 Yeah. Well, I'm trying to do my part. Did you get it from the voluntary? Oh, great. It's good. Like you're here. Okay, so you'll be able to manage the share screen stuff. Yeah. Okay. For the piece at the end there, the redistricting presentation. I have a short. Slide set. Okay. And then the cost, you know, $50 million. Because they have to get my whole thing is, couldn't they just let it? Oh, Well, that's a great question. Yep. Well, we're going to get the kids out of here. I'm going to get the kids out of here. Oh, I just know how things are. And I'm going to change the. Yeah. Hello, everyone. Can you hear us? Testing testing. Great. I see we have people in person at the Miller center. That's exciting. Thank you. I assume link on the government meetings page is invalid. I asked, we were just noticing that. How did you get in Lee? Sam sent me a link. And I'm trying to send it to other people and people have been calling me and. E-mailing me and saying, I can't get into the meeting. And I'm trying to send them the link. I'm trying to get into the meeting. I'm trying to get into the meeting. I'm trying to get into the meeting. I'm trying to get into the meeting. Okay. The problem is. Other residents don't know to do that. I know. Yeah. I put it out on the new North end neighborhood forum. The correct link. Thank you. In case anybody looks there. And now I'm trying to answer emails. Good idea. How about school board? No, I will try to send it to everyone that we sent the agenda to. Good idea. I think that was. Jeff comes. So maybe we'll give. Just like an extra few minutes, just in case. Is, um, is Chris Hasley there? He was going to come in person. I don't see him. Is, um, Sam, can you hear me? Sam. Does anybody know if Sam set up the big screen. So that the people in the room can see the slides that Chris is bringing. Oh, I think he's talking now. Sam, we can't hear you, but. Oh, yep. It looks like a screen is set up. Thank you, Sam. Excellent. You've got this, don't you? This is, this is cool. Eric, I haven't seen you in ages. Hi. Hi. You have been away. Where's Karen. She's in the kitchen. Hey, Olivia, show us your toes. They don't look as fresh and nice and new as they did a few weeks ago. I just, I just thought that was the loveliest thing. What a friend. That was, it was a lovely time. I would fully, fully support anyone going to the day spa and having a relaxed, like totally relaxing time, especially after being on my feet for 12 hours. Yeah. Yeah. Were you, were you standing on cardboard? Yeah. Is that a tip? Yeah. You stand on a piece of cardboard or some kind of insulated material, like sometimes the bubble stuff. And if you stand on that, the cold won't come up your legs. Oh, wow. I was just pacing. Cool. Yeah. Seven of one. So we'll just give it. I think we can start seven or two. I know we have some issues with the. Link. Should we wait a little bit longer? Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. I don't want to get that from myself too. As a matter of fact. So say, I don't, I don't have any volume. We can hear you, Jeff. They can hear you. We can hear you. But in this way it's your own. Yeah. Yeah. So they're going to go. Oh yeah. There we go. I think we're going to be like. I do. I do want to get us started. So I think the first thing I'm going to say is just. Everyone to mute your mic. If you are not speaking. Well, and then in 2008. Right now there's a lot of other noise. So. We don't. We don't have. Mike that needs to be. Olivia, can't you mute it from your. I do not have the power. Fortunately. Hey, Jeff. So the projector. Sending a signal to the projector also sends sounds. Yeah. I'm assuming it's this one. And. Okay. So the question. The day before. That was one. I never told Bill about it because it happened in my. I don't know. But that's sad. And you're still seeing. You can mute those mics. I cannot mute. I do not have the ability to. Unfortunately. But I think it sounds like they're trying to get some technology to do that. So is, is there a mute button? There. There we go. The joy of hybrid. Let me go back. He says input CD, but I think it was. Okay. We're all right after direct. No. Yeah. I don't have the ability to. I'm not even ready. That was. One that was direct. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Sorry, I hope I didn't make it worse. Can you hear us? Not familiar with this. I remember when I was an old analog. Yeah. Yeah. There was once a brief. I hear you said. Yeah, I'm going to take it with the radio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So do we need. Yeah. It doesn't seem like anyone can hear us or they can, but they're trying to figure out. Muting and technology at the center. Yeah. Yeah. Can people hear us or no. I can hear you, Olivia. Thank you. It seems like remote people can hear me, but I don't think we're into the center yet. Eric. Did you see the message from Monica? School board. Monica needs the link. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't have the ability to promote Monica to panelists, but if someone can do that. I don't know. We don't have the ability to do anything. Yeah. Can anyone in the Miller center here? Okay. What do you want me to do? Well, they are talking. Yeah. Are you a projection? Not anymore. I think no one at the Miller center can hear. Do you see any lights in the projector? Yes. Hello. Okay. Let's try it. I thought you said yours. We were. And then we lost it. Yeah. You got to promote Monica to panelists. Oh, okay. We have a few different tech issues going on. I can't promote Monica. I think only Sam can. I don't have the ability to do that. Okay. That means that Sam is the post. He should co-host, make you co-host. I am the co-host, but I don't have any power. Okay. This is me now. Jeff, we can hear you. Jeff, we can hear you. It's right here. So he's none of you. Switch to laptop one. Does that ruin anything for those things? Yes. I don't think we can predict. I think we can predict. I don't think we can predict. I think we can predict. I think we can predict. You've been a lot of time. Now, it will work. Can you hear us? Can anyone hear us? No. Thanks, Monica. I think no one at Miller center can hear me unless they say otherwise. I don't know. What are you getting for the name of that device? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Audio. Oops. Yeah, I have that. There it is. Yeah. I'm trying. Okay. Hello. Can you hear us? Can you hear that? Can you hear us? We hear you, Jeff. Yeah, we just don't have sound in the room here. Okay. But Jeff, you can you can hear us now. No, Jeff. Jeff, can you hear us? Jeff Comstock. Very faintly from somewhere and we're not sure where it is. So no. What? Can you, we can get Sam. Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Eight zero two five. Olivia, he's got to mute people. He's also got to promote Monica, the panelists. Yep. Jeff Comstock, Sam, can you hear us? I don't know that I have an audio outlet. Monica, can you hear us? Hi. Yeah, I can hear you. So it seems like it seems like the center cannot hear us at all. So we're trying to figure that out. Plus the link. So I don't know how anyone is going to attend. This is, yeah. Can anyone hear us at the Miller center? Yeah. Do we have a. We have a speaker we could plug in here. At what point? Yes. What can we do it? Jeff, what's kind of the, the, what do we do here? I'm not sure if he's saying for my first moderation. None of it your fault. So we're just going to roll with it. And I think we don't really start until they can hear us there. Well, yeah. What if, what if they can. Jeff Comstock. Understand why Jeff Comstock can't hear us. He's on. He's on the zoom link. Okay. I know. Jeff, are you on the text string? Okay. Everybody make sure that you're muted on your laptop. Do we have a system or operations for when this happens? At what point do we. Should we be cutting things from the agenda? Okay. I guess proportionately shorten. Each one. The elected officials. State reps said that they will not be able to participate. So that can be cut from the agenda. Well, okay. I had that through email. Yeah. Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Now we can't hear Jeff. Can you hear us Jeff? We can now. Yes. We have you on a speaker. That's great. That's great. Thank you. I think if everyone can mute. That would be ideal right now. And then we can get started. So you can, you can hear us. Cool. Amazing. All right. So I'll do a really quick ground rules. Okay. Please know due to time constraints, even more time constraints. We will not do our standard round robin introductions. Could the CEDO. Mute themselves. The, the large thing. Cause I'm getting some feedback from that. Thank you. Great. So if you ask a question or share a comment throughout the conversation, I'm going to start with a question. If you are in the street. If you are an out of district participant, you are welcome to speak your mind, but if time is limited as it may be today, neighborhood residents will be prioritized for comments and questions. Once again, keep your mics muted when you're not speaking. Remember to re-mute when you're finished speaking. Please be respectful of our presenters. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. Which we'll probably have for about five minutes. So if anyone from the community wants to make any announcement. This is your time. Please. Make yourself known by raising a hand in zoom or at the Miller center itself. And Jeff Comstock, if you can let us know if anyone has an announcement there. I do have one. I just wanted to thank Eric. Corbin for his service on the steering committee. He is officially retiring. So, you know, we wish him all the best. I know. Yes. Family issues right now that he needs to attend to and, but his five plus years on the steering committee, we thank him for. I just wanted to thank the group to consider. You know, new members as well as a result. So we're down to three and. Both Ward four and three and Ward seven. So. Again, thank you, Eric. And, um, you know, I remember back when I started shortly after you did. And, um, you know, there, I'm sure people that. Would, you know, on the steering committee or at this meeting would thank you as well. Um, I think of Linda and Jim, um, and others. And, um, I remember when we were always at the Miller center, you would bring, um, great, uh, snacks for us. So thank you for doing that and for working on the agenda with us and, and these meetings. So thanks. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I also would want to give Linda a lot of credit. She's the one who really talked me into doing this in the first place and, uh, uh, really did a lot to, um, uh, help introduce, you know, Karen and I to the community, you know, when we, uh, when we came here. And, you know, the other thing I would say for the NBA is hopefully we'll get back to the height we were in 2019 with the community dinners and the big attendance that then led into NBA meetings. You had a pandemic kind of got in the way, but I'm sure, you know, that will happen again. Yeah. And we'll see you then. Sure. Thank you. And thank you so much, Eric. Do we have any other community announcements? Not seeing any. Great. Okay. So I know we don't have any, uh, legislative ups updates. Do we have any city counselors? Oh, Jeff. It says there is an announcement. Jeff, you're muted or something. You're muted. So we are not sure. Jeff, you're muted. So we don't know what you're saying. We're just, we're just figuring out how to do the, uh, how to talk without creating feedback right now. Oh, okay. Thanks. We cannot hear anything yet. Yep. There you go. Okay. Got it. See your thumb, Olivia. Uh, so. The state house is still in session, but I came up because. Uh, there was conversation about talking about redistricting. Um, and that doesn't lend itself very well to. I think doing it on zoom. Uh, so. I need to trip up. And, uh, we're now standing in Chittenden 18. If you read my front porch forum post, you know that. Front porch forum is the mechanism that I use mostly to talk to you all. So if, uh, if you're on it, that's great. And if you're not, I'm missing you. Um, sometimes I even forget to put it on my website. But, um, I'm here to answer any questions basically our district and what does it look like? Um, I think it used to be six to stay really, really, really close to the same as we migrated our way down and over towards the university. Things changed some, some of which was based on population shifts. Some of which was based. Some of that was based on, um, The fact that things outside when you ski chain. So when you ski used to come across the river and pick up some of those things, you know, and then you go back to the other side of the river. That district is now gone. The city of Burlington is now a district in and of itself. Composite of five. And because of the way population shifted more towards the Northeast corner of the state. Um, There was conversation and I kind of grabbed this. We ended up with it here. So the rate, the district that. Used to be a single person district that Barbara Rachel's son was in. Up by the redstone campus. Uh, is now a two person. In November, there will be an election for the empty slot. But our voice in, uh, Montpelier, as far as the city is concerned. Just grew by 10%. Which is a good thing. Um, I don't have a formal presentation. I was hoping you'd have questions. Not grown. And I, um, you're behind me here. So, uh, If anybody has a question. Yeah, you can yell. All right. I don't, I don't see any online. So. Okay. We've got the larger portion of our audience right here in the room. So were you waving or did you ever hand up? He's waving. Okay. Um, So anytime, if anything does come up, I mean, nothing. Well, there were conversations when, you know, we started with. Uh, conversation about going to exclusively single member districts. The city's, uh, Local reapportionment board. Um, Matt and talked about doing all twos are all ones. When the 11th person came in, I think they just threw up their hands and said, we're done with it. And let it go through as we had basically done it. In the committee. Um, the, the original line when they were talking about. Doing all singles ran. Right down the middle of Sarah street. Um, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if the district half of it would have been in the other. Um, that. Sort of to our mind violated the constitutional. Aspect of. Four criteria that we were supposed to use. Numbers in a district. Don't disturb lines. Don't put. Incomments. At each other's throat and. Make everybody happy. Um. We tried to do that. We lost, I think, a couple of times before sing for double member districts that went down to. Singles and a lot of that was in. Say Orange County and down towards. Brattleboro, Bennington because. There has been a really significant and marked shift. In population up to our neighborhoods. And will extend and. Basically the northwest corner of the state. And that's where we're going to be. And that's where we're going to be going to be. And that's where we're going to be going to be going to be. Um, Champ attracts people, I guess. So Bob. When they were. Working on the rest of the state when the eight, when the eight, the house government office was working on the rest of the state. That. An adjusting lines or that an extra seat popped up sort of that. Suddenly you found you had 149. Seats. Assigned instead of 150. And you have a number of. You'd for that magic number of. You know, rounded out to around 4500 people per. District. And when you have a two member district, then it jumps up to. 85. I'm using round numbers here. It's not exactly those numbers. Generally speaking. We started in the southwest. Corner of the state sort of. We ended up in the northwest corner. Perfect numbers. And we had a. Deviation from that. Perfect number of. 5% up or down. And as we crept our way up. We ended up in the northwest corner last. So. We had an extra seat. We had an extra seat when you got to do that. And really the only place you could put that extra seat without really causing a lot of problems. So we had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. So we did. And. I'm happy. Sir. So. Is this. Your. Their new redistricting. Is that available? Is it. Out in the open right now? Yep. Have we actually. Of course, not uncomplicated. Go to the legislative homepage. Yep. Go to where it says committees. Go to house first, then go to committees. And then as you go into government operations on the committee page. On the left-hand side of the page, you'll go down. It'll say just redistricting maps. That'll take you to a different page where all of the redistricting stuff is, is kept. There's a three or four line click on here. And then that takes you to a page where you can choose. Maps by town or maps by district. Depending on what you're looking for. So the steering committee. Will volunteer to post that link on. The new north end. For. So that folks. Okay. Could go looking at the website. Okay. That's great. Yep. Sir. I'd like to thank you for your. Thank you very much. I'd like to urge you to respond and give me all kinds of trouble. Because that's why I'm here. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So if there are no questions, we will move to, I don't see any city counselors. Yes. We do have that. We do. We do have a Sarah carpenter and Mark Barlow in the room. Great. So we'll give them about 10 minutes and then we'll. Have about 10 minutes for school board. Okay. So they can share that 10 minute time. Is that the plan? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So. Sure. We're, we're going to win this tonight. We are. Don't, don't knock this court out. I know this is sort of. Do you want to go first or second? I'm Sarah and I sort of split some of the updates up. I wanted to talk about. Three different things. One was the on this on Monday night, we voted as a council, although not unanimously. To move forward the parking management plan. And the bike lanes on North Moosky Avenue. It's been a couple of years in the making. Before I was ever on the council, they had voted to install bike lanes along the. Along North Moosky Avenue from a river side to Pearl street. And that was the preferred alternative for. By directional bike lanes there. Part of that resolution. Put forward a parking, a committee to. To move forward. To move forward. Actually decide on a parking management strategy there and how to mitigate some of the parking loss that would have been caused by the bike lanes. I came into that process about halfway through. But over the last year. There's been a number of meetings. And at the end of that process. The committee decided that the parking management plan. Failed to meet the essential parking needs. And so one of the things that was put forward was. And what's, what's called a compromise, but it's really. Basically delaying South of Union street along. Where union comes into North Moosky Avenue along Pearl. And implementing the. The bike lanes between Riverside and Union. So. That went to the Duke and the Duke passed a resolution to move forward with that plan. And we passed it on Monday night. And so one of the components is a delay for one year. Which will allow some additional work to happen. Around trying to find some additional off street parking for the affected businesses and. And nonprofits that are in that particular part of the corridor. The other thing we did was on Monday night as we. Referred an ordinance change to the planning commission on reducing. Parking minimums. For new development in Burlington. And to get their input on that the. What. They want to, we want to be able to incentivize. And allow additional infill development to address the housing. Crisis. So. We're going to be able to do that. And we're going to be able to do that. And reducing some of those. Minimums will help to do that. And the last thing I want to mention is. This is coming. This is a, this is just a. A, I guess, like an advertisement for another topic that we'll be dealing with hopefully next month. It's the clean water resiliency plan. In a integrated planning update. We got a presentation at two yesterday, the transportation energy and utilities committee of the. Waste water, water, water and drinking water planning to address capital system needs. And more importantly, even the meat, some of the lake health goals by reducing the phosphorus load running into the lake. It's coming to the city council and. In April, and it'll be probably at. The next NPA or, you know, as scheduled permits or. The one after that. And then. You can take it from there. Sure. Well, which way to go there? Okay. Busy month, I serve on the Community Development Committee. We had a number of topics, primarily dealing with the homeless. I think you're all aware and hopefully got my update around proposals having to do with camping in Burlington, Councilor Joe McGee and Councilor elect Dean Bergman introduced a very detailed proposal that's under consideration. We've just begin the process, so nothing has been decided. It's got more detail than I am used to seeing in a proposal, so this is going to take some time to get through. The proposal as written would require or ask the city to designate where or where not camping might be allowed. From my perspective, and I truly want to get this off the table, and I think there's some consensus that should not be parks, even though if you read the way it's written, it sort of says that, so there'll be a lot of process around this. A big piece of this is we're having a legal review done by the current city attorney, which we hope to get in another month or so about how the proposals relate to our current ordinances, and I will certainly make that available to you as soon as I get it. We did hear from the city of Montpelier about their proposal which is significantly different, and so we're working our way through it. As part of some of our initiatives around serving the homeless, we did take some city arpo money, which is basically the federal COVID money, and we had all done a survey, I think you all recall, and serving the houses is really was one of our biggest priorities. We're going to add some capacity to the CETA office to put a person whose sole job will be dealing with homeless initiatives and housing initiatives. We're providing some funding to the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance for what's called the Coordinated Entry Program, which is really our primary program for casework with individual families. That's how we go about finding somebody a house. Then one of the final initiatives is money to set up a quickly set up an emergency shelter program using sleeping pods. It's gotten some press. We approved last Monday night for now, that would be cited on the parking lot on Elmwood Avenue, which is a city-owned piece of property. We needed a spot that was close to services, city-owned so that we can move this fast. As part of that would be a resource center for those particular folks. There's a few other things in our initiative. The other thing that we have spent a fair amount of time on, is short-term rentals. Actually, we've been spending a lot of time on this for 18 months past. There was meetings of the Planning Commission and the Ordinance Committee. They had a proposal this fall that was a compromise they had come to. The final step of that was to have it approved by the Ordinance Committee, which is just city counselors, not planning commissioners. The city counselors really were not happy with that proposal, and so it jumped around in this fall. We then had a proposal by one of our counselors to pretty radically restrict short-term rentals to only owner-occupied buildings. That would be it. I had actually introduced an amendment to allow owner-occupied buildings and an attached unit in an owner-occupied property. So if you had a duplex or an accessory dwelling unit, you could also short-term rent that. Then in multi-family buildings, if you were willing to offer one unit at an affordable low-income rent, you could have another unit as a short-term rental. That amendment did not pass. The proposal went through with very restrictive. The mayor vetoed that and the veto was sustained. We're back to ground one. It is my hope and I actually have just expressed this to the planning office and the mayor that I would like to reintroduce the proposal that got defeated a few weeks ago, for consideration very soon so that we don't stop the process. We do need to rein in the trend of buying properties just for short-term rentals. I totally support that. I just think we can't do it unilaterally. So hopefully that will be up on our agenda in the next month or so. Any questions? Yes. So if they wanted to buy some kind of place, they could buy it in the building. Could you repeat the question for those folks there, please? Okay. Sure. Well, the question is, first of all, just stepping back, right now short-term rentals are not well-regulated in the city. You either are a long-term rental or you're a bed and breakfast. There is nothing in between. We were trying to come in between to deal with the market. What I propose but has not been adopted what is that if you are an owner-occupant in a piece of property, you would have your own unit and you could short-term rent another unit on the same property. That's what I am proposing. No, it would not matter. Well, the ordinance hasn't been written as I proposed it size would not matter. The owner would have to be on the property and they could rent one other unit on the property book. I will say accessory dwelling units by definition of zoning do have a size thing, but as this was proposed, it was not related to size. I think that might be a possibility, but I do think that the property is still displaced. Yes, it's all speculative and it's hard to know. I think our sense is the testimony we got from the owner-occupants. I think that's a big change. I think it's really important to understand that shifting to owner-occupants primarily is a big change. We had two sets of scenarios, people that lived in a primary unit and needed the money for their own support and income. The other scenario that we heard often about is people who built an accessory unit for a family member, but didn't use it full-time and wanted to be able to rent it when it was vacant. I know the building is such a big problem. Yeah. But that is just a joke. Any type of trying to do anything, we're doing small additions now. Just a reminder, if you can repeat the questions in the Miller Center so we can hear. Okay. I forget what I was going to say there. I don't think that's going to happen. My question to you is, how many accessories will actually be built in the neighborhood? The question is, how many accessory dwelling units have been built in the city of Burlington? I cannot answer that. I can get you that. I don't think a lot, but I cannot answer that. Okay. Sarah's great with getting back to you. She's supposed to do that. I'd like to know that because I think it's kind of a new point. I think trying to get that accessory dwelling is not fun. It's almost not possible. So it should be. That was not the intent. Right. So I'd like to know that number at some point and how it's really affected. And I do go along with I like your idea about having the people there and then because it's the oversight. So I want to, I got a question about pods. So the city of Burlington is now going to become a landlord of sorts for people living in pods and at the same time we're going to, again, decrease more of public parking and there's two churches down there that use that parking lot for overflow on Sundays, which is kind of unfortunate and the strain in that portion of the city, which is already got a strain. My question is how is the city as a landlord going to manage it so it doesn't turn into the dangerous area that Sears Lane was? What is there? What is the process there? And how do these pods meet minimum housing codes that Burlington has set up now? Burlington is going to be a landlord of sorts. How are they going to meet those minimum housing requirements? The question is how is Burlington going to manage the pod community so that it doesn't become problematic like Sears Lane was? And I'm sorry, David, what was the second one? How do the pods meet minimum housing requirements? How do the pods meet minimum housing requirements? It is my understanding that they will and I can try to get you again more detail on that. They're effectively just bedrooms with a separate bathroom shower facility. This is a temporary proposal for up to three years. Right now the city is working on a bunch of permanent housing. And that's really got to be the ideals of permanent housing. This project will not go forward unless there's a management contract. So right as we speak, the CETO office is soliciting proposals for managing the property. I've talked with Director Pine and he has said adamantly that this will be managed, actively managed. So that is the intent. They don't have anybody doing it yet, as Sarah indicated, but that's the intent. Yes, sir? Robert, quick question. You guys just had your last council meeting Monday and it's the end of that term. Do you have any idea who might be the next city council president? Your guess is as good as mine. There'll be 12 of us next month. Ask them. Yes, sir? I want to follow up with that question on the pause. Yes. Be quick, please. Yeah. I believe you're looking at changing the ordinance and building permits to qualify over. My understanding is that, and I asked, I had three meetings yesterday, so I couldn't make it to the planning commission, but I asked Councillor Shannon if who did attend this meeting and she indicated that they are taking up and planning and going to address any zoning changes that need to happen, which I, 30. Okay. This is a great topic, but we're going to start with salvage. Yeah, we're going to move on to the school board because we did have a late start. So I know Monica is on Zoom, so we're going to give her until eight and then we'll do the Letty Park comprehensive plan with Sophie. So take it away, Monica. Thank you, Olivia, and thank you everyone for being here in person or on Zoom. My name is Monica Ivancic and I'm the ward seven school board representative. I've been on the school board for two years and just got re-elected for an additional two years. Thank you all for your vote and I apologize for not being here for the last NPA meeting or town meeting day. I was out in California celebrating my mother's 80th birthday. So I have several updates from the school district. First, unmasking started a week ago Monday on the 14th, where masks are now optional. And prior to that change, schools had slide show presentations, circles with children, just talking about the pros and cons of masking. Then I have some principal updates. So Maddie Scheit, who was the principal at Hunt Middle School, has now officially been named the permanent principal at the Integrated Arts Academy. Some of you know that school is H.O. Wheeler. And the school district is now in search of four more principals, one for Hunt Middle School. So Jim Kelly, who was the assistant principal under Maddie Scheit, is now the interim principal. So a full search is starting for that school. Flynn Elementary, we need a principal there. Edmunds Elementary, as well as the most recent one is the Burlington Technical Center, BTC. Jason Gingold got a position at the Montpelier High School as principal down there. So we're sad to lose him in our district. And the update that most of you have been, that is a big change for our city and very important is the new high school. So we're naming this the BHS BTC 2025. We have an ambitious goal of having this high school built by, I believe, when the 2025 school year begins. So last night, the design team met and they talked about the larger program spaces, such as like classroom sizes, the auditorium, gym, cafeteria, essentially to come up with the size of the building. Because as most of you know, the size of the building will drive the cost of the building. And so they're going to come up with, I believe, three to four conceptual designs. And these designs will be presented at the next school board meeting, which will be in two weeks from last night on April 5th. And recently we've been meeting at Hunt Middle School. So if you'd like to attend in person, I encourage you to come to Hunt. But we also do a hybrid fashion for our school board meetings. So you're welcome to zoom in. And let's see, then there'll be a community forum on Tuesday, April 12th. And so that's when we will be taking input from the entire community about the future of this high school. As you know, I think the superintendent floated the cost of the school on town meeting day at approximately 200 million dollars. And that cost will be driven by the size of the school. At this point, we have dedicated 11 and a half million towards that, 10 million from the ESSER funds, and then 1.5 million is what is left over from the FY21 budget. So that's a start, but we have plans to do fundraising, look for donations. Another thing that I believe that all of us as citizens of Burlington should be advocating with the state, I believe Vermont's one of the few states or the only state east of, say, Indiana, where the state doesn't pitch in 30% towards school buildings. So at this point, that's unknown whether or not the state is going to be giving us a big chunk of money to build this high school. Most of you know, the current building was shut down in September of 2020 due to high PCB levels. And at this point, we've spent the last four years trying to rebuild and essentially the re-envisioning project was to rebuild that school so that we wouldn't spend a lot of money on a new high school building. But in a city like Burlington, we need a new, we need a high school. We can't have our children go to a downtown location that used to be the Macy's building with no windows and essentially the classrooms are sort of like large cubicles. So we all need to come together and solve this crisis. I think you folks know that the new, so we're planning to build new buildings and those would be at the 52 Institute Road site in the, in on the north side of the north side where the current high school is but not this money doesn't include tearing down the current high school. So the high school would be built in the parking lot and like the bus turnaround. So that area there. And I'm open to questions from you. Please write down the come attend the April 12th community forum or join us at the April 5th board meeting. And last but not least, I would like to thank you all for supporting the FY23 school budget that passed by 74% in the city of Burlington on town meeting day. Any questions in the room? A couple minutes for questions. Okay, I have a question if I have time but we'll start with Mark Barlow. My question is I know I know that the district is seeking a fundraising consultant and I'm wondering if there's a target number for the amount of fundraising. So the question is Mark knows that the district is looking for a fundraising consultant and is there a target on the amount of fundraising contribution? I believe so you're right we are looking for a fundraising person and I have not seen that number discussed like the amount of money that we're targeting. I'm you know after we see these three or four conceptual designs I think that we can narrow in on perhaps one or two and hopefully come up with the total budget that this project will cost and go from there. Go ahead with your question. Okay, so this one is for me personally. I'm curious about the design the pricing plan on this design project and so how is the school district approaching the cost estimate for this project so that they don't fall into the same trap that befell the revisioning committee where when they actually got to architectural design phase they didn't have enough money for the amount that had been bonded so how is the district taking a different approach to cost estimate this time so they don't fall into that same trap. And I know the trap that you're talking about Jeff I think the idea is to have you know narrow in on the conceptual design and then the specific design and then go after the building costs months before we put this issue out on the ballot to voters because with the last project voters approved 70 million and after that we figured out oh what we want to do is going to cost 92 million or 95 million so I think the idea is. Monica if you could just quickly summarize it we've got to move on to the next thing unfortunately. I was just going to say to get more specific costs prior to when this you know goes out for vote. Okay we don't have time for any more questions so we're going to move to Sophie who's going to present on the Letty Park Comprehensive Plan. Thank you Sophie you have until 8 20. Thanks a lot. I think that's working. I've got my headphones on. So thanks a lot I probably won't need the entire time I just want to take this opportunity to give everybody a heads up that we at parks are embarking on a comprehensive plan for Letty Park. We just kicked off the project with our consultant team and our city team this week and basically we're looking at a building a vision to guide the future of Letty Park. It's not to start the park over by any means it's just to look at improving connectivity within the park accessibility, looking at the ecology and storm water within the park and trying to make things better and we also have identified some projects in our capital plan that are coming up. For example the playground a few frequent Letty Park you'll have noticed there's only a little lonely lady bug left as part of the taut lot. We had to remove the rest of the playground because it wasn't unsafe. So looking to the future to replace that we want to make sure that we're putting it in the right place. So this process will allow us to do some significant community outreach as part of the process so that we gain the knowledge of where things like the playground and other amenities that are scheduled to come online in the future should be and what the support is for those different amenities and pieces of infrastructure and it's just to also understand the prioritization of the community at large for Letty Park. So as I mentioned we just kicked off the project internally this week. This morning we had some nice weather that UVM Spatial came out to do a drone flight to collect the most accurate aerial imagery and topographic data to be able to do the work accurately and then we're looking towards the month of May for some public outreach at the park so that we can understand how people use the park now what is potentially missing and how we can just make things a little bit better and the plan is meant to identify those priorities so that when we do our capital planning for five, ten, fifteen years into the future we can identify the right amounts of money to put at what time for Letty Park as we think of all our parks in the larger city spectrum too. It's just to understand where that all those priorities fit in. So if anyone is interested in being alerted to those public meetings it will be obviously on our Facebook page, BPRW's Facebook page will be announcing it through Front Porch Forum and we do also have an email list where we send out alerts when these meetings are upcoming and we'll have signage as well in the park but if you want to be alerted that is the easiest way to kind of get a heads up. I can put that in the chat. I don't know if that helps the link. It's not a tiny URL unfortunately but it's a pretty easy way to sign up or just a Google BPRW email list and I'm open for questions. If you share it with us we can we can post it as well. We have a question in the chat. Is there an estimate on when the playground might be replaced? We do have capital funding set aside for fiscal year 23 so that starts in July but we want to go through the comprehensive planning to understand the priorities of where it should be in the park before we embark on implementing it. So I would say next summer would be probably the earliest. Right now we're working on replacing the playground at Callahan which was also in disrepair and a few other ones in town so unfortunately a lot of our playgrounds were installed in the same kind of gap of year so everything's seeing their seeing its age and we try and prioritize the playgrounds that obviously have been removed such as LEDs but also ones that where we can replace parts we do so just to prolong the life of them where we can because of this block of them that are due and then look also of what's in the area in terms of playgrounds. Just to one and I know Sophie's heard this but I really think it's so important that we prioritize getting accessibility to the beach area. So I hope that's high on the list. It's not easy because of the grades but I think we owe it to all of our citizens to make the Lenny Beach. So I don't know how much of that could you hear that Sophie? I understood it not all the words but I completely agree that accessibility is needs to be a priority at Letty. It is a part of our priorities in the project itself that have been identified by both our internal team and the consultants. The only thing I would say is we also have to balance the ecology on the side there. It's very tricky with all the erosion that's happening along the two kind of entrances that are not the stairs to Letty so that's why we're undertaking the comprehensive plan so we can look at everything together to see how we can best accommodate everything but it's definitely one of our key priorities at every park. Okay yeah so there was accessibility primarily focused access to the beach as opposed to sort of general ADA accessibility. Correct? Yeah and just one other comment which is really not related to the comprehensive planning but I wanted folks to be aware that this year Letty has been re-instituting parking fees using the parking fee costs that are at all the other needs. Okay apparently the parking kiosk will be at Letty will be reactivated and parking fees will be collected this year. That was just a comment yes from Councillor Carpenter. Any other questions? Larry? Any future plans for replacing the bridge under the bike path that goes to North Beach to allow emergency vehicles to get down there? Any plans for repairing or replacing the tunnel at North Beach for emergency vehicle access? Well we do we have developed plans for that but we don't have funding currently for that piece. We're looking at infrastructure funding for the overpass that goes over that tunnel that you're talking about but that hasn't come to fruition yet but that's one of the funding sources we're looking at to move that forward. It's definitely on our radar and the drawings to achieve that are very near completion too. Okay Olivia I think that looks like it from here. We have a question from Matt on Zoom. Thanks guys thanks Sophie. I have friends who's home borders the park and they're not here tonight so I know they would be curious so I'll ask for them. They spent a lot of time in the park walking in the beach and stuff like that and they say that it's very common for the rules to not be followed. There's a lot of campfires and there's a strict policy or rule or law that says no campfires lots of dogs so I know they'll want to know what's being done about that and I know personally they have some real hard questions about the topic of camping in the park or living in the park. Can you touch on those items? I can touch on the illegal activity we'll call it in the park or as you mentioned everything's posted but unfortunately we don't have the staffing capacity to monitor that at all times. There is a urban ranger position that has been posted to try and help educate to to hopefully address some of those issues that are happening but it is a challenge that our larger staff has been facing especially since COVID it's been on the rise definitely. We're aware of it but it's very challenging to address. That's all I can say on that. As for the camping we do have an ordinance that allows people to sleep in parks as long as they pack up by morning. I know there's been a request to change that or draft policy to change that but it has not moved beyond they presented it recently at the parks commission so I'm not sure how far that's that's gone since then but that would be the best way to keep tabs on on that is to attend the parks commission meeting. Was that request to not allow camping at all or to extend? To expand on that policy to reflect the one that's in Montpelier. Okay do you want to comment on that? Yes please yeah we have the city council comment about that. Thank you. Currently the current ordinance in the city of Burlington does not allow any camping in parks. There is a rule of law that says if somebody's in an emergency situation we have to notify them and ask them to move but it is not affirmed camping it is emergency camping. There's a proposal to amend a lot of that. It's a proposal nothing has happened and there's going to be a lot more work on it so that's kind of where we stand now. The issue of the emergency camping is prescribed by a city policy that again has to do with the emergency nature of it and how fast somebody can move but it is not affirmatively allowed and the proposal will be worked on. I also had a question what I'm up here. When are you going to institute the gate on the drive at because that was put in a year ago and I know there were some problems with the functionality of it but that ought at least be a little bit of a deterrent at least perhaps not so much camping but the college kid campfire thing. Do you know when that's going to be instituted? No I know there were challenges once it went getting power to the gate and that was the delay but I'm not it's out of my scope of work so I'm not aware of it but I can find out for the next time I'm here. Great thank you do we have any other questions oh I see one yeah we have one. The question is what's the status on the pump track the bike riding track for the the park. So the the pump track or the mountain biking course within Luddy is still part of the larger vision for it and part of this comprehensive plans process is to look at that location and develop a conceptual plan for the pump track. Okay I think looks like you're here. Great thank you so much Sophie and the link we will share so that people can can access it in the future. We are now going to move to the Burlington City Wards Redistricting Panel. So we have Chris Hasley, Leah and Jeff Comstock and I think some of two people are in person and then we have one person on zoom so. So how do I get to I think you might have two on zoom isn't Chris on zoom? Oh yes yes I see I see now Chris and Leah are on zoom yeah so we're we're working on getting my can you uh minimize zoom right here nope I just need to get this out of the way and open this up no you got you got to go through here first real quick yeah so minimize that and then the yellow I'll come back to it okay and then this right here is the before yeah okay see and then can you click on here yeah and then click on do you mind if I just go go ahead all right so I think I think Chris is going to go first is that correct Jeff is Jeff is going first and then Chris okay um Chris what do you think we could get started I guess you're going to cover some of Jeff's stuff anyway why don't we get started sounds like a plan um so thank you guys for giving me an opportunity to serve on the panel and talk about the redistricting topic my name is Chris Haseley I live down in College Street in Ward 3 in the downtown core and I've had an interest in redistricting for quite some time I've been working along with Lee and a group of other interested individuals to talk about the redistricting process and was asked to speak on the panel tonight and so I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about the work of the Burlington Independent Mapping Group so I have a PowerPoint here so I think I can do this the share screen function pull that up you all see that yes okay um so at the title of the presentation that we put together for tonight's meeting is a redistricting in the new north end why an eight word map supports the interest of the new north end so one of the things that you know we when we starting with the redistricting process with any type of map making the first thing you need to do is make sure that the maps you draw are in compliance with the statutory requirements the state statute requires that all of the maps preserve the concept of one person one vote as required by the 14th amendment all the population of each individual word is nearly equal to every other word and there's less than 10% deviation between the words the words need to be contiguous that means you can't have two separate parts of a word they have to be physically connected they can't be detached from one another and you cannot draw a ward or district on the basis of race ethnicity or religion that is to say you can't discriminate um so that's kind of an overview of the statutory requirements in addition to the statutory requirements we have identified a number of community priorities based upon the feedback provided to the ad hoc redistricting committee through the public forums that they held last fall as well as a number of the surveys that were put out not only in the new north end but across the city so in reviewing that data set some common themes emerged number one there was a desire to minimize the population differences between the words people wanted to see words that were substantially equal in population they didn't want wide variation so that was a primary goal that we had taken into consideration in the map that we had been working on the other close second priority was preserving neighborhoods and community as of interest this was a theme that we heard over and over again from all different parts of the city is please don't divide up my neighborhood please keep us together you know we want to be with the the folks that we've been with so that was another priority that we've tried to incorporate into our process small awards was another theme people wanted to have meaningful representation with their counselors they felt that you know with a smaller ward they had a better chance to get to know their counselor on a personal level facilitated personal interaction constituent services was also better from a campaigning perspective both in terms of you know costs but also in getting out and doing the work as well as just eliminating the barriers you know you have a smaller geographic area it really makes it easier to bring in a diverse group of voices into the into the process um the other consideration was to use natural geographic boundaries in our case here the one that comes to mind is the inner veil it's kind of the natural boundary between the new north end and the old north end spend that way for a while um and then interestingly another priority that really came out during the public process that was shepherded by the ad hoc committee was a desire to eliminate the current ward eight that the gerrymandered student ward which stretches from the center city neighborhood kind of up along college street up into uvm and down into the the athletic campus and we'll have a visual on that just a moment and then finally kind of related to to that there was a desire to balance students more evenly across multiple wards and under the current map all the students are kind of clustered together in one ward ward eight and up packing that the map makers refer to as packing a ward and typically when you pack a ward you do that because you're trying to minimize the influence you're trying to contain a specific group in this case they're trying to keep all the students into one ward and I guess perhaps limit the influence of them as a voting block so moving forward that was a priority and this is kind of the existing ward eight here it's it's got a bit of a funky shape it kind of comes this is the center city neighborhood this is the Beall Bradley street historic district take note of that for later this is college street area here and then it comes up and you can see it's just barely contiguous I mean I think it technically needs the legal definition but it's just this little sliver of land here and it kind of comes down you know here in this big chunk here that you see is the uvm athletic campus so over here we have our definition of what is a gerrymander and that's when you divide up a state county or municipality into election districts in order to give one political party a majority in as many possible districts at the expense of another political party so currently with ward eight there's a number of issues that were identified in the public process again it's a predominantly student population I believe it's close to 85 so the number of long-term residents their voices kind of get lost in the shuffle so to speak we've also heard from the ward clerk that there's consistently low voter participation and turnout only a few hundred residents actually vote during the town meeting elections and then we've also heard that the significant number of mail ballots are getting returned I think the number I heard from the ward clerk was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 percent this is largely the fact that this is a transient ward meeting there's a lot of renters there people kind of come and go they sign a lease for a year and then they're moving on to somewhere else and they're not always good about keeping their voter registration up to date which is why we see the significant number of mail ballots being returned so the question becomes why would we want to have smaller wards why not have bigger wards so you know smaller wards so the rationale for a smaller ward is that many residents have expressed the desire for a smaller ward through the public process for a number of reasons not the least of which is it allows them to foster personal relationships with the city counselors and with a smaller ward the smaller the political district or division or district ward whatever you want to call it the greater the likelihood that people are going to be able to know their representative and make a meaningful connection with them and you know you see this in some states where there's very large populations people don't get to know who their representatives and you know for those of us here in Burlington it's not uncommon to be walking around downtown maybe on church street and you happen to run into senators Bernie Sanders or Senator Leahy or any number of your city counselors perhaps the governor you know our representatives are accessible here and it's really easy to pick up the phone or send them a quick email and have a conversation about the issues of concern and so that was kind of the reason for why folks wanted to have smaller wards another reason that the smaller wards work well is it provides a diversity of representation you have a smaller pocket of people that are representative and it's not spread out over a large geographic area so it makes it easier to get people that actually reflect the population makeup of a given geographic area it also facilitates constituent services and as I mentioned before campaigning is a little bit more personal you can do the door to door thing get to have a conversation with the neighbors talk about the issues and it's also less costly you're not having to mount a citywide campaign and I think I think that if last time I checked citywide campaigns I think are you know tens of thousands of dollars and I think that the council races are a little bit less than that but campaigning can be costly and you know the larger the geographic area the more costly it becomes because you have a larger area to cover whether that's really flitting or flyering or whatnot so smaller wards make it easier to campaign and let people to office and that also allows people of modest means to be candidates you don't have to have the pockets and be taking out full page ads and the local newspaper online or in the various media you can actually take the time to get out and go door to door and have a reasonably good chance of hitting every door in the district at least once maybe even twice if you if you plan ahead so there's a lot of question about you know what is the ideal number of wards and we've looked at a number of wards and I have to admit when I first came into this I was very nostalgic I'm like you know I like the seven word idea I like 14 counselors it seems like a good number it worked really well for almost 30 years now why don't we just go back to that that seems like a really good thing and it's kind of a you know naive assumption on my part because when I got into the actual map making and rolled up my sleeves using the district builder application I realized just how quickly you know how challenging it was you know initially I thought oh well you know we'll just move a couple lines here we'll tweak a line there and it's it's kind of like a balloon if you put pressure on one end it comes out on the other end so such is the case with redistricting and so one of the things that was at the forefront in addition to maintaining the population was the desire to maintain the neighborhoods and as we played with different configurations different numbers of wards we found that some numbers worked better than others on a purely mathematical level so there's a little bit of an inverse relationship here so when you talk about well what is the ideal population for a ward there's a mathematical formula and that is you take the total population of the city which I believe is 44,743 persons and then you divide that by the total number of the proposed wards and that will give you your ideal population for an individual ward and so it's kind of an inverse relationship so the greater the number of wards the smaller the population of each individual ward so if you have more wards there's smaller wards if you have less wards they're bigger wards and so when we went into the district game we tried to do different permutation we kind of realized very quickly that the current model of eight wards worked really well for a number of reasons so why eight eight wards and not seven or nine or ten or eleven or some other and the answer is that eight wards really does a good job of addressing a number of community concerns it maintains small wards that allows us to preserve meaningful representation build those personal relationships with our city counselors it also has an ideal population of approximately 5600 residents per ward this is particularly interesting because when I went back and looked at the previous map from 1993 the old seven ward map that I was you know really nostalgic about originally I did the math and given the city's population at that time the original seven ward map had a ward size that was 5,590 people which is just under our 5600 so given the growth in the city's population an eight ward map helps us preserve those small ward sizes that people had had prized when they uh you know felt nostalgic about the the older map like I did um eight wards also minimizes the difference in population between wards smaller blocks it's easier to move people around and that kind of brings up another point one of the biggest challenges with drawing map makers is we kind of at the mercy of the census bureau and the census blocks that they drew and there's wide variation in that regard so we have some census blocks that have as few as 20 people we have one census block which I'll point out shortly that has over 2600 people it's a block on the UVM athletic campus so you can imagine if you have a block of 2600 of residents and you plop that down somewhere on a map that's like half a ward right there and you have to plan around that so that was a pretty significant challenge here playing the hand that we were dealt so to speak working with the census blocks that were given to us by the census bureau um and that's not something we can generally change we kind of have to work with what we have so taking that into consideration we tried to minimize the difference of population between the wards we continue to put an emphasis on preserving the neighborhoods and communities of interest we wanted to balance the student population more evenly across the multiple wards and you look at the Burlington population almost fully a third of the city's residents are college students and right now we have a situation where the vast majority of them are kind of packed into that you know existing ward 8th and the funny looking pink shape down there and the lower right that's the gerrymander that folks had spoken out against and one of the things we tried to rectify is recognize that students are an important part of the community and that they should have a greater representation and a greater voice in the process so in the proposal that we've put together um the students would have uh you know a larger say in wards one and ward six that is to say they would be more evenly distributed rather than packed into one big ward um they kind of dilutes uh their voice in that regard um so um eight wards in particular works well for the new north end because again we have that small target population of 5600 residents um so looking at the new north end's traditional configuration of two wards two times 5600 that's about 11,200 people and track that with the current population of the new north end which is you know the population north of the railroad tracks there by yankee medical um and the current population is 10,686 which is about 500 people less than the ideal number but still within the 10 percent deviance uh required by statue um and it still allows us to preserve neighborhoods in the community of interest but also minimizes the impact on residents in the new north end it also has the benefit of maintaining that traditional boundary between the new north end and the old north end uh at the railroad tracks something that folks on both sides of the tracks have expressed a strong desire to maintain um but as i mentioned you know we do hear some interests of a lot of folks what about the seven-word map so you know we've got a side here this is a proposal i think uh map that lee had gotten uh forwarded to me i'm not sure who righted it might be robber burst or johnson it might not be um but anyways this is one of the maps one of many seven-word maps that could be drawn but the problem with the seven-word maps you see here on the power point is that to make the numbers work uh and be within the legal threshold for the 10 percent deviance it's mathematically impossible to not draw two wards without going south of the railroad tracks so with the seven-word map seven wards it's one less than eight so therefore the individual population of each ward is going to be larger uh it's larger by about 800 people so we're looking at about 6400 residents per ward in a seven-word configuration so if you take two wards of 6400 that gets you a total population of about 12,800 and we're down to uh you know a difference of about 2100 residents based on the current population in new north and so they'd have to take out a lot of people uh there um so one of the things that we had talked about was to do a downtown ward um you know because downtown burlington's a community of interest it's had its own ward for more than 100 years um and it also balances community and commercial interests and as you can see here in the slide there's a number of um other reasons why downtown ward makes sense but not the least of which is that helms preserve and kind of provides a home for the eighth ward uh to kind of make the numbers work which supports the interests of the new north end um so in addition you know this is what what would a new north end or downtown ward look like this is kind of our little proposal that we had put together it's based on some historical maps when downtown did have a downtown ward which it did for over a hundred years um it went away when little Italy went away when we had urban renewal come through um so uh another benefit of um the downtown ward which is really important for us was we wanted to unify the king maple neighborhood uh for those of you who are not familiar the king maple neighborhood is uh Vermont's largest community of color um and it's currently split between wards three and wards five so we wanted to kind of bring all those folks together uh under one ward um so that their community and their neighborhood can be preserved um so wrapping up we've got two different proposals here and we wanted to get some feedback from someone and sam if you can throw together a quick poll here uh through the zoom software option one and option two that would be uh incredibly helpful but you can draw maps a number of different ways but again it comes down to population to make it the numbers work so this first option that we had kind of contemplated was the traditional um east west split along north avenue here um recognize here that the the brown ward that's the uh side on the west closest to the lake that's where the population density is that's why it's a smaller geographic area whereas the blue ward it's a much larger geographically but it's not as densely populated so that's uh how we ended up with those two shapes there um the second option we came up with was the north self division which is very similar to um what they've done in the legislative districts again the geography and the population density uh play a role um the brown ward here is the northernmost portion which is where the the densest population is and again you have a larger geographic area in the blue but it's less densely populated uh so in summary uh any word map works well for the new north end for a number of reasons it addresses a number of community concerns it balances population across the wards it preserves our neighborhoods and communities of interest it utilizes natural geographic features as boundaries and it distributes and balances the student population across multiple wards so um at this point um I was hoping to get some feedback from the folks in attendance you know what you like particularly like do you want to keep the traditional east west split along north avenue or you know does the north south split work well for you um here again for reference is the traditional split along the avenue um and then this here would be a different option would be to kind of do a north south split the population numbers are substantially equal but as you can see the geography is a little bit different so um Sam I don't know if you could put together a quick poll um but I'd be curious to get some feedback um without further ado I'll turn it over to uh Jeff and Lee thank you Sam for the poll Mark question we can understand where the because of the presentation we can't really see the detail on the map so when you see a north south split I don't know where the brown line runs what road it runs down we can remedy that well and and Chris be advised that we we need to move this segment along because we we don't want to lose our feedback opportunity sure yep the other thing I would note is the city council hasn't even begun to process this so we're a little bit ahead of ourselves I understand this is an end of a project a project independent of the council efforts but make note that these are not like official maps but I appreciate the yeah I appreciate the work okay yeah thank you and mark is absolutely correct we are not affiliated with the city council or the ad hoc redistricting committee we're just a group of citizens that have an interest in this and our role uh is you know is to basically support and supplement the work of the council uh they have a lot on their plate so we kind of figured hey we'll throw some options out there and see if anything um you know uh catches their interest so that was kind of the thought process here but we fully recognized that at the end of the day it's uh the council's uh decision with which uh which way to go with the maps we're just trying to present some options right off the bat you've provided the community of interest is the crescent woods neighborhood that it looks like um east and west right the office short the neighborhood off the shore road which uh share of each association and other I am gonna I'm gonna jump in and just say we need to move on to the next one please yep uh circle back with me offline I'd love to have that conversation I appreciate the feedback okay all right the poll isn't working for me because you're a panelist when I click on the poll when I click on which option do you like best nothing happens panelists cannot vote is it isn't working for anybody uh we are panelists and panelists cannot vote oh panelists can't vote oh okay I have a question comment it's a smaller group you cannot see the maps I I don't feel that it's particularly valid to ask after this minute which we can okay you can't even see that so here's uh so I have to just play slideshow it's kind of hidden underneath that right there we go can I just also happen as uh Councillor Barnell said we are just beginning this process we have seen no maps to see council so I just want to make sure everybody understands we're at the beginning of the process we are kind of reviewing the ad hoc information which didn't in and of itself apply strongly on the number of uh districts so that's probably question number one we're going to have to see well I just wanted to speak to Councillor Carpenter and say that um I appreciate your comments about the map this is basically a concept here we're not really interested in like in specifics we're just do you like the east west split or the north or south and fully recognize that no lines can be adjusted it's mainly just wanted to get an idea of which concept great yeah thank you I think can we can we have Jeff and Leah go please um and hold questions for the the conversation piece yeah thanks so uh yeah unfortunately that uh how do I get back there where do I go backwards on your computer sam I go backwards oh right there okay all right so unfortunately because of the technology we we got our presentations out of order so uh we just wanted to quickly introduce the topic by going over the basic redistricting principles that apply here and Chris has actually talked a lot about that but one of the uncertainties that keeps coming up in conversations that I have with people is uh is the reinforcing the whole idea that redistricting is based entirely on population based on the census it has nothing to do with the number of registered voters and that's a that's a concept that I think throws a curveball at people when they talk about you know because we use the districts in the wards to actually vote for our representatives but the size and configuration of the districts really doesn't matter about number of voters it's actually population based so that's a little bit of a twist for people to uh get used to um and then again uh Chris went over some of these uh basic uh constitutional and statutory principles about you know maintaining deviation within 10 percent and you know keeping uh geographic and uh you know boundaries and stuff and respecting communities of interest etc so so then quickly you know uh Mark and Sarah you you mentioned issues related to the ad hoc committee report and that you haven't taken that up in earnest and I recognize that uh and sort of the next slide will deal with the potential I wanted to share the uh potential schedule that attorney Richardson had uh because I really want people to be aware of what the future opportunities for conversation about this are so this slide really kind of hits on the major uh highlights that came out of the ad hoc committee process in terms of uh and and these are pretty much in priority order so we'll just stick with the kind of the idea of multiple representation per district was very important to people uh or war eliminate the north southeast central west or just the four district concepts um people did talk about maintaining an even number of counselors for the whole to maintain the whole tie breaking mechanism uh clearly people understand that ward eight is broken it needs to be fixed and find a mechanism to redistribute the student population and then let's see oh and so chris talked about a lot of these other issues but the other one that was covered was significant opposition to city-wide or at-large city counselors which would be essentially exactly the opposite of voting for your counselors by ward where the entire city would be voting for counselors across the city and then what the last point I have here is uh actually uh in as far as the size of the council is a a challenge that the council is going to have to wrestle with for itself in terms of deciding what the optimum size of the city council will be and and that goes hand in hand with the question about the number of warts and then really the uh the most important piece I feel going forward is for folks to be aware of what the schedule for this conversation the potential schedule for this conversation going forward so at the beginning of march the city attorney and the planning office um sent city council a proposed schedule and so what that looks like generally is in april the council is going to begin to provide guidance to the map maker and then somewhere in that april to june time frame the city council is going to start to review mapping proposals and uh uh redistricting plans from the map maker and those that are submitted uh by citizens in burlington and this is this would be the exact point where the independent mapping group that chris was just representing this would be their point of uh engagement in this process and then the target uh is to have a proposed redistricting plan sometime in july roughly okay uh so the the city council would is would need to aim to have their proposal finished by july so that they could then enter the formal public hearing process at that point because um it's important for folks to understand that the description of our city wards are actually encoded in city ordinance so in order to change the bound the ward boundaries we actually have to go through the very formal uh ordinance adoption process so that's why there's so much lead time here so the public hearing on the proposed ordinance at that point would happen uh july to september roughly and then uh and then you know finishing that in september and october essentially so that there's adequate time for that final ordinance proposal to go on the ballot for november of this year november of 22 and then what happens is as with all of the other ordinances that show up on the ballot then uh the legislature gets a crack at it next year in 2023 and so depending upon how quickly that gets acted on by the legislature really determines when this whole revision would actually go into place uh would it would it be effective by would say the chances of it being implemented in time for town meeting day of march 23 are pretty slim so from practical reality with this whole ordinance mechanism whatever uh redistricting plan we have would be likely to be effective for 2024 and so that's uh the end of what i have here so that sort of that is the flip-flop version of what we intended to share with you this evening and so olivia i'll turn it back to you if you want to facilitate a conversation yeah thank you i think um what we really want to do right now is give people opportunity to ask questions to share opinions um have a community conversation so if there's anyone on zoom or at the miller center evan would you like to start sure thanks um actually my question is probably for our city counselors who are present related to this presentation so what i thought i heard um was was that there was there was a theoretical timeline about when this would come into effect and that it would potentially be as late as 2024 and i'd like to give the city counselors an opportunity to respond to that um if that's how they see the timeline unfolding and additionally i would just ask is that even legally compliant to be to be taking four years for federal census data to actually have an effect i think you want to just come all right so um yes uh the answer to the first question evan is yes our understanding is that the earliest this would take effect would be town meeting day 2024 um and to the answer your second question we ran into the same issue of sort of non-compliance uh last time around and i think we didn't get the redistricting done till 2015 so we're actually a year ahead of last time and i know that councilor carpenter has mentioned and i agree with her that one of the charter changes that we might make along with the redistricting that we're required to do is a charter change around how um we redistrict so that we don't have to go to the state with a charter change that there is precedent for that in other communities and obviously we have an interest in that because of the the challenges the time challenges we have in our own redistricting process uh right no just just to point out it's a charter change not important to understand right right okay uh state law timing for hearings and for the time frame is set by the state not the state which is why we need to do this other charter change but this year it has to follow the state mandate for charging yeah so carpenters councilor carpenter is correct that was actually my misuse of terminology i should have been referring to that as a charter change not an ordinance so that was that was my mistake uh thanks so much appreciate the answers question yeah um students aren't voting very much so did they think about maybe taking a simpler with a redistricting i know it's based on population but it seemed like they're working really hard to divide up students to vote in certain districts would you put him on a mic for students to vote in a local election would that be get simpler fair representation for the citizens of the city so the the question is about the uh low student turnout as far as voting and the the impact that that has in uh in in the elections in the redistricting plan but i guess uh not legal your resident yeah right there unfortunately there is yeah there is legal precedent that uh characterizes the students as uh residents for the purpose of census taken taking uh even though that might not necessarily necessarily align with our our personal viewpoints on what constitutes or who constitutes a resident i have a question okay sir do we know what constitutes a resident what is the definition of rest because that's kind of unclear i mean my out coming into this city from california is now resident what is the definition of that because students don't necessarily all students don't necessarily take a grant or even you know they're boarding at as a temporary person at a storm so i'm just curious what's the what's the definition they use because i know this is not from outside of the only state but it's a problem probably i believe it is where you declare your you don't have one residency if you declare it in your apartment so that's it so so wait a minute now so i mean in the state of ramon to have a driver's life to live here for six months you're required by law to have a driver's life so if my aunt comes from california tomorrow and decides this is going to be my resident on voting day did that make her a resident she doesn't legally have another resident i have a question okay olivia the conversation going on here is is what what constitutes the definition of a resident yeah that's a that is a very i have a question um go ahead um i have a question i have a question for sarah carpenter and my question is if the if redistricting didn't require a charter change would it still be approved by the voters i would recommend that it depends on what we vote on but that would be my recommendation that the voters approve it but it doesn't have to go to legislate we would be could you repeat sarah's answer i couldn't hear it i will if you'll give me a chance please um what she's what she said is is that's actually something that they're considering as part of the mechanism that mark explained about revising the charter change or the redistricting mechanism when they do a charter change and so uh as now where we vote on charter changes uh citizens would still be required to vote on the redistricting plan but then it would eliminate the necessity of going to the legislature so it would it would still have a voter approval mechanism at the local level okay good uh was there another hand on zoom here i see a hand up where you are okay right like to follow up with that uh so uvm is going to build some buildings in south burlington have students live there but they could have a mailing address for burlington at uvm and they go pick up their mail and they go to school they'd be able to vote even though they're living in south burlington i believe is where you physically reside i will ask the city attorney to give us a definition of that um and i will pass it on to jeff okay thanks so the question is if uvm builds student housing that actually lands in south burlington but they maintain a burlington uh mailing address for example uh where's their official residence and counselor carpenter said that uh it's south bur it would be south burlington because it's where you actually reside you know physically because those census blocks would fall into south burlington excuse me okay right i don't know i think we'll find out okay robert so um i just want to um repeat some information um that crystal alluded to this and i just want to make it clear so i think when a decision is made possibly between eight and seven wars there are going to be issues about the number of counselors and that might be another kind of a fight um i just want to say i think we're kind of the battle lines are going to come down to on this if we go to seven wards ward one doesn't have to change at all ward one is already one seventh of the city twice you think uh but everybody else would have to grow and uh we know that wards four and seven would have to grow and that means that they would have to grow south they'd have to go all the way to north street okay what do you want me to do i mean if this is a statement and not a question then you need to come up here so that everybody can hear you all right i'm sorry um all right i'm going to start really quickly if we uh i this is where i think it's going to come down to uh between six seven and eight wards uh in what the tradeoffs are going to be about if we go to seven wards like we had before um it all every ward except for ward one is going to have to grow in size that means four and seven will have to grow in size and then we'll have to go down as far as north street and as far over as la fountain street um it's going to be in ward four if it's ward four that goes down or in words that those people will have to come up to the miller center to vote in person or they'll have to come up to saint marx church and vote in person now but the people who benefit for that is ward one in ward if we go to eight wards then it's necessary that ward one is reduced in size and that means a certain part of ward one some people living in ward one now are going to have to be in ward two and they might not like that if that's what that's going to be above but that's okay that's the technical thing i want so yeah so you know robert's explanation gets back to you know a couple of those uh basic principles in terms of you know make uh communities maintaining communities of interest or neighborhood integrity and uh so that both chris and i talked about so so that really becomes part of the council's challenge in terms of the evaluating uh the priorities that they want to apply to this question and any comment mark um yes that's absolutely correct jeff um the thing that i think's going to happen next is new counselors incoming counselors we have three of them that need to be brought up to speed and we'll have a work session of some kind um and then we'll probably go into that sort of deliberation on number on the official report and other feedback that we've received on um what's important to register right and and i suspect during that process that there's a a core group of faces that are going to be familiar to you in that process so i expect so yeah yeah okay olivia back to you any i don't oh sam on zoom has a question go ahead hey can you can you guys hear me yes awesome i was just curious because it seemed like so much work and who thought has gone into this already do the just like does the city council more or less plan to use this as a basis for what they're going to do or is that just totally not decided yet i'd be happy to thank you step now you got both of them i think that um this is legitimate input and i think some of the constraints that chris pointed out his presentation um would be arrived at independently through other other people doing the same analysis because it's all based on um trying to equally distribute census blocks across whatever number of words you decide you want to have so i think that people going through the same process would come to the same sort of set of constraints that it becomes a decision um of a majority of the council on what direction to go and i don't know give anything to add well i would and i i appreciate all the work you as volunteers have done as an independent group but we did have an ad hoc group put together by the npa's they have a report we we need to look at all of that work some of their work was not conclusive in particular the number of wards so that'll take a lot of pondering a piece that i think is important for consideration is how does the council function how does the governance work is more counselors create better government so i think there's an unanswered question the none of us have really discussed in um there's a presumption more counselors will reduce workload i'm not sure that will necessarily be the case um and but we have to have that discussion i've served on seven member borbs i've served on 21 member borbs i've worked for both and we've had none of that discussion as well right i do think the number of counselors is one of the key questions um and one of the most fraught actually yes so there's a lot of strong opinion about that that's already out there in in the world that will be brought to bear in any conversations we have but i'm i'm interested in having access to your presentations obviously yes you guys could whoever i guess jeff and chris if you could share those can you put them on the web page or put them on the web page or circulate them other yes well i mean i mean to you directly certainly and then you're and you're you're thinking that would be good for public consumption well i i would like to look more closely at some of the work that christ has done that we couldn't really get a good deal for because of the resolution issues we had with the projection okay i'm thinking given some of the level of detail in his work and where you are in the public process it probably makes more sense for him to share that with you directly that's fun rather than go public with that yeah but we're two of we're two of 12 so you know okay understand that uh that that i appreciate some of the work that's been done because i actually was involved in that the earlier last redistricting process as well so i i understand these things i know where the fault lines are and i know where the politics is so um yeah okay that would be helpful and i definitely want more input i although i just want to make sure everyone understands we have made we're not even close to making decisions correct right but that's why i was hoping that that that timeline memo from attorney richardson would be helpful for public understanding the thing that i was going to say on monday night before i got and then i got beeped and i couldn't say it but this is that city council um i hope that it's not an opaque thing that just suddenly something pops i know that all those maps that jay appleton drew are with the city attorney and they're looking them over but they were never released but we never see them at least outside of government and so it seems kind of opaque i haven't seen it yet well but they they live somewhere in dan richardson's and um anyway i'm i'm just saying that i hope that in this political process that you don't just limit yourselves to what might come out of the mapping specialist that's some that's information there but i hope that you can also maybe look to you know real public input freshman's input i do want to bring our attention back to um if anyone has any questions we are over time and i don't want to uh make anyone stay too late um chris i know you have your hand up does anyone have their hand up in the miller center nope that's that's yeah they're look like they're getting ready to go well chris why don't you go ahead um as brief as possible and then we can close up yeah i just want to say thanks for providing the opportunity to share this work with everyone here tonight both in the miller center and on zoom um to counselors barlow and carpenter and counselor jen i think he is uh signed off for the evening but i'm happy to meet with you guys over zoom at a date and time of your choosing to kind of get into the weeds with this if you want it sounds like you have an interest here the feedback that i would say though that um my personal experience what i've learned from the process is that picking a number of wards and potentially you know by extension um the number of counselors without really looking at a different variety of maps may be maybe challenging because what i learned is that in looking at different numbers of wards some maps work better than others and having looked at different numbers of wards that's ultimately why we ended up picking the eight wards that we did for kind of some of the reasons that articulated so just wanted to share that um you know might be helpful to look at the maps that the city the mr appleton had prepared um prior to making any decisions about a number of wards or number of counselors because um the maps may kind of lead you in a in a different path great thank you everyone for coming today i think uh with that we will close thank you thanks everybody so good night have a good night