 Hey everyone, welcome. Sorry, we've had a last-minute tech issue and a change of staffing, but welcome to the NPA 23 meeting for July. Thank you for coming out on a beautiful July evening. I'm Molly. I am a Ward 3 steering committee member for for this meeting. So let's get this meeting started, huh? We're gonna try to stay on time today. We'll see how I do. So we are joined here by a number of other steering committee members. I'll have them introduce themselves. We have Roxanne. You want to just say what word you're part of and your last name, because I don't know. Yeah, I'm Roxanne Muse. I live in Ward 3 and I just joined the steering committee and I'm gonna try really hard to be a good timekeeper tonight. Great. Thanks so much for volunteering, Roxanne. That's awesome. Behind the camera, we have Charlie Giannoni. He is in Ward 3. I guess I won't make him interrupt his important job. And then in the kitchen, we have Jess Hyman. She's also Ward 3. She's amazing. She's taking on cooking and steering committee. She's incredible. We have a number of other steering committee members, but they aren't able to join us here in person tonight. We are in pretty desperate need of Ward 2 steering committee members. If anyone has interest or has a friend they want to bug, we could really use some more Ward 2 residents on our committee. So please speak to any of us if you're potentially interested. We could tell you all about it. We aren't gonna have an August meeting. We're gonna take the month off. Enjoy the summer and we'll be back in September on September 8th with another amazing community dinner. So please join us then. If you have any ideas for agenda items, we're always interested and they can be, you can just email us directly or you can submit them via the CEDO website. Recordings of all of our meetings can be found on YouTube and CCTV's website. We're very interested in hearing feedback on these meetings, how they can be better, and we have an active survey that we're asking for responses. So there's a very long complicated URL on your agenda. If you go to the city's website or our website, that link will also be there. And just a reminder when you're speaking please identify yourself by your name and your ward and please speak in to the microphone so that we can hear you and the people on the TV can hear you. We do have a Zoom audience, but we had a last-minute change in our Zoom link, so they'll probably be late in joining us. So Sam, please let us know when we have people on Zoom. So with that, I'd like to open it up for public forum. If anyone has any anything they want to share with the group, please come up to the mic and share it. And please keep it to two minutes so that we have time for everybody. I'm here on behalf of the Ramble. Maybe we can make announcement type things in the middle after we get joined by more Zoom folks. If possible, but I just want to let folks know the event sign-ups. First of all, it's happening Saturday, July 30th. Lots of big plans. Field days is going to happen, Decatur Fest is going to happen, the One World Market, the Roundup. It's going to be fun. Thank you in advance. And people who are interested in hosting events, we have two forms on the website. And the website is www.theRamble.org. So that's an easy one to find. And on there are different forms. If you are sure you're having an event, please fill out the form. Let us know. We want to put you on the map. When I say map, I think it's going to be mostly a QR code that brings you to the website for a Google map that Roxanne started like, what, seven years ago or something? Okay, seems like a long time. And if anybody has an idea and they're not sure if they can or if they need help or they want to do something but they don't have a place or they have a place but they're not really into coming up with like an elaborate plan. We have this other form. We're calling it the TBD, the 2B Determine. We're trying to match folks up, find different resources. And then of course there's a form to volunteer and of course there's a form to sponsor or make any kind of donations. Anything is appreciated. Thank you. Especially if you're good at manning bouncy houses and children that bounce in the bouncy houses. Thanks so much. Thanks for your awesome work organizing. Very cool. Nice. Thanks so much. I don't think we'll have time for another round of announcements. So if anyone has anything else to share, please do it now. Okay, so I'm Charlie G Ward 3 in the Steering Committee and I just wanted to let people know that right now we're using a really small television monitor. It looks like it's 48 inches or less and so the the intention is to get a much larger one like a 76 inch one so that people in the room it's easier for people in the room of this size to be able to see it. So I'm just letting people know that we're probably going to be spending or I'm going to propose that we spend some of our money allocated from the city to buy a much larger television monitor. We might be able to get it donated. It might cost a couple hundred dollars. It might cost five hundred dollars. But I think for the benefit of the Old North End Community Center, we need to get a bigger monitor because right now what they're doing is they're carrying it from the third floor down to here every time it needs to be used in this room and it would be better just to have one in the room that just stays over in the corner and doesn't get moved around a lot. So I'm just letting people know we're going to be making hopefully making a purchase in the near future for a bigger monitor. Thank you. Great. Thanks Charlie. Anyone else for Public Forum? Yeah, we're aware of that Barbara. Sorry for the tech glitch. Glad you were able to join us. Okay, anyone on Zoom with with Public Forum? Okay. Great. Sam, do we have Tony with us on Zoom? Okay. Great. Well, with that, I think we're going to change up the agenda a little bit. We don't have the first presenter with us because he was going to present via Zoom and we had a last-minute Zoom change. So let's rearrange our agenda if we're able. Do we have Ted Kennedy here? Oh, sorry. No, we don't. Okay. Do we have Erin Ardeo? Yeah. Awesome. Hi, Ryan. And do we have Kate Logan? Okay, awesome. Would you three be willing to have your forum first? So that then hopefully we can get back on track with people showing up for their agenda items. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So... Yeah. Great. Thanks. Okay, great. Well, if you three could move up here, I'll move aside. So the only problem with starting with them early is that they're not going to appear on the archives of CCTV or will they? No, I guess it's okay. I guess I'm overthinking it. I'm sorry. Okay. Great. Great. Thanks for thinking it through. Okay, please stand by while we get everyone organized. Okay. Do we have any questions? I guess that's fair. Yeah. And they're probably fairly like standard. Oh, do you want to do something else? Well, we have Tony now. So we could do Tony's agenda item. But you're welcome. Oh, yeah. No, happy to wait. Okay. Thank you so much for being here. Okay, everyone. We have Tony was able to join us on Zoom so we can actually go back to the original agenda and do his presentation on North Street Safety Plan proposal. So thank you for bearing with us. Yeah. Sorry, Tony was able to do his presentation. Sorry. So Tony, welcome. I'm glad you're able to join us. We have 15 minutes total for this presentation. So how many of those would you like to have for your presentation? How many for questions? And I think you're on mute, Tony. Still on mute. Okay. 10 minutes and then give five minutes for comments. Okay, great. This has been a challenge. Tonight, nothing like new Zoom and it may be either changing Zoom or actually changing to another software. So this seems sort of normal right now. The idea of a North Street Safety Plan study actually arises out of what we've learned over the last couple of years. Both in the city as well as the state and at the federal level that we're way behind on safety. And more importantly, it's the poor areas. It's the areas with the minority populations that have almost by default become a center of transport racism and color injustice. Our historic Old Haven Main Street, which is Forestry, is tested with five of the 16 West End high-crash intersections that cost us about 4.3 million a year. Each high-crash intersection has at least half an inch in here. This is one of those intersections. And I remember sitting there at Nun Young's, you know, watching the only one in the coffee, watching your parents hustling their kids to school. And I sort of didn't think too much about that until more recently when I realized that the reason they're doing it is there's no safe route to school on North Street, all the intersections are dangerous. And a few months ago, the Forest School proposed by watching just a branded dance by the retired guard that was going on in the traffic and helping kids get across the street. This is no longer acceptable. We know very cheaply how to basically remediate these intersections with roundabouts that cut basically injuries by 70% and serious ones, 90%. And it's cheap. The public works can do this with jump change. Our public works department has 20 intersections on mostly 25-mile streets like this. They haven't addressed a single one of the unsafe intersections in the last decade. And everybody I've talked with who lives along the street or knows those who do, are well aware of the crashes, the injuries, and the dangers that occur at these intersections. And I think Bane Jacobs said it right, which he said, do you understand cities you have to get out and walk? Now, this is the North Street, here is North Avenue, and the High Crash Intersections are parked, as you would expect, North Champlain. This is obviously North Winnowsky. And also, we're going to catch North Union Street is also a High Crash Intersection. The only intersection that isn't by the crashes, at least on the state list, is the one everybody talks about, and that's the Elmwood complex there. In part, I think that maybe because that's not on the state system, they may not even examine that for safety. The Burlington Transportation situation, we have basically 150 injuries a year, basically three a week. One of those injuries is either a pedestrian or a bicycle, and the other two are car accidents. Nationally, we have 21,000 excess dead each year. It used to be number one in safety, now we're 18, and another 80,000 serious injuries. The increase in PED deaths since 2010 of 50%, two of those deaths occur here in Burlington. The point is, it's got to be safety first, and we need to do a safety study of this street. Two actions are needed actually at the state level. We're sure we have some legislators here. We're going to talk about this a little bit. We need to enable cities and towns to set street speed limits down to 20 miles an hour. 25 is too high for the busy streets like Morris Street. And until we are allowed to lower our speed limits, and then secondly, enable automated fixed and mobile ticketing systems, so we can enforce those speed limits, that is part and parcel of a second major piece in reduction of crashes and injuries. First is getting the right infrastructure, secondly is getting the right enforcement. Our base, again, the base inventory of injuries is about 150 a year. You're going to talk about people in cars. Everybody's worried about pedestrian devices, bicycles, but two people in cars are injured every week, and so I'm sort of, not that I'm concerned, I'm as concerned about an injury to a person in a car, or a bike, or on on foot. This is, I want the mother to go in this entire document that will be put online, but basically in Burlington, we have 20 high crashes sections, almost all but one signalized. They are mostly in the downtown, Old North End, and King Naval, what is your price? Also, most of 25 miles of speed, so the point is the problems are densest population areas where we have both population and we have the traffic that's built up over the years, and we really haven't dealt with addressing safety. The 20 high crashes sections in Burlington average 1.4 inches a year, 14 per decade. And if we take a look at this roundabout in Manchester Center, we have now 52 years of experience that's been recorded for roundabouts. We haven't had, and we have basically, well we have 1.4 injuries a year at high crashes, intersections here in Burlington. The five downtown roundabouts in Manchester, Middlebury, and Montgomery average 1 injury a decade to give you some feel of the impact. There has yet to be, and please don't be the first one, there's yet to be a single person who has ever been as a pedestrian, ever get on the 8,000 roundabouts in the United States and Canada and killed on a marked crosswalk. Two pedestrians in Burlington were killed in the last decade or so on marked crosswalks. We have a transportation plan, it's a little old 2011. It states quite clearly that safety, and I'll quote the plan now, safety is a critical importance, particularly where walkers and bikers interact with cars and trucks. That's exactly what we have on West Street, and we need the public works commission to begin to address that. This is the intersection at the famous intersection of Pine and Maple. It's now an always spot. I'm not going to get into the parkway, in this parkway we put a brand new signal there. It makes no sense, it would decrease the safety pedestrians in for that community. So key elements in the West Street safety plan study, which only take a few months, full public engagement with the advisory committee, possible added study of the east end of the street where people concerned about comroy, by causing comroy, and also all the way up at the end of the answer. Two analytics of the detail crash and injury impact, and I think analytics would also look at the effect of remediation with a chain of mini roundabouts. This is the only mini roundabout we want. You notice the cars can actually drive over the central aisle. It's in Manchester Center. It's done very well. I don't think we've ever put an accident there. In addition to the plan study, you would look at evaluating the shift of motor potential from walk bike transit from vehicles, evaluate delayed person, estimated prevailing average speeds. Effect on, obviously, we're very concerned about the effect of climate change of any investments. And finally, mini roundabouts across the near traffic coming around. I'm really cheaty. I say that the public board of the department could use some changes to this to implement the study. We're talking about millions. We're talking about, you know, maybe 200,000 or 300,000. National issue in January was your recognition that the United States has gone for first the 18th with 21,000 excess debt on the street. Things actually got worse in 2022. I believe it or not, the highest number of road deaths in 15 years. And there will be pressure on cities like Berlin that use federal funds. You actually begin to address the high cost and the issues related not only to really three parts of the national roadside highway. My state-based study are one, preventable deaths and injuries. Number two, address climate change. And number three, the equity for low income and minority people at the same time. I'll leave it there. Great. Any questions? Perfect timing, Tony. That was 10 minutes. Thank you for your presentation. Yeah. Is there any questions or comments in the room for Tony? We have one in the room. Lucy. I live at the bottom of the street on Blodgett, which is the lower end. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. Okay. So one thing we have at lower north between Pickin and Blodgett as you're heading down towards North Avenue is visibility issues around the way the cars are parked and trying to get from those streets out to North Street. So the configuration of the parking and visibility is kind of tricky there, just as a note. And then obviously as a biker, the condition of the pavement, you know, the holes and the graves and all that stuff are really dangerous and sort of force us out into the middle of the street. So I'm sure you're thinking of those things, but I thought I would add that comment. Absolutely on the park. And we really have not looked at, there's all kinds of issues like in terms of safety for pedestrians. You don't have a car that's parked within 25 feet of a corner of the street. So the pedestrian has some visibility of approaching vehicles and vice versa. One of the worst locations in my view is Southern Grant and trying to cross green from over to the, well, whatever, used to be there. They put a good bike lane there on North Union. And you've got a car sitting right there at the corner and you've got cars, you know, parking right up at the corner and cars coming up North Union. So there's no question that the city spent the rules to try to squeeze in an extra car, an extra parking place, versus responding to the safety needs of the people on the street and that needs to change. And that should be looked at as part of the plan. Great. Any additional questions or comments? Charlie's coming up. Hello Tony, Charlie's here. So I think most people would agree that Burlington is maxed out as far as financing new projects is concerned. So do you have a general idea of the timeline of the changes you'd like to see or the survey you'd like to see done on North Street or where the funding would come from? Do you have an idea of that? Thank you. Actually, I've talked about the many roundabouts. Basically it's paint and some, you know, basically round traffic coming. But in terms of the actual study, I don't expect this would cost more than, this should be fundable within the city budget without having to go to get a special grant from the feds. If this is a safety study, the Regional Planning Commission is supposed to be feeling, supposed to be decreasing the number of people who are hurt with serious and fatal injuries. VTRAMS has that obligation. I don't see this as a problem of financing. I see it as a problem of recognition and getting a plan done. In terms of actual changes on the ground, those would be, as I said, that's jump change at public works. I mean, it was $7.7 million of construction and roundabout down there on Shelbourne Street, and that should open in a few days. I wouldn't expect it would cost $200,000 to do the five or six intersections that are targeted here. That gives you some relationship to the actual costs. And the payoff in terms of reduced injury and suffering per dollar spent would be, you know, very high. Great. I think we have time for one more question. Does anyone on Zoom have a question? Any hands raised? Nope. Doesn't look like we have any questions on Zoom. Anyone else in the room like to ask a question or make a comment? Okay. I think we're good here. Thank you, Tony, for presenting and for your work. Thank you. Thanks for the time. And I'm glad we, I'm glad we finally get on to Zoom. Glad you and me will make it. Great. Well, we will move on to starting our forums now. Do we have Ted Kenney now? No. Okay. Great. Great. Well, if we could do our House of Representatives forum then that would be awesome if you are all willing. So we'll let them make their way up here. While they are transitioning, I'll just remind everyone that the primary is August 9th, a Tuesday. The state will not be sending out mail-in ballots automatically for the primary. So you have to request them if you do want to be able to vote by mail or have an absentee ballot. So there is a very long URL on our agenda. If you would like to request one, you can follow that URL or Google. I'm sure it will come up. It's also on our website and on CEDO. So be sure to request a mail-in ballot if that's the way you would like to vote. We will have our forum for our House seat now. We are our House District elects two representatives. So two of the sign folks will be representing us in Montpelier. We have with us Joe Quincy, who is our incumbent running. We have Ryan Adario. Adario, but that was close enough for me. Nice to meet you. Thank you for running. And we have Kate Logan all running for the Democratic ticket in the primary. The way we're going to structure our forum today is that we're going to have each of you an opportunity to do introductions up to two minutes. And then we're going to have questions for the candidates. Candidates will have two minutes to each respond to the question. So please be thinking of questions that you would like to ask these candidates. And you can write them down on your note cards if you want to have me ask them. Or you can come up to the mic when the opportunity arises. For people on Zoom, please raise your hand and we'll be sure to call on Zoom participants in a rotating order. And then we'll give 30 minutes to this forum and then at 5 of give you two minutes to wrap up closing statements. Any questions before we start? Okay, great. Well, why don't we start with Kate for your introduction. Hello, folks. My name is Kate Logan. I use she and they pronouns. And I'm running to represent the Old North End in downtown in the Vermont State House. I'm the director of a statewide nonprofit social service network. Community organizer, a public policy analyst and a leader in movements for social, economic and climate justice in Vermont. Since 2016, I've lived in the Old North End at the Bright Street Housing Cooperative with my two children, who by next year will have both graduated from Burlington High School. I grew up in a racially, ethnically and religiously diverse working class community in the Chicago area. I'm the first person in my family to graduate from college and graduate school. And I completed my degrees studying economics, ecology, participatory democracy and human rights while I was a single parent. And I have the student loans and understanding of the social service system for low income Vermonters to prove it. Since moving to Vermont in 2013, I've been a leader in advocating for working families and helping Vermont elect diverse and progressive local leaders elected to public office. I do this because I believe that communities need their own voices represented in our legislature. We deserve to be governed by people who personally understand the everyday struggles that can be addressed through good public policy. Across the political spectrum, most Vermonters want to live in thriving and welcoming communities. Often what has gotten in the way of this is political leaders who are a little bit out of touch with everyday Vermonters. Those who are suffering from unjust and inequitable policy deserve a voice in the state house for them and the opportunity to be more deeply involved in shaping policies that impact them directly. By working together across difference in power and centering the needs of those who have been historically marginalized, we will achieve our vision for Burlington and our state. Thanks. Great. Thanks so much, Kate. I should have mentioned that Roxanne here is keeping time, so if you hear her buzzer go off or she starts waving at you, it's time to wrap it up. You did perfect. Great. Great. Jill. Thank you. I am Jill Kroinski. I'm your current state representative along with Kurt McCormick and Kurt has decided not to run again and is just deeply grateful for all your support. He couldn't be here tonight, but I just wanted to share that with you. I am current, I've represented this district for about 10 years, and I'm also serving as the current speaker of the Vermont House. I am running for reelection because I believe that we need an economy that works for everyone and that we need a COVID recovery plan that leaves no one behind. And I have a track record of getting tough things done. I think that we need to continue to focus our work on affordable housing and childcare. We need to continue to push this administration to do more on climate change and we need to do more on gun violence prevention and we need to do everything in our power to protect reproductive rights. I spent nearly eight years working at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England ensuring that we could do everything in Vermont to make birth control and abortion accessible to everyone, no matter what life situation they were in. And I was part of the movement in 2019 when we saw Trump having Supreme Court nominees to make sure that we did everything to codify, row in Vermont statute and now move this constitutional amendment, the reproductive liberty amendment forward. That is going to be on the ballot in November, so I really hope that we can count on your support for that. I live on the old North End on Spring Street with my partner Tim and our pup, Murphy Brown. So you may have seen us walking around the neighborhood. We love our community. That's why we restored an old house on Spring Street that we're now living in and I would be honored to have your vote to go back to Montpelier. So if you have any questions, please go to my website, JillKrowinski.com and also we'll stick around after this if anyone else has questions. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Jill. Ryan. Hi, everyone. I'm really glad to be here. My name is Ryan Adario and I live in Ward 3. I live on Main Street right downtown and I use... Okay, great. I was an actor, so I tend to eat the mic. I live downtown. I use he-him pronouns and Jill gave me a call in June and asked if I would throw my hat into the ring once Kurt decided that he wasn't going to run again. I'm really honored to have both of their support. Kurt is serving as my treasurer and I've really been enjoying getting out there and talking to neighbors, especially in the old North End because I live downtown. My background is in affordable housing. I worked for Champlain Housing Trust for a number of years and also at Steps to End Domestic Violence. For the last three years I have been doing communications and development for Lyric Theater Company, which was very exciting during the pandemic to be working in live theater, but we made it. I am running because I always think about what my mom used to say, which was no one's asking for it to be easy, but it shouldn't be this hard. I don't want to help families live the kind of life that I get to live in Burlington. I think through my work I've been able to interact with folks that don't share the same way of life in Burlington that I have and I'm so grateful to have. So I'm really committed to affordable housing, not just because it's my background, but because I think that is kind of the key to a lot of our issues. I think it's the key to COVID recovery. I think it's the key to the opioid crisis. We need to invest in reimagining our physical infrastructure and also investing in new permanently affordable housing for all. I think every Vermonter deserves to live with dignity in secure housing. And I also want to just echo what Jill mentioned about the reproductive liberty amendment. I know a lot of people are terrified after the Supreme Court decision. I am too and I urge you to vote yes in November, no matter what happens in the primary. Thanks. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for all of your introductions. It's nice to meet you. We'll open it up to audience questions now. So we'll start with a question from the room and then ask Zoom for a question. So does anyone want to shoot their hand up first? Well, we're waiting for people to raise their hands. There was a request to have another announcement about the ramble. So the ramble is happening on July 30th. You can go to the ramble.org to sign up and get more information. Got you. Good job. Thanks for not hearing your ramble. Does it help for us to be on the mic? Does that help for other people on the Zoom to hear? Yeah. Hi, all. Thanks for running. So as you know, we are suffering badly in Burlington and Wunewski with the F-35s. And I wonder if you see any role at all for the legislature in pushing to end the basing here to have those military jets leave the area. Thanks, Lucy. We'll start with Jill and then go to Ryan and Kate. Thanks, Lucy, for that question. So what I have learned when we first found out that the jets were going to be based here, I reached out to our federal delegation to find out what our role is as a state and how much authority do we have. And what I found out is that we do not have jurisdiction over the F-35s. It's a federal program that's run through the United States Air Force. And so we can send the federal delegation or send the federal administration our concerns and complaints. But year after year, we just don't have authority in the legislature to make change. Now what we can do and what we have done is invested in weatherization for homes that are impacted by the sound. So it's this great two-fer that we're insulating homes better that need to be insulated but also that helps with the noise. We also had a vote on a resolution at the end of the session just making a statement around concerns around nuclear weapons and just wanting to live in a safe place. But unfortunately, it's not in our jurisdiction. Okay, thanks. So I remember a few years ago, I didn't really understand the big to-do about F-35s, and then my office for the last three years has been in South Burlington. And now I'm pretty passionate about it. It shakes the entire building and it's awful, and I'm only there for a short amount of time during the day. I think where the state does have a role is in mitigating the impact for especially lower-income families. I think what's clear is there's a disproportionate impact on folks who can't afford to retrofit their homes to deal with the noise, the shaking, and it's also terrifying. I think we... My boss and I always like to say when the building is shaking, we're extra safe today. But that's not the experience of folks who are trying to sleep. I think especially kids. I've heard from many people that it's very scary. So I think we need to also make sure that people have the emotional support if they are struggling in their homes with it, in addition to doing everything we can to help them retrofit their homes. Kate, would you like some time? Thanks. Yeah, I would echo a lot of what has already been said by Jill and Ryan. And in addition, I live in the Bright Street Housing Co-op, which is the most recently developed champagne housing trust, affordable housing cooperative in Burlington, opened in 2016, moved in the first week. And I can tell you that we're in the flight path of the F-35. In my work as a grassroots organizer, I have worked on the F-35 issue and found the exact same thing. It's not within the state house, jurisdiction, lobbying your state legislators about removing the F-35s is not the move. However, as both Jill and Ryan have said, we can do things to weatherize and soundproof homes. We know that the folks who can least afford it are most impacted because the flight path does happen to be in some of the most low-income areas, particularly in Winooski, which is outside of our jurisdiction. But we can certainly work with our friends, like Representative Taylor Small over in Winooski, to continue to invest heavily in weatherization programs that soundproof homes, especially for low-income promoters. Great, thank you. Does anyone on Zoom have their hand raised to ask a question? Barbara, would you like to go ahead? Yes, I would like to hear how each of you feel about changing Act 250 to make it easier to loosen environmental requirements to make it easier for developers to develop. I understand the need for affordable housing in Burlington and Vermont in general. And I also wonder about if loosening environmental restrictions is the way to accomplish that. Thanks, Barbara. To clarify, was that Act 250 you were asking about? Okay, great. Act 250. Ryan, then Kate, then Jill. I don't have a ton of experience with the environmental side, but what I will tell you is, from the perspective of folks who are trying to build more affordable housing and invest in making sure that everyone is able to live safely and with dignity here, that doesn't have to be in conflict with environmental regulations, even strict ones. I think Vermont has been a leader, especially organizations like Champlain Housing Trust, as far as making sure that the way we're building in Vermont is sustainable and also that we're accomplishing the goals that we've set forth to get folks housed. So I don't think they need to be in conflict. I'm excited to dive in and learn more about this particular act, but I will, I assume Jill will probably know quite a bit about the act itself, but that's where I stand. Thanks, Ryan. Kate? Yeah, great question. I do not know as much about Act 250 as I need to know, and I think I'll probably go home and learn more about it tonight, but I know enough from working in the State House as an advocate to know that we definitely should not relax environmental regulations in order to build more affordable housing. In fact, one of the things that we know and passed the Global Warming Solutions Act to solve was that a large majority of our carbon emissions in the state come from transportation, and so if we need more affordable housing, we should be developing it densely in places like Burlington and other town centers throughout the state in places that are close to where people work so that we can reduce transportation emissions at the same time that we're building affordable housing. There are many other reasons why we should not relax environmental regulations to encourage development, which is not to say that I am anti-business. I am very, very much so pro-building a local, vibrant economy, but I do think that we can do that in a way that meets our carbon emissions goals. Yeah, and without relaxing our very high standards for the environment. Thanks, Kate. Jill? Hi, Barbara, thanks for the question and it's nice to see you. So Act 250 is the rules and regulations that we have set up in our state to protect the environment and ensure that we're making strategic decisions around how we develop businesses and housing across our state. And over the years, we've been trying to modernize it and unfortunately the governor has vetoed almost all of our Act 250 updates. One thing that we worked on this legislative session in working on our affordable housing bill is finding a way that we can make it easier around Act 250 in designated downtown areas that already have robust permitting and zoning departments set up. Because the whole point of this is to ensure that we're building in a smart way that we can protect consumers and make sure that they have access to what they need. So we did this change in S226 which did pass as part of our larger affordable housing bill and that the governor did sign into law. So, Barbara, we did do some of what you're mentioning but we did it in a very narrow way to ensure that we can continue to build smartly in an environmentally friendly way. And there are other tools in our toolbox as well that we can do to ensure that we're building affordable housing in the right place for the right people and that is a lot of the work and investments that we did this legislative session. Great, thank you. Is there a question in the room for the candidates? Great, go ahead. Hi, thank you for running. My name is Helen Reed and I live in Ward 2 and I serve on the Robbins Nest Board which is right out here. This is the child care center here in the Old North End. My question is about funding for the child care system. So our budget at Robbins Nest is incredibly tight and we've benefited over the last couple of years from COVID relief dollars and we're coming to the end of that money and the buffer that that money has provided to us. Can you talk a little bit about how you plan to, if you plan to, stabilize the child care system in Vermont and really invest in our youngest Vermonters? Thanks. Thanks. We'll go Kate, Jill and Ryan. Yeah, thank you so much for bringing up this very important issue. This is one of my passions, actually, is early child education and care. That's what I wrote my dissertation on and my first work in the state of Vermont was as an intern for a number of different early childhood education and care organizations including Vermont Birth to Five. And in terms of what I would do personally to stabilize child care funding, I will say I would be one of 150 legislators and I would certainly work very hard to support the funding for early child education and care. I do think it is, we're long past due for significant investment in early child education and care. It should be universal. It should be high quality. Child care educators should be paid like educators. And we will need to raise new sources of public revenue in order to do so. I'm not sure, aside from increasing the top brackets of the income tax to make our effective tax rate for Vermonters equitable. Right now, lower income Vermonters actually pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes across the board. I think that we'll have a tremendous amount of tax revenue coming in from the legal sale of recreational cannabis. We need to be creative and start finding new sources of funding such as state bank, for example. But that really depends on there being enough votes in the state house to pass it and a governor who won't veto it and the ability to pass it without a pass of veto override. Thanks, Kate. Jill? Thanks, Helen, for the question. And I have to say Robin's Nest is so, it is just imprinted in the fabric of our community and all the great work and services they provide. So really proud of Robin's Nest and that it's in our community. We're very lucky. So this affordable child care has been a top priority for me in the legislature my entire time, especially as Speaker of the House. We, a couple of years ago, put into place in legislation a multi-year plan to tackle affordability and accessibility and quality for health care centers in our state. This past year, we really focused on workforce development. As you know, child care centers across the state really struggled through COVID and they were already struggling before. And so the impact was huge. So we invested millions of dollars for direct support to child care centers, support for providers to go to school to attain the next level of accreditation that they need, and provided grants for centers to use for recruitment and retention. So we really focused on supporting them in the workforce way. The way that we thought about families was really important to ensure that we are providing support on both sides. So not only the child care centers, but the families. And so I was proud to push forward and achieve into law an earned income or a tax, child tax credit that gives families $1,000 per child, five and under. And that is law now, which I think will be tremendously helpful. We expanded the earned income tax credit for children and also passed a COVID family leave policy. So if you have COVID and you can't be at work, you can be covered for that amount of time, up to 40 hours to recover. Moving forward, I'll continue to advocate for funding for child care and paid family leave. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Ryan. Thank you. So I actually, Jill and I first met when I was working at Champlain Housing Trust and we were fundraising here. And I worked really closely with the Robins Nest team to fund the capital campaign. And it is such an institution here in Burlington. And there are places like that in every community in Vermont that are really doing the work. And if we don't fund not only the actual organizations, but the people who work there, we're setting our kids up to fail. That said, a lot of people don't have access in the first place to this kind of child care. I also just want to say that the part that's a real sticking point for me is that because we don't have universal child care, we're leaving about 5,000 people disproportionately women out of the workforce. It should be a choice if you stay home with your child. It shouldn't be because you have to. It shouldn't be because there's no other option. So I think Jill and Kate and I are all swimming in the same direction on this. Obviously we want to fix this. It's vital for our communities. And it's vital for the future of Vermont. I think we lose young people in this state all the time. And things like this tell me as someone who's thinking about starting a family possibly in the next few years, is this a good place to raise my family? I want to make sure that that piece is in place in order to make this somewhere where people can raise families successfully. Great, thank you. Let's see. Do we have any questions on Zoom? Anyone who'd like to ask a question, just raise their hand. Ginger, would you like to ask a question? I would. I'm always concerned in the housing question. Affordable. It often excludes the people at the bottom. And at the end of June, we just saw the people who were housed turned out. And we're seeing the results of that on our streets. I'm at Cathedral Square and we're seeing a lot in the parks and around us. And it seems like, I know there's an overall problem, but often it's talking about people who have higher income. When this squeeze comes on, it hits people at the bottom much harder. Man, I love to see people moving here to get jobs and to find, you know, that's all necessary. But we've neglected the people at the bottom for a long time. The housing question, I was very involved with jump for many years and it was always came back to the housing question. So I want to know, I know you tried to pass things, but how to include that, how to make sure that that's an all inclusive, so it reaches right down to very basic care. Thanks, Ginger. We'll go Jill, Ryan, then Kate. Thank you. Thanks for the question, Ginger. You know, as I talk to people across out the North End, housing comes up almost every single time. And I myself have also struggled to make a mortgage or to pay rent. And this year, this was another top priority in the legislature because, again, like so many other issues, the housing crisis was an issue before COVID and then COVID just made it worse, right? With so many out-of-staters coming into Vermont, which is great, but a lot of the housing, especially in the southern part of the state, was bought by out-of-staters forcing some local people out and having to move out farther. And so I've heard and had a lot of conversations with folks in the southern part of the state about that. But going back to what we did this last legislative session, we invested hundreds of millions of dollars in different ways. First of all, in first-time homebuyer grants to ensure that everybody has access that are forgivable. We did investments in housing specifically to be built for low and middle income Vermonters. Really had strong tight guardrails on that language to ensure that we weren't making it exclusive and that it was accessible to everyone, no matter what their income is, to get them access to housing. And then another issue that we worked on in regards to housing is workforce. We have a workforce shortage when it comes to plumbers, electricians. I mean, think about just those who've been trying to get someone to come out to their house to do a renovation, right? Like the wait list, the wait time is so long. So what we did is we invested into programs for free tuition and critical careers like plumbing, like electricians and others to help build the bench and get more providers out there. So I'm proud of the work that we did to make housing more affordable and I will continue to focus on that work. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you so much, Ginger, for asking the question. First of all, I feel you because I live downtown and I can sense the shift since folks lost that emergency housing recently. It's palpable. And it's unacceptable. I think in a state where we have this much wind behind Democrats and progressives, there's no reason why we can't get it done here. You look at states where they have decided to solve the housing crisis and if they can get it done there, I think we can certainly get it done here. I have been in the rooms on both sides of the equation representing affordable housing providers and also representing folks where it is the most miniscule amount of money that is the difference between someone being unhoused and housed. But I want to make it really clear that the biggest part of the equation is that it's permanently affordable. Getting someone into a home is not a solution for very long. You need wraparound services to make sure that folks stay housed. It's a huge transition to go from being unhoused. We also need to make sure that we're investing in all parts of the portfolio. So that is the one good part of the news about housing is that investment anywhere across the spectrum will help everywhere. So I'm with you. I think we need to make sure we're getting people housed and that there's ongoing support. And there are a lot of organizations that are doing that work. But I think it's an issue that impacts, as I stated earlier, it's an issue that impacts every facet of life. Housing is healthcare. Housing is safety. And it's also going to help our education system, making sure that kids can stay in the same district without having a tremendous commute. It's all related. And I think we need to prioritize housing before honestly anything else in the state at this point. Thanks, Kate. Yeah, thanks so much, Ginger. I have a question. I believe that housing is a human right and that housing should come first in my day job. I work with youth experiencing homelessness. I lived in Portland, Oregon during the time that Dignity Village came into full existence as a cooperatively self-managed and partially publicly funded housing model for those experiencing chronic homelessness. I'd like to see this model implemented in Vermont, particularly in Burlington, as it increases independence and dignity for those experiencing homelessness. I'd rely upon expert advocates to more fully develop my position on this, but I'm a strong proponent of that model. Further, as a resident of a permanently affordable non-ownership housing cooperative, which is a mouthful, the Bright Street Housing Cooperative, developed by Champlain Housing Trust, I would like to see this model aggressively replicated throughout Vermont. It eliminates the landlord-tenant relationship and still allows utilization of Section 8 vouchers and other sources of public funding for affordable housing. Vermont needs to invest even more to guarantee housing affordability in the state. Public housing, which is more of a federal issue, frankly, is likely a crucial aspect of full implementation of a housing guarantee, and so I'd love to work with our federal delegation on building new public housing once again, and additionally, moving towards more equitable state investment for housing access across the board would require subsidizing mortgage fees and guarantees for members of historically marginalized groups so that we can expand also community land trust capacity for shared equity models for single family home ownership. Great, thank you. Our time allotted has flown by, so we'll move on to closing statements. So if you have up to two minutes to say whatever else is on your mind, so you'd like us to know, and we'll start with Ryan and then go to Kate and Jill. Sure. Can you actually pass the water? Oh, yeah. Thank you. Here you go. Sorry, I didn't know I'd be first. Good. Okay, now I'm good. Now I'm ready. So as I said before, I'm running because I want to ease the burden on a lot of our working families here in Vermont. I am so grateful to live here. I'm so glad that a decade ago, my partner said let's move north, and we did, and I haven't looked back. I really treasure my experiences here working with folks that are on such a fragile edge. I see the businesses in our downtown, and I know that if you work there, you can't afford to live here, and it shouldn't be that way. If we are using your labor in this community, you should be able to afford to live here. I feel really strongly too, and I don't want to miss the opportunity to make sure that everyone votes yes in November for the reproductive liberty amendment. Prop five, vote yes. Everyone, we all need to commit to it. I think Vermont is a model for the rest of the country. We've done it before on many other issues, and I think particularly on this one, we need to show that it's possible, that it's popular, and show other states how we can get it done. I think that's the best way we're going to help our neighbors around the country is by voting yes on Prop five, and I really hope that you'll reach out to me, Ryanforrep at dmail.com, or go to my website, ryanadario.com. I really want to hear from you. I want to know what you're afraid of. I want to know what you're excited about in our community, and I'm grateful to be your neighbor, and I hope I can count on your vote to represent you in Montpelier next year. Thanks, Ryan. Kate. I'll just keep it really brief. I've said a lot already. I hope that you know that voting is on August 9th for the Democratic primary for this race. You can order a ballot and vote early if you don't want to vote in person or can't vote in person, and you can find those instructions on the Internet, or by looking on my website. It is kateloganforhouse.com. There's also a clipboard that will be going around the room that has QR codes and a sign-up sheet. If you're interested in the campaign, you can also find all of that information on my website. Again, that's kateloganforhouse.com. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, and a link to my email, which is kateloganforhouse.com. It's also on my website. I'd love to talk with you, answer any questions you may have, and I do hope that you'll plan to vote for me on or before August 9th. And thanks so much to both of you for running. Thanks for organizing this today. This is great. Thanks, Kate. Jill? Thank you. So like I said in the beginning, I'm passionate about returning to Montpelier, so I can continue the work to build an economy that leaves no one behind and to continue our COVID recovery that focuses on affordable housing and childcare, ensuring that we're doing everything we can to tackle climate change. And like you've heard tonight, the constitutional amendments are really important, and I hope we can count on your vote on those. That's the Reproductive Liberty Amendment, and then the Prop 2 is the amendment to prohibit slavery in indentured servitude in our state. Those are really critical. I don't think I can wrap up without just addressing some of the violence that we have been seeing in our community and how hard that has been. We passed a law this year that closed the Charleston loophole that expanded extreme risk protection orders and did a couple other things. But that work, we can't end. We have to keep on addressing gun violence in our state because what we're seeing in the Old North End is not okay. And I can't believe that I texted a friend and said, are you okay? And he said, no, that was me, that was hit. It's happening to our neighbors. And so we must take action. We have to take action at the city level and we need to take action at the state level. So again, I'm Jill Kerowinski, and I hope I can count on your vote almost at September. August 9. Thank you. Great. Thank you all. Thank you so much for running. Thank you, everybody. Great. We will transition to our state, our Chittenden State Attorney debate. We have Sarah George, our incumbent, and Ted Kenny running for that Democratic primary in August. So if you two want to make your way up to the front, we'll just transition. Great. Thank you both for making the time to join our meeting tonight. We will follow the same format that we did for the previous forum. So we'll have two-minute opening statements and then we'll have questions from the audience and from Zoom that will each have two-minute responses from both of you. Any questions before we start? No. Okay. Great. Well, Sarah, why don't you start? All right. Thank you. Thanks for having us. My name is Sarah George. I'm the Chittenden County State Attorney. I have been a prosecutor in the Chittenden County office straight out of law school since January 2011. I became the elected state's attorney in 2017. So for the last five and a half years, I have been the elected. At nearly 12 years as a prosecutor, I have prosecuted thousands and thousands of cases from disorderly conduct to domestic violence, sexual violence, attempted murder and murder. And I've seen a lot of things that work and I've seen far more things that don't work. It's very clear to me that our system, our legal system does not provide the public safety that we have been told it provides for a very long time. And I've tried to use my discretion, my prosecutorial discretion to make our system more just and fair for everybody in it. Our system is built on a foundation of racism and classism and policies that perpetuate the same. And I have implemented a racial justice policy, a truancy policy, a non-public safety stop policy, a cash bail policy, and others that look at data and evidence-based research to determine where we're at as a state and a county. I can tell you we are not at a good place. We are second in the country for most disproportionate prison population compared to our race. In Burlington, we arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate black and brown folks at a far disparate rate to our population. And that trickles through our entire system from truancies and delinquencies, youthful offender up to criminal court. So I am running for re-election because we have a lot more work to do and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Ted? Hi. Does everybody hear me? Okay, thanks. My name is Ted Kenney. I live in Williston. I'm a native of Chittenden County. I was raised in Richmond and moved away from Chittenden County for four years so that he had a law degree. It took me four years because I had to work full-time and went to school at night, put myself through night school. I moved back to Vermont two weeks after I graduated. I did that because I love Vermont and I wanted to live my life here. I moved back to my hometown of Richmond and started my own practice. I got a public defender contract, so I did a huge number of criminal defense cases for indigent people. I also got a juvenile defender contract, so I was representing children and adults and guardians in abuse and neglect and delinquency cases, both in Chittenden County and Franklin County. The rest, I developed a successful private practice and along the way, lived a life, got married, have two daughters ages 19 and 17. My time was spent, besides doing that, being on my school board in the town of Williston, being on the select board in the town of Williston. I'm the vice chair of the select board now in Williston. In 2020, I had an opportunity to become a division chief in the Attorney General's Office for the Human Services Division. It was a welcome change and it was important work, so I did that until the beginning of this year. I'm running for state's attorney because I think we have new challenges, and I would like to present the possibility of new approaches to meet those. I think that the crime in Chittenden County overall, but in Burlington particularly, is higher now than it was in important ways. I think we need to address that, and also one thing, my political background, I've never been terribly successful as a politician, but I was the chair of the County Democratic Committee. I believe in the things that that might indicate. The racial issues are real. They have to be addressed, but we need to balance both things, public safety and racial and criminal justice reform. Great, thank you. Well, we will open it up for questions, and first we'll take any questions from the room, so go ahead and ask your question. This is a question I saw emailed. Okay, great. So go ahead. Yeah, please. Thank you very much. This is a little bit of a long preamble. This is, my name is Jane Nodale, I live on Charles Street. On Wednesday morning this week, a search warrant was executed at a residence on Russell Street, well known to the neighborhood as an active hub of illegal drug trafficking. An individual was arrested and charged with sales of fentanyl. This person was arraigned in Chittin County Criminal Court. At the time of arrest, this person was on parole for criminal offenses of heroin possession, violation of conditions of release, cocaine sale, assault and robbery, and aiding in the commission of a felony. They also had an active arrest warrant for failing to appear in court after a previous investigation and arrest in August 2021, which also resulted in charges of sales of fentanyl. This person was arraigned in Chittin County Criminal Court and is being released with a 24-hour curfew. I'd like to add that many members of the Russell and Charles Street neighborhood and Parmoy Park area have been actively monitoring this house because it has, its activities have imposed a lot of cost on the neighborhood, and especially people with children are very concerned about the activity associated with this house. My question is this, is being released with a 24-hour curfew appropriate given this person's numerous felony convictions, failure to appear on another pending fentanyl distribution charge, pending parole violation, and new felony fentanyl distribution charges? If yes, this is appropriate, can you explain why? And if no, you think it is not appropriate, but can and should have been done instead. Thank you. Great, thank you. We'll start with Ted and then go to Sarah. The difficulty with scenarios like that is there are a lot of facts that go into each case. From what I've heard, it sounds like if somebody has failed to appear for court already, has serious felony background, is a pending charge of fentanyl distribution that picks up another one, then at that point we're probably getting close to where there's going to be a risk of flight. And so, again, not knowing more, I would say probably along the lines of either an actual, and I'm very much in favor of actually cash bail reform that's been done, and I want to say that. But there are times when it's necessary, and I think this might be one of those times, or even a possibility of hold without bail. The difficulty is that if the cases are true and the parole violation is a violation and somebody has been selling fentanyl in the neighborhood, they're charged, they don't show up for court, and then they sell fentanyl again, that does ultimately say that there might be a public safety risk that a 24-hour curfew is not going to cover. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the question, Jane. You know, every case is obviously different, and the particulars of this case are a little complicated, but I also would just point out that she was released on a lot of conditions. It wasn't just a 24-hour curfew. There was a lot of other conditions of release as well that we requested and the court did impose. I think it's also telling that she is on parole. The Department of Corrections has full authority to have taken her into custody and held her as long as they wanted to. A parole hearing would be set and they could have revoked her entire sentence and had her serve that. They didn't do that. I'm not sure why. I was surprised to see that they hadn't done that, but in terms of whether or not, it sounds like the question is whether she should be held, and so under our laws, it would either be cash bail or a parole violation. A hold without bail is not an option because that is only legally allowed for violent offenses, and none of her charges were violent offenses, so a hold without bail would not be an option. And cash bail, in my opinion, would not be appropriate because she lives here. She has always lived here as far as I know, and cash bail is only for risk of flight. It is not for public safety risks. So even if I believed in cash bail, it would not, in my opinion, be legally applicable here. Thank you. Got it. That's good to know. Thank you. Hi, Ryan. Great. We'll take a question from Zoom. If anyone wants to raise their hand on Zoom, we'll take one question. Okay. No hands popping up. Any hands popping up? Any hands popping up in person? One. Oh, great. Go ahead. So I live in the Old North End, and I've lived here for 11 years in the Old North End. And I think we're in a crisis right now, and as far as public safety goes, and I'm seeing that from a lot of my neighbors and a lot of people that live in our neighborhood. And I just wonder, you know, I know, you know, there's an issue with police retaining and holding onto police and staffing there. And I just don't see any kind of enforcement going on in the neighborhood personally. And I feel like I worked with a fellow who was a Burlington police officer for eight years. It's, you know, obviously one opinion, but it sounds like there's a real, their morale is at a real low level. And it's going to be hard moving forward to retain police. And I just wonder, I know your job is working with the police and keeping rapport with them. And what are you going to do in the future to, you know, make that a position that's going to be attractive to people who are looking to relocate to Burlington and, you know, because they have to be supported. I mean, and, you know, I just want to know how we're going to do that because I know it's a complicated issue, but I feel like we're really at a kind of a tipping point here and I feel a lot of people feel that way as well. Thank you. Great, thanks for the question. We'll go with Sarah first and then Ted. Yeah, it is a great question. I think the really important part of this conversation is that it's a sort of perfect storm of a lot of bad things happening right now. We have all of our police departments are understaffed in Chittenden County. All of our police departments statewide, including the Vermont State Police are understaffed. All of our prosecutor's offices are understaffed. We've lost several people during, keep talking. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Hello? Yep. Can you hear us now, Chris? Chris, can you let us know if you can hear us? Barbara, can you hear us? Barbara, can you hear us? Chris, can you hear us? Chris, can you hear us? Great. Chris, you can hear me talking? Okay, great. Thanks for letting us know. We paused to fix that issue. So we'll let Sarah continue. Thank you. During COVID, our office has a lot, and many offices around the state have lost several employees to much less stressful jobs for a lot more money. Because we are facing a crisis right now, and you're right, it is a crisis. We have a, we have a, before COVID had 32 chronically homeless people in Burlington, which I'm sure was undercounted, and it's now 160. And as Ryan said, you know, housing is healthcare, housing is safety. If we don't start meeting a lot more people's basic needs in this community, it's not going to get better. And charging those people with low-level misdemeanor offenses isn't going to fix that. But that being said, we are doing that. And I think there is a misconception in the community that we aren't, and I know some of that is because police are telling people in our community that we're not. I've had to do a lot of work on this campaign just to tell people the truth, which is really unfortunate. But it is happening. And, you know, right now we have 421 retail theft cases pending in our court that aren't even getting set. Because we are so far behind. COVID has put us in such a difficult position. And we're just trying to focus on the cases that have the domestic violence cases that have gone up and other cases that have gone up that we want to make sure that victims are being heard as soon as possible in our court. And that has meant that other cases are taking a back seat. It has meant that we are relying on and hoping that our restorative justice programs will take on more. It is hopefully a short term. It's something that we can ultimately get ahead of. But right now we are not in that situation and we really have to focus on meeting people's basic needs. Great. Thanks. Ted? Thanks. The interaction between the state's attorney's office and law enforcement is one of the most critically important relationships in the system. So my focus would be on creating a very collaborative relationship going back and forth. The way I would describe it if it works is constructive friction or creative tension perhaps. Because the state's attorney can't be the police officer's lawyer and vice versa the police can't do what the state's attorney can't order the police around. I will say in Williston actually we are not short of police officers. We actually did a good job of keeping them retained with bonuses when things were getting really rough. But the bottom line is that the relationship is very important. And one thing I have learned from my various roles in charities and in the attorney general's office and in my municipality is that when a group of people is not coming to you you got to go to them. If that's what's happening then that's what I would do is go to them not to give away things or agree to do things that I don't think are right but just to go and make sure that they are listened to and that they feel that they've been listened to. So I think the communication is critically important. Great, thank you. Any questions on Zoom at this point? Not seeing any hands. Any questions in the room? Yeah, go ahead. Hi, my name is Rachel Jolly. I live in Ward 3. My question has to do around the intersection of mental health and criminality. I work at the Community Justice Center. We're seeing a huge rise in cases where mental health was an absolute factor at play when the crime was committed. So I'm curious about what you think this office can or can't do around that intersection and or other ideas for investments around this area, you know, around that intersection. Thanks. Okay, we'll start off with Ted and then Sarah. Thanks. That's an issue that's very dear to me as well. Going backwards in time as the division chief and the human services division for the AG's office, one of the departments that the lawyers that I supervised represented was the Department of Mental Health. And, you know, I had access to any number of cases where they would say, yes, the person has a mental health issue, but that is not the cause of their criminality. I always was a little bothered by that because it seemed like it was a way to stiff arm because we just don't have the resources. Going further than that, I'm the last of eight kids and we had significant mental health issues in my family. My first and third oldest brother were paranoid schizophrenic. My oldest brother became homeless and died in Central Park in New York City. He was murdered when I was in college. They never found out who did it. I always assumed the person who did it was mentally ill and I've always remembered that and done my best to forgive that person, whoever he or she is. We don't really have a mental health delivery system in the state of Vermont right now, in my opinion. We shut down the state hospital. I used to visit my brothers at the state hospital when I was a kid. I could tell stories that I find to be funny, but other people find probably are disturbing. But when that hospital closed down, we were supposed to go to a community-based mental health system. And it seems like we didn't really do that. All we did is save the money. The problem is the state's attorney's office does not have any direct control over that or housing or feeding people or any of that stuff. But what I would do is advocate as strongly as I possibly humanly could to the legislature, to people who have the reins of power, who have the levers that they could actually pull to recreate a system. So we don't have people staying in the emergency room at the UVM Medical Center for three or four or five or seven or ten days or more because there's no bed available for them and the havoc is going to be sent back to the community because of a mental health issue that hasn't been addressed. Thanks. Sarah? Yeah. Our mental health system in Vermont is incredibly inadequate. I have not been quiet about that. I've made decisions on cases in hopes of putting a lot more pressure on the Department of Mental Health and our mental health systems. And every time it seems like it is met with a lot of resistance and because it costs money. And instead of spending the money to invest in more mental health services, like always we expect that prosecutors are going to fix this problem, that police and prosecutors are going to fix it and absolutely does not work. I think that one of the best things that we have in Chittenden County now with DUP and use as much as possible is our pretrial service organizations and our pretrial monitors to try to connect people with those services while their cases are pending. We've seen really incredible success with that. But there are so many limitations given the staffing and resource issues within our community partner organizations. We, as I said, rely a lot on our restorative justice programs but there are some people whose needs are too much for them and we need an additional step. When we do charge those people because it's not appropriate for restorative justice or they're unable to do it, we do try to connect them with a pretrial monitor so that they can engage, try to engage them in services while their cases are pending so hopefully they don't continue to pick up more charges. But again, this idea that people with significant mental health issues that are picking up offenses are somehow going to be fixed by arresting them and putting them in jail without addressing the underlying mental health needs while the cases are pending is a flawed system and we need to do a much better job at meeting those needs in the community quickly and whenever we can. Thanks. I think we have time for one more question. So let's check in one more time on Zoom. If anyone has a question on Zoom, please raise your hand. Does anyone... I have a question for Megan. We'll give Megan the last question. What things you might not agree on. Thanks, Megan. We'll start off with Sarah. I mean, I worked with Ted for years as a Deputy States Attorney. Great respect for Ted as an attorney. I don't... I think the major ways that we differ are that he disagrees with some of my policies. He seems to agree with a lot of the stuff I'm doing, but maybe not the way that I'm doing it. I don't back down when people push back on some of the policies that I've done. As a woman in this job, I face incredible pushback that my predecessor never did and so I don't come out with policies unless I know that they are data-driven and evidence-based and sometimes people don't like to hear the numbers. It's the racial disparities of how our legal system actually plays out are sometimes hard for people to hear, but the people that are most vulnerable and are consistently oppressed by it know very well. And, you know, I tend to think about them and how long they've been oppressed by the system and try to come up with situations that will make our system more fair and equal. That's, I think, the biggest difference as it appears to me, but I don't know any, I don't know. That's what I would say. Thank you. Ted? Well, actually, I'd say the same thing. Sarah is a good person and there's nothing personal about any of this at all. It is policy. Specifically, a couple of policies that I would list. The not prosecuting cases as a presumption, it could be overcome, but presumption to not prosecute cases for non-public safety motor vehicle violations. In other words, blinker defective equipment, depending, things like that. If a law officer pulls somebody over for that and they discover evidence of a crime, certain kinds of crime, non-specific victim type crime, then the presumption is that they won't prosecute. And the reason for that is because of the racial disparities that people are being pulled over. I agree the racial disparities are there. I agree it is a horrific, terrible issue that has to be addressed with great focus. But I don't agree with the policy for a couple of reasons. I don't agree that people who don't use their blinker shouldn't be pulled over. I don't like it when cops pull me over for that. But I'm glad, ultimately, that they do it because we need to have safe roads. The other thing is there was about 40% of Vermont State police DUIs happened when they pulled somebody over when there was no indicia that the person was drunk. In other words, they weren't weaving, they weren't acting like a drunk driver. So this kind of thing. That's 40% of the drunk drivers with the evidence, the best numbers that we have anyway. 40% of those drunk drivers are going to remain on the road. I don't want that. I used to do a huge amount of DUI defense, and I know that people who are almost everybody who is a DUI person is not evil. How much time am I out? Five seconds. Anyway, but that and conditions of release and things, there are a bunch of others too. But there's nothing personal in this. I just think there's a difference in policy. Great, thank you. We'll move on. We'll move on. If you could hold it, Chris, and send it to the candidates themselves, we need to wrap up and move to closing statements. So thanks, Chris. So Ted, if you want to start, we have two minutes for closing statements. Sure. I don't think I'm going to take a full two minutes. So thank you all for coming to this. I know it's probably not everybody's first choice to be spending time doing this when the evening is good because we don't have many summer months in Vermont. I am running for state's attorney because I do want to bring a different set of ideas and a different focus to the office. Again, there's nothing personal about this, but it is a difference in policy opinion. I would like to just say in a positive way, my experience as an attorney, my experience as a criminal defense attorney, as a juvenile attorney, my experience running my own practice, my experience managing 30 people in the attorney general's office, and my experience in leadership. I was the president of the Vermont Dismiss House, which is a house that houses people just out of prison. It's a wonderful program. I was used to cook there with my kids. Got to get back to doing that when this is over. My involvement with charities like that and my involvement with public service have shown me basically that when we are confronted with new issues, we should come up with new solutions. And when we are doing that, that you basically have to wear a path in the carpet to people's door to make sure that they feel like they're part of the process. Even if their view is not ultimately accepted or it's modified in some way, people need to feel like they've been heard. I cannot promise that things are going to get easier if I am elected state's attorney. In fact, I think that we're going to have a hard time for the next 10 years, at least, in this country and in our community. And the prosecutor's office is going to be no, not going to be exempt from that. But I do want to use every degree of mind and spirit that I possess to bring a sense of public safety and racial and economic reform to the system. My Ted for States Attorney dot com, there's a Wix thing you can put questions in there for more stuff. Thank you very much. Great, thank you. Sarah? Thank you. Thank you for putting this on. Thanks for having us. I am running for reelection because I believe there's a lot more work to do. I am doing this work every day. I am really passionate about this work. I love my job, even though it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I have a staff that I trust that loves this work and I'm lucky that they love this work because it is very, very hard. And they are lawyers with $200 plus $1,000 in student loan debt that are making very little money to do it. But they're working tirelessly to try to fix a broken system and to make people in our community safe. Not just a sense of safety, but actually to make people safer. And I think that that is really hard. When you are trying to dismantle a system that was put in place 200 years ago for very specific purposes, you are always going to hit bumps and there's going to be significant pushback. I collaborate every day with law enforcement. I collaborate every day with local community partners that are doing really good work to try to house people, to try to meet people's basic needs. They are where my focus is a lot of the time. And I am also prosecuting cases. I have a full caseload. I am prosecuting the domestic violence and homicide cases in our community. I know how bad it can be. I know how much some people are suffering. But you, most of the community, we have about 10,000 to 15,000 cases a year. Most of the community hears about the bad. We have thousands and thousands and thousands that go really well and people actually come out of a system of harm feeling like they have been healed. And I focus on those, even though the media does not, and I would encourage people to, if you hear something in the community that my office is or isn't doing, please reach out directly and ask me. My email is Sarah.GeorgeEvermont.gov for work-related questions. And my campaign email is Sarah for statesattorney at gmail.com. Thank you. Great. Thank you both. Thank you so much for running. Thank you for taking the time to join our meeting. We really appreciate it. We will move on at this point to hear from our currently serving elected representatives from school boards, state, house and senate, and city council, whoever is here. So I see in the room we have a school board member. I see on zoom we have a representative. Great. Jill, you're still here. Great. So it looks like we'll get reports today from our house representatives and from our school board. So why don't we go ahead and hear from our house representatives and we have on zoom Emma Mulvaney Stanek. Do you want to give a, let's see. So we have 15 minutes left. So we'll give seven minutes to the house and seven minutes to school board. Do you want to speak for about three minutes? No problem. Yes. And is it just Jill there? Because I want to make sure, because there's a lot of us in the, yeah. Okay. Great. Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm sorry. I couldn't be there in person. I have family visiting. So I appreciate being able to jump in. I hope everyone is doing well. I'm representative Emma Mulvaney Stanek. I represent what is now culture and 17, which is west of park street over to the lake and from battery park all the way up to Leti and Ethan Allen park roughly. So that is a once, the one remaining one seat district in Burlington after we redistricted. And I'm just going to give a bit of a policy update. Three things that I want to make sure folks are aware of. Just with my state rep hat on, although I am running for reelection, this is not a campaign thing at all. So from a state rep perspective, I want to make sure folks know about a gun policy event. I'm hosting on zoom next Thursday. So a week from today, from seven 30 to eight 30 with gunsense Vermont. And also with the Vermont chapter of mom's demand action and also a national organization called vote mama foundation. And we're going to begin to explore what Vermont's policy is now, but also what these advocacy organizations really are recommending the Vermont do to really take gun policy more seriously and move us forward, at least from my perspective in ways that actually center community safety. And also understanding all the intersectionalities of gun policy, how it affects affects mental health and suicide rates and the easy access to guns and what we need to do here. So all are invited. It is on zoom again. So hopefully that's accessible for folks seven 30 to eight 30 p.m. July 21st. I'll put out on the front porch forum and the old north end Facebook group again, the registration link, because we do want to keep it a safe event. So we do ask folks to register ahead of time. So that's the first thing. The second thing is as folks might have, it's been happening a lot in the northern part of the 17 district, but it's creeping into the old north end. And this is a little bit of an overlap of sort of, I think something all elected folks should be aware of and working on and not just a city issue, but there's been an ongoing from months now, a sticker issue where there's been hateful, transphobic stickers appearing on all sorts of things up and down the bike path on street signs, et cetera. And sadly, the city has not been as responsive as many of us had would like. So a couple of things. I just want folks to know that some neighbors, at least in my neck of the woods of the old north end and new north end have been trying to really organize around bringing the city forward to really be proactive and not simply to say, we don't have the resources and personnel to remove the stickers because harm is being done to our trans neighbors. And so we're working with the city to do some restorative practice work with the CJC, but also some of us have done a go fund, have done a go fund me campaign and have some trans positive love stickers. I'll just call them. And we're just doing them out to folks. Not, I'm not promoting putting them on street signs. I'm promoting you putting them up in other places that is allowable so that folks can know in this community that we support all people, however, folks identify. And that these hate messages need to be responded to having them up for so long has been really harmful. So if folks are interested about getting those stickers for free because they've been funded by by folks who've already donated or want more information on any of that, please feel free to reach out. The third and final quick thing is one piece of policy that I'm hoping to advance and collaborate with other legislators about if I'm reelected again is to really start to think about beyond proposal five, which I assume the speaker will probably speak to as well on the general election ballot, which is the constitutional amendment to put into our constitution reproductive rights is to think a little bit more broadly about what else Vermont can be doing now that Roe v. Wade has been thrown out by the Supreme Court. And specifically, there's a piece around pregnancy crisis clinics in the state or crisis pregnancy clinics that I forget which order that the terminology goes. But a fellow representative George Till had introduced the bill last session and probably has done it multiple times before around the consumer protection piece around creating some transparency of what these clinics are. They're very predatory. They're not licensed medical facilities. And yet they really prey on low income and vulnerable parts of our population who need contraception or our pregnant and needing counsel. And yet these are really fronts for anti-abortion national and global global organizations. And so they do exist in Vermont. It's something I think we can really examine around consumer protection angle as well as really understanding or really requiring them to be transparent about who they are, what their real motives are and stop the misinformation that they often put out. Now they've gotten much more sophisticated and there's a digital component that they often do, putting up ads and other ways to click when people are Googling, as you might imagine being very stressed, trying to figure out options. These often pop up and they've been getting more sophisticated on trying to intercept, if you will, people who are seeking counsel on pregnancy and options around abortion or, again, contraception. So that's something I'm looking into. If that's something of interest to you, happy to hear your thoughts. A constituent reached out about this as well as some other folks. And again, I'm looking to collaborate with other legislators. But the simple point is there's more we can do here in Vermont and around the issues of reproductive justice. And the final thing I'll just say is beyond these crisis pregnancy centers, I think there's an economic justice angle of making sure that every Vermonter can afford and perhaps even I hope gain free access to abortion services or contraception. I'd love us to really create a state investment. So rather than sort of celebrate the fact that we have it codified in statute now, I would like us to take a step forward to really make sure that economics are never a reason that someone is faced with a unwanted pregnancy or a dangerous pregnancy, et cetera. So that's it for me. I'll pass the mic. Thank you so much. Thank you. Jill, would you like, we have about three minutes. Okay. Thank you. So again, Jill Kroinski, I represent the old North end in downtown Burlington. And Kurt McCormick is the other state rep until January. I have been focused on looking at the Supreme Court cases that have come down and how they impact us in Vermont. And Emma's mentioned one, I'll go through the list that I just really think are tackling issues in topics that we care deeply about and really need to understand how it impacts us in Vermont. So the first one is the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Emma mentioned crisis pregnancy centers. We are looking at not only the, with our legislative counsel, what the Supreme Court decision says, but also what the impact is from the executive orders, from the Biden administration, looking at those two and saying what issues are left that we have, we have not. Are there any gaps and do we need to address those? So we are doing all of our research this summer and fall to make sure that if there are gaps that we introduce something day one in the legislative session to make sure that everyone is safe and protected and has access to high quality abortion care. The second one is gun violence prevention. There was a Supreme Court case that put some guardrails around what states can do regarding gun violence prevention. And so we are doing work with legislative counsel over the summer and fall to figure out how that impacts us and what we are still able to pass in our state. That is really important for us to continue to work on and understand what we can still do. And lastly, there was a Supreme Court decision around what public education funds, how they can be used regarding religious schools. And I have some really serious concerns about that Supreme Court case and how it impacts us in Vermont. And so we are also doing that work over the summer and fall to figure out how that impacts us here in Vermont. So right now, because we're in campaign season, those of us who are still serving, will do this work over the summer and fall to research bills and then start working on what we're going to introduce in January if we're re-elected. So if there's an issue that you care about that you want to talk to me about, don't hesitate to reach out. My number is 828-2245. 828-2245. Or you can tell me. Just have a little ring to it. Or you can contact me at speakeratledge.state.vt. U.S. I know our email addresses are ridiculously long. You need to figure out a way to make it a little shorter. So thank you. I really appreciate it. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions after. Great. Thank you. We'll go ahead with Jen in the school board report. And I can't do anything concise like that. I do want to start. We have about six or seven minutes. We have about six or seven minutes. That's feels generous. And once again, best for last. So I, good news. For the first time in seven years, there is not a wait list for pre-K in the district. So there were some. Two schools. Every single school has a pre-K program. And that is going to change at some point. I'm not sure why, but I wanted to start with good news. Speaking of childcare and childcare issues. I'm mostly going to talk about the high school. There's some major updates coming down the pike on Monday, the 18th, the superintendent chair and the director of finance will be presenting an update about what's going on. I'm going to start with the BHS. Well, Burlington high school, Burlington technical center build at, at the city council meeting. And actually, I think they're doing a presentation before that at the five o'clock finance, city finance committee meeting. It's hard to know where people are at as far as new news. So, I want to go back to the high school. To remove the high bay. Technical center, programming infrastructure, whatever part of the building. From the design moving forward. We did that because Senator Leahy. Secured a $10 million. Grants or, well. at the airport. And in addition to that, beta technologies has done a written statement or in good faith been meeting with district leaders about programming being expanded, tech center programming being expanded. All of those big bay type of industrial, I don't wanna say programs again because I already said it like five times. Classes, they're really expensive to house. And the idea of taking half of the tech center school community and having them closer to industry, closer to lack of a better phrase, the action that they're actually interested in. So that sounds kind of exciting in two ways. And the other way is that it would mean bonding for $20 million less than what we're working with at this point. And speaking of money, because that's one of the main topics that school board members have to worry about. There have been a couple of new developments also in that there is a new entity called Burlington Students Foundation that not everybody can go and ask for donations. This particular thing has the right credentials to be able to take legally money on behalf of fundraising for this project. And there are state and federal opportunities that have been identified. I'm not sure. I know it's throughout July that the grant writing and everything from the angle of, oh, this is about tech education and this is about environmental protection, because we're dealing with PCBs. There's many different avenues in which they're looking into finding funding so that the burden does not fall all on the taxpayers. So the main, all of this work is going into being able to get obviously first and affordable, but I mean, that's actually kind of second to a really awesome school for the students. Second to that is affordably. And Roxanne, I'm gonna go over. Just gonna let you know. But good job being a timekeeper. I know it's your first time. And I know I waited all this time. Guess what guys, it's your turn to wait. Yeah, so back to the project. Okay, during the month of July, all of the more details about what the design entails as far as classrooms, everything, all that, the more nitty-gritty or more detail, and then it goes to get the estimates, the cost estimates then come up. And that is where the district, the board has to approve an idea of what we're gonna ask taxpayers for in the form of a bond. That has to get approved then by the city council. And it can't go on the ballot until then, but that has to, and we're talking about a November ballot, everything has to be decided by August 17th. So it's kind of unfortunate because August, September, October, that's two and a half months to fundraise, but we're still gonna fundraise. We have to ask for what we know we need, and then continue to fundraise. Is there any questions? We're gonna find more information about that. Oh, hey, that's a good question because who's taking notes tonight? Cause this is the kind of stuff where I usually send lots of links. Chris on, who's on Zoom is taking notes. Awesome. So you can speak it and there's gonna be some of this presentation that's gonna happen at city council, it's all gonna be taped as well as the board meeting. There's more than one presentation. The one for the board is a little bit more detailed than the one for city council. There's the district website. This is being coined BHS, BTC 2025. Great, any other questions for any of our elected representatives? We have one or two minutes. Hi, Milla. Oh, great. Hi. Hi. My name is Milo Grant, living board three. Not as much of a question as much as a statement given what's happened recently, the violence in our community and the things that have actually been happening for quite some time now. There's been a lot of issues around guns and there's a lot of issues around youth who are dropping out, maybe going through the remote adult learning center to get their GEDs. And I just wanna say that the high school has to be doing more to keep these students in school. Because it's in school and it's also through certain programs in the tech center that they stay involved with positive things. And also we need to make sure that they're being told and reminded of their value. That is not consistently happening. Now I had a kid go through the school system here. I know how understaffed the school system is, especially with regards to the guidance counselors. But somehow we have to touch these students. And I've had a conversations with some of them. No one tells them they can't go to college or they can't learn a trade, but no one's telling them they can. So we are missing some really vital pieces and we have some of these children who are going into young adults and they don't have the proper support. And they don't have anyone counteracting these misguided thoughts about why they feel they need a weapon that they are now going out and using. So if our local police don't understand why some of these children are out at 2.30 in the morning, that's a problem because we need to understand why they're out 2.30 in the morning. And it's kids of all races. But in particular, our BIPOC children are really, because of some of the issues that some of them have found themselves in, they're all getting profiled in a way that's not acceptable. And our department is talking in a way that's not acceptable and not solving the problem. So I really think the school has to do more. They have to, somehow we gotta figure it out. We have to do more to support these kids and keep them in school. We're letting too many of them just be like, yeah, I don't want to be bothered with that. I'll just get my GED. And so I just wanted to say that thank you for the work that you do anytime. Do you mind if I invite you to some school boards? Like just nonchalantly send you Zoom links. That would be lovely. Great. Thank you, everyone. I think with that. Okay, I briefly respond to Milo just really quickly. Okay, sure. I promise really short, because I just want to really lift up the fact that Milo, who I know is a police commissioner, and her work and what she said right at the end there around the dangerous dog whistling that is coming out of our chief of police and how dangerous that is the way that he's messaging as well as the media is picking up. It's also the media and really putting imagery and racial undertones, racist undertones to how messaging is happening. It's beyond problematic. It's really harmful. And the social equity caucus for the general assembly and the white affinity group for that caucus has just put out an op-ed that will come out next week to really connect that it's not just Burlington that this is causing harm. It causes harm everywhere in the whole state. And we really have to get real on police bias and why that is harmful. So I just want to lift that up, Milo. Thank you for your service on the police commission and us as elected leaders, especially white elected leaders have to step into that space much more. Great. Thanks, Emma. Thanks, everyone. I think with that will adjourn. Thank you for sticking it out to the bitter end and for coming out in July. It's nice to see everybody in person and we will be back September 8th. So have a great night.