 All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And I do see, I think I heard you, Councilor Hightower, right? You are here with us and voting. Yes, I am sorry, just migrating rooms. Okay, great. The next item is the public forum. Is there any member of the public who would like to address the board of finance can use the raise hand function. If you are on the zoom with us. And you would like to be recognized in the public forum. I am not seeing any raised hands. So I'll close the public forum. And move to the consent agenda. The first item on the consent agenda is. The consent agenda. Take the actions indicated. Are we ready for a motion on that item 3.01. So moved. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Is there a second? Okay. Seconded by President Tracy discussion of the consent agenda. Motion. Seeing none will go to vote. All those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And we, the consent agenda is adopted. Okay. We have now. Eight items for recommendation to approval and recommendation. The city council followed by there will be one item that is a. Units approval only item. Star point with 4.0 one authorization to the branch electric department revenue bonds for a net zero energy projects. Team BED. Joining us here. And Darren maybe could just, you know, this is a significant authorization. So maybe could just say a couple words about it. Glad to mayor. Good evening. Stephanie's Wheelock, and also Emily Byrne, who is our new director of finance at Burlington Electric and Thomas Maloney, our bond council. So before you, you have a few different items that are all related to our net zero energy revenue bond, which was approved by voters December 7th special election. This package will enable us to go ahead with issuing the bonds and was approved by our electric commission. In addition, there are changes to supplemental resolution in supplemental resolution 16 to the bond resolution to do a few things. First, to extend from 120 days to 180 days at the end of each fiscal year, the amount of time we have to provide our audited financials. We ran into one issue at one point with this several years back where we had a challenge being able to get the audited financials issued within the 120 day period. So having the 180 days is certainly provides a little additional security for us in terms of meeting that deadline, which is part of the bond resolution. Secondly, it will ensure that in the future, we are able to include what we're terming energy efficiency energy transformation projects within our potential future bond issuances. This kind of expands the scope of what we may be able to go to issue for in the future as it relates to net zero energy and really is consistent with the way we're starting to treat some of our incentive programs at Burlington Electric, thinking of them as being regulatory assets and capital investments as opposed to ongoing year-to-year expenses, the way we've been treating them. And then lastly, expanding to include money market funds in the investment securities that are eligible within the bond resolution. So supplemental 16 accomplishes those three changes. Supplemental 17 and the general resolution that you have are primarily focused on helping us to have approval to issue the 20 million for net zero energy revenue bonds. And I'll pause there. I know myself or our team could answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Darren, for that. Thanks to the whole team for the hard work on this. It's I think really quite exciting and hopeful that we are moving forward with this and the voters supported the bonds so strongly. The floor is open for discussion or emotion. Councilor Powell. So thanks, Mayor. I have a question. Would there be an issue with making a motion for items 4.0102 and 03 together or is that not a good idea? We see we have a bond council here. Thomas Maloney. Welcome, Thomas. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. For the council and for the board of finance, there's one resolution that is being proposed for presentation for the full city council that incorporates and adopts both supplemental resolution number 16 and supplemental resolution number 17. So by acting on that one resolution, the council would authorize not only the amendments and approve the amendments and authorize them being to the general bond resolution as the general manager explained, but then also would authorize the up to 20 million of revenue bonds for the electric department and further into the net zero energy program. There is the delegation that goes to the chief administrative officer of the city in terms of those done historically with the final terms and rates for authorization with the caveat that the total interest costs cannot exceed a four and a half percent threshold. Otherwise, it will have to come back to this, to the board for actual authorization. Current rates, that's not expected, but there's certainly some uncertainty in the market. But at the current levels, it's not expected to be over the four and a half percent threshold. So with that, I guess what I'm reading from that explanation is that it's okay to make these together. That's correct. Yes, it should be all as one approval if the members of the board of finance so determined. Yes. All right. Well, with that said, if I might, I would make a motion to take the action as recommended in the board docs for items 4.01, 4.02, and 4.03. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councilor Jang. Thank you. I must say that Thomas, I'm confused. What I'm seeing on board docs suggests there are three different resolutions that have different language. They seem to be three separate resolutions we're acting on. Is that not the case? There are three separate resolutions, but the one resolution relating to authorization that's by the City Council that incorporates and adopts the other two resolutions that are attached. They're incorporated by reference. They're attachments. So by acting on... I see those are resolutions simply from the board of electric commissioners. That's correct. So the Council is approving and adopting those resolutions for the bonds. But it's done in the... by the single resolution contained... I'll open up the board docs as 4.01. That's correct. So is that the only one we really need to act on? And the others are just informational? I believe so, but 4.01 does incorporate the resolutions that are identified in 4.02 and 4.03. Okay. Sorry. I don't recall us ever doing it quite this way before, so just sorry to believe for this, but I just don't want to screw this up somehow. So the board docs recommended action for 4.02 and 4.03 says recommended action to recommend that the City Council approve the attached resolution. The attached resolution appears to be a resolution of the board of electric commissioners. You actually want us to do that? I don't remember ever doing that before. No, I... Mr. Mayor, I don't think that's necessary. I think if the board... if the board of finance and the City Council acts on the resolution in 4.01 by approving 4.01, it will incorporate and be approving the department's actions contained in 4.02 and 4.03. All right. That makes sense to me. Is everybody clear on that? Councilor Powell, I didn't mean to... You should want to get back in. Sorry if I cut you off. Okay. Okay. So after all that, we're just getting more act on 4.01. Would you like to make that motion, Councilor Powell? Maybe you already do. Yes. As I was trying to save us all sorts of time, I guess I wasn't able to quite do that. So I would make a motion to take the recommended actions... recommended action to recommend that the City Council approve the attached resolution in item 4.01. Great. Is there a second second by President Tracy? Discussion of 4.01. Great. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you, everyone. So I'm going to now simply just move to item 4.04. That's what we're all agreeing I should do, right? Yes. Okay. All right. 4.04. Then thank you, Team BED. We'll see you at the Council. 4.04. Shelburne Street, Roundabout, Budget Amendment, Utility Agreement, Supplemental Agreement Number 4. This is an e-contract. Welcome, Chapin and Laura. How are the Board like to proceed on this? Chapin and Laura, can one of you give a quick overview of what's going on here? In your engineer wheel, we'll do that. Actually, we're going to give this to Olivia. This is her work. Hi. So for the Shelburne Street Roundabout Project, we have a utility agreement with the State of Vermont. This agreement allows the City to be reimbursed for 100% of the costs incurred for the oversight and inspection of the water and sewer infrastructure being installed as part of the project. That oversight and inspection is being performed by a consultant, Aldridge and Elliott. Our Water Resources Department also has their water distribution team spending a significant amount of time in the field, and our water resources engineers are providing a lot of technical review for some of the field engineering and the changes being made in the field. So we're coming to the Board of Finance tonight to seek authorization to enter into an amendment of this utility agreement. The amendment includes money to reimburse our Water Resources Department for this time spent on the project, which was not originally anticipated. It also covers an additional amount of money for Aldridge and Elliott's work. There have been a few construction delays just related to the presence of ledges throughout the project, which has significantly slowed the schedule and just kind of stretched out the need for Aldridge and Elliott's oversight. So the amendment covers that additional amount of money. The motions also ask for authorization to enter into an amendment with Aldridge and Elliott to cover this work as well as an overall project budget amendment. Great. Thank you, Olivia. The floor is open. Questions or are we ready for a motion? Well, as this is sort of in my backyard, I'll make the motion to take the action as recommended on Board Docks. Is there a second? Okay. Great. Seconded by President Tracey. Further discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And Chapinage, U.S. is it? Yes, one piece on this item. Thank you for the approval is that it was listed as a deliberative item on the council agenda tonight. That may have been erroneous. If there's a need for it to be on deliberative, we're fine with that. But if friendly, we'd welcome it being moved to consent if that's possible. Are you looking for a motion? Add that to the motion or no? Looks like President Tracey would like to speak to this. So go ahead, President Tracey. Yeah, I mean, I would be fine with that. I think we should take care of that at the at the agenda approval at that. So if you could just ask that to be updated, maybe send that to Lori, Lori Elberg, and just ask Lori to update that in the agenda motion for tonight's main council agenda. And we can take that. I will do that. I just want to make sure there was no interest on your part. President Tracey or others to have it on deliberative. Thank you. Yeah. No, I haven't heard any concerns from folks. It seems pretty straightforward. So I'm okay with that. Great. I'm going to move now to 4.05, another DPW. We got DPW items the rest of the way here. Reclassification of a previously approved water operator position. Keep in how would you like to summarize this? I can give a brief overview. This is basically reclassifying a previously approved water operator position. This is the ninth water operator that will allow us to put the senior plant mechanic on day shift to help us get more proactive capital work done at the water plant. And previous approval had this as a tiered position coming in at a grade 15, 16. In further consideration in talking to the union, the interest was to have the tiering conversation as part of the upcoming collective bargaining. And as a result, we have a retiring senior plant mechanic coming soon. So we need to get out in front of this and unfortunately can't wait for those negotiations to occur. So in the short term, we're seeking to just reclassify this to a regular water operator at grade 17. And HR manager Lynn Reagan and Jenna Olson from Water Resources are here to answer any questions. Great. All right. I said to you both how would the board like to proceed? I have a question. Go ahead, Councilor Jayne. Yes, I wanted to understand the operator's license. I believe it's called the C4 or equivalent. Can you explain what it does it entails? Yes, it is a license requirement for operation of the water plant, the drinking water plant. And it is a licensure that our operators need to secure for their work at the plant. Every chef needs to have a mechanic and an operator on at all times. And so there is a basic operator's license so that they can just provide the basic functions to operate the water plant. And then there are, you know, continual tiers of licensure from there that allow them to do more complex tasks. And also, thank you. And I think also, you know, it seems you can hire somebody for disposition without that license, but there is a requirement as part of the memo that that person would need to actually have it within 1.5 years. Did I get that right? Right. Okay. So I want to understand then why would you want to move from grade 15 to 16 and straight to grade 17 without making sure that you will actually have, that person will be hired, will actually have that license. Yes, that is a good question, Councilor Jayne. This arrangement currently exists with our grade 17 water operator positions. These are existing positions. We had hoped to have a more entry level position to create a tiered, to create a ladder, a career ladder within the water resources, the water plant team. Given the conversations with the union, the thought was to have those tiering conversations as part of collective bargaining. So this is really just matching the other existing water operator positions with this ninth position. Okay. So I mean, I feel like, you know, looking at the job description, this is a very entry level job, data entry job, right? And also, you know, the requirements, the education requirements are high school or equivalent. And from my perspective, I think it would be better if, for example, the job description would say there is possibilities to move to grade 17 upon receiving the grade C for operator's license. I'm more comfortable with that than to just approve a $76,000 a year for someone who doesn't have a license. You understand what I mean? Sorry. I do. The challenge is that these are, well, they may not require a lot on the front end in terms of education. There is a very high bar in terms of professionalism and knowledge in the industry to operate our potable water plant. And these positions already exist as grade 17 positions already with the year and a half to get your necessary licensure. And we do have a good job shadowing program where if a member does not yet have their license, they work with a team member who does have a license. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, you're muted. Twice. I was just saying, I believe we still need a motion or further questions here, Councilor Hightower. Yeah, I'll move to recommend the City Council approve the attached resolution as listed on board box. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Is there a second? I think it might present Tracy. Discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Opposed. Okay. I think for these remote votes, we are supposed to do a roll call just if there is not, you know, it's just to be totally explicit. So I will quickly go through the roll. President Tracy? Yes. Councilor Paul? Yes. Councilor Hightower? Yes. Councilor Jang? No. And I will vote aye. So the motion carries by a vote of four to one. This brings us now to 4.06. Authorization for up to $280,832. Step one, loan from the Vermont Clean Water State Provolving Fund for Tertiary Treatment Pilot Study at the Main Wastewater Treatment Plant. Any quick opening remarks on this? Champion, you like to share? Yes. These three items are tied together and are part of a very exciting package to advance the city's water quality work. They seek to authorize loan application and execution for state revolving fund loans and for authorizing related contracts with a consultant team, oil tanner. The total value of the work is around $1.2 million but because of the loan forgiveness that the state is offering of $350,000, the amount to borrow is around $780,000 collectively between these three items. Over the last couple of years, with the integrated water quality plan, we have been putting together a plan, one of the first in New England for merging both our stormwater and wastewater permitting and there are two main efforts here under way. One is to reduce our phosphorus discharge and two is to reduce both the frequency and volume of combined sewer overflows in our collection system. So there's three items here. This first one is for tertiary treatment technology evaluation. This is looking at upgrading main wastewater treatment plant to remove additional phosphorus from our effluent. This alone is indicating to help us meet our total maximum daily load, our TMDL reductions under our permit requirements for both our wastewater and stormwater systems and then the second and third item are related to our CSO reduction efforts in terms of the Pine Street CSO storage tank, preliminary engineering of that work and some additional modeling, the hydrologic and hydraulic modeling efforts. I'm happy to answer questions on any of these. Jenna Holson is here to also answer any questions. These are very exciting investments into our increased commitment in improving our water quality of lake shimpling. Jenna, is there anything you'd like to add? Just that I have shingles on my face so I don't, Zoom can't help me right now. So that's why I look like this. These are projects that are really integral to our integrated water quality plan that I will be coming to present our final plan for in the coming weeks. We're starting with Conservation Board March 7th and then we'll be presenting to City Council, Board of Finance, DPW Commission and the TUC throughout the month of March. So there will be more information to come. I think the key thing that I just want to hit home is that we're requesting this authorization now rather than after we do those presentations in March because these projects are really dependent on capturing spring rainfall and if we wait until after March then we're going to miss that really important data set and we could push the, we could end up pushing the project out an entire another year which is just, it's too long. Thank you Jenna. That combined with the loan forgiveness that the state has that may be disappearing we did not want to miss that opportunity for $350,000. Right so we all, we have existing possibilities for subsidies in addition to you know being able to potentially seek ARPA funding right now and so we also really don't want to miss those and really important funding opportunities. Thank you both for that. Kester, hi Tara. Yeah just a question which I know the plan is coming but a question on yeah what the plan is for this being a pilot and then if the pilot proved successful with the plan is from timeline I guess really not specifically on the plan. Sure so that for the integrated plan that the tertiary upgrades at main wastewater plant are like really the key component to the integrated plan. The pilot study isn't, it's not, it's not a pilot study I guess to be clear on whether or not we should pursue tertiary treatment it's what type of tertiary treatment so the pilot is basically you know according period for folks that manufacture this technology to demonstrate to the city what they can do so we will be piloting different technologies and identifying which one is you know most effective and most cost effective at our plant in particular. I think another important point to make is that our main wastewater treatment plant has a wet weather treatment system and so that makes it a little bit different. It means that the phosphorus inputs you know coming into our plant and the effluent influence are a little bit more intense it also means that there's a lot more variation and so we want to make sure that we're piloting enough of those different technologies that we're you know maximizing that that phosphorus capture. If all goes to plan I think you know we are aiming to have the tertiary upgrades start sometime in the next year to year and a half so I would say that the upgrades themselves probably be starting in earnest probably towards the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024. Okay so not not likely to be the spring flow for next year but. No no I don't think so I mean just with the way the process goes with funding and everything I would say it's probably more likely that the upgrades would start in the middle of next year at the earliest. Great thank you so much. President Tracy. I'm wondering if we might be able to move these three items in concert so I'd like to move if possible and if the board is okay with it item the taking the recommended actions on items four point the recommended actions and board docs I'm sorry in items four point for items four point oh six oh seven and oh eight you're on mute again here. I have no objection to that and I'm not seeing a city attorney jump on the race I'm concerned about that so let's proceed with that motion is there a second second by Councillor Jang so motion has now we do have Dan here are you with the motion with the items being moved simultaneously. Yes I'm comfortable with that I think it's it's appropriate. Okay great uh any further discussion of items four point oh seven through four point oh eight. Four point oh six through oh eight. All right four points oh six through four point oh eight. Okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any post? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you John. Thank you very much. I went through the shingles up around the eye no fun uh good luck go to have the doctor check that out. Oh yeah. Talk to you uh talk to you soon. That leaves us with just five point oh one one and um we have Max and Cindy here to speak to this exciting first time in 37 years replacement of uh playground equipment at Callahan Park and um as in all of our recent playground uh upgrades or replacements just focused on quality uh materials and um I think it's exciting have it the major frequent user for many years of that park it's exciting to see this coming forward after an extensive we should say uh after planning process with the community there which did touch on uh some guidance that the team is working with so with that the floor is open for five point oh one. Cindy do you want to add anything to my my overview there? I think you know I think that's good I would just ask if Max does Max has been overseeing this project as he does um all our penny per park projects and does really a fantastic job with it. Max is there anything that you'd want to touch on there? No I actually thought the mayor did a pretty good succinct job there of sort of summarizing uh where this project is at and we're really excited to get moving forward with getting that equipment replaced and getting the fresh new playground in Callahan Park. The floor is open for our motion or discussion. You know if you can just pardon me for one more second Councillor Paul could you just remind us of how we have been uh kind of like just to address any questions there might be about why Callahan how we have been yeah I've been sort of in an orderly way um replacing uh this is it's not our first replacement in the past few years you've had a focused program on this can you say anything more about that and how that's funded and how you go about that Max? Yeah so Callahan has been on our list uh for replacement I mean since I started here it was sort of scheduled for around FY 21-22 timeline for replacement we work pretty closely with our grounds manager Paul Morris and a couple other people on our team basically evaluate all of our playgrounds comprehensively throughout the city looking at their age and also looking at just how the equipment is held up over time and what level different parts have sort of deteriorated into and what needs replacement and then what things can still get replacement parts based on their age so we've really taken a pretty comprehensive look internally at all of our playgrounds throughout the city and what is in highest need um now in terms of how we've been sort of approaching it is over the last couple years we've allocated um I might get the dollar amount here wrong I think it was $50,000 over the past two years just to replacing parts and pieces that were damaged and needed replacement because they presented a health and safety risk to our community and we were ordering those parts and getting in either contractors as needed to help with that or getting those parts for our grounds team to put in at various playgrounds throughout the city um and then before that going further back we've just sort of been looking at each of these playgrounds and as we can we are working through that list from oldest to newest best condition and sort of prioritizing our replacements based on the available funding and based on how much we think we can get done given the need in a particular park so like Kallahan Park which is a pretty high-use park that is serving age ranges from as young as two years old up to 12 in terms of sort of your typical playground use uh that means you need quite a bit more structures quite a bit more features and so that's kind of driving your cost up to a higher range so when we were looking at all the different playgrounds that are kind of highest need like the ones that rise to the top were Oakledge like Kallahan and then places like Letty where there just isn't a playground yet and so those have sort of gotten ranked quite a bit higher on our list um and those are also ones that have a much higher dollar value so we kind of have to stagger them in terms of thinking about any for parks dollars and what we have available year after year and then we're trying to get fit in some of our smaller playgrounds like Smalley things like Champlain Street Park where they're serving sort of a younger user group maybe have some smaller features and therefore a lower price range kind of mixed in with those other playgrounds so that we can kind of manage to chip away and get all of these playgrounds replaced on a somewhat timely fashion yes i'm happy to um so just uh make a motion to take the action as recommended in board docs and thank you there a second thank you thank you my counselor Chang thank you for their discussion yes i have a question for uh mr Bandowski um i was just wondering between the three four contractors um it seems you you you choose based on scoring you know compend compound whatever you call it but if you look at it it's very similar in terms of the price and you know the memo is saying it's specific why you made your decision is about the timeline of completion you know are there all the elements that you have not shared in here and also the all the the contractors which one of them all of them actually which one of them are local basically um and also which one of them you worked with in the past so four questions right there sorry yeah um i'm not sure i heard the first one of those four questions uh i think i heard the last three okay i'm gonna so the first one is about you know the elements you use in making the in keeping in scoring component okay more yeah gotcha so um so first off the things we look at are like overall budget and sort of what like in each of these proposals that we get there's sort of a detailed budget breakdown of what we're getting so it'll tell you like what pieces of equipment you're getting what they cost what's the installation fee um how much of a discount they're giving you on their like a list price on each of these items what's your shipping charge all of those different things so within our budget even though the total budget is coming in at eighty thousand dollars there's sort of some different things to pick through and sort of look at there um and part of the reason you're seeing across all four of these proposals that the budgets are fairly similar is because this is sort of a design build type project where it's uh playground manufacturers they have like a design team that sort of works for the manufacturer and then they have their own staff that they send out who are certified installers for these pieces and all of this has to do with warranties and liability around playground equipment and parks basically and you want to make sure that whoever you're working with has all of these credentials and these systems in place so that we as the city are not carrying all of the liability say if like a pipe uh that's one of these manufacturers put in turned out to be faulty and broke or something like that and somebody got really badly hurt because of that so we're looking for people who have all of those credentials and we're telling them like hey our maximum budget for this project is in this case eighty thousand dollars and we need you to be designing and proposing within that budget so that's why they're going to see that and they are going to want to know uh basically try to be cost competitive with what they're giving you within that budget so from there they we're looking at those discounts like how much of a discount are we getting between them um we're also looking at you know did they submit everything that they were supposed to so what's the quality clarity and completeness of their proposal um we are looking at their proposed design so in this case we ask that each proposer is submitting one to do designs along with their proposal we're looking at you know what types of pieces have they included are they explaining the different sort of um physical and mental uh sort of activities that are being targeted by these different pieces within that it does it show some thought in terms of thinking about like the social emotional development of kids of different ages and their physical development how well are they using the space is there a lot of empty space that really could have been programmed a little bit more with the pieces of equipment that they're giving us and in this case because we've completed our master plan already we're also looking at what is the community told us they want to see um you know we had a list of different features different like slides you know climbers and things like that that were sort of in a chart that was provided with our RFP for manufacturers to reference and coming up with their proposed design here and so we're looking to make sure that those things are showing up and in particular here at Callahan we've heard from the community which was also advertised again in our RFP that people really wanted to see natural materials in this playground and that was uh I would say probably one of the bigger factors in going with the with choosing to recommend ComPan for this award um and then to move on to some of your next questions so we have worked with um Pettinelli and associates most of our playgrounds in the city currently were put in by Pettinelli and associates in the past they are the only local playground supplier in the state of Vermont there are no other vendors that have a base of operations here which I think is part of the reason that in the past that's what was done um and I also think this is before I started working here and you know this is going back to probably the 90s now I think probably there was less of a process around putting playgrounds into our parks during that time would be my guess uh I think there was a close relationship with staff and Pettinelli at that time and so he was the local vendor and the local guy that everybody went to and I mean you'll see his playgrounds and also most of the schools in the area he's kind of a very common vendor for people here so we still work with him quite frequently for repairs and we certainly solicit from him for proposals on any of our replacements we also have worked with UltiPlay who was the next highest scored proposal on this project and there the playground that we got from them was installed pretty recently in 2015 up at Star Farm Park and then we have not I don't think ever gotten a playground from the last vendor on this list but that is a vendor who we work with for supplying park furnishings throughout our city so I think commonly our standard park bench which is a nice black benches that you see throughout a lot of our parks we purchase through them which is Emmy O'Brien based out of Massachusetts um hi and did I get all your questions Ali? I think so but I mean I appreciate again there is so much work that went into this it's not just here I'll prove it but thank you for providing them in details I appreciate it thank you thank you yeah okay the motion has been made and seconded are any further questions or are you ready for a vote we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye are any opposed the motion carries unanimously and thank you Max and Cindy thank you thank you that objection the board of its agenda is done and we will adjourn at 6.8 p.m. handed over to you President Tracy do you want to say anything about process for yep thanks mayor appreciate it um so we'll get started with our regular city council meeting at seven so we've got a little break here stay on this zoom we'll use this zoom going forward so just stay on this one you can turn off and mute for the time being um if you'd like um and if you're interested in speaking at public forum this evening the way to sign up and do that is by going to burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum that's burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum and that'll take you to the forum that you'll then fill out to sign up for public forum and we'll have public forum at seven thirty this evening thanks folks seeing we have a number of counselors on board i'll give it another minute before we get into the meeting still waiting on a few more counselors we'll just give it a little bit longer okay let's go ahead and get started um others we'll just can join we do um looks like we do have quorum so um first item on the agenda is the pledge so we'll do the pledge pledge next item on the agenda is the agenda itself um believe um i don't see councillor stromberg councillor hanson are you able to make that motion no problem i move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda item four point one one resolution appointment of acting inspectors of election for march first 2022 annual city election for councillor tracy with the action to waive the reading and adopt the resolution add to the consent agenda item four point one two communication to that board lions reshort term rentals with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file add to the consent agenda item four point one three communication julie marx founder and director vermont short-term rental alliance ink regarding when bans on short-term rentals go wrong with the action to waive the reading accept the communication place it on file remove agenda item 5.04 from the deliberative agenda and place it on the consent agenda as item 4.14 per laurel welock per city council president tracy add to the consent agenda item 4.15 communication regarding bba comments regarding mask ordinance with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file thank you councillor hanson and councillor hanson i'm sorry did that motion include okay the okay the item um the moving of item 4 5.04 to the consent agenda just wanted to call folks attention to that because that was undeliberative and then at board of finance we had a request from staff that um given that they hadn't heard any concerns it's a relatively um straightforward item that um they would like for that to be moved to consent so the board of finance felt okay with that and so that's why we did that um this evening just wanted to make sure everyone understood that okay we have a motion on the agenda is there a second second seconded by councillor McGee any discussion okay okay all those in favor of adopting our agenda please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us we're not at 7 30 yet so we will um move past that and come back to the public forum item um we'll do we won't take care of any um deliberative business prior to the public forum so I will go to climate emergency reports next do any councillors have any climate emergency reports okay I don't see any um so um we'll move on I do see councillor Mason is in the attendee section and so if he could be promoted and if I could also please be given hosting responsibilities just so that I can enable mics when we get to the public forum that'd be great um council Hanson is that in a hand for climate emergency reports the the mayor was trying to oh I'm sorry mayor attention yeah certainly go ahead mayor no problem thank you uh President Tracy councillor Hanson I just wanted to mention um we will um I believe um it is just checking where it is I I believe it's in the consent we just took action at the uh at the board of finance and it is in your consent agenda tonight that we will be um council will be authorizing uh us to go forward and um uh take the steps necessary to bond for 20 million dollars um for the net zero energy revenue bond and um I just we've talked about this previously but it is a significant milestone that didn't should pass this is um a really very significant amount of funding a large amount of which is going to go towards uh the infrastructure incentives um investments necessary to make it possible for us to pursue our net zero energy city goals by 2030 and I didn't um want the climate emergency reports to pass without uh noting that that development and that step towards actually securing these funds and starting to invest best thank you President Tracy thank you mayor anyone else with climate emergency reports okay next we will move um through the deliberative agenda down into the other reporting items so we have item number six which are committee reports are there any committee chairs with an announcement to make Tracy yes yeah council jane go ahead yeah on the 15th the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee met and we received a request from um some members of the state around for the city of Wellington to declare um not racism as a public health emergency but the declaration of inclusion um so the item is already ready but at our next meeting city council meeting it will be submitted in order for the full council to weigh in um this also has been in collaboration I believe with the uh with Jordan Reddell this administration who put us in contact with those folks but our next meeting you'll see it on the agenda um thank you thank you councillor jane any other committee chairs with the report councillor paul then councillor hanson thanks president Tracy uh the next public safety committee meeting will be uh not Tuesday next Tuesday but Tuesday the Tuesday after which is the 8th of March um we have finished section one of the cna report and we'll be starting with section two which is shorter um and are hoping to be able to get the section two and three on uh on the 8th of March um and the meeting time which I believe will be 530 but will be posted to the city calendar thanks thank you councillor hanson yeah the transportation energy and utilities committee is going to meet this Thursday at 6 p.m uh on zoom and we are going to be looking at the bike share program um and potential options moving forward on that we're going to be looking at south end construction coordination plan um the main street project that's on the ballot um and then other infrastructure projects coming up so um yeah 6 p.m thursday thanks thank you councillor hanson anyone else you also still need hosting responsibilities transferred over to me and I do still see councillor mason in the attendees so if you could um either make me host um or promote him or do both um that'd be great I know that councillor mason chairs know a number of committees so can whoever has control of the zoom please make me a host and promote councillor mason thank you okay now we got councillor mason on board any other committee chairs okay councillor mason go ahead I thought you might have something yeah thank you president tracy um I just want to report the ordinance committee is scheduled to meet um on march 2nd our agenda has not yet been sent a set but I would envision it will include a discussion of planning commission comments to parking minimums thank you great thank you any other committee chairs okay not seeing any so we'll move on to the next item which is a city council general affairs anyone like to speak to city council general affairs anyone like to speak to city council general affairs okay not seeing any other councillors but um I did have something that I did want to say I specifically wanted to to comment on the resignation of director green um this is um to me a devastating loss to our city um and my feelings of loss stem directly from this the unbelievable work that director green has done in her time with the city of burlington been so impressed with everything that she and her team have done during her time in burlington um if folks don't know director green built the racial equity inclusion and belonging office from the ground up um this was a department that didn't exist um and the work that the department came to came to do over its time and was work that really honestly was not happening in the city in any concerted fashion prior to its existence and I can say without question that the work of the reiby office and the staff in that office and in particular director green has absolutely blown me away it's been unbelievable to watch that team do that work at under director greens leadership seeing it unbelievable transformative events come to our community like tuneteenth see targeted programs like ipoc business support and director green just making that happen by going out and raising money in our community and making those things happen herself going out um and standing up a by pock vaccination clinic to make sure that no one was left behind in our vaccination efforts doing other things like making sure that our commissioners and counselors are trained i know i'm in that training program now and i'm getting so much value from the conversations we're having there um there is just you know the work on the reparations task force the work though the list goes on and on and on the work is absolutely incredible and that's what makes this loss so devastating what makes it so sad for our city because this is a this is just a tremendous loss for our city and i think it's also a time for us to take stock of of of what happened here you know what went wrong um i think that what we're hearing and what what actually happened there's a significant discrepancy between those two things this is um someone who worked incredibly hard under very difficult circumstances doing this kind of work is not easy under any circumstances but certainly not under the under you know constant constant public pressure and scrutiny and questioning and attacks that director green and her team have experienced over the last years it's unfortunate that come to find out and know that that work is made more difficult by the the the obstruction that she experienced to her during her time working in and with this administration and i find it deeply disappointing that we find ourselves in this place and that we have not heard acknowledgement or an examination um thoughtfully of what went wrong in this relationship and an acknowledgement of that we heard a commitment to do better in the state of the city address but we have yet to hear how that is necessarily represented by this and i'm very very disappointed by that tonight so i feel a need to express that i think that this situation indicates yet again the need for the racial the off the r.i.b. office to be made independent to have their own ability free from political interference interference in their that the crucial work that they do i also think that it's an important an important time for us to really take stock of this this office and all that the team and make sure that we're giving that team the support that they need through this transition because they i know that um that director greens leadership and putting together that team and supporting that team was absolutely crucial and i don't want this loss this unbelievable loss for our city to to to to have us lose ground as i'm afraid it and unfortunately might so i i really think that we need we need to do more to take responsibility within this situation um specifically around this around this issue and i just wanted to speak to that tonight i think it's incredibly important that we acknowledge what went on here take responsibility uh and and not just pledge to do better but actually do better because we haven't seen that happen here don't see any others wishing to speak for general affairs councilor stromberg thank you so much sorry i was me i just got home um um yeah i cannot say it better than councilor tracy but i when i first heard of the resignation i wasn't surprised given the many many elements that director green had to overcome to even stay as long as she did um i had written now a big big and i think writing is a very good outlet for anybody but i wrote out a very very long um kind of statement on the facts and i realized that i wasn't really focusing on what director green had brought to our community and i was rather focusing on the negative as to why she might she may have resigned or um kind of just i went into that that direction and i wanted to restructure how i'm looking at this because we do need to move forward as a city we owe it to the people who have made their voices heard and have shared their stories and it is incredibly incredibly sad i we all have worked with director green in very different capacities all of our perspectives are different um and i think that as individuals we've been impacted in a very positive way by her one way or another um and i'm just i i am so so thankful to have ever shared any space any screen any conversation with director green um i think that you know we we owe her so much more than we could ever repay back in our in our lives and i i just i'm really really really sad that she's leaving but i know that wherever she is and wherever she goes into the world it's going to be amazing it is amazing she brings an energy um and that you know energy is nor neither created or destroyed i am just i'm so proud of her um it's never easy to put yourself out there it's never easy to to say to say things that you know are are hard to hear in the moment and it's hard to it's it's incredibly difficult the last two years i i as a counselor for the first time in my life i i've never experienced these two years before just as a life but i think just looking at the big picture like we as a collective whole as a human humanity as a city we've never just experienced you know with the pandemic and um overdose and just so many different elements that we've kind of hit together all at once um it's it's been very intense and we need to name that doesn't matter our politics or our beliefs or anything like that like it has been intense across the board and i just i i think that director green really brought such an even healed incredibly strong voice to the table and i've learned so so much from her and i i yeah i'm incredibly grateful i'll be grateful for the rest of my life and i hope to in some way or another work with her again in the future because i i'm just i'm really gonna miss her and i think she's some incredibly valuable and yeah thank you thank you to director green i appreciate everything you've done is there anyone else comes with jane um thank you president tracy for you know i think speaking beautifully about this and also counselor stanberg it has been very clear and that we have a long way to go when it comes to racial equity inclusion and and belonging i think you know if we all remember i think race was at the center of the 2021 state of the emergency speech from the mayor but you know we all know with the resignation of director green you know that the words that we have heard have not been backed by action and from my perspective you know like you said we should not use another black leader in the city for political purposes and also i wonder even if the words we heard in the 2021 state of the emergency speech were actually from the mayor you know i think this is a huge loss for berlington this is a huge loss for people of color and people of color again let me remind you all especially the mayor that we should not we are not um object that people need to use when they want and also or to make political gains i think the declaration of racism as public health emergency uh was one element of you know political moves but you know i think any moves that people make should be backed by the allocation of resources necessary um and we hope that this would be like a lesson and i hope that the leadership team that worked with teisha green will at least stay and will in order for us to figure out about next step teisha green again thank you so much for your leadership thank you incredibly for you what you have done in the city of berlington and hopefully in the future you may come back to continue thank you thank you council jane anyone else okay don't see anyone so move on to the next item which is city council president update um just wanted to draw folks attention to the fact that we have a ballot informational meeting um as we do um every year we have a ballot informational meeting um just running through the questions and providing basic information that's at five o'clock tomorrow evening um for folks that's another zoom meeting um so if you are interested in learning more about ballot um questions um you may attend that um and though we'll give a short rundowns on each of the different ballot questions that are going to be that are on the town meeting day ballot i know many folks have already voted but many have not and so this is just yet another opportunity to learn more about what's on the ballot um no deliberative action is being taken though this is just an informational meeting for folks so just wanted to call folks attention to that um mayor weinberger had let me know that he would like to keep but his comments um at the end of the meeting um just to take into account um any public forum comments um or be responsive to those so um we don't have any other non-deliberative items and we are a little bit ahead of public forum but we do have quite a few folks signed up and if people we aren't able to locate people in this here in this little five minutes here um i'll come back to them and keep looking for them just to make sure that if they were um not right not on at this point so um if we could please have the timer up on the screen great and thank you to david cunin from the mayor's office for stepping up to to do that this evening very much appreciate it um super helpful um to me to keep that time um i'll read off a couple of speakers but before i get into the public forum um just want to let folks know that we'll have two minutes per person tonight so you'll each have a little bit of you'll have two minutes at the end of the two minutes i'll say that um your time is up and i'll continue to say that um so please at the two minutes respect when i ask when i say that your time is up your time is in fact up um out of open meeting while we are required to have give each person in the forum um the um the the the two-minute timeframe and hold them to that so um that's what we're going to be doing this evening in terms of um the forum itself um if folks can just please um not use profanity um please stay focused on issues and direct comments through the chair um so please um and please respect that um also please um with other speakers um in the in the queue please don't go after other speakers it's fine obviously to say that you disagree but sometimes we've had issues of people um really going after people and um when we're in person it's an issue of interruption but um in this case um just make sure that just please try and again stay focused on on on the issues um at hand and um we will be going to burlington residents first as is our our practice um those are folks who have affirmatively indicated that they are burlington residents um we'll go through them first and then um switch over to non-burlington residents if you are interested in speaking at the public forum um you can sign up by going to burlingtonft.gov slash city council slash public forum and that will feed into a spreadsheet um and we will call people in the order that they are received again though prioritizing burlington residents first and the order that they're received and then um non-burlington residents to follow after that um so with that um I will go through the first couple of speakers that we have this evening um and then um just so that you know who's on deck so I have Kent Cassella to be followed by Diana Carlisle and Gear Sherwood Smith Mark Jasmine Daigle Arnold Madison and Stephen Margolin that is not everybody who signed up but um it just gives you an idea of who's there so if folks can just try and stay closer um just so that we're ready to go um when we um when we get to you with that I will um start the public forum itself so looks like I've located Kent Cassella Kent I have enabled your microphone. Thank you again I want to ask the council to consider a regulated and registered short rental presence in Burlington our tourist economy needs it and short-term rental helps the economy thrive please reject the chapter 18 short-term rental ordinance I've spoken to several restaurant business owners and they shake their heads and ask why we want visitors to come and spend their holidays in Burlington without their gold and platinum credit cards are we going to tell the marathon runners the Grace Potter fans the jazz wine and brewfest enthusiasts to stay out of town or stay at one of our luxury hotels for instance the Hilton garden tonight is a mere $195 or the Hilton is $199 the Marriott is $279 and Hotel Vermont is $318 a night I can't afford that and this is off season I guess come in come come into town they ride their bikes into town they dine on church street they have a creamy at the Burlington Bay or ice cream bobs maybe they stop at the echo and take a take a cruise on the spirit of Ethan Allen or the whistling man because my short-term rental is priced well below the least expensive hotel in Burlington the Burlington page on the Airbnb should have a little caption that reads welcome to Burlington we do not support short-term rentals please look elsewhere for accommodations this ban is hurtful and your proposal saddens me it's a mistake and it's short-sighted and it shows little top consideration of the hard work that we tried to reach an agreement with the city council please keep Burlington open for everyone thank you very much thank you her next speaker is Diana Carlisle to be followed by Anne Gear Diana I've enabled your microphone I would like to speak at the short-term rental time I understand it's not a two-minute limit then is that correct so there is not not a public hearing specific to short-term rentals there are public hearings that are specific to other items on the agenda this evening those being the adaptive reuse definition the historic preservation rehabilitation bonus and permitting adjustments we held our public hearing regarding short-term rentals at the last meeting so if folks are interested in speaking only to those items you are correct there is not a limit on on those specific items but if you are interested in speaking to short-term rentals the time to do so is now and folks will have two minutes this evening so that's it two minutes okay well I'm yeah I'm speaking about the short-term rentals and I'm speaking about requiring the owners to live in the houses that they rent out and prevent all the negative consequences I want to read from the article in the Burlington Free Press about the spike in burglaries how to help how to help the police what to do to keep public safety and one of the major things to me was communicating with neighbors and watching out for each other and when you have a short-term rental like we do on Lakeview Terrace the young couple that we had hoped would move in didn't they're part of an investment corporation LLC there's no people to watch out for anybody there's cars in the driveway but essentially it's a house with no face and that does not help public safety or anybody I also it's a personal thing this is where my mother and father were and did so much to keep Burlington and make Burlington a better place to live mother went my mother went and had the clean air so that the Moran plant didn't spew ashes we need laws sometimes when things are not going well and this is a law we need um this is not an inbeat it can happen to any house on any street in any area and when it happens the neighborhood suffers and people that want to buy a house at a decent rate suffer we have four long-term rental houses across the street we see the people we know the people providing a housing need two big doubt duplexes across from that old stock young people live there they can get their start they could be employed which is what we need for all the tourists at the short-term rental people want to send down to Burlington um and if that duplex is not able to be rented out um that takes away housing for people so please let's make housing for people not businesses your time is up thank you all right our next speaker is Anne Gear to be followed by Sherwood Smith believe Anne is participating for another account um I've enabled I believe Beth Sightler um is in gear with you um you're a little muffled I can't hear you how about now that's perfect good thank you good evening that picture is of my daughter how I wish I looked as well I'm here to testify in support of councillor Shannon's amendments because I believe that they can't clarify some redundancies specifically I'm referring to short-term rentals they offer needed modes of oversight that currently are not in place and they acknowledge the necessity of preserving long-term rental stock unregulated parameters can actually inadvertently lead to a glut of short-term rentals and except for desirable high-end options there can be more than is needed in this finite market at the same time it can reduce the availability of much needed long-term rentals and it's for these reasons that I cannot support councillor Carpenter's recent amendment to have more duplexes available for short-term rentals duplexes are among just a few long-term rental options available although they still aren't adequate to the need and it will be deleterious to Burlington's efforts to have more rental housing available if we have a reduction in this particular housing stock and I wanted this time to thank you all for your years of work on this issue and I'm sure you are as anxious for resolution as we are thank you thank you I'm our next speaker is Sherwood Smith I'm sure I'm not seeing Sherwood the next speaker after that is Mark and I'm not seeing Mark in here so I'll go through the next person after that is Jasmine Daigle Arnold Jasmine able to locate Jasmine the next speaker after that is Madison not able to locate Madison so the next speaker after that is Steven Margolyn even I've located you and have enabled your microphone hello can you hear me yes go ahead yeah I'd like to put in a comment about Director Green's departure and to echo the comments shared earlier by city counselors at my great disappointment in this turn of events I believe Director Green and their office provided significant support to the city in addressing depressing issues of race relations in the way that the city all agreed was an important issue two years ago when the office was created to see such obstruction exist and continue to minimize the impact that these offices have is a great disappointment and leaves me untrustworthy of what my government can provide to see good opportunities squandered wasted and misused really leaves me wondering at the ineptitude of our city government uh mr president if you could please direct these comments to the mayor I think it's shameful that such obstruction exists and put good people like Director Green out of the job if anything we need to openly and willingly embrace diverse voices that push for more equity to create Burlington as a better city I mean if we want all these short-term rentals to come in they better feel safe vacationing right it's a shame that we don't have an office dedicated to that anymore so I want to use this time to let my frustrations and disappointment be known um Director Green deserved better and the city of Burlington deserves better and both of us are being let down by the current administration thank you thank you our next time our next speaker is Robert Bristow Johnson to be followed by by Jeffrey Desina Robert I have located you and have enabled your microphone okay well sort of be a fly in the ointment but I want to make the board of civil authority a little uncomfortable about passing up on our opportunity and the authority to look into the house redistricting plan from the state so normally the state defers to the adjustments preferred by the local bca um I know that the house gov ops committee through a curve ball at us uh uh uh last week or two weeks ago with the 11 with giving us a new representative we're gonna get 11 reps instead of 10 um and they drew out a map but um it looks like that the uh uh most popular city in Vermont has been given this blank slate and they're going to say meh we'll pass whatever you have the opportunity to weigh in with the state and tell the state how best to redistrict our city and you're going to pass on that so we get this gift falling out of the sky of an additional rep um the there are warts in that map from state from the house of government opportunity government operations committee and those warts can be fixed if you just take a look at it um so the information is there for you to look at I've been trying to keep you folks appraised of this for the last months about this and it only looks like maybe February 7th was the first time that you've been paying attention to this so the question is does it look like our bca is functional enough or dysfunctional enough that it might be able to look into and weigh in on 11 rep map from the house government operations committee and give feedback to the hgo suggesting changes that benefit the residents and voters of city actually serving this constituents in the city at a time when you'd think that voters of the city are paying attention we have to live with this map for 10 years are we the only municipality in vermont that looks like it can't do what other bca's in the state normally do and use their authority to inform the state government on how best to redistrict our city that's the question for you thank you our next speaker is jeffrey descent desina jeffrey to be followed by um christopher herron felker jeffrey i've located you and i have enabled your mic good evening um just wanted to chime in to give my quick support to miss tuttles and miss stetson's recommendation to the mayor on ending the mask mandate or allowing it to lapse on march 3rd i think they provided solid evidence that the coven 19 pandemic in vermont has reached a waning point and poses a little threat to much of this community and um such policies no longer seem appropriate so i want to thank them for their good work and i hope the council will take their recommendation seriously that is all thank you thank you next speaker is christopher erin felker um to be followed by we'll transition back to we'll transition then to burlin non burlington residents uh savannah sly roy hill cocosha wafiq fauer julie marx adline caron um that gives you a couple of ideas of who's coming but i'll go to christopher erin felker first christopher i'm enabling your mic there you go you should be enabled perfect thank you thank you president tracy i'm here this evening to speak in opposition to deliberate of agenda item 5.10 on short-term rentals in the last two years i've spoken with many burlington short-term rental operators they consistently tell me that many on council do not understand how short-term rentals work and unfortunately many have no interest in learning um so here are some facts uh whereas short-term rentals represent a combined total of just 1.2 percent of burlington's housing stock and whereas short-term rental alliance has announced that approximately 95 percent of their burlington members will not place their rental units back on the long-term market um it goes it seems that governmental actions to attack short-term rentals are not going to provide the results this council intends truly these restrictions will have no impact on stabilizing the rental market in burlington and will likely result in more negative unintended consequences to our economy uh attacking air bnb is neither prudent nor proper housing policy it's basic grandstanding and scapegoating and as such i encourage you to vote no on 5.10 tonight that being said it is with the it is with deep regret and a somber heart that i announced that today peggy lores passed away peggy was a proud lesbian a feminist a loving mother a carpenter and a friend to many in burlington she was the director of r u12 now pride center of vermont and was an organizing member of the first gay and lesbian pride in burlington peggy was a trailblazer for gays and lesbians and a tenacious advocate for women's rights both here and abroad i'm grateful for knowing peggy honor to learn from her i'm proud to have called her my friend very well peggy and thank you for everything thank you thank you next speaker is i'm going to be savannah sly to be followed by roi hill um if folks are interested in signing up to speak at the public forum the way to do so is to go to burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum will take you to a fillable forum that then feeds into a spreadsheet from what we call you know look for savannah now i'm not able to locate savannah so i will go to roi hill roi not able to locate you either so i'll go to coco shah i don't see coco on so i'm gonna go to wafiq fower don't see wafiq on here i will then go to julie marx to be followed by adline believe i saw julie on yes i see julie on julie i've enabled your mic so you should be able to speak hi thank you um i'm speaking on behalf of the vermont short-term mental alliance and its members to strongly oppose the short-term mental ordinance proposed by councilor shannon and caution the city against taking such an extreme stance against an activity without data to warrant it as communicated to you by email the very company that city staff has proposed to enforce this ordinance grant a case or host compliance put out an article entitled short-term vacation rental bans gone wrong which highlights the multiple cases where cities have been sued for attempting to ban owners from operating a short term rental and add to that list the town of conway new hampshire who just recently lost in court against their resident vacation rental owners as well our assessment is that this is this highly restrictive ordinance restrictive ordinance will cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and economic activity and diminish the amount of capital investment being added to brillianton's aging housing structures from the beginning our primary recommendations for regulating short-term rentals have been to implement a registration and monitoring system first so that regulations are formed by real data and evaluated impacts it's disappointing that this does not seem to be the direction the council's going to take banning short-term rentals will be ineffective towards the goal of creating more housing according to the vhfa there are 17,118 housing units in brillianton 199 our whole unit short-term rentals that's 1.1 percent a ban will have no impact on housing we urge you to reject the proposed ordinance and put through a registration and inspection system for short-term rentals effective immediately postpone further str regulation until you have real evidence warranty the need for specific impact mitigation if you can't wait for data please consider counselor carpenter's amendment which will invite more positive outcomes than the shannon ordinance thank you very much new our next speaker is adline adline i'm not able to locate you and if folks can just please if you can sign up if you can use the rename function to just be signed into the name that you signed up on for that just so that we are able to look better locate you so adline i'm not able to locate you karen i'm also not able to locate you so i will keep going i have next eric and debbie handley located you and have enabled your microphone can you hear me yes go ahead i'm here again to talk about the short-term rentals in brillianton we've worked you know for over two years with the planning and zoning and ordinance committee and the joint committee and and i think this latest proposal this most restrictive proposal that counselor shannon wants is is not what the planning and zoning recommended and i would like to have everybody look at counselor carpenter's proposal allowing off-site hosts and adding a low-income rental to that unit you know that would that would allow more short more affordable units in the city of brillianton in allowing people to still have an air bnb that contributes a lot of money to the city of brillianton makes people afford lodging in brillianton especially during graduation weekends festival weekends the marathon and and other things like that if the council votes on 501 right now the most restrictive proposal out there you know you're not going to add any affordable housing to the city right now like the proposal that counselor carpenter has on there people are going to lose jobs all these people that clean these short-term rentals um and i just think it's it's a very very narrow it's just very too restrictive um and and it's going to lose like other people have said a lot of money meals and rooms taxes air bnb you know contributed 120 000 to the city of brillianton in 2019 i agree we need registration fees for short-term rentals and i think we should be able to work something out thank you thank you our next speaker is abbott stark abbott i've located you and have enabled your mic hi there can you hear me yes go ahead okay thank you everybody for um continuing to listen so much on this issue i mean as i've shared uh you know that i'm a started a business here in brillianton and that several people you know it's a very young company several people who work in the business do short-term uh rental themselves just to make ends meet as i have done and um i have a couple of low income tenants i feel like i kind of represent the gamut of the issues associated with this um and you know at this same time i'm very passionate about creating more housing in brillianton um so i i appreciate how much work has gone into crafting the amendments that have come to the uh table this week and we're really interested to hear folks's comments i've also heard uh from some other people that you know this would especially at a time when we're considering raising taxes it would be a real shame to have to lose out on the rooms and meals local option tax that i know at least air bnb is 120 000 as of 2019 um and there's more because there's also other services like brbo that contribute money so um i've heard some ideas generated over the last couple weeks that we um pay a special tax um and i uh i've seen both from the administration and from other counselors that perhaps a local tax um would or an offset for loan come housing or short-term rental from short-term rentals might be a possibility so i just wanted to say thank you for all the work that's been done thank you i do not see any other speakers and i've gone back and looked for all the folks um who had signed up before and who we were not able to um locate just looking one last time just to make sure that no one has that signed up was on there okay i am gonna close the public forum for this evening and we will um now get into our agenda we have already completed item number three if you could just please take the timer down when you get it thank you very much appreciate it again thank you david for helping us without this evening and also just want to the reason david was covering that is because our clerk's office the city clerk's office is very very stretched with the election coming up and also just wanted to take a second to thank them for their work um getting making this election run smoothly it's a big endeavor so thanks to the clerk's office for your work supporting the council and also the elections um the next item is item number four the consent agenda um councillor stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda and move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated we have a motion from councillor stromberg is there a second seconded by councillor hanson any discussion okay go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda please say i any opposed that carries unanimously we will now move into um the deliberative agenda but before we get into the deliberative agenda we have a number of other meeting structures under which we conduct business um this evening we have three of those in play the city council with mayor presiding the board of civil authority and the license uh the the um the and license and so i will go to each of those before we get into and continue with our deliberative agenda they are um so i will reset first recess the city council meeting at 756 um and go to the city council with mayor presiding meeting and turn it over to mayor weinberger thank you president tracy i'm going to call into order the city council with mayor presiding at 755 p.m and the first item on the agenda is a motion to amend or adopt the agenda um can i have a motion on the agenda councillor mason thank you uh mayor i'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented thank you any is there a second for that motion seconded by councillor hanson uh discussion of the agenda all those in favor of the motion please say i hi hi anyone opposed motion carries unanimously um that brings us to the consent agenda um can we have a motion to adopt the agenda consent agenda take the action syndicated councillor mason so moved to mayor for a second take my councillor yee thank you any discussion of the consent agenda motion seeing none will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say i hi i'm very opposed motion carries unanimously the consent agenda is adopted now we have um the opportunity to point to positions the first is 3.01 conservation board appointment for a term expiring on june 30th 2025 the floor is open for nominations councillor mason thank you mayor i would move the appointment of kyle tansy i don't know whether they are present but if they want to speak so we do have a tradition of allowing uh applicants to speak so um a little sometimes more challenging to do in this forum but is kyle tansy available and interested in speaking i do see is raised his hand president tracy can you um uh given the mic mic should be able to speak okay kyle go ahead and uh you're invited to address the uh c council hey thanks everyone uh i didn't actually prepare anything to speak because lori told me that i wouldn't have to say anything tonight so i'll just keep this brief and say it would be an honor to get to serve on the conservation board um and i appreciate your consideration tonight so thank you everyone great thank you kyle uh for uh for your interest and thank you for sharing your words are there any um any other nominations i am going to close the floor for nominations and uh open the appointment up for discussions any any discussion about the conservation board appointment seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say i hi hi hi i sorry i didn't say that right all those in favor of appointing kyle tansy to the conservation board please uh please say i uh or raise your hand hi hi hi are there any votes against tansy it passes unanimously and i asked just we'd have to do a roll call if it was not unanimous uh congratulations kyle uh thank you for your interest then and serve in the city um we now have an opening on the board of health for a term expiring june 30th 2022 that correct is this just to serve out remaining just slightly surprised by that uh is somebody resigned okay so this is just this is to finish the um remaining months of uh the current term so the floor is open for nominations anyone like to make a nomination ship councillor mason uh thank you mayor i would like to move the nomination of joshua freeman gerry pretty good are there any additional nominations seeing uh none um will close the florida nominations is mr gerry uh with us and would you like to address the board looks like gerry is here so um thank you president tracy for help with this and go ahead uh mr gerry hi uh thank you mayor uh i think it's a great opportunity uh currently in the pre-med track at uvm uh in their post back program and i also work as an emt so i'm interested in learning more about uh the public health initiatives that burlington currently has going on and uh you know seeing what i can bring to the table to uh to assist and help out so uh thanks very much for the opportunity and uh that's all i have to say very good thank you for your interest in serving um on the board of health um are there any uh additional so i already closed the floor nominations so we will um open the floor for discussion i don't like to be recognized we will go to a vote um all those in favor of the appointment of joshua gerry to the board of health um uh please say hi hi hi hi hi hi um are there anyone is there anyone voting no so congratulations um josh thank you for your interest and um without objection that is the end of our agenda for the city council of mayor for presiding so i will adjourn adjourn that body at 8 o 2 p.m and uh president tracy was it your thought that i would now convene the board of civil authority yes please mayor okay very good i will call the board of civil authority to order at 8 o 3 p.m and would welcome a motion regarding the agenda okay councilor mason uh thank you mayor i'd like to make a motion to amend adopt the agenda as follows add to connor le france 476 north avenue and nicole gordon oh sorry connor le france i are independent 476 north avenue and nicole garen democrat 476 north avenue as 8 eos for ward seven per ward seven ward clerk flurry add to the consent agenda item 2.03 communication robert bristow johnson read 2022 from monthouse redistricting within burlington with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file thank you um councilor mason is there a second on that motion thank you councilor borough all those in favor of the motion please say aye hi hi hi are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously we have an agenda that moves us to a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated um could is there a councilor ready to make such a motion councilor mason i would make that motion mayor one great is there a second second by councilor mcgee discussion of the percentage on a motion council hands yeah i just wanted to i'm wondering if uh you could provide an explanation of why we're why we're not discussing the new proposal from um from the house around the 11 member district just to clarify for us in the public councilor hanson um sure i would i think it's a it's fun it's maybe not uh just want to make sure it's not violating some kind of pro uh process here but um i here's my understanding of how we got to this point um there was a deadline for formal comment to be made to the the house um government office uh and i see the city attorney rickerson has turned his camera on and he may be able to speak to some some of the details here a little bit better than me but basically there was an opportunity by statute for us to provide comment um i believe met several counselors and numerous members of the public did avail themselves of that opportunity we did have um discussion as a body as well um and um i took the actions that we did uh there was a discussion of potentially meeting again as a body before the deadline that was going to be challenging um a variety of scheduling reasons and when the mayor's office communicated to counselors about those challenges and the uh suggestion that instead of trying to convene another meeting because of those scheduling challenges the counselors make their comments individually since it also seemed there was not likely to be consensus um there was no uh i don't believe there's any response to that communication um or concerns raised uh so a special meeting was not called uh now we are are beyond the the deadline and um that's i think how we are where we are and i i don't think you're aware of anyone who you know what the deadline passed had wanted to take further action so the agenda was set the way it was but dan can you uh add anything to that um summary sir no i think that covers a great deal at ground um the deadline that you refer to is actually in statute um the statute that was passed by uh the general assembly stated a february 15th deadline uh for formal comment from the bca on behalf of bca i did file a letter with the house government operations committee reflecting the vote that the bca had taken um in regards to the uh proposal that either there be two member districts or one member districts um but not a mix and match uh of those districts um the process as it goes through in the house um now notwithstanding that deadline the the house government operations committee is just simply working forward so if individuals or um anybody wish to uh make comment about that submit maps or any type of statement they're certainly free to do that um it's just that this formal deadline that we were pressing up against has as passed um and the pressure that was created by that i believe had expired but certainly you know as as long as this process continues to move through the legislature there's an opportunity to contact legislators and express opinions or or strong feelings about the particulars of the redistricting process great thank you i believe the item on the floor um is it used to be 2.01 the motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated are there any any further discussion at this time seeing them we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye hi hi hi motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the end of our roller to quarter civil authority agenda and i will adjourn without objection the bca at eight oh nine p.m and i believe um at this point uh is our custom for me to hand over the gavel of the local control commission back to president tracy although i do vote on this commission thanks mayor so i will convene the local control commission at eight 10 p.m um first item on the agenda is the agenda commissioner mason thank you commissioner tracy i'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented we have a motion to adopt the agendas are second seconded by commissioner hansen any discussion okay those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us into the deliberative agenda and item 2.01 commissioner mason i would make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 first and third class liquor license application for a1 bakery llc dba august 1 149 south shamp plain street contingent upon fire marshal approval and all standard conditions okay we have a motion seconded by commissioner hansen any discussion okay all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi hi hey any opposed that too care that carries unanimously brings us to item 2.02 commissioner mason thank you commissioner tracy i would make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 outside consumption permit application for a1 bakery llc dba august 1 149 south shamp plain street thank you seconded by commissioner hansen any discussion okay we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to the final item on this agenda 2.03 commissioner mason thank you i would make a motion to approve the 2021 2022 first and third class liquor license applications for mcca enterprises dba money waters 184 main street with all standard conditions a motion seconded by commissioner hansen any discussion okay we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously we are that completes our local control commission meeting agenda for this evening so we are now adjourned at 8 13 p.m brings us back into our regular city council meeting where we will pick back up where we left off with other items that are in the same vein as the local control commission item starting with item 5.01 and entertain indoor entertainment permit application counselor mason all right let me get switched meetings here sorry president tracy we are on agenda item 5.01 correct yes okay thank you i wouldn't move that we approve the 2021 2022 indoor entertainment permit application for a1 bakery llc dba august 1 149 south jam plain street with all standard conditions thank you the motion is seconded by councilor hansen any discussion okay not seeing any so we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our next item on the deliberative agenda which is 5.02 an inner indoor entertainment permit counselor mason thank you president tracy i would move to approve the 2021 2022 indoor entertainment permit application for mcca enterprises dba muddy waters 184 main street with all standard conditions thank you counselor mason we have a second from counsel hansen any discussion okay not seeing any so we'll go to a vote on that all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously thank you for all those license getting us through all those licensing items we will now move to another topic item 5.03 the nature-based solutions to climate and an addendum to the open space protection plan i believe we're going to get kicked off with that with a presentation but before we do that may i please have a motion on this item did not have someone counselor hansen sure i move to approve the nature-based climate solutions and addendum to the burlington open space protection plan and incorporate into the plan btv comprehensive plan when the comprehensive plan is next updated thank you counselor hansen we have a motion as or a second seconded by counselor mcgee okay did you want the floor back counselor hansen okay great so we have um scott gustin and steve whitman with us as well as zoe richards from the the conservation board so welcome to to all of you um scott i believe you're going to kick us off is that right i will but before i do that um president tracy we have one more uh of our group taj shotland and the attendees if you could promote them to panelists that would be excellent absolutely in my apologies yep i i've actually wait a second um i made them i gave them speaking i need to give them panelists there we go okay taj i think i got you as well i apologize for that there we go great perfect okay great we're all here so um i'll introduce folks who are here and a little bit of background on the addendum and then hand it off to the rest of the folks here tonight so i'm scott gustin i work with the department of permitting inspections in the zoning division but i also work a great deal with the conservation board um and after a bit more than a year of outreach and work together in this group we have this nature-based climate solutions addendum to present to you tonight so i'm here with uh zoe richards and rebecca roman the chair and vice chair of the conservation board we have steve whitman who's been our consultant working on this project with resilience planning and design and we also have taj shotland who works for trust republic land but he also does work with nature-based climate initiatives and he can help us out in with metrics uh for quantifying um nature-based climate solution benefits there's six major components to the addendum they pertain to urban forest and tree canopy our waters and wetlands lawns fields and small open spaces agriculture and community gardens green infrastructure and finally and all-encompassing uh equity inclusion and equity inclusion and relationships so i think above all the addendum is a framework and an invitation to participate in burlington's climate work this is really something that anyone who lives in the community can participate in in a hands-on way to enhance and expand our green spaces it also serves as a transition to a comprehensive rewrite of the open space protection plan in the coming years and with that zoe and rebecca i'll hand it off to you great thank you scott um and i'm just really happy to be here tonight um with this uh i hope close to finish document um and i want to thank uh the conservation board for their really hard work on this document and my co-chair um or vice chair rebecca roman um for steering me through this process and scott who's been super helpful in zoning and also um dan kay hill who's not here who's the city land steward who's been extremely helpful in this process along with alicia daniel who's our city naturalist um and our consultants steve and linds who helped us with this document and basically um before i hand it off to the consultants and to taj to talk a little bit more about the details of the document i just wanted to give the council a little bit of a frame and i think you know um we're really excited to share this document because what it really does is outline how nature is critical infrastructure for the city of burlington it's really easy to take that for granted but we really rely on it um this is an example trees provide extensive cooling um they help us avoid emissions um they provide carbon sequestration flood mitigation filtration and lead to lake health um you know without looking out for our natural systems we'll lose them and that's a lesson from a lot of other cities um and we really until you lose some of them you don't realize how critical they are in fostering um the city that we want to live in there is a lot of groundbreaking work that's going on in burlington um and this document outlines some of that work um and we hope that it will support and help to grow it and we really want to put a lot of conservation related work um in a climate action frame which is where where it really should sit um and that's what this document strives to do where we know we need to get to net zero it's something that we really have to do for the planet but nature-based climate solutions in burlington is something we have to continue to do to make the city habitable in the face of warming that's that's one of their more significant values um we feel like this document provides a path forwards for doing that um and it has an implementation matrix and we've worked really hard with city staff to sort of figure out um and create a to-do list really in this document for nature-based climate solutions and with that i'm gonna um turn it over to steve wetman who was the consultant who helped us um work on this document and i believe i can screen share some slides is that okay uh yes all right thank you let's see the other alternative was reading the plan to you but they said i couldn't do that i think you should why don't you try to try to share your screen uh it's not letting me oh okay let me okay switch there it is it's it's there now thank you so much and i won't take too long with this we just wanted to give some visuals and highlight a couple of the things that scott and zoe have said so thank you for the opportunity just to kind of run through the framework that was created in creating this addendum to the burlington open space protection plan with this nature-based climate solution focused what we ended up doing in creating this was identifying early on the process that nature-based climate solutions for burlington were defined as actions with protection restoration and stewardship components that alone was not quite enough so we went further in the development of the framework and as scott said we have these these primary themes of urban forests and tree canopy water and wetlands lawns fields and small open spaces agriculture and community gardens are kind of all fitting in as different types of land cover and land use that have different types of activities and different types of nature-based climate solutions that lend themselves well to those environments but throughout all five of those we saw opportunities for equity inclusion and relationships and continuing work happening within the city so what do we mean by forest and tree canopy uh as as zoe alluded to the biggest thing is trying not to lose existing canopy and where we can to plant trees and to work with members of the community to craft new solutions related to tree canopy for agriculture and community gardens opportunities to promote soil and water conservation um anywhere we can in burlington's open spaces as well as expand community gardening opportunities which have been incredibly popular in the city and support other kinds of food security related to water and wetlands uh both protecting remaining wetlands but also identifying places where wetland restoration can take place or where vegetation along surface waters can be restored or enhanced for more ecological value and then with lawns fields small open spaces many of these places that are controlled by um city or are you know along the edges of roadways and neighborhoods as we see in one of the images here there are a lot of new approaches to sustainable grassland management and ways to manage these spaces both for capturing carbon but also public space for gathering and other things so pocket parks and continuing to work on connecting the open spaces within the city and green infrastructure both identifying opportunities to retrofit and restore existing spaces within what is you know largely an urban environment but also creating new standards that will guide new development to help green burlington as development continues so this was just intended to kind of give you an overview of all of the many actions that have been put into this this implementation plan that zoe referred to that's going to give lots of work ahead for boards and committees um and i'll stop sharing but that gives the framework and then the actions and the various boards committees and staff um the steps that they'll be taking will fit within that and i yeah go ahead zoe as i said i think now um we we uh have tash shatland um i've been participating for a couple of years um in a national group um through the urban sustainability directors network um which used to be called the urban drawdown oh tash you'll have to help me the urban drawdown initiative and now it's called the nature based climate solutions initiative um and we wanted to sort of put our work in a in a national context for you all to to show you what other cities are doing around um the country um so you can see sort of where we fit in and and and how this movement is growing that it's not just here in burlington but it's um really um gaining a lot of traction and focus and energy um all around the country and so i'm just going to pass it over to tash who i think is going to share a couple of slides with you and then we'd love to welcome any questions thoughts you know before maybe you all go to vote awesome thank you zoe all right let me share my screen and launch this power point uh so as zoe mentioned again my name is tash shatland i'm the associate director of the trust republic lands national climate program and i work nationally but i'm based just down the road in in south burlington and uh i wanted to as zoe mentioned put in context this amazing work that's happening in burlington uh in the context of what other cities are advancing through this nature-based climate initiative and the nature-based climate initiative it's a group of leading cities from around the country about 50 cities that are working together learning from each other around how to apply innovative nature-based climate solutions to develop to deliver climate health and equity outcomes so before i talk about the network of cities i just wanted to put this work into concept into context our natural climate solution is really that important and the general consensus is yes we cannot meet the goals of the paris climate accord which is that un framework for for advancing climate action globally we cannot meet those goals without more effective management of our natural resources and there's lots of ongoing research but one peer reviewed research that was put out a couple years back now showed that the us through improved land management could absorb 21 of our current net annual greenhouse gas emissions so that's it's just huge so over the past couple years cities that had previously focused mostly on renewables and transportation and more traditional climate strategies realized that they had this untapped potential to deliver climate benefits through land management and so the urban sustainability director's network as i mentioned launched this initiative and it's led by a host of city staff a core team of folks which i'm a part of science advisors and we're all providing technical assistance creating new tools and resources to help cities really advance this work and elevate best practices and i think there are a handful of cities that are emerging as leaders in this work san francisco's new climate action plan has a focus on nature-based solutions city of boulder just launched a new natural climate solutions division actually within their city government and now i think with the this open space addendum burlington is going to start to be recognized as a leader in this field which is which is incredibly exciting and i just want to emphasize one thing in particular about this initiative at the heart of it is this new way of defining climate action it's a realization that climate action can no longer just mean mitigation right we need to reduce emissions quickly uh but based on our current trajectory and past emissions we're locked into some significant climate impacts in our communities they're going to impact the livability of our communities and so reframing climate action around this holistic approach that brings together climate mitigation climate adaptation and equity and cities are pursuing these goals through a a variety of of nature-based solutions and i just want to highlight a couple burlington specific statistics so uh we all know that heat waves are a challenge but these are some projections for burlington itself from an analysis by the union of concerned scientists and so you can see burlington like other places are going to see a rapid increase in extremely hot dangerous dangerously hot days and that's exacerbated by how we've designed and built and invested in our communities in burlington and and elsewhere we've essentially created these inequities that make some parts of our towns hotter and other parts of our town because of urban heat islands basically densely developed area of lots of buildings and concrete no vegetation are amplifying those those heat waves and so what do we do about these issues if cities are starting to really invest in nature-based solutions because they provide a whole bunch of climate benefits and scott was getting at the the the power of this initiative so start putting numbers on quantifying those benefits so i just want to end with this slide with a little bit of data and the emerging science around nature-based solutions and how they benefit our community so they absorb stormwater runoff so green infrastructure can reduce flooding protect water quality filters out 10 filter out 95 percent of major pollutants and reduce runoff and flooding by as much as 90 percent uh they cool urban heat islands so zoe mentioned they can uh reduce extreme heat there are a bunch of cities that have participated studies that show that densely forested parks are as much as 17 degrees cooler than uh nearby neighborhoods that lack adequate trees and green space they also connect people through active transportation build social cohesion which is a key ingredient in climate resilience they protect against flooding and they have a significant benefit in sequestering carbon so these are just a few examples of the nature-based solutions the benefits that nature-based solutions provide we're working to further quantify these benefits at national scale as well as at a local scale and i just want to end by saying how excited i am to see this work happening right here in our backyard in berlington i think it has a huge potential to deliver impact locally but also to serve as sort of a beacon of progress that other cities around the country that are part of this network can really learn from so thank you thank you very much appreciate it maybe i could just add one more thing and um tosh i can put you on the spot but one of those slides i think showed um and i just want to highlight this is not something for us to solve this evening but that you know the un estimates that a third of climate action should come from nature-based climate solutions but currently it's receiving one percent of the funding of in terms of climate action so i think that's something for us all to collectively um wrestle with you know what are we doing as a city where are we putting our funds how can we shift that up a little bit i think we're really poised to deliver more nature-based climate solutions but having the adequate sort of support staffing to do that i think is going to be important and i think we start to outline some of that in the implementation matrix in the document you know what do we need to do to start to deliver on some of this so that's not an action item for tonight but i but i just want to throw that out there and and i also just want to open it up to rebecca who um in case there's anything she wants to add before we open up to a wider conversation or questions nothing to add everyone did everything so great but i'll chime in if there's a question i feel super excited to answer great thank you well we're happy to entertain any questions if you have them we have a question president tracy sure go ahead council jane um thank you so much zoe taj and team uh for your work this is this is just amazing now i've been also following the conversation in south burnington about land use issues you know a lot of developments happening there and i was just wondering instead of focusing on only burnington what will it take to expand this at least to shittenden county uh view in communication with the planning commission what will it take to have a bigger white uh around this work so jane to whom were you directing your question um any of them who can answer okay i can take a stab at it okay go ahead so i mean we can go and we can go in a real hurry from just burlington to global right i mean this is a global problem um but we can only get there by acting locally um so burlington and south burlington are both part of chitlin county and chitlin county has a regional planning commission and that regional planning commission has of course what else they have a regional plan um and part of that plan addresses open spaces and and climate adaptation um what you're seeing tonight this addendum is incorporated by reference into the city's comprehensive plan so set another way all the pieces fit together at least on paper in terms of active outreach um i think that's something that would be worthwhile uh rather than simply having the plans line up and be in agreement which is always a good thing i think there is room for collaboration with south burlington and the rest of the communities in chitlin county and the region and um yes well i was just gonna say i could just throw one more piece in there is that you know we're really trying to build some of those regional connections you know in as my when i'm not the chair of the conservation board i direct the burlington wildways partnership and you know this spring for the first time we're having this city nature we had it last year a city nature celebration and we're going to do it again this year and we're teaming up with south burlington winooski and colchester um and we've just started to plan for that and this is sort of the ways in which they're very excited about some of the work that we're doing in burlington i think it's sort of the beginning of seeing us like as in as more of a functional eco region so it's an abstract answer to your question yeah but i mean this is just amazing and i like it would be imperative to just extend your great work to the surrounding communities yeah but thank you so much yeah thanks president please thank you councillor jane i don't have anyone else in the queue councillor councillor stromberg thanks president tracy thank you so much for bringing this forward um this is something that i actually studied a lot in college um especially having to do with like vegetarian vegetation and water quality um so i very much appreciate this on like a very personal level um and i'm just very curious to like kind of see how this works and goes forward um one question i do have is i and i might have missed it i apologize um the timeline of kind of the rollout of how this is going to be integrated is there kind of like a broad timeline that you have in mind um on this i'm whoever can answer that well i mean i can't say i i maybe scott can get back to that question in a minute um i will say that a lot of that the work that's outlined in the implantation matrix is happening um and it's happening by many different institutions within the city everything from the parks department to the interval center and so this document helps give support and um and framing for a lot of groups who you know are really working on this but but but we don't see it as climate action you know we grow 30 000 trees in the interval um the interval conservation nursery does and i suspect nobody in the city knows that um and they're used for restoration and the work that they're doing is really sophisticated it's really climate informed um and they're really focusing on lake health and you know i won't i won't talk too much about the details that's one of the reasons that i felt very motivated to get this off the ground was to really try to give you know support to groups that are doing this to recognize this work as climate action and to have this invest more in it ultimately thank you thank you so much i think this is definitely absolutely worthwhile i think it goes hand in hand and works symbiotically with a lot of the other initiatives absolutely shouldn't be invested in thank you great hey counselor hanson great yeah thank you all so much this is amazing and a reflection of so much work i'm sure just from the from what i've heard um you all have been working really hard on this for a long time and it's paying off um we're lucky to have um such a proactive conservation board um taj i guess you mentioned this i think on your last slide just around the quantifying um are we doing anything to try to quantify these um these benefits that these enormous benefits that nature or natural areas in burlington are giving us yeah great question so we started working with a handful of pilot cities started out with three and then advanced to nine pilot cities around the country to run that quantitative analysis so we had to advance we worked with researchers at csu and others to sort of advance the science to the point to be able to quantify the different benefits of turf management and compost application and um restoring degraded habitats and what are the actual uh benefits for carbon sequestration and so we advanced that work in nine pilot cities now we're sort of regrouping figuring out the lessons learned from that initiative and we're excited to try and take that and apply that and support that uh work in in burlington it hasn't started um but it's certainly something that we can do to to support uh to support the conservation board and and this broader plan great i look forward to learning more about that and yeah i would just say um for you all the yeah continue keep up the great work and continue to advocate be proactive you know don't be shy with advocating to council as we're navigating a lot of these decisions around land use and development um i think we need to i think this is a big step towards integrating that indoor decision making but i think there's still this isn't gonna automatically ensure that um this you know this framework is integrated into our decision making so i think as much as we can continue to incorporate it and as much as you all can continue to to advocate and help us um keep keep these issues forefront as we make decisions that would be that would be great yeah and i'll just say one more thing which is i think you know we're back and i've talked about this a bunch but i i hope that no one sees this as like this is like a development versus conservation kind of issue it really isn't that there are so many ways to have dense green lush enliven cities um and so that the i don't ever want to see these things like played against each other because that's not what it's really about it's about how do we do the best we can in our urban ecosystem to make sure that you know that that we that um we have a livable livable habitable cool carbon sequestering city and there's lots of creative ways to do really cool stuff in the urban environment and that's what we're really looking to yeah and i'll just chime in on that and bring it back to allie's comment earlier about thinking on a landscape level and when we look at the state and think on a landscape level like and development has to be something that we consider within our cities and this is more about how do we like zoe said how do we balance it and how do we continue to have resilient communities alongside the development that's happening um which includes food security and stabilization of our uh steep slopes i'll stop there understood yeah and i yeah that makes sense and i just think you all have especially now that you've developed this have a level of expertise uh and awareness on these issues that we don't have on the council so just wanting to keep that line of communication open um as we're making decisions that relate to this and wanting to hear from you all um i love that feel free to reach out to us or invite zoe and nita to chime in i'm always excited to share my opinion so great thank you so much anyone else okay not seeing any other counselors really appreciate the presentation and sharing all this great information and answering your questions this evening look forward to continued collaboration with you all thank you still have a motion on the table regarding this item was there any further discussion of that motion itself okay not seeing any we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi any opposed that carries unanimously thanks again we will uh item 5.04 was removed um or when i'm removed was placed on the consent agenda i'm sorry uh is item 4.14 which we adopted earlier so that brings us to item 5.05 which is a communication um from megan tuttle and nancy stetson regarding the municipal mask mandate ordinance um before we get into that piece um just wanted to get a motion to accept the communication may please have that motion councillor jane uh i moved the motion as indicated on board thank you councillor jane is there a second seconded by councillor hanson did you want the floor back councillor jane no okay great i see we have megan tuttle with us megan isn't nancy joining us is there a are they on i don't think that nancy will be joining us on zoom this evening oh i do see actually nancy is on um has she joined okay yeah great if you would like to yeah that would be fine i wasn't sure if she would be able to make it okay great yeah i've promoted them to panelists and so should be able to join us should be joining in just a moment she's not responding president tracy i think that this actually coincides with her a little one's bedtime so i would just expect that she might be trying to listen okay great okay all right well why don't you kick us off then um okay so the communication that's on your agenda was from nancy and i about to the mayor about the current mask mandate um you have adopted this mandate in december and readopted it twice um since then to extend it to its current expiration date of march third um and as a reminder this is a mandate that was authorized by a special assembly of the vermont legislature at the end of last year um essentially our recommendation is that uh with the current state of the pandemic in vermont and with omicron's most acute phase having passed uh we recommended to the mayor that we allow the mask mandate to expire on march third as it is currently anticipated to do um we understand that that the current phase of where cases are and and all of the um hospitalizations and other metrics that we've been monitoring the state to not suggest that the pandemic is completely over or behind us but we do understand that the way that cases and other key metrics have been trending suggests to us that this acute phase is um really ameliorating and that um it would be an appropriate time for us to lift that mandate and focus on the um promotion and greater uptake of individual actions that we have been talking about for for many months now um so happy to answer any questions specifically about what was in the communication that we shared with the mayor or if the mayor would like or dan would like to weigh in at all um about those questions sure thank you director tutel i see city attorney richardson has turned on his camera and the mayor as well mayor did you want to speak to this uh sure i'll just briefly say um i appreciate very much the analysis um uh megan and and nancy the way work they've done throughout the the pandemic to give us to put us as as policymakers in position to make key decisions informed by data and informed by the latest in science and what other governments are doing has um really been uh just an enormous boost throughout throughout the last two years and i think they've done that job uh very thoroughly again here and i feel after reviewing this data it was clear to me that i i did not support although i have been in the past a big supporter of strong uh mask uh actions mandates fabrication of masks and when the omicron was um uh headed towards us in december i did support the reinstatement of mask mandate i don't believe that such action is still justified um at this point given where we are in the pandemic and i think like where we are with omicron specifically and i think uh you've seen um that thinking broadly adopted uh by many jurisdictions over the last few weeks i think we should follow suit happy to try to answer further questions but that's basically where i'm at thank you mayor city attorney richardson did you have anything to add no i can i can just add from a legal perspective you know what the effect of this is um if the city council doesn't uh ops not to renew the mask mandate it naturally inspires um the city council would be able to revive this mask mandate um in a future vote if it so felt um that was appropriate but i would just remind the council overall um that under the guidance from the state authorizing and enabling statute our authority to an ability to uh promulgate a mask mandate ends i believe in april of this year so um you know the question is you know whether if in if in march there was a change in the data or policy or direction of the council if they wish to revive it they could um but short of the state extending it um such a revival is it can only last until the end of april okay thank you attorney richardson um council high town where i saw a hand did you have a question or comment yeah and i think this is to um megan but and maybe the mayor's office but um i i think i'm also supportive of um not extending the mask mandate and at least because i think compliance when folks are not excited about masking anymore it gets really difficult the majority of the bba has said that they don't want to do this but i guess i just want to note i think that there's still some of the members of the bba did ask um us to extend it and then there's also i know a lot of folks who are still feeling really vulnerable given that you know where we were one and a half years ago we were still being much more cautious than we are now and i understand that you know we're gonna kind of move forward with a different risk calculus but recognizing that that's really hard for some people i just wonder what the city can do through the crc or anything else to encourage especially you know like restaurants is one thing where you're just kind of assuming the risk but things like grocery stores things like that to continue to encourage some level of mask wearing yeah i that's a great question um i think one of the important things that we've been talking about is scheduling another covid briefing in the near term to help share information with folks about you know really what they should be thinking about at this phase of covid um especially as we come down from the omicron peak and part of that messaging can be talking about more recommendations around mask wearing than mandating mask wearing um i think one of the other important things to share is just about how our understanding of and and the availability of high quality masks has really changed the landscape of mask usage over the last couple of years in particular with the quality and availability of k and 95 masks um really helping people understand that that does offer a level of protection even if you might be the only person wearing a mask where at previous points it really required all of us to be wearing masks in order to provide that level of benefit and pay that protection so um that's something that we're looking to do in the immediate term and we are also exploring whether you know we can obtain some uh number of masks that we could help provide to the community to help increase access as well great thank you man anyone else come to jay thank you and this is one for the city attorney um you know i know that our policies does not govern the school district so if we lift the mask mandate will it you know include the burnington school district as well or they have their own policies about how they want to move forward with this they have their own policy and when we first promulgated this uh or when you first promulgated this uh ordinance actually that was one of the statutory limitations that the mandate could not extend into the school district so whether you extend it or not it will have no effect on the school district thank you and if if i may add just as well um i believe it is still within individual institutions and businesses rights to be able to require masks if they wish this is just not saying that the city is mandating that each business do that that's right that that remains a private right that any any business or institution has the right to do so yeah um and megan haven't you heard of any of the new variant coming in i've been hearing at least someone told me that he read two different article that there is a new virus let's say in japan but the scientists don't understand it yet i know it has nothing to do with this but just was wondering if you heard of it um i have heard that or i do understand that um there isn't a sub variant of omicron um that many people are watching and i think in some cases um you know there's a concern that in some communities that have experienced that sub variant of omicron it might just delay their um peak receding um and as far as other kind of emerging variants of concern that's something that we continue to watch and um kind of do some research on and bring that forward to see if it's something that the city needs to really address in terms of um changing our posture or policy around thank you so much no more question president please thank you councillor jane anyone else councillor stromburg thanks so much um yeah i just wanted to voice that i'm very supportive of us following the data and taking seriously and adjusting one need be you know different mandates and kind of health evaluations along the way so i i am very supportive of us lifting this mandate um and also just want to like caution i think councillor jane brings up a very good point like we are still in this we're still kind of going through a lot of the developments the world is an ever-changing place and we should just be prepared to in the future and i don't want it to happen but be prepared to have to kind of reinstate a mandate if need be um but i do think it is one of those things where it's important to recognize how well and how good we've been as a city overall um in in in listening to this mandate and and and making sure that we're being safe for one another and and we've gotten this far because of that so i do want to name that and say that you know it has worked thus far and um to some extent and yeah i adjusting as we go and this is one of those adjustments that i'm very happy and and excited to make so yeah very supportive of lifting that tonight thank you councillor stromberg i don't have anyone else in the queue mayor weinberger thanks for this and tracy i just wanted to quickly um share that i i completely agree with the sentiment just expressed by councillor stromberg and and others that this is uh this is a decision that we're making based on the science and the data and the state of the pandemic now um we can be i think hopeful that the omicron wave was the last major wave of uh this incredible two-plus year pandemic we do not have a guarantee of that there certainly could be new variants there could be conditions of change again um if you know in the coming months we certainly are looking at the fall as the time when we may there there's at least a real possibility that we have to deal with some new development with respect to this pandemic we will continue to watch very closely um all of these developments we will continue to have an infrastructure set up within the city to monitor monitor developments and to be able to make changes as necessary we will continue to be a very close touch with the Department of Health and you get medical center um and we will not be complacent uh on this um we also even beyond that um i think we are starting conversations about how we ensure that pandemic planning uh beyond the COVID pandemic is something that is well integrated into our emergency preparedness and that may call we may well be coming to you in the months ahead with um some uh uh ideas and long-term thinking such as you know we're asking ourselves at least the question should there be some kind of supplies that are stockpiled on a permanent basis and we have systems in place um to refresh over time uh we're starting to look at that as well so um yes i think this is the step we should be taking now will be important i think it's important to say now as we're taking this that just because this is the right decision at this moment does not mean uh that the science and the conditions might change again and requires to take new action thank you mayor anyone else okay we'll go to a vote on the motion to waive the reading accept the communication place it on file all those in favor please say aye hi hi we opposed that carries unanimously this to our next item which is a series of public hearings regarding zoning amendments again as i said at the public forum this is only to speak specifically to z a 21 dash four dash 20 or z a dash 21 dash oh four adaptive reuse definition z a dash 22 dash oh one historic preservation rehabilitation bonus and z a dash 22 dash oh two permitting adjustment so those are the three items there um we'll get to the public hearing in just a moment for that um if you are interested in addressing the the council on only these items you may do so um by using the raise hand function and i'll just call on folks that way again only these items uh you're able to speak to no other topics are not you're not able to address other topics at this point but prior to doing that um i just saw um scott gustin turn on his camera so scott i just wanted to see if you might be able to give an overview of the each of these ordinances prior to the opening the public hearing so that folks have a knowledge of what to comment what their comment might be commenting on sure i can do that so um there's three separate amendments here uh two of them are related um one is the revision of the definition for adaptive reuse and really all we're doing here is tweaking that definition so that it's in agreement with the federal department of the interior's standard um adaptive reuse basically is taking a historic building and reusing it for a contemporary use other than what it was originally built for so think think of loft apartments and your typical mill building somewhere that's adaptive reuse so we're simply changing the definition a bit to line up with um federal standard in doing that uh that had implications and this is the second amendment that had implications for an existing adaptive reuse bonus in the residential districts and so we it looks like more is going on than is actually going on here um we have relocated the adaptive reuse bonus and put it under section 548 which is the historic preservation criteria and have renamed it between relocating and renaming it and making a slight adjustment to the residential conversion bonus uh there's really no difference for an applicant between the two of those this is really at risk of being repetitive this is this is sort of like rearranging the deck chairs but hopefully not on the Titanic because hopefully you approve it um the third um amendment before you tonight has uh has three pieces to it um the first component um enables a greater applicability for what's called basic zoning permits so we have basic zoning permits in the non-design control areas of the city there's a few out there uh the new north end is probably the biggest one as opposed to in design control areas where we take a closer look at what buildings look like what the materials are uh lighting and whatnot in a basic permit all we do is look at a site plan so your typical single family home on a lot in the new north end uh if they want to do in addition we simply look at the site plan it's pretty it's pretty easy for the applicant it's inexpensive and it's a quick turnaround once we get into design review it's a more involved review we can involve uh going to boards architectural design what this first piece of the amendment does it removes a couple of triggers pertaining to lot size um that presently trigger design review so setting plan english if that single family home in the new north end is on a substandard lot so 5000 square feet as opposed to the minimum required 6000 that goes from a basic permit to a design review permit so all this does is it removes that substandard lot size um and lot frontage trigger so a basic is the basic the other piece of this amendment it removes the zoning permit requirement for non-residential permitted changes in use only so for a long while we've had instances wherein we have one permitted change and or one permitted use changing to another nothing else is going on and the only standard that we really consider is parking well parking has gone away in the downtown and may go away in the rest of the city depending on what happens with the pending changes to article eight so for example in the downtown if you have a cafe and somebody wants to change it to um I don't know retail they're both permitted uses right the policy decision has been made that we're going to allow both of these they're not conditional not special uses uh they're both permitted uses and there are no standards that apply at all so this amendment simply says in those cases you don't need a permit for us to say you're okay um seems like i'm sitting the obvious there um the final piece here enables administrative permit review for small scale development and the flood zone so the city has a fair bit of flood zone area uh and some of it's developed like out at north cove road and along the downtown waterfront uh the fairy docks in particular and right now the standard says that any development in the flood zone even if you're putting up a freestanding sign or a fence something really small you need to go to the development's review board which seems uh onerous it seems overkill so this amendment simply enables administrative review of those permits when it would go to administrative review otherwise so it slams down the permitting burden for these smaller scale projects in the flood zone and uh i'll leave it there or i'll leave it at that if there are in case there are questions uh let me know great thank you for that let's hold questions until we get into the actual items themselves for counselors um i want to transition to and open the public hearing now so if there are any members of the public who are interested in speaking to the three zoning amendments that were just described please use the raise hand function you can use that um at the bottom of this of your your screen and again you're only able to speak to these specific proposals that were just described nothing else so again i'm not seeing anyone sir any the public hearing is open anyone interested in commenting on this going once twice three times okay did not see anyone interested in commenting i'm using the raise hand function so i will close the public forum and i mean the public hearing that is and we will um transition to the next item which is item 5.07 which is the first of those items on adaptive reuse counselor mason may please have a motion thank you president fracy i would move to waive the second reading and adopt the ordinance as presented and do not need the floor back at first second thank you council mason is there a second seconded by council carpenter any discussion okay not seeing any we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our next item which is item 5.08 the historic preservation rehabilitation bonus that was described by um just now counselor mason may please have a motion uh thank you president fracy forgive me one second i'm trying uh city attorney pointed out an error and i'm trying to make sure this is the one and whether the language got captured no it did not okay so i will make a motion to waive the second reading amend the proposed ordinance by retraining the words conditional use in line 28 and striking the n in many in line 88 so it reads may and adopt the ordinance as amended thank you counselor mason um is there a second second okay not seeing any so we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to the last of those three zoning items um the item 5.09 which was a permitting adjustments um amendment uh counselor mason thank you president tracy i would like to make a motion to waive the second reading and adopt the ordinance and don't need the floor back but would like to thank the efforts of both scott and megan both in terms of the explanation but to get us to this point thank you thank you counselor mason we have a motion is there a second is there a second seconded by counsel jane thank you any discussion okay not seeing any let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that too carries unanimously brings us to the last item which is on our deliberative agenda the um the zoning um or the ordinance change regarding short term rentals counselor shannon uh president tracy i'd like to waive the second reading and adopt the ordinance with the amendment noted as uh chapter 18 short term rentals ordinance post occupied section eight voucher mickey is how it is noted in board docs okay thank you for that and i'll ask for the floor back after a second okay so we have a motion um is there a second seconded by counselor mickey you have the floor counselor shannon thank you president tracy i just wanted to um go through some of the the details of this particular version of the short term rental regulation this will allow anybody to rent um a whole unit or partial unit for up to 14 days without triggering this regulation it allows um for anyone to rent for 30 days uh or more without trigger triggering this regulation it um it does not require an annual lease or anything like that seasonal homes as defined by the assessor are exempt there's been some concern that um homes that people don't occupy the entire year would be exempt as a vacation property but that is not the case it's only uh properties that are not built as year-round homes uh things like the camps at star farm would be exempt um they would be allowed to short term short term rent a whole unit um anyone who is the our eviction regulations don't apply to short term rentals um the rental of rooms within your primary residence whether it's your rental primary residence or the primary residents you own are still allowed so the main requirements are that um your short term rentals have to be within your primary residence that you can't rent more than three rooms and you have to register the property the amendment that was offered by counselor McGee and offered with my motion also allows for a short term uh rental in a duplex or multi-unit building where you have in excess of your inclusionary zoning you have a section eight rental you may then offset that section eight rental with one short term rental um I think it's important to kind of reflect on on why we're why we're doing this and the intent of this regulation is about preserving our long term housing stock and restoring unpermitted illegal short term um rental units to the housing stock I think that I certainly feel the pressures of our current housing crisis and while we have talked about our housing crisis for the entirety of my tenure on the city council I have never seen anything like what I have been experiencing in the last two years in in two ways one is um what we all saw at Sears Lane where people tragically had have no place to go and this situation exists throughout the city where people are camping throughout the city because they have no housing they have no housing options and while there were a small group of people at Sears Lane that really wanted to live independently outside the bounds of the law the vast majority of people who were living at Sears Lane were there because there simply was no housing for them and they were grateful when the city provided the option for hotel rooms and safety in my professional experience I work with a lot of people who are moving to this area who have jobs here and they need to find homes and it's becoming impossible for workers to find housing you can't find rental housing you can't find housing to buy and the housing that we're talking about with short term rentals some people have said it's not really going to affect the market well it's not going to affect the market in as far as it's not going to solve the problem but it's some of the lowest hanging fruit we have in creating or just preserving rental units according to um Megan Tuttle's uh slide deck from some time ago I think that it dates back to July of 2020 um we had we have 17,000 housing units we have over 400 short term rentals and um I couldn't find the exact numbers I'm taking it off the the graph but it was about 280 of them were whole unit short term rentals that is a lot of units to bring online and that's a lot of units to take offline which is what happened these are units that were long term housing units and they have been converted into lodging units and taken out of our housing circulation I feel passionate that we need to do this for our economy I know that some people are concerned that we won't have tourists coming here well we'll still have tourists you can still rent a room in somebody's home if you want to do that you can still rent the entirety of your home when you're on vacation or you choose to leave your home to rent it as a short term rental you can still do that and people can still come and stay in the hotels and yes it will be more expensive but I don't the trade off is that some of our workers will get housing and we have seen that a lot of our restaurants downtown have been closing or limiting their hours because they don't have staff at the restaurants I have been working with people who work at the hospital and they work at UVM and the other colleges and they can't they're reluctant to take jobs because they can't find housing the crisis has has peaked in a way that is it's dire and I don't I don't have anything against short term rentals and I do want to also say that the people who are are who've created this opportunity for short term rentals have done so with the best of intentions and they have created a wonderful service in our community and they have upgraded the housing stock in ways that I have to say the long-term landlords don't so that's definitely in the plus column for the short term rentals and they're good people who take great pride in the service that they're providing and the product that they're providing and in a different environment and if we can get past the point we're at now I have no objection to loosening up these requirements and allowing more short short term rentals and allowing some conversions but where we are at this point in time I don't see how in good conscience we can continue to pay lip service to affordable housing and allow these conversions to continue to happen so I'll leave it at that for now thank you President Tracey thank you Councillor Shannon for Councillor Carpenter go ahead thank you I appreciate Councillor Shannon's sentiments certainly I've spent my entire professional life in affordable housing but I think it is still um quite short-sighted and I think I would like to propose an amendment I have posted the amendment on board docs and would like to present that now and walk through it sure go ahead Councillor Carpenter which um are you just able to clarify yeah um Director Tuttle said actually that they're exactly the same what she had and jump in Director Tuttle she'd renamed the one just for clarity um and they in somehow they got posted twice but they're really the same amendment um Director Tuttle they say the same thing so that's exactly right Councillor Carpenter both of the documents that have Councillor Carpenter's name in them are the exact same documents okay so are you just able to read the title of that amendment which one are you proposing I recommend is there is there a protocol to that no just I just wanted for reference and for the record which version you're introducing well I guess we can take the first one amendment to chapter 18 short-term rentals Councillor Carpenter okay great say the same thing okay thank you for that so we have a motion on an amendment is there a second to that motion Councillor Jang seconds Councillor Carpenter would you like the floor back yes thank you go ahead um so this is this is moved fast and and moved quickly and in somehow I think it's also been somewhat confusing as you always call really now over two years ago as is noted in Director Tuttle's memo we were asked to create a joint committee to come up with a regulation framework for short-term rentals it came with several requirements and the planning commission and a joint committee with the ordinance commission spent almost 18 months reviewing it the charge to that group was to limit the number of housing units converted to short-term rentals ensure the conversions contributed to expanding affordable housing provide flexibility for homeowners to earn income and to recognize that the short supply of short-term rentals benefits they brought in economy in I think it was August or September we were presented with those recommendations we had a work session on it spent quite a bit of time on it it was clear then that not all councils were in agreement but we spent a good amount of time on it sort of moving through the fall we were then presented with an additional alternative and I had assumed we would get the opportunity to discuss that but that didn't happen that that was really at our December meeting and council Shannon's proposal was an amendment was presented which gave us no opportunity to discuss what I feel was it was a middle ground and really was a good alternative to meet all of our goals and really the the version that I'm presenting tonight or in the amendment the remainder of the ordinance pretty much stays the same covers a lot of territory and I think the planning staff and the amount of work they did on that and we need all of that detail but this really focuses primarily on what and who would be allowed to serve in a short-term rental like um council Shannon's proposal it would allow someone to short-term rental their own unit but that's the only option that is presented um under that consideration that the amendment I want to offer really would also allow the owner of a their own primary residence to short-term rental another unit on their property either in their home or on their property and I think in addition to that I would I support council McGee's intent and the amendment that was added to councillor Shannon's what would broaden that a little bit to include other programs that receive federal rent assistance as well as units offered under IZ rents and I think that's a good balance and something we need to consider the concept from my point of view on the owner occupancy I agree there are issues with how non-owner occupied units may affect neighborhoods I'm suggesting that we do limit the whole house single family rentals to owner occupants but if they have a unit on their property I think we should give them the opportunity to be able to short-term I see that as a real advantage and and perhaps an incentive to people becoming homeowners if you have that opportunity it may provide almost like a second job for your family and it allows you to remain in your home and pay all your expenses there's also an incentive to encourage people to build accessory dwelling units they're expensive you know seventy five a hundred thousand dollars to add a unit we want to encourage it and I I literally have heard from individual people I know and I respect about their ambivalence about adding a unit to the market if they don't have some flexibility I know several people that have already built units and use them primarily for family but in the off season or when it's unoccupied they'll offer them to the public why would we not want to offer those to the public I have another friend who's a retired woman and lives near UVM she offers her unit during the academic year long term but to sort of off balance that short terms it in the summer so I think we're by not allowing owners more flexibility which was one of our goals to allow homeowners flexibility we're selling ourselves short and taking a product off the market that I don't think necessarily adds to long-term affordable rentals the other piece of the amendment really is for non-owner occupants who could and are willing to offer an offset unit at either the affordable inclusionary zoning rates which are set by the CETA office and based at about 65 percent of our of our rental system and make that available that available in return for allowing an str and we again heard from a lot of owners who said I have an str in my building and allows me to keep my rent slow pulling that opportunity away just incentivizes the owners of those apartments to just raise the rent to the max and if there's no offset there um you know why wouldn't I raise my rent for the max they'd have to document this I think it is in fact going to cause a little bit of work for somebody but I think like we do with the IZ rents you produce a lease or a document that says the rent is set at this and the same thing would be true with occupants receiving federal renters federal rent assistance or state assistance I think that's a fair trade-off and allows some units to be on the market it doesn't pull them all off the market which I think the other proposal does I mean strs aren't a horrible thing they do contribute I'm sure we've all stayed in them but what we want really with an amendment is to stop the speculation and I think this would stop it it would um you know where we've seen I think a big impact is pulling single family homes off the market and not making them available to homeowners when we talk about people wanting to move and live in burlington buying a home is is a problem and this is an opportunity to um assist with that 55 percent of the strs were single family homes uh so again I think this proposal addresses that I think it's time for us to adopt an amendment there's a lot in there particularly including the registration um that we need to get started right away I don't think we need to leap to the most restrictive option now as opposed to the more tiered approach which we were actually charged to do um as it is with this amendment um we're still going to tell people that have uh purchased single family homes and they're not all occupied they can't do that anymore but it will allow owner occupants to continue the opportunity and I would hope with the trade-off on the affordable union that we could actually create some more affordable units because it'll now be regulated so I encourage us um to pass this and you know as we've said several times this is the year to get the data because of we're shifting this into minimum housing we'll have the opportunity to change it we're not locked in forever with this but I think this is a reasonable program to start with and allow um both owner occupies to do some strs and allow those that are um non-site based to offer us an opportunity to give us another affordable unit so that is my proposal and I'm happy to answer any questions as I said we unfortunately didn't discuss the whole ordinance earlier in the fall when it was first presented thank you Councillor Carpenter the floor is open for comments on the amendment Councillor Shannon thank you President Tracy I just want to say that the reason we didn't discuss this when it was presented and it was on our agenda previously was because nobody chose to move it and I questioned that I offered to not move my version forward I did not rush this and gave everybody the opportunity to move this version and nobody chose to move it so that is why the version that I have moved again tonight came forward and that the other version was not discussed at great length in terms of the opportunity for home ownership I again want to remind you that when if you are looking to purchase a duplex with the intention to owner occupy it and rent out the second unit the mortgage company will not consider your short term rental income unless it is already a short term rented unit so they will only count the long-term income so you need to be able to qualify with that unit as a housing unit not as a lodging unit and I think there is sometimes we are conflating affordability with profitability you have to be able to afford it as a long-term rental according to the bank you can then choose to a more profitable route and do the short-term rentals also people who have been in their home for a long time and the financing isn't an issue I won't argue that a short-term rental is not more profitable than a long-term rental but it is removing our housing stock and I think if you live in a neighborhood of single family homes it's easy to perceive this as a problem of single-hand family homes being rented but to push that problem onto owner-occupied duplexes and the neighborhoods that have more multifamily housing doesn't really seem fair I don't think that there is any evidence that allowing short-term rentals keeps rents low there may be anecdotal situations where somebody has a short-term rental and that is subsidizing their long-term rental and that individual case is it is subsidizing that long-term rental and that one person's rent is low but as policy makers we can't look at these individual situations the the effect on the market of the short-term rentals is not to keep the rents low it's directly the opposite it takes units off the market and pushes rents up as far as offering flexibility sure some people want to rent their place for the summer and go someplace they can still do that but and if it is their it's their primary residence they can do that without limitations but if it is not their primary residence you can still rent it for for 30 days in the summer you just can't do the short-term rentals and that's all thank you thank you councillor shannon i think it's councillor hightower did i see a hand yes um i've you and then councillor mason i see you as well great um i think i've had a hard time with this i think if folks remember it came out of ordinance with the owner occupancy allowed um which i was planning on supporting i was not planning on supporting councillor shannon's amendment um and and then most of us did now i don't really know what to do because this feels like going back on what we all just supported a few weeks ago um i am definitely supportive of the mix of inclusionary and section eight vouchers um i think well i don't think a section voucher section eight voucher allows up to around 1600 dollars of right covers inclusionary zoning allows up to around 1400 dollars in rent um and i think i'm really supportive of having both of those options i think section eight is the most important and the most needed and should be prioritized but 1400 dollars all utilities included is still pretty low income and i don't really see the need to put the two against each other i think it's really better to give folks the option if we're giving this as an option i think i think having both would be nice um so i might try to divide the question at the end of this um but i think the other thing to say we've had folks talk about some other things over the last two years as well as tonight um and i think the first comment that this isn't eating into the housing stock you know last year is the pandemic we've had air bean bees at an all-time low um and it's still full rental units are still 1.1 percent of our housing stock which is starting to compete with our vacancy rate and then if we imagine what happens in a few years when folks are more incentivized to air bean bees especially once it's not in the legal limbo that it is um i just i'm regardless of how i guess that is to say regardless of how we what this ordinance ends up looking i think like i think it's going to be incredibly important to pass and then to councillor shannon's point you know on the affordability of hotels versus not the most affordable way to visit burlington the way that i first visited burlington um before i moved here is to stay in a um room an airbnb room which is something that is still at that summit that is owner-occupied um and that is still very much allowed under this ordinance so i think it's very important that we keep that in place and that we allow allow in unit rentals um still torn on the owner-occupied buildings um but i think i would like to see us i think i would like to see us um consider at least including the inclusionary zoning and i think i'll wait to see how this shakes up and i so i guess maybe president tricey i don't know if there's a preference between me trying to divide the question here or wait to see since we're already on two amendments i don't want folks to get confused um with me trying to amend the amendment or divide the question um you couldn't you can amend the amendment because we're only on the amendment itself so it hasn't been further amended so you can do that um at this time um i might instead if i may try to divide the question um um with the inclusionary zoning piece versus the rest of it um oh great i'll try to do that and then i actually have a question before actually i'll have a question before i do that for the maker the resolution if i may for councillor carpenter which is the difference between the section eight and the state councillor mcgee's amendment had specifically section eight vouchers your amendment has state and federal housing assistance and i guess i just wanted to know what the difference was between those two before probably not a lot the primary rent assistance program is section eight federal rent assistance but for example we got millions of dollars in vermont emergency rental assistance program dollars which is really arpa dollars which is not section eight so i was just it was really just an intent to cover all the bases um sometimes there are tenants that get specialized vouchers through the agency of human services so it'd be a state rental assistance voucher not a section eight section eight is a particular federal program and i was only trying to broaden it to the section eight like programs that are being paid out of arpa or agency of human services right thank you and then i'm actually going to hold off if that's okay and get my ducks in a row before i try to divide the question if folks have other thoughts on the amendment sure thank you councillor hi tower i have councillor mason to be followed by mayor weinberger and councillor barlow i'm glad to answer mason thank you president tracy um i i want to thank councillor carpenter for coming forward with these proposed amendments i also want to thank excuse me both the council and the public for staying involved in this discussion for two plus years um i feel strongly that we need to do something um and it's up to us tonight to figure out what that something is i i want to acknowledge and and i would concur that even though we may come down in different places on this it is a false false flag the state that you know strs don't have an impact on the housing stock they do we know that every unit that's an str is not available for long term um renting i want to take us back though the challenge has been and we've been struggling with this as a council you know there are two competing policies here you know one is you know the impact on the housing stock but the other two aspects or policies that we recognize in 2019 when we put this to the joint committee was strs do have some benefit to the economy like it or not you know and i've done it too if i go to a you know another city i might look first to see if there's an str before going to a hotel those they do serve a purpose and the concern is that you know go too far whether that's you know the requiring full owner rock as councillor shannon has proposed that might have an impact on you know clearly will have an impact on my view on the number of strs available the other piece and we heard this for those of us that were on the two on the committee for two plus years you know we also when we passed this wanted to provide some flexibility for homeowners to earn income we heard from countless people who have testified that you know they're relying on this income in order to be able to pay you know their property tax bill whether it's their own home or second home go too far in one direction you know we're negatively impacting that so you know what we're seeing play out is in essence a competition among policy goals and from my perspective it's a question of how far do we go one way or the other i think what councillor carpenter has done is provide a little bit of a compromise it doesn't go as far as i would have liked but i am i can count and fully know that you know whether the montal control compromise or other that wasn't going to fly so you know that that that is no longer on the table what councillor carpenter has proposed which does address a number you know the a big concern that we've heard from a number of lakeside and other neighbors is whole house strs that's not permitted under what councillor carpenter has put forth so i appreciate it's not perfect i don't think there's anything that will be perfect but from my perspective you know this is a better start and if if it is determined a year from now or at some point in time that this is doesn't go far enough this body will be able to make an adjustment but i think going too far out of the gate is going to have very adverse consequences you know on our constituents and on the market as a whole so for that reason i'll be supporting councillor carpenter's amendment thank you thank you councillor mason i have councillor i have mayor weinberg to be followed by councillor borough and councillor jane thank you president tracy um i've been concerned about the impacts of short-term rentals on the housing market on the availability of permanent housing for a long time i think i played a role in um bringing us to this decision by putting this issue of short-term rentals explicitly on the mayor's housing summits back in 2019 because it was clear to me we we needed to grapple with this and we have grappled with it for a couple years um and i certainly fully believe we we need to be regulating this area uh much more significantly than we have up until now and need to be taking action to ensure that we do not see actions happen in this community that we had that have happened in many other communities where sustained old buildings with multiple units overnight are lost long-term rentals market and become short-term rentals and i think we want to make sure that there are very limited number of of these units because of the threat they present to a community that simply doesn't have enough housing um i'm i asked to be recognized uh to speak to council carpenter's amendment um because i do want to weigh in on this amendment i didn't i did not support this language that council carpenter is bringing forward um when we made the action uh a couple months ago to warn this uh ordinance for public hearing um i that night um was uh wrestling um as many of us have throughout this where the where the right place was to land but was very moved that night with councilor uh shannon's arguments about um how far we need to go in the midst of a housing emergency um and uh was persuaded that that that night that uh we shouldn't take that action and warn that language for a public hearing um but uh in the time since then um i've done what i think we are tasked explicitly by the uh by the way the ordinance creation process works by the the uh the process itself which calls for that step of warning and public hearing um i've done what i think we're we're as hard as possible to do is i've kept listening and i've stayed open to new information and um uh and i've kept an open mind on on where on where we should uh ultimately land with this and i have through the formal public hearings and through my public meetings that i have on a weekly basis where many people who care about this issue have come on to continue talking to me about this um i've come to uh be in a different place uh tonight um i understand the data a little bit differently than i did uh when this we first took this action my uh understanding is it's pretty clear um we don't have as definitive data as we would like but that the actual number of short-term units has reduced somewhat over the course um of the pandemic uh i also sort of came to think that the way that i don't think it really works to we are we are setting we're in the process of setting long-term um housing policy here and i think it is uh challenging to a really a difficult way to go about it i i don't think we really have in our ability um through this long-term policy setting system to create policy just for this current particularly acute moment i think our job really is to get the policy right for at least the medium to long-term that was something we went into this uh effort with a major goal of was to uh was to um provide a sense of stability um back to this policy and i'm not confident that um we will get it right if we set uh long-term policy based on the acuteness of this particular moment i don't trust that our systems work such that um when we are a different moment that we will go back and fix a policy that we haven't gotten wrong i think we have to try to get this right for burlington now and um i've come to the conclusion that's what council carpenters um amendment uh does uh at least the best we can um at this point um i believe that the uh current the hearing version final uh version the unamended version of the ordinance would be one of the most restrictive short-term rental ordinances in the country i think it is it it goes too far and is too intrusive um into the decisions of some of our residents face and i do believe that we'll have significant negative community and economic consequences as written i i will say that um i our work is not going to be uh done that i am um i don't think we are going to be able to finish this debate uh however the council comes out on this i do think we need better data ultimately to get this policy right i think we also um i need to uh seek greater legal authority to potentially collect revenue from short-term rentals to create significant new affordable housing resources i think that there's the possibility of almost you know perhaps doubling or more the funds that we have available local funds for affordable housing if we get this right um and uh i think that there are increasingly examples of other communities that have more effective methods to directly relate regulate the number of short-term rentals that we want um as opposed to the ways in which we've tried to do it through this policy and so regardless of where we end up i do think that's an issue we're gonna need to continue working on um going forward and i'm committed to doing that um i um just to summarize again i do support the councilor carpenter's amendments appreciate all the work that has been put in into this um and um i'm hoping the council seriously consider accepting these amendments because it's going to be very challenging uh for me having grappled further with this to uh sign off on the non-invented version uh of of this ordinance thank you president tracy sorry but that i have uh counselor barlow to be followed by counselor jane thank you president tracy um counselor mason and the mayor have covered some of my remarks so i'll be brief um there's no doubt that we need to put some boundaries on what's allowable as an str and we need to establish protections for neighborhoods and limit the impact on housing stock but the ordinance under consideration without counselor carpenter's amendment is just too limiting um um bad ordinance would essentially end the str business in brolington um airbnb the rbo and other str platforms are ubiquitous now most of us probably use them while traveling and visitors to our city expect them in the same way they expect to be able to get an uber when they're here um and those people that are visiting most of them want whole unit rentals not a room in someone's house um we need to find a way to address the negative impacts of strs while also providing some support for strs in our city and i think counselor's carpenter counselor carpenter's amendment does this so i will be supporting it thank you thank you counselor barlow i have counselor jane to be followed by counselor handsome yep um thank you president tracy and um you know i think it will be also important for us to remember that whenever we talk about data let's not just focus on one aspect of data data always is quantitative and also qualitative right from what we have heard from the people during these hearings it has been very clear that you know without the amendment of sera carpenter counselor carpenter this will affect them you know negatively and we do not want it we do not want that um i think also counselor mason and also the mayor just like my counselor barlow just basically you know summarize everything that i wanted to say so to be short i would be supporting the amendment of counselor carpenter thank you thank you counselor jane counselor handsome great thanks i'm still where i've been at you know largely throughout this process i think so i don't i don't support this amendment and becoming more permissive i i'm uncomfortable even with counselor mcgee's amendment i you know i've been very on the fence about that but i'm ultimately i'm planning to support that um but i don't want to go any more permissive than that and i think i just want to the aspect i guess that i want to push back on is that the airbnb market is going to go away as a result of this we're still allowing a significant chunk of people to participate in that market and to earn revenue um and to supplement their ability ability to live in burlington through this airbnb income and provide um those short-term rentals for visitors so even under the policy as proposed with counselor mcgee's amendment yeah i mean just to reiterate any anyone who lives in burlington can can rent out a room in their dwelling unit or their home and they can also rent it out when they're out of town as well um and then additionally with with counselor mcgee's amendment someone who doesn't even live in the unit could rent out the full unit but what they have to do in exchange for that is is provide this benefit to people who actually are trying to live in our community and again that that's the trade-off that we're trying to solve is that we're these short-term units are pulling away from long-term units and and preventing folks from being able to live in burlington directly by pulling those units offline or not having them online in the first place this trade-off of you can you can do um even if you're you don't live there you can do an entire unit for airbnb or for short-term rental you just have to provide you you have to make available for section eight housing the other rental units so that we hit that bottom end of the market for the lowest income folks and there is that waiting list right now of people who have section eight vouchers who don't have access to housing right now and and these folks who are who are using housing units as a business to to generate income um can still do that and i think counselor high tower pointed out you can still these folks can still bring in a good amount of income from the section eight units as well as from their airbnb unit that they would have at the same time so i feel like there's plenty of opportunities for people to create short-term rental units in burlington we're just trying to restrict the number of off-site landlords who are doing that to to limit the damage to our long-term housing stock i think it's already plenty of a compromise as is and we need to let it play out and we can make changes in a year if we somehow went too restrictive i'm skeptical that we did because as others have pointed out we've been in a pandemic for for you for a few years now and we don't know how this market's going to explode as this moves into potentially an endemic and even this summer we could see an explosion of of that market so i just think this is already a compromise and we need to be cautious about this given how tight our housing market is um and let's let's be safe to start with here thank you thank you counselor hanson i don't have anyone else on the queue to speak to the amendment council carpenter go ahead i just want to clarify as i said one of the reasons i am proposing that an owner occupied also be able to str the unit on their own property is in fact to give them flexibility of income and councillor shannon mentioned the complexities of mortgage lending it is true that in qualifying for a mortgage there's nuances i looked at the fanny may selling guide you can in fact count part of it if it's an owner occupied str but also more important the way they do mortgage lending with ratios up to 45 percent of your income um people just need the extra income to afford life childcare health care retirement so it's not always an issue of mortgage qualifying it's an issue of allowing you to stay in your home by not approving an owner occupant to do it we're going to we're going to pull that away from them now and maybe they can go back to it maybe they can't but um rather than letting them do it now we don't even know how many of them there are and i think this will after we enact this in a year from now we'll know how many of them there are um and hopefully we can deal with issues but it's still owner occupied base thank you councillor carpenter i did see councillor shannon and then i see director tuttle getting in as well so councillor shannon i would defer to um director tuttle sure director tuttle i only had a point of order to offer about the motion that councillor carpenter made um when we were helping councillor carpenter organize her proposed amendment it was based off of the version of the document called hearing alternative or hearing version final um if the moved version is um the McGee alternate councillor carpenter's amendment would amend lines 89 through 97 of that version just a point of clarification okay thank you for that clarification i appreciate that councillor shannon um thank you so if if we were to allow short-term rentals in owner occupied duplexes i thought it might be helpful to have some information about how many units are we talking about um according to the the data from director turtles um information to us which is dated july 2020 um we have 2002 and i've extrapolated these numbers from the percentages that were given to us but um i think the numbers sound small when we're talking about percentages when we're talking about housing units we can um better appreciate what we're really talking about um there are 2210 duplexes in the city 353 owner occupied units so we are talking about allowing up to 353 uh owner occupied units um um turning their only rental unit into a short-term rental under this proposal taking that off the market and becoming a short-term rental the idea that we should not legislate for this moment um i disagree with that i think that uh we absolutely need to legislate for this moment and we are in crisis this has been a trend we've been heading in this direction for a long time it's gotten worse and worse and worse until we are here at this moment we don't have any reason to believe that this is that our housing crisis is going to be changing anytime soon i haven't heard anything on the horizon that gives me hope that this is changing anytime soon maybe there's something i don't know um the way this was structured was brilliant by our planning department it was put into chat after 18 which is much easier to amend than our our code of zoning ordinances so yes it's a fairly nimble process and we can amend this uh if something changes or we need to tweak this one way or the other it it can be amended as for being intrusive into the decisions of our residents we have always been intrusive in the decisions of our residents we have always regulated bed and breakfast and it's only in recent years we've decided to ignore what's on the books in terms of that regulation it's zoning zoning regulates what our residents can do and we we regulate them in ways um far more onerous than this we tell them what kind of windows they can put in we tell them what kind of siding they can use we could we tell them where they can put a window and where they cannot put a window so i don't see this as more onerous than the vast majority of our zoning regulations and we don't really know if pulling this back is going to affect our rooms and meals tax it certainly might but the other possibility is that it increases our hotel vacancy or it reduces our hotel vacancy it fills in more of of um those units and it might not be that big a hit on our meals and rooms tax but we didn't get into this in an effort to increase rooms and meals tax that was never really a motivation and as others have said we still allow this in your primary residence thank you thank you council shannon i don't have anyone else in the queue on the amendment you're ready to go to a vote okay so we will go to a vote on the amendment will the city please call the roll councillor barlow yes councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor freeman no no councillor hanson no councillor hightower yes councillor mege no councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor shannon no councillor strongberg no city council president tracy no six eyes six nays the amendment fails we are back to debate on the underlying motion there is there further discussion of that motion councillor carpenter to be followed by councillor mege and hightower um i'd like to amend the portion that um councillor spannon and adopted councillor mege's language and i'd like to replace that with language that says um um running to section eight as well as i'm trying to read this here um rented uh that meets affordable requirements identified in article nine inclusionary and replacement housing of comprehensive development ordinance or rented to attend at receiving federal or state rent assistance uh which line are you on councillor carpenter um oh dear um hang on here i think that's um let me just find that someone wants to pop in they can do that but i'm trying to find the original amendment the original one that we're working on i'm not sure which which line um okay here it is um councillor shannon adopted councillor mege's amendment but i'm not sure what line she was going to put that on to tell you the truth it's we're looking at lines 87 to 92 um did councillor mege's have a specific line i guess is my question of the day kind of information i think it's line 92 through 95 okay so it would be uh replacing line 92 to 95 with what what is your amendment let me get councillor mege's up here um okay replacing line 92 with language that says one whole short-term unit is permitted only if the str is located within a two-family duplex or multifamily dwelling owned by the host that contains at least one dwelling unit in excess of any required inclusionary units that is rented to or that is rented this is the main at a rate that meets the affordability requirements identified in article nine inclusionary and replacement housing and comprehensive development ordinance or rented to a tenant receiving federal or state rental assistance okay so can you read that line again just so that folks are clear because we don't have it in writing right i'll try to it it is online but i'll try to send it to you shortly okay so um the dwelling unit is located or excuse me one whole unit short-term rental is permitted only if an str is located within a two-family dwelling or multifamily dwelling owned by the host that contains at least one dwelling unit in excess of any required inclusionary units that is rented at a rate that meets the affordability requirements identified article nine article nine or rented to a tenant receiving federal or federal or state rent assistance okay thank you council carpenter or folks clear on what council carpenter is seeking to amend councilor shannon i isn't that what we just voted on no the one that you loaded on or added only was limited to section eight vouchers holders um the one that i proposed had two pieces really to it it had that piece and then it had the ability to rent an owner occupied another unit and owner occupied property but this adds in what you proposed which is what we just voted on no a portion of it it does it changes changes lines 92 to 95 of what you adopted which is really the mickey amendment and it effectively it allows rentals to both section eight holders and those that are offering an iz grant clear council shannon i guess clear enough thank you okay all right councilor hanson did you have a clarifying point of clarification yeah i guess a question that's okay okay sure i just want to before i get a second i just want to make sure that people understand what what the amendment is go ahead oh yeah it's just so it's a process question i guess for the city attorney is just i i think i understand you're just doing a scaled back version of the amendment that failed but is that is that allowed i i don't know that i've ever seen us do that where an amendment fails and then we bring just one section of that amendment back immediately attorney richardson sure um yes it is because it's a fundamentally a different question so if you took uh councilor carpenter's amendment which you know had four or five pieces um that failed as a whole so what she's essentially proposing to amend is to take one piece um and use that to substitute in a specific piece of language um in in the existing the the current proposal um so that's allowed in the sense that it is a separate and new um amendment um where you would not be able to do that would be um you know if it was um essentially uh something that was a a single piece um that you attempted to revive but i think it's it's uh fair enough to be able to distinguish between you know this the three or four different things councilor carpenter's original amendment was trying to do and saying that taking one piece out of it is um fundamentally different for purposes of a second amendment thanks okay any other clarifying questions people clear on what the amendment is okay is there a second to that seconded by councilor hightower council carpenter did you want the floor back okay discussion on this amendment councilor McGee thank you president tracy um i just want to sort of speak to um this amendment uh and in so doing sort of address the reason for the less permissive version in the underlying um you know i i think the important thing to note here is that we have 94 households currently on a waiting list that qualify for section A vouchers but cannot find uh units or landlords who will accept those in conversations with the housing authority who serve as the area in and around burlington they are constantly struggling to landlords who are willing to accept section eight vouchers um so i think when we consider that and consider the of units that this will ultimately impact i think to be more permissive with this exemption would undercut the intention of of the underlying um provision um so i just wanted to say that in that you know i'm under no illusions that they're going to solve the housing crisis that 94 families are facing right now waiting for housing to accept the section A vouchers that they have um and and hopeful that this might open up a few more units to accept those vouchers but um you know for that reason like i can't support this amendment tonight thank you councillor McGee councillor carpenter this is the point um uh council please write about the 94 waiting waiting on waiting lists but we have no sense of one of the groups that waits on the section A waiting lists are people looking for large units so this one-to-one substitute isn't going to serve the needs of a lot of people on that waiting list is my guess and i felt that including the iz gives you just a broader opportunity to get some more affordable units potentially out there in the market thank you councillor carpenter councillor paul was that a hand okay sorry about that um anyone else speaking to the amendment okay we will go to a vote on the amendment uh will the city clerk please call the roll councillor barlow yes councillor carpenter yes councillor jeng yes councillor freeman no councillor hanson no councillor high tower yes councillor McGee no councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor shannon no councillor strongberg no city council president tracy no six eyes six days the amendment fails and we are back to debate on the underlying i think there were a couple of hands trying to get in for that um i but i missed it um so the floor is open for folks wishing to comment on the underlying resolution councillor high tower yeah and i'll be brief which is just to say i'm probably the only person who was um okay with either one of these versions um and i just i think that i really again all of the things that we said in favor of the owner occupied i think is even more true of this underlying version i think it definitely is easier to open it back up than it is to restrict it again later so um i just i hope that we can pass this um on a on a much more supportive level than a seven five vote in that in the future if we want to allow owner occupied especially if that is with some kind of champion housing trust support um that that's still something we can look at so thank you councillor high tower are there any others who wish to comment councillor paul to be followed by councillor mason um thanks president tracy um i just sort of would like to get an idea i mean i feel like we have uh you know we're sort of sort of would have to agree with councillor high tower this has been a rather stressful hour um and um you know to to vote six six six is uh rather unfortunate it seems to me that probably there what we really should be doing isn't voting on this at all tonight but probably going back and and having several people who aren't who aren't both in both camps on this discussion to try to work out something um i think it's really unfortunate that we're in a position like this um and would like to know whether or not um you know where this is going to go if this is uh if this is successful given um you know where the mayor is are we going to find ourselves back you know a couple of weeks from now talking about this again and i think we're we should i just i just think it would be great if we could maybe just take a step back and try to figure out some other common ground other than seven to five or six to six um i think what we're showing the public is that we can't really agree amongst ourselves and that we're not really really willing to really try to figure it out and i think that's unfortunate thanks thank you councillor paul councillor mason uh thank you president tracy um first i have a question for them i think councillor magie if you're willing and that that relates to i'm hoping for an explanation about the requirement in line 93 of host ownership we got we we've got had so many permutations i'm just trying to exactly understand i mean i appreciate it's no longer host owned but i'm trying to figure out what's the benefit of host excuse me not owner occupied but host owned so are you intending to preclude you know a non-owner from serving as a host and i'm trying to understand why that matters this uh specifically um relates to instances where a host would be exempt from hosting offsite if you know say they own a duplex one unit could be a short term rental if the other unit is rented to a household receiving section eight measures or if they owned a building of three or more units um so i don't think this necessarily means uh and i would look to director total maybe to answer this but necessarily means that it couldn't be an owner occupied um building if it were three or more units let me i'm missed i'm not articulating my question better if it's a multi-unit building for example i appreciate you know what this says is it doesn't need to be owner occupied if there's um at least one unit above and beyond what's required under our iZ ordinance that's rented to an occupant but it also requires that the owner be the host and the host in the air b and b world has a certain meaning you know you're the person that shows up and rents the apartment and collects the money and make sure that it's clean i'm just trying to figure out what if that was the intent and what the benefit of requiring the host also be the owner is adding to this well i think uh at least my intent it would be difficult to enforce uh uh short-term rental existing building where a unit might happen to be rented to a section a voucher holder uh the host is a tenant in the other unit i don't think that um is that well no that's that seems to say it doesn't have you don't have to have this is an exception to the owner occupancy requirement but it does right it doesn't i don't want to get bogged down in the details i just that that's that's a very specific requirement i was trying to haven't been bogged down in this for two plus years understand what was the policy justification behind that um thank you let me sort of shift to what council paul was just alluding to and and more of the legal question and forgive me and i'm not sure whether it's kim or or who this is an interesting um no not this this whole process given the bifurcation between our you know ordinance and and uh chapter 18 i know we're coming up on some deadlines you know we have a new council being seated maybe someone could sort of speak to the lay of the land and the concern that if this were vetoed are we out of runway like i'm i'm not remembering exactly what deadlines we're bumping up against director total or kim or attorney sort of it i i can let kim start and i can add if there's anything i can add is in addition sounds good um so just to lay as a counselor mason asked to lay out the timeline um basically the chapter 18 ordinance changes when they get approved will get worn to the newspaper and then they're effective 20 days later that the zoning amendment need to be staggered from that because they become in effect in the sense that they can be applied under once they're warned for public hearing the difficulty that you're running against up against the time frame is that they will expire uh i believe it's april 13th um so the zoning amendments if not passed by then we'll need to start over and um they can you know we're expected to be a quicker process because we've spent time on it already but um they would have to go through the planning commission again and come back up through thank you that answers my question um from my count this is likely to be a seven five vote um which will pass i appreciate it will not have well and maybe more than seven five but um based on earlier statements i will not be supporting this i for the reasons i've already articulated i think this goes too far in one direction and i i disagree that you know we'll just change it i that that ignores the practical reality of the dozens of people who have you know this will materially impact their life and and what their current existence is so i i don't agree that it's as simple as just we'll change it a year from now um i'm not confident i appreciate council pollas always you know the push for trying to achieve compromise i am a little bit concerned you know we've had five different compromises and and do not seem to be able to land in a place that generates either you know other than a six six or seven five um so i'm prepared to go back to the table if that's the will of the council and do my damnness to achieve a compromise i'm not convinced it exists though unfortunately thank you thank you count for mason anyone else on the underlying council right tower i think i just what councillor carpenter proposed is i'm pretty sure we came out of the ordinance committee um and then a lot of us voted for what we're calling the councillor shannon amendment including myself including others and so i would find it very frustrating and the mayor supported it so i think we got to a point where the majority of us not a simple majority like a true majority of us supported a stricter version than what we are currently voting for so i think it's not exactly what i wanted i think it's not exactly what a lot of us wanted but it is what most of us supported at some point in the last this year and so um i think that moving forward with something that most of us were willing to support even a month ago after we've already talked about this for two years um is much better than not moving forward with anything at all when we know that we need this regulation and again i say that having supported the amendments that failed and having supported the way that it came out of ordinance which was a looser version of this thank you thank you councillor hi tower councillor carpenter just a point um i i didn't support this last time and and it was only two of us but i will say and i can't speak for other people i think there was some confusion around people not understanding that that middle option was then going to be off the table and i just can't speak for the people but i think there are people who feel that they didn't understand that that was going to be totally off the table thank you don't have anyone else in the queue councillor shannon um thank you i'll just say that this has been postponed several times there has been plenty of opportunity to figure this out and it doesn't really look like that is happening um as far as changing people's lives everybody who is operating legally today will be able to continue operating legally and um should this be vetoed i would expect either we override the veto or we revert back to the existing zoning laws um and start enforcing them so i hope that that is not the case but we do regulate bed and breakfast today there are regularly it's not it's not an unregulated area there it's regulated so i hope that this passes and i am happy to make adjustments to it as as is needed and as our um circumstances in burlington change thank you thank you um councillor paul but we are at 10 30 so we do need a motion to suspend the rules such a motion in order i'll come to you councillor paul after that councillor strongberg was that a hand yeah i was just going to say um i'd move to suspend the rules to finish out the rest of our deliberative agenda this evening so you're that means you're cutting mayor weinberger's comments sorry to include the the mayor's comments as well thank you okay we have a motion to suspend the rules to complete this item and the mayor's uh remarks are is there a second seconded by councillor shannon any discussion all those in favor of suspending the rules please say aye aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we have suspended our rules to complete this item and the mayor's remarks councillor paul thanks um so uh i've you know i've gone back and forth back and forth um i i did support councillor carpenter's amendment mostly because i felt that it would it did it did offer a bit of a middle ground and i'm sorry that um seven of us didn't see it that way um i don't think that we shouldn't regulate um uh and i mean listen that there's that that is true we basically we regulate a lot um so that that argument really doesn't doesn't really hold with me i mean obviously we we all know that we regulate plenty um uh i guess all i can say is that if this does pass and it does become part of our ordinance that those people who have been who have been talking about how it will be revisited if things change i really truly hope that they really mean that and time will tell whether or not they really mean that whether or not they're going to then go back and say you know we're not we're no longer in a pandemic we need more units um or there is a new property that is built in burlington that has 400 housing units and all of a sudden we don't see the significant strain on our housing stock i mean those are just obviously hypotheticals but what i'm saying is that i really hope that people mean what they say um thanks very much thank you don't have anyone else in the queue counsel hanson and if we can just start moving towards a vote i appreciate that go ahead counsel hanson yeah i mean i just wanted to respond i think to counsel's paul's comments about revisiting yeah we've set this up in a way to revisit it but i want to be clear i agree with counsel shannon that i don't expect the housing crisis to dramatically improve in the next year so it's not that i'm and i think others have said others have characterized it as we're planning on amending it in a year i'm not planning on amending it because i think that this is necessary i think this policy is necessary giving the housing crisis and i don't expect that to change within a year what i'm saying is if it does and if we're wrong about what the impact of this and or if we're wrong about what the impact of this policy is we have the flexibility to change it but that's different from from this idea that um you know we're doing this policy and we expect to change it in a year that's not really where i'm at personally i think this is the right policy but i'm but i want to see it play out and i want to see how the conditions change and i'm open to changing the policy if things do fundamentally change or if we find that we were wrong thank you thank you counsel hanson anyone else okay not seeing anyone so we'll go to a vote will the city clerk please call the roll councillor barlow no councillor carpenter no councillor jeng no councillor freeman yes yes councillor hanson yes councillor high tower yes councillor miggy yes councillor mason councillor mason i can't hear you're sorry about that no no councillor paul yes councillor shannon yes councillor strongberg no i mean yes sorry city council president tracy yes eight eyes four nays the motion carries thank you very much appreciate all the work that was put into this from the ordinance committee as well as city staff really appreciate that thank you for all your work on this director title i know you've worked very hard to provide lots of counsel to counselors regarding a variety of different amendments and just appreciate the really strong sense of collaboration that you brought to this process and likewise i i also just want to thank scott gustin and kim sturdivant who have worked on this every step of the way as well okay sorry sorry about that i appreciate that worked as well thanks for mentioning that appreciate that great so that concludes our deliberative agenda and brings us to the last item of the evening which are the mayor's remarks on general affairs thank you president tracy first i just would like to remind everyone that time meeting day is one week from today and their continue to be many ways in which people can return their ballot um if they have received one the we at this point are not recommending that people send their ballot back through the mail but 24 hours a day they can drop off their ballots in the four outboxes that are located throughout the city they can come to city hall during working hours and on election day you can bring your ballot straight to the polls you can also go to the polls in the awards um if you've not received a ballot and register that day and get a ballot there in person i hope um that uh pro-enthonians will be spending large numbers in this election that has so much of its take to the council races as well as five ballot items um i also did want to take this opportunity to reiterate um number of the comments that i made uh with the announcement last week that director taisha green would be living the city director taisha green has been a outstanding first leader of the reid department i am grateful for taisha's service to brolington and for her dedication towards making brolington a more inclusive and equitable city for black and brown brotonians taisha has been a tireless fearless leader throughout her time in brolington and i will greatly miss having her perspective and candor on the city's leadership team racial equity work is challenging it will be even harder without taisha here but in her nearly two years with the city she built a very strong foundation for the reib department and will continue to push forward with racial justice and equity work on many fronts i'm committed to working with taisha through her main remainder of her time with the city through march 10th to ensure a transition to new reib leadership so that this team can continue to do support work thank you president tracy thank you for that mayor we are now done with our agenda so motion to adjourn is in order so moved moved by councillor jeng seconded by councillor stromburg any discussion all those in favor please say aye any opposed passes unanimously we are adjourned at 10 40