to also continuously sending you information as the process is revised. So bear with us with that, with that process as well too. I'm gonna turn over to our senior director, Nate Laverian. We're gonna do some highlights. The presentation is quite extensive and it's meant for a document that is presented on our board website so individuals who do not attend a meeting can kind of go through the process on their own but I know you've seen it and there are some critical information around tax impact and variables that we'd like to have some conversations with you about so we'll try to just go through some of the highlights throughout the process and then get to the end where we can share updated information around that information. Good evening everyone. So I'm going to give Amy the nod here and let her advance the slides and as we go through if you have a particular question if we're moving too fast, just let us know. But we wanted to start by giving folks a quick summary of the process we went through to gather input into the budget. We had a number of community forums as well as opportunities for staff and district leadership to provide input online as well as in person. So we went through a pretty lengthy process that began in mostly through the month of November but certain avenues are still available in fact, including the website. There are a number of themes that we heard. Some of them we've heard in prior consultations. Some of them are new but we summarized them here. This is not an exhaustive list but it covers a lot of the major themes that we heard and that we incorporated in this case from some of the consultations and then on the next slide you could see the actual types of requests that we generated mostly coming through staff and kind of turning some of those themes into kind of actionable proposals. This totaled requests of over $6 million in our estimation. As you'll see, we paired this list down substantially but we thought it was appropriate and necessary to kind of show everyone that we did the work of actually estimating the costs of these things as we went through and did our analysis about what would be supported. So in addition to the things that people asked to include in the budget there are a number of pressures that we have to consider even though they aren't things that typically come up during kind of consultation or input opportunities. Obviously folks are familiar with the process we went through last year to get and then we thank the council for support on getting a budget or a ballot question rather to increase our capital spending by bonding for funds to cover deferred and preventative maintenance. That's a big driver but we know that the high school was the one piece that wasn't part of that equation and so we've got that pressure looming. We also know obviously that salaries and benefits rise on an annual basis and folks here are probably familiar with some of the changes in health insurance that have been happening across the state. While premiums as a result of that change went down we have already been notified by VHI that we're facing approximately a 10% increase in the premium cost for the year that we're now budgeting for next year. So the reprieve was short lived. There's a series of other costs. The biggest one on the bottom there again has been in the news a lot. The legislative environment, the state education fund which provides the vast majority of the funding to the district has a substantial deficit essentially resulting from the use of one time funds to balance that state education spending last year and so that drives pressure on one of the key variables that ultimately dictates our tax rate. So we'll come back to that later in the presentation but that's a major hurdle. Additionally there's other costs associated with benefits like retirement that we pay to the city and such so there's a series of things. I see we've moved on here so that's fine. That's all right let's actually skip through this one because it goes a little beyond where we need to be tonight and I'll just let you briefly talk about the kind of strategic approach to budgeting. Yeah one of the things we wanted to sort of emphasize with our staff and the community that our budget is also a moral document in terms of what we believe in and how we develop supports for our students and so once again we've sort of articulated sort of our strategic budget goals around our goals and priorities that we established our strategic plan, investment in students, staff and programs and how to sustain and support the future as well as using data and also providing an equity metrics that we've started in the last couple years in terms of allocation of resources. So that's sort of baked into our process and we just wanted to reaffirm people that that's the lens that we look through in terms of developing the process. Great and let's go to the next slide here that's just a graphic representation. One of the things we did want to highlight was the fact that over the past couple years we've looked for opportunities to reduce spending in areas that don't have direct impact on student learning and so we thought it was necessary to remind folks that we've done some of the hard work of looking at the administrative component of the budget. It's a small piece but it's still an important piece and it does have costs and so that's one of the areas where we have been cutting back over the last couple years and required spending increases so it's a little bit redundant but again we just talked about the number of things that we have to spend more money on whether we want to or not essentially based on rate increases and other cost drivers sometimes dictated for example the universal preschool payments is a cost that is sent to us from the state and even though there's been talk at the state level of keeping spending either level or at a 2% growth rate that's a particular charge where the states increase the rate that we have to pay to providers by nearly 3% there so we're in a difficult situation of being given instructions to keep the rate of spending lower than that and yet being forced to pay higher reimbursement rates. Through all this and this is a theme that we'll come back to we identified some of the priority areas that for any increased spending and also priority areas that we're gonna look to maintain even if we have to make reductions so there's a series of areas here and some of them are driven again by guidance from the state such as education quality standards and others are part of the strategic plan that has been vetted and adopted by the board. Enrollment is a constant discussion at the state level about the changes in pupils across the state and there's been a lot of discussion from the governor's office about how the enrollment across the state has declined significantly. In Burlington, we've more stagnated is probably the way to describe it and that's a relatively recent phenomenon. We have seen some slowing to, actually I'd say substantial slowing of the increases associated with new Americans. That's very recent so that was driving a lot of our increase in enrollment in the past and that has slowed down substantially and so for example, you can see on this slide we're talking about the high school enrollment and how we budgeted for a higher number of students than we've actually ended up enrolling in the current fiscal year. So we believe for example that supporting the same amount of students next year would be possible within our budget even though our estimated number of students is actually somewhat below what we believe our budget would support. It's a similar theme at K-8, we've got a little bubble in the middle school offset by some decreasing enrollment at the elementary level. One other important thing to note is that a lot of the pre-K, the universal pre-K law that is in effect has actually supported overall district enrollment but from a funding perspective, the process that dictates what our spending per pupil is and our tax rate, it favors essentially enrollment at the secondary level so even though overall we have had a pretty level enrollment over the past few years, there's been kind of a shift. We have higher enrollment at the preschool level, lower enrollment at the secondary level and so that actually has funding consequences for us. I just summarized in terms of enrollment because there's a lot of debate around enrollment and our data really reflects what's happening in Vermont. We have been declining and the difference for Burlington has been the immigration and refugee numbers we've had over the last several years. That's kept us sort of stagnant but in the last couple of years, we've seen those numbers decrease so now we're starting to see a decline, slight decline, not as significant as some of the rural areas but we're not projecting growth in terms of even though you would suspect that a great city like Burlington that we're growing out of our scenes but we're not so I wanted to kind of emphasize that I've had this conversation several times with several individuals and people insisting that we're growing with our data as you've seen doesn't illustrate that we're growing at a significant rate like people may assume. I won't spend a lot of time in this slide but just to say in brief what this slide does is illustrate an example of our attempts to apply the equity lens to our budgeting decisions so making allocations in this case of staff on the basis of not just the headcount so to speak the number of students in a particular school but also the kind of needs profile of those students and that's something that we've applied to our approaches to both staffing as well as to non-personnel budget allocations. Last year we made significant new investments in a number of things and right now we're in the process of determining which of those investments we can afford to maintain and we have prioritized them. There are some that clearly do not need to be maintained they were either one time in nature or they're at least if not once in one time they're infrequent in terms of our need to make those investments in other situations they were made to meet a need that persists. So we've sort of structured the investment portion into three goal areas and the first one is around sustainable finance and facilities and I'll fast forward to the next slide if you can. So initially when we started our process some of the things that we wanted to reflect was the comments we heard from the community and staff and a number of items here that are supportive in terms of moving forward. The library and maker space pilot that's an opportunity for us to look at our learning spaces and this came about by community partnership. We had a number of community members who work with our staffs and have found grants and have accessed architects and given their in kind dollars to put forward a proposal around supporting one of our schools in order to set a sample that we could replicate. So we said in the beginning of our process that we want great ideas from our community and people have stepped up and actually have contributed their time and money and effort and being able to do that. So we want to reward them by saying if you do the work we'll be able to support it and be able to support our students as well too. The other areas around special ed we have some challenges around transportation and they're very much needed in particular with special ed transportation. So we've added an opportunity for drivers and aides on the buses. And this is one that I'm quite excited about is we've been looking at the last couple of years of establishing an international program. This there's just multiple advantages to this one. There's an economic advantage in terms of generated revenue in terms of international students. And also it gives us an opportunity to continue to diversify our student population but with students who are coming also with other assets including financial resources. So this is a project that we've been able to partner with an organization that's actually in Burlington and I've been searching the last couple of years for an organization in the states that does this international program. It just happened that there was an organization that does with other states and they're actually housed here in Burlington and we haven't accessed them thus yet. So we're looking forward to that partnership. Another great opportunity that we are partnering with community businesses and community members is a late semester project that's gonna offer our students an opportunity for a termed course that engages them in many different organizations and sites and facilities in Burlington that connects to their curriculum. So those are areas around having little investment for greater rewards and we're hoping we're able to sustain those opportunities and continue to engage our community in investing in our students. Move on to the next slide. So the last area and I won't go through each of the items here but one of the major goals is about equitable climate and culture and we've identified from some of our analysis around the social emotional needs for our students. Many of you have heard about the mental health needs in our communities and the trauma informed information that we need and this speaks to the conversations we've had with our administrators, our strategic plan teams and what they've expressed our needs in order to support the foundation of our students before we could even get to the old fashioned arithmetic and the three yards. There's a foundational piece in terms of their social emotional need that we need to address. So all the items up there reflect in that particular area and I was also, I'll pick out the summer school project. We've had really great opportunities for summer school which extends the learning. We know the research shows that when students are not engaged over the summer, there is a loss in retention and we've been able to provide a program that provides nutrition as well as a great academic vigor over the summer. Every summer, the last few summers, at least I've been here, there's been a waiting list of students who want to and we've had to turn people away and we wanna be able to provide that for as many students as possible. One more. And the last goal area is around inclusive teaching and learning. This really speaks to the core of our work around the achievements and the board has put forward some goals around closing the achievement gap and raising the bar and around restorative practices which sort of go hand in hand. And so we're looking at what sort of instructional strategies that are going to enhance what we're currently doing to move the achievement of our students up to the next level. And so we've done some significant analysis and as you saw the initial list, the six million list, we couldn't do that. So we've had some extensive conversations with our instructional leaders and our administration in terms of what are the essential things that we could pull out in order to support you in getting to where we need to get to. And that's represented here. I'll go down to the bottom. One of the areas that we've been looking at for the last couple years is around dual language programs in Burlington. I think Burlington is a great city to have that sort of program. I think many of our parents and students would love the opportunity to engage and there are community organizations within Burlington that are interested in that. So we want to take the big step this coming year in exploring the opportunities for dual language. I know having had the experience of having dual language schools in my former districts, one of the challenges is building the state-sustainable infrastructure, getting the teachers that you can have to continue to grow the program because you would start off with sort of a small cohort and that means partnering with maybe local colleges or colleges who are willing to do that. So we want to start that conversation and make sure we have the infrastructure before we build it because we know if we say we have it, you build it and they will come. People will come and we'll have to turn people away and we don't want to do that until we know that we can provide something that people who want that access can receive it. Now the fun part. So there are four primary variables that drive the tax rate that the school budget produces. One of them obviously is how much we choose to spend and that's a process developing that number still ongoing and there's gonna be a school board meeting tomorrow night where we're gonna be presenting some more detailed information and so I would invite folks to come out to that meeting to learn more about that. But in addition to that, we've got the equalized pupil count. This is essentially a weighting of the enrollment that we have that factors in certain needs. In Burlington's case, that number was just about level from last year so it doesn't really have any impact positive or negative on our tax rate. However, the dollar yield, that is the variable that reflects the challenges facing the state education fund. The dollar yield declined pretty significantly this year and the result of a decline in the dollar yield is upward pressure on tax rates. And then the last item on there is the common level of appraisal. Just I learned just this listening to the changes to the agenda that that's something that the city is going to be appealing but we do have a preliminary number at this point and that number also moved in the wrong direction so to speak in that it went down and a decline in the CLA also puts significant upward pressure on tax rates. So all of those variables combine, if we go to the next slide, kind of the tax theme here is that even without making any of the new investments that we're talking about where we would still potentially see a significant increase in property tax rates, possibly approaching double digits. So that's going to require significant work on part of the board and on part of the administration to determine how to address that. Again, these are driven primarily from variables that are neither under our control nor are they associated with spending to meet student needs. So the next step, as I mentioned, tomorrow night we're having a meeting with the school board and the discussion is going to focus on how to ensure that we can produce a budget that's sustainable, that meets the needs of our student population while also being something that is defensible to taxpayers. And there it is on the schedule. So that's the end of the presentation. We'll open to questions. Thank you very much. Councillor Busher. So thank you. Before the meeting I went over and said was there a spreadsheet that came with this because I was looking for dollar amounts and now I understand that you're not there yet. So there were a couple of things that I don't really totally understand and that's more your partnerships where you're hoping to generate money for initiatives and so you had a number of them where there was anticipated, I guess, dollars coming in and I guess I wanted to just better understand that and I'm looking for that page again. Can you go? Sure, I can give you, I think I know what you're saying. So sustainable finance and let's say in facilities, for example, you've got special education bus driver and aid, that's $75,000. The first one, the library maker space pilot supported by grant funds is $75,000. So that, the grant funds are there. What am I supposed to take away from the special education bus driver and aid? Where is that money coming from, the $75,000? That is an investment, that is an investment we would have to invest in. That's an investment that you're making. So you have to find those dollars and you're investing in those, okay. The international student program, you said you were hoping to grow that but you're saying that will bring about future revenue. If you invest $7,000, is that what you were, that's what I was supposed to take away from that? Is that true? Right, so that is an opportunity that we would be able to have fee paying students and so that would generate revenue for us in terms of our district and be able to utilize it to support other programs as well too. There are many examples across a number of districts who've been able to utilize that and so we're in the beginning stages of developing a process and having the right conversations. So at some point in the next week or so, week or two, you will have fine-tuned the number of initiatives that you feel, some you are mandated as you stated but you will have fine-tuned this list and associated where that funding is coming from and if indeed that requires a reduction where that reduction is coming from also so people can really look at that and then that will, based on the other factors that you referenced, that will then lead you to what kind of increase of what you're going to be asking the community to support as far as a tax increase. Right, so in terms of timing, so when we developed this process and we were preparing it to arrive here, at that point we didn't have all the variable numbers from the state in order to do the calculations but this is our analysis in terms of the first pass we went with our board in terms of these are the items that we've started with and we've narrowed down from six million to these items to make investments and we knew we'd have to go back and do that analysis as well but now that we have the variable numbers and we know that it's gonna be a significant challenge to bring forward these items without a huge tax impact so the conversation we'll be having with our board is first we'll have to give them the analysis around what it would look like without adding anything in terms of the costs and then the conversation around how much would we be willing to add as investments moving forward, it may be nothing maybe the board may say the tax impact is way above the threshold with the community could afford or willing to support and we would have to look at doing something status quo but even at status quo that means looking for dollars to supplement to keep the district the same as we've run it this year. Okay my last comment is I think there's something telling here that I wanna make sure that the school and the school board and the community understands when you look at your elementary school enrollment and then the dramatic change at middle school level and then a slight increase in the high school I'm not sure what drives that I don't know whether it's family saying that the high school is inaccessible and that they're making that change when the children start middle school so there'll be some continuity for friends and growth, et cetera I don't know what that's saying but if indeed I mean I think we if we're planning for a new high school also or a renovation a significant one we have to understand if that change will bring back some of the students that were in the elementary school that have left us will they come back to us if there's a different high school and a more accessible high school if the facility is different I don't know how much is driven by the facility versus how much is driven by the actual education that's offered in the facility so I think that that's really important also I don't know what to make of these numbers of why we lose so many people and then they grow back in the high school and if we're going to plan education and we've got all these moving targets I feel like I'd like to understand that better Yeah That's it, that's just my comment, okay Thank you One comment, I shared some data about two years ago in trends in terms of our enrollment and if you look at there is a natural attrition from elementary to high school that's you can look back about 20, 30 years and it looks the same So there isn't a significant we've looked at the analysis around how many students are leaving to private schools from the middle school to the high school and it's pretty consistent and you look at comparison to other districts and other parts, other states the numbers are pretty consistent in terms of so but I agree that if we do if we are able to put forward a excellent product that it will certainly entice individuals and families to continue to consider Burlington as their number one choice Thank you, thank you Councilor Tracy Thank you President O'Dell and thank you for your presentation So as someone who worked in international education specifically international recruitment trying to get international students to come to the University of Vermont I'm very excited by the idea of bringing international students to our high schools not just for the budgetary benefits that they perhaps might bring but also just for the cultural benefits that it brings to a school environment we've seen that benefit pretty directly at the University of Vermont in terms of just really changing our campus culture in some pretty meaningful and exciting ways So I really applaud you looking at creatively to try and do that At the same time, however I think that you exist in very much the same world that we do in terms of the international student lens and after years and years of tremendous year-over-year growth in international students in the United States last year we saw a drop for the first year In fact, international students in the United States declined by about 7% last year with nearly half of over 500 colleges that were surveyed reporting some sort of decline in enrollments of international students Anecdotally as well as really specifically we've found that the political environment is of no assistance in this regard as well as notable improvements in a number of other countries kind of drawing students My question, I guess, is given this environment do you see sort of similar trends in terms of high school age international student populations or are those populations still tending to grow? And if you are seeing that decline how then are we gonna be able to really recruit these students to Burlington when other schools have been at it for a lot longer than we have a lot of other districts like your reference, which is absolutely true I see that every day when I read applications so just wanted to understand your take on that and how you compete in a challenging marketplace Well, thank you for that and thank you for acknowledging that it will add a rich opportunity in terms of cultural sharing when you have those students here as well too The organization that we've been partnering with has a really good plan in terms of recruitment and even at this stage before we've actually done the official sort of invites they're already noting that they have candidates that will be interested in coming to Burlington and one of the things that we're planning to do with this organization is actually do summer camps and they've already committed to pay for those camps where students would get a chance to come for the summer and have the experience here and then look at enrollment Not only that, my plans is to extend that so we could have opportunities that have satellite Burlington High Schools in other countries where we'll be able to send some of our staff and also have students receive our accreditation There are many, you would know this many sort of nations that if you have an American diploma is quite desirable in order to get into post-secondary education and I know many of the communities outside of our nation are looking for that opportunity so it gives me a lot of hope that we can continue to encourage people to look at Burlington and to continue that international exchange The challenges that you've raised are very much there but we're going to continue to explore and that's why we're in exploration stage in terms of looking at it and looking at what's the viability of doing that and how can we develop something that'll be sustainable for us that will enrich our schools and also at the same time some revenue that we can build our programs Thank you very much Thank you, Councilor Mason and then Wright and then any others Thank you, President O'Dell Thank you for the presentation comment is 10% it's a hard number to hear I'm sure it is for you when that came out on email it was not a welcome, I'm sure to anyone I have concerns sort of about the impact of that on the discussion about the high school you know that was a big number before I have very big concerns and we all know how important it is to move forward on the high school so I hope we can still move forward but this is going to be a different discussion I think if it does go forward question relates that because we sort of glossed over if I look at the 10% number could you sort of break down further like what's driving that number how much is coming from the state versus how much is contractually obligated salary increases I'm just trying to get a sense of Sure Without going into too fine a detail which I don't know off the top of my head I can just say that so when we've kind of been talking about a range because obviously the variable that we are still working on is the spending variable but one of the analysis kind of the ways of looking at it was suppose that we don't increase our spending at all we hold that variable constant and so we are essentially only absorbing whatever the impacts are from the changes in the dollar yield and the CLA two variables that again we don't have any control over and they don't have anything to do with student learning and give or take both of those variables contribute over 3% combined they're around 7% in change to so that's just kind of if we didn't spend a penny more we absorbed every single increase associated with salaries, benefits and any other increasing costs we would still be looking at something on the order of 7% in change increase in the tax rate so to give you a sense of that when we start talking about potentially being in the kind of double figure range that would be increases associated with all the investments that we've talked about tonight on top of that. Thank you. Councilor Wright. Thank you President Odell and I want to delve a little bit further into that but first I want to thank you for the presentation and thank all of you including our current school board for working I think very hard to give Burlington kids a quality education the best education possible but at an affordable price for citizens I know that tough balancing act so I want to thank you for that and thank the entire school board for that but I do want to ask and the tax commissioner as you know has to write a letter to the legislature recommending what the projected increase is going to be in the tax rate and that's where the 9.4 cents comes from the projected increase but about five cents of that 9.4 cents is projected as the aggregate spending across the state what they project to be the aggregate spending of all the spending increases. What the governor has said and I know he's recommended to school districts across the state is to try to live within a 2.5% increase in per pupil spending. Do you I'm not sure if I where are we in regards to that or do we know right now? Well again that so per pupil spending is a function of your and really what they're talking about is per equalized people in that context so it's a function of our equalized pupils which we said are essentially flat and then our spending which is still under development however as I was just saying under that scenario saying even with a change in our spending per equalized pupil that is small we're talking about half a percentage point increase perhaps we would still be as a result of those other variables facing the significant tax impact that's a combination of the dollar yield decline and also the CLA decline. But the yield is basically set to pay for the increased tax rates I believe. The well now the yields a calculated figure and then based on changes that may or may not be made to for example add additional revenue to the education fund the legislature can change the dollar yield but as the dollar yield that was in this presentation is what was distributed by the tax commissioner in the December letter. Right I just wanna make sure that citizens understand that what's happening in Montpelier for the most part is driven by the aggregate local spending decisions across the state. Three cents of the 9.4 is the use of the education fund surplus. However people also need to understand had that money not been used last year the three cent increase would have happened last year rather than this year. Yes certainly it's true that using one time money whether it was in any given year is gonna create a kind of fiscal cliff and that is what we're kind of driving over this year. Can I actually, can I go one further? Can I just read you the end of the governor's or this is actually a tax commissioner's letter to the legislature and just have you react to what this is a short paragraph. It says while the statewide homestead education property tax rate is ultimately driven by aggregate statewide spending locally voted spending amounts remain the primary detriment of a town's tax rate. For instance in an average district holding per pupil spending level could mitigate most of the projected nine cent rate increase. Can you just comment? So there are multiple variables holding per pupil spending level in Burlington would mitigate some of what could be a projected increase. The tax commissioner's letter is it's kind of describing the aggregate situation across the state. And so in addition to issues like the deficit in the education fund they're also projecting what do we think across the state school districts will vote on in terms of increased budget. And then they're saying okay in aggregate that'll cost this much money and they're coming to an estimated total tax rate. So it's not specifically applicable to any one particular case. So it's kind of have to tease out the two parts there. And so we will be looking at and presenting the school board with kind of what it would do in terms of projected tax increases if we were to do exactly that. If we were to keep our spending per pupil at a hold it level. But because of for example the CLA change we would still face an increase in our tax rate. The it wouldn't be driven in that case by an increase in spending per pupil but it would be driven by those other factors that don't that are related to spending. And we're in Burlington did we end up with the whole healthcare issue with where the state wanted schools to stay within a certain. We have seven I can't even remember now seven different bargaining units or so. So we didn't end up in the same place with everyone. I think we made I guess I would say we made progress toward the benchmark that was laid out in the legislation. We achieved it for some bargaining units. We did not achieve it for our largest bargaining unit although we weren't really far from it which was is our teacher bargaining unit. So yeah we made it there in some cases and but not all the way over the finish line in all cases. Thank you. I have Councillor Jang. Thank you President Lel. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you everyone for being here but I have a lot of questions but I will just try to ask you for and most of them are maybe to help us understand what is proficiency coordinator and also the proficiency learning portfolio coordinator. What are the differences? Right. So there is a number of mandatory requirements for us. So by 2020 we need to according to the agency of education have proficiency based learning implemented throughout the district. We have personal learning plan that's with PLP. I think that's on the. So those are some huge initiatives that were legislated a number of years ago and we have to have those implemented. And so in conversations with our strategic plan teams and our administrators, they come up with the strategies in terms of what would help and support them in getting to those levels where we need to get to. So those ads represent those strategies. Now post the conversation you just heard, we may be in a situation that we're not gonna be able to do that and we're gonna be talking about, okay, what can we do considering the financial restraints that we have, right? That's the ideal what we would have been talking to you today and saying we understand we'll have a sort of a modest sort of ass to the community but we're in a situation where we may have to revisit, we will have to revisit all those items and in terms of being put forward. The other one, during the presentation you stated very clearly that there is a huge decline in new arrival. So less need yellow students. But at the same time you wanna maintain the fund for multilingual liaisons. And if I understand correctly, the multilingual liaisons their pay was coming from title one and title three. Why do you now wanna shift it to the general fund? So two things. First of all, while the kind of stream of new enrollee, new arrivals has reduced, we still have as across the district all of those existing students to serve. So just because we're not getting new students at that same level, we still have needs that we believe are not being fully met for the existing population. So the second part of your question, we have been paying for multilingual liaisons through title money, federal grant money. And that money passes through the state and it has strings attached to it. Specifically and the state essentially approves our requested use on the basis of the federal criteria for those funds and the challenge we're facing and the reason we are proposing to move a portion of our multilingual liaison funding into the general fund is because the federal grants are very strict with respect to prohibiting the use of the federal funds to provide services that they believe you are, you do essentially supplant basic services. The requirement is the federal dollars need to be used for supplemental additional services that you wouldn't be required to provide anyway. And so the feedback we've received from the Agency of Education is that they no longer consider a certain portion of the work that the multilingual liaisons do to truly be supplemental. They think that they're therefore continuing to pay for those services with our federal grants would be supplanting district obligation. Therefore, they're not gonna approve it anymore. So this is a situation where we're not getting more multilingual liaisons for those dollars. We're simply using, we're gonna be forced to use our general fund dollars to pay for those instead of the grants. It does have the potential advantage of allowing us to use the grant money for something else. But based on the priorities of our EL director, we wouldn't choose to use that money for something else. We would prefer to use it to support the multilingual liaisons. We won't have that option. So we will go to a second choice, but it does mean that we need to pay from the general fund to maintain those services. Thank you. And equity under equitable climate and culture. Equity, recruitment and hiring initiative, equity and diversity initiatives. If you can just maybe try to help us understand what are those, what are the differences from equity, recruitment and then hiring and then initiatives. Sure. If you can elaborate. Sure. I'll try to explain a little bit. The one of the chief sort of goals that the board has given us is to diversify our workforce. And so we charge with the task of developing a plan that we can reach out and have an employment equity action. And so that requires dollars and resources in order to, there are a number of strategies across the nations that other districts have used in terms of trying to entice different individuals to come to their communities. So the board has asked us to take that on as well. The other piece is around capacity building for our staff. We understand that there is a level of understanding and training needed for our staff in the area of equity and inclusive strategies. And we need dollars and resources to have those professional development opportunities and also to access the professional experts to come in and work with our staff. So those items are around that package to support our students. So our students are well prepared for the global world. Yep. Maybe just two more. So one of them is when we talked about equity and we know that most of the time there are students doing extremely well. And in this proposal or the presentation, it didn't outline anything that talked about helping those students to challenge them in order to challenge those students to keep on doing better. And I'm talking about student in AP classes, et cetera. But it's all geared toward just students who are not doing very well. And to me, there is a lack of equity when we talk about those who are actually doing extremely well. And lastly, and it's a question about the community partnership, example, the Lake Semester, and was just wondering if any of those programs or projects has been already piloted. So let me tackle the projects, the Lake Semester project. So those projects are really great community partnerships where they have found the money for these initiatives. So they've either gone and gotten grants or they've put their own dollars in. And so those are great enrichment opportunities for our kids. You talked about advanced placements. So that's a range for those type of students. The other thing I would say around the equity piece, so I don't wanna do a dissertation here, but we talk about the achievement gap and raising the bar. So that's not inclusive, that's not just, we're just not looking at students who are in that gap area in terms of maybe not achieving the standard. We're also raising the bar. So we mean those kids who are achieving, right? So strategies that are employed for those students as well too. So when we look at investing in academic enrichment and interventions, we're asking our school administrators to make sure that we look at all the school programming. We know that our core sort of challenge around some of those kids who are sleeping, but at the same time, the kids at the top end can be at risk in certain situations as well too if we neglect them. We wanna keep Burlington reaching to the top in terms of achieving and we wanna still bring up the middle part to raise the top. Often when people hear closed achievement gap, they think we're just looking at the bottom, but we're talking about closing the gap and raising the bar. So we want those kids at the top to continue to achieve. Tomorrow at the board meeting, we will have three students who are state scholars who are at Montpelier today being recognized. So we're certainly not neglecting those students and those students are being honored. And sometimes when you don't see items explicitly up on the investment, it doesn't mean that it's not happening within our regular operation and programming. So, okay. Thank you. And I know what you're doing is very complex and we glad you're here. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Saying no other questions, we will thank you for your presentation and stay tuned for updates. Yes, do you wanna? Just in closing, if I could turn over to Chair Porter. Yes. Sounds good. You know, after everything you folks have been through, I know that you're just looking at me saying, hey, you're welcome to our world. So it's gonna be a very, very tough year. We haven't seen anything like this since the budget got shot down a couple of years ago. I think we're determined to weigh in on all these improvements we wanna make because we've made such a great momentum going forward over the last couple of years. We've just finished up our third year of favorable audit. We're in the black again. So that's coming back again. So I mean, that's kudos to these two to tell you the truth. You know, as a board, I think many of you know us, right? So I mean, it's really very disheartening when we can't pursue some of the things that we wanna pursue. I was the advocate for the funding to go out and hire more teachers of color. Why? Because we have 14% of our students who are black. Where's the social and academic mentors that everybody desires and needs? And this brings us great concerns. We hear some stories on the board. We, such as, you know, you saw the item up there on restorative practices. Guess what? When a kid gets suspended from school, we're gonna lose them. The propensity to lose him increases dramatically. And is that fair to do to a 17-year-old? Right? So we have to build these practices. We have to build these proper policies. We need these kids to stay in school. If we have to spend some money to get special programs going for them to rescue them, guess what? As a community, we do that. Okay? Because the outcome otherwise is something that you have to face five, six, seven years from now when the kid can't get a job because he doesn't have a high school education or he's the one that you don't wanna see on the street. This board's not gonna, we're gonna do everything we can to not let that happen. And so when we look at these expenditures that you see up here, everything from closing the achievement gap to the equity to the financial side of things. I think on the financial side of things, we have a great momentum that's going on for years now. I think we've really turned that around. But it's taken so many people to make that happen. From the side of the equity, we're not happy with where we are. I think we're subpar from the side of closing the achievement gap. I think we're subpar. I know as much as you mentioned the challenge in the high end, those differences between boys and girls and blacks and whites and poor and rich and English language learners and natural, the people that speak English naturally, those differences are huge. They're just huge and they're staring us in the face and we cannot accept them. And that's why this board put together this time around, we had all these hopes of putting these things together. And the community was with us. There was four times that we went out into the community to gather items from them. So now when we sit here now and we see, hey, if we do nothing, if we do nothing, we might get the budget shot down. It's seven or 8%, we're not adding anything. That's not a good place to be. That's not where we want to be. So we have to sit down. I think it's gonna be a lot of priority calls as to the strategies of the past. Are they still applicable for the strategies of the future or do some new things have to come into play? But it's gonna be a tough next couple of weeks. We certainly are inviting everybody from the public to show up at our meetings tomorrow night at six o'clock at Hunt in the library. We would like anybody to come to public meeting to the public speaking period at that time and let us know how they feel about this. What are the priorities that they see and where do they want us to go? I mean, we're merely the tools of the community. We just, we speak what they say. So, and certainly if you're hearing anything else, we would welcome to hear anything else that you may be hearing. If you could pass it on to either myself or to your ward representative. Cause at this point in the game, we just really could use some help coming through the next couple of weeks to make sure that we're delivering to the kids the best education that we can possibly get them. Thank you. Thank you very much. Dr. Abang, Mr. Lavery and Mr. Porter. Good luck. Thank you. Moving on to 5.02. These are like to open at 842 public hearings regarding zoning changes. One is ZA 1802 rezoning St. Joseph School neighborhood mixed use and ZA 1803 article eight regarding article eight food and beverage processing. So would anyone like to address the council on either of those two proposed changes to our zoning? Yes. Good evening, Michael Monty, chief operating of financial officer of Champlain Housing Trust. We've, I want to thank the city, the support of the mayor's office and parks recreation for being at St. Joseph School, but also the planning office, the city council committee that reviewed this as well as the planning commission. The change that we saw it as we have a property at St. Joseph which is bifurcated between residential and neighborhood commercial. You had an earlier speaker at public forum said the parking is difficult and this particular zoning change will actually make that parking more rational and enable us to build more handicapped spaces, build more spaces on the North Street side, preserve the green space, build a playground and do some other things for the uses within the building. So this change basically brings the property together as one and one zoning district as opposed to two which is extremely difficult to do in terms of both its redevelopment and in terms of its current uses. So we want to just thank the council committee and the work of the planning staff and the commission for its support and I'd be glad to answer questions if absolutely necessary. Okay, we'll appreciate your being here and we get to that item. Anyone has questions? Mr. Monti, he's here. Anyone else like to address the council on either of these two zoning changes? Seeing none, I'll close that public hearing and we'll move on to 5.03 which is the potential zoning change for St. Joseph School. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President O'Dell. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back briefly after a second. Is there a second? Second from Councilor Busher. You have the floor, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President O'Dell. I really have nothing to add. Mr. Monti actually gave a very good summary. Other than that, I'm guessing Miss Tuttle's here from the planning office if there are questions for the planning office as well. Great. Floor's open. Councilor Busher. So I'm a member of the Ordinance Committee and certainly we discussed this and I supported it. My dilemma was, and Michael Monti knows my dilemma was that this is a property that's between residential and commercial and it does change the intensity of development from 40% to 80% but the current lot coverage is 63%. And my real concern was the impact on the residential component, not the need for what Michael referenced. So having said that, I really wish that there had been a way that we could've better protected the little neighborhood side with better buffers. There's 12 and 15 feet. I can't remember exactly it's in the ordinance but I was the need and the use which is so necessary and so wonderful really exceeded the concern. So I just wanted to state how I came to my decision to support this but to acknowledge that I'm always about trying to protect existing neighborhoods when we introduce new activities surrounding it and try to balance that. So anyways, thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Wright. Thank you, President O'Dell. President O'Dell, could someone address the chair, perhaps address the questions that were raised by Janet Patterson in public forum? Councilor Meeson. Certainly. I believe Mr. Monti did sort of speak to them. I don't know that the ordinance committee or the city's in a position to address parking issues. I would say it's somewhat the landlord but my understanding is that this will potentially allow for increased parking which may address the current situation because a lot of coverage is Patterson's looking perplexed. So this will allow lot coverage to go up from 63 to 80% which means you can put pavement or more building on the site. My understanding is CHT will be looking at potentially adding parking for the senior set or other uses in the building. Mr. Monti, would you like to further explicate? Sure, that's exactly right. We actually submitted a site plan to the planning department for review for additional spaces, a double the amount of spaces and to create handicapped spaces closer to the building. But the second part of the issue is really has to do with Allen Street and DPW and their jurisdiction over sort of parking and drop off zones and that kind of thing. And that's something where we thought we had a change with the DPW commission. It didn't seem to get implemented correctly. We have a different points, different things that we still have to struggle with and we're meeting with DPW with Gary Rogers and Parks Department staff this Wednesday I think to see if we could work out what is it that we really need? What did the Public Works Commission pass a few months ago that was going to allow for more drop offs for the kids and more drop offs for the seniors and all that other stuff. So there's a bit of a thing we had to work out on how Allen Street is being used at this point. But it's a DPW jurisdiction, not a planning department jurisdiction or even ours. Thank you. I got Councilor Moore. If I could ask, yes, thank you. So this is about the parking again. I'm looking at the map and I'm assuming where those parking spaces might go, but I'm wondering if you could be very specific about where you're looking to put them. So right now we're looking at the parking lot as it is now is not configured well. So we're changing the configuration and then increasing spaces right up to essentially to the edge of the building and then creating that. And right now people are parking on the grass fairly regularly when there's events. And so we're trying to pull all of that off onto the pavement, maybe allow grass parking forward as a high holy day or something else like that where the church gets pretty crammed with people who need to visit. But essentially increase the number of existing spaces from 33 to 66 in that range, depending upon Planning Commission review and approval, but that's the plan. And then move a playground and park structure, playground structure onto the green grass a bit for the daycares that need it for their licensing and then preserve some more green space and some other things along the Greece area. So it'll be grassy area plus there's still some more parking. Thank you for the specifics. Any other Councillor? City Attorney Blackwood, I have a question for you in terms of my own participation. I'm on the board of an organization that rents space from CHT in St. Joe's. Do you have any advice? I'm sorry, I'm springing this on you. Okay, so I'll be recusing myself from this vote. Councillor Shannon. Point of order. I thought that when we were talking about zoning ordinances in particular that there was something in our conflict of interest that said when we are, we can zone ourselves. So without having a conflict. In general, when you are looking at zoning ordinance changes they are zoning ordinances that benefit a large group of citizens and therefore it is not targeted to the entity that you are a part of, to you personally or to your personal interests. The problem here is that this zoning ordinance is affecting primarily a single property. It's moving a boundary line, I believe essentially. And that's why I'm coming to the conclusion that I think it is close enough to a benefit to an entity on which President Nodell is a member of the board that she should accuse herself. I'll say it, Councillor Shannon. Any other Councillor? So then we'll go to a vote on 5.03. All in favor of this change, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Councillor Paul, voted in favor and Councillor Nodell recuses. So that carries. Great, thank you very much. So we're on to 5.04, which is the food and beverage processing, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Nodell. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance and ask Ms. Tuttle who to come up and explain this one, this was not as straightforward as the other. Very good, is there a second? Councilor Busher seconds it. Ms. Tuttle's not listening. And Ms. Tuttle, there's a request that you please explain what we're doing here. We may do. Thank you. I know there were some questions coming out of the ordinance committee, so thank you for providing me the opportunity to address you. This amendment accompanies a previous amendment that came through and was adopted by the City Council to modify some of the uses in our use table. We had a number of uses that fell under the general category of food and beverage processing. And the Planning Commission found that it was advantageous to bring them under one umbrella and treat them similarly in terms of their potential use and impact in different parts of the city where they're located. We inadvertently left out the parking piece, so this is an amendment to come back and address the parking that corresponds with that change. So to that effect, you'll see that there are several uses that have been eliminated from the parking table because those uses are no longer in our use table. We've added a new parking standard for food and beverage processing, which draws upon some of those former parking ratios and some of the existing ratios that we have in our ordinance. And essentially the purpose of this is to better tailor the parking requirements for food and beverage processing to the likelihood that a use will serve patrons or be just for processing and manufacturing. So the food and beverage processing starts with a base requirement of, depending on what zoning district, parking district I should say, with a base requirement for spaces for the entire operation and then adds an additional requirement for parking spaces based on the size of the use that's dedicated to patrons. So if you can think of a good example is a brewery that has a small tap room that serves customers. We really wanted this amendment to be tailored specifically to the level of potential activity based on the size of that use. So if you can think of two 10,000 square foot breweries, one with no customer service, no customer facing service, and the other with a thousand square foot tap room, that one with the tap room is more likely to generate additional demand for parking on that site. So the purpose of this really is to try to address the potential demand for parking based on that level of use. Thank you. The floor is open. Can I ask Councillor Blusher? Thank you for being here. You weren't at the ordinance meeting. And so I just want to make sure that I thank you for the actually the letter that accompanied this is from you is very clear, but the table itself regarding food and beverage processing. So it says 1.3 plus three per, I'm just looking at neighborhood districts plus three per 1000, whatever gross floor area, whatever that I think so devoted to patron use. It's 1.3 per 1000 and three per one. And that's how you'd interpret that language. Correct. It would be 1.3 times 1000 or yeah, per 1000 of the entire facility and then an additional three per 1000 of space that dedicated to page buttons. I just wanted to make sure that anyone looking at this, the words say that, but I wanted to make sure that's what someone would take away from the table because there aren't words that go along with the table. Right. And it might be because it's a little bit out of context from the section of our zoning ordinance that would describe that, but that's how our department would interpret that. Okay, I just, you know, as it, because when I looked at this now tonight, I thought, well, maybe it would, someone would say it was only 1.3 unless you had patrons and you'd have three per 1000. And I wanted to make sure it was 1.3 for the employees and three for the patrons. Okay. Thank you. Any other counselor? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All in favor of the motion to adopt this change to the comprehensive development ordinance, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Councillor Paul? Great. Okay. So it is unanimous and thank you very much for your work on those two zoning changes. Ordinance committee. Thank you very much for being here, Ms. Tuttle. 5.05 is a resolution about the personal property tax. Councilor Wright. Thank you, President O'Dell. I'd like to move adoption. And after a second, ask for the floor back. There's a second from Councilor Mason. Councilor Wright. Thank you. This resolution actually started as a result of a letter that we all received from the owner of Simple Roots. Actually, it was a few months ago. And frankly, I forgot. I was planning on bringing this up earlier, but I then ran into someone that is an employee there and it reminded me. So it started out as taking a look at this in regard to small business and the impact that it has on small business. And there was some confusion, I know, by the owner of Simple Roots in regard to whether he should be taxed. He thought that he wasn't supposed to be. There was some confusion there. So I'm glad that already in bringing this up, we've gotten some information about that. But I do wanna thank the counselors in Ward 5 for actually having met with some businesses in the South End and working with me to change the resolution, to expand it and broaden it to taking a look at the entire picture in regard to the business personal property tax. And so that we, as a result of the work with the information from the counselors who have met with businesses there, we expanded this to take a look at the entire thing with the possibility of eliminating that in some way. They're phasing it out or just eliminating it. And so getting a report back, I think that counselor Mason is going to have an amendment since we did, we heard from some people tonight that there should be a date in here. And I didn't realize at first when we did the new version, we did have a date originally and it didn't get back in the final version. So I would like to have, is Mr. Vickery still here? Looks like he's not. So I had a couple of questions for Mr. Vickery but I guess we'll get that at another time. Very good, thank you, Counselor Wright. Counselor Mason. Thank you, President O'Dell. I'd like to propose an amendment to add line 13 after Board of Finance date certain, which is by the first meeting in April of 2018. We do not have yet scheduled. Laurie, did you get that? Great. Okay, so we're adding the motion to amend by adding the language after Board of Finance by the first meeting of April 2018. Is that correct? Yes. Okay, is there a second to that motion to amend? Counselor Roof, thank you. Any discussion? All in, Counselor Jang, discussion? Yeah, I don't know if it's discussion or amendment but I was just was wondering if Mr. the person in charge of property taxes can be here so he can explain because based on my understanding I received the letter, I spoke with him and then he told me that this is possible but this is more of a statewide issue and it will take at least two years in order for the city of Wellington be able to not ask those business properties to pay that specific tax. So I think it would be very important to hear from him before we make anybody on this. Thank you, Counselor Jang. I believe that on the issue of the report back date, did you have any discussion on that question? Not specifically. Okay, thank you. So Mr. Vickery is not here at this time so when we get back to the main motion we can maybe make sure that we do kind of tap him, he'll get him to do some work on this as part of the report back or let's do the vote on the report back date and then we can get to that. So anything else on the report back date? Seeing none, all in favor of the Mason amendment on the report back date, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Counselor Paul? Counselor Paul has left the meeting. It's like the Frasier, right? Was that Frasier or was I got that wrong? Okay, so that motion that passes. So on the availability of Mr. Vickery or his, Mr. Merrick? Certainly we can speak to having Mr. Vickery available here for future discussions. I just, I think what Councilor Jang is referring to which is worth noting and thinking about as we consider this issue is that this tax is in our charter, any amendment to the tax would require a vote of the voters of Burlington and then going through the legislative process for charter change. So that's why if we were to start this now, certainly on the timeline I talked about in this resolution, the earliest you could actually see a change would be in next year's legislative session. Is the rate set in the charter? Yes. Yes. The rate is set in the charter. I see, okay. The rate is in the charter. Yes, it is. So we're back on the main motion as amended. Counselor Mason. Thank you, President O'Dell. I guess this is directed to the administration. I appreciate that and we heard, or at least in our informal discussions, then that's actually this by statute, there's a phase out by state statute, but something to consider that I would ask the administrations, we've heard whether true or not that even though it's on the books and other jurisdictions. Elimination or some changes to the calculation would clearly be a charter change. There may be some amendments that can be done short of a full charter change. I guess along with that, anecdotally, we've heard that other municipalities are simply not charging it. So again, I would sort of, as you're mulling options, if that is an option after a consultation with the city attorney, that'd be something I know we'd like to know. Thank you. So just to be clear, I think that with this resolution, we would be asking for information back on how, what would be involved in changing, making changes to it, in addition to the kind of more limited revenue impact questions that are in the resolution itself. Council Busher. In keeping with what Councillor Mason said, I thought that we didn't always have to call up a tax even though we had it. And so I just, I mean, that's really basically what he was saying was other communities don't do it. So even though we have a tax, do we have to enact that tax? I guess that's really the question that needs to be answered in the report back. Yeah. Thank you. Any other Councillor? On this resolution relating to the impact of eliminating the personal property tax. Councillor Wright. I just say that I look forward to having all these questions answered when we meet in April. When the report comes back to the Board of Finance and then back to the Full City Council, I think that we will get all these answers, questions answered. And we can then decide which course we want to take, whether we could do something that might be an amendment that we wouldn't have to go to the voters with with the charter change potentially, or if we wanted to eliminate it and go to the voters. Yep. Thank you, Councillor Wright. Councillor Roof. Councillor Paul, I did have to sign off, but she did request that I just state that while she can't be here to vote for it, she is in support of this action. Thank you very much. Ready to vote? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So is it unanimous? I'm not opposed to it, but at the same time, I'm not saying aye. Until I don't know if it's possible. Okay. Yeah. Did he say yes? Did you say yes? I don't know if I have to say yes or no. I'm not sure how to record the vote. Okay. I'm not sure how to report your vote, Councillor Chang. Point of order. Yes, sir. Can I ask the city attorney, we always had my understanding for years on the council was that if you're here, you vote yes or no. Could you? Okay. The council president would like to suggest that we take this up at our work session on rules that we're going to be having and I will talk about it in just a minute. But for tonight, Councillor Jang, should we record you as a yes or a no, please? Can you explain to me yes or no on what? Okay, so a yes vote would mean that you agree with asking the administration to do some exploratory research on what would be the impact of eliminating this tax and how, what kind of process we would have to use if we decide that. Yes, I vote yes. Okay, great. Thank you. So it's a unanimous vote. Yes, thank you very much, Councillor Chang. Okay, so now we're into committee reports. Any committee chair? Councillor Bushard? Yes. Is there anyone from the police commission? I don't know about them. No, they never, I think we're gonna roll forward. I could see if there was someone behind the camera person. That's why I just wanted to make sure. No, okay. Thank you. Those are members of the media. Yeah. Thank you. Just wants to keep camera rolling. Just wants to keep camera rolling. So we'll be rolling forward the police commission report to another meeting because I think it's an important enough commission that we would like to have some direct face-to-face interaction. Absolutely. Thank you. Councilors agree with that? Great, okay. So can I keep going? Yes. Okay. Okay, committee reports. Councilor Dean. Thank you, President O'Dell. I just wanted to let the council know that the local control subcommittee and licensing committee will be meeting next Tuesday, the 16th act of... 23rd. Thank you. 23rd at 4.45. Okay. Thank you, Lori, for correcting me on that. Great. Thank you, Ms. Olberg. Other committee chairs? Councilor Mason. Thank you, President O'Dell. The Ordinance Committee will be meeting tomorrow at 5.30 in room 12. It's not on the... I'm looking online. At the Fletcher Free Library. Thank you, it's not here. At the Fletcher Free Library to discuss. Thank you. To take up sort of the potential elimination of a number of unconstitutional quality of life ordinances and also a proposed change to the Burlington Retirement Ordinance. 5.30, Fletcher Free Library. Thank you. So on the quality of life, do we expect that coming on the 22nd or? Yes, the public safety committee did meet and didn't move forward our resolution. With the recommendations, there are now seven and they are ready for action. They'll be ready for action on the next meeting, the 22nd. And an ordinance is ready. Because you were done. We were in the queue. You were already done. Okay, very good. Other committee chairs? Okay, seeing none, General City Affairs. Any councilor? Councilor Dean. Thank you, President O'Dell. I wonder if I could ask just a little forbearance from the other councilors and the community to give you an update on the Burlington Natural and Open Lands Conservation and Connection Initiative. This was supported by a city council resolution back in June of 2017. And as a result of that resolution, we convened a summit on December 6th out at Rock Point at the Bishop Booth Conference Center. And this initiative is led by the Winiskey Valley Park District, the Burlington Parks Rec and Waterfront and the Burlington Conservation Board. And we were able to entice more than 45 stakeholders, representatives of UVM Parks and Rec, local motion, Vermont Land Trust, the Lake Champlain Land Trust, Bishop Ely, who is the Bishop of the diocese, Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, representatives of State Fish and Wildlife and the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, Parks Foundation, to the summit to discuss what we plan for or what we could see as a future for all of the open and natural lands that are a huge resource to us here in Burlington. We had welcoming remarks from the mayor and from Bishop Ely and a presentation from Elisha Daniels and Zoe Richards who talked to us about the seven wonders of Burlington, the seven natural wonders of Burlington. And we came to a decision or a kind of general consensus that that included Rock Point, the Winiskey River, Lake Champlain, the Armist Forest and some of the beautiful vernal pools and lady slippers, which are fantastic, unique foliage that's there in that and many more, including the intervail sea caves. We spent the morning and into the afternoon talking about what we saw as shared conservation and connection initiatives between many of the stakeholders, including desirable characteristics that we would see for ongoing preservation, including human and ecological connectivity, signage with cohesive access plan. And in the end, after we were able to move this forward to see maps including trails, coherent network of spaces, signage and wayfinding and commitment to neighborhood stewardship of all of these close natural lands. And then as our final exercise of the day, we did something which was quite interesting, which was to come up with a tagline that would or a headline that would appear in the Burlington Free Press 10 years from now. And those headlines were interesting. One said, too wild for people. One said, Burlington celebrates five years of neighborhood and community stewardship of our urban wild lands, and then one that was further out on the fringe. Space aliens agreed to leave BTV in charge of its own destiny after seeing its pioneering new model of conservation, connection and open lands. So we did have some fun. So our next steps are to come back to the council with a formal report from the summit. It's our intent in the weeks ahead for Zoe Richards and Alicia Daniels to go to each of the NPA meetings to give you a presentation on what we heard as well as what we're planning for the future. And then we will, with that report to the city council, we'll be asking for your assistance as we move forward into the next steps of planning. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Dean. Any other councilor on general city affairs? I wanted to mention just two things from today's Burlington Free Press that struck me. One was the open letter from Shure's communication to the residents of Burlington about their plans for Burlington telecom and what they've committed to and the purchase asset purchase agreement. And I thought that was a really positive way and I hope that they continue to reach out in various ways. And the second was I wanted to note that the volunteer of the week is Marty Woodman who is award three resident. And she is someone who arrived at UVM when I did a long, long time ago. And she had a bad accident as an adult and she lost her vision and had to stop working. But she volunteers at Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity and she helps people with good budgeting skills and how to make the most out of their income. And I just thought that this is someone who's really giving back to the community. She was in the, you know, that did accounting in business. So I just wanted to commend Marty and others like her people volunteer a lot in the city of Burlington and they add a lot to our city. Rolling right into council updates from the council president, I wanna confirm that I'll get to you. Sorry, Councilor Jang. We'll go back to city fairs. Confirm that the council will have a work session on Monday the 22nd, which is the date of our next council meeting on our council rules. So it's just kind of an update and a reminder and there are some topics that the city attorney especially wants to bring to our attention. And then if any other council, anyone has any questions about our rules or the desire to change the rules, that will also be fair game. So we'll send out materials and I've asked Ms. Olberg to find a space. So look for more to come, but please do hold that time. Unfortunately, Councilor Moore is unable to attend, but I have promised her that I'll fill her in. Councilor Jang. Yeah, so there are two important events that will take place in Burlington and one of them will take place on January 13th and it's called Let's Talk Mirror. So as you know, everybody, everyone loves an opportunity and everyone loves a parade. So the Mirror on Church Street, everybody, everyone loves a parade. So there are so many community activists and just community members who would like to get together and talk about that mirror. And it will take place on the 13th and it will be on 65 Pearl Street and it will be at 1 p.m. If anybody who wanna come talk and hear them out, that would be wonderful. The other thing is also Martin Luther King Day of celebration at the church, Unitarian Church. I will be addressing some remarks and I believe Miro also will be doing it. And I think it's the 15th at the Unitarian Church by organized by Patrick, Mr. Patrick Brown. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll finish up with the mayor on General City Affairs. Thank you, President O'Dell. I had a couple of BT items I wanted to start with. First, I wanna thank President O'Dell and Councilor Wright for suggesting the presentation earlier from Stephen Barrickle about the rate changes I thought that was certainly welcome as there had been considerable confusion about that. Also just wanted a final time to thank our city attorney Eileen Blackwood as well as our outside council, Ralphino Rourke who really worked right through the holiday period up until the very end of the year to ensure that we could meet the deadline. I know the council took an exceptional step as well by meeting that week. But a lot of the heavy lifting fell to the attorneys too to get this done and anyone who's ever been through a complicated closing, there's a kind of work that's involved and to do that in the holiday period is especially difficult. So thank you for that all out push. The final points I had to make were around the upcoming Martin Luther King Day weekend. The in addition, I will be making some remarks as well. This great event that Patrick Brown leads every year. He has, I mean, he's done it again. He's again gotten a very interesting high profile speaker to agree to join us, Lewis Gossett Jr. who is one of the original actors from the Roots television program is going to be making the address this year. And Patrick does this all by himself and every year is able to line up a great speaker. It's also become, I think, a good time for us to kind of take stock of how this is doing with respect to its diversity and equity strategic plan. And my remarks again, well, we'll speak to some of the progress and goals that have been made over the last year and the goals going forward. The another tradition, newer tradition from Martin Luther King Day weekend is the open house, are the day, you know, day long free events that take place at Echo from 10 to 5 p.m. It's the sixth year in a row that there has been a series of events celebrating diversity at Echo and that the celebration is free and open to the public in part because the city makes a modest contribution each year through its budget. So we hope that it's generally the busiest day of the year at Echo and we hope it will be again and there'll be a series of great events we hope to see everyone down there. That's what I have for today. Thank you President O'Donnell. Thank you Mayor. Right moves it. Second. Martin it seconds it. Any discussion? All in favor of adjourning please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carried unanimously we are concluded at 9.18 p.m. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.