 You just need to press the button in front of you that says push. Great, thank you so much, President Paul, city counselors. Thank you, as President Paul said, I'm Celia Bird, chair of the Burlington Board of Health. Recording in progress, the Burlington Board of Health. And it's an honor for all of us to serve as your Board of Health, and we appreciate the opportunity this evening to highlight a few of our, what we feel are our most impactful activities, actions, and community collaborations from this year, which are described in the annual report that we submitted to you. The mission of the Board of Health is to educate the citizens of Burlington, promote, improve, and protect their health and wellbeing while contributing towards building a healthy community and environment in which to live. And this year, our focus has been to consider the most vulnerable people in our community while doing that, to think about what are the most pressing public health issues, and then consider how the safety and health of the Burlington community is enhanced by looking at social determinants of health, working with community organizations addressing health disparities. We work with you, city council, and city residents, while also trying to share useful and evidence-based health information focusing on culturally congruent and multilingual methods. We thought a lot about our goals for next year, and we want to increase access to health-related information, continue to use data analysis and forage community partnerships. We will continue to conduct our health equity-focused data analysis of our past pesticide and herbicide use application data and try to modernize our data projects to convert existing paper records on pesticide and herbicide use applications to an online format. We have several sections we're going to highlight, but I also wanted to mention the heat-related emergencies in addition to our pesticide applications, that we hope that we contributed a valuable modification to existing practices for the cooling stations this year, as well as focusing on accessibility in the location of those cooling stations, working with community services or community members. Jenny Tomzak is gonna talk about prevention of gun violence. Before she does, I just wanted to also highlight a couple other things, which is we feel very proud to have worked with several community organizations this year. The Howard Center for Safe Recovery, the Chittenden Clinic, Vermont Legal Aid, the Office of Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging, the Community and Economic Development Office, UVM Health Network Community Health Needs Assessment Team and the Chittenden Accountable Community or Health Group. So we're appreciative of all the collaborations we've been able to make this year. Thank you, President Paul, counselors for these. If you could just get a little bit closer to the... Great, thank you. Is it working? Yeah. Thank you for this opportunity to update you on our latest work within the Board of Health. Gun violence is one of the topics we've been working on to address this year, and it's closely interconnected with our other main areas of focus, which are systemic racism and substance use disorder. In response to an accelerating increase in gun violence in our community as well as nationwide, we presented a resolution on the prevention of gun violence to City Council last November. This resolution consisted of requests for new legislation at the state level and for non-legislative actions to address the many aspects and root causes of gun violence and violence in general. We're encouraged by the Burlington City Council's unanimous approval, followed by unanimous approval of their own resolution relating to addressing gun violence in Burlington, which expanded upon these requests, including preventing those convicted of hate crimes from having guns. Both resolutions asked the Vermont legislature to allow Burlington to ban guns from establishments with a liquor license and require safer storage of firearms. Both resolutions made a broader request to allow municipalities to enact reasonable firearm regulations by ending Vermont's firearm preemption law. Unfortunately, repeal of the 1988 preemption rule has not been addressed at the state level yet. However, we are encouraged that state legislators responded to ours and others' calls to combat the gun violence crisis by passing two of their own resolutions this year. House resolution H-230 is an act aimed at suicide prevention by reducing access to lethal means, requiring a 72-hour waiting period prior to firearm purchase, creating new gun storage requirements and expanding access to extreme risk protection orders. Senate resolution S-4 seeks to reduce crimes of violence by juveniles by reducing access to dangerous weapons. It also provides community safety grants for outreach and intervention. Both were passed in the Senate and House on May 5th. At the local level, we are grateful to Mayor Weinberger for creating the mayor's task force to reduce gun violence within the office of racial equity, inclusion, and belonging as a means of addressing gun and other violence with racial equity and trauma informed solutions guided by data analysis and community input. We would like to contribute to these and any other efforts to improve mental health, data collection, and analysis, and to increase awareness and education. Going forward, we seek to partner with city council, REIB, other city departments, community organizations, and our schools as needed to address the public health crisis of gun violence within our community. Thank you. Thank you. Inez, do you want to take an opportunity now to speak to your section, please? Yes. Can you all hear me all right and see me? Yes, we can hear you great. Great. Thank you so much for having us. I echo that of the other board members. It's a wonderful opportunity to share our work. I will share the focus of the board on eradicating systemic racism in the past year. We're committed to examining and addressing systemic racism as a public health crisis, wherein we have tasked ourselves in this past year to identify key Burlington community stakeholders to build relationships with local groups whose efforts do align with that of reducing and eliminating disparities through racial justice. So these meetings have served us well in understanding and establishing our own board's presence and being an effective and collaborative partner in a broad yet crucial effort to address and eliminate systemic racism on both internal and external scales. More specifically, we see the work of our board to be that of improving equitable access to care and services that relate to health, safety, and wellbeing. So to date, I'll briefly outline the groups we have met with and the direction of the work. We've met with the Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. These connections have been fruitful in ensuring our work is guided by the principles of REIB to stay aligned with the focus of their committee. It's led the Board of Health data modernization efforts, whereby we've chosen to take a closer look at past herbicide and pesticide applications to assess those for health equity. In this project, we're analyzing data to examine spatial trends that may exist in application approvals, pesticide and herbicide use, and demographics. We've met with the Community and Economic Development Office. Our partnership with ZEDO has resulted in increased language access to public health messaging and announcements made by the board as we're able to expand our reach through a more inclusive Burlington community through their multilingual newsletter that's distributed in eight languages and shared through trusted community voices. And lastly, we've met with the UVM Health Network Community Health Needs Assessment Team and the Chitinin Accountable Community for Health, whereby we've led efforts to use their evidence-based practice to inform the area of need that we can focus on. That being housing needs. So we appreciate an evidence-based approach to using their Community Health Needs Assessment and their implementation strategy plan to steer our direction and seeing how we can impact housing needs in the community. Thanks so much. The evening was the mitigating the impacts of substance use disorder and reducing the number of discarded syringes in our community. And that was a really important component of our work this evening, led by Josh Geary and Patrick Payne. The main focus of that was to reduce the number of discarded syringe needles in our community. And that was done through working with key stakeholders as we've described, one of the main things we do is try to collaborate with our community organizations. And I named some of those before. And actually working with this eClickFix system for the discarded syringes to identify where the high-frequency areas are. Use, start using data to look at the amount of heat map and validate the location of the sharps disposal containers and then plan to increase that over the year. Those highlight our main aspects and we'd love questions on anything. Great, thank you. Thanks so much for being here again and for this presentation on this important work. We will go to the council if there are questions or comments that councilors would like to make. Councilor Bergman. Hi, thanks for this great report. I got, and I think the rest of the council got a complaint regarding pesticide use, significant pesticides down on the waterfront, I think, the railroad. And I'm wondering if you guys are at all looking into that. Yeah, thank you for your question. I'll let you mostly speak to that, but I wanna start by saying that when I received that as well, I think one of the important things is how much we have started to work with our community and take on some of these issues and expand what we are able to do within our limitations of what we're able to do. And so we are working with that particular community member and had been prior and also recognizing that the railroad is not all within the jurisdiction of Burlington, but we're increasing particularly this year, the signage and awareness we're providing to the community so that they know what is being sprayed, where and when. Bill Ward and I have met with the railroad, sorry, with the state agency, which oversees the, sorry, which approves the permit application by the railroads to apply pesticides. And we've been in contact with them for a few years now and met with them in person this year. And we appreciate the citizen you're mentioning for bringing forward a lot of good information about the pesticides and it's inspired us to look deeper into it. And it ends up being a balance between controlling the weeds on the railroad to prevent derailment versus adding pesticides to the environment. So we're doing our best to mitigate that as much as possible including advanced notification and signage when the pesticides are applied and that continues to be an ongoing work we're doing. Thank you. Thanks for doing that for myself. Anything that I as a counselor or anything that the council can do with this regard is really important. So thanks very much. Thank you so much, Councillor Berkman. Any other counselors who have any, Councillor Grant. Hi, thank you for your report. I just had a couple of questions around the item of trying to reduce the number of discarded syringes in our community. Are there any active programs and can you give more specific details about those programs, where you feel they stand? What is impeding more progress in that regard? I will, we can. I wanted to provide some details. The individuals who worked most closely with us are not here in person with us this evening. So I hope that we can provide any further information that you'd like also in the future. We worked primarily with, there are several organizations who are already working on this. So our main goal is to collaborate with the community organizations who are really working hard on this and then look at what is our capacity for sharing this information, particularly looking at outreach to community members who might not receive this information because that's part of our mission. And then also to look at the impact on the city and figure out if there are ways we can use data to better understand it and then continue to again increase the capacity of the organizations already working on it. So specifically the Howard Center for Safe Recovery, Chittenden Clinic and Vermont Legal Aid are working on this as organizations and we feel that we can provide strong collaboration with them to continue and expand their work. I described the heat map a little bit and we're trying to figure out where the issues are most focused in, where in the city the problem is the worst and then to work with thinking about how we can use our budget and then also our website and other tools that are at our disposal that we can improve our technology so that people have more access to understanding what systems are in place for them in the language that they speak and in the ways that they're going to access that information and then also actually provide more disposal containers. So figure out what it is that works and use our budget as well as like I've described our communication methods to get people to those disposal containers. So in the next year we plan to allocate funding and then also increase some of the infrastructure and also use the Board of Health to advocate for increased harm reduction services. So safe injection sites, increasing access to naloxone, fentanyl and access to fentanyl and xylosine test strips. So we look carefully at our budget and those are not all things that will necessarily to be able to increase this year but it's something we look forward to in each year figuring out what will make the biggest difference at that time. Thank you. So with regards to needles again and the different organizations that are involved and the coordination, is there one organization or is it the Board of Health that's responsible for the outreach and tracking, for lack of a better word, the productivity? Like who's tracking the number of needles that are being taken off the street? So you have a heat map for activity but is someone actually tracking the number of needles and? I think the best answer that I have right now is we're using the data that's coming out of C-Click Fix which is the city's operation for if people report a found syringe using those ones that are picked up for understanding where those are. So that's the main data that we have coming in. It's not the only data that exists but more importantly it's not the only information about usage and where syringes are but it's what we have now that works well and so we're trying to increase our ability to use that and get as much out of that as we can so that we can help to solve the problem. I wouldn't describe the Board of Health as organizing all of that. I certainly wouldn't wanna take credit where we're working hard to collaborate with all the community organizations that have been doing it for a long time as well as the city. Do you collaborate with say the Burlington Parks Department because the Parks Department, a lot of those employees are put in situations where they have to be responsible for disposing of needles but I don't think they necessarily use C-click fix all the time. Our hope is that they would but I certainly, yes, we want to collaborate and continue to collaborate with the Parks and Recreation and also continue, I mean part of the Board of Health is figuring out, is working on this project but then also thinking about the safety of the individuals in our community who are finding those and how they dispose of them and that's part of the advocacy and thinking about every citizen's health and safety. So continuing to work on making sure that if someone finds that whether they work for the city or they don't, that they know what to do with it and how to dispose of it properly and if that information isn't readily accessible or it's a barrier to people being able to dispose of needles or syringes and wanna change that and figure out whether that's linguistic or where the information is or what information they have. So continuing to find those barriers and address them. Last question is, do you have a copy of your heat map that you refer to? I don't at this moment but it's not, it's certainly something we could... Could you, I would appreciate that. Okay. Thank you so much. Great, thanks so much, Councilor Grant. We'll go to Councilor Travers, Mickey and then Hightower. Thanks, President Paul. I just have a brief comment. First of all, thank you very much for your service on the Board of Health. And I commend you greatly for stepping up and coming here to meet before the full council. I spent a number of years on the Housing Board of Review and then on the Parks Commission. I don't think I once came in person to give our annual report. And so I really appreciate your reaching out here. I appreciated your reaching out around gun violence and our having an opportunity to work on that together. And we'll look forward to an opportunity to work on that in the future. In joining the REIB committee, I met an S. Castro there. And so it's very clear that you as a Board are taking your role seriously in our inserting yourselves in very important ways, rightfully so on a number of important issues for our community. I think one of the only concerns I have about your great work and that of a number of other Boards and Commissions with the City is that if you actually look in writing at our charter at what the role of Board of Health is, it was clearly born out of concerns around spoiled milk and cream, right? You look at our charter and the Board of Health is responsible for licensing around milk and cream and meat and so on. And our ordinances don't necessarily talk about in a clear way your role on gun violence, your role on substance use and syringes, your role on pesticides and other issues along those lines. And so it's a testament to the group that you have right now. And my suggestion, particularly in my role as Chair of the Ordinance Committee is that as your 10 years inevitably wrap up on the Board of Health and I hope that you'll stay on in service for quite some time, but of course it won't go on forever, that you think some about how we in our ordinance can memorialize the work that you're doing, such that it's in our ordinance, perhaps even in our charter to give you all and your successors sort of a clear path to continue the great work that you're doing. So we can follow up on that, but just a thought as we receive your great report. Thank you. Great, thanks so much. We will go to Councilor McGee and then High Tower. Thank you, President Paul. And thank you both for, thank you all for presenting this evening. It was great to work with you on the gun violence resolution and really appreciate the research and time that you put into that and hardened to see some of those efforts materializing. And I'm also grateful for the work that you've done around the overdose crisis and substance use more broadly. The legislature passed at least one bill related to substance use disorder this session and advanced another related to overdose prevention centers that didn't quite make it across the finish line, but hopefully will next session. And so in thinking about where to direct your time and energy looking at that issue going forward, you know, I think the bill that passed the session authorized drug checking services which go beyond the information that somebody would get from a fentanyl or xylazine test strip. And so as we get those services here in Burlington, making sure that that information is coordinated in addition to those other harm reduction services and also that bill approved expanded access to naloxone with vending machines and kiosks. So that will be another component that I hope is that funding gets distributed. Some of the you all will look at as well. And lastly related to the overdose prevention centers, I'm hopeful that that bill is gonna pass that will not just authorize overdose prevention centers throughout the state, but also hopefully come with its funding. And I think one of the big questions that will have to be answered as we think about starting an overdose prevention center in Burlington is where exactly will that do the most good? And I don't know to what extent you all have time or resources to look into that question, but I think it would at least be helpful for me and I know a number of organizations and individuals would be interested in starting such a program to have some collaboration on that as well. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor McGee. We'll go to Councilor Hightower and then to Councilor Chang. Yeah, and my first comment is some letter Councilor Travers is, I feel like the Board of Health has really started expanding the work that you all are doing over the past few years. And I don't know if that just is the way that the Council is perceiving it or if you started doing a lot more work, but really just thank you for diving deep into some of the city's most difficult topics and appreciate the amount of time and energy that went into this. And I apologize for missing the presentation, but I did read the report. And so if somebody already asked this question, but of course we all have different comments on different parts of it. For me, I'm a housing person first and so yeah, interested in, and you don't have to answer this now, but definitely as chair of the city and our committee and also just as an individual councillor as you think about what you're gonna be doing on housing equity over the next year would love to be a partner in that. And especially as I feel like the one thing that Councillor Carpenter and I argued about came to agreement on and then worked very hard for is unfortunately still stalled, which is of course the just cause of iction piece that we passed through. So anything that, and I know that a lot of my ideas and like it doesn't really make sense until we have that protection in place and so anything that you all are thinking about would love to hear about it, collaborate on it, anything like that. Thank you. I think our main focus particularly when we think about the most formal people in our community is to think about how race equity and health come together and what are the social determinants of health. And because our city is the size that it is we're able to look at the whole city and all of the citizens and where the impact will be, where inequities exist and how we can work to link them to health and then collaborate with the organizations and counselors who are most passionate about changing that so that everyone has access to equal housing. So thank you. Great, thanks so much. We'll go to Councillor Zhang. Yeah, thank you. Thank you again. This is such a great presentation and I wanna expand, you know, all the appreciation from my colleagues about the work that you have been doing. And also to say what I'm mostly interested about and, you know, thankful for is about your approach. You are not here to reinvent the wheels but you are here to collaborate with existing efforts in the city about health, about the well-being of everyone in this community. And that's great. Reading your report and hearing your presentation today touching on the CNA report, the community health need assessment from the UVM MC is just evidence based approach on what the community already said they want or what they already said is missing. That's great. And the collaboration piece, I don't know how many times Ines have participated in the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee meetings. And even if she can't make it, someone else will take her place. I think, and also you sometime witness conversation that are very hard and not digestible but just the professionalism that you guys show. And also we are here to learn and to grow. We are here to add to whatever you guys are doing as just is just amazing. And also hearing all the aspect of collaboration with all the city departments is just amazing. I love the approach. I love the thinking. And I love also the way that we, some of you such as Jennifer, we meet Sundays or Saturdays sometimes in coffee shops to just talk about issues related to gun violence or housing to new Americans. This is just amazing. Now, let me ask you my first question. What do you think you will need from the city in order to do a better job or to do your job in the way that you see the vision? What else will that be? We all do. I think that what you're already doing is really excellent. We understand that the Board of Health is a citizen advisory council to the city council. So the best that we can do is say these are the most pressing public health issues. And this is the population that we've identified as the most vulnerable and the most impacted by this most pressing public health issue. And then say this is what we think we can do. And then we need to bring it to city council. And so our hope is that broadly you will listen to us and you will think about how we can make subcommittees and collaborations with the organizations in the city and then take action and change the things that will impact those health disparities that impact the most vulnerable people. So we have the ability to collaborate like you described and we really like doing that. We love, we have a group of people that are very excited about using evidence-based data-driven practices. And so we're looking into improving the technology that we have in the website and looking at the data that is available to us to better understand the issues. And we're working together and then with citizens to try to come up with solutions. But we can't necessarily complete all the solutions without the city council. We can't so that's, and that is our purpose is to bring to you ideas and the hopes that you will help us enact them in the city and then also bring them to the state level and hopefully create some change. So thank you for what you've already done for that and we look forward to doing that in the future. Yeah, thank you. And I think I will help you maybe say what I have heard you said. So basically it seems that you want to better make sure that the technology that you have in place is performed, your website is better. And if there is a dollar amount, I think that's where exactly the city council can come in or the mayor's office to say, yes, just make the request of what you need. This is how what we need, how much it costs. And I'm pretty sure that people will do that. Thank you again. My second question is about the declaration of racism as public health emergency in the city of Burlington. And I was just wondering if you have heard of it and if you have exported or if you are pushing in order for the city to make action into it and what the collaboration effort should look like in that area. Thank you. If Inez is still on, would you like to start by answering that question? I am here. And thanks so much, Councillor Zheng. And those other councillors that I've said very complimentary things, we do appreciate it. And you are right in perceiving that we have focused on expanding our work in some ways, but we do, we are trying to in some ways, keep our work realistic, right? And understand what is within our scope. And if I may just add to your first question, Councillor Dang, my impression in meeting with these groups and you're correct. And we really wanted to understand the needs and hear the needs first before our determining what is our role. My impression is when there's bottom-up work being done such that of so many amazing stakeholders, there is a gap in understanding policy impact and opportunity for policy change. And I think even within our board, we may be limited in understanding that scope. And I think that's where it's a very exciting collaboration to have conversations with you all, where you all see opportunity or see challenges or see barriers that we might not. So honest and transparent communication, I think would be the ideal to be working towards together. Speaking to racism as a public health crisis, I can begin by saying we have just begun the work of understanding what is the data that we should be using in Burlington. As Celia mentioned, it's very important for us to take an evidence-based approach because while we may recognize that palpably and culturally the need for racial justice is undeniable, I think greatest impact can be through using data to inform the citizens of Burlington and to describe stories with a base of knowledge, really of collection of data. So we've just begun that effort and we are looking to the opportunities in the next year of how can we use and access information regarding, let's say violence in the community or housing insecurity or even within our own work. We wanna make sure that we look within and without in our approval of pesticide use and our approval of applications. Is there an equitable system in place and where is there opportunity to reevaluate processes and challenge those things? So I'm sorry that's sort of a nebulous answer but very, very open to any ideas and conversations. Thank you all again so much for the presentation and for all that you do. Thank you. Great, thanks so much, Councilor Chang. Lots of questions, lots of interest. Seeing no other counselors in the queue as you, I'm sure have gathered by our enthusiastic questions. We're here to support your efforts throughout the year, not just when you, not just coming and giving your annual report and just wanna thank you, Silia, Jenny, Inez and also your colleagues who aren't here this evening for your time in service to our city. Thanks so much and thanks again for being here. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for the invitation. Thank you. We are, it isn't quite 7.15, which was the time for the, which was the time for public forum. Perhaps maybe just in the couple of minutes that we have, we can move on in our agenda and go to item number four, which is climate emergency reports. Are there, is there any counselor who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? Councillor Bergman. Let's see if we can use this time effectively. This is actually for a counselor, Barlow, who could not be here. He's actually, my apologies, he and Councillor Chang are joining us. I mean, he did ask me to give a report about the McNeil Symposium that the Transportation Energy and Utility Committee is putting on June 13th in this room at 6.30. I think that the funding is in front of us if it wasn't passed last week, but what we are attempting to do is really get to the public question that has really been front and center about the burning of biomass and the role of McNeil. And we have heard in this room criticisms and we have heard defenses of McNeil and what we're really trying to do is get participants who are knowledgeable about the operation of the plant, the ecology and the economics of harvesting biomass fuel and the science of harvesting and burning biomass for electricity all in the context of the climate emergency. And so we have got some folks that BED has arranged including several foresters, Harris Rowan and Ali Koseba who is a UVM forestry professor and Harris is the chair of a biomass task force I think at a state level as well as the author of the VEC report on the emissions coming out of McNeil. And we have got professor Juliet Rooney Varga an expert on the burning of biomass who will also be attending and is part of an international group of scientists working internationally but also in the Northeast because she's from UMass Lowell regarding biomass. So I think that at the very least we will end up with an event that if we're really good and we're really lucky we will all at the end be speaking the same language. We may not draw the same policy conclusions but we at least when people talk about the harvesting of biomass at McNeil will all have a common knowledge will have a common framework in terms of the science and it will be focused not abstractly about the harvesting of wood and the burning of wood but actually the practices that we are using at McNeil and the burning that we are doing at McNeil so that we can decide what should we do and again this is for all of us the climate emergency affects all of us and it affects our grand babies and their babies along the way so I'm really excited about this. Thanks for the opportunity. Great thank you very much counselor Berkman. Are there any other counselors who wish to share a climate emergency report? Seeing none, counselor Berkman gave us the perfect segue to the next item which we can get to which is item number seven committee report so we've heard about a little bit about what Tuke is doing I don't know if you have a meeting scheduled if you wanted to mention that and did wanna also acknowledge that counselor Barlow in addition to counselor Jang, counselor Barlow was also joining us via Zoom. Are there any counselors who wish to offer a committee report? Counselor Travers. Thank you President Paul. Also turning to counselor Berkman it would be helpful if you could list again the date of the symposium if you wouldn't mind our turning back to you after that. The 13th of June at 6.30 here in Contois. Thank you very much. So if counselor Berkman would allow he and I are co-chairing the joint committee between the Ordinance Committee and Charter Change Committees to review the question of police oversight and accountability. We held our first meeting and have two additional meetings scheduled for this month, one on May 23rd and another on May 30th. I believe I can speak on behalf of the committee where there's some sense that these meetings will last through the summer as we delve into and collect significant information on this important issue. After the meetings on the 23rd and 30th we'll look forward to perhaps reporting back to the full council at our meeting on June 5th as to the work we've done over our first three meetings. The Ordinance Committee itself has had two meetings on the rezoning proposal for the South End Innovation District. It appears we will need another meeting or two to wrap up that work. We have not scheduled our next meeting on that hoping to do so in early to mid June. Thank you. Great, thanks very much, Councilor Travers. Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I would like to let everyone know that the first meeting of the Parks, Arts and Culture Committee will be on May 24th from five to seven. We will meet in person in the Bushrow Conference Room or online via Zoom. And folks will be able to find the agenda for that meeting on the government meetings calendar hopefully in the next week or so. Thank you. Great, thanks very much. Councilor Hightower. All of the work that the city and our committee has done to date is on today's council agenda as item 6.01 and 6.03. But we are having our next meeting May 25th at 5.30. Great, thanks so much. Probably can maybe get in, Councilor Grant, did you have a committee report? Not necessarily a report, but RAIB has continued to work on the Juneteenth celebration which will be Saturday, June 17th. And I just wanted to put a reminder out there. There will be soon advertisements for all the beautiful events that will be happening downtown Burlington and just wanna make sure all Burlingtonians know that there will be shuttle buses throughout the city bringing people from different parts of the city into the downtown area. Thank you. Great, thanks so much. That actually works our way into city council general city affairs. If there is a councilor that wishes to offer a comment on general city affairs, now would be the time. Let me. Councilor Berkman. I would just say that the two is meeting on May 23rd at five o'clock. I think that we've got them lined up so that we'll go from one to the other in terms of the police and police matter. And I just wanna say that I spoke to Bill Ward who I don't see here but was regarding the story in seven days burned out. And he says that some troubling information regarding the response of the code enforcement office to the responsibilities of a landlord for the not relocating tenants was not entirely accurate. And I have asked him to clarify that because it's an incredibly disturbing report for anybody who hasn't read it. I would ask you to take a look at that and with regard to the way that we enforce our relocation ordinance. So I'm hoping that the record will be set straight and landlords will know that it is their responsibility when it's not the tenant's fault to relocate their tenants. Thank you. Thanks very much. Any other councilors with general city affairs comments? Yes. Please go ahead, Councilor Jang. Thank you, President Paul. Thank you for seeing me here. Yes, I just wanted to send a huge shoot out. Thank you so much to DPW, Japan Spencer and team. As you probably know, in the recent city sweep, citywide parking ban, there was substantial amount of issues, especially in the new Northland where some towed car are being parked in neighborhood streets. That brought some level of confusion and some level of concern from so many taxpayers in here. But very quickly, when we requested for Japan Spencer to provide a plan about next steps, he developed one that after he actually, they debriefed about the situation. And the plan is it was shared with the new Northland city councils and also it was put in our new Northland Facebook group. But the plan includes that the city will no longer be exclusively towing to residential neighborhoods, which is really appreciated. And also they will be towing cars to parking spears. I believe it's somewhere in the city and all the facilities that are less disturbed to residents, they will also be communicating clearly performance goals and to tow companies with contract that they have contract with. They will also be working more clearly about communication to the tow plane around the city for all city residents in the city. I just wanted to say, I mean, it's not easy sometimes to identify that issue was made and also to quickly debrief and bring another plan. And we're looking forward to what it will bring. But just thank you to DPW and Tim and thank you to all those that express their concern about this specific issue. Thank you, Council President. Great, thanks so much. Thanks, Councilor Jang. Before we get to public forum, we'll just round out the end of the agenda with that. My apologies, did you want to go? Yes, Councilor Travers. Thanks, President Paul. I just wanted to briefly follow up on the comment from Councilor Bergman. So the property on St. Paul Street, which is in Ward 5, which unfortunately suffered significant fire damage. I've also been in touch with Bill Ward and Patty Wayman in the Code Enforcement Office. And I just want to say they're owed a great deal of credit for the work that they've done with the tenants who unfortunately had to relocate because of that, my understanding, and I hope I'm not speaking at a turn here, but my understanding in communications with Bill Ward and Patty Wayman is that the owner of that property was served with formal notice of their requirement to pay the relocation expenses of those tenants. And in taking a closer look at our city ordinances, my understanding is that if the property owner does not pay up with respect to those relocation expenses, this is that the city pays those relocation expenses and is entitled to take a lean out on the property for the amount of any relocation expenses that are paid. So I understand that our Code Enforcement Office is well aware of their full authority under our ordinances, has been in close touch with the tenants here, and I trust an update will be forthcoming along those lines, but I appreciate Councillor Bergman bringing it up individually. I've been in touch with a couple of the tenants who were impacted and I'm grateful that it appears that they've found other lodging for the time being. Thank you. Great, thanks so much and thanks for that update. So again, before we just get, we're running a couple of minutes behind with Public Forum, but just to round out the end of the agenda as the mayor, due to a conference and personal commitment is not joining us this evening, so we won't have an update from the mayor, but to round out the end of the agenda with item number nine, just wanted to remind everyone that I think, just one more reminder about the fact that we will be repainting the Black Lives Matter Street mural on Sunday, June 4th. If you're interested in assisting or if you know of community members who are interested, all they need to do is show up at around eight o'clock on Sunday, June 4th, and we will be happy to have them help us. And as well, May 31 is the deadline for the annual commission and board appointments, so if there are any members of the community who are interested in serving on a commissioner board, please go on to the city website. We'll come right up on commissions and boards is the application, just submit it by May 31 and we will be in touch with you to set up a time to talk with you about your application. With that, we will go back to item number three, which is the public forum. Before we get to public forum and we have a number of people who would like to speak with us, just a few, just some information for those who may not be familiar with our process. There's a table in front of me and on that table is a light system. There are three lights. The green light will shine when you begin speaking, the second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and the last light is red and when that shines, your time is up. We ask that you please complete your comments when the sound and the light indicate that your time is up so that we are able to give everyone equal time and to also keep the public forum moving along. We have a hybrid system for public forum. So if you wish to speak in person, there are forms to my right in the back of the room. You can fill them out and then bring them to the clerk who is to my right in the front of the room. If you wish to speak via Zoom, you're welcome to do so. You just need to go on to burlingtonvt.gov forward slash city council, forward slash public forum and a form will come up. Please complete the form and your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have in my computer in front of me and that way I can call on you in the order in which you submitted a form. It's been our practice that Burlington residents have first priority to speak and we will go to Burlington residents that are joining us in contois who have submitted one of these forms and then we will go to Burlington residents online. We will go back to non-Burlington residents who are joining us in person and then returning online to non-Burlington residents. During public forum, we have really one request that we make and that is that you please use respectful language. We would like to remind everyone here and joining us online that there are a number of families who watch our council meetings and this is their connection with civic engagement, teaching their children about city government and public discourse. Please try to keep that in mind when you speak with us. And also if you can please direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table and please refrain from personalizing your comments. We really want to hear what you have to say and it's a lot easier for us to listen intently if you speak respectfully. With that, as I said, we have a number of people that are joining us in contois wanting to speak and I think all of them are Burlington residents. So the first is Romeo von Herman to be followed by Dave Mer. Good evening. Good evening Madam President, Councillors, City Administrative Team. Today I just want to highlight something that I think that is heartbreaking but yet not a secret to anyone out here. That is the situation that the unhoused members of our community face right here in Burlington. This dire situation that these folks face are they will be unhoused coming this fall and as somebody who interacts with them and sees the situation that they're going through, including mental health, drug addiction, it is heartbreaking to see what's happening to them. These folks do deal with people who prey on them, including smugglers, human traffickers, drug dealers and so on and so forth. I appeal on this council to look at a compassionate, tangible, resolute plans in dealing with this issue and providing adequate housing for these folks. Thank you. Thanks so much. Our next speaker is Dave Mer to be followed by Lucy Gluck. Welcome. My name's Dave Maher. I've lived in the area for almost 50 years and seen a lot of changes in those 50 years. I want to talk about a news program I saw last night on CNN. It's titled, What Happened to San Francisco? It's about the homeless. In San Francisco and how the homeless population has exploded in recent years. Did anyone else here see that by the way? Anyway, I encourage everyone to see that. As part of that newscast, they interviewed a number of people living on the streets. What they found out is a lot of them were from out of town. They went from San Francisco, they're from outlying areas, sometimes as far away as Portland, Oregon. And they went to San Francisco because San Francisco just happens to be a great place to be homeless. They provide great services for the homeless. They provide food, they provide bathrooms, and they provide needles. And it's a great place to buy cheap drugs. And as other bonuses, you can shoot up in public and shoplift without having to fear that the cops will arrest you. So it sounds like a tough situation, but I have to wonder if some of those people would be better off if San Francisco wasn't quite so welcoming, didn't have quite so many services and wasn't such a nice place to hang out on the streets and do drugs. Maybe some of those people wouldn't have moved to San Francisco. They might have cleaned up, gotten their act together and joined the rest of society. So if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that all of you watch that. Everyone on the city council, anyone else who is concerned about dealing with a homeless. I'm sure even though it aired last night, you can probably still see it, pay per view or something, but if you can't seem to find it, I've got to record it on my DVR and you're welcome to come over to my house and watch it. Just give me a call and schedule the time. Thank you. Thanks so much. Our next speaker is Lucy Gluck to be followed by Martha Dallas. Good evening. Good evening. Yeah, Lucy Gluck. I live on Blotchett Street in the Old North End. So I'm working within, in close contact with a lot of folks who are houseless and quite a few who are camping out. And so I wanted to put myself in their shoes for a moment and think about what it's like knowing I don't have a place to live, but I have a tent. And where can I go close to downtown where I can find some food and go somewhere to do my laundry, take a shower, use a bathroom and be safe. And unfortunately, some of the folks I've talked to have tried to set up their tents in places where we were not allowing it and they're getting pushed out or other people are coming by and taking their tents and taking their stuff and things get stolen and wrecked a lot. And so if that was me, not only would I be feeling frustrated and unsafe, but also just kind of at a loss about, what can I do now, especially knowing that there aren't gonna be as many motel rooms available and the shelter beds are filling up quickly. So I guess I wanna say, I think it would be a good, supportive and safe thing to do to choose a place somewhere in Burlington and one of our parks that could be safe and controlled and supportive so that we don't have people suffering as much, to be compassionate towards those situations. And I'm just remembering, well, I'll stop there. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Martha Dallas to be followed by Lee Morgan. Thank you, Martha Dallas. I also live on Blodgett Street in the Old North End. And I just wanted to speak briefly in favor of this opportunity you all will discuss later on tonight to find ways to be compassionate and supportive of folks who are homeless or will become homeless later this summer. The look of our public spaces in Burlington changed last summer in particular. I saw tents and encampments that I'd never seen before. And I'm anticipating this summer that that's gonna be even more so. There are systems that have brought about the situation that we're in and that people without houses are in and it's gonna take some time to provide enough housing for everybody who needs it. So in the interim, what can we do to be bigger-hearted, to be creative, and to respect the humanity of everybody among us? Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Lee Morgan to be followed by James Mulowney. Hi, Lee, good evening. My name is Lee Morgan. My pronouns are they, them. I am a resident of Ward 7. I am worried about the growing tensions and rhetoric surrounding houselessness in Burlington. I have been in the same room with some of you when people talk proudly about how they are surveilling people to keep tabs on them. I think the resolution in front of you is reasonable and very measured. A yes vote is necessary tonight to show your constituents that you hear their concerns and that vigilantism is not welcome. Unsanctioned tent camping has long been a problem and will continue to be a problem as long as we refuse to acknowledge its existence in hopes that it won't be a problem. I read this quote last night and it's been knocking around in my head today. So maybe I'm meant to read this tonight. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. Thanks. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is James Maloney to be followed by Representative Kate Logan. Good evening. I hope I have your name right. You did, you spelled it right. Great. That's all right, thanks. I just want to make a pitch for city parks being used as a place for recreation and enjoyment by all citizens. And I live right next to Letty Park. I don't know if any of you live next to parks, but right now, Letty Park is a lawless place where there's goings on all hours of the night where there's nightly fireworks, parties, fires, dogs running wild, and the police, God bless them. There's no chance to enforce that because they only have three people on at night. I need schools. Yeah, let's not do that, please. Okay, let's just, let's. My wife is part of, can I get extra time? My wife is part of the Burlington Concert Band and during the summer, we go down there to enjoy the nightly, it's been doing it for 50 years. And the tents, we have to ask people to move them out of the site so they can even practice there or have their concerts there and they still have to deal with all the noise in the background while that's going on. You know, they talk about crime. There's a lot of crime in those communities right now and the shootings I see in the paper and hear about is, you know, I think it's the other way around. I don't think people are robbing the homeless or the houseless, but unfortunately, good or bad. So I think finding a place for them, not in city parks is what I'm looking for. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. Our next speaker is Representative Kate Logan to be followed by Todd LaCroy. Welcome, Representative Logan, thank you. Thanks for being here and thanks for your service to our city. Of course. Report on the 2023 legislative session for you, relevant to Burlington as far as I see it from my committee on environment and energy as well as other projects that I've worked on and I will need more than that amount of time in order to do that. So I'll start in order of priority. First, House Bill 288 was signed by the governor today. It's a bill on liquor liability insurance. I was approached by bars in downtown Burlington at the beginning of the session, letting us know that it's difficult to get liquor liability insurance in Vermont. Long story short, it got signed today and I helped shepherd that through the House and Senate. Most relevant to tonight's meeting is House Bill 494 and act relating to making appropriations for the support of government. That bill did not include funding to extend the GA emergency housing program in the state of Vermont beyond July one. As of June 1st, 766 households, 204 of those in Shintenden County will be exited from the emergency housing program. That's around 850 individuals. On July 1, 1056 households will be exited from the program that includes about 177 households in Shintenden County, but 305 households in Rutland County, which it turns out the hotels are housing a number of folks from Shintenden County there. That represents nearly 3000 Vermonters who will be exited from this program, including 700 children. You are more than welcome. We would welcome the opportunity to have your comments and writing. If you do, please send them to us and I can assure you we will all gladly read them. Thank you. I would urge us to do something to prepare for having hundreds of additional Berlin Tonians back in town. Great, thank you so much. Our next speaker is Todd LaCroix to be followed by Steve Miller. Yes, I look funny, do I not? But let me like tell you something about this. This that I'm wearing is why I came home from Asia alive. This right here is why China nicknamed me, yes, the Communist Party, a Jedi. While most Americans nicknames, especially spies, mind you, are dickhead or prick, I got called Jedi. No matter where I went, they knew I didn't want to kill them. That's why they called me Jedi. No matter where I went, I represented the America they wanted to see, not the America they were seeing in our foreign policy, in our domestic policy, killing our children, killing their children. Right here, this simple shroud kept me alive where everybody wanted to kill us. And you know why? Because it represented something else. But more importantly, I lived that representation. I didn't just fucking pretend it. And everywhere I went, they called me Jedi in Asia. And now I come home and they want to kill me. All the Sith Lords here want to kill me. What's that say about the American oligarchy? The American oligarchy is more of a threat than the Russian one. To me and my children, wake the fuck up. Our next speaker is Steve Miller to be followed by Jane Assef. That's a hard one to follow up. I guess I just wanted to come, do I hit the timer here, the green button? Is that, oh, it's going? You're good. I guess I just wanted to come down and speak my opinion. I'm a resident of your ward, ward six, the center, or councilman. And I sent you an email concerning the camping bill in town that's going to be presented. And I guess I just wanted to say that it just seems a little ludicrous, the presentation of it. Like, I think it's valid to talk about and there's absolutely something that needs to be done. It's obviously an issue, but I think that it's very apparent, just me walking down the street with my friends or with colleagues. It's pretty ridiculous out there sometimes. And I don't think that you guys or the city has a grasp on it. It doesn't seem to me that if you were to pass the bill, there's enough to really police the areas and actually make a change. It just doesn't seem like the plan, I mean it would take 30 days to evict someone from a public park. I think you're absolving yourself from being able to police those specific situations as they come up. And yeah, I guess that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our last speaker who's joining us is Jane Ossoff. I should say joining us in person. We'll go on to Zoom after. Good evening. And my name is Jane, by the way. Jane Ossoff. So I am here to voice my support for the resolution relating to the process for updating sheltering on public lands. As a prison abolitionist who works closely with formerly incarcerated people, I can tell you that the lack of supports and services, namely housing, are fueling the cycles of trauma and incarceration in our state. Vermont prides itself on providing robust supports for its people, but I feel this is something we can no longer claim. With Vermont's homelessness population raking second worst per capita in the United States, how can we continue to act like a progressive state that takes care of its own above all? If we do not adjust this crisis now, we will be left with a domino effect of disasters that will affect the well-being of Vermonters for generations. We are in a moment when 2800 people are expected to be evicted, yet the state is actively planning to expend 100 million on new prison construction but refuse the $50 million price tag to house folks until 2024. As more and more people become displaced and have less access to social services, the more we'll see our community members ending in prisons. There are no public safety plans that involve nourishing communities by investing in them. We are dealing with a health care crisis, mental health care crisis, child care crisis, substance use epidemic on top of ongoing effects of the pandemic. Are we to blame these folks when they are forced to engage in survival crime to live? Are we to blame these folks when their mental health issues are exacerbated? By choosing to not invest in the community, we will see these effects play out across multiple spheres of life and with the cost of living continuing to skyrocket, I implore the rest of you to see that this could very easily be the rest of our fate very shortly. When rent rises to levels you cannot pay, who will save you? Where will you go? How many safety nets stand between you and homelessness? It is much closer reality than most of us want to acknowledge. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we do have one last person in con choice who wishes to speak. That's Representative Troy Hedrick. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. I wasn't necessarily prepared. My colleague encouraged me to get up here and say some things I said on the floor the other day. I'm gonna add a little bit here for a second. First, I don't think there is such a thing as a nice place to be homeless. I'll leave that at that. It is bad. And it's terrible. And it's gonna get worse. And we know that just by considering the numbers that Representative Logan gave us in her brief time here. And as somebody has spent the last five months watching money move in this state, I have come to understand that this is certainly a policy decision. It's not a money decision. We have, and I can point to $14 million in the capital bill right now that is just gonna sit there for two years. That is largely there due to scare tactics presented by our administration. And I can talk more about that to anybody who would like to learn about that. The budget can still accommodate a smoother off-ramp than what we are providing to the folks who are currently housed in the General Assistance Program. And we're not willing to do that right now. And that's unfortunate. So Burlington does, because of that, unfortunateness have to prepare for a larger number of unhoused residents coming back to the city. Yeah. The crisis of the unhoused is absolutely a wound on this country and especially in this state. And nobody will disagree that the General Assistance Hotel Program or the plan being presented tonight is a Band-Aid. Nobody disagrees with that. But if we get rid of the Band-Aids, that wound is going to reopen. It is going to become infected and that infection is going to spread. Thank you very much. We have no one else who had signed up to speak in person, so we will go to Zoom and set a timer on the screen. The first person who wished to speak was Bob Kiernan. And Bob, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak by unmuting yourself. Thanks for public forum tonight. We can hear you fine. Go ahead. Good, there's an important discussion and action taken this evening regarding delivery of agenda item 603, which is a core part of much thinking and opinion, city-wide as you all know. As of right now, I do not yet support the resolution I was written. And at the same time, I do not support what the administration proposes in both their entirety. There's a need for further collaboration. It's murky, no doubt, but here's some clarity. No one has defined an outdoor space as a suggested temporary camp or camp location. No questioning. In the north ward seven, Ethan Allen Park, ward four, Letty Park, in central ward three, Battery Park or City Hall Park, ward two, Roosevelt Park, in the east ward eight, Redstone Pines, ward one, Centennial Woods, south ward six, Crescent Woods, ward five, Callahan Park or Oakwood Park. And no one has argued against, yet anyway, yet argued against any location. And no one has suggested how to keep an operating location fully functional day to day. No accountability has been really seen for the added mixed responsibility already tossed off the city staff, let alone the future overload to come. There's some understanding along with some misunderstanding. And it seems not a whole lot of bravery, but a fair amount of jargon and sloganeering. A plentiful supply of band-aids, but no medicine. The camping may be inevitable. The camper residents should be asked to come forward with a measure of cooperation and responsibility. But this is a very hard ass. We need to do more. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm guilty. We're all simply guilty. Thanks. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Sylvia Knight. And Sylvia, I cannot find you on Zoom if you are under another name and want to use the raise hand function. Please do, and I will look for you that way. In the meantime, the next speaker is Andrew Chronichfeld and Andrew. I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Yeah, this is Andrew Chronichfeld from Ward 7. I was calling in support of the resolution for camping on public grounds. This is an issue that if we don't deal with it's just gonna get worse and worse. I know that the Emergency Mental Assistance Program, which helps economically insecure homeowners is coming to an end. There's a possibility the Hotel Voucher Program may come to an end and then, you know, that's thousands more people that are gonna be living in tents. And it's sad, but it's true. And, you know, I think ignoring this is not gonna help. I think another thing to consider is environmental refugees, you know, a new scientific research just came out that a lot of parts of America are gonna be under water sooner than we thought. So there could be even more people coming here from Southern states in the future. So let's figure this out soon and not keep ignoring the issues. Thanks. Our next speaker is Cheryl Green. And Cheryl, I found you and have enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Thank you, President Paul. First of all, thanks to the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, commissioners Hightower and McGee and King with Christine Curtis as the city staff support person and their work on the resolution for updating sheltering on public lands policy. I especially appreciate the timely interviews with city staff working on the issue of supporting people who are experiencing homelessness as well as the people themselves. And regarding camping, I am glad to see this resolution is going to look at CEDO research regarding best practices, including sheltering on public lands, including camping and hiring additional city staff to help with this work and build trust with people who are homeless or houseless. We need to get to a position of telling people what they can do, where they are welcome and not make the main focus what they can't do and where they will be kicked out of. When the focus is on all the places that you can't be, it just ups the stakes for figuring out how to do something and not get caught or put up a challenge. Fletcher Free Library is a good example of that welcoming of everyone. And during these turbulent times, there is also a now relaxed security personnel as part of the library experience for all of us. And I understand the library is not a place to sleep. I look forward to seeing where a sleeping welcome will be extended. Thank you. Thank you so much, Cheryl. Our next speaker is Aspen Overy. And Aspen, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Good evening. My name is Aspen and I'm here in support of resolution 6.03. And I want to start by laying out the situation we are facing. This is an impending crisis, likely one of the greatest in our state's history. So many of our, so many families and so many people are going to be thrown out and basically left to die. And I am aware this is not the fault of this council. Rather, it is the joint cruelty of the Republicans and the vast majority of Democrats in the state house. However, we are facing a crisis and it's coming soon. Our first neighbors will be kicked out without housing in just over two weeks. It seems increasingly unlikely that any solution for Montpellier is coming. So we must, so this city must act. I want to start by saying this bill is not enough. We should have had a plan earlier and we should have had better plans in camping. The fact that this bill is coming through now is incredibly disappointing and will lead us to be incredibly unprepared. However, this is the barest minimum to start to prepare Burlington to think about taking care of our neighbors. People are going to camp inevitably. And this bill only encourages us to start to think about how we can take care of them, which is not enough. And so I also just want to say that there appears to be a desire to, or planning to postpone this resolution. And to you, I believe in June, which is detached from reality. And the idea that we should only initiate planning until after people have already been evicted is does not meet the urgency of this moment. And so, and one last thing else like that is some is that there has been people coming is I hope the city council reject the ideology proposed here by some that suggests that we should be harder on those who have been here. The idea that we should be harder on the homeless is a savage and brutal ideology. And I hope our city council rejects it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Wendy Grant. And Wendy, I cannot locate you on Zoom if you're under another name. By all means, please use the raise hand function and that way I can recognize you. The next speaker is Lena Greenberg and Lena, oh, you've raised your hand. Well, thank you so much. You should be able to speak now. Thank you. Hello, thank you. My name is Lena Greenberg. I live in Ward 5. I share the concern of my neighbors elsewhere in Burlington that the crisis of unhoused folks continuing to be left to fend for themselves on the streets and in the parks of Burlington is urgent and must be dealt with. People are not just gonna disappear if it continues to be illegal for them to camp. I'm also in favor of us using our Parks for Recreation and I don't think that this is a great solution but I do appreciate the language in this resolution that's about researching best practices because this is a complicated problem. And again, it's not just gonna disappear if we postpone till June. It's not gonna disappear if we don't pass the resolution. This is here to stay. It is going to be a hallmark of this era of Burlington's history, whether we like it or not. And I really encourage everyone on the city council to take this as seriously as it is. I've heard from other folks that, you know, it's unpleasant to have people who don't have homes in your way. And I'm sure it's unpleasant for them as well to feel as though they can only be in the way. We owe them a place to be both in the short term and the long term. And I really can imagine a robust set of supports that we can offer folks who are not currently housed. That's a much better alternative to just continuing to chase them out of parks. So really hope we can do that in a timely manner in a way that respects everyone's humanity, housed, unhoused alike. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Again, I'm unable to locate Sylvia Knight and Wendy Grant. With that, we will go to non-Burlington residents. Oh, there is one person actually in contrast. I'm not really sure. We will come back to that. There are two non-Burlington residents joining us via Zoom. The first is Brenda Siegel. And Brenda, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Thank you. I wanted to come and speak because I have in the last many years been working on the shelter of those who are unhoused throughout the state of Vermont. In the last couple of months, I have visited 16 of the hotels, some in Burlington, and talked to a thousand of the people, the guests in the hotels. In and in County, the people who I've spoken to include who are going to be exited in June include a couple whose wife just had brain surgery, multiple families who are in recovery from substance use disorder, but we know from data that substance use disorder is not able to be maintained when unsheltered frequently. Many people who have now stabilized mental illness that will become destabilized while out in the street. And this is not, unsheltering is not a choice that they made for themselves. Our state has lined 3,000 people up on the edge of a cliff and we're about to push them off. And so whatever we can do in our communities and our cities to support safe, stable camping spaces so that people can maintain recovery, can maintain supports for mental illness, can continue to recover as best they can for health conditions is what our responsibility is now. I wanna just say out loud that as someone who's been experiencing poverty for the last 20 years, I am no better or no, and I have not figured something out that people experiencing homelessness have not figured out. I just had a different set of circumstances and safety nets that allowed me to remain sheltered and my son to remain sheltered in the last 20 years. It is our responsibility as human beings and our responsibility as communities and state that prides itself on this to actually do what we can to support what is coming whether we like it or not. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. And the last person who's joining us online is Grace Fell. Grace, I have found you and enabled your microphone, you should be able to speak now. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. It's file. Thank you so much. Sorry, my apologies. You're good. I'm here to speak on item 6.03. People do not wanna be unsheltered. This is a situation that we have created as a country and as a state and as a city where people have no choice but to live outside. People are currently sheltering in our public land, in our public parks and that is not going to change as much as we send police to tell them they cannot be there as much as we wanna ignore this issue and wish that they would go away. People are and will continue to live outside because we have put them in a situation where that is the only option that they have. Regardless of if it's sanctioned or not, people will be camping outside. What we need to do is ultimately prioritize getting people into permanent, affordable, supportive housing and until we are able to do that, we need to have a plan of where people are going to be able to go and we need to make wherever people are going to be able to go, we need to make sure that that place is safe. We need to do everything in our power to make sure bare minimum that there is access to bathrooms, trash removal, storage and sharks disposal. We cannot wait. We cannot wait until June to figure this out. This is something that we need to do now. And it's not only the hundreds of people who are gonna be unsheltered in June and going forward if the legislature chooses to unshelter people. I am a tenant organizer and every single day I see people and I talk to people who are losing their housing because their landlords are raising their rent. I talk to people with children who have waited years to get a section eight voucher and who could not find an apartment where the rent is $1,300 or less. This is a situation that we have created and we have the responsibility to make sure that everyone in our community is safe and taken care of. Thank you. Thank you so much, Grace. And thank you for your understanding with your name, mispronouncing your name. I appreciate it. There are no others in the queue that are joining us via Zoom. So we'll go back to Contois. There is one person, Gray Barretta that came in and Gray, we'd be happy to hear from you. Thanks so much for joining us. So, hi, I just got out of jail three, four hours ago for being homeless. Which has happened in the past to me has been a extortion of, basically I am allowed shelter until somebody decides to rob me and then they call the police because they have a dwelling and they accused me of robbing and assaulting, assault and robbery. This is a common action that unsheltered people are confronted with. I spent 72 hours in jail for something that was, basically I mean this person could have said I stole their Lamborghini and set it on fire and that was all taken as truth because I'm unhoused. I think that some quotes that are appropriate for what is going on here is the shallow understanding of people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Luke Worm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection and that's Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham Jail. Also to point out there's something called the Dunning-Kruger effect which is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because of lack of self-awareness, prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills and this is something that I'd like to just highlight that the language I've heard from a few people has circled what we are dealing with and some have hit some points. Some have been, many, many have been way off. Please, I have appealed, we are listening, we are willing to offer some information on this topic. Anybody who's willing to just reach out and talk to us, I hope that you might stand up and do that. Thank you. Thank you so much. And with that, seeing no one else in the queue and no one else online, we will close the public forum at 8.07 and continue with our agenda. We left off at item number five, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated? So moved. Thank you so much, Councillor Chang. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Carpenter. Is there any discussion on that motion? Councillor Grant. I had a question about 5.02 and the accountability list and the, I believe it was a second item. It just seems to be very outdated. So when we're saying we're gonna approve this, I just wonder how these items get updated or when they get updated? I am so glad you asked that question. At the last April, when I became council president, there were about 60 items on that list. And we went through, myself and the clerk, Laurie Ulberg went through that list. We contacted everyone who had been the maker of those resolutions, any items that were on that list. And in fact, most of the items that were on that list actually were items that had already been addressed and we had done a lot of that work. And so at the end of every meeting or at the beginning of every meeting when we do the agenda, we go through this list. Most of the items are actually pretty current. The first one, the dog task force will be coming back and I try to update next steps in the process so there is a running list of where each of these items are in terms of being completed. And the item number two was part of that, let's see now, the reason why that one is still on there is because some of the items that were in that resolution are part of the information that is being used by the joint committee on police oversight, the charter change and ordinance committees. So because of that and because it isn't completely complete, we have kept it on there. And that's the reason why that one is on there. So I guess I understand that letter part but I'm just concerned about it being updated. Like what does it mean that it's on the consent agenda and we're gonna approve it with information that's not current? Or kind of reflective on what we're trying to do or just the name of the document doesn't change? Is that part of the process? I guess I need to be clear. It's always been called the accountability list and I suppose we could call it anything we want. The idea is for it to be a working document and it's a record of any resolutions, ordinances, communications that have made their way to the council needed an action to be taken or actions to be taken. And until those actions are complete, we keep it on the list. So at any time, anyone, whether it's a counselor or member of the public can look at the list and see what other actions there are that are outstanding that we have yet to address. Okay, so if we approve it as part of the consent agenda, I can say send information to the co-chairs of the joint committee and say we should be looking at changing this so it's more, it reflects current information, I guess is my concern. If someone were to look at this, they would see information that does not fully reflect our current situation. Well, that particular item, item number two is also part of item number six. Those are together, those are two actions that the council took that directly relate to police oversight and accountability, among other things, particularly item number two. A number of the things that are in item number two have been addressed. One of them in particular is the work on the CNA report, which we have already completed, as you know from being a member on the working group. So I'm sorry, I don't mean to be difficult. So just for clarity, if there were certain updates that I would like to suggest to be put on that item, I would go to the co-chairs for the joint committee. Yes, in fact, one item that will probably be taken off of this list is item number three. That was the fairness and reappraisal process for the property tax system, which we received a very in-depth report on, and I believe our last meeting, and that really completes the work of that particular resolution. Doesn't mean that we're done with property tax reappraisal, but the resolution itself is no longer on our accountability list. Thank you. Thanks very much. Councilor Travers. Just very briefly, Councilor Doherty and I need to acknowledge our recusal from item 5.12 due to a professional conflict of interest. That recusal is noted on the parts of Councilor Travers and Councilor Doherty, item 5.12. Are there any other comments on the consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda taking the actions as indicated noting the recusals, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed, please say no. We have approved our consent agenda. Thank you. That moves us on to the deliberative agenda. We have three items on our deliberative agenda. The first one is a public hearing 6.01, a public hearing, the community development block grant and home investment partnerships proposed allocations for the 2023 action plan for housing and community development. And we have with us Christine Curtis as well as Todd Rawlings from CEDO. Did you want to give us a brief overview and then we'll open up the public hearing? Is that sound like a plan? Yeah, I was gonna give a brief overview. I did have a presentation that was only gonna take a couple minutes. Sure. I was trying to share it by joining the webinar and sharing my screen, but I was having trouble with some feedback just now as I joined. Is there an easier way that I do that? All right, well, bear with us and we'll see if we can make that work. Okay. Oh, see, I'm hearing it here. Yeah, it is. Housing and community development. I'm sorry, I don't know why this is... Okay, let's try this again. I apologize. So this is the official public hearing for the draft 2023 action plan for housing and community development. This is a mandatory part of our process when we draft our action plan every year. It's an opportunity for the public, city counselors and city staff to comment on our draft plan and its funding recommendations before we submit it to HUD for their final approval. So a little background first. The city of Burlington is allocated a certain amount of funding each year from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development through the Community Development Block Grant or CDBG program and the Home Investment Partnerships or HOME program. These programs provide a principal revenue source for local communities to address the roots and consequences of poverty. So in order for the city to access these funds every year, we have to draft an action plan and we have to submit it to HUD. This action plan outlines the activities that the city as well as community partners plan to execute to address priority needs and goals that are identified in the city's five-year consolidated plan. So this action plan that we are talking about today is going to cover the 2023 program year. That starts July 1st of 2023 with a program completion date of June 30th, 2024. A little bit more information before we get to the funding recommendations. So every year, the city solicits proposals for CDBG funding from community partners, nonprofits, and city departments. All CDBG eligible applications are then reviewed, scored, and funding recommendations are made by the Voluntary Assistance Advisory Board. That advisory board, also known as the CDBG Advisory Board, consists of NPA representatives, mayor appointees, and a representative from the state. So the advisory board makes CDBG funding recommendations for external applications only. So those are applications from our nonprofit partners. CDO leadership and mayoral support makes CDBG funding recommendations for any applications that are internal or city department applications. Home applications work a little bit differently than the CDBG program. They are received and reviewed by CDO housing staff and they are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year. So this is a breakdown of our funding for the year. So the top section there, that is our entitlement funds. That's our annual allocation that we will be receiving from HUD this year. The middle section there, we did have some carryover funds for both programs for CDBG and home. We are able to carry those over and use those for the upcoming program year. So the bottom section, that's the total that we're working with for this action plan with CDBG at 759,311 dollars and home funds at 685,309 dollars. So we're gonna look at CDBG awards. CDBG awards are broken up into two kind of subcategories. Those categories are public service and development. So right now we are looking at the public service awards. I'm gonna keep going through but at the end of this presentation, I'm happy to go back to talk in more detail or answer questions about any of the programs that you see up on this slide. So next we have the development awards. I did include at the bottom here our CDBG administration line. That is capped at 20% of our annual allocation. The administration funds are used to fund salaries at CEDO to help us implement and administer and manage these programs throughout the year. Again, happy to go back to any of these after the presentation, but I'm gonna keep going. So kind of a breakdown here. Like I said, there's two subcategories within the CDBG program, public service and development. Public service projects are typically capped at 15% of the annual allocation. So you'll see there that's slightly higher than 15% this year. That's because of the CDBG carryover funds. We were able to apply to a public service project. Then we have development and then our planning and admin giving us the total that you saw there at the previous slide. So our home breakdown. Again, since these projects and applications come on a rolling basis throughout the year, we don't have as many detailed line items as far as awards go, but this is kind of the breakout of how the home funds get broken out into at the year, beginning of the year. And again, admin and planning at the bottom, that is capped at 10% of the home annual allocation. So timeline, we did already present to CDNR. They made a motion to sponsor this resolution that will be coming soon to Board of Finance and City Council. So May 15th, here we are, our official public hearing. We will be accepting comments on this action plan through June 5th. So if someone does not wanna come out here today, they can come at via email and we will accept those up until June 5th. So right now, tentatively planning and hoping to be on the May 30th Board of Finance agenda that would approve this action plan via resolution, same with June 5th. On the 5th, with that approval date, that public comment period would end. And then pending City Council's approval, we will submit that the action plan to HUD and then pending their approval, we could start the program year July 1st of 2023, meaning that these projects can begin incurring costs that would then be able to be reimbursed with these funds. So some resources here. Obviously, this is a very quick overview. The action plan document itself is a bit longer. There's a bit more narrative in there. I highly recommend everyone to check it out. That can be found online. There's some more program details and overview and applications you can find online as well. And that is all I have. Thank you for your patience as we struggle to get started in this presentation. But we will accept questions and comments now. Thank you. No worries. Thanks so much and thanks for being here. We usually just go and open the public hearing. If there are counselors who have questions or comments, we can certainly go to them. But the point of the evening is to have a public hearing. So with that, we will open the public hearing. The way that this works is that members of the community, if you're joining us in person or you're joining us online, you're welcome to offer your comments regarding the action plan. All you need to do is raise your hand or use the raise hand function online. And we will recognize you going once, going twice. I do not see anyone online either. So with that, we will close the public hearing. As I say, normally we don't go to the council for this because it has gone through a committee. But if there are counselors who have any questions or concerns about the action plan, we can certainly entertain that at this time. Does not appear to be the case. Oh, my apologies. Thank you so much. Councillor Jang, please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, President Paul and thank you for the presentation. Go from CEDO. I just noticed that there were, let's say, nearly $300,000 from last year that was not allocated. And I just wanted to understand why, with all these issues and all the problems that we have solved here, why have we kept nearly $300,000? Sorry, other $300,000. Are you referring to the CDBG program or the home program? Yes, there is like $271,000 and also almost $25,000, yes. Yes, for the home program. Thank you for that. Sure, that's a great question. I think many of us in this room are aware the funding affordable housing projects is something that often has quite a lengthy gestation period and we need to do a significant amount of planning in terms of ensuring that we have funding available for the project when it is ready. And so that is the case right now. We anticipate that most of the home funding that was carried over as well as the funding, the new funding that we're getting for 2023 and probably for 2024 will largely go to two projects. One is the VFW project on South Winooski, which will be creating 38 units of new housing, 30 of which will be permanently affordable. And then the other project is Pine Place or the 85 units of CHT, permanently affordable housing at City Place. So between both of those projects that will consume the money that we carried over and then some. Okay, so basically there is a plan in providing those resources. Yeah, thank you. Right. Yeah, so also I wanted to understand about the added fee process because since the pandemic, there has been substantial amount of great, wonderful organizations that were created, including the one working on the language. And I was just wondering, why haven't we seen any proposal from those? Can you paint me a picture about how you send that added fee and who do you send it with? How people can find out about this actually is my question. Yeah, so as far as the CDBG funding goes, we release notice of funding availability every December. That is widely distributed through several email distribution lists like our CDBG lists, our home, housing trust fund, our COC lists. It is also made available online. We advertise it in seven days. That is at the point where we solicit applications for funding. And within that NOFA, we lay out what we think our projected funding will be for that year. And we in very much detail outline, what kind of projects are eligible, who can apply, who should apply, et cetera. We hold an application workshop as well that is open and widely advertised to any applicants who are interested. I mean, thank you. And I think my only charge and request would be for you to consider going back and looking at that email list and see what organization do you think are missing here. Especially those that are new set up organization in the state and working on changing that county. Again, thank you. And please consider doing that. Revisit the email list to see what organization you can be chapter. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. If there are no others, it doesn't appear that there are. If there are no others, then we will close out the presentation and thank you very much for being here this evening. And as per your presentation, we will look forward to the resolution coming to the Board of Finance next week, I believe it is, and then coming to the council on the 5th of June. Thank you again. Thanks so much. Thank you for being here. Thanks very much. We will move on now to item 6.02, which is a resolution regarding Burlington Solar Eclipse 2024. And for this resolution, I will go to Councillor Travers for a motion. I moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and would ask for the floor back upon a second. Great. Thank you, Councillor Travers. Is there a second to this motion? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Councillor Travers, that floor is yours. Thank you, President Paul. This resolution is before the council tonight, largely at your initiative, because you are in your seat. I will speak to it on your and my's behalf. So I know that city staff have already started work, including with coordination with Burlington City Arts on planning for a solar eclipse, which is going to pass through Burlington on April 8th of next year. I think what is particularly unique about this event is that Burlington is in the direct path of totality for this solar eclipse. It's truly a once in a lifetime event. The last time this happened in the state of Vermont was 1932. I went back and looked at some newspaper articles from 1932 and it was cloudy in 1932. So the last time anyone in Vermont actually saw a total solar eclipse was 1806. I know that Vermont hotels are already booking up for this event on April 8th. I truly think it may turn out to be one of, if not the biggest events in the city of Burlington's history drawing perhaps more people to our city than any event in the past. And appreciate your efforts and hoping to get the council support such that we can coordinate with city staff and continue to receive updates as Burlington continues to prepare for this, again, unique once in a lifetime event. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councillor Travers. Are there any other Councillors who wish to comment on the resolution before us? Seeing no others, we will go to a vote. Oh, my apologies. I need to look at the screen more. No problem. Councillor Jag, please. Yeah, I just wanted to make a very quick comment for both of you for considering to put this and also all those updates to go to a specific committee. I think it's, I didn't know about this until I read this resolution. But wanting to say thank you so much for doing it and also for hearing that both some cities, departments and hotels are gearing up for this. May God give us health and to be there to witness it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, Councillor Chang. I'm going to be paying attention to that screen more. Councillor Hightower. I did not know that hotels were already filling up. You are allowed to rent in Burlington for 14 days as a short-term rental before you have to register as a short-term rental just in case anybody has a spare bedroom. Thank you so much. I actually had heard that the hotels within an hour of rolling into April 7th of 2023 were completely booked up and sold out for this amazing event. Seeing no one else in the queue or on Zoom, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously, which brings us to the last item on our agenda, last item on our deliberative agenda, which is item 6.03, a resolution, a process for updating, sheltering on public lands, policy given the rise of homelessness and the end of the Motel voucher program. And for this resolution, I'll go to the chair of the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, Councilor Hightower for a motion. I'd like to waive the reading, adopt the resolution and request the floor back after a second. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Seconded by Councilor McGee. Councilor Hightower, the floor is yours. Thank you and thank you for the rest of the CDNR Committee for supporting us. So Councilor McGee and Councilor King, but also for Councilor Carpenter for her work on this before she left the CDNR Committee. I have to admit, I did not expect this to be a contentious issue. This has been in front of the CDNR Committee as we all know for a very long time going on a year and a half. And I think most folks who pay attention to city council also know that I'm a bit of a compromiser, so I like working on compromise and I did not know that this wasn't going to be that, although it definitely feels like it in drafting it. We know, and I mean, the resolution is pretty clear on that we have a lot of issues around folks experiencing houselessness right now in Burlington. We have testimony about how folks are feeling about folks coming into camping and parks currently. This resolution, I do wanna be clear just for folks who didn't understand. This resolution explicitly says, let's not talk about parks, let's not talk about the Urban Land Reserve, let's just talk about all of the other public lands. So we're not talking about Oak Ridge Park, we're not talking about any of the parks. We're talking about specifically other public land that, but not are typical, like what we think of our recreational parks. But yet we still have people camping in those parks because as so many in public forum talked about, this is a reality of where, what people have to do. The only option that they have and we're about to have even more of that. I think for this city, both the administration and the city council to not have done anything up to this point to really prepare us for what's happening in the summer is irresponsible and for us to still not take action tonight would be even more so. And really, the reason I thought this would be a simple resolution to pass is all that it's asking us to do is to do research on what best practices would be, what other cities have done, what the pros and cons of that are. It's just more data to help us make a better decision down the road. That should not be something that we are afraid of or that is controversial. That should be something that we welcome and that we want in front of us to help us make more decisions. So I hope that this, I assumed this would pass easily. I'm truly, I feel so responsible for what we are about to see in our city. As like, every time somebody comes in and is like, we're finding needles and it's like, I can't believe that. I know it's, we're hearing the numbers of like hundreds of people every week now, but that has, those are people. I don't know, like I don't understand how we're not in this moment saying what can we possibly do to prepare for this and not, and that we didn't do it three months ago, that we didn't do it a year ago. And I also just like, I do have to respond to some of the comments that were made in public forum, which is that I know that there is this like movie narrative where we see like folks who hit rock bottom and they turn around, that's not the reality of how people get out of bad situations. And I'm very like the work that Brenda Siegel has done to like lift up some of the stories and how much better some people are doing because of the Motel Vacher program where they did have stable housing for the first time in a very long time. And they were able to get the surgeries that they needed, the mental healthcare that they needed, the, just the care that they needed. That's about to end and we're about to put people into bad situations. And sometimes we get emails being like, you should try being homeless. I have tried being homeless, it wasn't fun. And I was lucky, I had a car every time and I had a job every time. So all I had to do was survive long enough until my paycheck came in so that I could get a deposit so that I could get an apartment. And that was in places that had a much, much higher vacancy rate than Burlington did. Here folks, even if you have the money for a deposit, where are you gonna go? There is nowhere to go. Like, there are so many people who are in this situation through no fault of their own. Vermont is not a great place to be homeless. It is extremely cold. Nobody wants to be homeless here. I understand that we can't tackle this as a city alone. I understand that we need the help of other cities. We need the help of the state. But we also need a plan. And right now we have no plan. And all I'm asking us to do is to get the information that we need to start making a plan. And that is all this resolution is doing. Again, we should have been making this plan months ago. And part of that is also on me because I waited too long until we got the things that we needed from the mayor's office. And I should have just forged ahead and done it. But like, this is the moment that we're in now. And I do not, I truly do not feel comfortable with waiting any longer. We have waited too long already. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councilor Hightower. We'll open the floor to others who wish to speak. Councilor Carpenter to be followed by Councilor McGee. Thank you. I just want to say I so appreciate... Do you have your microphone on? I know. Sorry about that. The work that CDR has done. And I appreciate the such a difficult position we're in. But what I am hearing and I'm hearing directly from the administration is we, the city of Burlington in terms of resources and experience are not in a position according to the administration to deal with sanctioned camping. We all got a memo which is posted on the city website from the mayor expressing his deep concerns about this particular resolution. We could have, as we often do, go back and forth and doctored it and offered different proposals and amendments. It was my thinking that since the mayor was not going to be here tonight that we would be better served to have a working session and understand, I understand there is work being happened. He's been talking to Secretary Sam Wilson, Agency of Human Services. We need to be talking to our delegation, state delegation, other municipalities. And I need to understand all of that before we send CDR down a path of something that will fail. So I'm gonna propose and you've seen my amendment also posted that we, I would like to move that we postpone this debate and vote on the resolution to June 5th and request that the administration bring us a full update. What are they working on with the city, with the state, other municipalities, and a legislative delegation and address these in a full work session so we can understand if we're gonna adopt some of the things in this resolution or not. And I think we can be much better served by having a full body conversation. We don't usually do that in this forum. We need a forum where we can ask questions back and forth the ideas. And that's the intent to postpone this to June 5th, have a work session, invite in others like the continuum of care, which is really the group in Chittenden County charged with managing homelessness, not the city, the continuum of care. So again, I move that we postpone this to June 5th and request the administration provide that full update to us. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. So there is a, you have made a motion to postpone this item to a date certain. Yes. Which is June 5th. Yes. And then offered other language that will also be included for the record. Is there a second to that motion? I'll second. Thank you, Councillor Barlow. So there's a motion and it's been seconded. We will discuss the motion first and then depending on where we end up with that, we will go back to the underlying resolution or a postponement. Councillor McKee, I imagine you probably wanted to speak to the resolution. Do you want to speak to the motion to postpone? All right, yes, please. Yes? Okay. Thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you, President Paul. Can you hear me, Jean? No, I can't hear you. Right. If I could briefly just correct some of the misinformation I heard during the public forum related to the underlying resolution and the proposal that started this whole process back in February of last year, I would appreciate that. All right, we'll try to do that and just, as best we all can to keep our comments concise and germane to the motion, which is the motion to postpone, but please go ahead. I appreciate it. I know you'll do your best. Thank you. A lot of folks came here tonight to speak about their opposition to camping in city parks. And I just want to make it clear that I, with my proposal in February of 2022, proposed ordinance change to address the issue that we're talking about here again tonight, it was never the intent of that proposal that people would be camping in recreation areas in our sports fields or in City Hall Park. But we know that there are public spaces in Burlington, wooded areas, other public lands where people are camping. And we have an obligation to make it clear where camping is prohibited. And this resolution tonight also does not suggest that people should be allowed to camp in City Hall Park or on the baseball fields at Roosevelt Park or Calian Park or Smalley Park. So I just want to clarify that because I feel like that misunderstanding has driven a lot of the conversation that we have had over the last several months and I feel partially responsible for that. I have more to say on the underlying but I will speak to the motion to postpone. It's been clear, maybe it's been made clear to me over the past several days that in conversations I've had that the city has not convened a meeting of outreach workers, of city staff, of service organizations to come up with a plan for what we're gonna do on June 1st or July 1st when hundreds of people are exited from state housing programs. So for me, the fact that we are considering postponing this conversation tonight to June 5th, which is four days after the first group of people will be exited from state housing assistance is a serious mistake. And that would leave us only less than a month to come up with a plan to serve these folks before the July 1 date which we'll see over 1,000 households exited from state housing assistance. With that said, the rest of my remarks are related to the underlying resolution so I will leave it there. I think we really should consider having this conversation tonight. Thank you. Great, thank you so much, Councilor McGee. We'll go to Councilor Grant. Thank you. In order to speak about the current motion, I do have to address the resolution. We have no time. We have no time. We were out of time a while ago. People are camping now and I believe I've been copied on a couple of emails that other individuals on the council have also been copied on of pictures of tents in front of businesses, people sleeping in doorways. So we have a variety of situations that are already happening now. My concern about the mayor's memo was, there was a statement that he did not support tent camping as a solution to addressing homelessness in our community. Well, neither do I. I don't think anyone on this council supports that. But we're in a very, very unfortunate reality. This is not a long-term solution by any stretch of the means, but we need something in the interim given what thousands of people are gonna be facing, including as it was mentioned, about 700 children. Is that the type of shame that we really need to have in this community? The shame of children? Intense in the street and completely unorganized at pray to God knows what, that's the shame that has to come down upon us. We really need to be more mindful of this. We want, quote unquote, hard wall options, not tents. We all want that. But we don't have that option right now. We have all these things in the pipeline, some of which were discussed earlier, but we don't have it now. And we have a crisis now, not even an impending crisis. We know the money was not funded by the legislature. That's done. So we know people are gonna be in situations where they, more people will be camping more than last year. We're already seeing it. I think that I wanna reinforce the education provided by counselors McGee and Hightower around the fact that this resolution calls for putting clear signage so it's easier for people to do enforcement in the parks because the goal is to take back our parks. We had problems all over the city and all of the parks. We wanna try and take back those parks. And I think people don't realize the number of city employees that are involved in enforcement. Yes, police officers may be involved in enforcement, but we put our parks department, people who work for parks are put into a lot of health and safety situations that they're not equipped for in order to help maintain and clean up all these areas where people are camping. We have work being done by employees at the library. The library's even gonna be putting in lockers. We have work being done by people who work for our fire department. So to say that we would need new funds, we are already spending money. We are already spending a great deal of money and that money will continue to be spent. It's just a matter of can we organize it? Can we focus it to create a situation where when people are told to move, they're given a place where they can go because otherwise it's just whack-a-mole. You move here, people complain, move them again, people complain, move them again. That happened all summer long. It's not viable. So I would also say that when we review some of these options down the line, we can't keep waiting. I understand what Councilor Hightower said about waiting for information from the mayor's office. As a former police commissioner, I'm very well versed in the constant delays around important issues. This information should have been here a long time ago. The assistance and homelessness, I would like to hear from them. And I just feel that there is so much that it is not being done and we wanna wait for another month. This is, I feel we would be irresponsible if we did this. I think it is cruel. And I think that there is, there's no compassion, as people mentioned earlier. There's no compassion and there's no understanding that just to say no, that we're not even gonna research and we're behind in the research, right? We should have already been researched. But just to say no, that we're not even gonna research it now is going to stop what's already happening. And I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor Grant. Councilor Hightower. Great, thank you. I do have to say, I have to read the resolution and what the mayor is taking issue to you, which is pertinent because that's the reason that we're talking about moving it, which it says that the city council asked CEDA to provide the CEDA in our community with research and community and staff engagement on best practices and potential pathways to take to improve the status quo on three topics. The first one being the current sheltering on public lands policy. The second being camping options when shelter capacity has been reached, including but not limited to sanctioned camping. Like, I feel like the door is wide open on what we could do as a city. It's just saying, consider sanctioned camping. And that wasn't me coming up with it when we're saying like, let's talk to you. Let's have the conversation. That's what came out of what talking to city staff. That's what came out of talking to our partners. None of them said, this is the right answer, which is why we didn't phrase it that way. But they said, what we're doing right now isn't working. And to be clear, it's not just not working for our neighbors who are experiencing houselessness is also not working for our city staff. It's also not working for other neighbors. What we're doing is not working. And all this is asking is, do we think sanctioned camping would be an improvement on the status quo? To take it off the table without even really doing the research on that when so many people think it could be, that seems a little ridiculous. I'm not saying that it is the answer, but to not even be willing to entertain it or do the research to see if it is. Why are we so scared of finding out that maybe that is the best option that we have? Again, not a long-term solution. Nobody's saying it is, but I don't understand why we wouldn't at least look into it knowing that that's what came out of our conversations with the people we say we value their opinion. I do not support the movement to postpone just because we need momentum and action on this. What I would support is if we added language to this resolution saying, let's have that community forum, let's have the discussion in June. And then if we need to push back the research, let's push back the research. I think the research would actually be really helpful for having the discussion, so I'm not sure why we would want to have one over the other, but I think I would prefer we do both, but I need, I trust the people at this table. I don't necessarily trust the mayor's office to move this forward because they've been so opposed to doing this and blocking even the work of the CDNR committee and trying to move this work forward. So no, I think we need some pathway forward, we need some momentum on our side and some, okay, if we don't come up with a better solution, we've got another plan in place. So I'm asking the council to consider not postponing action on this, instead changing this to have the, we can still have the community conversation that we want in June, but we need to keep moving this forward. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilor Hightower. Are there any other Councillors? I'm also looking at the screen to make sure that we have two Councillors joining us by Zoom if they wish to speak. Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I wonder if we could have a brief 10 minute recess. Do you really mean 10 minutes? 10 minutes. Okay, we have a 10 minute recess. We'll come back at, I don't know, I guess about eight minutes. Well, we'll come back. We'll come back by 10 after nine. We'll go back into open session. Thanks so much for keeping to the time limit. It's now about nine minutes after nine. Councilor McGee, you wanted the recess. Did you want the floor back after that recess? I'm trying to remember now. I had not requested the floor back. Okay. But I will just say that I hope that there is some agreement that we can come to tonight that sees this resolution move forward. Sees that city staff and community partners have time to discuss a plan and that that might inform our work session on June 5th. I think the more information that we have when we have that conversation on June 5th, the more wheels that are already turning before folks are exited from the adverse weather conditions support, I think we will only be better served by passing this resolution tonight and still having that work session on June 5th. So it's my hope that this motion to postpone will fail and that we can move forward with the underlying resolution with possibly some amendments. Thank you so much. So just to keep in mind what we are debating now is the motion to postpone as actually it's on board docs and as effectively spoken by Councillor Carpenter. Councillor Bergman, did you want the floor? Yes. Please go ahead. I just wanna voice my opposition to postpone and it really feels like a burying of our heads and we've heard enough tonight to make it clear that that is just an unacceptable action to take. There's no reason why we can't act on this and still have the discussion on June 5th as other people have said. And I don't understand why we have to postpone asking the mayor's office to support updates to the current outreach and removal policy given the new positions in the city. Talk about the community service liaisons and the park rangers and provide us an update. It's late as June 20th. That's lines 83 through 85. Makes no sense to me to postpone that. Makes no sense to me to postpone having this council get behind study and understanding. We have the three areas. I don't need to go into all of them and there's even been a proposal to push back the dates but it makes no sense at all to block for another 20 days or when have you. The city staff being able to be looking at this particularly when I have heard them willing and able to do that now, right? What we have is a mayor saying I don't wanna talk about this stuff and I don't want my staff dealing with it. This is a policy decision and clearly our rules say that when there is an important matter for staff to be dealing with that sometimes you need the full council support for it. So staff can't act if we're gonna postpone this. This is just burying our heads in the sand and then getting feedback. Why would we postpone asking for feedback? Why would we postpone having the city council and the administration work with the legislative delegation to find additional funding? It makes no sense. This is just pure, I don't know. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. It's just head in the sand and we should not delay. We've got a crisis which is a storm that is coming. It's gonna get worse. Thank you so much, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Travers, did you want the floor? I do have some comments on the underlying motion. I do think we were having some discussions there during the last recess and so I'm sorry to take us later into the evening here but I do think there may be some value in our taking another recess until, well, that clock is fast. It wraps 9.20 and then returning at that point in time. If you're amenable to it. Yes, although actually it's 9.13 so 9.20 is not a lot of time but if you feel that that would be well served then we'll reconvene it 9.20. Okay, thank you. It's now 9.00, I've been working on the resolution and there is an amendment that will be coming that will be posted very shortly to Board Docks. All members of the council have just received it. We are back in open session and I don't remember if there was anyone that was in the queue, I don't believe so I think we left off with Councillor Travers who had made, who had asked for a recess. So before we go to Councillor Travers we will go to, we will go to Councillor Carpenter and Councillor Janging, Councillor Barlow are you able to hear us? I am. Okay. Yes. Great, wonderful, thank you. Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. As you've seen us, feverishly working away. I think there were valid points. There was a lot in the original resolution that we all agreed on. My original concern and my recommendation for postponing this was that we needed time to work out other language and that we could not be focused exclusively on the City of Burlington taking on more campers without support. The City of Burlington has done a lot and I think we're underestimating what we have done. I hope in a work session we can be more explicit. I challenge us to look at what other communities have done or I will say not done, particularly other communities in Jitney County and that's where we've got a little bit of work, a lot of work to do. I hear that we have no plan and I don't believe that's the case and again that's the point of a work session is to be brought up to speed on what have we done? What are we doing? What have we got for future plans? What's in the hopper? We need to have that session, an interactive session so we can understand it. Having said all of that, as I said, there wasn't the entire resolution that we had concerns about. That's why I was just moving to postpone it but I think we have worked out some language that will allow us to move forward and start doing some stuff in the next couple of weeks so I'm gonna withdraw my motion to postpone. Okay, so a motion has been made to withdraw, the action is to withdraw your motion to postpone. We will then go to Councillor Barlow who was the seconder. Councillor Barlow, are you amenable to the motion to withdraw? I am if I can speak to the motion before I withdraw it. No, if a motion to withdraw is debatable, is a motion to withdraw debatable? No, I don't believe so. Okay. How about a yes or no? If a motion to withdraw it's withdrawn. Okay, thank you so much, my apologies and to Councillor Carpenter and to Councillor Barlow, thank you for your flexibility on this as we work through this as a body. With that, I will go to Councillor Travers and just for the benefit of the public, on 6.03, there is a new addition to that on board docs called the Traverse Amendment and with that I will go to Councillor Travers. Thank you President Powell and thank you to my colleagues and the public's patience as we work through that issue. I think I take some exception to some of the statements that were made about the motion to postpone that was on the table being tantamount to punting or turning or otherwise burying our heads in the sand on this issue. I think as Councillor Carpenter just noted, I think Burlington and Burlington City staff led by Mayor Weinberger's efforts on this matter have taken really significant steps, I believe more so than perhaps any community in Burlington to address our houselessness crisis. I think the City Council has taken significant action including supporting funding for the Youngwood Avenue Shelter Village, including efforts over the winter to stand up, city run for the first time in our history, warming shelter, including our existing policy on camping, which in text at least strikes the right balance between ensuring that our public parks, our places that all Burlingtonians are free to enjoy, while also balancing that with the humane demands of the reality that at the moment, camping is a part of our answer to the houselessness crisis. That said, I think there are some potential changes to the resolution that's on the table that would at least secure my support. And I think there were really two issues that I had with the language of the underlying resolution and in the text of the resolution, they're relatively limited, but a lot has happened over the last few days. I saw this resolution for the first time, I believe last Wednesday, a draft of it. Of course, last Friday, notwithstanding the efforts of a number of members of our legislative delegation here from Burlington, unfortunately, our state legislature failed to take action to preserve the vital Hotel Motel voucher program. And so the concerns that I had about the underlying resolution were twofold. One, with the apparent forthcoming crisis, this never has been in particularly now, is not just a Burlington problem. This is a Burlington problem, this is a Winooski problem, this is a South Burlington problem, it's a Chittenden County problem, it's a regional problem that we need to be addressing, not just here on the city level, but regionally in partnership with our colleagues on select boards and city councils and administrations around Burlington. The other issue that I had with it is that the resolution, as its sponsors have noted here, is very or was very targeted towards the question of camping, and whether or not to use the term that's in the resolution, we should be exploring sanctioned camping, but I think the forthcoming issues that we'll be facing here are much broader than just the question of camping. The sheltering options that we need to be looking at here, yes, there's a certain reality that camping as it is today and has it been over the last few years and as it is in communities around the country really, that is a part of the short-term answers, unfortunately, that we have right now, but we need to be looking at this in a much broader way, and so I have a couple of proposed amendments here that I've circulated and have put out on board docs, and at this point in time, I would move to amend the resolution by striking and replacing from line 86 on the text with track changes that has been posted on board docs as the 515-23 Travers Amendment, and this accomplishes two things. One is in the first resolve clause after line 86, I don't think that we should just be focusing on camping options and certainly not just options here in Burlington, so what it would do is under topic two, it would state now that CDNR will receive updates on Chittenden County sheltering options when shelter capacity has been reached, striking the term camping options and striking the language of including but not limited to sanction camping. That is the only change that's made to that resolve clause, and then I do think that Councillor Carpenter's idea of a work session on this on June 5th is a good one. I actually viewed that and was prepared to support it as a step in the right direction as our building momentum to better address this issue for us as a council to have a more meaningful substantive discussion on it, and so I don't want us to go without our still having that discussion, and so we've added a last resolve clause here, which would still allow for that work session inviting the administration and other community organizations to a work session at our next council meeting on June 5th. And so that explains the motion, the text of which is posted on Board Docs. Thank you very much, Councillor Traver. So there is a motion to amend the resolution that is called on Board Docs, the Traver's amendment strike and replacing from line 86, going forward the text that is in that amendment. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Bergman. Is there any Councillor Barlow, you have your hand raised, and I'm not sure if that's still having that raised or if you wished to be recognized. Well, it's a little of both, actually. My phone doesn't say it's raised, but since it's raised, and since I do wanna speak to the Traver's amendment, I will use this opportunity. I, for one, don't believe that camping is necessarily the answer to this problem. We have an existing problem with camping on public lands that are already expressly prohibited. And I'll just point to the encampment at Cambrian Rise as an example. There's a camp there that's been an issue for two years and conflicts with existing uses, hazards in the campsites. And a situation that hasn't been adequately addressed or resolved with the residents that's living adjacent to that park. And last week there was a significant fire there in our experience with sanctioned camping. At Sears Lane, we're an ideal. So I'm very concerned that when we formally sanctioned camping on any of our public lands in any way, signal that we're gonna be more permissive about it, then we're inviting it, not only in the sanctioned areas if we have them, but in the unsanctioned areas, and we haven't demonstrated our ability to manage that. So I'm not sure that that's a good solution for us. It's also, I agree with Councillor Trevors. This is a problem that we have now that's being made worse by state in action. And we've heard throughout the night that it's Burlington's imperative to respond to this. And it is really a bigger, it's a regional problem, it's a state problem. We shouldn't be acting on our own because if we do, we're gonna take a statewide problem with these thousands of people that won't have the Motel voucher program anymore. And we're gonna make it disproportionately a Burlington problem. And we can't be doing that. We need to be coordinating a more sustained response with the state and with neighboring communities. So with the removal of this emphasis on camping as an option, I can support the Travis amendment. We look forward to having the work session where we can talk more broadly about sheltering options and not be so singularly focused on camping. Thanks. Thank you so much, Councillor Barlow. We'll go to Councillor Hightower and maybe then we can go to a vote. Great. I'm also supportive of this amendment. I think especially because it brings the work session to the city council on June 5th and hopefully we can also do as much as we can to send some stuff to counselors before then so that we can educate ourselves as possible about the current situation so that we can actually get to some of the more substantive debates there. But I'm very supportive of us doing that. I think as a community we need to do way more education of ourselves and others on what is the reality. And then I also wanna be clear that I am fine with this because it's been introduced as a broadening of the options rather than the removal of sanction camping as an option. And I do just wanna get into it a little bit because I feel like there's some confusion, which is fair because I also didn't know a year ago what sanction camping was. We currently do not have sanction camping in the city of Burlington. We have areas where camping is expressly prohibited and areas where it's not expressly prohibited. And at least in the conversations that we've had about what the difference would be between what we have now is right now we've got one or two or like we've got a few areas in the city and Sierra's Lane was one of them where people were like, oh, this is one of the few places where I may not be removed as long as I like do the things. Sanction camping, at least what we're thinking of what cities, what we have heard in some of the conversations is you don't want just one campsite so it wouldn't just be one place where everybody would congregate. It would be like, okay, can we have a few places in the city where support staff would know there's campsites there. And there would be some understanding of like a limit of how many folks should camp there. And there would be some minimal provision of services. Some of the things that we hear complaints about a lot. It's like, oh, we're getting like more defecation in public and stuff like that. Well, that's because people don't have places to use the bathroom. So you've been having basic things like a porta potty and things like that so that we're not running into some of the public health issues that, again, is difficult for the folks who are camping, the folks who are doing the cleanup and the folks who are living next to the campsites. So, and I want to say that the reason we shouldn't take it off the table, not because I think it's the best solution. I really don't. I think that's very clear. As none of us think it's the best solution, but it's just because we have a lot of people in our state who are thinking about this all of the time. And I think to some extent, I think you're right. The administration has been good about, like we have Elmwood Avenue, we've done some things on other types of camping, but we have not done a lot on trying to fix, like we still have folks camping and how do we manage that? And we're gonna have more folks camping and how do we manage that? And we're not gonna be able to get all of them in the short term over the next year into permanent housing. And so I'm supportive of this with the understanding that this is a broadening, not an exclusion. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor Hightower. Councilor Grant, and then we'll go to Councilor Travers. I just have a quick comment because I still keep hearing this language about camping as not being an appropriate answer or not being an appropriate option or solution still being talked about in a way as if we can stop it. It's already happening. It's going to get worse. We saw what happened last summer. I personally believe from my observations and the people that I've talked to in the community that it's going to be worse this summer. It's not that we can stop it, we can't. So we have to, we can't keep thinking that way because that's what's slowing us down. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor Grant. We'll go to Councilor Travers and then perhaps to a vote on the motion. Thanks, I would just like to briefly say in my remarks before, I think I gave some accolades to the Mayor's Administration and I rightfully so for the steps we've taken here in Burlington to address our homelessness crisis. I also, however, want to give credit to my colleagues here on the Council that have been continuing to pursue this issue. I mentioned in the earlier remarks that we do have a camping policy that the text of which at least is designed to strike a balance between our existing prohibition on camping in our parks and ensuring that our parks are available for everyone in the public to freely use as well as the humane side of, as Councilor Grant just pointed out, camping being a reality right now. And I say that that is in the text of the policy because anyone who went to our parks last summer saw that the policy was not effectual. And I appreciate the efforts that my colleagues here have put into this matter recognizing that we do have a policy that I think needs some updates or at least some clarification and no small part because of the additional city staff that we put forward. I think that some of our colleagues have taken perhaps some undue flak in response to their pushing forward on this. I do want to say that I've never understood their efforts here to be saying that we should be sanctioning camping in Smalley Park or Callahan Park or these places where we have playgrounds and ball fields and community gardens and so on. I've never understood that to be the effort. I've understood it to be seeking clarification and updates to our existing policy. But as we discussed, I think the amendment on the table allows us to broaden that review and to come to a better understanding and consensus on the issue. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor Traver. So what we are voting on now is the Traverse Amendment. If that passes, that will become part of the underlying resolution and then we will vote on the resolution. So this is on the motion known as the Traverse Amendment. If, Lori, if you could call the roll please. Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Bergman. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Doherty. Yes. Councillor Grant. Yes. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor King. Yes. Councillor McGee. Yes. Councillor Travers. Yes. City Councillor President Paul. Yes. 11 ayes, one absent. Wonderful. So we now have the Traverse Amendment. It's no longer the Traverse Amendment. It is part of the underlying resolution. That means that we are now on the underlying resolution. If everyone is amenable, we will go to a vote on the resolution. Is everyone amenable to doing that? Great. If you could call the roll on that as well, Lori. Thank you. Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Bergman. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Doherty. Yes. Councillor Grant. Yes. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor King. Yes. Councillor McGee. Yes. Councillor Travers. Yes. City Councillor President Paul. Yes. 11 ayes, one absent. So the resolution passes with the exception of one that is absent, it effectively passes unanimously. I think what we have seen tonight is it may be a little bit messy sometimes, but we saw democracy and collaboration and action and just want to give a huge shout out to all of my colleagues for working so hard to get us to a place where we could all agree. And the good news is that we did the beginning, the end of our agenda at the beginning. And this was the reason why. So without, I shouldn't say without objection, I should actually call. We need a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Any discussion on that motion? All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. We are adjourned at exactly 9.59. Thank you so much. Our next meeting is the 5th of June. Have a good evening. I know.