 The camera is on, okay, it went from starting to now it says live, so apparently I am live. By the way, how do we, how does one access a meeting like this? The question is easy. On the internet. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Now, since it's 15 minutes, I can pause the camera. I can do standby on the camera and still stay live, or do I have to? Sharon? Yes. You're all set? What's up? I'm sorry, what? You're all set. Yeah, you have to pledge first. I know. Yeah. I don't know. I'm on my game here. Good evening. I would like to convene this meeting of the regular meeting of the city council tonight at 752. Would everyone please join with me in resetting the Pledge of Allegiance, please. Thank you. First item on the item, first item on the agenda is the agenda. Councillor Busher. Thank you, President Wright. I'd like to move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. To note the PowerPoint presentation slides for agenda item 3.01, discussion, David White, planning and zoning director and Neil Lunderville regarding permit reform. This is the CEDO slash planning merger per Neil Lunderville. Add to the deliberative agenda item 3.02, a communication from Eileen Blackwood, city attorney regarding Burlington telecom update verbal and it's an expected executive session. I so move. Thank you, Councillor Busher, seconded by Councillor Pine. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the agenda as amended by Councillor Busher, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. We have our agenda. Item number 2 is the public forum, which we are significantly late on. So I will open the public forum at 7.55. Anyone who wishes to speak to us tonight, please come on up. I have no sheets right now. If you want to speak, there are sheets over in the corner table. Bring them over to Lori at the clerk's table. She'll bring them up to me. If no one is doing that, we will close out the public forum. Going once, going twice, gone. We will close out the public forum and move into item number 3, the deliberative agenda. And it is the main event tonight. And that is planning and zoning proposed merger. And here from Neil Lunderville, director of CEDAW and David White, director of planning. President Wright, would it be okay if I just add a couple introductory remarks? Oh, Mr. Mayor, the floor is yours. Okay. Thank you, President Wright. And thank you to the council for coming together for this special meeting and having this kind of exceptional step to have a special meeting on this. I know we have already very conscious, of course, that we have had one work session on this already. And what we are, we pushed forward some part of the permit reform effort, but there was this whole other area which the sentiment of the council was that we wanted further discussion on before taking that step. And, you know, that makes sense to me for, you know, for multiple reasons. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, we're working on getting Councillor Powell on the line. So hopefully that's working. But the point I want to make is not surprised that we're trying to work through it a lot in a short period of time, but also I think one thing that I'm hoping comes to you tonight that may not have been clear fully up until now is the idea that we have put before you of this merger of CEDAW and planning has come really from two different directions. We've talked a lot about one of the directions being the kind of permit reform direction that resulted in the situation that we have to make a decision about what happens to planning. There's this whole other effort that Interim CEDAW Director Neil Lunderville effort has been leading really since he took on this Interim Appointment. And really a large part of the reason he took on an Interim Appointment was to look at this question of whether CEDAW was properly organized, whether it's properly resourced to do the job that I think we all want CEDAW to do. I think we all have a vision in our mind of this kind of group of superheroes that can get a ton that wades into these big, difficult problems and is able to just get a lot done on our behalf, on behalf of the people of Burlington. And I think in reality our resources and personnel for doing that are more limited than I think most people realize. And we also have some structural elements that have been worth the review. So what you're going to hear more of tonight than you've had opportunity before is an update from Neil on where he is in that effort and how where he is landing in that kind of separate initiative of looking at a reorganization of CEDAW ties into this planning question. And with that, I'll hand it over to the two of you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. David and I are really pleased to be with you all tonight. And thank you for the opportunity to present again on this. We're not going to cover a lot of old ground. We talked last week about some of the specifics of this, although we will spend a little time getting into the details to make sure that we're clear. But we'll spend a little time, first I want to start by zooming out. So first I want to give you a kind of a current assessment as I see CEDAW after spending six months alongside the great staff at CEDAW and also spending a lot of time beside David and Megan in the planning department. And in current assessment of where we are, my recommendations to go forward, I think recommendations that are not just mine but that I've pulled from the staff over a period of time. And then bringing us back to the question of the merger between planning and CEDAW. Why we believe that it is an important and necessary step to really getting a full revitalization of CEDAW. And then we'll obviously take time for any of your questions and discussion. So, go ahead, a couple slides, Rich. So first I want to start, back one, I want to start with the vision. I did before we started, passed out this large sheet of paper, the 11 by 17 vision. This is not something that we had when I first arrived. One of my early missions was to pick up the, pick up where Director McKay left off and complete the strategic plan. And I found that we were well underway but we had some work. So we first looked at the vision. And I won't go into all this plan but I want to highlight it because I think it's important to start with this. This is why we want a revitalized CEDAW. Why we want a CEDAW is because ultimately we want to make Burlington the most livable, just and connected community in America by empowering individual voices in the life of our city, fostering healthy neighborhoods and housing choice and advancing people-centered development. That's a vision that we worked on with planning and the CEDAW teams through a iterative process over the course of about four months. Many meetings, many drafts. We also came up with a number of strategic initiatives that you see listed here around housing, opportunity, place and engagement. All of which combine to create what we think are the necessary elements to advance Burlington to the next level. And to the types of activities that we need to do to re-establish Burlington as a leader in housing and economic development and equity and mobility, but also to bring CEDAW back to where it needs to be. So I wanted to start there because I think, like I said, that's a really key point. I also wanted to just review what CEDAW does. We do a lot of things. I was sort of shocked when I arrived at CEDAW and dug into all the work that happens. By charter, I think folks know it well. We do look at the comprehensive community economic development strategy. We look at how we stimulate business and investment in our community. Of course, look at our housing needs, waterfront development, grants, CDBG, administration, and then coordinating and facilitating citizen participation in NPAs. That manifests in a lot of ways, some of which are well known, others which may not always get the top billing. Community Justice Center is part of what we do, bringing restorative justice practice to Burlington in many different forms. We run a lead program for lead abatement in our homes and apartments around the city. Of course, we focus on, there's a lot of focus on these large projects like the mall, the memorial, Moran. There's a lot of housing policy and programs. These are just a few here, but certainly implementing the Housing Action Plan, Administration Housing Trust Fund, Continuum of Care, Inclusion and Resoning, Accessory Dwelling Units, The Neighborhood Report, Home Rehab, IZ Monitoring, the list goes on. Our youth programs, these are just a few, AmeriCorps, My Brother's Keeper, the city internship program we run. And this is what I could fit on one page without making it too much of an eye chart. It's broad, it's deep, and it's diverse. It's sort of the way we like it. We'd like to be at a lot of things. It's one of the magic elements of CEDAO is that we are in a lot, that we're creating threads between different areas and doing them in such a way with a focus on equity and mobility that ultimately delivers a really great product and a really great city. We're not alone in doing that. We have a lot of great partners, but we feel a real sense of pride for what we're able to do. So looking at the organization, this is my quick assessment. I could probably spend the whole work session on this, but I wanted to give you some key points. The first one's really important. I think you probably know this already, but CEDAO has a smart, talented, and committed team. But what you might not know is they really do need support. There are some fractures, and that need to be mended. There's not enough training. There's not enough professional development, and they don't work as well as they need to as a team. There's no training for that kind of development. They've had a lot of turnover, including at the director level. Turnover is a symptom. Turnover is not part of the problem. A symptom of something that is deeper that I'll talk about. But when you have that kind of turnover, it does impact the kind of cohesion you need to deliver on the kind of vision that the city wants. Secondly is that, I should also mention, these are all interconnected. One is not a symptom of another. Necessarily they all sort of feed together. But the way we work does not work. That work model is broken. It's compartmentalized and fragmented, as you'll hear in part because of how we receive our funding and the types of grants we get. It's also because that's the work model we've chosen. We don't have a team approach necessarily. We have it sometimes, but not all the time. And we have a system where there are all across the organization individuals doing all parts of any one project to program. That creates the operational risk where if somebody wins the lottery and leaves tomorrow, they may have a lot of knowledge that we really need. A team approach would start to resolve some of that. But right now the way we work doesn't really work for the kind of work that we do. Third and as the mayor alluded to, the resources that CEDA needs to do all this work are very thin. As you'll see in just a moment, we're very thinly staffed for the breadth and depth of the work that CEDA has asked to do and that CEDA wants to do. One of the challenges there is that we receive a lot of grant money, a lot of federal grant money and some state grant money. And that grant money comes with a lot of strengths. It's very inflexible. And the result of it is that we aren't able to be as nimble and entrepreneurial as we would like because we are really trying to meet the needs of particular federal programs. So finally, and a lot of this rolls up into this, is that we have some misalignment or non-alignment between our mission values and initiatives and the organizational structure needed to achieve that. So purposely when we start to look at this, we didn't start by looking at the organizational structure. The organizational structure needs to follow both the work that we're trying to accomplish and how we work to do that, to do those efforts. And then you build an organization structure around that. Ultimately, some of the reasons that these things are misaligned is that, again, the federal money has a lot of implications, but also there's sort of a lack of an integrated view across the city. One other thing I'll note is that when we have a lot of federal funding that's very specific to the grant, there's not necessarily a lot of flexible money for the core programs that CEDA does. And so you'll hear that observation time and again. So just a quick look at what we have for staffing. We have 26 employees, including three limited service employees and five that are budgeted for 40 hours a week or less. We have 12 of those 26 employees in two programs, the Community Justice Center and the lead program. Those are really single issue, they do a lot of things, but they're really single issue and kind of stand alone programs. We have three people, but two and a half full time equivalents in the administration, which includes the CEDA director, leaving 11 people to do a lot of the things that you day to day associate with CEDA. Of those 11 people, five of them have their funding streams split across five or more programs. Some of them as many as 10 programs. These are extremely fragmented way of approaching the work. Secondly, of those 11, seven of them have money from federal programs where they have very little flexibility. And we see this time and again. When you have folks that are having their funding streams split across so many ways, it becomes a literal administrative challenge to fill out your time sheet in a week because the notes need to go in. We have at least one employee who spends upwards of two hours a week filling out the time sheet across 10 program codes with all the notes. That's 5% of their time. That's really not a workable way to do this. So keep your eye on that 11. Those 11 people do this body of work. Going back to this slide around the scope, broad, deep and diverse. 11 people plus the director are handling the housing, economic development, all the large projects, the youth programs, CDBG administration, et cetera, et cetera. This is an extraordinary amount of work. It's amazing what we are able to do. It's really because we have a great staff that works a lot of hours and works really hard. But it's really not long-term sustainable. And with this, we're not able to deliver on the big vision that we laid out before. So what are the prescriptions to solve this? So I want to tell you the good news is that this is not broken beyond repair or anything like that. The core of CEDO is strong, but it does need some attention. And I've listed here and I'll run through really briefly a few of the things. One, the team is smart, but needs support. Making sure that we are investing in training and development. Also making sure that when we go forward to find the permanent CEDO director, there are representative employees in the search committee. That's going to be important, so they have a stake in who is leading them. They are taking a real stake and a real ownership in the plan and in the work to make all these changes, they want to make sure they have a stake in who the next leader is. When it comes to the work model, we need a very different approach. We need a team-based approach. I'm going to talk more about that tonight. That really brings in the life cycle of these projects and we need to invest in that kind of team building. When it comes to resources, with all my work, four years at BED, we did a lot to trim the workforce there. I see the opposite occurring at CEDO. CEDO needs new staff, at least three to five by fiscal 20, converting the limited service staff to regular staff and finding flexible funding that CEDO can use to be more nimble throughout the organization. Finally, we have to finalize this plan. We've got a long way at the final draft stage of that plan. I think the merger with planning, as you'll hear tonight, is really integral to getting alignment around all the things that we do in the organizational structure. And then finally, after we bring the two organizations together, we spend some time working together, building the teams, then we should complete a reorganization of CEDO overall. We're not trying to do that here by bringing CEDO and planning together. That's another exercise that comes after we bring the two teams together and get them working together. So the rest of this presentation will focus on really only two things tonight, which is merging of planning into CEDO and then creating this more entrepreneurial, nimble team approach to the projects that we do. So again, you've seen this before. What's the big idea? The big idea is that we bring together planning in CEDO into this supergroup that's able to handle these really critical and increasingly complex initiatives in the city. And I want to turn it over to David to talk a little bit about really clearly what this idea is about. Thank you, Neil. And David, also, if you could, you're probably going to address this anyway, but it really made clear to us why this, in your opinion, is better than keeping planning separate, a small, separate department. We will absolutely get to that point here coming up. Thank you. So as you all know, the proposal here is with the, currently, planning and zoning is a standalone department with oversight by the Planning Commission. And of course, my position is appointed by the Planning Commission with your confirmation. The proposal going forward, as you understand through the permit reform initiative, is to take the zoning part, the permitting part of the work that our department does, merge that into the new permitting and inspections department, and then take the planning portion of what we do and now merge that into the CEDO office. Currently, as I said, the director of planning and zoning is appointed by the Planning Commission with confirmation by the council. The proposal is that in this new structure, the planning director becomes the deputy director of CEDO and is a mayoral appointment with consultation by the Planning Commission and confirmation by the city council. It's the same arrangement that there is in the Department of Public Works with a public works director and a city engineer. It's really the same basic concept we're talking about here. Today, as I said, the planning department has oversight by the Planning Commission appointed by the council and they have statutory authority and responsibilities for the development and amendments to the city's municipal plan as well as any ordinances and by-laws that implement that plan. Going forward, we would anticipate that the Planning Commission remain an independent body, again utilizing their statutory authority in plan development and amendment and by-law development and amendment. They themselves would not have any oversight responsibility for CEDO. And finally, the Planning Commission today doesn't have any sort of advisory role in the land use and development related plans that may come out of CEDO. Going forward, we would anticipate that that would be the case. Using examples of the housing action plan or the jobs and people report where CEDO is engaged in doing very important planning and policy work around the specific programs that they are responsible for and we would use the Planning Commission as a mechanism to get insights and get advice as that work is developed. Ultimately, those kinds of things get approved by you, the council. So, this slide just highlights that relationship both before and after, the role of the Planning Commission before and after. So, I won't spend a lot of time with this but you can see in the portion of the slide on the left-hand side, the grade boxes is a function that the commission would no longer have. That is the appointment of the Planning Director who is also the Zoning Administrative Officer. The orange boxes on the right-hand side of the slide are additional functions that the Planning Commission would have in this proposed relationship. And advisory to both the advisory to the land use planning and development work that goes on in CEDO as well as the administration of the regulations within the permitting and inspection department. And as commissions do under the Charter today for all of the other departments, they play a role in the annual review and the hiring of a new director but that appointment is made by the mayor. Yep, I've covered this as an example of where the commission has not had such insights in the past. What we're proposing here is something that really is very common across the country. Having a planning department isolated from a community and economic development function is actually quite unusual. The examples that I've looked at, it's really only in some of the largest cities in this country, a place like Seattle where there's a standalone planning department but it is enormous compared to the kinds of things that we're talking about here. We've really looked at cities here listed on this slide where there's a planning and community development department and a standalone permitting department. And Portland, Maine is kind of one of the best examples but also Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Providence and Northampton, Mass are other examples where they split the permitting function from the permitting function from the planning and community development functions. So next slide. We wanted to show what after we do the merger and do a full reorg a few months out, what a new CEDO might look like. And I want to spend some time on this, I want to spend a moment on this but there's something really important with this. It's that in the end with any kind of reorg it doesn't exactly matter where you put the boxes. It definitely matters how you do the work and how we do the work as one organization. So getting the work model right is the most important thing. Ultimately we'll have to come up with an org chart to make sure we have those clear lines and we think something along these lines might work where you have a policy and planning branch that sits along, that is doing the planning work that David has articulated alongside an opportunity and engagement branch that's working on housing choice, homelessness, promoting economic mobility and doing great community engagement. Sitting alongside a community works function that's really the projects and economic development branch. Sitting alongside a finance and administration wing where we're bringing in more resources to help on the really complex financial matters that CEDO deals with where right now we don't have the resources that we need and also not to forget the community justice department as well. So when you align all of them like this you can then start to look at how will certain projects work. And the next slide sort of shows that with a cross-cutting team approach we're not assigning one person one project for that person to live sort of in their own pod and do all of the activities that go along with doing a project but within a project there's a life cycle. There's a planning element, there's an engagement element there's actually implementing it, doing the work on the ground and then there's an evaluation, compliance and reporting part of it. That's sort of what we laid across here. So you take something like the youth and policy programs you might have a team comprised of two or three different areas where someone from policy and planning might work somebody from opportunity engagement working with somebody in community works where the team's brought in at different points to be able to do the part where they know best drawing from the strength of the team in order to get the best outcome for that project or program. There are some things where you're going to have a team that's drawn from every branch inside of CEDO. I think about community engagement. One of the things you'll see in our strategic plan is the whole column about engagement the need to build a robust community engagement effort. Now I think in some ways with the way CEDO works today that could be assigned to one person that person could go do a plan they could sort of implement that plan without really working with anybody else at CEDO. That's not a great way to do this it's really the wrong way to do it engagement needs to be part of everything we do whether you've got a plan a program a project or initiative good engagement is a cross cutting type of endeavor. So you can see that nearly everything that we do will have some kind of engagement team member working alongside folks to do it so that as they move through the life cycle of a project the team members will work next to each other. This is a well known way of working in a lot of other areas it's just not quite yet at CEDO but I hope it will be. When you think about this continuous improvement life cycle approach to these projects you'll find that you can have a very different work model that brings you much more results better results. Employees feel more empowered because they're closer to the work they're collaborating in a way that they haven't before and when you do some when you use a work model like this it's much more resilient. So right now going back to if we had an employee win the lottery and walk out the door a lot of knowledge could walk out with him or her but with a team approach where you're spreading that knowledge across multiple team members who are bringing in expertise we build a much more resilient system that's really a best of many talents and not just one person on the team. I mentioned it here if anybody's familiar with there are different models that use this called Agile Scrum or Kanban they're kind of fancy names for this collaborative model this is sort of what we've been thinking for a model that would work at CEDO. So President Wright you asked the question what about planning as a standalone department what are the options here that we might think of in the alternative to CEDO and planning merging together so the first option here is that planning moves into the new permitting and inspections department that certainly is one approach to take the downside of that are twofold at least initially today planning and zoning work well together and planning has a strong function within our department because we're a small department and because one of my primary objectives as the director of the department is to make sure that the planning function doesn't get lost in the day to day permitting process that recognizing that the importance of plan development and policy development needs to be nurtured it needs to be prioritized in the work that we do in a larger department that is dominated by a permitting process it's much more likely that that planning function can get buried within that department because it's not the central focus of their day to day work on a regular basis in addition moving the planning function out of city hall down in Pine Street where the permitting inspections department is in plan to go would completely undermine the working relationships we have with CEDO today that really require close proximity with CEDO with the mayor's office in order to collaborate on the projects that we do today if planning were to become a standalone department the isolation that we experience both as an independent department and as a small department would be greatly exacerbated a two person department just really is in a functional size department and it would really require additional resources in many ways in order for us to fulfill our responsibilities and our objectives in plan and bylaw development work that we're charged with as Neil was talking about with the examples of the vulnerabilities without having a team-based approach those vulnerabilities are certainly the case in a very small department where somebody's sick somebody's on vacation you've lost the functionality of 50% of that department as a standalone I think just to put it on the table keeping the status quo and not advancing permit reform would be another alternative but I don't think that that's a viable alternative that any of us want to discuss tonight So in summary, last couple slides the CEDA revitalization that I talked about tonight is very much in sight I'm very optimistic about about the work we've done over the last six months I'm optimistic about the team and from conversations I've had with many counselors I'm optimistic about the support for CEDA we have a final draft of a strategic plan we've been working we've been finding ways to build our team and to try to find ways to get flexible funding and get more resources in we still have a long way to go but with your support we will be able to continue on the path to seeing CEDA fully revitalized but there is a piece of this that will be is really necessary to do that and that's we see the merger as part of the ultimate prescription to make CEDA revitalized and here are the three top reasons the first one is that the merger the merger is a bit of a yoga pose you're finding it's creating strength and balance at the same time because what CEDA has that planning needs is that we bring immediate ground truth focus to the issues facing our community equity housing mobility economic mobility the need for youth policy youth engagement good community engagement these are elements that need to be fed into the planning process to create good plans and planning brings to us the long term comprehensive view that we need to fit all of these together planning stops us from having a lot of squirrel moments where we're squirrel and jumping around it gives us that balance that allows us to execute on the long term vision that we have secondly is by putting planning alongside of CEDA in the office on the ground we're creating this team approach where we can manage the life cycle of these important plans, projects programs and initiatives that we think we need to deliver on the vision for CEDA and then finally by drawing in the planning commission in an advisory role we are drawing on their knowledge base to help align these plans in a way that we think makes good sense and is to the benefit of the people that we serve and if I could just throw my own two cents worth in on this one merging planning in CEDA is a good idea regardless of whether or not permit reform are going on today it's something that I've certainly often thought about that our department would be so much more effective and I think CEDA would be so much more effective if we work together more closely this is a great opportunity for us to actually do that it'd be kind of hard to bring up that idea without permit reform being the instigator of the conversation but it's clearly something we would want to do regardless and I think the kind of improvements and investments into the work that CEDA does that Neil's been recommending again is something that we would want to do regardless so just a quick next steps we are we are asking tonight that the council move this proposal to the Charter Change Committee we will have the full proposal at the Board of Finance next week and then with approvals in place recommended approvals in place we will bring that to the council on the 17th looking a little beyond that because I think this question has come up we are working on a transition to a new interim director through the course of the month as I will be stepping out of this role at the end of the year we do hope to be able, once we have clarity on whether CEDA planning are together we'll be able to go out and recruit for a new CEDA director that process will take us into the spring in the meantime hopefully the teams will be working together they'll be doing team building and ultimately understanding the pathways that will create a functional organization for the future and if the town meeting ballot goes through finalizing the changes we would the next director would bring the full reorganization back to the council for full approval there's nothing in that intervening period we can work together, find the best ways that work and continue that team building this is the action I think that you're contemplating tonight and with that we'll pause and thank you for the time thank you very much and just to clarify I started out the meeting tonight saying I was, you know, convening the regular city council meeting this is not a regular city council meeting it's actually a special, just for the public this is a special city council meeting called by the mayor it is dealing with this one topic and as Mr. Lunderville noted I think there will be a motion made and it's up to the council there to send this to the charter change committee which is I think already scheduled to meet on December 11th and 12th is that correct? Chairwoman Shannon we're talking about this, right? okay and so we will begin taking questions and see whether there is support to send this forward Councillor Buscher is first in the queue and then Councillor Shannon so thank you for this additional information I appreciate that but I have a couple of questions so this proposed org chart what's happened to Scott, Mary and the other person where are they? so the rest of our department Scott and Mary Lane and Shaley and Ryan are going into permitting and inspections department so how are they going to deal with certificates of appropriateness so their job within that new department will be as it is today in administering the zoning ordinance and the subdivision regulations so all of the permitting functions related to the zoning ordinance are being relocated into that new department so they'll do the same work that they're doing today just within that new department structure so okay, I have more questions so in this presentation the DRB was doing the exact function that they always had but they are staffed by Mary Scott and sometimes staffed from planning sometimes you're always at the planning commission but sometimes there's someone there from planning so I had pointed out and I'm not going to get into the weeds that zoning needed to be in two places zoning needed to be in permit reform and there still needed to be a component that was associated with the DRB and planning and I still am not really clear with that functionality and I'm somewhat concerned about this proposed work, I must admit I'm supportive of the I want to move forward with permit reform but I am really concerned about who's going where because I really feel that we as a city benefit from having all of your collective heads together when a project comes in and we give input to the developer so I'm somewhat concerned about this and I have to be aware of that I've always felt that Burlington I know for those that are developers they feel like there are such barriers and I understand that opinion but I also feel like because we have in the past recently we've rushed but in the past we've taken our time and I think as a result the development, new development is integrated with existing development and we've done it well I don't want to really lose that piece so I am concerned about this so the only two people that remain are David and Megan correct, correct all right when you talked about when you showed us the options for where planning would go you didn't mention that you could stay where you are with that's option two as a standalone department well yes, okay but in city hall not going down there's no rationale for you to go down to Pine Street so I don't understand why you couldn't stay as you are and still be in city hall where I think you need to be so I'm not exactly sure why that isn't an option you know there's the assessor down in that area I still feel like there's opportunities here let me just see about something else here I totally understand and I think that what you said about collaboration between planning and CEDO makes sense I don't require merger I've said this before and I don't want to be redundant but I don't believe it requires merger but I do believe collaboration if it's missing should be incorporated into whether we stay as is or would move forward with some new design I am a little concerned about the priorities that planning currently has regarding so who's going to be the ordinances is it going to be so planning isn't going to be involved in any of that absolutely so if I can use that answer maybe the first question you asked as well when you think about zoning there are two basic functions there's the creation of the zoning ordinance and then there's the administration of the zoning ordinance the permitting process so the as part of this merger planning planning in CEDO the development of the ordinance the amendment of the ordinance function would be there the work that Megan and I do as part of drafting amendments to the ordinance would remain with the planning function but there's also a very strong connection with the folks that administer the ordinance as you may know Scott Gustin is the staff persons to the planning commission's ordinance committee in this proposed structure he will continue to serve that function because it's very important that there is a strong bridge between the people who are creating the ordinances and the people who are administering the ordinances so through the job descriptions particularly of the zoning staff that's going into the new permitting department they will have some responsibilities to work with the folks in planning to develop those amendments to the bylaws whether it's something new that we want to add to it or it's a refinement to improve the way it currently functions I guess so thank you, thanks I'm still concerned about who's driving the bus with CEDO and CEDO determining priorities I'm concerned that planning planning's attention to some of their their issues right now will some maybe take a back seat I'm not really sure if you will be able to dedicate the amount of time you have which has served us well I still have strong reservations about this I really have to think a lot about Scott and Mary because that team it really works really well and Scott not only staffs the ordinance committee but Scott is as counselor Mason knows I mean Scott knows the ordinances Scott oftentimes is part in the creation of those ordinances and has served a really important role working with you and Megan not in isolation in another department down on pine street so I have some concerns about how this all has been shaped in the proposed org chart I think I want to do it right and I'm not convinced that this is right thank you there was another question relative to location physical location certainly if planning or a standalone function it could be here in city hall alone the assumption was in the first alternative shown there that if it were to be part of the permitting inspections department that is being proposed to be stood up down on pine street then it would go down there and that would create that disconnect but if it were standalone it could be here but we fully intend to build and maintain really the very strong working relationship between the administration of the ordinance and the development of the ordinance that we have now and by incorporating it into not just our day to day practice but into job descriptions we can institutionalize that over time so if Scott wins the lottery that the person that then fills his job responsibilities will know that that's part of their responsibility is to collaborate with a sister department in the development of the ordinances that they administer thank you president right may I just ask one other question of the CEDO director briefly I do have to get back into the queue here with some other sorry when you have this org chart and you talked about needing half and CEDO and you mentioned the people and a lot of change I how many people have actually been there more than five years I have to go back and look it's not we we've had a lot of turnover I saw Kristen and Todd and maybe nobody else Margaret alright so I just wanted to understand they are thank you sorry thank you very much thank you thank you president right first I wanted to clarify what I believe we did at the last meeting and the actions that the Charter Change Committee has already taken based on that which did include moving the zoning staff to the new department at DPW because our understanding was that that was the will of the council and that that is part of the permit reform work that we were asked to do and the only thing that was left out was the merger of planning and CEDO so I think that the choices we have left are leaving a standalone planning staff or to merge them because we have to do something the office has already changed if we're going forward with permit reform and we're implementing the zoning piece of it the change has already started to occur so we have to do something secondly I wanted to know president right there are a couple of highly regarded staff members from each department here and I didn't know if they had any desire to share their thoughts or if you would like to invite them to do so and we absolutely can hear from them if you would like to we can do it now or you can I don't want to force them to I just wanted to make the offer if they we absolutely can offer would you like to give us a brief your thoughts on this proposal I'm glad beyond what David has said other than just reiterating the point that a lot of the work that I do in terms of the long range planning function requires collaboration with many individuals across the city and often that includes a really close working relationship with many of the staff in CEDO so I personally as looking at my role within the city and the type of work that I do within the city I see tremendous benefit in being able to really work collaboratively as part of a team with not only the policy makers in CEDO but also the folks that are focused on community engagement and programs to make sure we really develop that synergy that Neil was talking about in terms of how we actually carry our policies all the way down to the direct service level for residents of the city so I think that's kind of the one thing that I would just say I think David and Neil have covered a lot of the other thoughts and perspectives I have if there are any specific questions that any of you have about the work that I do I'd be happy to answer them but if anyone has any questions we'll call you back up any other thoughts to be added I was generally here for more support I guess I've had the pleasure of working for the city of Burlington for a lot of years and the workload is continually sorry for channel 17 can you just identify yourself Hi I'm Kirsten Merriman Shapiro I work at the Community and Economic Development Office so I have been working for the city for many years and both planning and CEDO do really great work and have really high quality staff people but the workload is only getting more and more as our city and community continues to grow and to meet all those community needs resources and more staff to better serve the community and so I'm curious how this will all come together but we've been working on that with the previous director as well as the current CEDO director so you're generally supportive of the merger proposal yeah I think if that's what the citizens of Burlington and the council directs us to do I think it makes sense and as I said I've had a lot of good relations working with both David and Megan on many projects so I look forward to working with them if they're in CEDO or if they're downstairs still but yeah I think there's some benefits that could come from that for sure okay if councillors have any specific questions for me either of you can call you back up Councillor Shannon you still have the floor thank you my one concern with not merging is kind of what the planning department looks like and it looks to me like a department of two people maybe I'm missing somebody but I wondered how that affects hiring a planning director and David I hope you would stay but presumably you won't stay forever and is that going to hamper our efforts in recruiting somebody that doesn't look like we highly value planning if we have a department of two it seems like to me and I wondered how you think that might be viewed if we choose that route and if that's a problem or it's not a problem I think that's a great question I think it would be really difficult because I think it would be an illustration of how the community values planning as a function how it whether or not it takes planning seriously or not to be such a small department whether we remain independent or not really wouldn't matter it would appear to be so under resource to do the work that's at hand I think it would be hard to find hard to find quality people and to work in such a small area I mean certainly there are cities that do have a stand alone planning function but again they're much larger cities they have much more robust staff resources and I think even for us if we were to try to go down that road I don't know that we could do it with just two people we're able to do it with two people today because we supplement that work with time and effort of other folks in the department talked about Mary and Scott who both dedicate a proportion of their time to working on plan and policy type of work if that relationship is broken that I just think it really further isolates the planning function in the city my last question actually you just brought up for the second time that you said that there were other cities much larger cities that do have independent planning planning departments and you said that right before you showed us this slide that said that there are other peer and aspirational communities has successfully established planning slash community development departments and then you listed the same cities that I thought you just said had separate planning departments on that list you had Portland, Maine and Seattle, Washington you were misunderstanding something I hope you could clarify Portland, Maine has a planning and community development department and they have a separate permitting and inspections department that's kind of been the model that we've looked at both the permit reform and this reorganization we've looked to that as an example other cities do it in other ways but almost in every situation planning and community development is a combined department whether or not permitting is embedded within it or it's separate from it the one example of a purely independent planning department and planning function from the mayor's office is Philadelphia Philadelphia has a planning commission with its own independent staff so when you say that the other much larger cities with independent planning departments you mean actually merged with not isolated from the community development office you mean merged with the community development office even in that case in almost every situation they are merged in that or merged with a community development function they are within a department and there's community development and land use and development planning work thank you councillor Shannon councillor mason and councillor pine thank you president right two questions but to sort of start off just because tomorrow happens to be I think the presentation on plan BTV in particular plan BTV south end and I'm curious sort of looking back and I think we'd all acknowledge there were some hiccups in plan BTV south end how does that process look different how does this merger goes through and how is the process better so I think that's a really good example where the work that we do in the planning office we can't do in isolation we have to collaborate with other people and we do that wherever and however we can but particularly with the south end plan it was critically important that we have a close working relationship with CEDO in order to really understand the economic development issues and opportunities in the south end that we were trying to both preserve in advance had we been all part of one department that would have looked a little differently in that at kind of as Neil described it instead of Megan or before Megan kind of being the project manager and project champion through shuttle diplomacy meeting with lots of other people involved in the process and getting their input and perspective on it it would be as part of a team of people that really owned this plan and carried this plan forward on an ongoing basis I think by doing so we have much more buy in cross in between the two departments as they are now in the development of that plan to say nothing about the benefit of the robust public engagement initiative that CEDO is looking to put forward and really is growing their capability today we do rely on each other quite frequently then in Wednesday night it will be a good example of collaboration between our department and CEDO in pulling off that community engagement function but that's kind of a prototype for where we want to go in the future and by institutionalizing that working relationship we can make sure that it goes beyond kind of the current personalities and individuals that are doing that work today Thank you Councillor Mason Councillor Pine Thank you the history lesson real quickly it's worth it is that CEDO was created in 1983 out of a department called the planning department at the time for very good reasons I was after a year of a blue ribbon commission that looked at these issues so it's you just got to think about what you're doing I think long term and whether the solution really addresses and solves the problem that you're trying to solve I really respect both of you I have great respect for the mayor I think the idea has merit but I'm not sure yet that the solution is the solution to the problem we're trying to solve so I'm still open minded about it I will probably end up supporting referring it to the charter change committee but I have a couple specific questions that I think the one that's really getting me is the idea that doing this will bring in more resources for CEDO to do its job and I haven't yet seen how a merger of these two departments results in increased resources to CEDO I think that's the budgeting process that does that so I'm missing something there sorry if that was the impression made no, they're definitely different it is the list of recommendations that I printed out here they don't they all need to happen and they all have a different process of happening the merging of planning with CEDO does not bring in the new staff that needed the new staff that are needed are on top of that merger that's a separate process by which through the budget will occur what the merging with planning does is it does really activate our ability to do the life cycle planning that we really need to do around the life cycle approach that we need to do around these projects which includes planning that's one of the big benefits that planning the planning CEDO merger will bring but the other pieces also need to happen and some of them are on an independent track and I think they all need to happen in order to get the product that we all want but there's more to do there if you could then address the next big piece here which is that this is a proposed organizational chart for the merger only and a full reorg would happen in the spring of 2019 are there thoughts already as to what that looks like or is that to be determined I mean I'm not sure I can speak to you won't be here much longer but no we spent some time internally discussing the chart that we put right here with this sort of layout but I'm reluctant to say it'll look just like this in part because I think when the teams start working together and we start to really implement the team approach you might find some different pathways to build an org chart that will make more sense and I purposely recommended that we don't put the car before the horse there really do the merger have the teams work together on the priorities that are in the plan see how this team approach works understand what lines they create in the sand and then start to map the org chart around that versus trying to lay an org chart on top of it without the understanding of how it works most like I would say we take a little different approach in the city government where we want to have it all sorted out in the org chart before we do it and I think there's a lot of value to spending a little time working together seeing how you work together which is which and then figuring the org chart around that based on the evidence that you get versus just the kind of a guess going into it a good guess but I think it's also predicated on really beginning right now developing and fleshing out those team building relationships and kind of creating some of these teams standing them up seeing how they work and seeing as this is a starting point does it bear fruit as we envision it here or their important tweaks that we need to consider? That helps a little bit because I think what I'm struggling with is the structure now has you David the deputy director coming in but really coming in with a specific portfolio if you will of responsibilities not extending across the department necessarily and yet I think here I would see if we were to look at where you would land it would probably be the planning and policy area I think is what I'm hearing which the term deputy director kind of implies that you're maybe dealing with HR issues you're developing the budget but I don't think that's really what you're talking about here right? Just want to make sure as someone who looks at other cities for examples I think it's important to remember we are pretty unique the form of government where we have a strong mayor we have a council CEDO and the charter is clearly empowered by actions of this council there are governments that you cited there that are weak mayor or virtually no mayor and a town city manager running the city at the direction of the behest of the council so there's so many different variations I don't think it's that helpful to say these cities do this because we all are such unique creatures and I don't think it's really adds that much to the debate really I think it's important to remember that we're just we're unique and so I think that's really important and then the last thing for now it's almost like giving the other punchline now but I think I have to is I'm thinking that the permit reform has really broad support both here and in the community and I would worry that if we have something attached to it in the same question that doesn't have the level of support and consensus yet it jeopardizes our chances with that question so I think that's just for I think the whole council and the mayor to think about is does this help or does it hinder in any way getting the real main objective which for a lot of us is the permit reform so thank you councillor pine I don't have anybody else in the queue I do now councillor jane I want to just Mr. Lunderville have you talked to other staff at CEDO and do you have any idea whether not to ask you whether you know how every single person thinks or general support in the CEDO staff for this merger there's general support for the things we need to do to revitalize CEDO I think the the staffs have worked well together over the last few months in working on the overall strategic plan I've asked for feedback had a lot of conversations I've not heard negative feedback on it there are probably more questions that are on their top of their mind more often than that but they having worked alongside David and Megan so closely and seeing the opportunity to be able to work alongside them in the future at a more day to day level I think people like that idea the team approach has the merit they want to understand how it will work on the ground which is a fair a fair thing but with the idea of having the view alongside of our day to day ground level view I think it's something that people see the real value for thank you so much before going to Councillor Chang as Councillor Pine mentioned I think one of the things that if we do have the votes to send this to Charter tonight would be that question of should this be should the question be combined into one question to the voters or should it be combined into two separate questions you can speak to that in a second Councillor Shannon but I'm going to go to Councillor Chang now for Councillor Chang's question Thank you President President Wright thank you guys so much for being here and for the detailed presentation and my first question is to ask when community justice came to existent at CEDO when would that program have been developed? I don't know it's been around since the 90s it's coming gone from CEDO though it left for a little while and then it came back so it was thank you and I think I heard great wonderful things about the proposal wonderful and I think for example you gave Portland Mint and I think what they did about planning and also their community economic development I think reason why they have the best around the country if you can look at it Portland Empowers it is a program that really talks about diversity equity initiatives they have the best around the nation and also you go to yeah what is it? there is another state in the south I forget and you have an example of them Oregon they have the best homeless initiatives in the country those tiny homes for homeless people they have a unique and wonderful program one of the best and you know I like those examples and I'm glad that you provided them here but what I could not wrap my head around is the scope of work of CEDO it's deep it's large it's all of that but I did not see any component of diversity equity inclusion in the city and to me I am afraid to even be buried when we merge the two entities and was just wondering if that is like you know a fear that we might have some of the great work you do might go away because now those two departments are merged so on that question I think that equity is part of is part of the mission is the seventh word in our mission here on this page is one of our values of equity every one of these categories across the top mentions equity 75% of these initiatives have some form of a measure of promoting equity equity and the mobility of people in our economy and with their housing is at the very core of what we do and it is writ large in this plan so that is something that has come through absolutely loud and clear through the strategic planning process both internally at CEDO almost to a person and then in combination with planning even thinking about our planning in our place making sure that we are doing things to that promote diversity equity and inclusion across everything that we do so I'm glad you mentioned it because it really is at the heart of it is in some ways the beating heart of what CEDO does and it is through this plan which I know you just got a copy of tonight take a look through and you'll find it in there that bubbling up and nearly all the things and I hope that you would find that in reading the draft master plan that we're presenting that you'll see that equity and inclusion as a component of that work as well because it really is fundamental to the work that we do as planners and also it is my understanding that if we merge it to different departments looks like CEDO will have an addition of over nine new staff I mean based on your presentation here that's what it sounds like you say an addition of three to five staff two different things two different things so the immediate merger of CEDO and planning brings David and Megan into CEDO that's two through any other processes we do to bring on new staff those will be additional so there may be between five and seven new staff including planning and anything else that we get but there's a the additional staff there's still work to do to find the budget for those that ultimately bring them in so it came out as like you have three temporary staff and also you have five staff that are part-time I've included them in all of our numbers they're employees they're just not full-time equivalent employees so they're 26 employees but 24.375 full-time equivalents and whether there is this merger that still can happen but just like what you hope it does and I mean I think this is now where we get to the I heard a lot of team talented converted but need support can you pull your microphone down it's pointing up and we're missing you the team to work to close proximity I heard a lot of that advisory land prohibited provided by the PID you know the the work currently is compartmentalized it's fragmented I heard a lot of that there is a current model created for operational risks there are all of that but what I want to come down to is basically all of that to me solving those problems is just for CEDO to have a leadership and I think for a very long time we had such a wonderful and creative leader which is you Mr. Neil you know and I think just through your leadership all of these concerns can be changed and can be addressed over time with the time but I personally do think there are some component that I want to talk to Megan ask her I always thought that she works at Burlington Parks and Recreation because she's always there but I think the understanding was her office is actually here and I heard that there is this problem of proximity I mean and which I don't understand what do you mean by there is this lack of proximity between CEDO and planning knowing that your offices are already in technology the proximity piece I want to understand that so first of all thank you for your kind words about me but I will tell you CEDO's challenges will not be solved with leadership alone I feel very strongly about that Noel McKay was one of the most competent public managers I've ever worked with I worked with her during the Irene recovery you know I maybe should if Noel couldn't run it what made me think I could do better and I don't believe I have honestly I believe that being quite candid I feel like we've advanced the ball some work that she started we have a better sense of what we need to complete the work there which I've laid out here but there's a lot more work to be done some things are structural not the leadership one of the structural parts is the need to have folks working in these teams as you correctly said the proximity of working on teams is important because of the kind of work we do we work in the community we work next to folks and having them in the same office being able to in an office environment that promotes the kind of collaboration which we are going to have with an office renovation that's coming having the planning team working in that kind of space will really start to you'll see these ideas be tied together in ways they never were before that doesn't happen when you are able to go downtown to the south end to have a meeting for an hour that works but it doesn't work on that day to day and you sort of have that spontaneous creativity I saw this at BED when we took people out of offices and put them side by side where they could peer over their desk and they worked in different departments and said hey John what do you think about this idea I have another thought these little sparks that created I think the same thing could and will happen here with planning if we are able to bring the teams together and let them work side by side because the people they are smart, they are talented they have the same core values and they want to do this work and they want to do it right and I think what we are really striving for is we have built some really effective working relationships over the years and what we really want to do is institutionalize that right now at any given point in time we have one or two different CEDO folks down in our office talking about a project that they are working on that we are collaborating on that happens by sheer will of personality we shouldn't leave that to chance I think institutionalizing that within how government actually functions on an everyday basis is the goal that we are after and lastly Mr. President and I think is the fact that when we heard about this presentation at first it was more about efficiency accountability and I think nearly you added the aspect of bringing more funds to planning but all of those three elements I haven't heard it in this new presentation but the things that I came out with that I came out at the last presentation and today it's totally disappeared and I don't really see where we are right now you know why we should have these two elements merge but thank you for your time and for your work Thank you, Councillor Chang Mr. Mayor do you need to get to what Director White was just saying and also kind of we just had Megan up here before remind me of something that I feel like might make part of what's this challenge here I think is talking, it feels sort of abstract we're talking about org charts and the work and we're all even those of us doing this all day some of this can feel vague and not concrete let me kind of give you a concrete example I think we'll all remember that kind of brings home what we're trying to achieve here is Megan was just here at the last City Council meeting presenting on ADUs and this idea for a pilot she's clearly spent a great deal of time on and worked with outside partners on there is this whole parallel effort that Neil has two staffers in CEDO that have been working on for years that is also focused on ADUs and there was not a lot of there was a little bit of awareness between these two efforts but they're essentially we're spent we're having staff they are in the same building but they're not part of the same team they have different bosses right now and necessarily different priorities and things that are capturing their attention and we just we miss opportunities and I think we're too small of a city to do that and I think that's what David's point is exactly too is like we're doing probably better than at least you know I'd like to think we're doing better than we've been doing in a long time from some of the stories I hear about getting that kind of coordination between planning and CEDO but it's still it is not codified it is not institutionalized it's left to the personalities and the priorities of the people leading what are essentially two different organizations right now and that's problematic thank you mr. mayor councillor shannon and then councillor busher thank you I just wanted the council to think a little bit about something that was mentioned about possibly splitting this question and I don't see how that works I think that if you're we've heard strong support on the council for permit reform and included in that is moving the zoning staff into that new permitting office and the default once we do that the default is that we have a planning staff a planning department of two people and a separate CEDO office and I don't I would be concerned about going forward without making a conscious decision that that's what we wanted to do because I don't think that that would be obvious to voters who may think well we want to keep the status quo in the planning office but we're not keeping the status quo in the planning office if we're going ahead with permit reform so I think that it's important for the council to make a decision I don't think it's fair to say well I want to go ahead with permit reform but I want to hold this decision on whether or not planning should merge with CEDO to a later date or have more process around that because I think we have to come up with a workable solution for all three we can't just we can't just say well go ahead with this piece and what happens on the other side happens it is kind of a package deal I think if you have other thoughts as to how that's viable I don't really see how that's viable having done the work that we've done on the charter change committee so far there is a big impact on the planning office just by doing the permit reform piece I think that I don't think we as I don't feel I I can take responsibility for myself but I do believe that others around the table also didn't really look at all of the minutia that went into zoning moving over to permit reform I identified it though I said I think there's a problem here with zoning I'm not comfortable with what's going on here because I didn't fully understand it so I just wanted to say to councillor to president right but if he had passed it on to councillor Shannon that I do feel that the zoning component could be not that I want to remove it completely but I do think that there was a need for zoning in both planning and in permit reform and I'll just stop there because that's not the only reason I wanted the mic I wanted to say that I haven't heard from the planning commission their opinion of this and I think that's key I did ask before we started the meeting and I was told that they have not given their decision to anyone yet which says a lot they're being very thoughtful but if you're on board you usually know I'm wondering where they are on this the other thing because I am getting into minutia now who's staffing and I don't I'm just saying in my head who's staffing the conservation board who's staffing the design advisory board you know I mean we've unraveled a department that was complex and made this new department thinking ooh we've done a great job but I don't think we've done a great job on really understanding what we unraveled and who's staffing what and I'm being honest there the last thing is and Mr. Mayor this has you could ask prior Mayor Clavel or prior Mayor Kiss or prior Mayor Brownell because I it doesn't apply to Mayor to you solely but I have never felt that I would be well served by having the planning director appointed by the Mayor and I want to be really clear about that because I always thought autonomy for the planning director was a good thing and I and I heard that from people a lot wiser than I am in regards to this topic saying that you don't want the Mayor to control development you want the Mayor and he has the Mayor some day she will have some day I can only hopeful she will have a CEDO department that will allow that vision to be moved forward working in collaboration with planning but I don't feel that we are well served by having the Mayor make that planning director appointment and so I'm not comfortable at all with this and as I think more and more I'm somewhat frustrated that we didn't get into more of the weeds and minutia because I think as we see these org charts and as we understand more and more we begin to become enlightened and hopefully are asking the right questions we want to do this right I want the permit I want one stop shopping just like everyone else but I'm not sure that by unraveling planning and zoning we're doing our city justice thank you thank you Councillor Buscher no Councillor sorry Councillor Hartnett Councillor Dean was up next thank you President Wright at this point in the evening I'd like to actually make a motion to refer the CEDO planning portion of permit reform to the Charter Change Committee to consider and report back to the City Council at December 17th our City Council meeting and after a second I would request the floor black motion has been made by Councillor Dean seconded by Councillor Mason Councillor Dean you have a floor back thank you President Wright I think probably outside of my role as a City Councillor I probably have the most direct professional experience dealing with planning and zoning and certainly you know and CEDO as well and just from my perspective I think this is the right move to make it's logical it makes sense to me in my professional role that these two planning organizations would share you know both a common location and they share a common mission already that they would be within in the same organization make sense to me so I think there have been some valid points made I would like to make two of my own one is that Director Lunderville and Director White are two of the most respected professionals that we have working for us as a City and I know that Director Lunderville has had a fantastic run and experience in reorganizing and making organizations more efficient both at the state level and here with the Burlington Electric Department and supporters the backers of this give me great confidence they really see efficiencies and they see this as the right move that gives me a great deal of trust that we're headed in the right direction the other point I'd like to make is that when CEDO was created in 1983 I think as Councillor Pine reported Burlington was a different city our concerns were different the city was different and the kind of what we look at today as a goal for our city is really much broader I was having a conversation with Michelle Cooper-Smith who's a four term legislator and her point to me is that our success in Burlington is not just important to us it's important to Chittenden County and really is the economic driver of our whole state so we have to get this right and I think doing things the way we have done them in the past when the challenges aren't the same doesn't make sense so with those two points I'd like to say that I do feel as though this is the right thing I will be supporting this to move to Charter Change Committee and yield the floor thank you thank you Councillor Dean so we now have a motion on the floor we'll go to Councillor Hartnett at the last meeting about part of this that's uncomfortable for me is whether we want to omit it or not this all becomes political now with planning and zoning and I think that's unfortunate and I'm not quite there with that but and the other thing there was a slide up there that said option three would be to stay status quo and not do anything at all and I think that's an insult to this council actually because we all want permanent reform and to say on a slide that we can't get there unless we do one or two things I disagree with that and if I have to eventually come out and not support this and as one of the councillors that was on the resolution that passed permanent reform I'm confident I can go to the voters and make my case why I can't support it I just want to put that out there I'm not afraid to do that so I think we really kind of need to think about our next steps and how we're going to do it because I think we can keep planning and zoning together and have permanent reform and because I do think there's a component of zoning that could be down in public works but I don't think the whole department needs to go to public works and so to me yes zoning has to be part of that but I don't think the entire zoning department has to be down under the public works and the new department so I would hope if we send this to Charter that we think outside the box and we look at ways that we can keep planning and zoning together intact for the most part and continue to work on permanent reform but as of right now as Councillor Buscher said I'm not willing to risk the change here because I think the I just don't think the benefits outweigh what we're trying to do so that's where I am, thanks Before I go to Councillor Tracy can you address that I mean that we could take off part of zoning and have part of zoning part of the department part of the other Councillor Hardnett a component meaning I think one person from zoning could be down there Well I'm going to address that So I think that the answer kind of depends on a number of different factors is there still a permitting and inspections department that encompasses planning and zoning and all of the other things so you're asking for a piece of that department to be dislocated and kept up here versus down there I mean is it possible it's certainly possible to do that but I think again from an organizational standpoint from a leadership standpoint I think it further isolates the planning function within the city yes it's within this larger department but that larger department is primarily focused on permitting and the planning function is happening often some corner I think it's less than optimal for both to approach it that way Thank you Councillor Tracy Thank you President Wright and thank you for the presentation I certainly appreciate it what I will say is that with this process I feel incredibly rushed and I don't like to feel rushed and in that I also feel like I'm not getting the information that I need in this fashion to have a presentation put on board docs at 546 the day of a meeting have materials handed out for the first time when we're at fundamentally thinking about changing a department is unacceptable I think it's completely unacceptable for us we've made this point time and again to the administration about getting materials we made this point a year ago when we were talking about the UVM funding issue and again many of us on the council pretty much everyone on this council who works doesn't have a chance to review this material beforehand even if they did get it even during the work day they wouldn't be able to do it either and I just think that's unacceptable and not good practice when we're talking about making fundamental shifts in terms of the two crucial city departments and the work that those departments do I think that's the first flaw I think that from that flows a lot of other problems I think that we have both unanswered questions and then connections within this proposal that are not made I think in terms of the unanswered questions and this was a point that I made before I do not specifically see how the historic functions of public outreach diversity and equity outreach and anti-poverty work are specifically supported by this merger I see elements that could be done outside of the merger namely bringing those lenses to the planning commission work but that in no way is dependent upon merging these two functions nothing in this presentation tonight has shown me how we're going to expand the diversity and inclusion or the anti-poverty work that does this and I think that this is part of an intentional shift actually that's taking place here where we're trying to institutionalize the more developer focused lens that this particular administration has put on the CEDA department and that's this particular flavor that this particular administration has chosen to bring to this department another mayor may choose to take a different approach and I think that that should be there at their leisure but I don't think that we should institutionalize that approach and I think that there's a couple of reasons that I think that that's also problematic beyond that more general sort of ideological thing that I think is institutionalized here and that's going on here but I think that part of that is that it doesn't really address the key issues that you're naming here whether it's the team needing more support we don't address that issue because as you specifically said we don't address those points of adding additional staff in this that comes later and so we don't know whether the staff issues of support will continue to be that continue to exist and part of that is that this doesn't crack the nut that we have or deal with the problem that we have regarding federal funding and the slacking off of federal funding that's going to continue to remain an issue this doesn't deal with that whether we have a different process or something that those issues are still going to exist and I would like to have clarity on those to understand whether or not this is actually going to help those kinds of issues I don't see the connection being made that goes back to that point we also don't have the this idea of the work plan being you know being flawed I think that again this is another issue where why can't we work on this within CEDO see if we can't fix it within CEDO first before doing a merger I don't see the connection between merger and the work plan model I think we can fix the work plans that are going on within CEDO in a more collaborative or team based fashion and not necessarily have to do them that way there's also you know these a number of other questions about why you know about the flaws of a small department I don't see that necessarily as being a problem I think that that is a nimble department that could be there and I think that the issue of location that they said that you know they would be far away that's by no means a decided factor so I just think that there's a lot of things within this plan that are not necessarily well thought out that are not well established and so to ask us to even do so much as refer that to the charter change I don't know as a member of that committee what kinds of things I'm supposed to be bringing to that language when I bring it to that committee so I'm going to be voting against this motion I will be opposing it at the committee level and I'm going to impose it with the voters and I will be very clear that I think that the voters really have a choice here whether or not they want to have a continued focus on some of these historic issues that that's you just focused on or whether they want to really take a shift ideologically towards a more developer focused department thank you thank you council Tracy response not sure where to begin on that council Tracy thank you for those comments is certainly intended to your opinion on them I would would disagree with most of that I won't reiterate the points I made earlier because I but I will make a couple points one is that I would very strongly disagree that we have lost our equity focus in fact I believe this plan strengthens the equity focus focus in a way that will make it more robust than what we've done over the last many years 10 years at least on this because we are actively finding ways to increase the number of programs that will enhance and promote equity diversity inclusion anti-poverty economic mobility that is again as I mentioned to councillor that this is writ large in this plan a plan developed not by the mayor not by me this is from the staff this is a staff level document and I have I'm happy to share with you the paperwork to show you all the work we've done as a staff to really create this there are development things in here but they are taken in balance they're taken in balance with the other items that we need to make complete city and I think that's so that is important to understand that if you're critical of this plan you are critical of the staff time that went into this and the focus they wanted to put and they believe strongly about an equity one I agree with and one that I think CEDO needs to occur second item is that you're right we are not taking all of the things on my list to do right away that would be great that takes a lot of time that takes it's complicated some things are going to take time to do but in my experience and I've had a little experience in challenging circumstances you don't wait to make a perfect solution you take the things that you have that you know work and you know are good and you implement them and then when time permits and when the budget permits you start to do the other things the good idea is to have a plan which we have we have a plan that will allow us to start to do this part of that plan I do believe in my opinion that is bringing planning together with CEDO to form a more cohesive unit but that doesn't mean that's the last thing we should do in fact it's one of the first things we're doing we've got a strategic plan we're working on team building we're working on the budget items bringing planning together is on this list we should continue to pace ourselves through this list I would just say that I it's been certainly a great honor to work with the CEDO staff I think I would encourage you all counselors to spend time talking to them you've heard from Kirsten who is among the very best that the city has you will find their words their values imbued in this plan very deeply it is something that ultimately I hope that CEDO with planning has the opportunity to do and to act to really make real on the ground because it is the thing that will really make our city shine in the future we've done great in the past and CEDO has been it engine for that and we want to make sure that it has the fuel and that it is finally tuned to continue that into the future thank you unless there's any other counselor I think we may be ready to vote I would like to just say before we go to vote I don't want to open this back up for a debate but I totally get what the Chair of Charters said about her feeling on any potential combining of the questions or keeping separate charter changes but I think there are some counselors who feel differently about that I would just ask that that debate happens at the Charter Change Committee and some testimony be taken about whether that could happen or not with that I'm actually going to ask for a roll call so would the clerk please call the roll on this being the move to send this merge proposal to the Charter Change Committee to come back to us and at which point the city council will still have another bite at the apple when it comes back I have a question if we vote no tonight will it come before us again it still has to come back to us for a final vote let's say it doesn't have enough votes to go to Charter so this is the last time again if it's voted to not go to Charter then this is a bad time so with that the with the clerk please call the roll Councillor Boushore no Councillor Dean yes Councillor Jang Councillor Hardnett yes Councillor Mason yes Councillor Paul Yes Yes The motion to refer this to the Charter Change Committee has passed by nine to vote and Charter Change Committee has its work cut out for them. Thank you for the presentation and We will see what happens when it comes back With that we have one last item to deal with that is item 3.0 to which is dealing with Burlington telecom a Verbal update from the city attorney with I guess an expected executive session and City Attorney Blackwood if you could also make clear To the council because I've had this question myself Why we will need to go into executive session on this sense the topic has been Widely reported in the press, but if you can explain it it is my understanding that counselors would like to hear from me about the reasons for Filings that the city made and the position that the city has taken that requires me to talk about what our legal strategy is in relation to litigation against the city and Therefore, I would suggest that that should be covered in Executive session as premature disclosure of it would indeed put the city at a disadvantage If you if we were to try to explain exactly what our strategy is and what we're doing Okay, Councilor Mason. Thank you President right. I'd like to ask for a finding that Excuse me premature public disclosure of litigation strategy would put the city at substantial disadvantage Moved by Councillor Mason seconded by Councillor Shannon any discussion hearing none all those in favor, please say aye We have the finding Councillor Mason. Thank you President right based on that finding I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session noting that the city attorney CAO and Mayor staff will be present for executive session Thank You Councillor Mason seconded again by Councillor Shannon any discussion hearing none We will clear the room and go into executive session 941 just to be clear president right. We're not expected to take any action So I don't know if channel 17 and that's right. We are taking no action This is just a an update from the city attorney with some questions from council I Don't know if we do have any idea where this is will be lengthy. It's I guess it's hard to say you're I'm responding to whatever questions you all have okay You're updated your update itself probably is not lengthy, but we'll be very short. Okay. Thank you Start back. Okay. We are back from executive session and I need a motion to adjourn Move by Councillor Shannon second by Councillor busher all those in favor of adjourning. Please say aye Any opposed we are adjourned and we'll see you back here on December 10th It won't be well