 It's time to start our meeting. Thank you everyone for being here. And this is the board six NPA meeting for Thursday, March 3rd. I'm Michelle Maraz on the steering committee and also here from the steering committee is Joel Fitzgerald and Nelson Martel. We also have a steering committee member retired Gail Rafferty. I see her committee member, America. So we're going to start the first part of our meeting which is the public forum. And so I'm calling on anybody who would like to speak in this segment of our meeting. And I see Gail has her hand up. Should I go ahead, Michelle? Please do. Okay, hi everyone. I just wanted to let people know that there's a Parks and Rec Commission meeting next week, Tuesday, March 8th at 5.30. Some neighbors in our neighborhood near Smalley Park are interested in this Parks and Rec Commission meeting because Councillor McGee from Ward 3 will be talking with Parks and Rec about an ordinance that he's proposing that would drop the prohibition for camping in Burlington's parks. It's a complicated ordinance if you have a chance to read it. Some of our neighbors are concerned, myself and some of our neighbors are concerned about this ordinance because there was a lot of camping in Smalley Park last summer. And while our neighborhood strongly supports Burlington coming up with options, especially for unhoused folks to have an outdoor option for living in the warm weather, doing so in Burlington's parks does not seem like a great idea to us. I'm not here to debate that, but just to say that one of the first times that this ordinance will get any sort of airing will be Councillor McGee talking with Parks and Rec Commission next Tuesday at 5.30. And that's a Zoom link meeting at this point, I believe. And Michelle, I think the link is gonna be posted somewhere up on the minutes for this meeting, I believe. Right, so it will be posted with the minutes on the CEDA website. We can't post links during this Zoom. Sure, and Ben Traverse has said that Parks and Rec will also put the agenda and the link to that meeting up on every front porch forum sometime in the next couple of days just to generally advertise the meeting, which is also gonna have something in it about Letty Park as well and entrance fees. So anyway, that was it, really just an announcement if anyone is interested, pro or con in whether or not camping should be allowed in Burlington's parks and what sort of follow-up procedure should happen if it is happening, we just are hoping people will go and hear what Councillor McGee had in mind and we can all be aware. That was it. Great, thank you, Gail. Is there anyone else here who would like to make a public comment? Michelle looks like Jordan has his hand up. Okay, Jordan, please go ahead. And Jordan is a sheet. Oh, I apologize. Sorry, Jordan. No problem. I actually, I don't need to make a public comment. I just did that to participate in the later discussion. Great, okay. Thanks, Jordan. All right, just the last call for public comments looks like Greg has a public comment. Go ahead, Greg. Okay, I think I'm unmuted, am I? Yes. Okay, good. Yeah, thanks a lot. Yeah, for the past several years, some of you read the Friendport Forum, South Union, know that I've been concerned about the amount of salt that's being applied sometimes indiscriminately and I let Spencer Chapin know my opinion about this and over the past two years, last year's and this year's City of Burlington annual financial report, Spencer gives a lot of very, very detailed summary of the activities of public works, but I have not seen any mention about the snow plowing and the application of salts. And I would like to be able to, I would like him, he probably already does, the DPW, to keep track of the amount of salt, the amount of time that the snow plows are used on the sidewalks and in other words, the number of the type of salt that's used, the quantity and also what would be the algorithm that's used as to when it's applied, how much is applied and that sort of thing. I've been walking up to UVM for quite a while, number of times this winter and I've noticed that, for example, Champlain College, there's enormous piles of salt, much, much too much salt applied and of course that when it dissolves, goes into our water supply and into the lake and I'm not sure how much of that can be extracted from the water for our drinking purposes or from the lake. Also, I'm Ward Clerk and I was very concerned of Edmund's auditorium or the gym, I should say, the amount of salt that was applied around Edmund's on the sidewalks and at the entrances, it was a lot which was tracked in onto the gym floor, unprotected gym floor and so I was concerned not only of the custodians that had to clean that up for today's classes and activities in the gym, but also the fact that I'm sure a lot was ground into the finish of the gym floor. So Greg, I'm gonna just pause you for one second and just see, we only have a few minutes left for public comment. I wanna just see if there's anyone else who wants to make a public comment and if not, I'll let you continue. Anyone else want to make a public comment? In the three minutes we have left. Okay, I'm not seeing any hands, so Greg, go ahead. Yeah, sure, I can just sum up to repeat my concern and that is I would like to see the type of protocol or the algorithm or whatever you would call it as to from DPW in at least in the annual report as to the application of salt, the amount of time that the plows, the sidewalk plows are out and have the facts and figures and that sort of thing show up in the annual, it's annual or the DPWs section of the annual report. That's all I have. Cool, thank you, Greg. Okay, I don't believe anyone has joined us since my last call for public comments. So I'm going to then turn over the next item to steering committee member Nelson Martel and this segment of our meeting will be elections for Ward 6 NPA Steering Committee members. Yeah, thanks, Michelle. Before we get into election of new members, I just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge the effort and service of two of our outgoing steering committee members, Michelle Moraz and Matt Grady, who's not here tonight. They've both served five years on the Ward 6 NPA and just wanted to say thank you for all the energy, enthusiasm and leadership. I only participated for about a year with them, but I can say just from the planning meetings before the meeting, there's just a real commitment and love for the community, Burlington of ours, but our neighborhood here in Ward 6 too. So thank you, Michelle and Matt. You're welcome, Nelson. I appreciate your comments. All right. So with that, I know we had a few folks who have expressed interest in being on the steering committee. I see them here tonight. I see Dale Azaria and Chloe Tomlinson and wanted to open it up. I know actually myself and Jill Fitzgerald are also interested in continuing on the steering committee and wanted to open it up and see if there's anyone else who's interested and participating. I don't see any hands. So if that's the case, then I would say I would open it up to a vote from all the members here on the four of us, I guess if we can prove everyone at once, the four of us being on the Ward 6 NPA steering committee for the next year starting. Actually, I think our bylaws say that the new steering committee members would begin in May. I would propose that they start in April if they're for the April meeting, if they're available. But let's go ahead and have the vote. Any opposition, let's say, to the four of us continuing on the steering committee? Well, actually, Nelson, what we have to do is have two people from the floor nominate each of the candidates. Thank you. So it could be anybody who just says I nominate. I nominate Dale Azaria. Seconded. Robert, go ahead. I'll nominate you, Nelson. Thank you. I'll second that. I'll nominate Joel, too. I'll second that. I'll nominate Chloe. I second that. OK, Michelle, since I'm newbie to the process, is there something more official beyond the nomination now? Is there a vote? Yeah, so we have to vote. So what we do at this segment is we'll vote by a show of hands. And I think it would make most sense to just have our slate of candidates be reelected all together. And that would just require the people who are present to raise their hand if they agree with the vote for these nominees to become steering committee members. On the way, can you go get it? Or on my way back? Michelle, could I just note that not everybody is necessarily eligible. Everybody present is eligible to vote. I am not eligible to vote because I live in Ward 5. Yes, so that's a very good point. I want people to think I'm not voting for them because I'm totally supportive of all of you. Very good point. So all those who live in Ward 6 who would like to vote, please raise your hand physically or electronically. And that looks like a majority to me of the Ward 6 residents who are present at this meeting. I'll stop now, Nelson, so you can. I think that's it. Like I said, Dale and Chloe, welcome. And if you're available, we'd like to get you started straight away. So we'll have our first planning meeting for April meeting. We'll have it in about two weeks and we'll be in touch. So thank you. All right. And I think we're on time for the next agenda item. Take it away, Michelle. Yes, perfect timing. That's wonderful. OK, I just want to thank everyone who's joined us this evening for being here. And the next topic that we are addressing is a discussion about the search and the appointment of the Burlington Police Chief. And we have a panel here who will talk on this issue. And what I've asked each of the participants to do is to comment on the process for the selection of the police chief and then to let us know their perspective on the mayor's selection of a permanent acting chief. And if there's any expectation for further developments in that appointment. So what we'll do is I will I think for ease, I will just let folks know who we have participating on this panel. We have Stephanie Seguino. She's a police commissioner. She lives in Ward 6. She's co-chair of the commission currently. We have Susie Cumberford. Susie is a police commissioner. She lives in Ward 5. We have Karen Paul, our re-elected city counselor from Ward 6. Congratulations, Karen. And we have Joan Shannon, who is the South District City Counselor for our South District City Counselor. And that South District includes Ward 6. Oh, and then Jordan. Jordan, I'm so sorry. Jordan joined us today. She announced her participation. Jordan, thank you so much for coming. And I'll just introduce myself. My name's Jordan Radam, the mayor's chief of staff. Great, thank you. And Jordan, I was going to read the statement that you provided in lieu of the mayor or a representative participating. But since you're here, what I'm going to do is ask you to start us off. And what we're going to do is we're going to give each person five minutes to address the points that I described initially. And then we're going to use the remainder of the time to allow our participants to ask questions or make comments. And just a heads up, our final presentation for this evening has been unscheduled. So depending on how this discussion goes, we may have up to 10 additional minutes. So we'll start with the five minutes for each presenter. Go to questions and comments and just take it from there. So I just need to get my timer ready. And I am going to be a bit pesky about keeping to the time to make sure that everybody has equal time to comment. So I'm just going to ask a question. Sure. I know that there are a lot of attendees. And I didn't know if they had been invited to join. There's a lot of people that are here. So our meeting is open to anyone in Burlington. But we do take comments first from Ward 6 residents. They get priority for comments and questions. But we do. Our meetings are open to any. Actually, our meetings are open to anyone. Well, there are people in the attendees group who are not panelists. That's all I'm saying. Michelle, there are Ward 6 residents that are in that are listed as attendees. If you there's a number of them. There's also Ward 5 residents that are panelists. So I didn't know to promote everybody to panelists. I think that's generally some folks choose not to be. But we can try promoting everyone again just to double I just sent a request to everyone who's there. Great. Thank you. Sorry, Joan, I misunderstood your question. OK, so Jordan, I will invite you to begin making your comments. You're muted. Great. OK, thanks, Michelle. So hi, everybody. My name is Jordan Riddell. I'm the mayor's chief of staff. I'm also a Ward 5 resident. And I thought I would start by sharing a little bit procedurally how the search process worked and some background on the process. So over the past 10 years, the mayor, Mayor Weinberger, has made over 30 appointments to senior administration positions and attracting and hiring strong leaders for the city is really a priority of the administration. So we put a lot of care and effort into our hiring processes. And I've been part of the mayor's office for nearly seven years. And in that time, I've led several search processes. And I can say really with confidence that I don't think we put more effort and energy towards a search process in that time. The police chief appointment process began in the spring of 2021. And we began with a pretty extensive public engagement effort. And that included listening sessions. Stephanie Segwino joined us on the listening sessions. Care counselor Paul also joined many of the listening sessions. And then other Jane Stromberg, another city counselor and Mila Grant, who was also participating on the search committee, joined for many of the listening sessions. And we also conducted a citywide survey. Following that public engagement process, we consolidated all of the input we've received and worked with the police commissioners and counselors who joined those listening sessions to develop an ideal candidate profile. And that profile listed the key attributes that the community was seeking in the next police chief. And I'm not going to go through that ideal candidate profile because I only have five minutes, but I'm happy to talk about it. More folks have questions about it. Um, so that we posted the police chief position on August 19th and the full search committee was convened later in August. The stated goal of the committee was to conduct a first round of interviews and recommend a final, recommend finalist candidates to the mayor. And usually there are between three and five finalist candidates. Um, so the position was posted on August 19th in mid to late September. It was clear that our candidate pool was small and our pool of qualified candidates was smaller than we hoped it would be. So we consulted with two police executive search firms to ask for their guidance on why our pool was smaller than we hoped it would be. And they indicated that our salary band was low in comparison to similar cities. The police executive research forum conducted a salary survey and they recommended a salary band of one hundred and thirty thousand to one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Our current salary band is I didn't write that in my notes, but I think it's one hundred and eighteen. To one hundred and thirty maybe. Um, so the search committee unanimously recommended that the council increase the police chief salary. Uh, the mayor and I discussed increasing the salary with counselors and it seemed like there really wasn't agreement to change the salary in September. And the counselors we spoke with requested to be readvertised the position instead. So we did readvertise the position, but it's important to keep in mind that at that time we did have viable candidates while it was a smaller pool, we did have viable candidates. And anyone who's been involved in a search process knows that if a search process drags on too long, you can risk losing strong candidates. And this is one, you have one more minute, just heads up. OK, in this specific case, we had a strong internal candidate and it was extending the process and definitely was not fair to him. So the readvertising process did not yield additional candidates. I have some more notes here. I'm not going to just going to. Skip down and say overall, the city really needed permanent police leadership. And the mayor didn't want to continue dragging on the process. And especially because the recruitment recruitment efforts were destined to fail because the council didn't support several of the steps the mayor recommended that we would need to take in order to create a supportive environment for policing and recruit a broader pool of candidates. And that is a perfect place to stop. Thank you so much. And Jordan, just keep those notes handy in case there's time at the end for you to go back. OK. OK, thanks so much. Great. Thank you. OK. So, Stephanie, you're next on my list. Would you please go ahead? Yeah, I was initially invited to be on the search committee, but because it was delayed, I was away. And so Susie Comerford as a commissioner replaced me. I probably have some comments, but I'd like to defer to her to speak. And I can wrap up after the Karen and Shannon have spoken as well. Joan Shannon, they've spoken. I'm muted. OK, so Susie, would you please go ahead? You're muted as well. We have a muted problem. Great. I just want to start with just a few things about me because I know very few of you. So I'm a social work faculty. You have a 23 years live in the South End. My teaching and research areas are racism and other disenfranchised populations, people with disabilities and refugees. And for those reasons, because the city's been struggling with these issues, I said, yes, when I was asked. So I came into the search process late. I've been on many search committees at UVM and currently I'm on one. I can just going to tell you what I observed. I don't want this to turn into like a big argument. We're here to learn and kind of move the whole process together. First, communications for meetings were frequently late and that made it difficult for people who did not work in the city to get there. We didn't manage to set a schedule for meetings in advance so people could plan. We really didn't have any role as a search committee in designing the questions to be asked, despite promises that would happen. I think there was a lack of clarity among the role of the committee. The search really happened in the mayor's office. Largely, they made the decisions on the questions and other key decisions. And that's different than a search committee really would happen at UVM, which I'm quite familiar with. I often experienced confusion as to what was happening and who was doing what and why. I wondered if we were really a citizen team of group of members whose input was sought and listened to. There was so much political noise in the background going on that it was very unwieldy. I think there's a general lack of communication with the search committee. At large, and we didn't have a set of shared expectations among the search committee themselves, nor the committee, I think, in the mayor's office. This is the most important part. Majority of the committee did not think the pool was deep enough and did not want the search closed to come. When we talk about having a small pool, we had a very small pool. Only two people met the basic qualifications. And of the two people, one other person was dismissed because he had some issues in his background that didn't, you know, portray a good future. So we ended up really with only one real candidate. And I know the mayor asked for more money for the search for a search firm and also more money for the police chief to be more competitive. And that looked like from the outside, like a real political battle. So that's a little bit. My conclusions are that I deeply believe, given my own background and my research areas, we're at a community inflection point. We're either going to be a whole community where everyone is valued, respected and listened to, or we will not. This is there is a strong and persistent sentiment among many in the communities of color here that are concerned about the practices condoned by the present police chief towards people of color. And many white people feel the same way. I also want to acknowledge that not every person of color holds the sentiment we as a community either listen or we don't. But if we don't, we're continuing the same white racism that has continuously existed in our country. Our state and our city. And finally, there is there is no one in the police department that people who are not in the police department don't suffer from in terms of racism. My personal understanding is that we are brought up in a country where right supremacy was the norm from the inception. And we're still trying. We have to recover from that so that people of color can actually live their lives unencumbered. So that's basically what I want to say. Thank you, Susie. I appreciate your comments. And Stephanie, you want to go after our counselors or did you want to go after Susie? After the counselors is fine. OK, all right. Great. So, Karen. I do know how to unmute myself. So I have been I've sort of lost track. I think I've been probably on six or seven search committees as a city counselor. I've done other search committee work in different and other organizations, but I think it's been six or seven that I have done. And these are for the hiring of department heads over the years I've been on the council. I would say without question that this has been the most this was without a doubt the most challenging search committee that I have ever served on. I think it was challenged because for some reasons that were beyond our control. We were trying to do a search without us all being in the same room, without us all having the opportunity to interact with each other as a committee. And I think that is really, really difficult. Zoom is just not a replacement. And I think there and I think part of the reason why there was this lack of communication was because because of that and because I think there was a very broad group of people that made up the committee, which oftentimes that's that's what it is oftentimes. But I think this was a much broader group. And I think there were a lot of people that were they're communicating, but not really listening to one another. And that breakdown when people don't feel like they're being listened to does not help the the work of the committee. I think we were challenged due to the salary as Jordan can confirm to you. I had actually given her the names of a couple of search firms and to the administration's credit, they spent the time to look into these search committees. And without a doubt, I think that we needed a higher salary. And Susie is right that became a challenge. And I think the reason that that is a challenge goes to the heart of what we are seeing, we are seeing in our city, we are seeing in our city council is that there is a lack of trust and understanding that of taking each other's taking each other at our best at our best and not taking each other at any sort of preconceived motives. But needless to say, those were the issues and the challenges that I think we had on. And, you know, as the as the eternal optimist, I do believe that we can find a path forward. I think that one of the things that we learned in the appointment process is that there are clear challenges and clear hurdles that need to be overcome if we are to move forward with the chief that we that we currently have in the acting role. We know what those challenges are and we have to work to address them. And if we can address them, then perhaps there is a path forward and hopefully soon, because I think we all want the same thing. And that is, you know, leadership at the police station and transformative policing on as we move forward. So that's that. I think that's what I'll say in under five minutes. Yes, you were way under five minutes. Thank you very much, Karen. And I just want to say to the folks who have joined us, who are on the next panel about the Ethan Allen Express, I just want to let you know that we actually gained some time for our presentations, these two panels, because we had our final presentation reschedule. So we have a little extra time. So your start time might be delayed a little bit, depending on how this discussion goes. So please sit tight. It might be a few extra minutes that we spend, but we'll spend more on you as well. So, Joan, please chime in. Thank you, Michelle. I was not on the search committee. And so I think that what you have heard from those who were on the search committee is more accurate than anything I could contribute to that. But just I'll just speak a little bit to historically what we've done for police committee, police chief searches searches. And, you know, it's a mayoral appointment, but it's a really important position. And I think that's long been recognized. And there has been probably more process around hiring a police chief than there has been for a lot of other department department heads, you know, going back to the 1980s, we had Chief Scully for quite a long time. And I don't really, I think Chief Scully was appointed when commissions were still appointing the chiefs. And so that's probably how he got appointed. Going in after Chief Scully in the 1990s, we hired Elena Ennis and that was a national search. And it yielded two finalist candidates. And Elena Ennis was chosen out of those two after, you know, public forums and some engagement process. After Elena Ennis, there was not a national search when they identified two candidates inside the police department, which were Steve Work and Tom Trombley. The commission was very involved in that search. And there were public forums and Tom Trombley was selected by the mayor at that time. And then after Tom Trombley, there were three candidates in the next pool of candidates that were considered. They were Mike Shirling, Walt, oh, what was his name? I'm forgetting, but it was Walton Emmett. There were three all internal candidates, again, no national search. And they went through a very rigorous engagement process with, I think there were three very large panels that evaluated the three of them. And then more recently, Brandon Del Pozzo, I think that was again a national search and that yielded many more candidates. I think, I don't know if there were six or eight candidates that got interviewed in that process. But, you know, getting to where we are today, we're just not, we're not in a great position hiring in police departments nationwide is difficult and a lot more difficult in Burlington. So I guess I was happy that we were able to attract two qualified candidates. And I guess one was eliminated along the way, but I was really worried that we wouldn't be able to attract anybody to this job. And I'm very concerned about the situation the department is in today. And it's, you know, it's a difficult situation. So I respect the experiences of, you know, both Susie and Karen who served on that committee. I'm grateful that they stepped up for that. And I'll leave it at that. Great, thank you, Joan, Stephanie. Thanks. I too have served on a lot of search committees. I was associate dean at UVM for a while and chair of the department. And so I've done this in numerous capacities. I think what was different about this search was the degree to which it was micromanaged and that the search committee didn't have the autonomy to review applications, all of the applications and develop questions and so on and so forth. So that was very different than any search I've ever seen. I think given the issues of trust, that was unfortunate that having the benefit of input of a wide variety of the search committee would have been really helpful to improve trust in the process and in the outcome of that. The other thing I would say is that in this environment, the use of a search firm would have been very helpful. It was unfortunate that that city council resolution was not adopted, that was not acted on because in this environment, as Joan has said, searches are challenging, but Burlington has a lot to offer. And I think as a reform minded community, we would have been able to attract a reform minded police chief candidate had we had the ability to network more broadly. It's a very time intensive process and search firms are really good at this. So I think that it's beneficial. I appreciate Susie's point that I don't think this ought to be a contentious discussion but I think we can learn from this about how to do this better in the future. And given that many departments are searching for chiefs and searching for reform minded chiefs, we needed the extra help to be able to network more deeply to attract a larger pool of candidates and it would have been helpful for the search committee to have the ability to look at all of the applications. I'll leave it there. Michelle, if I'd love to be able to respond to what commissioners Suguina just said because it's just confusing for me. The search committee did receive all the applications. Jordan, just to do that, I'm gonna give you a minute because I wanna make sure that anyone who's participating who has a question or comment can give that. So I'll give you a minute to respond. Okay, yeah, there are just two things that commissioners Suguina and commissioner Comifers comments that were a little confusing to me just that the search committee wasn't able to review all the applications. We did send all of the applications to the search committee. So that didn't quite make sense to me. And then with respect to developing questions that's the search committee would absolutely would have been able to develop questions. Unfortunately, we never got to that point because we didn't ever schedule, we scheduled interviews and then canceled them because the search committee didn't feel comfortable moving forward with those two candidates. So if we had ever gotten to the stage where we had conducted interviews, absolutely we would have engaged the search committee in developing questions. We just, we didn't get to that stage, unfortunately. Okay, thank you, Jordan. So is there anyone, a non-panelist who has a question for any of the panelists or a comment that you'd like to share with them? I see Rob Bacchus and Amanda Skihan. So we'll go in that order. So I was disturbed to hear about the issue with salary because when Alana Ennis came in about 22 years ago, her salary I think was $86,000 which created quite a stir. Since then inflation just about doubles that. So it sounds like we're nowhere near maintaining inflation. And I could be wrong on the inflation by a little bit but I think that's regionally accurate. The other issue that I have, that's a question I have is I don't understand where the mayor has authority to appoint an acting police chief to serve indefinitely. The charter gives the mayor the authority to appoint a police chief annually with approval of the city council or to fill a vacancy with approval of the city council. He's acted to fill a vacancy but the city council hasn't approved it. So I just wonder how the appointment's legal. And if it's not legal we don't have a legal police chief which means the police chief can't describe, can't discharge all the duties that he has under the Vermont statutes. So I'm concerned about that. Maybe there's something somewhere in the charter or in the ordinances but I couldn't find it. Thank you for the question. Is there a panelist who'd like to respond to that? And I'd like to give you each one minute to respond to that. And I'm gonna say Joan and then Jordan and then Susie. Thank you. Well, I am not the legal expert that Rob is. I'll start with that. But I just wanted to reference a similar but in some ways opposite historic data point which is back when Bernie became mayor he wanted his own department heads and couldn't get them past the council. And so I believe he was stuck with department heads he didn't appoint until he got a new council and could get the department heads that he wanted appointed that they continued to serve. And there was something in the charter about continuing to serve until somebody else was appointed. Acting chief is a little bit different. So I'll defer to Jordan who probably has a better answer than I have. Great, thanks Jordan. Thanks Joan and then Jordan please go ahead. Just pulled up my city charter but I wasn't able to find the specific section I'm meaning to reference in the period while Joan was speaking. However, what we've discussed with our city attorneys that the mayor's authority to appoint acting leadership of the police department or any department for that matter falls under his responsibility for day to day management oversight of the city. We have to have management and oversight of our police department that is this mayor's responsibility to do that. And we've interpreted that appointing and acting chief falls within that responsibility. Thanks Jordan and Suzy. I'll let Suzy comment and then Rob you can have a quick follow up comment and then we'll go to Amanda. You can give it back to Rob. My question has been answered. Oh, okay, Rob. I mean, I think even if the charter doesn't authorize it which I think it might not obviously acting officers make sense although it seems to me it'd be better practice to have that spelled out in the charter with definitions and terms. But the mayor isn't appointing an acting police chief. He's appointing a permanent police chief. I frankly don't see how it's legal. And in your explanation I don't think at all addresses my concerns. You're certainly entitled to disagree. The mayor has made clear that he's asked Chief Murad to continue serving as chief indefinitely we don't intend to do another search. And I hope that for at least part of this conversation we can talk about moving forward on some of our public safety challenges and how we work with our current police leadership to advance some of the police transformation goals that have been that were laid out in our ideal candidate profile and through other community discussions. Thanks, Jordan. I wanna make sure that we hear from Amanda. Hi, thanks, Michelle. So I wanna thank you all for giving us the opportunity to interface with you tonight. I've been watching obviously city council meetings and participating for a couple of years now. I've also been watching police commission meetings. And I think that we can do a better job of working together. I know that there were some criticisms of acting chief Murad's interactions with police commissioners. Having watched those meetings, I have to say and this also goes for the city council that it is clear that there are at times there's a breach of decorum and I hate that word decorum, but just kindness. Kindness both ways, where there's an opportunity to work together. And I think if you listen sometimes, yes, there are always going to be differences whether with the city council or with the police commission meetings. But there's so much that we all share together in interest and progressive goals. And that's including acting chief Murad. So with the reality right now that this search is not going forward, I'd love to hear about how the police commissioners are looking to go forward and work with chief Murad or if Ms. Riddell has any information about how the city will support chief Murad and going forward to bridge these gaps because this has been a painful, this has been a painful time and there's some healing to do. You're gonna have to work together. And you are working together, I believe towards restorative justice, towards mental health response. So can we focus on that and what are your goals in healing those relationships? Thank you, Amanda. In the time we have left, I wanna make sure that we hear from Dale and then I'm just gonna gauge our time in terms of responses to your question, Amanda. And I would imagine that each of those panelists that you're interested in hearing from would talk to you offline about your point. So Dale, if you could chime in. You know, Michelle, I just wanted to say that really my question was very much the same as Amanda's, which is to all of the panelists, how they think we're moving forward from here. So I think any of the panelists who wanted to respond to Amanda, that's really what I was looking for as well. Okay. And just to let our panelists for the railroad know we are going to just extend this time five more minutes. I'm sorry to keep you on pause. We have five minutes. So I would like to give each of the panelists one minute to respond to Amanda and Dale's points. And let's just go in the same order. So, Stephanie, why don't you start? Sure. You know, the role of the commission is really to provide civilian oversight, regardless of who the chief is. And that is something we've been doing. And I would say what we've really done in the last year is institution building. We've developed better mechanisms for oversight. We were given outside legal counsel to help us provide independent review of complaints. For example, we have done a lot of training. We have addressed the issue of racial disparities in policing, especially in the use of force. And we have been, I would argue, very collaborative with the chief and with the department. You may recall that we as a commission recommended an increase of the number of officers. We recommended to the city council to host the mental health summit. I think one of the strongest things that we have done is to identify for the community that many of the calls for service are actually related to social distress, whether that is mental health or whether it is opioid addiction and we have been pushing for some changes that would help address that, including additional community service liaisons and so forth. That is why... I'm gonna have to ask you to vary anything rapidly, okay? That is fine, that's good. Okay, good, thank you. Okay, Susie, one minute. Just one quick comment. I've heard over and over tonight the word we and I'm looking around the room and we are not all here. And the part of the we that's not here have been having continuous issues. And that's not an easy thing to talk about among our neighbors, among our friends or at the police commission. But we have a large community here and we're not all the same. We have to address the question of who belongs within the we. Thank you, Susie. Okay, and Karen. Well, the first thing I wanted to say is I do want to second what Stephanie had said earlier. I, when the police chief was hired, when Tom Tremblay was hired, I was on the police commission at that time. And I can say the police commission of even, that was a long time ago. The police commission of today is not the police commission of two years ago, five years ago or anytime before that. There has been tremendous change in the police commission. And it is for the better. This is a group of people that work well together. They're collaborative with one another. And they are really working. The amount of time that they put in is, if people knew it's unbelievable the amount of time that they put into this endeavor. At the same time, you are right, Amanda. We all have to get beyond whatever challenges there are. I think that they are not insurmountable, but we can't do it without having everyone in the room. And we can't have it without everybody being respectful. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it's not just what you say, but how you say it. Sometimes it's not always seen by the public, but there are challenges. And until those challenges are openly acknowledged by everyone, including the people that are the challengers, we have to keep on working on that. Thank you, Karen. I hate to cut you off, but... Okay. Okay, thanks. And then, Jordan, why don't you bring us home? You've got a minute. I feel like the comments others have made have been well said. I maybe would just end by saying that I think we're very fortunate to have Chief Mirad serving as our chief. He's exceptionally qualified for the role. And I could list some of the things that he's done in his time with the Burlington Police Department, but we've limited time to do that. As I said earlier, I do really encourage us as a community to move forward on these public safety challenges that at least from the mayor's office, we've been hearing from Ward 6 residents about. And this is also an opportunity to work with Chief Mirad to advance those police transformation goals. And I look forward to continuing to do that work. And I know the mayor does as well. Great. Thank you so much. I want to thank each of you for the panelists for participating and modeling. I think I get one more comment. I'm so sorry. How did I? It's okay, Michelle. I'm so sorry. I go unnoticed. It's okay. Okay, you got a quick minute. I just want to say I appreciate Amanda's question and we often forget that we are all on the same team and for whatever divides us, there's a lot more that unites us. And basically, I think we're all, we all want to go in the same direction, but we very much disagree on the route to get there. And I am just cognizant of how fortunate we are to have Chief Mirad. And I'm grateful that he's been willing to continue to serve our community. And I honestly don't know what we would do without him. So it's important to me to protect that relationship, to support him and to stabilize the police department. To me is the top priority. And once we do that, we can start building towards other goals, but stabilization to me is what needs to come first. And I think I support the goals that we all share. I'm virtually have to ask you to stop right there. Okay, thank you very, very much. And as I was saying, thank you to each of the panelists. You've modeled respectful, honest discussion from a variety of standpoints. And I think it's been useful for us to hear from each of you. Thank you very much. We're just gonna make a quick segue here to our next presentation. It's a panel on the Amtrak Ethan Allen Express. And what we will hear from our panelists is a bit of a background from each of their perspectives, meaning their participation in the development of this new rail service that's coming to Burlington and the current status of the project from their perspectives and also their expectations of this service for Burlingtonians. And we're going to do a similar format to what you've just seen. What we'll do is give five minutes to each of the presenters to give that overview I just described and then we'll take the remaining time to hear from our participants, their questions and comments. And then make sure that we have, our panelists will have time to respond to those questions and comments if needed or asked. And then I just want these panelists to know we've earned ourselves about 10 minutes of extra time due to the elimination of our final presentation. So that's enough about that. And what I'd like to do is just go in the order that we have in front of me that the panelists have been provided with. So that brings us to Melinda Moulton who will answer the points that I described. And Uiso, I will ask the two of you combined if you can keep it like to about eight minutes that would be great. Here you go. Okay. Hi folks, great to see a lot of you on my screen. I do want to recognize Uiso Makuku who was the incoming CEO for Main Street Landing. So I have to start with that because it's just a wonderful thing. And so how we decided to do this is I'm going to give you the history and give you my four minutes or whatever. And then I'm going to turn it over to Uiso to talk a little bit about the future because that's kind of how we are. I'm kind of like the past and she's the present. Hey Melinda, I just realized I didn't identify you. So if panelists just provide us with your... Yeah, yeah. Well, I am the 40 years. I've been the CEO of Main Street Landing. I'll tell you my experience with RAIL is I got a call from Howard Dean when he was governor and he said, hey, we want to create a train station at Main Street Landing. And I said, okay, I said, that's great. Let's figure it out. So he secured federal and it's probably some state dollars and we signed a lease with the state of Vermont at 20 year lease and we built the train station. And while we're building the train station, I'm just going to tell you a little aside, I got a call from Howard Dean and he said, by the way, Tom Brokoff and his CBS crew are coming, his NBC crew are coming up to Burlington and they are identifying you and me as the fleecers of America. And I don't know if you all remember the show The Fleecing of America, Tom Brokoff National News. Well, what was I? I was like, in my late 40s or something. And here I'm going to be a fleecer of America on national news. And so in comes the crew and they taped us and it was on the national news. So anyway, I just want to let you know that because of the $1.5 million that we secured for this train station, my five seconds of fame were as a fleecer of America. So there's that story. I have, Main Street Landing has been just dying to have passenger rail return to Burlington. And I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that we are at this crossroads in time, but it's been a long road. And we built the train station. We had the commuter rail come in for a little bit for a couple of years to mitigate the construction on route seven. And then that commuter rail stopped. We had me, myself and Irene, a film crew from Hollywood with Jim Carrey and Renee Zellwerger. I don't know if Chapin, if you remember this but they came in and they shot a film and used the station as one of the locations. And I was sitting in my, up in the patio outside my office and I was like, oh my God, it's an Amtrak. And this was for the shooting of the film. So they only stayed for a few days. But anyway, I have been, Main Street Landing and all of us have been waiting forever for this. And I want to give a huge shout out to Vermont Railway and to the state of Vermont for the work that they've done. The construction that's gone on in front of the Union Station has been extraordinary. It's been beautifully done. I think it's classy. I'm just really thrilled Chapin. I want to give a shout out to you as well for all your work on this as well. But this has been a historical moment. And for 30 years, I've been sitting around waiting for the train. And that's pretty much the history of it. It's been an empty train station. We sold the station to the state of Vermont. I think Dan's on the call here, Dan Della Bru. About two years ago, we sold it as part of our condominium to the state of Vermont. So they own it and they're gonna be operating out of that location. And I want to see the train go to Montreal. I'm gonna let Oizo talk a little bit about this. But just for all of you on this call, this is momentous. And this is really a huge moment for our state and for Burlington. And I think we all should be really proud of all the stakeholders, the hundreds of people who have worked really hard to have this moment in history happen for our town. I mean, I projected 30 years ago that we would see a thousand people come into Burlington by rail. And I'm sure it could be a thousand right off the bat. But I promise you, as this train grows and as we move along that track up North, I can see someday having a thousand people arrive in Burlington. So that's the story, that's my history. As a fleecer of America, thank you for listening. And I'm gonna turn it over to Oizo. And Oizo, you wanna share a little bit about the vision for the future and what you're seeing here. Thank you. Hi everyone, I don't have as much history as Melinda has on the waterfront, although I met her 20 years ago when I was the waterfront coordinator for Burlington. So there's that. I'm actually really excited about Amtrak coming through as well. I mean, the fact that it's going to be this, we're going to be this hub between New York City and eventually Montreal is huge for Burlington. It will give us so much access and exposure. It'll create connectivity that we didn't have before, connections to cultural centers. It's a sustainable transportation option. There'll be fewer cars on the road and we can emphasize bike share and walking and car share and Call of Treat shuttle and everything else. And it's just such an opportunity for Main Street Landing to be one of the hosts, I believe of Amtrak and to work with Kaumann and other organizations to strengthen mobility options once people get to Burlington. And I see doing a lot to, I see Main Street Landing being a welcomeer, being a host, being part of the future of rail in Burlington, giving people more of a reason to want to come to this important gateway. And I'll cut off my comments there because everyone else has a lot of interesting things to tell you about the history. Great, thank you, Elisa. I just want to say that we're going to hear from each of our panelists, then we're going to open this up for questions. So please hold on to your questions and we'll make sure that we hear from you. Okay, so we have Seldin Houghton with us. Seldin, why don't you introduce yourself and make your remarks. Yes, Seldin Houghton, president from on rail system. And thanks for the invitation to answer some questions and highlight some of the work that's been happening. Certainly want to recognize very much the team effort that's involved here, the collaboration with V-Trans, the city from on rail system, the community. And certainly we're excited as well to see Amtrak come into Burlington. Our role here is the host railroad and... Seldin, I'm going to interrupt you just to say that you're representing from on rail systems. Correct. So yeah, our role as the host railroad is to host Amtrak. They come on the railroad at Whitehall, New York. They currently come into Rutland today and looking forward to them continuing on to Burlington. Presently, I think Melinda mentioned the work that was done at Main Street Landing. The majority of that was a state project and I'll let Dan speak a little more to that. We started some of the initial efforts there in the fall of 2020 to get the track realigned and get the prep work underway for the state project. And currently we're working in the yard south of Maple Street constructing the layover and servicing track for Amtrak when it comes and getting other infrastructure in place along the corridor to support the service. If folks haven't noticed, Amtrak has started training their crews. There's been several qualification runs that have happened and are continuing to happen. So you will see some Amtrak trains up this way. So very excited. And I think in terms of the goals of the service, I certainly let Dan DeLiberer speak more to that from the VTrans perspective. Great, thank you, Selden. Chepin, I'm gonna ask you to chime in next. All right. Well, it seems like this may be one of our bi-weekly coordination meetings between VRS and the city and VTrans and the community. This is historic, I agree. Melinda Momentus is an appropriate word. 30 years ago, thanks to Melinda and others, there were two main goals in the waterfront that haven't yet been achieved. One was putting the bike path on the west side of the tracks and number two was bringing passenger rail to Burlington. We've accomplished a lot on the waterfront, but for decades we could not accomplish those two. The problem was that they were inextricably intertwined and the land was so tight and the state owned such a large piece of railroad right-of-way that there wasn't really a clear path forward. As folks may recall, it's not such distant history that three years ago, there was a pretty significant public debate on where the train was gonna overnight. And that debate threatened the alignment of key stakeholders to bring passenger rail back to Burlington. And I'm really pleased to say the people on this call today really worked hard to find a win-win solution. And that every partner has taken a little bit of blood and shared it in the group effort here of achieving the group goal. The city has contributed some land, we have contributed some treasure, hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the overnighting in the rail yard. And together, VRS, VTrans, adjacent partners who are property owners have all pitched in to make this work. And there were over 10 legal agreements that need to be brokered among partners, all of which got unanimous council approval to get to the point where we are today. And I couldn't be more pleased with the sense of collaboration and problem solving. We're not done yet. We've got a couple more months of construction. Seldon, I was so pleased to see the contractor working hard in the rail yard today. And we at the Public Works have even given up some of our land at the wastewater treatment plant to be able to move over that access road to allow for the Amtrak spur to be added so that Amtrak can be stored in the rail yard and not in front of Union Station. So I gotta tell you, there are times when there's political battles that are not win-win and it is tough to be in a place where you're trying to win a vote where someone's gonna lose. But I think this project has been the perfect example of working so hard until you can find that win-win and the fact that all the parties here are now working in alignment. This is going to happen. And my family has told me as soon as it's running, Dan, I'm taking the family to Hamilton and I'm committing that here. I see this as being recorded. So I think I'm definitely on the hook now. That's great. Thank you, Chapin. Dan, please introduce yourself and make your comments. Well, good evening everybody and thanks for inviting me to this meeting. My name is Dan DeLabriere. I'm the Rail and Aviation Bureau Director for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. As a broad agency of transportation, we manage the two train services that come into the state of Vermont. The Ethan Allen, which now terminates in Rutland and what we're talking about is bringing that train to terminate in Burlington every night. The other train is our Vermonter service which starts in St. Albans and runs all the way down to Washington, D.C. So we're gonna have two great trains in and out of Vermont every single day and we're so excited that the Ethan Allen will now come to the great city of Burlington, right downtown where it should be, you know, the largest city in the state. So you should have a train service right in your downtown and that was V-Trans in Vermont's goal. I will tell you that I wanna echo Melinda and Chapin and Selden. This could not have been done without a team effort. I mean, there's so many items that had to be worked out, figured out, worked together. And it's just been a team effort. So a little history, the background of this, you know, the Ethan Allen's been running into Rutland since I think it was 1996, I believe it was when it came in there. And it was shortly after that that people were like, well, okay, well, if it's in Rutland, why can't it go to Burlington? 2005, you know, Senator Jeffords got the state, an earmark to start working on the track because the track just, it needed to be upgraded from Rutland to Burlington, wouldn't support passenger service on the tracks that were there. We needed new track, we needed upgraded crossings, we needed upgraded bridges, we needed sightings so that passenger trains could bypass freight trains. There's so many things that projects that had to be done. And we've been, V-Trans has been working on this, again, since, like I said, 2005-ish. I took over the project in 2011-ish and we've kind of ramped it up since then. We've put in all new track, not all new, but mostly new track between Rutland and Burlington. We have added lights and gates to, I'm gonna say 20 plus, almost 30 crossings between Rutland and Burlington. We've added the station platform in Middlebury, we've added the station platform in Virgin's. We've moved a building in Virgin's to create a station in Virgin's to have a station stop there. And I'll, of course, whatever you guys are familiar with is all the work that we're doing in Burlington. The new platform in Burlington, which is coming out great, the new siding that the Amtrak train will sit on that both Seldin and Chapin have also mentioned already, but that work is being worked on right now. Our goal, V-Trans, is to have all of this work done. It's right now, if you look at the construction schedules, they all work out to be sometime in June. So we are anticipating starting Amtrak service sometime in July of this year. And again, it's just so exciting. We're gonna be able to get on the train in downtown Burlington, ride it all the way to New York Penn, spend the weekend in New York and come right back. So while we don't have an exact schedule, I will tell you that the approximate schedule is leaving Burlington somewhere around 10-ish in the morning. Don't hold me to the exact time because we don't have it yet. We don't have a timetable yet, but somewhere around 10-ish in the morning, it'll arrive in New York Penn a little before six at night. So around 5.45-ish. And then on a daily basis, it'll leave New York Penn around 2.20-ish in the afternoon and arrive just before 10 p.m. back in Burlington at night. So that's the approximate schedule. Again, not the finalized schedule, so don't hold me to that exactly, but that's about where we are right now. That's what we know today. And I think I could go on for about an hour on this stuff, but I'll stop there and I will look for questions. Great, thank you so much. Boy, I have a list myself, but I'm gonna give priority to other folks participating. Nancy, do you have a question about the rail, about the Amtrak coming to Burlington? Your hand's been up since the beginning? Nancy Harkins. There you are. Sorry, that was a mistake. Sorry, I have to get my hand down. Okay, all right. So another call for questions. Amy Mellonkamp has her hand up. Great, Amy. And then Rodney. Well, I don't really have a question, but I just wanna applaud everybody for all the work that's happened. I've been so excited about this project, and I just wanna know how I can be on the first run to New York City. Can I claim a ticket right now? I have a lot of people ask me that question. Can I be on the first train? I think I'm gonna need an extra 10 cars for the first train. I'll fight you for it, Amy. Okay, we'll go together. There you go. You can sit on my lap. Okay, there you go. No, thank you everybody for all your work. That's a vote of appreciation for you all. Thanks. Rodney. Thank you all. I'd like to be on that first train too. I'm sure you'll need those 10 extra cars or more. I'm just curious as to what work remains to be done, what's unfinished. I walk down under Perkins Pier with the dog every evening. So I've been watching a lot of the stuff that's going on down there. So I'm curious what remains to be done to complete the infrastructure, if you will. Yeah, sure. So in Burlington, we have the platform, which is not complete. We still have the canopy to put up. We've got some lighting to do, some other minor adjustments. We've got some work to do in King Street and Maple Street, still the Amtrak overnight siding that Seldin was discussing earlier and Chapin was talking about. That's being built right now. Now to build that siding, it required a whole bunch of other tracks that were sort of in the same spot. We had to slide a bunch of tracks over. So there's a whole bunch of reconfiguration of tracks in the yard right now that you have to have an exact layout for these tracks, otherwise trained cars and locomotives can't align on the tracks, right? So it's very precise as far as getting those tracks in the right spot. So working on that right now, South of Burlington, we have a tiny bit of work left at the Middlebury station, where we've got some parking yet to finish up there down in Pittsburgh. There's a bypass siding there near the Amia plant where passenger trains will bypass freight trains there on the siding. And then there's a few spots along the line kind of north of Virgin's to Burlington where there's several spots where we have to do what we call injections into the ground where it's just gonna stabilize the ballast and things like that. So those are the major things left. There's some signalization still yet to be done, which VRS and Seldin's team's working on for actual, when I say signalization, I'm talking about train signals, not signals at road crossings. These are actually signals that the train crew follows. So those are the things that we have left to do between now and June and each one of those, and it sounds like a lot and it is, but we seem to be on track and I'm not gonna pardon the pun. I'm gonna say that's exactly what I mean. We're on track to get this done. Great. Michelle, can I add one thing? Sure. Which is that I just wanna give a shout out to the Parks and Recreation Waterfront Department in coordinating with V-Trans and V-Trans agreed, which is amazing just to basically project manage the bike path project as well as the waterfront passenger rail project. What that means is that instead of having to do the waterfront rail project, finish that and then bring in a whole separate construction project to do the waterfront bike path, which would have extended the period, extended the disruption on the waterfront, V-Trans agreed to roll the bike path project into it with a lot of oversight from Parks and DPW. And what that means is that, as Dan talked about the remaining rail work, there's a little bit of bike path work that needs to be done, but ultimately the end result for Burlingtonians will be less disruption with this unified project. And it just shows what good coordination can do. That's great. Michelle and Melinda here. Can I just quickly add for any of our viewers here, if you're interested in learning more about the history of rail travel over the last several hundred years, a couple hundred years in Burlington, I wanna send you to the Main Street Landing website MainStreetLanding.com and you click on history and you'll see a 45 minute video that we created on the history of the Burlington waterfront. And quite a bit of that show talks about the rise of rail in Burlington and on the waterfront. It's a really great little piece and you'll learn a lot about the history. Great, thank you, Melinda. And we see a little piece of it behind Chapin. His backdrop is showing us the path and the rails, they're train tracks. Is there anyone else? Greg, you have a question. Yes, thanks. I'm just as eager, you know, I'm ready to climb on top of the, one of the cars with my chickens. There's not enough space. But my question is, I know there's no Amtrak rep here on the call Zoom today, but could anyone provide any information as to what's next to the Montreal connection? So I'll try to help you there. So there's going north of Burlington. Okay, well, let me back up. Going from Rutland to Burlington and all the complications that are involved there. Now take that and multiply it times two because now you've got another country involved. So getting one of the things we are working on separate from the Ethan Allen, our first goal at V-Trans is to continue our Vermont service, which stops in St. Albans to get all the details worked out and to get that train to Montreal. That's one of the V-Trans goals. It's one of the administration's goals that V-Trans is working on. So if that, I shouldn't say if, when that happens, then it'll open up the discussion of whether the Ethan Allen can follow the same, can follow the same, all the same rules and all the same things that we did there. So step one is to get the Vermonter there. Step two, then we can start talking about the Ethan Allen. Now there's significant amount of track work sort of north of Burlington station that would have to be done, much like the track south of Burlington wasn't ready for Amtrak service. The track north between Burlington and Essex is not ready for passenger service. So it's being talked about. I don't wanna say it's definitely something that we're gonna get done and I don't have a timeline. I'm saying that what we are working on is getting the Vermonter there first. When you do projects like this, you gotta kinda go in baby steps. You can't eat the whole apple in one bite. So you gotta, let's get the Vermonter there and then we can start talking about the next step. Right, thank you, Dan. I don't see any more hands, which means I wanna raise my hand. Okay, so I have a number of questions. So one is, can anyone estimate the cost of a one-way ticket from Burlington to New York City? Yeah, I get that question a lot and I don't have an answer for you right now. We are literally, and I will tell you, I mean, yesterday, even as of yesterday, I'm still working on the contract between VTrans and Amtrak. So costs get rolled into ticket costs and that whole thing gets kinda figured out. It's all a big puzzle. So the answer is, I don't have an answer right now, but you know. Can you give us a range? How about like a broad range? I don't even, I'm sorry, I don't even have that. We really haven't gotten to ticket costs yet. We're just not there yet. We're really on actual cost of train. How much does a crew cost? How much does a fuel cost? How much does a police cost? All that stuff, we're still working on all that, so. Gotcha. Okay, what is the maximum speed of this train? We can go 59 miles an hour at the top speed. Now it's not gonna be 59 every mile of the whole trip, but top speed is 59 miles an hour. Great. And did, oh, sorry. If I could just, this is Selden, if I could just jump in there while your guys are talking about speed and that was a great question. As Dan said, it will be 59 miles an hour and that's one of the things we'll be looking to get the message out to the community with Operation Lifesaver along the entire length of this corridor that hasn't seen passenger service since the 50s and the education in all the towns and with first responders about our freight trains are typically doing anywhere from 25 to 40 miles an hour and now you're gonna have passenger doing 59. It's a lot quieter than a freight train. So really could use all the help we can get getting that message out that they're running qualification runs now and just highlight the safety aspect of things. Great, thank you Selden. Yeah, so another question I had was do the upgrades that you have put in place benefit the freight trains as well? Certainly we take advantage of the tracks as Dan had mentioned prior to the Amtrak where 10 and 25 mile an hour and bringing them up to passenger speed does allow the freight to go at 40 miles an hour for a good chunk of the corridor which is certainly far more fuel efficient and far more efficient moving the freight goods in and out of the state. So certainly advantages come with that as well. Great, and are there any amenities that we can expect like food and drinks and I don't know a disco car? So the consist of the train will consist of four coach cars which are just regular coaches and then there'll be one cafe car. So cafe car you'll be able to get a sandwich or whatever on your trip down soda something like that. There's even a couple of, I think, Cabot cheese and things like that Vermont products. So it's nice. There's Wi-Fi on the train, free Wi-Fi. So if you want to take a trip down you can have your device go in the whole time. You know, yeah, they're all bike racks. They'll be bike racks. So if you wanted to load your bike on you can take your bike. And I'm assuming there's a bathroom. Oh, yes. Yeah, restrooms and every car, yeah. Yep. And generally how long are the stops? So what I read is that the stops between Burlington and New York City will be Middlebury, no, Virginia's Middlebury, Castleton, is that correct? So the Vermont stops, obviously Burlington, Virgin's, Middlebury, Rutland, Castleton. But then you get into New York and there's several stops. Fort Edwards goes down through Saratoga Springs, Albany, all through there until you get to New York Penn. Currently the trip, like I said, currently the trip today, as of today, we leave Rutland at 1220 and we're in New York at 545. So, you know, it's a pretty quick trip really. I don't think you could probably drive it and park your car in New York and do the whole deal. I think it's gonna be a little bit quicker on the train than it is with a car, so. And can you take a trip from Burlington to Saratoga or Burlington to Rutland? So you can, yeah, so you can do a trip to any one of those spots along the way. Absolutely. Great. Yeah, Saratoga is actually, because of the racetrack there, that's actually kind of a big destination point for many people. Right. Do you anticipate that it will relieve any traffic between Middlebury and Burlington? Like any, will it be cost effective for people to hop a train from Burlington or from Middlebury to Burlington? Well, I mean, it's possible, but this is, you gotta remember, this is what's called an inner city passenger train. It's not a commuter train. So it wouldn't be something that most people would use on a daily basis back and forth to work, but this is more of a longer range. It's called inner city passenger because it's more likely that you're gonna go from Burlington all the way to New York City. Cool. One of the things I appreciate in this discussion, we haven't spent a lot of time on it, but you have highlighted it, which is all the moving parts. I mean, it makes sense when we hear from you folks who've actually had to do the work of establishing this route, just how many different pieces there are, just like within agreements and the physical work of upgrading the infrastructure. And I mean, there's just a million parts and I don't know a fraction of it. It just makes me really appreciate, as we've heard expressed, how you've all come together to pull this off because for a layperson like me, it's like, yeah, trained in New York City, do it. And it's so easy to say that, but when you talk about all the pieces involved, then it's like, oh my God, you did it. So thanks for sharing. And I will tell you, I would like to make a comment that Chapin mentioned it earlier. We have had just an amazing team of folks working on this between Chapin's team, Parks and Rec, Seldon at VRS and his team, Melinda. Everybody that you're talking to today had a real big hand in this project and it has been complicated. We're very proud of it. I can tell you that because we've really come a long way and there's a lot of people that should be thanked for all their work on this project. And we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not hoboken, oops. So, Greg, I see that your hand is up. We have another presentation. If you can say something in one minute, you can have another bite at the apple here. Sure, okay, sure. Yeah, my quick question is that I've taken the train many, many, Ethan Allen many, many times between Castleton, which is a great station, and New York City. But occasionally, and I've taken friends and we've all complained about the quality of the cars, the passenger cars. And I know Amtrak, I think this new money that's coming in federal money, they're gonna be upgrading the Amtrak cars. Does Dan know anything about when these new cars might be put into service? And if so, will they be deployed on the Ethan Allen? Yeah, the answer, the short answer is yes. We will be getting new equipment for both the Vermonter and the Ethan Allen. The problem I have is I don't know when. Amtrak has a procurement contract out to build these. These aren't overnight things. You don't just go and buy these off a car lot. They have to build them. And they're doing this for not just Vermont. They're doing this all across the country. So I mean, it literally could be years before we see this equipment because they're just not, they're not even built yet. So, but yes, we will eventually be getting all new equipment. That's great. Wow, what a wonderful crew. It's just been so interesting. And I could certainly listen to you for another hour, or an hour more. But we have one more presentation and we wanna make sure that Andy and Ruby get their time. Thank you so much, Dan and Melinda and Noizo and Chapin and Selden. Thank you so much for your time and all you've done to bring this exciting new travel option to Brillentonians. Thank you for arranging this, Michelle. Oh, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. Great. So moving along, we have a presentation now by Andy Simon and Ruby Perry and they are going to talk about Save Open Space in Brillenton. Hi, I'm Andy Simon. We're actually gonna talk about the Barge Canal is what we're gonna talk about the Pine Street Barge Canal and we are part of a group called Save Open Space Brillenton. Hold on, I haven't quite... Well, I can do an introduction while you get up the screen sharing room, okay? We live on Locust Street around the corner from the Barge Canal so we've been involved with it. And I do wanna say that we have a railroad component to our presentation. So railroad fans will enjoy at least one part of this presentation. We have a little bit of a presentation about an eight or nine minute presentation and then we'd like to open it up for questions about the Barge Canal. I'm having trouble. It's not popping up. I'm having a little trouble sharing my screen. You're not getting the screen share room? No, it popped out of Chrome and into Firefox. Do you wanna share it and... Okay. Okay. No, wrong one. Okay. Yeah. And then you gotta go... Yeah. Slide show. So you wanna do it? Do that part? So, slide show. We... I'll go back to the start here. There's the railroad. So we wanna just... I'm gonna just interrupt you for one sec. Could you just introduce you and Ruby and your role? A little bit. Our role. My name is Andy Simon. I am among other things, award five NPA Steering Committee member, though that's not the capacity that I am in tonight. We are... Ruby and I are residents of Burlington and Ward five. And since... Well, most actively since last November, we've been involved with getting to know and advocating for conservation and remediation of the Pine Street Barge Canal under the banner of Save Open Space Burlington. Okay, thanks. Ruby, would you like to introduce yourself? I think that's plenty. Okay. So, here's where the Pine Street Barge Canal is in Burlington. I'm assuming that most people in Ward six or people on this call, know the Barge Canal, but just to get you oriented, I think that it's useful to sort of know where we are. We're talking about the site, that's west of Pine Street, north of BED and just near the railroad track. It's useful to have some history about the Pine Street Barge Canal. This is the area around the Barge Canal pre-1850s when it was all wetlands, transition zone between the growing city of Burlington and the lake. It's a large area you can see that was covered by wetlands in this period of time. And it was a hunting ground, a gathering ground, a fishing ground for indigenous people and early Euro-American residents of Burlington. The railroad came in 1849 and that was a big impact on this area among other things. This is the Rutland and Burlington Railroad that came in and built a track right between the wetlands and the lake and essentially cut off the access of the wetlands to the lake, the connection between the two. It also promoted a really rapid industrialization of Burlington. Just to get sort of an aerial picture at the top, you see Lake Champlain and just below that, the railway line, that's where Rutland and Burlington came in and you can see the Barge Canal right below that in this picture that's oriented that way. We'll come back to this picture because it's a good one. So in the second half of the 19th century lumber, the lumber industry was the big industry in Burlington and most of the lumber after the Vermont forests were depleted came from Quebec down the lake on sailing barges. Hence the Barge Canal. They needed to be able to store the lumber over the winter because the lake would freeze up so they couldn't get the lumber in continuously. So Lawrence Barnes, a name that you will know because of the school, who was one of the big lumber barons in Burlington decided to dredge a canal into the filled area, so all of this area here was all filled with wood chips and sawdust from the lumber mills. He dredged the canal into that area from the lake, built a drawbridge down here to get across the tracks and created this new lumber storage area. You can see Howard Street coming right down into it but the lumber industry went down very quickly in the 1890s. Another industry sprang up on the Barge Canal. This was a manufactured gas plant. It burned coal or it brought coal, turned coal from Pennsylvania that came up on the railroad into gas to use for businesses and households for lighting, heating and was a, this isn't a plant in Burlington but this is a similar plant in Rhode Island. It's a dirty industry. The gas is filtered through wood chips and the wood chips that were saturated with coal tar were taken out back in the Barge Canal, dumped in the water, dumped in the land, dumped in the old storage areas and that was the biggest source of pollution in this Barge Canal area was from that manufactured gas planted operated from 1900 to 1966, fairly recently. So the growing consciousness in the 70s of the environment led to the creation of the EPA and led to the legislation that created the Superfund sites all over the country. And the Barge Canal was added to the national priorities list of the Superfund legislation in 1983. The EPA after a very long contentious, fairly contentious process in Burlington recorded a record of decision in 1998 that instead of aggressively going after a remedy that would solve the contamination decided to cap, essentially just cap the bottom of the canal itself and leaves the land pretty much alone with frequent monitoring by the EPA every five years. So we're going back to look at the land itself in this period of time since 1998, we're really since the closing down of the manufactured gas plant. The trees have grown up, there's cottonwood, there's red osier dogwood, there's invasive species like buckthorn and frag mites, but the trees have repopulated the area and lots of animals was there, beavers, herons, Canada geese, I don't know if you've been down there, I've seen a bald eagle down there and lots of different kinds of animals, fish and smaller creatures live in the barge canal. This is what turned in the other orientation, the North-South orientation, this is what the zoning looks like at the barge canal right now. The middle section right here with the green around it is under conservation zoning. And this part right here in the middle is owned by the city, it's 11 acres that's owned by the city. These parcels over here are privately owned and so are these two 453 and 501 Pine Street are also privately owned. The yellow boundary is the federal super fund site boundary all around including BED and DPW buildings down to here, down to Lakeside Avenue. Ruby, you wanna go on? Yes, so here is where we started our campaign to conserve and remediate the barge canal. On a cold day in mid-November, we gathered with friends and neighbors to consider how much the barge canal has done to heal itself and protect the lake. With debris from the land, late flowers and herbs from our gardens and paintings of mushrooms and birds, we created this collective offering of our gratitude. On that day in a very real way, we committed ourselves to caring for this land. There are many reasons to conserve and care for the barge canal site. So we'll take a short drone tour of the area while we discuss them. Put on your seatbelts, please. So the most obvious benefit to Burlington is a healthy functioning wetlands habitat in the middle of the South End, home to mammals, birds, insects, plants, fungi and microbes. The living barge canal protects the lake by providing flood control for the South End and helps the city manage its stormwater runoff. It stabilizes the soil and contains and slowly transforms the toxins left over from industry. The living barge canal sequesters carbon, creates climate resilience and nature-based solutions to climate disruption. The barge canal has the potential to remind us of our history, indigenous, natural and industrial history. Let's just watch this for a few seconds of its remaining. Okay, we're back to the map. At this point, the city of Burlington, as Andy mentioned, owns 11 acres in the center of the barge canal land, purchased decades ago in preparation for construction of the Southern Connector Highway. The rest is privately held. The small private parcels along the railroad track are wetlands and are already zoned for conservation. This is where our regeneration work needs to be started immediately. And we began this spring to care for the land. We need to clean up the extensive debris for decades of neglect at the barge canal. Starting in April, there will be a volunteer effort to inventory the plants and animals on the public land. Non-native buckthorn has taken over large parts of the site along the canal and native species need to be planted and nurtured. We're envisioning the site as a forested parkland. Some see a botanical garden of diverse native species. We see an educational center with interpretive pathways to learn about our natural history. Our indigenous presence on the land, as well as the obvious industrial history embodied there. There's a great deal of interest in using the barge canal as a laboratory for much needed cold weather bioremediation research. And the UVM class in plant and soil sciences has already designed their semesters project there. The Wildlands Park can offer safe public access with boardwalks and a possible route through the bike path, through to the bike path. We would like to expand the conserved land to include all of the private land at the barge canal. We're exploring the idea of rematriation of the land. And that's opening to its original inhabitants for ritual and traditional uses by entering into partnership with our Abnaki neighbors. We have been active these last few months. Our main strategy has been to learn as much as we can about the barge canal and to get as many people aware and involved as possible. And you can help. Your voice is essential to conserving this land. The city needs to be a partner to help with the active regeneration of the land, including cleaning it up as well as restoring and protecting the natural ecosystem. We did not expect the city to buy the two private parcels that are for sale. There is interest both in private donations and foundations to purchase the land. But now is the time to get involved. So write your city councilor speak at public input sessions on south and rezoning, talk to neighbors and friends, show up for pop-up events, which will be happening, participate in citizen science projects that are coming up and visit the barge canal and sign the petition. And that leak will be included in the minutes. So our vision for conserving the barge canal land is a paradigm shift, a different way of thinking about development and open land and about our responsibility to clean up after ourselves. A different way of thinking about our relationship to our home. So we really appreciate this time with you to tell you something about this vision that we're carrying. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Ruby. Thank you, Andy. Do any of our participants have questions or comments to share? We hope so. How many people have been down to the barge canal? Raise your hand. So I'm raising my hand because I have a question. Okay. I haven't actually been through the barge canal. I've been kind of on the periphery of it. Are there actually like, are there any restrictions to sort of like going and walking? I saw some trails kind of in the satellite image. Like, I assume people are doing that. I never have. Are there restrictions to accessing the space? The access to the space, the answer, the practical answer is no. The, you have to nuance that a little bit. Going in from Pine Street, you're crossing private land owned by Rick Davis. And he has never put up a no trespassing sign. He has never done anything to prevent access across his land. We've asked him for permission to access the public land through his land because there's a UVM class down there. There's a St. Michael's class that's gonna be doing a case study at the barge canal. We're gonna be doing this plant and animal inventory starting in April. And Rick has been very kind about letting people just walk across. You can get there other ways. You can get there from the Maltex building parking lot. You can get there really with much difficulty from the BED side, but the easiest way is to just walk down there. Right now in the wintertime, you can go down to Myers Bagels to the end of the driveway and go on the ice. That's where most people are accessing it. And just walk down, walk down that way. It's pretty well frozen. It's pretty shallow. So you can get there that way. So I see a question from Tom Hyde. Yep, Tom. Wow, I didn't realize. Oh, I just raised my hand because I had been to the barge canal. But the fact is that, you know, my impression is the barge canal in addition to being a wild space, a lot of the water from the streets in Burlington runs into the barge canal and through there and then out to the lake that way. And I have heard that, you know, street water is not very clean. It's got all the stuff that cars leave. But the water that runs out of the barge canal into the lake is as clean as the lake. So it provides a water, whatever. I don't want to say purification because the lake is hardly pure, but it does help deal with street runoff, which I think is kind of interesting. Yeah. That's a really important point. The barge canal is a crucial part of the stormwater system in Burlington for two reasons. One is the one you brought up, Tom, the natural filtration that goes on from just street runoff, just surface runoff. But there's also the major combined sewer outfall overflow in Burlington because of the combined sewer system, stormwater and sewer system goes right down in back of DPW into the barge canal and depends on the barge canal to, as you say, filter it effectively. And the barge canal land and the water are both essential to that. You know, I do want to say that the land in the barge canal, and I didn't emphasize this quite enough, is that the EPA, when they made their record of decision, they identified 56 contaminants of concern in the barge canal soil. And these included obviously because of the coal tar hydrocarbons, but also numerous heavy metals. So a lot of work needs to be done down there. Now, when the EPA came in in the 80s, their proposal to Burlington in the 1990s, early 1990s was to scoop up all of the contaminated soil at the barge canal. I mean, really all of it, create this giant toxic waste dump 25 feet high and 13 acres of toxic waste dump and park it there by the lake. And people in Burlington looked at that proposal and said, uh-uh, really just rose up. I mean, I don't know how many people are on this call, we're part of that, but lots of people got involved. And so did elected officials, city counselors, Senator Leahy, the mayor, and the EPA after having proposed first a 30 day comment period, extended the comment period to six months. And then for the first time in EPA history withdrew their proposed remedy because of the opposition. And for the first time ever, they created this council of local residents and stakeholders and scientists and let them come up with a solution, which they did after five years. And really it was quite extraordinary process that led to this outcome that wasn't a huge toxic waste dump. So Andy, we have just literally two minutes left. I have a question. I was wondering if Karen could quickly comment or just give us a minute of feedback about what you know about the city's position on this proposal, if you're there. You're there. Okay. Could we extend it if we talk more about the railroad? Sorry, we still, we preserved your time. We just, we did preserve your time. You know, I don't know that I'm really in a position to comment on it. I know that I've received the information that Ruby and Andy have both referred to. And honestly, I think it is probably, falls under the purview of the Parks, Art, and Culture Committee. And that is actually the committee that Joan chairs. And I'm not, we have there, don't believe there's been a meeting of that committee in a while. So I'm not really sure where that stands, but would imagine that that's where that would, where that would go. So I really, I really don't know the answer to that, but I have, I have received all the information they have sent in April. I will be, I will be down there watching them do their inventory. Don't know that I can do it myself, but I will certainly be watching. Andy is, or, and Ruby, is there anything, I mean, you have a, another minute. Is there something that you haven't had a chance to explain or comment on that you would like to? Well, I think that I can say that we have talked with every city official from Parks and Rec, to Planning Commission, to Conservation Board, and we have found no support so far. And the primary reason is because the mayor has a plan for redevelopment of that land. And that's why we say that it is key that people let them, let their city officials know that this is an important development process. It's a different paradigm of a development. This is to centralize the land and what it does already for Burlington and what it can do for people. And just to remind you of the citizens of Burlington, there are 52 brown fields in Burlington. We're talking about a superfund site and partially a brownfield. And all of that land, we don't know how to do with it except to scoop it up and take it away. And our vision is that we finally stop and stop passing it along to Coventry or wherever it'll go and start to learn how to remediate the land ourselves. And we have a lot of information, a lot of, it's like the forefront of research, scientific research now is how we heal the land from those toxins, both containing them and actually healing them and that Burlington could become and there's much interest in this from UVM and from the Good Institute and from St. Michael's that it become a training center for bioremediation. Great, thank you, Ruby. It sounds like this is worthy of another installment down the road where we can hear more and as things develop and there's more to report. So... Could I just say one more word, Michelle? Just like 30 seconds. This will be discussed further down the road, especially when the city begins public input sessions on South End rezoning, which haven't been scheduled yet but should be coming up in the next couple of months. And I think this will enter into that discussion. So I encourage people to be involved. And sign the petition. If you sign the petition, you will get regular updates and you'll know what's going on, where there are meetings, what decisions have been made, where you can have input. So sign the petition and you will get all, you'll find out everything that we find out, which... Okay, great. It's hard. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for waiting through the extended panel discussions and thank you for coming and putting together this presentation for us. Thanks for including us. Oh, you're very welcome. Karen. I just didn't get my chance at the beginning of the meeting to say, wanted to second everything that Nelson said and then some about the amazing work that has been done on the NPA Steering Committee by Matt and also Michelle by you. You've five years, I can't believe it's been five years. Five years certainly has a way of flying by, doesn't it? You've done so much work to bring these NPA meetings to life. And I think a lot of people don't realize the amount of work that goes in to developing the agenda, to assigning responsibilities, to making sure that the people are here, particularly in the Zoom era and also to, well, certainly to Nelson and to Joel for continuing on, but also Michelle, thank you very, very much for five amazing years. You're very welcome. You're very welcome. It has been an honor and a privilege and a joy to participate on the NPA. And Karen, you have always been there as a guidepost and a historical container of all that's come before. You've been a fabulous reference for us. And I really appreciate your just always being there to answer questions and provide your feedback and you have been a great friend to our steering committee. So thank you. Great. Well, with that, I will say good night and thank you and this is my last meeting on the steering committee, the ward six NPA. And it's been a really good meeting for me. I hope it's not for you all. All right, have a great evening, folks. Thanks again. Thanks. Have a good night.