 Good evening. Welcome to ongoing general election coverage by Town Meeting Television. This is one of a series of forums we are bringing you in advance of the general election in November. Town Meeting TV hosts forums with all candidates and covers all ballot items you will see on your November ballot. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with issues that shape your local community. If you're watching this live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. Watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast Channel 1087, Brillington Telecom Channel 17 and 217, as well as online at youtube.com slash Town Meeting TV. This evening we are seated here with our general election 2022 Vermont Chittenden County Senate Seats for the Chittenden Central State Senate Forum. Hopefully I've said that correctly. Thank you for participating in the upcoming Town Meeting TV forum. I'd like to welcome you here this evening. I'd like to welcome, please correct me if I say your name incorrectly. I'd like to welcome Infinite Cochleisure. It's close enough. Why don't you say what is it? Cochleisure. Cochleisure. Tanya Wajowski, Phil Baruth, and Martin Lorok Gulik. Thank you for being here. We're going to ask that you please keep your responses to 1.5 minutes or less. And we're going to start with an opening statement. I'll work from Infinite over this way for the moment. Please tell us why you are running and what experience you're bringing to the position. What will be different for the people of your district or the state as a whole because you have been elected to this position and what qualifies you to make those changes happen? Well, I am a policy advocate and lobbyist for kids and families as my trade and a community organizer by vocation. So one thing that would be different about me serving as a senator, my employer representing Chittin County Central is that people actually know who their senator is. I talk to a lot of people and a lot of people actually don't know who this senator is. So I will be a lot more accessible and I will be using local knowledge to drive and guide my policy agenda and priorities. And my experience really I think will allow me to build the community's capacity to hold us accountable as public officials. Great. Thank you so much. Tanya, please tell us why you are running and what experience you bring to the position. Thank you so much. So I grew up in a single parent working class family and I was one of many Vermonters who struggled to afford to come back here after college and continues to struggle to afford to get by here. I also work as a social worker and I support people each day for whom our systems are failing. And when I have looked to Montpelier in the past I saw that there were very few people there who represented my experiences and who were truly fighting for the issues that were important to my family. And I continue to see everyday Vermonters struggling to get by and not be represented. As a state representative I fought hard to make space in committee rooms for the people most impacted by policy changes to be heard, whether that was tenants who had been evicted for no cause or our teachers and state employees when their pensions were under attack. I found that incredibly important that we brought their voices into the room with us. I also worked hard to pass Act 117, which streamlines the mental health licensure process and sets up a workforce development task force, populated almost entirely by people who are underrepresented in that field. Electing me as your next state senator will give me the platform to continue my work to ensure that these experience and perspectives are heard and represented in both chambers of the General Assembly. Thank you so much, Tanya. Phil, same question. Please tell us why you're running and what experience you bring to the position. Thanks to Channel 17. I'm Phil Baruth. I've been in the Senate for 12 years and I'm very grateful to the voters for sending me back. But I will say it's not been entirely fun and games. We started with Tropical Storm Irene in my first biennium and the last three years have been the pandemic. So it's something where you work on what you thought you were going to work on but you also pick up the emergency pieces as they come to you. So over the last three years, I've been doing what a lot of my senator colleagues have been doing and that is overseeing the administration in terms of how we respond to the pandemic but most importantly deciding where the federal money goes that has washed into the state and it's been a lot of money. So we've been trying to make those investments transformational, big investments that will make people's lives better not only now but 10 years down the road. So that work isn't done. I'd like to go back and finish that as well as a number of other things that we'll talk about later. But I would appreciate your vote again and I'll turn it over to Martine. Thank you so much, Martine. Same question. Please tell us why you are running and what experience you bring to the position. Thank you, Annie. And it's nice to see all of you in person. Last time we did this, we were on Zoom and so it's great to be here in person. Thank you, Channel 17 as always. I am running because we need folks in Montpelier who are good collaborators, more than ever we need folks who are willing to work across party lines, work across ideologies, and be effective and efficient legislators, creating legislation that supports all Vermonters. As someone who has spent my life working in education, I've seen the struggles that Vermont families face, whether it be housing insecurity, food insecurity, mental health issues, systemic racism. These are struggles that I've seen firsthand in my classroom, in the classrooms of my colleagues and in the school community in general. Already, I've worked to help pass or encourage our legislators to pass legislation around school funding and it's exciting to know that for the first time in Vermont's history we're going to have a funding system that is equitable across the board, whether our students are from living in poverty or they are from rural areas or they are English language learners, they will be getting the resources that they need to thrive and succeed. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I think what I'll do now is, if you went first, now you go last, if you went second, now you go first. We'll do like that and I think I'll work my way. Our second question of this evening involves redistricting. Starting with Tanya, briefly tell us how redistricting has impacted your election and the constituents in your district. How are you connecting with voters, Tanya? Yeah, absolutely. So redistricting obviously shrunk the district from being almost a countywide district to being a three-seat district, representing the most densely populated parts of Chittenden County and I believe the shift really will allow senators representing this district to do a better job connecting with their constituents. The redistricting process also increased the number of Chittenden County Senate seats and one of the new seats is located in this Chittenden Central District and with retirements that actually meant there were two open seats in the district and I think with this record turnover, we have an opportunity to really change the makeup of the Senate and welcome some new voices. I'm using a lot of tools to connect with voters from events and making sure they have literature and making phone calls, using the media and mailings and continuing to respond to constituent questions as they come in for my current seat. Upcoming will also be hosting a couple of issues-based town halls to hear from voters about what's important to them as well as some of the priorities I have going forward. But I really think that this is an opportunity to sort of revitalize the work that's being done in the General Assembly. Thank you so much. Same question. Bill, briefly tell us how redistricting has impacted your election and the constituents in your district. How are you connecting with voters? So, as I said, I've been in the Senate for 12 years and for those 12 years I've represented about 120,000 Vermonters in Chittenden County and in towns like Shelburne and Jericho and, you know, the whole set of towns that have made up the district. It's a very strange thing now to lose all those people that I've worked on behalf of and that I've known and they call me up and they say, I just found out I can't vote for you and I'm sad to lose them and they're sad to lose me, hopefully. But I think Tanya's right. We needed to break up the district. We were the only six-member district in the country and it was at root anti-democratic, I think. And so now we're a smaller district. We can meet with fewer towns, fewer people, but more quality in those meetings. So this is one of the ways that I'm trying to reach out to people is through Channel 17 and community access, but also social media and direct mail I think is the best way to get to people although they have competing realities and sometimes they throw your stuff out, but I would say please read it if it comes to you. Thank you very much, Phillip. Thank you very much, Phillip. That's appreciated. Same question for Martine around redistricting. Briefly tell us how redistricting has impacted your election and the constituents in your district and how are you connecting with voters? Thank you. Yes, so I was relatively excited when I saw the new district. It gives me an opportunity to be a leader in communities that I have a long history with. I was in the Lime Kiln Bridge, so Winooski was really my neighbor was a community that I spent a lot of time in. My mom's French-Canadian, so back in back in the day in the 70s, Winooski was a really strong French-Canadian presence. I watched the woollen mill go from a dilapidated abandoned building that was really just a remnant of our history to a really vibrant shopping place and now to housing and a place where folks can gather. So it's been an interesting watching that metamorphosis has been really interesting. In terms of Essex, that is where I spent my professional career working at the technical center as well as the high school and Burlington is where I've lived for the last 25 years where I've raised my family where my kids attended school and where I'm a three-term school commissioner, so I feel as though these communities are home to me and I'm excited to serve all of them. Thank you for that. Infinite? Yes. I wanted to make sure I had your name correct. The same question for redistricting. Briefly tell us how redistricting has impacted your election and the constituents in your district. How are you connecting with voters? I'm pretty sure I would not be running if the district was still the same if I had to canvass and campaign and Milton and Shelburne and the entire Chittenden County. When I saw the new map, I thought okay, this is a reasonable amount of ground cover for an independent candidate with low resources. I wish I could afford to do mailing. I've been connecting with folks meeting people where they are at the grocery store, coffee, public events and Winooski is a place where I've done a lot of organizing in the Winooski school district so that it's been easy to reconnect with folks in that community. I walk around neighborhoods a lot in Burlington and Essex is the place, the farthest of away from where I am where I'm going to need to do a little bit more work with connecting with folks. Great, thank you so much for that. We're going to move on to the third question and I'll start with Phil Baruth about criminal justice reform. How does Chittenden County address crime? Is there a problem with policing that needs reform? How would you address community safety? So for the last four years I've been on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and so criminal justice reform is something I've been involved with at the nitty gritty level. So among other things post George Floyd we took up the issue of chokeholds which we banned and that was a bill that I put through that I was glad to see go all the way. We also banned the teaching of the chokehold in the state of Vermont and we redid the entire use of force statute so that there are now different rules being promulgated. Rules that take into account the idea that in many ways we had people who were under-trained and over-using force in my own opinion. So we've done real work on that. We have other places we need to go. I think personally we need to get rid of life without parole which is something that disproportionately impacts people in the correctional system of color as well as the rates of prosecution and other contacts with the police. So the data that we're getting now is very useful in that way and the last thing I'll mention is that we created a division of racial justice statistics specifically to take in the data and crunch the data on disparities in the system and that will be useful going forward. Great. Thank you so much. I'm hopeful that I had given the correct impactful solemnity to the question. I think maybe I did not but your conversation put me there. So thank you. For Martine, how does Chittenden County address crime? Is there a problem with policing that needs reform? How would you address community safety? Thank you, Annie. First of all, I thought about this question and I thought it was interesting that in the question there's an assumption that there's some kind of coordination throughout Chittenden County and that's not the sense that I get as someone who lives here in Burlington although I understand that police forces assist each other I don't get the sense that there's necessarily a coordinated system in Chittenden County and each community has its own challenges its own needs here in Burlington because of attrition and because of some cuts we obviously have had some issues around our police force and retention and our numbers dwindling that's something that you hear about a lot but in terms of reform absolutely we need reform we see that people from the global majority are arrested at a higher rate than white folks for sure. They're treated differently as well we have seen over the last few years black people killed and murdered by our police force and this is absolutely not to be tolerated. What we need to do is we need to give police officers not only bias training and anti-racism training but also the tools that they need to succeed. They've been asking for years for wraparound services and services from social workers and mental health providers as well as addiction specialists they need that kind of support I it's a complex issue I don't believe in defunding the police but I am in favor of sweeping police reform Thank you so much Martin on the topic of criminal justice reform infinite how does Chittenden County address crime is there a problem with policing that needs reform how would you address community safety Chittenden is right it depends on where you live police services are being rationed out right now and so now is the time to get serious about alternative responses to crime and I think it was decided in our primary election of the state's attorneys level that decriminalizing poverty is a value that we want to use to guide our public safety measures and so you know we need to I live in the old north end where it's very intense and so I'm seeing the need for a localized approach to maybe a public health approach to violence prevention so that communities are empowered to be less dependent on our police departments I think it's unfair actually to police that we call them for a lot of the things that we rely on them for a lot of the calls that we get we need a different way of addressing you know some of what we're calling crime in our communities thank you so much infinite Tanya on the topic of criminal justice reform how does Chittenden County address crime is there a problem with policing that needs reform how would you address community safety so Chittenden County like the rest of the United States has a serious issue of inhumanity injustice and inequity within our criminal justice system and we really do need to fundamentally overhaul this system so that it is grounded in restoration treatment and meeting the needs of our community members when I was in grad school I was able to study abroad and was exposed to a completely different system a community treats people and drastically has lower rates of recidivism and it utilizes community building and treatment resources and I think we need to move quickly in this direction our current system is hurting everyone in our society it's hurting the people who work within the system those who have been incarcerated and every one of our community members we have to remove health and human service issues from the criminal justice system and instead build out our treatment systems we have to stop decriminalizing poverty as we think beyond policing and criminal justice and instead into making sure that our communities have been invested in so that all members have their needs met and in terms of policing I think there needs to be significant reform and a first step towards that reform is robust citizen oversight right now we ask our police to police themselves in that's not working I introduced H460 last year based on model policy from Nebraska and insights from the ACLU that would build out citizen oversight for our municipal officers and I've been working to strengthen and fine tune this bill in the off session making sure we bring in the voices of everyone who's been impacted and harmed by our present system and I intend to reintroduce a stronger bill next biennium and there will of course be more work to do from there including taking recommendations from the qualified immunity report the racial justice statistics commission and the recent report about the criminal justice training council from auditor Hoffer's office to create thank you so much Tonya I believe we are you know I think we're moving on to a topic I started with you right that idea was a great one Annie on the topic of education I'm going to start with you Martin the legislature the legislature can make impacts on how education is funded statewide do you see the need for changes to how we fund education and how would you use your office to move changes forward thank you for the question Annie so that is a great question and not an easy one as we all know education funding is extremely complex and complicated there are folks who are calling for a change from a property tax based system to one that is more focused on or based on income tax and you know and before I get into that I do want to thank the legislators that we have here and the legislators who have been working really hard this past year to past 287 I know I brought it up before but I want to bring it up again providing that kind of equitable funding and the resources to all of our kids across the state is just so incredibly important but getting back to the funding piece yeah so if we go to an income based system that seems to be a good fix and yet we know there are Vermonters who show income if any income at all but have inherited wealth from their families have inherited property real estate and also folks who are retired who do have the means to pay into the system so that is not necessarily a perfect fix I would imagine that ultimately there will be there will have to be some kind of a hybrid system but the key to fixing the system is really ability to pay we need to look at how who and how folks can pay who have the ability to do so that is the most fair and equitable and just way to pay for education perfect thank you very much I meant on time I have no I know is 130 exactly on the topic of education please infinite the legislature can make impacts on how education is funded statewide do you see the need for changes to how we fund education and how would you use your office to move changes forward I agree with Martine that moving from property tax to fund schools to a more personal income tax is reflects better reflects people's ability to pay right since property values increase in and not necessarily people's ability to pay the school tax unfortunately how we fund our schools is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the changes that need to happen and our public education system so I really wish that how we fund our schools would you know I really wish that you know you know throwing more money at our schools was the fix but unfortunately is not because I've seen the Barlinson school districts budget you know go up and up and I haven't seen the outcomes or the educational experiences shift at all so we have a lot of work to do around our public education system in Vermont thank you very much infinite Tanya on education legislature can make impacts on how education is funded statewide do you see the need for changes to how we fund education and how would you use your office to move changes forward thank you thank you yes I absolutely think we have to shift how we fund education our current system is overly complicated it is income sensitized for about the bottom two thirds of earners however the top one third is really not paying its fair share into the system and we have tax commission reports and income based model that can include capital gains and retirement and even investment income I was co-lead sponsor on a bill last year that would have shifted our funding mechanism to this kind of from property taxes to an income based tax that would really ask all Vermonters to pay their fair share into the system and this would have the potential both to lower the burden on our working and lower in moderate income families extra funding into the system by implementing a progressive income based tax we bring the top one third of earners in and ask them again to pay equitably into our public education system and our public education system benefits everyone whether you have children in the school system or not I intend to continue working with the advocates that I worked with to craft our original bill in the house as well as my house counterpart who will remain in the house to reintroduce a similar bill that would bring biannium to shift our funding mechanism to an income based system the mechanism would for the first year exclude renters in order to make sure that renters aren't paying tax twice they're not paying the property version of the tax so it would set up a study commission that would bring in renters to make sure that it's fair and equitable because as we know renters are often some of our lowest earning Vermonters although with the housing market thank you so much Tanya Bill as our last panel member talk about education on this particular topic in question the legislature can make impacts on how education is funded statewide do you see the need for changes to how we fund education and how would you use your office to move changes forward I just wanted to reiterate something that Martin said and that's about the waiting formula so we did a lot of work over the last especially the last two years to change the waiting formula which determines how much resources each community gets for certain categories of students so it's more expensive to educate a high schooler than it is a preschooler English language learners are a wonderful boon to our community they need more resources the schools need more resources and we've known that for years and years Winooski and Burlington especially are places where the cry has been loud it's been urgent and the legislature finally heard us all three of us have worked on that at one point or another and that formula has changed so if you live in Winooski, if you live in Burlington those resources are going to become increasingly available as will money for students living in poverty huge, huge benefits to be had with that said I would echo what Infinite said is in need of lots of different kind of change not just financing we have an ethnic studies committee that's gone into Title 16 and is slowly working their way through all those laws trying to determine which if any among them need changing to make the system more equitable, more fair across the board last thing I'll say I do support moving to an income based system because I think the property tax system has wound up demonizing teachers demonizing the educational system because the only budget people are aware of is the one that's broken out from the general fund and that is their property tax so it's an unfair and odd burden on teachers and administrators thank you so much Phil moving on to the topic of health care also with Martin the increasing cost of health care is putting pressure on Vermonters and the state's economy COVID has sharpened our focus on inequities in health care what is next for health care changes in Vermont please be specific thank you first of all I'd like to say that I am a fan of a proponent of universal health care we're the only developed country in the world that does not provide some form of universal care to our people and that is unconscionable so that's number one what's happening right now in Vermont and across the country are rising pharmaceutical costs as well as rising administrative costs we know how complex our health care system is with so many various systems of delivery and so many overhead and administrative costs and I can tell you I know it doesn't always make sense to compare the United States with other countries but there is an easier way to do this I have lived it and experienced it we need to look at other models and learn from them it just makes sense in the meantime I do believe that only about 3% of Vermonters are uninsured at this time we generally do a good job with 97% of our folks insured and so I would just I also wanted to talk a little bit about coordinated care and wrap around services is something that we need to look at we've talked before about the silos that we have in the state and folks end up losing because of the silos that we have and so that idea of coordinated care working together across the state to really bring health care to our folks that's what we need to do I think my time is up Thank you, you're great in the interest of time I will say this health care question one more time and then not say it again infinite on the topic of health care please the increasing cost of health care is putting pressure on Vermonters and the state's economy COVID has sharpened our focus on inequities in health care what is the next for health care changes in Vermont please be specific yes sometimes I just want my catamount plan back you know we lost a single pair on the Schumlin and then we got stuck with the affordable health care thing and now our deductibles are unreasonable and so some folks are advocating I think and I agree that there's a publicly overseen insurance program that creates the universal paid medical and paid leave because right now we're getting these rate hikes that are incredible even after the audit that Doug Hoffer that showed how ineffective and inefficient the system we have we're still facing these increases in health insurance so we need to publicly overseen this insurance system that we have thank you so much on the same topic and the same question of health care John please absolutely I started my work as an organizer and an activist on the health care as a human right campaign because when I graduated college it was before the ACA and I was uninsurable due to pre-existing health conditions in the past act 48 making health care a public good that has yet to be realized as an insured Vermonter I still have to make health care choices based on my ability to afford them and not my medical need and it's not an okay thing for us to keep asking people to do COVID showed us clearly there is a deep flaw in linking health care to employment as people lost their jobs and their health care in the midst of a global pandemic this is an equity issue people stay in bad jobs, abusive relationships in all manners of horrible situations they need health care health care should not be for profit and we have to investigate every possible avenue towards ensuring that every Vermonter has the health care they need when they need it without worrying if it will bankrupt them there are multiple bills that have been introduced over the years that would move us to finally realizing health care as a public good we've talked about universal primary care we've talked about expanded doctor dinosaur we've talked about regional partnerships and it's well past time that we made it a priority to figure out which path forward is most feasible and work towards implementing it so that we stop allowing Vermonters to go bankrupt or stay in abusive relationships simply because they can't afford health care thank you John yeah on the topic of health care same question thank you I've always thought that the most revealing dynamic in the country about health care is that it was and remains illegal for Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs they're the biggest purchaser in the country but the system was set up to be generating maximum profits for pharmaceutical companies so due to the very very narrow margin we have in Washington we've just gotten the first taste of that negotiating but it won't take effect for a couple of years which was again a sort of sop to the pharmaceutical companies so that says to me that the system is still profit driven it is not patient driven and it's not within in that sense the ideals of what we want the United States to be let alone Vermont so following the death of the single payer system under Peter Schumlin many people began to move to universal primary care as the goal cheaper but theoretically more doable with the flawed system that we have in place so one of the things that I'd like to do Senator Chris Bray among others Deb Richter are working on plans to bring universal primary care to prime time in the next biennium and I would be all for that bill moving swiftly into the kind of intense examination it's going to need and then we have to have a conversation about how we pay for that a payroll tax was killed single payer because the governor wasn't willing to sign it so ultimately we'd need to talk about how to finance such a system but that's the way we need to go great thank you very much moving on to the topic of ballot issues I will read the question once I will start with infinite and then I will ask each one of you to also respond thank you all for being so professional and present to all these questions on the topic of ballot issues infinite two constitutional amendments constitutional proposition two and proposition five will be in front of voters this November do you support or oppose I support I support and I actually think they're related in that you know this effort to control women's bodies and slavery I mean it's very much connected to capitalism and the system that we've all inherited so it would be great if we can look at these issues through that lens of how is capitalism undermining women being able to have control over their bodies and these old vestiges of slavery still haunting us thank you very much Tanya on the same topic of ballot issues do you support or oppose constitutional proposition two and proposition five I support both of these propositions I think it is critically important that we eliminate any exception clauses in the prohibition of slavery and indentured servitude in Vermont and across the nation I also support the reproductive liberty amendment this is coming at a time when reproductive rights are under attack all over this country and I'm thankful that the leaders in Vermont had the foresight five years ago to begin taking the steps to codify reproductive liberty into our Vermont constitution however this is a first step as these attacks continue and intensify we need to continue to enact legislation that explicitly protects people seeking reproductive health care and the medical practitioners that are providing that care thank you so much Phil on the same topic of ballot issues do you support or oppose constitutional proposition two and proposition five I strongly support both in terms of the reproductive liberty amendment I absolutely support it I absolutely think we could pass it and should pass it I worry that the Supreme Court is already looking beyond these sorts of laws that is state based laws at nationwide bands and Lindsey Graham just the other day unexpectedly came out with a 15 week ban nationwide and he's making it very explicit that if voters put a Republican majority in come November that they will take this up and move to pass it so we can you know our Vermont constitution I think is among the strongest in the nation it's the one that I've taken a vow to uphold but in a situation where you have a six three court that may not be enough so I think passing this constitutional amendment here is absolutely necessary but everybody who thinks about this issue cares about this issue needs to get their friends out in November not just in Vermont but in all the swing states or all of it is at risk I appreciate that Martine on the same topic of ballot items do you support or oppose constitutional Proposition 2 and Proposition 5 I support both of them and I just want to echo all of the sentiments that have been said already well well said and well articulated and important Proposition 5 absolutely as a woman the thought of some other being often old white men taking away my bodily autonomy is just frightening it's frightening for my daughter frankly it's frightening for my son as well so I completely support Proposition 5 abortion is a health care issue family planning and access to safe and affordable reproduction reproductive you know medication and so on key to all of us thriving in our society Proposition 2 100% I said it last time and I'll say it again I'm still baffled why by why in this country we have not apologized for slavery it is part of our history that informs so much of the systemic racism and the institutional racism that we live with today so I'm 100% in favor of both and I hope that we pass them in great numbers great thank you so much moving on to the topic of language access I will start with Tanya what is the value to Vermonters in supporting language access to information about health local government education issues firstly I want to name that language access is protected under federal law and it is our legal obligation to provide language access that said I've worked in many settings trying to navigate these systems with interpreters if it's available and translation services if they're available and what we currently have is wholly inadequate and it's difficult to navigate it best in many instances I found it's wholly unavailable in order to strengthen these systems and provide equitable access to all Vermonters yet to the resources and services we have we have to build out those systems diverse communities are such an incredible strength and create some of the most dynamic and beautiful services in our state without language access we are driving away this diversity we are driving people away from the supports and services that they need and we are also in opposition to federal law so I think there's a whole host of reasons why we need to invest in these supports and services I have worked with people whose for whom English is a second language and trying to navigate the system of getting language access is incredibly difficult thank you very much for that response about language access Phil yeah I agree not only is it protected by law in many cases but it's just the best way to build a robust democracy we do have people here who are not native speakers English language learners when we test them in the standardized testing system we find ways to reach out to them and to provide services because the testing reflects on the system and I feel like sometimes when it comes to the democratic functions like voting there isn't the outreach that there should be the outreach that you get in the educational community so I just want to give a shout out to Senator Tim Ash who is now working at the auditor's office but while he was in the senate Tim Ash was very concerned with this question and one of the things that he realized was that new Americans in Burlington who wanted to get into the policing system wanted to be employed by the police department were confronting an exam that was without any form of supports in terms of language access and so it made the goal of diversifying the police force much more difficult to achieve and so he helped to pass some language that made sure that there were supports and in some cases exams in those languages that would allow people to prove that they knew the material it was an unfamiliarity with English and the testing situation that was hanging them up so I think he was a good mark in terms of reaching out to these people. Great thank you so much. Same question Martina about language access. Yeah so I was a language teacher for many years so obviously it's something that I understand and something that I know is crucial to being actively engaged and involved in our democracy and understanding our systems and being a fully realized member of our community. I think in the Burlington school district we've done a great job of realizing this. Our multilingual liaisons are absolutely critical to the success of our students and to the success of our district. I think other districts are now becoming aware of how having these trained professionals as part of our school communities is just vital to our success. But to echo something that Phil said just now, yesterday I had coffee with two good friends of mine Jules Lewetschi and Guillaume Weepu who are both from the Congo and we spoke about this very issue and spoke specifically around how it would be great to get more new Americans voting but how just that initial barrier of registering to vote because of language is a problem. So I do hope that's something that the legislature can look at and can fix. Great. Thank you so much, Martine. Infinite, same question about language access. As a community organizer I had the privilege of seeing how language access to education issues made it possible for families to advocate for getting transportation to school for the kids. It made it possible for Burlington families to advocate for restorative practices for changing the report card at the school that they went to so that they could better understand where the kids were and what kind of grades they were getting. So language access to information is a win-win for everyone. Great. Thank you so much, Infinite. I'm going to start with Phil on the topic of community access. Currently funded primarily by cable customers. Revenue for community TV is in decline. How would you see the legislature supporting community access TV such as provides for this very form? Well, as I began by saying I really appreciate Channel 17's presence in the community especially come election time. Election night and I'll just make a little plug here. Election night, Channel 17 has the best results and that's a tribute to what you all do given how little you're given to do it with. So yes, I think having the cable companies provide a tiny smidgen of the money they take in and the resources that they have to community access is key. I do think we could be doing more. It's interesting that the whole spectrum of news has deteriorated amazingly over the last 20 years. So it used to be Burlington Free Press was the big player. I hate to say it, but the Burlington Free Press has gotten out of the business of a lot of daily reporting around the political sphere and the community sphere. So other things have sprung up. Among them Vermont Digger is probably the best source of daily information about what's happening in state government and they're doing that on a subscription model and people paying for subscriptions and philanthropic gifts making up the difference. It's a bigger discussion about using taxpayer money, but I'm willing to have that discussion. Great, thank you very much, Martine. Same question around community access. Thanks, Annie. Yes, so if you've been following this topic across the country, you will know that there's data that suggests that when local media go away, for example, newspapers, radio, TV, what happens is there is a rise in corruption and graft and embezzlement. These are things that we know happen. So it's critical that we keep our local news sources. I know that you reach out to the community for donations. I get the pleas and I'm happy to support this channel, but I do believe we need to do more. Media really is critical in holding our public officials accountable. It makes our governments transparent or certainly encourages them to be transparent, so it is really important. I think the legislature at the very least needs to really study this issue and this question and decide how important is it to our communities to have local media and what kind of an investment is it to long-term successful government? That's great. Thank you, Martin. The same question regarding community access. Yeah, agreed. In this age of fake news and just this hyper internet world, I think there is media literacy, a need for media literacy, and community TV is where it's at. With schools in Vermont exploring a community school strategy to improve outcomes for students, I do wonder if there's a connection to be made with our public education system and our community TV and that community TV has a role to play in the development of young children and that maybe if it's possible for some public dollars through our public education fund that supports the community TV in a way that is mutually beneficial for our public school system. Great. Thank you so much, Tanya. Same question on community access. Thank you. Absolutely. So in this time of divisiveness and lack of trust in government and media, I think it's critically important that we have publicly available non-corporate-owned media sources like this one. I am deeply committed to expanding civics access with forums like this one and really making sure that it's accessible to all Vermonters and I really feel like this is an important tool in actually saving our democracy. Forums where people can that our community-owned and community run are incredibly important for engaging people and I think the best way to have a strong revenue stream as has been pointed out is through diverse funding streams but government funding has to be one of the parts of that. It's clear with the changing landscape of how people are accessing and seeking media with likely a decline in cable subscriptions that we need to consider other possibilities for raising the revenue that are in line with the 21st century media consumption without selling out to the priorities of locally owned media access. That's great. Thank you so much. Have I had everyone on that topic? Great. I believe I'm starting with Martina if I've gone in order correctly. I think so. Great. And we're going to go to the topic of citizen legislature. All of the questions here in reference complex system issues. This year the legislature will see a big turn over in elected officials. Can a part-time citizen legislature in Montpelier do the job needed for Vermonters? Great question and I have to be honest that I think the best people to answer that question here tonight are Tanya and Phil having lived it. But from my experience I can say that just as an example on the Burlington School Board we serve and we are not paid and we have talked about should we get some kind of a stipend even if it's relatively small and it's something that we go back and forth on but certainly having some kind of a stipend would allow us to welcome more folks on to the board who might not otherwise be able to serve. So I would imagine it's the same with the legislature. It is hard work it is time consuming I don't understand how our legislators can work a full-time job do the work of legislating and pay the bills it's expensive to live in Vermont so as much as I like the thought that our legislators are part-time and can serve on local boards local committees can be in our workforce and have on the ground experience that they can bring to Montpelier I can't imagine how it's affordable and if we really want to diversify our legislature we're going to have to think about changing the way we pay for it and the time allotted. Great thank you very much infinite the same question can't afford to have a citizen legislature in Montpelier do the job I don't think so I think if we're going to say with this citizen legislature model we're going to have to do a better job at increasing participation from everyday people and making government more accessible and I don't understand how our governor would veto a bill that would lower the voting age for young people so that they could participate more fully and on democracy because that's what we need on one side we're saying we want to keep young people in the state but on the other side we're saying well you're not old enough to fully participate in our democracy so there are lots of different ways I think we can bolster our democracy and how people are participating. Great thank you very much same question Tonya on citizen legislature. Absolutely thank you firstly the idea that we have a part-time legislature is not really accurate while we're only paid through the legislative session most legislators myself included in fact work all year to support constituents research policy moving forward with bills that we're interested in we're just not paid for that work the issues facing us simply don't go away because the legislature has adjourned as the system as it's currently structured I've seen over and over again that we can't solve all of the complex issues facing us I don't believe that we're going to have the political will or even capacity to make this change before the next cycle of redistricting but I think we have to start talking about it and really begin the conversation about building a responsive first century general assembly that will provide more robust ability to look at the issues that are facing us and also make it a more diverse and accessible body the current structure not only forces us to scramble towards a clock and make choices about which issues we can take up and which ones we can't meanwhile all of the issues are at a crisis point but it also stands up insurmountable barriers to serving for most Vermonters resulting in a body that is not truly representative of the state Thank you very much Tanya Last but not least Phil on the topic of citizen legislature please I think I might differ a little bit with some of the views just expressed I support the citizen legislature idea it was originally the idea was to allow farmers to go back and harvest their crops in addition to being in Montpelier and I think it's not a bad idea to have an awareness of the worlds outside the legislature Phil Scott has many times proposed the idea that the legislature would meet from January to the end of March which I think is just a crazy idea I can't see how we could possibly do that sometimes it seems crazy that we would get all the work done between January and the end of March or I'm sorry the end of May but we do and we balance the budget every year so it does depend as Tanya said on lots of volunteer hours from legislators in fact when we go home and we adjourn CINA DA which is kind of permanently for the biennium there is an emergency board of senators and representatives who are still sitting and making decisions along with the administration and they're not really getting paid for that they get a bit yet for all the flaws in that system I think there are big advantages in terms of not having a professionalized house and senate not having people have their entire career and world everybody gets out of the building many people have jobs everyone has families and I think this allows a balance great thank you very much due to my rephrasing the question we're short on time and we have a lightning round right now so I'm going to grab the ones I can do the fastest and you're just going to answer and go do you support safe injection sites in Vermont, Chittenden County infinite I support overdose prevention sites yes I do great yes I support overdose prevention sites in Vermont sorry I really threw you by throwing that right at you you're really good to have that good time you go yes this model of harm reduction has been shown to be effective at reducing substance use, reducing public health issues keeping communities safe and keeping people alive great hope he's in addiction yeah I just heard a great national public radio story about Canada doing this and they're doing a more systemic approach in the US we're kind of at the pilot stage so in New York City for instance they're piloting these sites and that's what I would support is a pilot here where we watch it carefully make sure it's working and that there are no unintended consequences great thank you very much same do you support safe injection sites in Vermont, Chittenden County I'm seeing the two minute sign so I'm just going to say yes absolutely I do great I'm also going to ask quickly about gun legislation do you think we should implement more gun control legislation this next legislative session go ahead I've talked about this before many of you know I lost my father to gun violence in 1994 so it's near and dear to my heart yes I support safe storage and yes I support extreme risk prevention order as well honestly speaking it's unclear to me how previous gun control legislation has had an impact on decreasing violence in our community so my question is how has the previous legislation how are we monitoring it and how is it doing before we just keep going with gun legislation great thank you Tonya yes I think we have additional work to do to keep our community safe from gun violence and some of these things will be additional legislation regarding firearms a lot of it's going to be investing in our community so that people are not in despair and seeking violence great we're so tight for time Phil please thank you I supported gun legislation after Sandy Hook and after Yuvaldi it occurs to me that we haven't made it very far we still have elementary school children being targeted and killed in classrooms to me that says we haven't figured it out with the laws we have and we need to go further thank you for tuning into town meeting television on going coverage of statewide and regional candidates and ballot items don't forget to vote honor before November 8 this year ballots will be mailed to all registered voters in the state to confirm you are registered and will be receiving a ballot at home visit the secretary of state online portal at mvp.vermont.gov thank you for watching and sharing town meeting tv if you're not already please subscribe to our town meeting tv youtube channel thank you all so much for your time for what you put in and for your dedication to community that you're willing to run for these seats thank you so much thank you channel 17