 You should see there are a bunch of agendas and I'm just going to start with introducing myself. My name is Erica Faulkner and I'm a chair of pronouns. I live on Decatur Street and I'm a Ward 2 student community member. Do any of the other student community members want to raise their hand? Say hi, there's Lauren, Molly. So, beyond that, we are seeking a representative from Ward 3 for the CDBG program. If you want additional information, you can come talk to any of us after the fact. Now, sorry for all the speedy introductions but I'm trying to catch this back up to where we left off. So, I'm going to take 10 minutes for the public forum. Anyone have any announcements or anything they want to say? Hello, my name is Keven and I'm representing Big Heavy World which is a music non-profit. Our main focus is inclusivity and equal access to the music scene related. So, something we're currently planning is an event called Make Music for Moment and that's going to take place in June, I think June 21st, the next summer. And we're looking for a place to host the event at. Definitely somewhere outside, a large area. So, if anyone has any suggestions, that would be great. Another thing that we're working on is going with a group of youth in our community to develop a youth culture space in New York City. Basically, it would be a place, it would be a music venue and a place that ages the youth in our community to get them an activity like that. And as we consider redeveloping within Vermont or within Burlington, I think that the corporate name of a place like that would be super beneficial to take into consideration. So, I wanted to put that out there. Yeah, I think that's all I have. Thank you so much. Thank you. Do you want to ask any announcements? Hi, I'm Sean Molina with the Burlington Lead Program. I'm going to need to know what the Burlington Lead Program is. So, we'll be taking applications starting really in the spring. If you are a renter in Burlington and you see lots of chipping, peeling paint, or worried about lead, lead-based paint, which we certainly are, and are looking to help get rid of, you can get in contact with me or look us up on the web. I'll leave some information on the table so you can read more about our program. I just want to take a second to honor Shelby, who is a steering committee member, as many of you probably know, and she recently stepped down. But I want to thank you for your time in the steering committee and your leadership. Hey, everybody. I'm Ivan Klipsman. I'm a little bit of an artist. Hello, TV manager. And I'm here at the board, too, working as an artist and really an education person. I'm just here at the very last moment because some of you may have heard that the wrath of tonight is two advanced copies of the Everyday Neighbors' Free Multilingual Community Calendar, which will be available at the end of next week. It's gone in print in a couple of days. And I'm just here to announce that for the next maybe 12 to 24 hours or so, there's still a few spots available for community orders of small businesses with just crazy ideas. If you want to advertise on any given month, the gray space here, like on either side of the day's grid, I've been selling into local orders and businesses, like the railways in there, miscreeners' donuts, all kinds of other delicious things, Rotten Farmers Market. I have a few spots left, so come hit me up if you want. They're so cheap, it's only $50 for one little square. It's going to be $1,000 plus copies of this calendar available free for people to pick up in piles of air in the name of the city. So that's the announcement. You don't need to email me or call me. Just call me, see me in that physical form. It's nice to be dying with you all as a contentious viewer tonight. So I'm going to ask you to suggest a group of thank-you spots. I'm going to ask the announcement. Seeing none. Okay. In which case, we're going to move on to our next part on the agenda, which is doing the sharing session with our legislators. So all our legislators want to come up, sit or stand, give a bunch of microphones up front for all of y'all. So my colleagues have suggested I go first because I am going to set a timer for myself. So there's many things we're going to be working on and some priorities for me are what I'm hearing from people, which is quote unquote public safety, which I think of as something beyond that. We'll get to that. And housing and how we need a vision for Vermont. So basically the pandemic left behind in its wake greater disparities and inequities, which is driving violence and negative human behavior. And if we respond to that with more violence, we're going to perpetuate more violence. We have to respond to that violence, not with state violence, but with community care. And so it's my hope that we will focus our efforts on developing a vast continuum of housing options that are affordable from the least restrictive in the community to the most secure recovery residences for people who pose a risk to themselves or other due to mental illness, substance use disorder or our criminal behavior. And that we commit to this that we can end incarceration as we know it in Vermont and set an example for the world of how we can hold people accountable by wrapping them in community care. But the first step is that we need housing desperately. And so I think we all will agree on that. And there's several bills I'm introducing that I can talk about in more detail later. If people want to hear kind of how I think we should do this because that would take up more than three minutes. That's half way through. So that being said, as we build this housing around Vermont, the way that we do it is going to be important and we have an opportunity to engage communities on the neighborhood level, the city level, the regional level in expanded forms of democracy where we empower people to have more of a say over the decisions of their life. Because inclusion and belonging is an important social determinant of health. And so as we look to provide and improve for the social determinants of health for people, which include housing, food, health care, education, economic opportunity, social opportunity, we need to be thinking about inclusion and belonging in ways for people who feel like they have been rejected by society to have a path back in. And that the answer is not going to be to segregate people or ship them away or lock them up. It's going to be to wrap people in care and services where they're at along the continuum and provide endless opportunities for people to recover and to restore the harm that they cause and to feel like they're accepted as neighbors. And so on that note, how do we both get us there? What could be a guiding star? I think we should bring the Olympics to Vermont. And we can talk more about the details, but the new model of the Olympics is perfect for what we need to do, where you create community assets over the course of time that are used for the Olympics but remain. And if we do this the right way, we could be an example for the world of how to, in the 21st century, create a sustainable and equitable way of life on Earth. Good modeling. Hi, everyone. I'm Anna Mulvaney-Sanuck. I'm a state representative for Chittenden 17, which runs from Battery Park up into Ethan Allen Park. My two kids are over there, so forgive me if they start interrupting. I think they're a well-timed group. So I'm also running for mayor right now, so my legislative update's going to be really focused. I'm trying to be really effective in both spaces, but I'm trying to finish the work I started in my first session of this biennium. And there's three bills in particular I'll be trying to push on and make sure we get across the finish line. And here is Elliot, right on cue. The first is normalize having kids and doing big jobs. And so S-102 is what we are calling the PRO Act, which is a labor bill. It has passed the Senate, which is very exciting. And hi, Elliot. And the second, he loves microphones, so beware, do not give him a microphone. But this labor bill is important because there's three aspects of it. It will make the unionizing process easier. It will go from a three-step process to a two-step process for folks who are in the public sector, so public employees. It will ban things called captive audience meetings, where employers use to be a labor organizer. So I'll tell you, captive audience meetings happen in Vermont, where folks are trying to organize union and employers allow people in and talk about how awful the union is. And a couple other things. So hoping to get that out of the house and pass the finish line. The second one is a bill that's up on the wall to create a practical support fund by the state to allow low-income volunteers to gain access to abortion health care. This is in response to the DOBS decision last year. The state of California and Oregon have established practical support funds. I'd like to even add, because I've been talking to folks in those states who've implemented these funds to add gender-affirming health care access to that fund as well. So that's a bill I'd like to get moving this session if possible. And then finally, good old Burlington Charter changes. I feel like I'm just that lab partner who keeps pushing them forward. We have one more left that's still on the wall in the state house, and that's for just cause eviction rights for tenants. And that would allow the city to start the ordinance development process to make sure that it's a transparent process for landlords as well as tenants. And then finally, I think I have a... Did I set my timer? Yeah, I'm embarrassing. I don't think I set my timer. There's a couple of constituent bills, because those ideas come best from constituents around adding a licensing program for contractors to help protect consumers. And then also in terms of the housing crisis, it's an emergency at this level. There was some really brilliant ideas from constituents around leveling the playing field for Vermonters who need financing to buy homes rather than just all cash, which is really pricing people out as a structural barrier for folks. So those are two other little bills. I'm trying that a little bit. Bill's trying to go for it. Thanks. Hello, everybody. I am Martine Larocchi. Look, I am a state senator here who lives here in Burlington, and I represent Chinnu Central, along with Senator Bihovsky, who's next to me and Senator Baruth, who couldn't be here because he's actually presenting at Public Safety gathering this evening. But it's nice to see you. Thanks for coming. I think I could take credit for this evening because I really wanted to hear from all of you. So I look forward to hearing what your priorities are and what you're looking for us to do in the coming session. That said, I can tell you a little bit about what I hope to be doing. I am on Senate Education. I'm the vice chair of that committee, and I'm on Senate Health and Welfare. And in Senate Education, I believe that one of our primary focuses this year is going to be literacy. We've probably all been hearing how literacy rates in the state of Vermont are quite dismal, especially with our young children. It's imperative that students learn to read well by third grade. Otherwise, they really struggle after that because in third grade, you shift from learning how to read to using the ability to read to learn. So it's a critical time. So you can probably expect to see some bills coming out of our committee around literacy. I have been working all summer on the school construction aid committee. In 2007, the legislature put a moratorium on school construction aid, which seems like wasn't necessarily the best decision because what's happened is we went from giving 30% aid to school districts that needed help with their school buildings to nothing. And so we now have this slate of buildings across the state, including, as you know, BHS, that were really falling in disrepair. And it's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of resources to get those to a place where they're healthy, safe, and good learning environments for our kids. So that hopefully you'll be seeing something around that. Mental health is obviously going to be a big issue for us. Sadly, we are losing federal funds. Our ESSER and ARPA money is going away. And that money has really helped us provide schools with more mental health providers, more resources for mental health. So this is going to be a struggle for us for sure. It's going to be hard. In health and welfare, we had a joint committee this summer that focused on homelessness and housing. And that really set the stage for the work that we're going to do this session. We're going to be focusing a lot upon homelessness and housing. And, yeah, I'm working on a social work compact bill, which will allow us to have social workers provide services to Vermonters who are in our compact. And I still have two bills from last year. One is a psilocybin bill that I really hope moves this year. Primarily to help mental health professionals help folks with PTSD and other serious mental health issues. So, and I will pass on to Senator Yavihovsky, but thank you so much. Awesome. So, I'm Tonya Yavihovsky. I also work in central in this Senate. I am on the Judiciary Committee and Vice-Chair of the Government Operations Committee. In Judiciary, I know some of the priorities for our committee this year are to take a look at at expungements and what crimes are expungable when and how, as well as looking at bill reform, overdose prevention centers to respond to the opioid crisis that we are facing and the record number of overdoses that we keep seeing. We'll also be taking a a bill that would ban deceptive or threatening police interrogation practices for children and a bill that I'll be introducing this year is around our civil rape shield laws. So, currently, if you are in criminal court for a sexual assault, you cannot use the previous social history of the victim to mitigate what has happened, but that is still allowable in civil court. So, this would align our civil laws with the criminal laws. In Government Operations, we'll be taking a look at oversight of some of our county electives, like sheriffs and states attorneys. That would have to be a constitutional amendment, which is a really lengthy process. We'll also be looking at really exciting things like emergency services dispatch and government accountability. I served on the summer Government Accountability Committee that has some recommendations to make government more equitable, accountable, and transparent. And we'll also be taking a look at the nomination process for our judges. A couple of other things outside of my committee that I'm looking at is a bill that's called a right to charge bill. It would mandate electric vehicle infrastructure at multi-unit dwellings. As a renter myself, I know how challenging it is to get access if you want to get an EV to charge your EV if you don't own your home. I'm also looking at a bill that would disallow medical debt from being reported on your credit report, so that would no longer get in the way of doing things like buying a home or buying a car. I would certainly like to see us live in a society where we didn't understand what the words medical debt are, but this is sort of a harm reduction tool as we hopefully get there. And then we will also be introducing a bill and likely working on parts of it in the Judiciary Committee that would dictate that the big fossil fuel producers like Exxon and Mobile are held responsible to pay for the damage their products have done. And so those are a couple of the things that I know we will be working on that I will be working on as Representative Cheena said. I know there's more as well, but I am also really interested to hear from all of you. Hi everyone, I'm Jill Krawinski, I represent the Old North End in downtown Burlington and I'm also serving as the Speaker of the House, which means I don't sit on a committee or sponsor bills, but I have the great honor and helping to shepherd through the priorities that we all share and the values that we share and making sure that we're creating a Vermont that works for everyone and leaving no one behind. So I'm going to be careful not to talk about things that have already been talked about. Obviously housing is going to be a huge priority for us this session. Last session we spent nearly invested almost $300 million in different housing programs across the state. We invested millions of our dollars to ensure that we're getting affordable housing units up in all 14 counties and so we will continue to work on that because we know that is the core piece for so many challenges that we have in our state. It always comes back to housing, right? So we'll continue to do that. We're also going to continue our work on climate resiliency and flood recovery. I know in Burlington many of us weren't impacted by the floods, but our Dear Interveil Foundation was and all of our local farmers had to go through a really difficult time and so we've been looking at different ways to support our farmers to ensure that we have emergency funding available when they need to address the problem immediately. So we're going to be looking at different ways to support our food systems as well to make sure that they're strong and resilient. In addition to that, we'll be looking at the renewable energy standard and that's going to be another key part of tackling climate in our state. As we've heard, we'll be doing some work around health and public safety. We have a huge backlog in our court system and we are long overdue for making investments to make sure that they have the workforce to keep up with the pace and to ensure that we have enough judges on the bench to keep up and so we'll be doing some work around access to justice as well this session. Workforce development is also a big issue in our state. For several years now we've been investing in critical careers so people could go to Vermont State University and have access to programs that would allow them to go tuition free or have forgivable loans or grants and those are careers like nursing plumbing, electrician plumbing, all of these things that we need right now when we're looking at climate resiliency and building housing, right? And so, especially in healthcare with the cost of traveling nurses and so if we can help people become more interested in the profession have access to education, we can help with address that issue. Also, Tonya mentioned this I can't stress in this how important accountability is going to be we spend a lot of time investing money in different programs and ensuring that we're meeting the needs of Vermonters but in many cases there are programs that are not getting off the ground or the law is not being implemented by the administration and being implemented the way that it was intended to and so accountability is going to be another key piece of our legislative session and one bill that's a favorite of mine because I don't get to sponsor bills but that we're tracking is a right to repair law. I was actually out logging the other day, it was so awesome and we were just, it was great to see these incredible machines and talking with loggers about how it would just make such a difference for them to be access to repair there. So, right to repair is my little favorite bill to get across the finish line and looking forward to the conversation tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. I'm Charlie Hedrick from Chittenden 15 so awards two and three intersect with that district. If you look North Avenue and Pearl Street east of North Oneusky there's a little square there over the new districts. So Brian and I share Chittenden 15. I serve on the corrections and institutions committee so I'm going to just start by talking about some of the things that I know are coming through that committee immediately. The first is just making sure we are short up for funding all the repairs to say buildings that were damaged by the flood. We had a briefing earlier in the fall I have a lot of confidence in building and general services as they plan that repair. Those repairs and the chief recovery officer's ability to leverage federal funding is right on spot so a lot to be optimistic there. We just received a very long report from the corrections on the women's correction facility I'm not all the way through yet but I do anticipate that we're going to be hearing from DOC on land acquisition and continued designs of those funding. Everything I'm talking about tonight is I explained very deeper including my kind of philosophical approach to all of this in my blog that's just triathletic.com and you'll see a link to it on the front porch forum momentarily. If you want more depth the Futures Caucus a group of legislators who are under the age of 45 some millennials and Gen Zs are bringing to our committee a bill that will decrease the sentence for incarcerated individuals if they continue degrees and see some of that. I'm introducing three bills I don't have numbers for them yet the first is based on a California law it's a bill that will provide protections to sexual assault survivors from weaponized defamation lawsuits if you want to talk to me in more detail about how that shows up I'm more than happy to do that I see it constantly in the university setting I work for EVM adjacent to the sexual misconduct investigation process to hopefully see that keep going I am introducing a bill that would amend current statutes so that it would require criminal cases against children under the age of 18 to start in the family division this is in direct response to a 14 year old child recently being charged as an adult after what appears to be an accidental shooting I am working with the EVM student who wants to see an increase in access to locks on especially in downtown businesses so we're tweaking a standing order for the Vermont Department of Health I am so this is a bill that Brian introduced last year it's H446 an act relating to the reconstitution of EVM Board of Trustees I work in close alignment with the faculty and the staff union and we are trying to democratize the Board of Trustees by adding faculty and staff union by watching that very carefully and I will also be watching the memorandum of understanding that is currently being developed between EVM and the city of Burlington I have some pretty significant concerns and I've been very outspoken about how EVM is currently partnering with the city I will seek to convince and remind my colleagues that EVM is a charter of the general assembly and I'm accountable when they're not showing up to the table but again, my blog has deeper explanations on everything amazing people so much so does anyone have any questions thoughts listening session my name is Jacob Langan and first off I would like to say thank you for passing sorry I don't know any of all the details but the wads and make it so that Duke Lexus can be built across the state and municipalities can't force that not to happen kind of on a similar vein I'm in the solar world and one thing I would I've been talking with a few of you on one thing I would love to have your help with is making development of renewable projects work in the state right now hydro and wind is basically not possible because of our regulations and permanent policies getting harder mostly because of our administration's kind of efforts in that regard so I really appreciate any focus because I see kind of a similar thing with housing as renewable energy we made some decisions about housing many decades and now we're paying the penalty and I think we're running down a similar track with our renewable development thank you Jacob I am happy to continue to talk with you about that I am really interested in some reports that are coming back around land use and Act 250 that will be taking up this session that will bring us back to some of these conversations and as well as the renewable energy standard I know I said that before but I do think that is a critical conversation for us to have and sort of the next place to go when looking at climate resiliency after passing the global warming solutions act and the affordable heat act which we need to make sure gets implemented and it's strong and it happens so again just happy to work with you and keep on talking about it if anyone can respond to anything and also if anyone else wants to talk they can always raise making this a community conversation I'll say something quickly that I wasn't going to but I will something that we were talking about in the last session and it didn't, there was an amendment that was looked at and this piece didn't make it into the regional planning report that was referred to by the speaker I think just now it was to look at how to when we're looking at land use look at how to co-locate waste management and energy production into the development of new housing and I haven't given up on the idea but if we look at each region and we can look at ways of managing waste and generating energy as we develop it will reduce our carbon footprint and one example like in Burlington we have the McTheo plant which is controversial what if what if all of our compost went to the intervail into bio digesters I'm not saying this is the solution it's just a way to think and as that that waste is decomposing it could be it generates natural gas which is what it's going to do in a landfill anyway that natural gas was used locally to heat greenhouses to grow food year round for the people of Burlington or what if the gas was burned to heat housing so like I'm not saying that there's problems with that too because energy it's complicated to live in this universe we destroy things as sentient beings so we're always going to do that but in terms of harm reduction if waste on the local level could be used to make energy on the local level it's going to reduce the harm so I think we need to be thinking creatively and I want to give you an example of like one idea could you quickly go over your accomplishments from last year because my brain is a little fuzzy there's a lot of egos and we go over to that point it would be great to see your successes failures what you're going to do change go back and adjust to the economy for somebody else's opinions weekly time for hours about this this is not there we go okay one that I think yes it went all the way through it's a nail biter because the senate had an act during the veto session to finish a bill but it was as 103 don't ask me the act members but it is a bill that improved our wage discrimination sorry workplace discrimination laws and in there was an update after 20 plus years of our equal pay law that added racial identity and gender identity so it used to be a law that said based on your sex so an update of modernized protections under our equal pay law so now despite their identities have two ways to do a wage based claim or wage based discrimination claim in their workplace I have a quick one so I'm in the healthcare committee so I'll just focus on that one of the greatest accomplishments of our committee was advocating for investments in pay for frontline healthcare workers across the board everything from community mental health home home providers debt to nursing because we had the pay has not been keeping up with inflation and we have practices closing and people losing access to healthcare so unfortunately the how do we sustain that and that leads to one of our greatest failures which we are not taking enough action towards universal healthcare and I'm hoping in the next session we are going to be forming a universal healthcare caucus to try to bring everyone together and reignite that fight more to come universal school meals that was a big one I didn't know enough about it at the beginning of the session but by the end of the session it was just so obvious to me that that's the right way to go and I was really happy to support that bill so that was a win I kind of want to talk about something that we didn't win but I could maybe do that later so I'm really proud of our childcare bill that we passed and I'm really disappointed that the governor vetoed it but I'm really proud that we were able to override it because it's so critical we hear from families all the time having to choose between their job and taking care of their kid at home and that doesn't reflect our values in our state and so our bill made many investments but one part of it was to ensure that we're paying workers more and that our early childhood educators have access to more professional development and we're opening up more slots for families and I'm so excited that we're starting to see more slots and more daycare centers open up childcare centers open up across the state which is so awesome and so needed so one of the successes that we had in judiciary was to protect healthcare providers who are providing reproductive healthcare and protect people who are seeking access to reproductive healthcare in a post-row world we've worked really hard at the state level to make sure that people have access to the healthcare that they need when they need it and that they can't be extradited to other states or sued for accessing that character so that was a really huge success in the judiciary committee and I certainly also could talk about challenges but I don't know if this is the moment Last year was my first year and I'm going to be completely transparent. I spent a lot of time just taking it all in and that's really hard to do I'm going to talk about a general kind of surprise for me and then I'll talk about a little bit of legislation and then something that I still need to figure out for myself here in Burlington the partisan politics between the parties is significant right now the gridlock is significant right now I was really incredibly pleased to find that that's not necessarily the case in Montpelier sitting on a committee with Republicans and Democrats and myself as a progressive I was really pleased to learn that we really can work together and push and pull with one another as we create legislation that was a surprise to me and I'm happy to be part of that I'm on the corrections and institutions committee it is not a sexy committee we are mostly moving around dollars that are bonded so I was pleased to learn about that I was I'm still really confused about how the governor inserted money from the general fund into our capital bill I'm worried a little bit that I don't understand it and if I don't understand it how can I explain it to anybody who asked me why we're doing that really pleased with gone safety legislation that we passed last year that requires safer storage 72 hour waiting period thank you speaker we seek luck I live in board 2 now it is thank you all for all your fantastic work we appreciate that and see that you're all working hard I work for COPS committee and temporary shelters and working with people who are struggling with many issues and I won't get into all the layers but the things that are rising to the top over and over and over again besides trying to find a place to live we're lucky enough in Burlington to have a lot of free food a lot of jobs people who want to work can find a job and bring in money which is awesome we have a community health center of Burlington which is fantastic and Safe Harbor is doing great great work but what people keep saying to me and are trying to help them work through this is they cannot find mental health for themselves as adults and or primary care physicians that they don't have to wait months and months for they don't know if it's what is going on besides staffing and different things like that but this is really hurting people a lot we already have so many different challenges in trauma so those the just finding a counselor not having to wait a year it was really sad when heart mental health had to pull back on some of the programs and that is impacting our clients hugely so not that I know you got your eyes on all of that and this is not something that's going to come you know into your agenda right now but we are as you all are because you live locally still suffering with the F-35 Superhead and it is a health issue and it is a trauma issue and it's not going away and we're not forgetting about it so I just want to name it that's all so when I'm not a legislator I am actually a clinical social worker so I provide mental health care and one of the bills I was really proud of that was actually from my last biennium when I was in the house is looking at the workforce shortage and I believe the report back from that group to help us craft legislation for innovative ways to make more investment in the mental health field is due back I believe this month and so that would allow us to really look at how we work on that and bring people into that field you know it's a field we've under invested in for 50 years there isn't going to be an easy fix but certainly it is on my mind all the time knowing that it is the work that I do in my day job and knowing the many barriers to getting into that work and I have a waitlist that people sit on for a year so I get it I know it's really really bad and I'm hoping we stood up a group of people from all kinds of different places of life to really look at how we grow and diversify that workforce I'm also a licensed clinical social worker and I'm on the health care committee so I feel obliged to say something about this from lived experience as well as being a legislator that the health care system is like the rest of our economy it's extractive so health care workers like myself Tanya and others in the room have worked in a system of care that has not properly supported us in supporting clients in terms of our wages our benefits I can't afford to use the health insurance that I have to purchase that's like that seems inhumane and I'm not the only one and we keep raising the rates but retention is still an issue because the QD the QD of the workers you know doing work is getting so high that it's traumatizing us like the workers so some of the things I think we can do to address this one is the racial justice alliance wrote a bill that passed that created the health equity advisory commission and the commission has recommendations on provider training what's cool is they recommended that the training be not just for traditional health care workers but for anyone who contacts people in the system including policy makers and so hopefully our health care committee will be looking at ways to roll out these recommendations and I'm suggesting we start with corrections because that's where we see some of the greatest disparities right now and we have corrections workers like handling traumatic things in facilities that people shouldn't be there they should be getting treatment not locked in a cage and so that's one thing and then the other is peer support that for years we've been fighting for peer certification of Vermont so that people with lived experience can do the work of supporting people who have similar experiences through trouble we have turning point is an example or pathways Vermont doing great work in this area we have to build on that and you know what if we provided workforce training for people struggling now so that they could learn to be the health care workers helping others out of the struggles down the road and so we're going to be looking more at peer support services if micro residential programs run by peers so I just thought I'd share that because I think those are two solutions that may help but ultimately we have to stop treating the health care system as an extractive thing and we need to be thinking regeneratively and also about like making sure health care is a human right we have seven minutes left so we're referred to my name is I live on Avenue in the Old North and I had a question about the drug crisis like fentanyl coming in from other states into Vermont and what is being done to address the drug trade from other states coming into Vermont I think that's a conversation that is going to be had in the state house to really try to figure out how we respond to that in a way that is actually helpful in public health but I don't know that there is a single solution that has been put forward yet but I am certain and I know having talked to my chair on judiciary that those are conversations that we are going to be having but I don't know that we have landed yet on a solution I think a lot of times the major response is to increase criminal penalties for that type of drug trafficking and what we know from history is that is rarely effective it fills our jails in prisons and causes people to rely more on children to do that trafficking because they are less likely to be charged in the same way and it causes them to use different adulterants that aren't yet criminalized that we don't know how to respond to so that heavy criminal response often is sort of like playing a game of whack-a-mole with the next thing that is going to be killing people and so I think it's really about on the ground public health response and making sure that we have places like overdose prevention centers ready access to treatment some countries have responded going as far as the safe supply where people can get access to whatever it is they are using I don't think we are there in the United States but I think what we can do is one thing we did last year that I was really excited about was past immunity for infrared drug checking machines so people can go and get whatever substance they are using checked to know what is in it so that they can use it more safely and we passed a law saying that no one can be arrested for operating or utilizing those sites so I think that a lot of the response needs to be in keeping people alive and getting access to services rather than heavy criminal responses that really are just going to shift us into some other really dangerous thing that we don't know how to respond to like xylozine has made more of an appearance in our drug supply and Narcan doesn't reverse xylozine overdoses and so when we force people to go to the thing that we haven't criminalized yet we often are then playing catch up and trying to keep people alive so I think it's really about looking at what are the harm reduction supports and services that help keep people alive Yeah I agree I would say that the first bill I think we will see on the House floor is a harm reduction bill that made it to appropriations and didn't quite make it to the floor that has pilots for overdose prevention sites and we hope to fast track that bill and get it to the governor because I do think it is critically important that the public health perspective be the lead on how we manage this crisis The one thing I will add is that people are needing to direct people to drug checking Vermont CARES has a machine that is mobile and I know that they are going to be in the coming days and weeks doing some sort of pop up harm reduction going to the places where use is happening to make sure that people have access to drug checking Narcan, wound care sterile supplies and also doing some street cleanup to just make sure that also there are syringes on the ground so this is going to take a whole community response to respond to this crisis and Vermont CARES right now is doing some of that work if you know people that are using that want to use more safely Can I ask any comments, questions? Hi my name is Tess Bradley and I live here in the Old North End I was talking to Regina and talked a little bit about housing and I was just wanting to ask how run capping comes into play and if that's being considered in affordable housing because inflation has been a massive issue and there are definitely many greedy landlords in this town So it's a topic that is sensitive for people and I'll give you one example of a possible way to do it just capping it may not make sense but what if, this is kind of complicated but I think it's sometimes good to give people a detailed example like what if there was a formula that was used to determine what is truly affordable in a region because right now I don't believe the way that the formula we're doing it is really what's affordable for most of us so we figure it out and we say to people renting property if you charge within like $100 above or below that amount you get tax normal you're staying in like in the lane if you creep above that threshold you start getting taxed and the higher you go the more you get taxed until you hit a point that all your profit is going back to the state to be used for affordable housing so it's capitalism it's the free market like they can choose how much they want to get back to the state and if people want to keep it if they want to just pay their regular taxes and guess what if you go lower than the threshold than the bottom part you get a tax break but there also has to be a limit on that because we need taxes to fund the state so maybe if you go below a certain point you stop getting the tax break so let's say I don't think this is fair but let's say it's a thousand the bedroom is considered affordable I think that's the rate now I don't think that's affordable but let's say that's affordable if you charge $1100 a bedroom or $900 between that range you would get taxed the same if you charge $100 above $1200 a bedroom you get taxed more $1300 more when you get to $14000 you're giving all of your profit back to the state and likewise if you go below you get a break to a certain point I think that's one example of maybe a way we could stabilize rent without capping it but I think we need to be thinking how do we create incentives and penalties or carrots and sticks as they say in the legislature to try to steer human behavior in a way that is making housing affordable because housing should be a human right and not a commodity that's bought and sold in my opinion I just wanted to say if you don't speak up tonight you can always email any of us I know I speak to my colleagues here please reach out I made a movie mistake this year I ended up getting two caught up by constituents and I have like 11 bills which is way more than I ever envisioned I would but I had constituents reach out to me and I said you know what that's a great idea let's work on a bill for that so don't hesitate I know we're here to represent you thank you for being here tonight thank you, thank you everyone thank you all for coming we're now going to move into our next section which is I'm Brian Pine I'm the director of the community I kind of keep all of them and among the duties that we have one of them is to address our housing challenges support a strong and we are looking to potential before the potential I should say for a public private partnership where the city's involvement with a private entity that I'll describe in a little bit would look at the feasibility over the next few months of whether a development of the Memorial Auditorium and the parking lot basically all of the land on that side of Main Street from Union to Southwest B Avenue may include something to do with a relocation potentially of the Central Fire Station but that's not determined that's to be fully reviewed and so basically we're in this period which is real estate sometimes called due diligence which really just means look carefully at all the assumptions and all the potential hurdles and all the issues is there a feasible project that could be developed here so that's where I'm here to discuss tonight I did this similar presentation not same last night at the Memorial MPA so I'll try and go through these slides fairly quickly and FOSCA is going to help me I'll just say next alright we have technology on our side tonight so just to get ourselves centered here the city on this particular block owns the property labeled Memorial Auditorium the fire station and the parking lot below it's called the fire station that is named at the bottom of the gateway block the library and the parking lot to what would be the east the library which is between the library and the church the purple Janet my brain doesn't work that way I just want to find out the people over there I don't want to use the commotes, that's fun but if everybody's lost I want you to help me with them so are we talking about lost on geography is that what we're talking about or on the whole topic oh so I don't have a pointer so I can't really do much but I'm going to go up on stage and this says auditorium right out right here this says fire station gateway block parking lot Fletcher free library I think first Congo maybe some congregational church here so that's what we're looking at this shaded area is privately owned by well it's just privately owned so our challenge has been to look at a way to come up with a comprehensive plan but that includes that purple area rather than tries to sort of hop scotch over it to include the parking lot and so I should just point out that underneath this parking lot running kind of like this diagonally here right through here is a massive ravine it's the ravine sewer it's 20 to 25 feet down it's a huge ravine that is nothing can really be built of size there was once a county jail where the parking lot is right here on the corner of Maine in itself but that was a two-story structure it wasn't a very large structure it had a house for the sheriff and their family and that's what that was before but in order to really get it so they can be something a more significant building in our downtown as part of the gateway that ravine sewer is being relocated it will now basically go down College Street down Maine Street to Church Street and then flow where the where the pipes go now so that's what's going to happen in order to make that site manageable for something to happen there's been different visions over the last three three or four decades there was a public safety proposal in the early 90s to build a police and fire station on the parking lot that did not pass or did not get enough votes to pass when we looked back to Memorial Auditorium and people say well we should figure out how to save it and we have tried numerous times to get voter approval to make investments I did find the ballot question that failed in 1994 was going to take care of most of the issues and it was a million dollars that was the cost in 1994 today sadly the estimates we have range from 30 to about 40 million to fix the Memorial Auditorium so our challenge as a city is we only have so much ability to borrow money to keep our taxes reasonable but also to maintain what they call the bond rating so if a city our size goes past a certain level of debt, borrowed money the agencies to care about how much debt you carry reduce your credit rating when your credit rating goes down your interest rates go up so it's actually quite significant an issue for a city like Burlington and the New High School is about 160 million that's the bond amount it could be more maybe some additional grant funds to lower that a little bit but that's about what it is that kind of uses up all that bond capacity that debt capacity to the city for quite a while at least seven years, maybe more so what we're faced with is a building which for decades has largely been advanced or just neglected and that's by Memorial Auditorium is a building which is in extremely difficult, very challenging conditions at Memorial so we're trying to look at what can be saved and what can be repurposed if you will and the ideas that are being explored now is housing somewhere on this site a couple hundred housing units perhaps is what's in the letter of intent a mix of incomes super energy efficient because of the current energy code all electric because of the provision of new fossil fuel buildings as little parking as we can possibly get away with but I recognition that this site may be also a good place for folks who come to town with their vehicles can get a space in a public facility that would be sort of on the inter portion most likely of this of this block in here that would then allow for things like the library and maybe the church to free up this space for perhaps other programming and green space and put our parking sort of buried in here is one of the ideas that's part of the letter of intent so these are all concepts, none of this is like a plan this is all purely conceptual at this point next slide sometimes I get stuck on a slide that my coworker told me don't get stuck on a slide, sorry about that this is really just another view of it so we could probably move on so this is just a bit of history a memorial it was built around 1928 it was built as a memorial to the returning veterans from the first world war it has served a number of purposes I have very fond memories of with the youth employment program in the 80s creating the first brilliant children's space at the very ground level we renovated it and turned it into a child care that the city launched because there was enough child care and the mayor said we need more child care our oldest kid went to daycare in that space and the kids were in the rock camp here they played basketball here so I think most people who lived in brilliant have some connection to memorial usually it's quite fond I think so it really is a gem I really hope that we can find a way to repurpose it and save as much of it as possible I don't know that it will be possible to salvage but what we have are multiple attempts to try to reinvest to try to stabilize memorial and what we do have right now is we have some funds that have been used to ensure that the building what's left and the condition it's in not be allowed to deteriorate further and so repairs have been made to the roof and the whole roof structure roof system so that you know so that the weather doesn't penetrate the building and cause any further damage it does need an entire heating system overhaul and that would be extremely expensive and so that's on hold so right now the building is largely dormant and it's mothball that means all the water has been drained out you know it's not heated there's no risk of you know pipes bursting because everything's been drained in the building and so that's where it is right now next slide again there's some previous proposals redevelopment both of the whole well the parking lot there was talking about a decade ago for the YMCA to relocate to memorial in addition at the time there was an idea that some mixed housing both student housing and just community housing would occur because of that purple lot that I pointed to earlier that funny shaped lot that's privately owned that never came to fruition because you have to kind of get that private entity to come along and that was a challenge and has continued to be a challenge there was a proposal for UVM to have an arena there higher ground looked at locating here before they decided to go to Burton and even for a little while high school team that was looking at work at the high school looked at this site as a possible location we finally got a proposal that looked like it had some real potential and it was an immersive art facility which maybe somebody else can describe because I'm not exactly sure what immersive art means but I think there's one in Montreal and there's one in maybe Austin, Texas in the animal is it's a very unique experience it's really exciting I feel like it would blend art and public access it was incredibly exciting it didn't get they couldn't make it work they just couldn't figure out how to make it work so they spent a little while doing that due diligence and they couldn't make it work next slide try to put this in the context of some of the planning efforts that this community has had around things like planned VTV and kind of like downtown to ensure that we have really walkable pedestrian oriented downtown with played housing places for folks to get their daily needs met but also places of employment really to ensure that the downtown has the right support for that type of dense urban development so that is a guiding document that has led to the sort of thinking of the gateway block next slide this is a photo on the left of the current actually it's not current because it has the Midtown Hotel that's been gone for a few years so this is probably maybe just before the pandemic and then the pictures on the right depict some of the drawings that came out of planned VTV and I'll point to what it is this is as you can see that's the church that we saw earlier the fire station is right here so the idea is this is Main Street this is Wunewski Avenue I know representative Sheena's office may be somewhere down this block here it may have an extra story added above you he's looking at it like that's not my building but it is my building I can see his face so these are concepts these are concepts that were part of the planned VTV so what now and what are we trying to do for both Memorial and for the whole block as an opportunity to really bolster our housing supply and to really address the ongoing challenge of what to do with Memorial we are facing some really exciting work that will happen on Main Street the Great Streets project which if you don't know much about take a look at DPW's site to describe what the Great Streets project involves but it's major sort of generational investment in the infrastructure from Wunewski Avenue it has actually changed a little bit it was originally going to be from Union Street all the way down Main Street to the very bottom because of funding constraints and cost increases the Main Street project is being kind of a little bit shrunk a little bit and it will be a shorter distance on Main Street but the idea is to extend those improvements to Great Streets which really has a real pedestrian and bicycle focus with a dedicated bike lane on the street so it's got some really great features and to extend that right up Main Street on the past Memorial Auditorium so I think, okay next slide we want to just give a reminder that this public process that it was engaged during 2018 identified things the community really wanted to see happen in Memorial when we were hoping it could be repurposed really as a public kind of community gathering space entirely so these were some of the priorities that we just want to continue to highlight and make sure we don't forget that these were priorities there is a real commitment to look at community space by these particular individuals in the letter of intent and they actually call out youth led programming space so they're very specific that they want that to be included these are obvious things attractive welcoming to our downtown that's why it's often referred to as the Gateway mixed income housing I think is a great huge need for housing at most income levels preservation of the veterans memorials which if you haven't been in the building there's great big plaques that need the Burlington folks Burlington residents who who gave their lives in World War 1 so it's a commemorative piece there's several of them actually I think some were discovered about 10 years ago when we brought adults like the basement and were restored so that was really exciting so a public space with a real focus on youth again here some type of public parking don't know how much obviously growing the grand list is important downtown is a site to do that so the rest of us taxpayers don't can share the burden if you will there's the benefits and there's the burdens and growing the grand list is what that's about and obviously long term economic benefit for having that vibrancy in the core of our downtown as I mentioned earlier the ravine sewer has got a real barrier to development on that lot as well as some other locks like the old hood plant which is where King Street goes way down and then comes back up it will address those properties as well we haven't been able to control that property that I referred to earlier that Tinkish property that privately held we call it the hole in the donut I don't know if I'm right because it's not a circle but it should kind of work as a visual image we have this bit bond capacity issue which I've touched on already and the cost of renovating Memorial now approaching the $40 million bond for it to be a feasible project so we are dealing with the great the ravine now we obviously have a huge housing crisis we need to be exploring every possible place where housing makes sense and this is a site that certainly makes sense it's on a main quarter it's very accessible to our transportation system it's a great location for people to live and just advancing the goals that the community has around you know having a thriving healthy vibrant downtown pedestrian oriented and those goals as well so next slide two local developers control that pink chunk of land that's Eric Farrell and Joe Larkin Eric Farrell is did originally did development as well maybe 15 years ago in the New North End near Stanford Road as well as Thayer School which used to be DMV in Wellington out of North Avenue that whole development that was Eric's one of his flagship developments he also led the development downtown which has TD Bank that's still there on the corner but the rest of the site was developed that Eric did when he was with Redstone and more recently Eric is the developer of the property that used to be known as the people of the college of the St. Joseph's Orphanage on North Avenue now called the Cambrian Rise Joe Larkin is second or third generation person from a sort of real estate background and in his largely his area of expertise is hotels so the concept here is that Eric was focused on the memorial redevelopment, repurposing with housing as his main focus and Joe Larkin brings a hotel that's at least interesting so that is part of the concept here next part again the letter intent has been signed which gives until the end of March to explore all of these aspects of due diligence the feasibility of whether there is a project here whether there's a way to make this viable whether it's feasible this is part of the public process the city council asked our office to engage it so we're doing that now we're running out of time? alright so we're at the last slide that's perfect okay so here's the time frame we are now of course over there in December so we'll open it right up there's stats to here so the big property that's currently owned was there ever if I don't know if I missed it any discussion of just outright buying it so that that was not a responsibility of just developing the whole thing as a one unit I think it was a desire of both the current owner so the current owner isn't Farrell and Larkin the current owner is another group and they desire they want to be either a developer or they want to do a deal with these guys so they will not do a deal with the city okay secondly and I assume we open the church or no no congressional church no no that's private land church owns that yeah they broke through on the driveway though the driveway used to end and they cut through now to go through the memorial they didn't use to do that they are interested in kind of a free development that would move their parking off of that site and to the center of the lot as we talked about the central garage that's something both the church and the library are very interested I mean the church has basically a parking need one or two days a week really yeah okay and then lastly I assume that I would love to see maintained in some way or form just like you many many years sadly you're screaming resource at this point and also the Carnegie library I'm assuming that's going to stay and lastly we should free the sewer just let it go you know I'll take that under review now I'll just going back to your very first slide with the map on the pink area I just want to make sure that I understand so Fusco's going to help me out here because you wouldn't want me looking to do that there it is well it's just in the address of time it's getting there and interrupting anyway go ahead to your question about the pink yeah I just want to make sure I understand so my property is publicly owned that's by the city, correct yeah the city of the property is basically everything open at the church and this big parcel here to run back to the library pretty much and then I'm just curious if there are any resources perhaps I should have moved up closer as well so if it was on the slide and I missed the diabolos but I'd be interested in learning more about the history of the pink shade area and how that became privately owned I've just been privately owned as long as our records show it's been privately owned it was a motel for about 50 years it has a duplex on the property, a brick duplex it's yellow, it has a tattoo shop in there and maybe it's a salon so yeah it's been privately owned for many many years for many decades anyone else have any questions in the ideal world how many units we put up I think they have broadly a concept of at least a couple hundred but I think that's like a placeholder number could be more, could be less I'm just curious about a fire station and then what would happen to it if it was part of the development so the fire station is a good topic for us to talk a little bit because I think it was in 2018, maybe 2017 the city had a study to look at the fire stations and it gets rather complicated it gets into things like the firefighters wanting to have at least three firefighters on each vehicle because of new standards around response and safety and what you do when you go out and do a fight a fire but also when you deal with other emergencies in order to do that it gets really challenging with our existing stations and so I'll forget I think we have five we have one in the new north end, we have one in the old north end we have one up here at UVM, Central and then we have Southland the one at the very far south end is so far south that it really isn't that useful honestly because the geography and the center of geographic sort of center of gravity where the activity is it would, the idea would be to move the central fire station from there very difficult by the way for them to get in and out of there during an emergency so they try their best to get out really fast but they will say that their time and their time getting out of central is never as good as their response time at other locations so the study found that the best location for where the call volume was at least five years ago was probably about where I'm just going to say this, not to take over their property but Curtis Lumberand that's about where the fire station geographically should be and the one on Flynn Ave or not Flynn, Ferguson Ave, Ferguson Ave that's it should not be in Ferguson Ave basically that's what the study concluded there's no fork on conclusion but the building itself is absolutely good enough shape that it would pretty much has to be preserved the fire station itself because it's in good shape relatively good shape I can't see any scenario where that would come down at all I really don't think that would ever that's on the table for sure I think it's their goal is to figure out how to use it as best as possible whether it just gets redesigned into their project when you think of the building that has the comedy club in it called the Armory downtown that's an example of reusing a building but keeping you know as much as possible hey so do you know remember what the timeline is for doing all that review work so what so basically what I'm getting at is what's the earliest that something could actually happen on this project that timeline that we have there doesn't do it but that is this is executing a development agreement in January of 25 that's a year from now what roughly is no actual construction takes place in that time period so construction would have to be after that if all goes well construction on the main street the ravine would be done in 24 that part of the project so that's about gives us about until 25 before anything could happen if this is deemed feasible a lot of big questions to be answered between now and then but these local people want to be I think they want to be part of resolving this for the community that they grew up in so I think they're both really they seem really interested in this being kind of family legacy type projects would there be guys who were coming in to say BHS as well it's not the same for urban people was it the pick of the pick never mind the pick so many people said no that's a different group yeah different group there's a lot of priorities you have like civic space music use light groups housing, parking is there a hierarchy of which ones you're going to or maybe not you but the developer that's a really great question used to be a game called SimCity you can do like this thing if you like this kind of stuff and it's really fun you can take those variables and decide what was going to win out and what was going to go but no this is probably going to be I think it's viewed as an opportunity to really actually hit on all of those priorities honestly that's the wish and I can tell you there's one counselor here tonight I'll do it very clear that the priority is to figure out how to preserve as much memorial as possible and also not to sell off the city land as an asset but to use it as a way to kind of leverage public benefit and keep it in perpetuity as a city resource so that's been guiding us we really have enough time for one or two more questions are we too close to each other I like it oh what is that yes we might get in front of it yeah the hotel is that one of the priorities is the hotel priority in the list of the priorities for development a hotel is definitely a priority for the type of partners right now I'll be blunt about hotels generally are ways to make the housing a little more financially viable so even though we know rents are incredibly high the banks don't like the way they look on a budget on performance if you project them over time because costs keep going up and rents aren't projected to go up quite as fast and so they like hotels are viewed as a good way to shore up the development so that's I think what they're hoping to do is use that as a Burlington hotels apparently have the highest you can see which is like saying the lowest vacation of hotels in northern England so yeah do we need another hotel I don't actually know if we need another hotel largely that's where the public and the private part comes in if they determine that a hotel is what they need to make it work and get housing and other public benefits that's the trade off I think the purple part just being greedy I mean because we have this first one either side and it's like if you don't do what I want to do then we're just going to sit here and keep owning it and we still have this wasteland in the middle of this potential big unified project how greedy are they being well let's just say we are in a partnership that we're trying to explore we don't want to be kind of careful about I characterize them I would say the current owner so there's the owner and then there's the group that has the option to buy it basically we're working with the second group not the first somebody tell you something I know but they're just not interested in selling to the city just go well that's too bad and I agree that we should keep owning our land and not just sell it off because we're not making any more of that our way nope, and we have an heir who likes to sell things off and we don't want to do that anymore so but I was just wondering it just must make it very hard to do a project with these people right smack in the middle it has distorted the breakthrough has been new people coming to say we're interested in doing something they don't exist that they're going to buy the property that I mean they're being very flexible about the approach there's so much another round of applause we have a viewer question so thank you so much for letting me ask this question Sino director pine will the public have a chance to make comments about any of this development or has this agreement taken it out of the public opportunity to make statements about the public's own land and will that just be relegated to the council and the administration to moving forward so with respect to public involvement in this process right now we are trying to gather some public input and feedback through bringing us to neighborhood planning assemblies there will be additional opportunities we don't envision any action occurring for quite some time we have this due diligence period until the end of March and at that point I think it will be time for the council to discuss and debate a development agreement and a development agreement will often spell out things like role of public input and involvement beyond the normal process which is the development review process and all of that but as far as the question about use of city land and those issues it will largely be a process where the council considers public input in that decision basically thank you so much so now we are going to hear from both city and school councilors or from their councils oh my I'm the only guy I have 20 minutes I said 5 minutes was not enough but shorter so I decided because I only had 5 minutes which I now don't but I was going to just say hey what do you want to ask and then I'll answer it and let me just say the only thing that's coming up on Monday night which is the last meeting until January 12 so it's the last meeting of the year is going to be a discussion about a MOU a memorandum of understanding with the University of Vermont around housing I've been very clear that I won't support the striping of any lies let alone anything else at UVM until they seriously deal with the housing crisis that is caused in much part by the under housing of their students and so whether this MOU does that we will see the documents the council's agenda was posted today and the MOU says items to be posted or materials to be posted later love that but what we have made clear and what is implicit in the item on the agenda is that we are not making a decision we need the public to weigh in to hear what this deal is what y'all should be telling us is this enough and really let me end this part by saying it's been my perspective that the University of Vermont has refused and does not believe that housing really is something that they should be providing it's not their mission and they've had that position for as long as I know which is like the early 1970s they have a housing crisis which is now affecting them people are having a hard time going to the University because they can't find housing they're getting tripled up it's just a mess so this is when they come to the table and the question will be like what we saw here with Memorial we can't negotiate these things negotiations are good and takes so you can't get everything you want otherwise it's not a negotiation it's a hold up but we'll see on that and so everybody should be paying attention to this because the housing of UVM students is critically important I know that everybody in our words in this neighborhood the student under house population is coming into the community and I love students in the neighborhood but it is not a responsible way for them to be operating which is just basically increasing enrollment increasing enrollment and not housing of people and we need to help us have a hard line because everybody else is saying we have no leverage they give up before they have the fight okay so that was a really long I'm sorry way of talking about one thing that I was going to talk about hardly at all questions when he says stop I never listened to her for the last 35-40 years so Lucy has a question if we can't come Monday is this the beginning of a long process or what are the steps here that we're looking at if you can come Monday and you can comment on I think the question that you should think that would be helpful is to say do not railroad this we need the opportunity to see this you know so coming back is it too short a period of time for us to actually vote in it on January 12 it's a long period of time you got holidays in between we wouldn't have had really a debate we're not going to have a debate on Monday night what we're going to have is a presentation we're going to talk to and we're going to ask questions and then we're going to have to figure out the give and take of that and you all are sort of like an afterthought in the Brainiacs of the world so there are two meetings in January and one in early if you there is the desire and the need for vigorous public input then communicating to us via zoom or in person or in email that would get sent to everybody to say you know what thank you we'd love to do this we're going to digest the material we need some more time and actually January 12 is even too soon that's totally legitimate if people don't say that kind of stuff then March just the tide, the currents just keep carrying it off so that's the way that I would do that comment in person via the zoom or by email that would get sent to the whole city council and ask that be included in our consent agenda so we've got that thank you it's okay let me just end some of you have I'm going to run for election this is not an election pitch just to say that I've got some petitions that my dear heart circulated for me earlier while I was at other meetings and anybody who hasn't signed who is in the newly constituted ward 2 I tried very hard to keep ward 3 folks in ward 3 I failed I did not get the votes please decide my petition is in the back there Wendy's got this right here thanks amazing thank you so much I hope you are drawing