 Hi, I'm Gene Bergman, Ward 2 City Councilor, and we are here tonight with the Burlington Progressives TV show. We do this monthly and get a chance to talk to people in the community on the City Council throughout the state. We have talked about the state budget and state tax policy. We've talked about climate change and thermal energy networks. We've had people here from the UVM staff support union talking about the struggles that they've had over livable wages and working conditions. And it was just before their union negotiations, which were successfully concluded, very pleased that we were able to talk to them about that. We've talked about the state hotel voucher program and state policy and the progressive City Council agenda and police oversight. I mean, we have really gone the gamut in the months that we've been doing this and tonight. I am so happy to be here with my friend and sister, Milo Grant, who is the Central District City Councilor, which encompasses the entire Old North End. I just represent Ward 2. Yes, Ward 2 and 3. So you got us both. And we're here tonight because Milo is an expert on public safety. She's got lots of history on it. I'll try. And you do. And so we're just going to talk about public safety. We're going to talk about the Old North End. And we'll talk about other city matters that pop up. And we're just going to give you primarily, I'm going to riff, the opportunity to talk. So let me just ask you an opening. It's a softball question, Milo. And that is, how has being on the City Council been for you? Wow. It's been really difficult, actually. Okay. It's been really difficult. I thank you for your support. I thank Joe. I thank Zariah. It's been really difficult. I have to think a lot about how I move. There's a certain way that I communicate. The truth matters. Right? Words matter. How we talk to people. You know, the term transparency is thrown around a lot and things are not actually transparent and that's of grave concern. Milo, you can't say that. Why can't I say that? Why are you trying to control the information that I'm trying to give to... This would be sometimes interactions at the Council itself. Sometimes interactions at the Council itself. Oh, you're going over your time. Well, other people go over their time. I'm a wicked, you know, not victim, but person who does that. Yeah. And, you know, so I have to think about that. Like, to be having to use my phone to keep track now. Because I'll be cut off. And I'm like, but I'm not out in my five minutes. And then sometimes to be said, well, you have to give an update, not talk about the issue. What? Like, what does that mean? It's an update should be providing information that the citizens of Burlington need. It's hard to be the people's representative when you're operating in a setting which is really outside the kin of the people. Right, right. And there's a lot of control over... I think that would have that particular incident a few weeks ago where it's like, oh, you have to do an update, not talk about the issue. That really disturbed me greatly. Like, what do you mean? Like, why are you trying to determine the information that I give? Because you're not comfortable with the subject matter. That's a huge problem. And I am greatly concerned about that. And I kind of feel lately like I've been well-behaved. And I've tried to do it a certain way. And now I think I'm going to be a lot more assertive. You know, I can't imagine if I can be more assertive than I've already been. But you know, there's that whole angry black woman stereotype, right? There's that, oh, she's difficult. Oh, she can't be reasoned with. Part of the systemic challenges that we've got to have a democracy which truly lets everybody sit at the table. Let's everybody sit at the table. And also participate. Exactly. And we know that in the old North End, we haven't gotten the same respect that the rest of the city has gotten. That's just facts. We know, for example, the mayor, he does public engagement by doing his weekly coffees. They're always in the new North End. He never does them in the old North End, never. And he doesn't do them any place else. And why is that, right? Why do we not? Speaking of public engagement, I need to do more of it. I meet a lot with people individually. I email with people. I sometimes have calls. I do a lot of meetings at Scout having tea and things. I've been concentrating on meeting people such as, you know, when I joined the public safety committee, I met with the fire chief because I wanted to learn more about Chief LeChance and the fire department, especially the work that they do in public safety. And we can get to that in a moment. And I tried to meet as many city directors as I could. The learning curve for this job is huge. This is a real full-time job. Yes. And to juggle it with my other full-time job. Yeah, for $5,000 a year. It is not really. When you think the taxes have come out, that barely covers my takeout because I have no time to cook. I do not cook since I've been a counselor. I get takeout for lunch. I get a big lunch, which I eat lunch and I eat dinner because I always have a meeting afterwards. Because there's fewer of us, we're on more committees. At one point, I was on four committees because I was on the committee to choose people who want to be on committees and commissions. Yep. And you have a week where you have a council meeting on a Monday, committee meeting Tuesday, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and I still try and get my radio show in. So it's a lot. And so I've been doing meeting people in the community. I've met not only residents but with business representatives from businesses and talking a lot about public safety, going down and looking at what people are concerned about in our community. So what committees are you on? I'm on the REIB committee, Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging. I am on the Public Safety Committee. I am on the Licensing, Liquor Control, Cannabis Control meeting in addition to the Committee on Committees. I'm not sure what that official name of it is when it does need to meet to choose people. So, I mean, those are hefty committees. Yes, but the Public Safety Committee didn't meet this month. It's because we don't have a crisis. I'm a little upset about that. I've been a counselor since April and twice now there are months have gone by without a Public Safety Committee meeting. And I think that's outrageous considering everything that's going on in the city, but I'm not the chair of that committee. So I can't control that. I tried to see if maybe two of us could, but by the time we got to the end of the month with Thanksgiving, then people weren't available and I should have scheduled it at the beginning. I think there's a lot of things to talk about. So I feel a little bit powerless in that sense. If someone doesn't have the time to do that because they want to run for mayor, then maybe somebody else should be doing it, right? And I think that's a serious question. You can't say that you're concerned about public safety and that you don't have a Public Safety Committee meeting. That's the thing that bugs me today. Yeah, so talk to us about the way that you're seeing public safety issues. So just as a quick recap, after the Millie Brothers incident and that use of force case and the lawsuits that came to the city, I applied to and was accepted for the special committee on policing policies. And I learned a lot. I went in there with an open mind. I was a sponge. I want to learn about attitude to training. You're not coming from this as a politician. You're coming in as somebody who's lived in this community for like ever. Exactly, exactly. And that affected my community in a way that I still don't think some members of our council fully understand and that the police department doesn't fully understand. Still to this day, it resonated. And that's why I talk a lot about community engagement but I'll come back to that in a moment. But I was on that committee. I was concerned that we needed to do more work. I felt that the council at the time was just trying to speed everything up. So you've got to come up with something to kind of check off the box. There was a lack of vision with regards to the problems that we did have and that we needed to be discussing them long-term. Problems in the department, problems on the street. Both, both. Problems in the department. I mean, especially with the lack of community engagement, the issues around racial equity and policing. I was really concerned in 2019. There was a seven days article. Anyone could go look it up called Force Reboot. And it talked about the long-term problems of our department which included turnover. Turnover has been a long-term issue. We talked about the morale issues. 2019. 2019. Because, you know, people say that we have caused, you know, this exodus or we defunded the police even though we didn't take a dime out of the department. It is so frustrating that people don't understand the root causes. And it's so frustrated to have members of our department allow that, you know, based when people call for help. You know, we were defunded. We don't have any. It was like there was no vote that fired officers. They had already been leaving, which is why the votes said attrition. And then they just started leaving faster. And then they said it was politics. But they forgot, like, how people get elected. It's a representative democracy. People are being underserved. People weren't being treated right when they asked for help. So they voted for people that they felt could help them to either make things better or to bring in other positions. Like, because the other thing was, I heard repeatedly from officers that encountering the number of incidents that involve mental health issues, they weren't prepared for that. They weren't trained for that. We heard that repeatedly. It was sort of like teachers in schools. We asked the schools to do, like, everything. Everything. Everything. And as we know, we now have a drug crisis, substance abuse disorder that, because of fentanyl, has really changed the game. So from that committee, I then applied to be in the police commission, because I was like, well, I see the work that needs to be done. Maybe I can make a difference here. That was quite the experience. Uh-huh. Because it became, oh, if you say certain things out loud, so that there was a lot of... So you got to give me an example on that? I think to be having frank and honest conversations about equity and policing, racial disparities, lack of public engagement, you can't say that you don't want to stay in a city because the people who live in the city don't appreciate you, don't like you. Or it's the politics. And then not address why these feelings exist. Uh-huh. That is huge. And that lack of engagement, that lack of addressing why officers feel this way, and I've tried to talk to the mayor about it. I said to Mayor Weinberger, no one is done an honest look and addressing why officers feel the way they feel. Even as of today, that's just not being done. And he said to me, why you think they're lying? And I said, I never said they were lying. I understand exactly what they said. You know, on the commission, August 21, I believe, I said they took this internal survey. It shows a lot of concerns around morale. They should do a presentation at the police commission, which they did, and it's available for people to look at, and they should. I said, we've never addressed it. I didn't say I didn't believe them. So that's another thing that bothers me, this twisting, this twisting of language. Oh, he said they lie. I could never call them liars. Why would you say that? You said, I said we're not addressing it. At some point, you have to look in the mirror and say, what can I do better? In a lot of ways, that is just the status quo of politics where you try to weaponize language. Yes. It's particularly hard when, you know, the people that you're trying to move, the mayor is one, have such thin skins and twist things for political advantage. It's so political. Everything is so political. And I've tried to really stay above that because it's not, the safety of the city should not be politicized. Period. And people are doing it. And we have, I've got to focus, because I can go. But it's very difficult because it's prevented change. You know, this idea that a certain people are in power, things are going to be better. No, the underlying issues still exist. The underlying issues are not being addressed. So give me some examples of what you think could be done, should be done, and sort of where that stuff would happen. I mean, it happened through the Public Safety Committee or through the Commission or other places. I would like, so in terms of public engagement, I think that there needs to be a frank talk about customer service. Like how do you answer the phone? How do you talk to people? There were a lot of things that were kind of put on the backs of dispatch in terms of the shortage of dispatch because there's a labor shortage there too and that someone being new. But when you listen to complaints and you listen to audio, it's like, no, they started with the dispatcher but they ended up with officer in charge. So it's not all on dispatch. We need to look at what was said. There's a lot of pushback and there's simple, can we do some retraining? Can we bring up how people are talked to? I tried to advocate for people, when I was on the Police Commission, advocating for people who live next to a drughouse and were asking for help. And when they would call, they would be told, what do you expect because you live next to Section 8 housing? Or what do you expect because you live what I live? And this is literally within 5-minute walk from the Police Department and when we look now at some of the major arrests that are being made for the trafficking in the city, which I appreciate, I appreciate that work, because we are being targeted. We have people coming from out of state to target us because of this epidemic that we are suffering from. But they are coming in, they are sizing up the city. They know where to go. Right, but they know where to go. They know what houses have been set up and have been dealing, where dealings have been occurring and use has been occurring. It's easy for them to find out. Everybody knows. So, all of a sudden, now we have the arrest happening and people over a certain color, why didn't we arrest people who were white who were dealing with impunity for years out of some of these locations? And many people in our city know. Anyone watching this will go, oh yeah, we got that house and it's over here. Oh yeah, we got a house and it's over here. They know and everyone knows that there's huge issues with our parking garages. There's a lot of activity in our parking garages. A lot of activity in our parks. City Hall Park is a huge concern. I was really disappointed when we had the presentation by the detectives who were, I think they were the drug detectives. And we had just heard a very long public comment where there were lots of people talking about drug dealing in City Hall Park and I asked them, you heard what people were saying. What should we do about it? What are we going to do about it? And they were like, we're actually not going to be arresting people there. We're not really going to be stopping it as the message that I got there. There is no street crimes unit. It's a very important meeting to watch, October 10th. If you haven't watched that meeting, you need to watch that meeting Burlington. It's very important because their presentation explained a lot. There is no street crimes unit and that is why at the street level nothing is being done. I have questions about whether nothing should be done until you hire folks to staff that up. I have questions about that too but it's very difficult. Even when we do have our public safety committee meetings my relationship with Chief Murat is kind of spilled over and it's a difficult relationship. People watch these meetings, they can see how contentious they can get and some people get concerned, oh, you've got to give him a chance. Well, how long is a chance? What is your definition of that? Because I've now been in this arena for public safety arena over four years, four and a half years now. And I can't get basic questions answered and I get responses from other people in the public like, oh, that conversation wasn't okay but not because of me. It's just not a good dynamic and I think, I don't know how to get... I don't, I've asked for help. I've been asking for help for three years. I got very vocal when the police commission was accused of being responsible for being the reason why officers weren't applying the department. That was outrageous and so I brought up a lot about what happens when you have department heads and the administration attack people who volunteered for a commission. I mean, it was really extraordinary what was happening. But I would say that October 10th meeting is very important. It's very educational for the people of Burlington. I know not everyone has time to watch these meetings but you have to watch this meeting because we need to hear about the work that they're doing because that drug unit is doing good work in terms of the arrests that are being made. Yeah, the bigger houses. The major trafficking. Yeah. And we need the major trafficking stopped. We need to send a message that you can't keep coming up here with your drugs and poisoning our community. There is something to be said to not allowing City Hall Park to be an open-air drug. I agree with that in other places but I think too we have to do balance because I was trying to, when I was interrupted and told it was an appropriate update, I was talking about balance because we do need the quote-unquote law and order aspect but we must have we must must have the harm reduction side because people are coming here to sell they are bringing a supply here because of the demand. So talk about the harm reduction that should be done and that, you know, why it isn't being done. Right, I would, there's several things. First of all I wanted to give a shout out to Joe McGee because he's tried to, you know, when we look at the balance and we think of a seesaw, it was like law and order up here but you, we don't have the officers. We've given the increase in the salary we've given retention bonuses we've given sign-on bonuses they have a contract that protects them heavily even ignoring important oversight and accountability that was the CNA consultant that reviewed the police department recommended it it was decided to do that because people were afraid of more officers leaving I think that was some mistake but I wasn't on the council at that time but we did all of that and so now they have the higher cap they are well funded they are the most funded department yes they are they are the most funded department why would we put more money there now that doesn't make sense they, we see what continues to happen and we come back when they can make what they are budgeted at because they are budgeted they are nowhere near those numbers of officers so we have to be very careful about what we promise people when we say we are going to promise them more police officers, wait a minute that cap is already increased and the money is there so people can't control who applies people can't control if they do apply are they going to be qualified people can't control if they apply and they are qualified and they go to the academy will they finish the academy because that's an issue we have lost people with regards to the county so the building back has gone very slowly the police commission meets once a month the police chief does chief mayor does his police report he always has a page that says what is going on with regards to building back and how many officers there are and that is something if you don't have time to watch the whole meeting that is attached in what's called civic clerk and we have to do a video on civic clerk we probably do I think tell me TV we need to do a video on how to use civic clerk so people can find information so jot that down and let's schedule that it can be really hard but people you go to civic clerk and you can find and you can view that report so if you don't have time to watch the meeting you can see the information that's being presented so we look at that so when people say oh we're gonna promise you more police like you can't do that we do have to make sure that we're advertising correctly one of my complaints was when they were blaming the police commission I started looking around like hey I'm applying for the job what information do I see and I discovered that even though the council had increased the salary they weren't advertising it but even on the city's own website where you go to submit an application did not have the correct salary and it took weeks to fix and I talked to the mayor about it multiple times then I talked to someone else and it got fixed no it got updated and then I had to bring it up a third time so you're literally accusing people like it's your fault so work with the police commission that people don't want to run you know that's the perception and shrug your shoulders it was really quite amazing to me there's no accounting for the city's not even advertising the correct price and there's other areas even now you can find landing pages where we are not showing the correct benefits but why am I babysitting that so that's a huge issue using digital advertising properly advertising on job sites that people use especially people moving state to state so improving recruitment is important talk about the harm reduction stuff the harm reduction let's get back to that so that's very important so harm reduction is basically doing things that help people get into recovery right reduce the demand for these drugs if you will harm reduction let's talk about needle exchanges and needle kits that have like the equipment like some people feel this is enabling people if you're giving them new needles if you're giving them sterile water if you're giving them equipment that they can cook with testing supplies people say this is enabling and this is not enabling if people are going to if they suffer from substance use disorder and they're going to use they're going to use so we need them to use in the safest way possible for reasons we're skyrocketing in terms of overdoses we're skyrocketing in terms of overdoses but just from a basic safety standpoint it has it is well documented there's plenty of data going back to when the HIV epidemic it started there's plenty of data that people sharing needles leads to viral infections that can be hepatitis C and that can be not just among people who suffer from substance abuse disorder they can pass it to their loved ones who may not suffer from that and also it protects first responders it protects city employees who work picking up needles and picking up garbage that is occurred it protects residents including children because we have had in our city instances where people have been pricked by these needles so being able to do these needle exchanges is important to keep these other viral infections at bay exactly because we know our health system is already overburden they're not fully recovered from COVID it's to protect them so where are we at with these sites we do a good job of getting needles out but we need an overdose prevention site we need an overdose prevention site which is a safe place where people can come and use now people like that drive some people crazy they're just like you're enabling them people are going to start using drugs first of all no one is going to start using drugs from an overdose prevention site or a center or OPC that is just not going to happen that is just outrageous that's fear-mongering what it will do is one if someone overdoses someone's right there so it's going to do a couple of things in terms of containing where overdoses occur it is also going to help with syringe litter because right now needles are being left everywhere we had parents who came to a city council meeting talking about needles found in the dugout when they're getting ready to do a little league game they are everywhere we need to control syringe litter in a way that is just not happening right now if you see needles, see click fix see click fix to report that so you would control where used needles are left in an overdose prevention center they would collect those used needles can you get everybody in? no you can't but we can substantially change what's going on now you also have when they come in they're going to be meeting people who are not the police let's not play games there's a stigma will you get arrested people don't want to be dealing with police in that way so we have to be honest about that they're able to their relationships that can be formed that could lead to recovery because you're talking to someone that you start to trust they're there with all the information on the services that are available and when you we have a lot of compassion fatigue right now but when you treat people with compassion and you acknowledge their pain that's a way to pull them back it is at least a start it's a way to get them to think of recovery what is stopping us from doing that? well there's a couple of things first of all at the state level I've been very very concerned about Governor Scott's disengagement I don't feel he fully understands what is going on in Burlington even when he was running for reelection when these issues were being brought up he downplayed them I've had many conversations with the mayor about this I'm like you say that Governor Scott gets it yet he doesn't he does not speak as a person who understands what's happening here as things continue to get worse I believe that if Governor Scott was more engaged with would come to the city would talk to people I think that would go a long way he feels that we shouldn't be I think I know he is stated he does not believe we should use methods that aren't tested when we look back at what Governor Shumlin did he made a state the state address was devoted to the opioid crisis back then saying this is our top concern we gotta be thinking out the box it's a completely different type of leadership and when we need that now we don't have that from Governor Scott so send an email do a phone call do a video audio we need Burlington to be talking to Governor Scott we need Burlington to talk to all our legislative representatives our Chittenden team needs to be on the same page they're not all on the same page and that may be because not all of them live in Burlington or they don't live near the affected areas in the old north end we've really affected for a while it's all over the city now so we've only got believe it or not like just five more minutes really? how'd that happen? it's just the way it is we'll have another chance to do this over those laws we have to change laws but I think we should do it they've got one working in New York City that is saving lives getting people into recovery and they just did it and maybe we need to look at that let's just do it and work big shout out to the fire department Burlington fire department has been extraordinary I don't think people fully understand the amount of responses that they're doing to overdoses they have done a rapid response unit from the time that they talked about it where members of the fire department went to chief Lachance and said we can do this better we think we can get a truck we can supply it up that was really yes in between that first conversation and getting it going three weeks that's what we need and I believe that the CARES team that was put under the police department after seeing what the fire department has done I believe we should be having serious conversations to move the CARES team to the fire department I think it would be better managed there and I think they could get that up and running seeing public safety more than just arresting people more than just police out there deterrence is important and being able to stop people and give people consequences for doing things that are harmful is essential but this is a big picture this will not go away if demand is not addressed and everyone needs to understand that and needs to be clear as long as we have demand there will always be someone to come here to sell and that's just facts and people don't want to hear that it's facts we cannot arrest our way out of it we don't have the jail we are exporting prisoners one who just died in out of state prison we have people dying in state prison we got to look at that other safety issues is what's going on with our online incidents I'm trying to do some research I want the public safety committee to talk about it we have BPD talk about it how are they triaging these cases people don't get responses cases they won't be prosecuted but the state's attorneys doesn't get everything so that's a whole other thing too you were talking about the dispatch and the training that really does go to the need for oversight for monitoring and auditing and being able to look at the experience look at the data collect the engagement from the people and then make recommendations and I know that we're hopefully going to have a charter change that will clarify the role of the commission in regards to the monitoring of the department and their right to really be engaged with the creation of directives and trainings and the like because at the end of the day we as a community need to own our part in making our own selves safe this is not something where you just say oh here take care of it for me we all have a role in it but everybody there's got to be a system that can work online reporting system you and I both got a complaint from somebody in our neighborhood that was like this just doesn't work and the answer I've talked to businesses there's a lot of issues around it so hopefully when we have our next Public Safety Committee meeting we're going to start to talk about it I do want as public engagement I have asked Chief Mayor I directly multiple times what can the residents of Burlington do to assist the police department during this time of limited resources I don't get any engagement back with regards to that and that's not okay yeah yeah I've had issues with what I think is a lack of innovation and creativity around the place of the community service officers and the community service liaisons I know we're just starting on that road but there's plenty of opportunities in my estimation when people are out when city officials are out and about folks they watch themselves a little bit more you get a chance to get more engagement you stop somebody from doing something that is not necessarily what they're going to do yes but even with the fully staffed police department and even with the fully staffed CSOs a big shout out to the CSOs because they're doing incredible work incredible work we need like six more of them we need to be we need more coverage 24-7 and we're not there yet the CSOs it's been interesting because their numbers go up and down but it has proven to be people start to be a CSO and then they show interest in becoming an officer so I don't want to say we lost some CSOs because they went to that next level which is excellent and the department has done some really good work and the diversification of the department so definitely credit there I don't want to say everything is bad but I want to say that the lack of community engagement is a huge issue special shout out to Sarah Tim she's talked to me and I've also talked to her about things that I'd like to see with the department and I think also I think it's when I look at what was her training like she's been coming to MPA meetings I was like why don't you ever speak she'll speak during the open comment that you have like an MPA public forum for lack of a better term but not always doing a presentation I was like you don't have to wait to be invited this is how you do it so someone wasn't giving her that information and we need to look at that because she's a great resource and I supported that position so let's have that resource out there she was great she listened to the things I was talking about it's like hey if you're going to do this you're going to put this information out there and you're going to put it on the web page who's tracking how many hits you're getting who's tracking what the engagement actually is so we talked about things like that she was like what do you want to see and I was like I would like to see and I appreciated that a lot but that's an example of another position to help the department we just have to make sure she's utilized to her full potential it's not her fault I think we just need to be let's switch gears a little bit because I think we might have even a little bit more time Kevin back there we're doing okay Kevin so good thank you other hot things on the council the vote for which a lot of people equated with the F-35 mission I think it was a difficult vote for me I support the people who work for the National Guard you're talking about the lease extension and the MOU and part of the issue around the lease is we cannot affect the mission the city council cannot affect the mission with the lease right and members of the public didn't understand that so there wasn't sufficient engagement about that but then we're not given it became like this whole big thing we got to move because you can't have a lease under 25 years and it turned out out of compliance as of July so that was not handled well in a transparent way in a way of good engagement and I fault the mayor for that I think that McNeil was very you know so many people were concerned about that and there was a lot of misinformation about like oh we're gonna shut down McNeil no vote does not shut down McNeil and there was thank you for the work that you did on that you're welcome and we did actually differ in terms of that vote but it was not which is fine I think I would have voted yes if the amendments had passed well they actually the ones on the ordinance passed yes which would have made greater incentives to places like the medical center to do the transformation that they need to do which is really driving all of this and we will still yet to see that because even though yes we had the medical center they weren't too much strong on it and they were very much they said it was about the money and maybe that's it maybe that's what motivates them to make change it's like okay we're gonna get this money and this credit we're not gonna be all that we will bring back a strengthened carbon fee ordinance that takes that's the step that we try to and at least brings that to the voters I'm working with folks to do that we've got the in terms of McNeil we have now got a roadmap across the board for how to deal with the issues around the plant emissions around the wood consumption around the forestry practices we've got to hold them to account but it is a public entity and it is something that if we as the people take the initiative and responsibility for we hopefully and should be able to make sure that all the commitments that I worked on to get in there you know are met and if we don't get that if we're not able to if they're not able to keep those commitments it really will undermine what remaining trust there is in the community so that's critically important it really will because it really will because there's we have to verify absolutely and that's a huge issue with people there should be you can say that reports the missing reports that a lot of people reference weren't relevant but people don't know that if they can't see them right so that created a lot of distrust they're going to have to really deliver with tracking and then tracking UVM to make sure that they remain committed to what they say they want and then will we be able to do anything with the university if we get it up and going right because that's like a bigger picture long term with only one customer there's a lot of change that's happening in climate and unfortunately I think that the warming planet is going to continue to force the acceleration I mean it's sometimes if things just sort of stay the same you don't have the impetus to move but money into fears was so much money but I mean money in this case is the reason why the medical center wants to do it and I asked them directly at the meeting you know if you weren't going to get these credits would you do this and they were like no we've got work and luckily this process revealed that there are really good people working with and at the medical center that we can partner with and hopefully they got the message that this is a priority they are providing health care they need to provide that is their number one mission but they need to do it in a facility that is not causing additional health problems it doesn't do anybody any good when we are like struck by all these disasters when we get all the wood smoke from Canada and then we got to go to the hospital so we've got to do our part on that and then the gateway block I think that is of major interest to I don't particularly like that name but here we are I think the city cares about the future of Memorial Auditorium in that space and we'll get that look like we're going to get that by the end of March but like the other things that we've been talking about tonight that you've highlighted it seems that it is likely that we'll get it at the last minute with no time to digest stuff and with a decision that has to be made with a decision that has to be made immediately and that is not the way it is a terrible way to govern and then to be lectured about it it is so frustrating and it's just like but this is the way it's so frustrating how can you and many people asked about it because I was attending MPAs that week many people asked about it like why would you guys vote on that because people didn't see it and it did seem to me like it was and I know that's not the intention but it was like a back room deal like you're literally going to give us all this information on something that you want us to vote on the same day and it hasn't been presented to the public and that is not okay that's not transparent especially when you know how interested the public is in this space we want development there but people just don't want anything and I think the public made that very clear so I think that we have had so much blight for so many years now even before COVID we had the hole in the ground so people are frustrated but that doesn't mean people are desperate and I think this attitude that you've got to you know to put us in that position like well we're going to lose this you know to say we're going to lose this because this funding because of funding and all of a sudden it's like well why didn't you tell us before why didn't you give us more time this is not the way so whoever is the next mayor I hope they do something differently because this is this has not been it's not been okay I feel that it's like really being dishonest to the people of Burlington and um I think we'll have the same issue with UVM and our attempt to get them to take greater responsibility to solve the under under housing of their students that they've over enrolled in a lot of ways I've said publicly that I I don't think they understand how it's affecting the city I don't think they understand how it's affecting their students many students have like everyone else have concerns about housing and I think the way the rents the way the rents have gone up in the city has affected our economy in other ways oh you can't get workers you can't get workers but also students who have to or people period who have to meet these extraordinary rents can't shop downtown so when we're in Louisiana shoppers downtown it's not all due to crime and how people feel downtown especially people who come from outside of Burlington but I've talked to Burlingtonians who feel like there's nothing for me downtown or I can't afford it you just can't afford it and that's an issue okay so we have touched on these other council matters and I think our time is up and I feel like I just got here but we'll do this again okay and we should do it twice a month this would be fun and maybe we can do that yeah we should do it twice a month so thank you, thank you for watching again and we'll we'll see you next month this is Burlington Progressives TV thanks, bye