 Welcome and fair with us as we work through change when we're going to wrap up. I'm Molly. I'm not steering committee for this word two, three meeting. I'll maybe introduce the steering committee members from Zoom and the ones that are in the community center. Maybe you can say hi by seeing Patrick, Johnson, and Tony Wettig-Sinter joining us on Zoom. Who is at the community center? I had to go up to the mic, or do we just say from our seats? I'm Kevin, and I'm here with word two. And Jess Hyman, word three. And then we also have Charlie Giannoni over here. Welcome. So we are only moving for additional steering committee members and joining our crew to help organize these meetings. We'd love to have additional folks join, help who's on the path to be making us even stronger for our whole community meeting with Patrick. So if that happens, I think we'd be interested in seeing how to get any one of us or email us. Our email is wards232 and 3mpa at Googlegroups.com. Our next meeting will be up to the 14th, or always the second Thursday of each month. We hope to have a picnic. If we didn't eat dinner, we'll maybe try for that. We're hoping this month would work out, but logistics still didn't. But we are always trying to bring that tradition back. For the next meeting, we just wanted to warn that we are planning on voting on the drafted bylaws for both wards. Those can be found in the appendix for this meeting and on the CEDA website and on our website, which is wards233mpa.weebly.com. Please, if you have a moment, take a look at those. We'd love to be able to vote on those next month and adopt bylaws. Recordings for this meeting can be found on YouTube and CCTV. And again, on CEDA's website and our website. So feel free to share this meeting with other folks that would be interested. With that, let's open it up for public forum. And maybe we'll start with anybody at the community center who's interested in speaking, and then we'll move over to anyone on Zoom. My name's Jacob, and one of a bunch of volunteers that's working on a community build to make window inserts, insulating window inserts this November. So, quick poll, who here has windows that are drafty or cold or old? Raise your hand, anybody? Okay, cool. So yeah, a lot of people in Burlington have not great windows, and it's expensive to replace them with nice double pane or triple pane windows. So a bunch of us figured, let's do something easier, let's do something that's more accessible. So where's this camera at? Yes. So what we're doing is we're making these window inserts. Obviously it would be a lot bigger. It'd be the size of your window, but this is what it would look like. And so on November, people that share interest and sign up, we're gonna come together and we're gonna build these inserts for our windows. So if you're interested, we've teamed up with this nonprofit organization called Window Dressers, who's been helping a bunch of communities. They started out in Maine, just like a church in Maine, and they've been helping out different communities in the Northeast do these community builds. So if you wanna sign up, go to windowsdressers.org and you can sign up or learn more about it. Or if you just have questions, you could shoot me at Burlingtonwindowdressers at gmail.com if you have any questions. So that's the deal. You sign up, we're gonna build the thing. There's a cost for the materials because this is just us doing it, but we have donations available to help support people that can't pay the full cost. So don't let money be a barrier. Please sign up if you need some window inserts. And if you wanna help out, obviously, whoever signs up, we want you to help out at the build, but definitely want you to help out spread the word. I've got pamphlets for the people here. Please spread the word and what else do I wanna say? And yeah, I think that's about it. Okay, great. Thank you all. Anybody? I think I can jump in pretty quick. All right, thank you, everyone, MPA meeting specifically. So I think a few months back, if not two or three time can get pretty advanced when you're focused on a project, I had the opportunity to the MPA Pan Association to, or the committee, to amplify these community dinners through a grant. The appreciations through that process, I was able to, and I am still in the process. I live right beside, or I'm in a part of Ward 3, stop site value part. And one of the endeavors with this application, I'll let everyone know about what's going on without the neighborhood pen application community dinners coming out, also opened up an opportunity to hold space positively in value part. And it also opened up a couple of small incentives, like incentives to communicate with Parks and Rec, to advance the bathrooms, public bathrooms, and to kind of have opening discussions about why the bathrooms are closed in the first place, a little bit of a knowledge about what's going on, and a bit of community bridging. So I'm going to report back to this other, along with the fact that I did do a lot of documentation and just put it together that day. So I do have to follow up with that to kind of show you some visuals that I will present at a later meeting, but also open up the space to have part of engagement with other nonprofits. I do also amplify that engagement led to me also being in partnership with Parks and Rec for their preservation team. I'm also, this Sunday, and what's interested at 311 North Avenue, there is a poetry walk exhibit that is open in honor of the, it's not a nursing home, it's a children's home, and that was there originally in the past, I believe, I'm learning more about that here than once was the Wellington College area, that term just so there's a path that leads down here to the waterfront, the garden, and that there will have that poetry walk, so anyone who's interested, that's this Sunday, but that was opportunity to amplify work, the end of the meeting, that now I wanted that space, like let everyone know in the community what's going on, and also just connect for those who are still in the park, but I just wanted to just think that went well, that event was on August 7th, and I'm still holding space in the park to bridge, not only with those community members in Ward 3, but also all the under-Americans, all the other community members that are safe for better with the park, and it is a good point of conversation to be had that connects everyone together, so thank you so much, and for this opportunity to testify to that. Great, thank you. What time and no-offence for that? So the poetry walk exhibit is gonna be open throughout the remainder of the year, but on Sunday, the presentation, I think, starts at two, and yeah, there'll be music, there'll be the artist, the poetry, there's also a mural painting that's happening on the, yeah, I forgot which, and which are our direction of building, is that as you're going into the community garden, but there's an artist there that's doing the mirror painting and all the poets that actually have their work, that work is gonna be placed on panels that's gonna be along a trail, it looks very nice. So around that time, of course, if you reach and shoot up along that path or walk across down that path, it's gonna be open continually, and it'll be great to check out, it's a good narrative for use of public space for community members. Awesome, great, I see I like to know. What's else for public form? There's being none, I'll move forward in agenda. We're going to talk about the ad-hoc existing MIDI for start-up with some information and then we'll move forward with how we're involved. So, Jeff, can you put this one up? Sure, and just let's see, I'm not entirely sure where I should be. Charlie, should I be here by this microphone? Okay, perfect, great, thank you. So, it feels like I should be at this height for some reason, but thank you. So, the ad-hoc, no, this is fine, I can see my computer this way. The ad-hoc redistricting committee is a committee that was created by the city council in an effort to have a public and open non-partisan process to go along with potential redistricting in the city. And so the reason this is happening is, thank you, the reason this is happening is because with the 2020 census, it's likely showing population changes around the city. And when the population changes, that could affect how the census draws the boundaries of our wards. And because if there are more people, as the numbers grow in some areas and shrink in other areas, that might affect the representation on both at a state representative level, but also at a city council level. So in anticipation of the fact that there may be changes, we still don't really know, the city council has asked each ward in the city to select a candidate to serve on a committee that will be charged with collecting public input. And making some recommendations about the redistricting. And I wanna make it really clear that this is not actually drawing the maps of deciding where board boundaries might change. This is the focus of the committee is more on gathering input about what community members feel is important. And this committee will be charged with holding a certain number of public hearings. I'm hoping Kirsten will talk more about the details about what the committee will be doing. But we just, so what we wanted to do today is provide a bit more information about this process. And so today we'll have Kirsten Wilson from CEDO talking about the process from the city side. And then Jeff Comstock is here from Ward 47. Thank you, thank you, Jeff for joining us. Who will talk about how other wards have been approaching this process. And then we also, Charlie G on our steering committee will talk a little bit about the history of redistricting. What happened last time? Some of the concerns that we have that we have. And also some of the things that will be really important to consider for folks who are serving on that committee. And then we'll open it up for questions. And we would encourage anyone who is interested in representing either Ward two or Ward three to make your interest known and we'll go from there. Does that sound good? Wonderful, so I'll turn it over to Kirsten. Thank you. Hi, my name is Kirsten Wilson and I work for CEDO. My role is to support the NPAs. So I know a bit about the redistricting process from the city lens because I've been supporting the NPAs as they elect these different representatives to the committee. So this committee will be formed of eight representatives from one from each Ward and they will be charged with working together to put together two public forums to garner public input as Jess has described on redistricting. So the work to organize those meetings and hold those meetings will happen from September 16th to October 25th. And with the culmination that by October 25th, the committee will having heard the various reports back from the community, sort of synthesize that all together, glean what can be gleaned and then share that in a report to the city council. The city council will then review the report, draft a resolution and then share that with the map specialist for the city. And then from there, there will be, hopefully from there, there will be a potentially a charter change proposal. I think we'll be first worn by December if we are going to like redraw the lines. And that has like, it appears that we are federally acquired and or like that has been what's been proposed by the committee and the city council. So that will be first worn in December to be on the ballot by town meeting day, 2022. Yeah, and so then from there, it will then go to be approved by the state. So that's a little bit of like the timeline there. Yeah, I'll let whoever else wants to talk unless there's like any quick questions now, but we can save that for later too. Jack, do you want to share how your committee has handled it? Okay, yeah. Hello, thanks Molly. I will give just kind of a brief introduction of what we did and then see if folks in your group have questions. We, Ward's Foreign Service, can you hear me? I'm getting a mute signal. I can hear it. I'm really just seeing the center while you're talking about getting feedback. Okay, so Ward's Foreign Service, our MBA meets the fourth Wednesday of the month. So we were on a very short timeline in order to fulfill our requirement, you know, to meet the city council deadline. So we had our meeting on back on August 25th because the fourth Wednesday of September would have been outside that deadline. So we had fairly, we were diligently to advertise this meeting and got fairly good attendance so that for Ward seven, we had two candidates and Ward four, we ended up with three candidates. So it went through the nomination process and had conversations with each of the nominees. And interestingly enough, even though we, you know, all Ward's folks, Jess was very involved in this, put together the informational forum on August 18th. Unfortunately, that wasn't terribly well attended. And so when people showed up at our MBA, we ended up spending an important amount of time actually trying to explain the resolution to people so that they had a better idea of what we were trying to do with the ad hoc representative nominees. So we ended up using a huge amount of time in what we sort of felt like was backtracking a little bit, but I feel like we did eventually get folks up to speed and we managed to get through our nomination process fairly well. So we do have our two reps ready whenever the council or the CEO convenes the committee. And we're a little unsure how that mechanism is gonna happen. So maybe Kirsten can address that later. And I guess sort of the bottom line for us is that, you know, our steering committee and even the general public who participated in the meeting have a number of reservations about moving forward with redistricting on the potential schedule proposed by the city council. But we felt it was necessary at the end of the day level to go ahead and fulfill our obligation to at least get our reps selected. And then we can participate in the public forums the way in terms of whether we're feeling comfortable with the potential schedule as it's proposed. So I'm not sure what other information you might like to hear. Like certainly sort of entertain any questions if folks have that. I guess, oh, one other thought we had is that I would say that the one actor that we sort of ended up being disappointed about is that the three people who ended up getting elected from the same two people who served on the redistricting committee back in 2015. So we're feeling a little frustrated that we missed the opportunity to get fresh perspective into the handbox committee this time around. So that would be the reservation, the one reservation we had about how this turned out for us. Great, thanks, Jeff. Thanks for sharing your experience. Let's get over to Charlie and then open up for questions that any of us could address. Charlie's setting up a camera for himself. Okay, so hello everyone. I'm Charlie G and so I'm a steering committee member for awards two and three, actually award three. And so here I am to talk about this so-called plan by the city council to try to do the entire redistricting process in record time in the history of Burlington. So typically what happens is for instance in 1971, so the data from the Census Bureau was delivered to the city by the 30th of March. So that's an year 1971, okay, with a one. So in the history of Burlington, redistricting has never been accomplished by March of 72. They've never attempted to do that. It would have been, technically it's legal to do that, and they have nine months to get it on the ballot for March of like 1972. But the city of Burlington has never done that. They always wait a year. So considering that, you also have this year where the census data was not available and still is not available. It's still not available. And here we are in late September. So the city council is trying to ram this thing through as quickly as they can, even though the data for the census is not even available yet. So what they're gonna try to do in October, November, December, they're gonna try to do something in three months that has never been done in the history of Burlington in less than 23 months, okay? People need to understand that. This is totally unprecedented. Now the city council in Burlington knew a year ago that the census was going to be late. They knew it wasn't gonna be, it was gonna be six months late. This was announced a long time ago. The city council should have immediately shut down any idea of doing a redistricting a few months from now in March. That hope, they shouldn't be even considered such a thing. That is an outrageous maneuver on their part. Now the reason I think they're doing that is because they, I think they just were victims of their own procedures. And so what happens, they learned a year ago that the census was gonna be late. So they formed a committee thinking, oh, we'll have a subcommittee of the city council, not the committee tonight, of the city council. And they said, why don't we study it now so this thing doesn't drag out five years? So it's fine if they wanna study that and it's fine if they wanna have ad hoc committees to study it. But for them to try to ram this thing through in three months that has never in the history of Burlington been done in less than 23 months is totally improper. Now, I haven't seen that in writing, but anecdotally, that's what people are telling me. In fact, when the new city attorney was appointed, there was a press conference at City Hall. And so I went there and I recorded it. And after that meeting, I asked Brian Pine. I said, you know, we just got this notification in early July that the city is interested in doing redistricting as early as this coming March. And I said, I was concerned. And he said, no, no, no, no, you got it all wrong. You got it, no, no, that's state redistricting. The city doesn't do redistricting in the first year. So he said, don't even worry about it. There's nothing to consider because it won't happen. Okay? So I forgot about it for like a month. And yet here we have, we continually have city officials coming to us and pressuring the NPAs to engage in this process. And as far as I'm concerned, it's borderline unethical because they're not educating the public as to what's actually happening. That's the problem. So they're saying, oh, we're gonna have these meetings, these public meetings to get feedback from the public. And yet not one word has been spoken yet to educate the public on these issues. No one in this room and no one listening today has heard one word of information or education from the city council or the city or anywhere else about this issue despite the fact we still don't have the census data. And here we are in late in mid September. So they're saying, oh, we'll have these semi-public hearings. Well, they're gonna have public hearings before the public is educated. So what are people gonna do? People are gonna testify in something they don't know anything about. And that's the feedback that the city council wants. Now remember, all over the world, you have congresses and you have city councils and you have presidents. And those people have a severe conflict of interest when they do their own redistricting because they wanna select their own boundaries and they wanna select their own voters. Now I hate to say that about this city council, but like I said, I think this whole thing just got out of hand because they heard the census was gonna be late. They formed a subcommittee of the city council to study it and the thing just got into a life of its own. This should not be occurring. And I am actually angry with the city council for still pursuing this at this time. This whole thing should be dropped and it should be started again in January. And if they wanna have another ad hoc committee that can work once or twice a month through most of that year, through 2022, that's fine. You have one or two meetings a month. After a few months, you can have some semi-public hearings. And so by December, which is this is the usual way it's done, by December, you can have your city council saying the question, if they come up with a formula and they wanna do the redistricting or they wanna change, or if they support changes in the configuration of the city council, they can do that in December to get on the next town meeting day as a question on that ballot. That's the proper way to do this. Not, what's the emergency? So right today, we have an emergency. So we're all here today because the NPAs are being pushed into this. Okay, we're not even really in control of our own agenda here. The city council is pushing the NPAs into this. And that's what's happening. And the NPAs are saying, well, like when wards one and eight the other night. So they had their nominees and they selected people who basically said, well, we're not really interested in being on the committee and we don't know anything about redistricting, but we have to have somebody to be on the committee. And that is exactly what happened in ward six. So now you got three wards with people who don't know anything about redistricting and who are basically just there because, well, we gotta have somebody. Okay, does that sound like educated members of a committee who are gonna know how to proceed and know how to form a good committee and know how to do good research and know how to do proper education of the public and proper semi-public hearings? It doesn't sound that way, okay? Now, it upsets me that I'm the only human being out of 50,000 people in Burlington that seems to feel this way. But I'm just, what I'm saying here is all true as far as I know. Now, someone might be able to step forward and say, no, you got the dates all wrong, but that's what people are telling me who have been done this before in the past, that this whole thing is being pushed through as if there's some kind of an emergency and there is no emergency. And this whole thing should have been stopped a long time ago. I don't mind if this ad hoc committee goes forward. As long as it's understood that what they're doing is basically trying to educate themselves in the public. I mean, all I can do is hope that that committee basically says to the city council, do not put anything on the ballot in March. Do not do that. Start over either with a new ad hoc committee if you want to do that or start from scratch in January and do it through the year. I will be absolutely angry if the city council does what we just heard tonight from another city official that they're pushing to get this on the ballot in March. Again, the census is six months late and here we are in September, we still don't have it. Secondly, town meeting day is earlier than at any time in the past. It's on the first day of March. So you can see how constricted everything is. Jessica, am I going too long? I'm pretty much done. I could go into a lot of specifics about things but basically that's all I had to say. Okay, do you want me to sit here or do you want me to take off? Okay. The question is actually in response to something you said and it's a question for person. So if the ad hoc committee does exactly what Charlie recommended. Can you hear her? Can you hear okay? Luna, can you hear? Can you hear what she's saying? I'm not even speaking. Okay. So if the ad hoc committee does exactly what Charlie recommended, which is they meet, they gather, they do educate the public, gather public feedback about the process and about the public's feelings around the issues related to redistricting. And if the committee says, we've done some education, we've talked to a lot of people, we've gotten this feedback, we think it's too fast, we need to slow down this process. If that's what the committee says and if that's the committee's recommendation to city council, will that recommendation be followed? So my understanding is that the committee could meet parts of the public, get feedback on the process from the public and they could go to city council and request an extension if it feels like the timeline's too rough. I guess just maybe to add some additional comments from what you've talked about so far. I know that redistricting timeline has varied you to here. Like Charlie mentioned, like Brian alluding to I think the last time it was done, it was after the legislative process on the state level. I don't know if there are any state guidelines that it's supposed to be one after the other. I know that the state is operating on the same exact timeline as the city is right now. So they're also working on the March 22 timeline. And I also know that the census data is going to be available readily soon. I think as soon as like the city council meeting. But I think what the intention was of the city council members who sponsored this resolution was to start to build the framework to garner public input. It's not so much to get community members together to talk about what the census data says, but rather to hear feedback on, do we like the way that the city council is structured right now? Do we like the number of city council that we have? Do we want districts anymore? Those types of items, do we feel like lines so that this neighborhood is more intact? Or we think we should do away with the district model or that sort of thing, you know? So I think that that's why it feels a little cramped, but I think that the intent was to like, let's have these conversations and then we'll get to like the federal requirements as they come. Does that help? That's very helpful. Thank you. How did the city arrive at the March 22 deadline? And the five weeks, I guess, for this ad opportunity to work, that seems awfully fast to even like, schedule meetings and everything. Yeah, I can't speak for what timeline was established by the city councilor who sponsored the resolution. I do think that the resolution was probably written without the understanding that most of the MPAs take the summer months off, so it feels especially cramped when we're talking about this now the first NTA meeting back since the summer. So yeah, I can't speak for, but I think maybe, I think the thought was that in past, you know, the last time we had this whole redistricting process, it felt like it got dragged on for so long. So like having like a really concrete schedule like could help keep the process going. But I understand that like having two public meetings in like five weeks time is like very tight. We'll have to do a lot of work to make sure that folks know about those meetings. Indeed, and they're all like very important questions to address, right, the large model versus districts and also kind of the overlay districts that they are now. I'm just afraid that the five weeks isn't gonna be enough to engage enough people. Yeah, and so like Jess's point is that, you know, if the feedback is like, whoa, I just don't even know yet what to think about this and that the committee members themselves think that this is just really rushed. They could go to city council and ask for an extension. Just to be clear that the city council doesn't actually have to do any of this, right? So they could just move it forward without us, not that they should. So I think that they're trying to make it a public decision and to kind of remove themselves. I think that's, you know, often like part of the conversation will be like, does income and see matters when we redraw these lines, these legislative lines, is it gonna impact somebody who's already in office? So I think they're trying to, it's a very political process, but I think the intent was to have a separate committee being charged and garnering public input on that so that they're not the ones making those decisions on whether they're affecting their own income and see. Right, yeah, but in the end, they are going to make this. They will, yeah, they will review the report and then have their own resolution. And the resolution, it would have to be a charter change, so wouldn't it, if they, if they, Yeah, there will be like a charter change draft. It would go before the vote, both of us, yeah. There will be a charter change draft and then that will, you know, if it passes like, get on the ballot, which then we all get to review again and then decide, is this really what we want as a community? So it won't ultimately end up in the vote of the community members, but obviously if we're going to go through this process, it would be really great to have something that passes that represents what people really want. And I'd be interested in Charlie's responses mostly, but is, I guess the counter argument I can find here is that because it is going before the public, it's part of the city council's duty to get that to the public ballot in a timely manner and let the public actually make that decision instead of holding it up for five years. So I guess, does that feel like that is at all a ballot point? I'm not clear what we're asking. That we should, it's part of the city council's duty to push to have it on the public ballot in a timely manner. Yes. So I mean, I understand if it's not done correctly and if it's not done with the public well-educated and I want to be clear that I agree with the timeline being way too fast, but I mean, in some ways, do you feel at all like the city council needs to put it to the public as soon as possible or? Well, so like I said, it's just never been done this fast in history. So for instance, for example, so what you're saying is that it should be on the ballot as soon as possible because of redistricting the wards. Okay, so well, let me just make an observation. So since ward seven was created decades ago, ward seven has been overrepresented on the city council. So every March or every year, there was always a deviation. The deviations are only done once when the census comes in, but ward seven has always been overrepresented on the city council and ward one has always been underrepresented because they had too many people in ward one and there's not enough people to justify four or three city counselors in the new north end. Okay, and that's actually where all the controversy started because back about 10 years ago, the easiest solution, and this is gonna be controversial, but the easiest solution to redistricting the wards at that time, there were seven wards, 14 city counselors. The easiest thing to do which caused all the controversy was just take one city counselor out of the new north end and then redraw the lines between wards four and seven. And then all you had to do was get some voter, some residents out of ward one into ward two or six. It was the simplest thing in the world, but because of politics between the mayor's office and the new north end and the old north end and the negotiations like what would the old north end get for their vote kind of thing, which of course that's speculation on my part. So you see that's when the politics took over and they ended up with this massive redrawing of like ward two for instance, all the voters, all the residents from Pearl Street to Main Street in ward two that was locked off and put into the new gerrymandered ward six. So you had thousands of residents, not thousands, a thousand or more residents were cut off from their ward and dropped into this new gerrymandered ward eight. So I'll just make one last quick comment. So if someone was here from Australia or Nigeria studying our government, what would they see? The first thing they would see was this massive gerrymander called ward eight in Burlington. That's the first thing they would see. And they would say, what in the world is that all about? We're here to study the good aspects of your government. And that's the worst, the best example of gerrymandering in the entire state of Vermont, ward eight in Burlington. And then you do the second thing and you say, and you would say, oh yeah, we're doing redistricting. And oh, by the way, we're doing it in three months instead of 23 months. And they would say, how is that a good example of good government? You see? So I'll just leave it at that. This gentleman here. I mean, it's all, to what extent does waiting longer further invalidate? How do you weigh that again? Yes, well actually, I think I should say first that we have a city council and they're all hardworking people. They go to a lot of meetings. They put in a lot of time. They're overworked and they're underpaid. Okay, so that's the first thing. I want to make that perfectly clear. That I know most of them personally and half of them are friends of mine. So that's why this whole thing is so frustrating to me. But as far as I think what you're saying is that that there's a benefit for doing it quickly and there's a benefit for doing it longer. And so how do you decide what to do? How do you decide? And it's true. People who are doing voter suppression in Texas right now, they have a legal right to do it as fast or as slow as they want. And it's just up to the individual members of the city council how they want to do it. They can legally do whatever they want. I mean, we've been through this with Donald Trump doing things saying technically he can do something which everyone says is a gas. But technically he's allowed to do certain things when he was president. So did that answer your question? Can I follow up with a hypothetical? Yes. So let's say you have a problem. Because then you have this data from 2020 which maybe is a little bit screwy because it was a pandemic year and it's different. So now we're deciding two or three years down the line to use this data that it's no longer reflective of reality versus the other data that's no longer reflective of reality but with part of a longer deliberative process. That's kind of what I'm wondering is at what point, how long is too long where we expect the demographic changes to be so significant that the benefit of going slow and taking our time is lost and we end up with districts that are just as unrepresentative of the present as the ones that currently exist on? The easy answer is that you wouldn't know because you have to wait for the next census. Now you can make a change anytime you want. The city council can apply for a charter change to change their eight wards forward. They can do that anytime they want and any year they want. But when it comes time to basically apportioning voters to a district, basically that is put into, there's a mandate to do that when the census comes out, they see that the deviations get to a certain point. But see, it wouldn't come up year after year after year. It gets triggered by the census. Now again, it can be done anytime. I think this gentleman here should basically ask a question about who's responsibility. Is it necessary to do that as the city halls or is it the committees we're establishing? So if it's the committees, then are they having the resources appropriate to be able to go out and provide educational materials? And on the issue of like a timeline, I mean that's kind of subjective. It could happen in three days, just pay me a computer and nap it out in a meeting or maybe like a year. I don't think like a specific set timeline is necessarily the answer. I think it should be when the committees feel that they're people that they'll be redistricting, feel adequately involved in the process or they've gotten through all the major hurdles. So I don't think a timeline is a good idea. I think that giving the committees resources and educational material and wanting them to come to the decision of when they should present the city council and they should just wait for that. Yeah, so on the question of resources, the committee will be the ones like determining how they want to go about the public forums, but they will be getting city support. Once the entire committees convene, they'll be working with the new city attorney and Dan Richardson. And then they'll also be getting support like administrative support from most likely CEDO where I worked. And like whatever, like obviously like budget restraints, but like whatever resources they need to like get the word out, be it a sponsored front for format or whatever, you know, like they can come to the city and ask like make those budget requests. Thank you. So I just want to say that the city council is not compelled to ask the public anything. They're not compelled to educate the public. They're not compelled. However, good government would say that they would do that. So I think anywhere in the United States, I would hope that the city council or the legislature goes to the public and asks their opinion. Cause otherwise they're in danger of getting booted out of office if they're not looking open and transparent, which is what we keep hearing. I'm just frustrated by how can you be open and transparent? So again, I'm actually congratulating the city councilors because they're willing to actually talk about a change in the configuration of the city council. And they're willing to do that in a couple of public meetings before the census data is available. That can only hurt city councilors. Okay, so that's a good thing. That's a good thing that the city council is doing. They're saying, we're open to having discussion and changing it because what if they went to just a representative's point for war? That means four of them would have to run against four other city councilors for their seats. They definitely don't want to do that, but they're open to that discussion. So in their favor, they're willing to do that and they're willing to put this and our committee together. With nothing else to do for three meetings, so there's no census data to talk about warrant deviations. So that's in favor of the city council. They're assuming something good when they're doing it. That's open and transparent. So I should say. Thank you for that, Charlie. I'm not gonna just turn it over. And offer some space for people on Zoom to speak and actually let you co-heather and say, oh, what are we doing here? Do you want me to? All right, so last time they viewed the line, I often made a city call where Jay Appleton was on this map. And it was actually quite fun because it really is the worst, worst boundary. They're taking in progress. And the boards have to have possibly the same number of people. It can be differentiated by about 10%. But it was sort of like he moves the line and then it would all of a sudden say what all the populations would be in those different boards and you realize, well, that may be the numbers not be what they should be. And I specifically was paying attention to word two. I've been an awardist for 26 years or something. Word two used to be shaped sort of like that, like that handgun. And it had this little piece of William Street, which is like really not part of the old Norsean. And I said, well, yeah, that's not part of our native but that William Long's important line. So it was things like that, that people from a different board were able to contribute to the drawing of the line. But for people to say they weren't used to that, but at some level it comes down to the number of voters, number of registered voters in each area. So the number of citizens, so it's not just because we want to be together. I mean, it has to do with the numbers. Obviously, Kim and I had that, because they vary comments more than one, have made this big huge influx of populations in those boards. So I think, so that was one thing I wanted to say is that the numbers count very much. The other thing is, I think Kim Rowling came from two years, this thing about the districts in the board and so that we have this person who's been to greatest two boards. I mean, I liked it better when we had two city counters per ward because this idea that somebody could bridge two wards, they have to do, I mean, it just made campaigning really not as effective because it's just too many people to cover and it's much more personable if you have a smaller area and people representing that smaller area. So that has to do with the politics of it. I mean, back then they were freaking out that there would be like 16 people on city council, 14. It's like two more than 14 to cares, but they care and that's why it's taking well. So anyway, those were the two issues I wanted to bring and I think it hurts. Thanks, Wendy. So we are going a little long on this important agenda item. Are there any more burning questions and then we'll talk about process. Anyone on Zoom have a burning question? You can raise your hand or just start waving at us on screen. Not seeing any more burning questions on Zoom. Are there more burning questions in the community center? I had a quick one for Kirsten. How long might the timeline be to get the budget approval for education material out to the public either, I think the best method would probably be a mail out to the households in Burlington, perhaps even including a survey or a feedback. What would the timeline be like just to get a sense of? So your question is regarding like... If the ABAC committee can be on the 16th, they're expected to give a report by the 22nd, I believe, of October 25th. Yeah, so if they want to do a mailer because they're like, we need to get the word out to everyone. Like that's probably something that they could propose. I would probably advocate. Yeah, I think so too. And right now the city's also working on their language access plan. So I think language access is a huge thing for this process too, is making sure that folks who speak other languages other than English are able to understand the process and participate as well. So those are all things that the committee will have to be thinking about and meeting on city resources to fulfill. And is there, and do you have any idea what the timeline would be like to get that out to folks? Yeah, I have no idea on the specifics, but that will certainly be the first thing for the committee to start to nail down before they have the actual meeting. A bunch of approvals and that. Yeah, I didn't mean like, I meant that there would be budget for the committee. I can't speak to the amount and I don't think there would be like necessarily like an approval process on the public, or that the public will participate in, yeah. Right, okay. Let me just say that what I would like to see is that either someone from the city or in the public basically draws up something, a little bit of a history and basically draws up something like, these are the other types of options that people should think about. And then send that out to the public and let the public think about that for a week or two and then have, basically say to the public, what do you think and what are possible proposals coming from the public? And then you can share those with the public. So see, the whole thing takes a week to do this, to send it out, a week to get it back, a week then to reage, to send it back out to the public in general. So it takes like a month basically just to educate the public on what the past has been like and what the potential is for a change of something different. So everything just takes, you know, a week or two to do it. So I just think, I'm pretty opinion there's not enough time to do a good job of it. Thank you. Great, I'm gonna jump in here. Thanks for a rich discussion and there's a lot to talk about of course. But I'm gonna make a proposal on process so that we can move forward. Obviously we're working on a really tight timeline and that's less than ideal, but what the steering committee was thinking was that we didn't wanna ask people to learn about the committee and make a snap decision on whether they could volunteer a third or not. And then vote tonight, that seemed like a rush timeline for up on top of a rush timeline. So we, our thought and our proposal is to let people think about whether this is a volunteer job that you're willing to engage in and email us at the steering committee just a statement of interest saying, you know, why you're interested and what background you have to offer the committee. And then, so email us by Monday, the 13th. And then we will host a hybrid meeting next week, likely on Monday, so that's to be determined where we will vote as an NPA on those candidates. And it'll be, you know, an evening 6.30 meeting, so obviously it will be challenging for people scheduled to attend since it's not a regular NPA meeting. So these email statements will hopefully make it accessible for people who won't be able to attend that meeting to still be considered for the committee. And then we will vote as an NPA next week and have not reached the offer to the city by the deadline next Thursday. So could we have, let's open it up for discussion and tweaks to that proposal and progress moving forward. So he's a board 3-4 that he'd like to make a statement. Any discussion at the community center? Did you say next Monday would be the voting? Yes, we're going to finalize the date and time of the voting email and we'll forward that on Facebook and on CEDOS website, our website for the Eurus Board. We just haven't mailed that down yet. I think that next Monday is also city council meeting. So maybe if there's a way to vote by email or to do it a different day, that might be a good idea. Yeah, Molly? Molly, we also have, so one of the people who would like us to nominate himself is here today and not available on Monday and he wanted to be able to make a statement to see some thoughts he wants to share tonight. So I'd like to add too, so Molly's proposal is to have a vote on Monday and we're discussing that now. An alternate proposal would be to have the vote now which we felt a little rushed but I just wanted to call the attention if there's somebody who wants to make a statement in the room here, but Molly, please continue the discussion about your proposal. Yeah, how about we nail down a process and then we'll take a statement that people want to make that tonight? Yeah, how many people are on this call right now? There is 19 people with a few duplicates not counting everyone here, so probably like, I'm guessing like 35 people. It's pretty solid, Sean. I don't know, I'd be, especially with the City Council meeting happening and a note on the idea to have it as an email voting has to be roll call. Sometimes it would have to be like a dedicated NPA special meeting, unfortunately, that would be ideal. But yeah, I think we have a solid chunk tonight. I know it is rushed, I think the whole thing is rushed. Might as well keep it to the theme, it's my take. But 30 L, just throwing it out there. Does anyone else have a question or comment related to the process? So there will be time for a candidate statement after that, but do you have a comment related to the process? I was kind of confused on the process because I saw an email that went out and there was a deadline on the 13th and I'm like, wait, the meeting's on the 9th and the NPA is cool as opposed to it. So what was the process after the gentleman's concern over here about the City Council meeting? I think it online, I'm gonna be out of town on Monday but I can certainly attend an online meeting that would really do it. But if there's a conflict with the City Council and that's gonna possibly depress turnouts would there be another day like Tuesday or Wednesday that could happen? Because it sounds like there's a hard deadline that this needs to be done. Or maybe what about the next Thursday? That's the deadline, I don't know if it's 5 p.m. or midnight or what it is, but. Kristen, do you mind? Yeah, that's totally, I think as long as you all meet the deadline, like you can find any time. I, unfortunately, am precipitating in the Ward 5 NPA 30th day evening. So I wouldn't be able to support the process but definitely hybrid, like it would be a hybrid meeting for sure. I would second concern vote participation next week but also it's only seems fair that if people were told they had a tool, is that the 14th? The 13th, the 14th is that, yeah. To be nominated then that is also something that should be the, yeah. Both are that kind of out of that. Is there a problem? Kristen, if you're not available, would there be other CEDO support for having a meeting on Thursday? I'm not confident on that. There's a lot of, you know, but the reorganization of CEDO, they're in the process of hiring new folks for the opportunity, engagements, subdivisions, so I can't speak on snapping there. But I could definitely do Tuesday if that's of interest. But you guys can also, yeah. Is there a way to do a quick poll of all the persons in the room and the persons on the call to see which day of the week would work best? Sounds like Monday's out, so I'm suggesting a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday meeting. Thursday has to be the term. Excuse the deadline, like midnight on Thursday or is it 5 p.m. on Thursday? I don't know. I think it's just 5 Thursday and I think if that's really going to be an extension to Friday, that would also probably be... Maybe what we can do is approach the counselors and ask them to maybe pass an extension at the Monday night meeting to help give the process a little more time. No guarantee to be out on that. Yeah, and it would be nice to have a decision tonight at this meeting about what the next step is so that we can make sure people are informed and know. To the issue, I'm not sure how the process is going to play out, but some of the comments I've had, part of my prep for coming here to the internet actually went through and read all the previous online documents of one process before and as I understand it, the committee put together a number of different recommendations that were forwarded to the city council and then ultimately behind the city council and did something, none of the recommendations from the committee were actually honored and to think that kind of leads credence to Charlie's point that anytime you have a legislative body drawing the lines, there's always that potential that there's gonna be some questions about the process. So I think that having that kind of process is key and it sounds like there's very widespread support, not just among people in the room and on the call, but at the other entities as well that this is being pushed in a very quick manner. So from my perspective, yeah, there's no guarantee even if there is a committee and there is a lot of public input, there's no guarantee that the health resolution that will direct the mapping specialist will actually take into consideration what the recommendations of that are. And that's a concern as well. So, Molly, what's next? Well, it sounds like folks are generally supportive of holding a special meeting next week to vote on nominees. And it sounds like we should aim for at least not for Monday. I would say we should move forward with having a steering committee set a date and time for that special meeting and we'll award it via front porch forum and our website. How do folks here in this room feel about that? What was the statement on that? That the steering committee will decide on a date next week that won't be Monday and we'll warm it through our website, front porch forum, social media, through CEDAW to make sure as many people as possible know about it. Does that get a thumbs up from in the room? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, any thumbs down? No? Okay, how does it look on Zoom, Molly? Yeah, anyone on Zoom want to give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down? I'm getting a few thumbs up. Okay, we'll move forward with that plan. So again, please email the steering committee with a statement of interest if you'd like to be considered. Our email is ward2m3npa at googlegroups.com and that's with a number two and a number three but the rest spelled out. It's our email box listed on the website if you need to check that out. So please email us your statement of interest by Monday and we'll warm the hybrid meeting as soon as possible and multiple times so that people know about it and can come. Great, thanks everybody. We will move on to the next agenda item then, which is the city of Burlington's capital plan. We have Martha Keenan with us on Zoom, I believe. I thought her. Yeah, so, Martha, sorry we are running so late but thank you for being with us if you're able to get your presentation with us on it. Very much. I wanted to share my screen and I'm not sure that I am able to do that. Martha, you are. Oh, you need to promote yourself to the panelists. Can you accept that? It's like you needed yourself. There you are. Awesome, thank you. I am technologically challenged after all this time of doing this, I still am learning. So thank you very much for having me here tonight. It's a pleasure and I have been going to a number of the different boards and I've really been enjoying the conversation regarding this ad hoc committee because each one has different perspectives on it so it was fascinating to listen to that. I'm going to share my screen and talk to you about the city's capital plan. Can you see my slideshow at this point? Yes, we can. Awesome, we did it right. So the city has a capital plan and it has now been going for five years. Do you want to talk to me about what have we accomplished? What have we learned and what are our next steps? Let's start with a little bit of the history of the capital plan. Is that in March of 2014, the mayor stated that he would present the coming year, the first capital plan for the city. And following year in April, there were many crafts of the capital plan. But it was in September of 2016 that the Board of Finance and City Council actually approved the capital plan and also a special issuance of bonds which went to the voters in November of 2016 and had a really great response. We had 78% voted for this issuance of bonds for the city's sustainable infrastructure of 27 and a half million dollars. And we have now finished our first five years and it's the next step that we are going on to. Over the first five years, we worked with all the departments, the public, the city council to reinvest in the city's infrastructure and that worked cut all aspects of the city. We integrated greenway, bike path, and sidewalks really made many buildings and all of our projects have considered the impact on the city's net zero energy fall as we moved along. What have we accomplished? We improved over 14 miles of sidewalks. Prior to this bonding, we were working about one mile of sidewalks per year. Now we're doing three miles of sidewalks a year. We've been putting our investment in our streets from one million dollars to two million dollars. Even that is a struggle with the new freeze thought seasons that we've been having has made that difficult. There is a street capital tax that residents pay that goes towards it. It's still not sufficient to be able to do the payment when you can keep the pot bowls at bay. We rehabilitated seven miles of bike path, about 90%. We created a new facilities building in Lent Park. We got on now houses, the grounds and trees maintenance teams and at the same time we installed some gas and diesel pumps there. What this is, is a great efficiency for the workers within the city is that previously if someone was out of the snow plowing and they were in the North end, they would end up going where they don't need the station that they spawned out of being there out here, down less time. And the police department can go there rather than the security's and has helped us save on. We improved the number of the city buildings with their on-road bike coming in, insulation, new rooms, new HVAC systems. All of it created more energy efficiency and reduced overall operating costs. Improving our IT infrastructure. And prior to this also, we are spending about $125,000 a year. And we learned with the pandemic that it was not sufficient by a long shot. And so this need has only increased magnetism, magnetism, I can't say the word. But exponentially it would be a better way. And we need to continue that investment. We did electronic door systems and replaced the city video security systems. In the past, all of the city video was in each building. And so one person sort of managed it there. Now it's all tied to the dispatch system in the police department. So if there's an incident anywhere in the city, the dispatcher can pull up the camera that relates to it and they can help the person responding by telling them what's going on so that they can walk into a situation better prepared and create a better result from the end of the incident. We have created three different committees. First we created a capital committee which is made up of the department heads to deal in the most capital. So CEDO, Public Works and Parks, as well as the Treasurer's Office and the administration. And this provided an equitable base for which projects could be looked at, prioritized and strategized around. We also created a fleet committee. Again, previously each department bought their own fleet vehicles. And that was highly inefficient. Now all brought over one time. It's all done in one place. They have a year-long process to figure out what vehicles we have moved towards hybrid and electric vehicles wherever we can, it's a perfect charging infrastructure that's needed and it allows us to strategize on our financial strategy how to move forward with that. Whether it be a mass release or bonding. And the longer items, longer life items go within this bonding fire points. So there are three fire trucks to be replaced from this request that we'd like to make to the voters. But we also have in there snow clouds and sidewalk tractors. So all of those have a life longer than 10 years and it's more efficient for us to put them in a bond than it is to try and do a mass release. So it's less expensive overall. And then the latest committee that we started was an asset management committee. And that's the next step of the capital plan is the asset management system which we're implementing right now allows us to have a inventory of all of our assets. And any work done on them is recorded here. And it allows us to evaluate the risk of failure and determine when something should be replaced rather than just replacing it because it's 25 years old and it's supposed to be replaced. It gives us that data. And so it helps us create a better strategy and forecasting of what we need for dollars going forward. One of the things that we have improved on our plan is that originally we didn't include anything from public safety. And there are a lot of, I would say, radio systems that public safety has. And one way in particular is at end of life right now and is part of this plan. And it is replacing the overall infrastructure of the radio for our public safety book, Leason Fire. Cell tower upgrades, routers, repeaters. The whole part is at end of life and needs to be updated. We did some renovations at both 645 Pine Street and City Hall, which improves security and also public services. The new permitting and inspections division is housed out of 645 Pine. And we've made it much easier for people to get in and out and get work done. What we've learned, we've learned a lot, that capital needs are evolving always and that although a capital plan is a photo of a picturing time of what we need that day, it changes every day. We had a huge storm last night, last night. We got almost an inch and a half at my house. I'm not sure what we're looking to nut. I'm just a little bit south. But with that, you know, roof south trouble, flooding occurs, pop holes occur and that's a new project that goes into the capital plan. We didn't have a complete understanding of what our assets were or are and that is part of it is the public safety part. We also didn't list our bridges and the city has a lot of bridges. And so we continue to learn about more assets that we have and we can get a more complete picture and try and create one large strategy so that we look at everything at once. We unfortunately have decades of deferred maintenance to catch up on and it's going to take us decades to catch up on and get somewhere. The capital plan is not a one-time deal. It is quite long commitment or a historical commitment to take care of the city's infrastructure and it's going to take us a long time to get where it can be really proactive rather than reactive. We've made a good start on it but we aren't there yet. The fiscal year 22 budget survey showed that the residents and I hope they do who are part of it showed a strong support for our infrastructure. Over the next three years we have a need of over $140 million and we have about $60 million so there's an $80 million gap of what we need. Now we're not asking for $80 million. What we're doing is we're looking at all of the different opportunities that are out there and when we came in 2016 there were not a ton of opportunities but now we really do have some. We have the federal infrastructure bill which is in the process of getting passed. We have the American Rescue Plan and there is increased funding through the state for both climate change and transportation. So we are looking at all of those opportunities. However, there are a number of things that still don't qualify for any of those other opportunities and so we still have a need to ask for money from our voting on a bond from the voters. So over the next three years we want to continue the initiative that we started five years ago and we've been reinvesting about $1.7 million for three miles of sidewalks every year. We have been doing around $2 million or a little bit over $2 million on streets. We invest about $700,000 of that has been from bond money and the other is covered by a street capital annual tax that's out there. Our infrastructure for IT, transportation planning which includes traffic comments and other items. The technical project management is resources for consultants and staff. Facilities, we have a continuing need. I like to joke that facilities will stop having needs when streets stop having models. It's never going to happen. There are a lot of parks projects. The parks have funding through Pending Park and impact fees. However, they have a number of areas that aren't covered by that or are larger needs that are easily completed with the monies that they have. An example being the Boathouse which is on water and isn't considered part of the park. The barge is failing and it's going to sink. So it needs money to be able to move that Boathouse over. The bike path is another area of parks items. We have just a little bit left to fit the bike path and have a detotally refit on tape. We have our fleet and we have been utilized in Astra Leases for the items that have a shorter length. But as I mentioned earlier, we do have fire trucks, no plows and sidewalk tractors that would fit well into this bonding request. We have Public Safety which is the radio infrastructure which is really, there is an ongoing need of maybe $100,000 or $200,000 a year but the replacement of their infrastructure is about $5,000 or $300,000. And we have Memorial on-frame. We don't know what we're going to do with Memorial but it needs work one way or another and so there is an order that we are looking at to make a determination and do something with Memorial. So on an annual basis, we have over $7 million worth of need and for this request, we're looking at $40 million as a request. There are other capital needs and the city works hard to leverage their dollars. There are a lot of grants. The Rail Yard Enterprise is just starting Champlain Parkway, the Sheldon Street Roundabout and the Rail Yard Alignment are examples. Most of you may have seen or driven down Sheldon Street and seen the work that's being done there and the Rail Yard Alignment which is allowing the Amtrak to come back into Burlington. The Rail Yard Alignment is scheduled to be done by December of this year. The Sheldon Street Roundabout is a completely funded project by the fence and the state. These four projects together are more than $60 million worth of projects and the city's investment in them is around $6 million. So we're really leveraging our dollars wherever we possibly can to get a greater reinvestment into the city. To make our decisions, we're looking at comprehensive plans that have been done in the late pet master plan scoping and corridor studies. We also have a number of departments that have done some really good work on some larger revisioning projects. The library has been looking at how can we move into the 21st century. Their building was built in 1980 and it has had some upgrades but it really doesn't fit what a library does today. There's a lot more computer technological work that is done at the library now by customers and so that area needs to be expanded. The youth area and team programming have been expanded greatly and so it has a whole vision to redo the library and make it vibrant for today. That project's about $22 million. It's not in this plan right now. The fire station, the chief did a hired consultant and looked at whether two fire stations could be consolidated and still maintain the response time as necessary. It is possible if we were able to build that building, it would save on resources. We would be able to have less trucks and less people and still maintain the same coverage. That project's about $16 million. And we have also had a lot of conversations around consolidating collection and bringing that in-house. If you were to bring it in-house, it would cost about $6.7 million. Whenever you do these capital projects, there are operational and maintenance needs that go along with those and so we have to always think about what are those needs that are going to be created by this work of pavement markets, landscaping, still in these maintenance. So what are our next steps? I'm here, I'm going to all the commissions, all of the wards, all of the committees to help get the word out about what this need is, why it's important, and help people understand that. This coming Monday, we're going to board a finance and city council to be able to ask them to approve going to the voters in November for a special election and the issuance of the bond. And hopefully on November 9th, we will have the special election and be able to move forward with further, further in our capital investment and in-bank infrastructure. All through this, we're looking at prioritizing our needs and how can we create a sustainable plan. We are also working to strategize all the different funding opportunities and I spoke a little bit about each of them before. The American Rescue Plan covers ventilation for buildings, so that's a really big one that we do qualify for. Broadband, there are various parts of the community that use broadband. That has been used back. The state infrastructure and climate change can go for help with bridges, transportation planning, electrical vehicle charging, infrastructure, our federal infrastructure bill goes more towards our streets, sidewalks and bridges. So we're looking at how we can apply for and utilize those funds and therefore use any investment from the voters of city dollars as wisely as possible. Some things we have to consider as we move along in this is our debt policy cap. In 2018, the city created a debt policy and a cap on it. So we do still have room in it and we want to stay within it. It is shared with the school department and so any time we go into these things we need to consider what are the school needs and what are our needs to try and balance them. And we all are pretty aware that the school will be coming to the high school at some point. And so this was taken into consideration as we looked at this. We want to look at our other funding opportunities and make a strategy to create a sustainable plan to maintain a vibrant downtown. Right now, the capital program gets $2 million a year annually. And as you saw our annual need is at least $7 million just to maintain what we're the level that we've been doing. So over the next three years we're hoping to further that knowledge with our asset management plan and come back to the voters with what is the right number to have on an annual basis and then avoid having large fund votes but have it at a sustainable level of investment. The longer we wait, the more we defer things the more it's going to cost us. Unfortunately. So this is the schedule. This one, I have lots. And I've been enjoying going and talking to people and helping them learn. And hopefully on November 9th we'll look for a special one. Great, thank you, Martha. Yeah, let's open the floor up for questions. It's starting on Zoom. We are running a bit time schedule. So let's try to keep questions to no more than 10 minutes but questions are the best part of our case so let's not cut them short. So anyone on Zoomland has a question? You can raise your hand or you can turn on your video and start with your hand. I'm not seeing anyone jump into it so let's open it up to the community center and we'll give one to Greg. Thank you. Yeah, Greg, go ahead. Hi, I have more of a comment than a question. I just wanted to say that I'm really supportive of the idea of addressing deferred maintenance and investing in our sidewalks and street repairs, bike path, parks, all of these things. Well, one, I guess one contradiction that I saw in the presentation was that you wanted to invest in the Champlain Parkway. And this is, I think, one really good example of something that not only conflicts with this idea of reducing future maintenance needs but you also stated you have certain climate goals for the city and a new road that's really dedicated in cars and trucks that are primarily fossil fuel based transportation is just really conflicts with all the city's climate goals. So I think that the city council and the mayor should really be selective about the sorts of capital projects that they invest in even if it's primarily federally funded, we're gonna be on the hook decades to come to maintain that. So just to comment, thank you. Thank you. Thanks Greg. Anyone else on Zoom, one last way to begin? Okay, let's kick it over to the community center. We'll come back to Zoom if anyone comes up with a question. But how's it going over there? All right, I have a question if anyone else does. So one item that stuck out to me, I could use a little bit of clarification on is the three year projected cost for dealing with the Memorial Auditorium. I know that's been a long saga. James Lockwood really led the charge on that one for a while and I've been following it kind of loosely, but is that like a similar, like why 10 million? Like are we looking at doing something similar to like the frame with the Moran plant, like kind of repurposing it in some way that isn't building? Or like what's the, do you have any information on that? Like what the current, I don't know, why the 10 million? Phil. It has a number of structural issues with it. So whether it can be renovated and utilized by someone, whether it be the city or not, whether it is past the ability to be renovated or we're just trying to leave that there because we know we need to address it one way or another. The heating system in is at end of life. They were boilers that were put in in 1958 and it really doesn't make sense to replace them when you don't know what you're going to do with the building and there's no ventilation system, no elevator, no ADA anything in it. So this is a placeholder to help us work through what those options are and I am sure that there will be some public process. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions? Molly, we don't have any other questions in the room here. Great, any other questions on Zoom? I don't see any, but I'll give you another five seconds to raise your hands. Okay, I think with that we'll say thank you so much for coming in and sending the time. Sorry we're a bit behind schedule right now, but we appreciate your presentation. Thanks for the opportunity, have a great night. Thanks Mark, thanks for coming. Great, our next agenda item is Good, been done by Brian and Tina. So welcome, I'm sorry we're behind schedule, but please go ahead and give one 10 minutes to this one. What was the last thing you said? I think you were claiming 10 minutes for this presentation. So I will help you. So hi everyone, I'm here tonight to present a proposal regarding public safety, health, equity, quality of life that I could develop through my work is good, so I'm gonna share screen now. Can you confirm that you see this live show? That looks great. Okay, so I'm here tonight to present to you the Neighbor Outreach Worker, also known as NOW, program pilot project. This is a draft proposal for this MPA, it's going to be a little further as we gather more from neighbors. It's presented by me, Brian and Tina, I'm a resident of the Old North End, a social worker, an activist, community organizer, a performance artist, and I also serve as a state representative, but I'm here tonight really as a neighbor, so this proposal was inspired by my work with Eichin Street Gardening and other optimistic doings, and let's begin. And I'm gonna ask that full questions for interruptions to be held for the end so that I can get through this in efficient manner. Thank you. So the Neighborhood Outreach Worker, NOW, program, would be a community development program grounded in transformative justice that will cultivate public safety by building relationships, improving access to social, health care, and economic resources, and growing community competency to manage quality of life issues. And it's inspired by the lessons learned from the work of this, and these are some pictures of people who have worked with this for over the years that you'll see featured as we go along. So is the Eichin Street Gardening another optimistic doings? Is a mutual aid and community building project that has transformed Eichin Street over the past 12 years or so from being one of the worst streets in Burlington to being a model for how neighbors can improve their quality of life. So you can see here some of our neighbors and staff from Rosca and you can also see the mayor and heads of city departments who came to visit us many years ago as we were beginning our work. So through community organizing around gardening and good feeds, we improved the physical and social environments of Eichin Street and crime rates dropped significantly when compared to surrounding streets. In 2014, the Burlington Police Department and ISGOOD applied for a grant together that would quote, bring the knowledge and skills developed through the ISGOOD program to other neighborhoods struggling with quality of life issues. And you can see here that as a Burlington Police Lieutenant Jay Lawson and his officers whose jurisdiction includes Eichin Street and the surrounding area noted a dramatic difference in the looking field of the street since ISGOOD was formed. They reported less flight and disruptive behavior and more evidence of good property maintenance. The improved feel of Eichin Street is backed up by a reduction in noise violations and burglaries of vandalism on the street all of which remain the same on neighboring streets with no community organizations. And I can provide a copy of this grant to anyone who wants to read it in its entirety from 2014. So our community police partnership did not receive funding for that grant though. But the city of Burlington's Community Economic Development Office, CEDAW, and the Office of Student Community Relations, Oscar, at the University of Vermont, they continue to provide financial and human resources to support the positive impact of ISGOOD on our city. So you can see here, these are some pictures from during the pandemic of things we did. Though through the pandemic Oscar and ISGOOD with support from CEDAW continued to bring neighbors together to improve quality of life and to promote public safety as we face tremendous loss in trauma as a community. 11 neighbors passed away in Burlington Health and rehab early on in the pandemic. We made the signs for their families and the staff and people who were still, were recently trapped there, quarantined there. And that was in, I think that was like late March or early April, 2020. And then the next picture, you can see some of the characters from the old north that you might recognize doing sort of a roving band for people to be socially distanced. And that was this spring. So it's one, you know, a year apart, these pictures. And, you know, as we continue to bring neighbors together, I listen to people and I've been reflecting on the successes, failures, strengths and challenges across our neighborhoods. And I imagine a possible alternative way to meet people's needs based on my experiences as a street outreach worker and as a crisis clinician. And it would be the Neighborhood Outreach Worker Program. The Neighborhood Outreach Worker Program would provide peer outreach and support services by training and paying teams of neighbors, one student and one resident who is not currently in school to serve as peacekeepers and guardians of the public good. The Now Program would help the neighborhood address quality of life issues such as noise disturbances, parties, when they get out of their homes, as we like parties, disorderly conduct, fighting, fireworks, we don't like them. And now I can't tell if it's gunshots or fireworks, fires, littering or vandalism, and vandalism. The duties of the Neighborhood Outreach Workers, now teams, would be to walk the streets and attend community events regularly to get to know neighbors before problems arise, to encourage the prevention of the problem. They would provide an unarmed first response to quality of life complaints made tonight or on board or made directed to the analogies. They would facilitate access to emergency medical services when needed. They would follow up after incidents to connect people with other social health care and economic resources in the community that can address any underlying problems and unbend needs. They can teach relationship skills to neighbors to build our collective competency for dealing with quality of life issues and they would provide support for practicing these skills. And they would design interventions with the community that empower people and that do not use violence or courage. And they would do this with professional support through supervision with a social worker who would direct the program. That would be the full-time work. So how would we hold this program accountable to the community? You hear a lot about in public safety, community control or accountability. I'm proposing that we embed this program in CEDA and that the program engages the community in an initial assessment of needs and strengths. Then create a plan with the community for training the workers so that they can train the community in the needed skills to improve our community competency for managing quality of life issues. And this might include training such as the escalation, conflict resolution, farm reduction, cultural humility, psychological first aid, restorative practices. I'm curious to see what people think we need. They would collect and report qualitative and quantitative data, but they would do it in a way that protects the privacy of individuals and respects human dignity. They would evaluate results regularly in a wide range of public venues, including the neighborhood planning assemblies and the community coalition, for example. They would facilitate the design of interventions with the community grounded in transformative justice and they would meet with other social, economic, health care and emergency services month-long to review the data, coordinate resources and improve performance of the entire system of care. So re-imagining public safety, specialized responses to non-alarm calls. I see this program fitting into a division in the way we handle our responses to non-alarm calls so that we can divert more calls to the services that people need. So neighborhood outreach workers could potentially provide non-alarm responses, but I think it's called third tier if I have the language wrong, I'm sorry, but they're like the lower level calls that at least are saying they're gonna not answer now when they have these other calls. So they would only answer these calls and people could call them first and that would be what they call them all. I also am proposing that it's not gonna be in detail here, but I think we need a new mobile crisis program, possibly a collaboration between the Roman Empire Department and Howard Center, but we figured that out as a community and it would create teams of a mental health crisis worker and an emergency medical technician that would provide an unarmed response to the second tier non-alarm calls, which is mental health substance abuse mostly, I believe. And this would be like the Peruvian program, and then Berlin's Police Department would prioritize first tier non-alarm calls to each stream situations where we need an armed response, where we may need, because we may still not need it, but where we may need one. Or we could have coordination between these three responses as needed, so each tier could phone someone for the other one if they feel like they can't handle it or that it's better handled by someone else. And then they would also, the now team would refer people to other services like first calls, street outreach, turning point, pathway, spectrum cuts, et cetera. We have a lot of great resources that they can refer people to after the initial response, after the emergency. So you might be asking, how much is this gonna cost? What's the damage? And I had to include a picture of the damage in the city cloud cause, some graffiti and some strange stains on the sidewalk, just for a little comment, really. What's the damage? What's the cost? So this is the ballpark figures. We need to work on this as a community more, but I did my best. So bear with me if the order of operations is wrong with the parentheses and things, but the neighborhood outreach worker now program pilot project budget. Two teams, we're gonna have two teams, each of two workers, every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to start. And they would have six hour shifts walking the streets and responding to calls from nine p.m. to three a.m. So it's sort of the covering the peak of quality of life incidents. From my perspective, living out of your dream is like the episode. Maybe it isn't that it feels like this. And then there would be two hours each week per shift of flexible time that could be used for following up on incidents following up in the hours. There would be six hours each month for worker or attending community meetings. There would be an hour each week for the social work supervision with this program director. So they're weekly being engaged in self-improvement as workers. It's a core element of being a social worker that I think is essential to doing this work. There would be a one hour team meeting every two weeks. So we pay these workers, these are part-time workers, students of other residents, maybe retired folks, or people who just want to make extra money and live with the community. If we pay them $30 an hour, which they deserve, it would cost $146,808 a year for the wages of the outreach workers. And if we hire one full-time program director who has a salary and city employee benefits, I'm estimating this. I don't know how much the city benefits. I did some Google research, so this is probably not exact, but 20,000 for benefits. I'm opposing 75,000 a year. I looked up 82,000 seems to be the average nationally. This might be a little low, but I'm just putting something out there. If we add all the staff compensation up, it equals 241,880 dollars. And I'm opposing we spend 50 grand on the initial training. And that might not even be enough. We need to invest a lot in the training because we're training them to train us, the community, and the neighbors. So the total estimated cost without administrative overhead would be 2,901,880 a year. And just to put it in context, the city is spending approximately 825,000 for the 10 community service officer positions at the police department. So this is far less expense, providing a different service to divert people from the police. And what are some possible funding sources? Everyone grab your wallets. I'll start out by saying, I do not think we should raise taxes on people in the city at this time. We, they've gone off too much. However, the University of Vermont could redirect the $100,000 that it budgets annually from, quote, additional police patrols in areas at times when students are likely to be present in neighborhoods to the Neighborhood Outreach Program and they could possibly contribute more through voluntary payments in lieu of taxes. And this is from a Neighborhood Project for 2018. So this is an accurate now, sorry, but I was doing the best of what I have. Champlain College will provide some funding. CEDO could apply for federal, state, and private grants. And the city of Burlington could find a way to allocate some resources in the city budget to CEDO to support the now program and can possibly cover the administrative expenses by using existing infrastructure. There might be a way to create a new city hall or buildings for them. So I don't know my time, I'm almost at the end, though. So this is a vision for public safety, health, quality of life and equity. This is me dreaming big and you can critique this all you want, but I think it's important sometimes to aim high. So my vision would be the Neighborhood Outreach Program expands into other parts of the city and it adapts to meet the needs of all these multiple neighborhoods that the mobile crisis team and a properly funded system appear eventually turn the tide on the substance abuse and mental health pandemic that's taken so many of our loved ones. Increase public access to resources and community and increase public access to resources and the community's use of competency skills would lead to improvements in the social determinants of health and to a reduction in the social determinants of crime and reductions in crime and improvements in health would generate savings and spending on the most expensive parts of our health care and criminal justice system would just still embedded in a partial state and these savings could be increasingly redirected into more investments in social health care and economic resources that promote equity and eliminate disparities and eventually quality of life for all people would keep improving as we bring it into poverty and justice in equity and needless effort. So last but not least, I'm gonna end with two quotes from myself and the other co-founder of this good Bill Harris-Block and this is from our policing partnership grant. Since our first block party, I wish I could talk like Bill, but again, since our first block party in 2010, the culture of the street is up. You can see the change. It's powerful. Students say hello to each other. They say hello to us. We talk. They're sharing their time. Bill Harris-Block is a good co-founder. We now move to the new, he migrated to the New North end like so many former IHP residents but Bill is essential to the beginning of our project and still is a supporter of New Park. And I'm gonna share a quote for myself and then I'll end. The key is to inspire someone to do something greater to unlock our optimistic feelings. Start with just acknowledging people who live around you. They notice what you do too. So become a role model. Invite people in, ask for their ideas. And so I'm here tonight to ask you for your ideas and feedback on this proposal. And I'm hoping that our city can use this as a starting point, but we have to move fast. People are scared out there. People are feeling unsupported. We have to move fast. And on this project release, we have to gather feedback, move fast and get things going. But before we act on it, we need to make sure everyone has a chance to weigh it. So please reach out to any concerns, questions, comments, ideas. And I look forward to speaking with you more about this. Thank you for doing this time. Awesome. Thanks, Brian. Do you want to share how people should be impressed with you? Yes. You can email. See, this is not, as a state wrap, so it's tricky. It's like, I don't have a personal email. What I would say is maybe use my campaign account email. This is not my official one. And oh, this is probably Boya a little bit anyway. So keep that in mind. So it's C-I-N-A-F-O-R-H-O-U-S-E chinoferhouse.gmail.com. And if you email my state wrap account, it's fine. Honestly, like when you email me about anything these days, you know, you have to realize that it might end up being public someday. I can exercise my right to protect your privacy, no guarantees it will happen. So those are the best ways. And I'm happy to make time to meet with people. I'm happy to give this presentation at other venues. I'm happy to just come, sit with people and hear ideas about public safety in general. Thank you. Great, thanks, Brian. Let's open it up to the commons and thoughts in a few minutes while we're doing it. I knew you guys were having a great presentation. I think it's an outstanding project and like- Any questions? Oh, I think, can you hear us now? Yes, honestly, it was an outstanding presentation and definitely the search for alternative in public safety is huge. But the thing I was thinking about was just that you guys have been working on this project for a long time, really trying to build community and communication right in the local neighborhood. Say another street in Burlington that isn't so well-connected. Do you feel like they're ready for such a program or might there be other steps that, you know, the neighborhoods like the communities themselves could take in the meanwhile? Yeah, so what we're proposing is not what is I don't get paid. Me and my neighbors, we keep up the lack, we follow up with people we plan. We don't get paid, we get grant money to buy the supplies, but we don't, it's not a job. You know, we cannot sustain this work city-wide on volunteer hours with neighbors. We need to pay people, we need to make up. So this is actually very, this grew out of the work of this good because in this good what we learned is that when you build relationships, when you teach people skills, when you honor our connection to the land and to the place we live and we build respect, build like we improve quality of life just through those relationship building, that's the piece that gets carried on into this program, but it's professionalized. We're creating an institution, a system of the government and that's different than this good. This good is like, I don't want to use the word amortist because it's not that disorganized, I want to scare people with this, you know, it's fluidic. So this is very different than this good. So it's not asking other streets to do what we did. It's saying to other streets, we know you need help. So the years you can call for help, that's really what it is. So the work we did on this good taught me lessons that I combined with my past experience as a social worker and I looked at the situation and I listened to people and I realized like we need a new system of government to help people with these interviews. And that doesn't mean that if people out there are interested in doing something similar it is good on your block. We're happy to meet with you still. And there's plenty of great mutual aid in Burlington like People's Kitchen, Food Not Arms, the Old North Image, Relay. There's so much going on in our city right now and neighbors taking care of each other. But this would do is take some of that weight off us and we're paying people properly to do that job right. So I hope that answered the question. I think that's all of the comments from here for now. Thank you so much, Brian. Yeah, thank you. Great. Anyone who would like to ask a question and make their comment? Brian, I just first want to say thank you for all of the time that you put into the research you missed and putting you back in those little... I think it looks great. And I guess one question, one comment, the question is how does CEDO feel about taking this on? And then I guess it's the other person's comment is that I hope that you can find or bring the costs and the funding sources in line to this type of project even if it's not as big as what you're probably going to use. So I'll just be blunt. Normally, like I'm trying to plan something, I'll do a lot of work reaching out to everyone in advance. But in this situation, like this summer has been rough. And I've been talking to a lot of neighbors and I realized the only way we're going to really... I'm going to be able to read for people is if we just bring it public. So I didn't reach out to... I haven't spoken with the UVM administration. I haven't spoken with CEDO. I was speaking with the people on the street and the people in the neighborhood, you know? So if they don't think CEDO is the best place to put it, I think our community can discuss where it should go. That's just my opinion. You know, I think CEDO is the place and this should properly fund our people and make sure that program is taken care of. And the other thing is I haven't... There's other ideas I have that I didn't include in the proposal because I didn't want to put too many things out there and the people are like, okay, we're setting all these people up. So maybe at some point we can talk more about some of those ideas because I do plan to follow up with people in the presentation before I ask more things for them to do. And then, can you say or find a question or comment again? Oh, I just wanted to... I just... Just the comment was I hope that you can find a way to align the program fence with the available fund rate so that you can move forward while you're proposing. Thank you. If you're trying to do anything to us, then yeah, hopefully people will be in touch. Thank you. So we're going to move on to our last agenda item which is representatives updates. Our city councilors can join us tonight even during a special meeting. And our school board members can join us either or they'll send us a prepared statement that all of you have attended this meeting. But I see Emma, albeit we stand, has been speaking with us through the waves of the meeting. Thank you so much. I'm not seeing any other representatives. I think we... I want to say that I'm seething my time tonight because I just had a lot, so thank you. Good point. Thank you, Ryan. Great, so why don't... Yeah, Emma, would you like to give up your recovery? Sure. Good evening, everyone. I'm Kevin, probably the candidate that she's circling around the empty lands. I'm pretty sure. We'll start with the reminders because I'm going to say our candidate for the west side of the Old North End, so mostly for three. I don't represent any parts of board two, although redistricting is upon us, so who knows what will happen. And the district I serve is Chittenden 6-2, which extends all the way up to Letty Park and the Ethan Allen Parkway, which is the New York End. I thought I would just be brief, kind of, you know, it's been interesting my first year as retail. My first year at a legislature, but I want to say that we are at what I call the unpaid hard work of being a legislator once the session is over, because things don't stop. Constituents keep reaching out. There are many, many task force and setting committees that convene after the legislature ends in May. We also tentatively have something coming up not over a couple of days of convening. If there's issues, we need to align with the federal government as to contribute to the needs to recover from this pandemic or a little through the pandemic. So I thought tonight what I would do is really put in a couple of issues. I've been watching closely and then do a quick invite to a third thing. So first of all, a couple of our older fan, small work leaders, did testify last night at the Kerr-Pewple-Wayden Study Task Force hearing. This is a task force that has been tasked with really examining a UVM study that the legislature commissioned before I was a legislator, so maybe about a year or two years ago or so, to look at how we fund education in the state. And it's kind of a funny joke. Most people say there's like two people who can explain the funding system. That's how we do it. Because there's this hybrid model of an income-based system of income-based, based on what you make, folks who have the ability to have an income-sensitized property tax bill, and then the second home non-residential property. It is complicated and I'm happy offline to try to explain that to someone to be good practice for me. But the point of this is that the study, I really pointed out the fact that when Act 60, and Act 64, which were two big acts about 20 plus years ago, looked to make the system funded in a more equitable way, that indeed some pieces of that are not reflective of today's student population, today's students, and also the schools that exist today. And their needs are both rural communities and urban, I think that's one of their quotes, like Burlington and Ludusby, who have very different needs, but also as an vision, higher costs. And yet we're all supposed to have this equalized with her people, every student in Vermont, who can get the same money attached to them. So this study looks at these two concepts, I'm going to wrap up on this one, so I don't want to get too far into it, about what we do with the permutable formula. So I'm really looking at that. That really gives districts the most amount of money. And then really questioning this categorical aid element of how funding gets allocated, which is, think about it like I'm a class B, it's sort of a catch-all for things like English language learners, or a catch-all for special education, et cetera. But the point is that the system is just not something that needs to be set anymore, we need to modernize it, and I'm very much in support of what the study community ended for, which is looking at her people formula, it may be that more equitable, because that would actually help underweighted districts like Burlington and Ludusby, who have tons of English language learners and tons of needs to really modernize how we educate those students. Someone who passed by last night called our EL program, the Tribal Legacy Program, and agreed that he needs better resources to do best practices with those students, and also look at our rural districts for those similar districts, who also struggle with high costs for a smaller amount of population by these small schools. So anyway, anyone who wants to know about it may, as I always say, reach out to me. Their next meeting is September 13th. It's in the middle of the day, which is not ideal, it's nine to three, but they meet every other week, and they're all reported and available on the legislative website. Actually, their site, their committee site lives on the joint fiscal office page, or somebody said, I'm happy to appoint you there. If you want to geek out. Second thing will be more brief, but as folks know, I do really try to follow up on employment issues in the state. I serve at House of Commerce, which is the committee of jurisdiction. Briefly, that also has a task force working on the very messed up broken system, frankly, that we have, and all other things. And so their challenge of really studying our upper benefit system right now for unemployment insurance claimants fair, how we rank compared to other states, and also what system changes need to be made. Anyone who's been on employment in the last year with or many other folks out there know that there's all sorts of broken things in that system, and need a lot of examination. And we don't want to have the only one, but we need to make this significant change in the task force is to try to make some recommendations. I'm going to be pushing for two things in particular. An idea of adding an advocate or an unlawful person that can have a state that works correctly. And by the way, an advocate or an unlawful person involved will be independent from the Department of Labor staff or call sent in people to help folks navigate the treatment system and also help those advocates and they have to go into the appeals process. Too many demanders just get stuck on the stuff in that process unless they can, you know, afford our qualified, I should say, to get from off the way services. So it's a big system issue. The second quick thing would be looking at the timeline to do the process. A lot of folks have been stuck in the appeals process for months and months and months and that's not really the current law, so we have to be better. Anyone on insurance, I'm sorry, on insurance, on employment right now, she would have seen the pandemic, the relief money for the federal government, the boost of what the legal claims were and about a couple days ago or so. And Vermont, our legislature tried to put a $25 a week increase to the claim as sort of a step down to help, you know, really provide some sort of support as we all try to make our way to this pandemic. And the US Department of Labor denied that for Vermont's ability to implement. So that's a major problem. There was one tiny article in the figure about it. The task force is going to bring that up. They don't bring it up. I will bring it up with them when they meet next week. But that's significant because employers have a tax rate decrease this summer to help with their recovery from the pandemic. And now the needs workers are on hold. And the way folks are on hold is seeing any sort of increase on that end. Last quick thing, just a quick invite. I'm looking to organize this early October. I'm meeting, I'm sort of out of commerce. I'm meeting with local business owners of any size, any strike and with the old work that they work in to just really hear first hand about how the pandemic is going for you all and workforce needs, et cetera. So I'll just end with anyone's interest in that. Please reach out. I'll use some of our promotion around that. But I would love to just do some listening and learn some more about what businesses need. And that's it. People can reach out to me on my info so I can let you see the website. I really appreciate your time. Great, thanks Emma. Thank you for all your work. Any questions for Emma? We'll start with Zoom. Nothing anyone's done for us. Anyone have, can you say one after the question? No, yes, please go ahead. I have no questions here, but we just want to extend our thanks to Emma for all your time and energy and advocacy. Very sweet. I love this MPA. The guys are awesome. Well, anyway, please reach out. I sort of joke about being on page. This is the service. That's a fight for another time to make sure these are practically page off. So anyone's run for this office. But do reach out. Don't be shy. I'm happy to answer questions no matter where you are. Thank you. Thanks. And thanks for speaking with our delay agenda. Yeah, so a school board sent us a short statement. Polly, I can't remember Polly's last name, but she wanted to say that the schools are off to a good start despite the challenges of the Delta variant. And she wanted to remind people that there is a public meeting on September 14th at 5.30, during which there will be more information regarding the potential grown to high school, grown to a technical center site. So that will be a point of discussion. And then she also wanted to highlight the 70s newspaper this week has an article about the Superintendents planning game, which she wanted to highlight that folks should check that out. So with that, that brings us to the end of the agenda. Thank you so much for sticking with us. And please keep your eyes out on our course forum or our website for more information about how to vote with ad hoc committee vote. We're putting out that information as soon as we can. So before you leave. So before you leave, I mean, we just went through an entire meeting without hearing from Tony Redington. How can we possibly have a meeting without hearing from Tony Redington? Tony, I know you're there. It happens once every five years. Thank you. Let's not make sure he's making some money. Thank you, thank you, Greg. I'll send him or two, a comment for him. Thank you, Patrick. Don't pay it unnecessary. Thank you, Marley. Thank you for voting. I nailed it.