 Good evening. Today is June 5th, 2023. Thank you for joining us. Thank you all so much for being here to join us both in person on online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 6, 6, 16. Before we commence with our meeting, just would like to thank the three local partners of City Place, Dave Farrington, Scott Ireland, and Al Seneca, who I believe are here as well in person with us this evening, but also for the site visit that you hosted this evening for the City Council, as well as the number of Burlington and Chittenden County legislators. It was wonderful to see the site filled with activity and the work. My understanding is there's over 50 people that are working on the site every day. So certainly exciting to see all of this happening with steel set to arrive in July and give form to our buildings. And we're all looking forward to the housing that we're going to have downtown. So a heartfelt thanks to Dave, Al, and Scott for their your commitment to this project and to our city. With that, we'll begin our agenda this evening with item 1.1, which is a motion to adopt our agenda. We do have some amendments to our agenda. Is there anyone who'd be willing to make that motion? Thank you so much, Councillor McGee. Please go ahead. I would move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows to suspend the rules and amend the agenda to set public comment for 7.50 p.m. As well as to take up item 2 ahead of public comment. Remove from the consent agenda item 6.29 First Amendment to second amended and restated development development agreement and place it on the deliberative agenda as agenda item 7.1 per City Council President Paul, per Councillor Bergman and Grant. Add to the consent agenda item 6.31. Communication, Michael Long, Re-Police Chief Appointment. Add to the consent agenda item 6.32. Communication, Jennifer A. Frankeur, Re-BTV Crime and Council Support for Citizen Safety through Essential Law Enforcement. Thank you so much. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Zhang. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes and we have an agenda. And with that, we move on to item number 2, which is a resolution declaring June 15, 2023 as frozen treat day. I will go to Councillor Travers for a motion on this resolution. Thank you, President Paul. I've moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and would ask for the floor back upon a second. Thank you so much. Seconded by Councillor Bergman. Councillor Travers, you have the floor. Thank you, President Paul. So it's my great privilege to welcome my family here this evening, including my daughter Lola Travers, who's a second-grader at Champlain Elementary in the classroom of Ms. Jacqueline Patricio, who's here this evening. My wife and I, as part of Ms. Patricio's curriculum, went in for a career day. And the class was very much not interested in hearing about my real career as a lawyer and much more interested in hearing about the work we do here on the City Council. And my wife, who works for the legislature as well, and I engaged the class in a legislative exercise where we asked them to choose something in our community that they would like to honor on a particular day. And after much debate on different options like a running day, or a say yes to kids day, or a everything, yeah, that's every day, or everything is free day. The class ultimately, after much deliberation, settled on a frozen treat day. And if the council would oblige, I know we have a packed agenda this evening, but we do have Lola and Ms. Patricio here this evening who if I could yield the floor to them for a minute or two to explain why they landed on frozen treat day, I think maybe it would be a good way to start our agenda this evening. Great, thank you. Please come and sit down, join us. You want to come forward, Lola? Oh, and yes, Lola's second grade classmate, Calder Bird, is here as well. And so Calder, if you could come forward too, that'd be great. Calder's mom Celia was here recently in her role with the Board of Health. People may recognize Celia. And we have a future, no doubt, engaged Burlingtonian here and Calder and Lola as well. So Lola, if you want to hit the button in front of you to make sure that light is green. Okay. And if you want to talk just for a minute or two about why your class landed on honoring frozen treats. My name is Lola Travers and I'm a second grader in Ms. Jackie's second grade class at Shareplace Elementary School. And I'm here to support Frozen Treat Day. Great. Hi, my name is Calder Bird. I think we should have Frozen Treat Day. Maybe Lola or Calder, could you say just maybe one thing each that you like about frozen treats? Because they're yummy and fun. Yeah, okay. I think it's a good idea because it's the end of the school year and it's a good way to start off summer with a good frozen treat. Also, I think it's a good idea because it's a good way to celebrate all our learning as we step onto another level of learning. And I think it also builds our community when we step together and have some like cold treats for fun. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here, Lola and Calder. Thank you, Ms. Jackie. Yes. I just wanted to say hello to all the counselors. Thank you so much for supporting this and it's a great way to end our learning this year. We have a new curriculum program, a new literacy program that's been adopted for all the elementary schools and our unit is jobs in our community. So this really brings a lot of real world learning for us and that's super important for them. That's what you know helps the learning stick. So I'm a big fan of Frozen Treat Day. It seems like it's accessible to all. It seems like a nice way that we can celebrate kids and all the hard work that they've done this year and start our summers off right. Thank you for your time and for listening. Thank you. Thanks so much. Yeah, we can clap again. Thank you to all of you for coming and thank you, Counselor Travers. Are there any other counselors that wish to comment on the resolution before us? Seeing none, before we go to a vote, Counselor Travers, perhaps you would want to amend your motion to request that a copy of the resolution when it is signed by the mayor suitable for framing be distributed to the class and sent to the teacher. I think that's a great suggestion and I am friendly to that amendment if Counselor Bergman is as well. The grandfather in the crowd is totally in favor of that amendment. Seeing no other comments from counselors will go to a vote. All those in favor of the resolution as amended, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please don't say no. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much to Counselor Travers, to the second grade class at Champlain Elementary, parents and teachers for joining us this evening. Thank you very much. The next item on our agenda is a work session, which is item number three, a work session on plan for homelessness and exiting the Motel Voucher Program. I believe we do have a number of presenters that are here this evening. With that, I'll hand the work session over to the mayor for the presentation. Thank you, President Paul. In a moment, I am going to ask Sarah Russell, our special assistant for ending homelessness, and Samantha Dunn, our assistant director for community works to really lead a presentation that will share with the Council what and with the public what we where we are in this in this effort. I will say since the last time we talked about this issue with the Council three weeks ago, there has been a significant a lot has changed. The legislative session ended with some clarity about resources that would be available to help with the transition of the end of the Motel program. That budget was then vetoed, leaving there some some question as to the status of those resources, but we are moving forward confident that they will in some fashion be made available. The City was along with other organizations and municipalities formally invited by the State, by the Agency of Human Services, the Department of Children and Families to be part of responding to the ending of the Motel program. What the City team has settled on and has been working hard on in the since May 22nd when that formal invitation was issued by DEC, breaks down into three areas. There are two of the areas our actions of the City has submitted now a letter of intent to pursue if we can secure state funding for which will involve the opening of a third 50-bed congregate shelter in downtown Burlington as well as an additional day station facility so that people who are unsheltered will have access to services during the day and during the period when the congregate shelter at the hours when it's expected to be closed. And then the third action is something that Burlington is doing in partnership with 26 other members of the Chittin County Alliance, Homelessness Alliance. We are expecting a vote later this week, a formal vote following a couple weeks of discussion with lead agencies in the coalition to endorse an alternative plan for the second phase of hotel exits that are currently expected for the end of July. That too is something that has shifted even in the time since we last talked and that that second deadline which was expected to be July 1 until last week has been moved back to July 28th. What you'll hear in this presentation is a proposal to extend that further with a commitment from the Alliance to focus all of its resources on housing the 165 high need households that are expected to lose their housing currently at the end of July that we are proposing an extension and a funded extension by the state transition dollars accompanied with this coalition effort to house approximately 25 households a month through our coordinated entry system. That projection that goal is not kind of taken out of thin air that is the what what the coordinated entry system has been consistently producing over the last quarter. And there's good reason to expect with the new units that are coming online in the months ahead and the general functioning of that system that it is an output that we can plan around. And with that we could responsibly end this program in approximately five to eight months beyond the the current projected date at the end of July. It would be we believe this is a feasible affordable and humane alternative to the one that has been put forward currently by the state and more excited to kind of share share our thinking in more detail. I'll just hand over one moment. The one last thing I'd like to say is as you hear this presentation I hope you will and you reflect on the actions that we've taken together over the last couple years with respect to homelessness. It to me is really reassuring that we have I guess basically I am thankful that we have together been able to take the steps that we have. It is hard to imagine how we would be getting through this crisis if we didn't have a special assistant on homelessness who is leading the effort. If we hadn't opened together over 85 low barrier shelter beds in the city of Burlington going from place where we had zero low barrier shelter beds before that if we had not together appropriated the money to open the Elmwood Avenue shelter and if we had not focused so much of our efforts on housing production that it is leading to some of the units that are coming online and finally if we had not invested in the coordinated entry system that is going to make this this plan possible we'd be in just a very different much more challenging place than we are today. So we've come a long way together on this issue already. We have some challenging months ahead but I think this is a plan to get us through it and with that I would like to welcome Sarah and Samantha to lead the presentation. So we've prepared slides for you tonight that we'll walk through that will detail some of the work that we've been doing over the it feels like a much longer period of time but it's really just a matter of a couple of weeks since things have changed. So here are some brief updates the mayor went through most of these in his opening remarks. Since the May 15th city council meeting when the resolution was approved by you all we have taken a lot of steps and a lot of things have changed. CEDO and the agency of human services are now convening regular meetings with municipalities across Chittenden County in addition to service providers and emergency responders as we we're looking forward to this June 1st deadline and now as we look forward to the July 28th deadline. CEDO continues to convene regular meetings with outreach providers to understand what's happening on the ground what they're seeing in terms of folks primarily who are unsheltered. Those outreach providers also include a group who go into motels so they're not just serving folks who are outside and unsheltered but also working with people in the motel system. We worked closely with AHS leadership to understand the scope of our challenges. We obtained data from economic services about the households who are in motels and looking at the two waves of folks who are exiting motels to understand more about what their needs might be. We have also held the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance held an extraordinary steering committee meeting on May 26th in response to the request for letters of interest from the Agency of Human Services to understand what agencies were seeing as gaps and what they might submit an LOI around and I'm going to talk a little more about that in a couple minutes. We also pulled together City Department leadership including CEDO, Parks Drug and Waterfront, the City Attorney's Office, the Police Department and the Mayor's Office to define our staff roles around the campaign response within the City and the City Attorney's Office has begun updates to the sheltering on public lands policy to reflect current practice and the expansion of support staff that we have within the City. The policy previously referred to was to my understanding drafted at a time when the CSL team was not in existence and we certainly have built a more robust support offering to folks who are unsheltered in the City and last but not least we submitted a letter of interest as the Mayor mentioned to AHS right on that June 1st deadline. So I'm going to give a little bit of data here around the motel program and for those who are not as familiar with the motel program for the who haven't been breathing it for the last few months in an effort to limit the spread of COVID the state utilized federal funding to expand the emergency motel program federal funding for this program has been fully expended and in March the agency of human services announced that the program would end in two waves as we mentioned economic services runs an adverse weather conditions or AWC program from December 15th through May 15th March 15th excuse me this program this year was extended to June 1st and in Chittenden County 170 households moved out of motels that encompassed 194 individual people none of those were children that were included in that first wave we will see the second wave of motel program closures or exits on June on July 28th this is an extension from the July 1st exit date that was originally proposed I think in part because of some of the really kind of amazing advocacy especially on behalf of the city to AHS leadership resulted in this extension in the second wave we anticipate seeing 184 households exit motels that includes 318 people total this includes more vulnerable populations which is really concerning so in this wave we're including 56 families with 115 children 15 people who are 65 years old and older 92 people with disabilities 20 people receiving home health and or hospice services two pregnant people and four households fleeing domestic violence those four households that are fleeing domestic violence have been referred to the domestic violence motel pool that's operated locally by steps and domestic violence and will not need to exit their motels at this time so on June 1st I wanted to provide an update that was just Friday it feels like a lot longer ago now in response to the June 1st motel exits the community responded in a number of ways including deploying outreach teams in a coordinated effort across the county to connect households both on June 1st and in the days leading up to the exits they conducted planning for where people would go when the program ended according to both anecdotal and quantitative data nearly 60 percent of the households that exited on June 1st did not have a plan or had a plan which included camping or sleeping in a car many were hoping to enter a shelter program that existed however with all shelters in Chittenden county at max capacity this was likely to not be an option storage solutions will need to be generated as people with people exiting had all their belongings with them and had nowhere to go and nothing to do with their items so we're working on this with CVO right now and hope to have some storage options available soon CEDO in partnership with the Chittenden county homeless alliance created a resource guide with all available bathroom and showers across the city we had a great deal of support with parks and rec rec department on that in addition there were resources for food and meals and tents and camping supplies are provided in this guide copies of that guide are available here tonight for anyone who needs them they're also available in the first ground floor of city hall and at the CEDO front desk as well some people found overall the exits last week were largely as we expected some people found temporary options with friends or family some utilized a portion or some part of a $3,000 security deposit to extend a most motel stay some are camping and some are in cars and we're continuing to gauge the impact this week on a anecdotal note just to kind of detail some of the challenges around the exits and part of what makes the July 28th date even more confusing or confusing concerning one hotel in Colchester which housed over 50 households decided to exit all of the guests under their program so even households that could have stayed until July 28th were exited and provided a notice on Friday that they had to leave this caused a lot of confusion and worry for people because they were not expecting to exit on the state and among the 18 households that could have stayed until July 28th but were exited two were very vulnerable and receiving home health services so a real strong group effort needed to come in to help to relocate all of those 18 households but especially those two they were shifted to another motel but the unplanned exit caused the teams to have to shift really rapidly so on July 28th we will see the next round of folks leave motels on May 22nd as we said earlier AHS received a memo requesting letters of interest to respond to the motel exits there was an incredibly tight turnaround on this the deadline for the LOIs was June 1st although we've heard that that'll be rolling deadline from this point forward for other folks to submit recommendations on May 26th as I said the CHCHA or Chittenden County Homeless Alliance held an extraordinary community meeting that was attended by nearly 90 participants I actually think many of you city counselors were part of that meeting as well and we learned more about the data for the households that are exiting on now June 28th we also heard presentation from AHS around the request for LOIs and learned how agencies were preparing to respond CVOEO Burlington Housing Authority Pathways and Champlain Housing Trust submitted LOIs to expand outreach and training for staff to support meals and food distribution efforts to increase case management capacity for permanent supportive housing and to expand transitional units for vulnerable households in addition as you know the city of Burlington submitted an LOI as did the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance to expand overnight and daytime shelter and advocate for motel extension for vulnerable households so the this slide really summarizes our efforts we have a robust concentration of resources including state agencies community health centers public transportation substance use and mental health providers and nonprofit organizations that support basic needs within Burlington so we expect to shoulder the bulk of the challenge caused by the sudden closure of the state motel program our community proposes a three-pronged approach which the mayor talked about in his opening that includes the expansion of emergency shelter capacity expansion of daytime shelter options for people and advocacy for motel program extension for vulnerable households with a streamlined and tightly coordinated effort to rapidly house those in motels over the next five to eight months budget projections for the overnight and daytime shelters are here on this slide and are based on estimated costs associated with capital investment staffing shelter and office supplies food and basic necessities for guests it's important to note we have not received building plans or been able to to inspect the property that we're considering at this time so those are estimates especially around the capital costs the budget projections for extending the motel stay are between 1.7 and 2 million and are dependent on availability of housing resources over the next five to eight months so going into a little bit more detail the first the first piece of the city's letter of intent was to expand emergency congregate shelter we submitted this LOI with a focus on first of all acknowledging a lack of shelter capacity within the city and an influx of folks who are coming into motels and the overnight semi congregate shelter will accommodate up to 50 guests we propose using the largely vacant state office building located at 108 cherry street due to its proximity to resources services and transportation while best practice indicates non congregate shelter is ideal in most cases this building would allow the offices to be used for shelter accommodations for up to one to four individuals planning space for staff and an onsite daytime shelter available to the community for up to 75 people while the budget provided on the previous slide is annualized the shelter is expected to operate until the adverse weather conditions go back into effect in early December the guests who are remaining in the shelter at that time will transition into motels under the awc or adverse adverse weather conditions at that time and the city due to over text community agencies and a lack of staffing capacity the city is considered working with a staffing agency to ensure safe ratios between staff and guests on site and we are in close communication with agency of human services and have not yet received confirmation that this location is approved but they are in the process of going through health and safety inspections at that building right now the next step here is around the co-located daytime shelter the budget that we submitted along with our LOI includes both overnight and daytime shelter staff case management meals and resources onsite cvoeo the operator of the daytime shelter the community resource center that is located at feeding chitin reports up to 160 visitors to their location in a day our concern and their concern as well is that with people exiting the motels this could cause an overflow of guests at that location therefore a secondary daytime location is being proposed and this daytime shelter will be open during weekends as well as during the week and would serve as an additional cooling center in summer months partnerships for medical recovery and harm reduction supports will be pursued as well utilizing the same supportive model that we've been able to build over at the elmwood shelter before i talk about the the last point of advocacy i wanted to give a brief overview of the chitin county homeless alliance for those who weren't familiar the chitin county homeless alliance or cca is our local continuum of care and is comprised of stakeholders including social service and housing agencies community members and people with lived experience of homelessness or housing and security from across chitin county in addition to the city's loi the cca cca as well as other partner agencies have submitted lois to the motel program and i serve as one of the two co-chairs for the chitin county homeless alliance and i'm also the co-chair of the strategic planning committee for the homeless alliance so i also want to provide a quick overview of coordinated entry just to make sure that we all have a common understanding of what that means coordinated entry is required by hood of all communities that receive federal funding for homeless services and rental assistance at its core coordinated entry provides a streamlined access to housing resources including assessment case management or housing navigation as we call it here locally rental assistance and homeless dedicated units we are in the early process of incorporating prevention efforts into coordinated entry as well coordinated entry ensures equity and allows us to report on the county and systems wide data and utilization once enrolled a household is connected to housing navigation services and progresses through the system ending with a hopeful exit to permanent housing all households are reviewed via a data sharing agreement by frontline staff and a week at a weekly community housing review committee where case consultation and matching of housing resources occurs so the cca um oh next slide thanks the cca submitted a letter of interest on behalf of the providers in chitin county um to us pending our final approval um sorry i should say it's pending final approval on june 8th we do have a community steering committee meeting this week on june 8th but wanted to make the june 1st deadline for the letter of interest so that was submitted ahead of this meeting the basis of the loi largely advocates for extension of the motel stay for vulnerable households that we mentioned on the first slide and proposes we will closely collaborate with housing and service providers to prioritize resources leading to rapid housing placements in permanent or transitional housing for the households in motels data indicates as the mayor mentioned that we are able to house an average of 25 households per month through our coordinated entry system in addition to expediting motel exits to permanent housing as part of this countywide collaboration the howard center has agreed to prioritize these uh vulnerable households in motels for mental health and substance use services within the loi we request funding for a full-time staff person uh within the homeless alliance to manage this process coordinate all of the work of the case managers and work directly with housing providers to match households with appropriate housing resources including available units rental subsidy and retention services when necessary we estimate if a hs agrees to extend the motel stays in the manner that we are proposing that we can house uh the 165 households from the motel program by february of 2024 um this last slide here talks about really highlights well we talk about problems a lot i don't think we highlight the hard work that we do and the progress that we make to housing um to housing folks in chitenden county um so this slide shows um that the coordinated entry has supported 166 households exiting homelessness into permanent housing um in the first quarter of 2023 um we have been able to house 81 households um in permanent housing uh which is pretty impressive considering the lack of resources um staffing capacity and um really tight housing market the spikes that you see here on this graph indicate uh when a new housing development comes online so you can see you know exactly when that happens um the um in december you can see there that zephyr place which is the shampoong housing trust property opened and enabled 38 households to access permanent housing from homelessness um and according to plan development throughout chitenden county we anticipate uh total of 112 homeless dedicated units to open so for these units or for these reasons we need to coordinate exits from the motels so vulnerable households can transition directly into permanent housing um we just need the time and resources to be able to do that so that concludes my presentation thank you sir i think uh we'd open it up for questions from the council in a moment i just before doing that i just want to make sure a couple points are are clear to everyone from our perspective from the perspective um of the alliance the governor's current plan to turn out 165 chitenden county high need households and offer only congregate shelters as an option is not an acceptable uh outcome it it i think i know we have a lot of parents here uh at at the table here um if you anyone who's raised a kid i think if you think about the idea of raising children for weeks to months which is explicitly the current administration plan uh raising kids for weeks to months in a congregate shelter with um many others is just not not not a uh it's just that would be a desperate scene and something that um we can avoid through this alternative which is affordable which is feasible um and which we can deliver on and when i say we there i want to make sure again this is not the city by any means alone although with sarah we we are going to support this effort is greatly this is an effort that would be done in partnership with the other 26 agencies that are part of the chitenden county homeless alliance we expect again a vote later this week to commit the coordinated entry system to focus on this population there's also been commitments by um other agencies to focus other resources beyond the coordinated entry system to supporting these households uh so this is this an alternative plan that we think um uh is is is a much better way to go and we would welcome the council's endorsement of this different direction i think it's it would be great if the city could be speaking with one voice um that this is a better outcome and um we have this very rare and unusual situation where we're joined tonight by many members of the state legislature we appreciate your attention to this issue we appreciate you being here and it would be great if and i know many of you share the concern about the current direction of of the program and it is um it is certainly our hope that somehow we can work together over the coming weeks to get to this much better outcome um than what we're currently on a trajectory for so thank you president paul i again we'd be happy to answer questions great thank you so much mayor and uh thank you as well sarah samantha and also to marcella um uh quite an quite an amazing report thank you so much wonderful presentation i'm sure there must be some questions you put a lot of information at us are there any questions or comments from the council uh council council grant thank you thank you for the information thank you for the work that you're doing i have a couple of questions regarding the numbers when we say um chitlin county households there are uh from my understanding a number of people um who would consider their quote-unquote home base to be chitlin county but were housed in rutherland county because that's where rooms were available are they included in your numbers or would they be separate and if they're separate do you have a way to track them that's a really good question and one that we have been working to uh really pressing economic services to share more um with us um these numbers that we presented tonight represent the households that are in motels within chitlin county um it is our understanding that due to motel lack of motel capacity in chitlin county that as many as 70 households needed to be placed out of county however um economic services let us know that they did not track who those households were um so we have like i said advocating for that information for uh over a year now um and it's not information that we can find uh we anticipate that at least some of those families will or households will return to chitlin county but we're unsure um what that number might look like okay so these totals might change depending on communication yeah these totals are changing all the time yeah so um this data is actually from may 19th um and will continue to change people enter and exit the motel system every day so we continue to advocate for updated data from economic services so that we can plan accordingly okay thank you so much so there's a lot of information i also uh checked out the press conference so i got some more of it as well um i did not notice today is this a presentation being attached to the agenda are we gonna okay great thank you so much and then i had a question because we had previously a major concern about camping so we've got a lot of great information you see a lot of great work being done um but we know that frontline agencies are providing sleeping bags and tents we know that camping had already started um what is happening there i know it was a very controversial suggestion about the consideration of reviewing city lands where we could direct people to camp so that we could keep our city parks available to residents and visitors and avoid what happened last year if at all possible yeah i mean i think that we are continuing to assess that um as i mentioned i know i gave you a lot of information tonight so as i mentioned um in the presentation some people were um eligible to receive up to a three thousand dollar security deposit um that would the ahs put on the motel room and so some of those folks could use that to extend their motel stay if that was possible or to find alternative accommodations i think with the exits on friday um and today's monday we don't have a whole lot of information um but we do have a meeting scheduled with the outreach providers on Wednesday this week to understand more of what they're seeing so in some ways i think it's a little bit early for us to tell to be able to i to be able to give you a real accurate view of what we're seeing for folks who are unsheltered calcifer i would just add to that the this proposal is um consistent with um the administration's position that uh can sanction camping camping is not a real solution to the homelessness challenge that we're facing this part of the reason we are um offering to lead this effort to expand the congregate shelter uh to add an additional a third new congregate shelter since the start of the pandemic is so that we can expand the capacity of the current system um and avoid if there are we certainly are expecting as a result of the end of this program there to be more unsheltered people we want to get this congregate shelter started as quickly as possible um as and we are working with the state and there's been quite a bit of back and forth the idea here would be that this shelter would um replace would be would be a response to it it would address these the additional pressures on um on camping on city lands thank you um with uh the utmost respect i never said it was a solution as a matter of fact i believe i went to great lengths in the previous meeting uh to express that don't believe that camping is a but anywhere near a permanent housing solution in any way shape or form but it is something that people have felt that they needed to do it was a major issue the last two summers especially last summer it has raised a lot of concern in the city with um residents and visitors wanting to be able to use our parks uh we had families come and talk about issues when they started Little League uh that they found in some of the parks and so i think that we have to be real and we have to um be prepared to address some of this so that we can control certain things such as disposal of garbage people using toilets um disposal of needles for those that are dealing with substance abuse disorders i just think to say that it's not going to happen when it's already happening i think we really need to seriously um be looking at that and just saying what are we going to do are we going to have this whack-a-mole game that we all talked about that happens you move them you say you got to move can't stay here then they go to another park you got to move you can't stay here then they go to another park it's not um there needs to be something different thank you so much councillor grant we'll go to councillor travers and then councillor hightower to be followed by councillor carpenter uh thank you president paul um and uh sarah and samantha thank you very much for this presentation it was uh really much more than i was actually expecting when we asked you to come uh before us a couple weeks ago on june 5th and so i think you're uh and marcella as well owed a great deal of credit as well as you mayor for um the extensive work uh that you've done here in in preparing for um what may be to come here and sarah i'm very glad that we um stood up your position as well i think we're we're very grateful to have you uh here with the city so thank you very much um i have a couple comments which you can read as questions if you have an answer to it but if you don't have an answer to it that's uh totally fine as well um so one of the comments is um first of all i i do want to be mindful about and careful about not um conflating certain behaviors with folks who will be utilizing the proposed congregate shelters but i also know that we have some experience with for example when there was a daytime congregate shelter on south wanouski avenue there being some concerns there in such a way that the folks that were hosting that uh congregate shelter did not sort of renew that moving it forward i'm mindful the fact that 108 cherry street is right outside of the city's transit center which we've heard as a council leading up to today concerns about you know some of the activities taking place in the transit center and so i suppose my first comment is to the extent you are exploring the staffing needs of 108 cherry street itself um within the building whether or not you know we're also considering what potential additional staffing needs are outside the building particularly at the transit center particularly during school drop off and pick up in particular and again if you have an answer to that now you can feel that feel that as a question but that was one comment that i had i guess at this point how i would answer that is um that i think that the the model of neighborhood oversight that we've implemented at the elmwood shelter could be successful in this location as well so um we have certainly increased presence of cso's in the area um and bpd in addition shelter staff are um are also sort of going outside the immediate elmwood shelter property to check in with guests um and other folks if there are guests there you know welcoming them back to the shelter and um and sort of being a staff presence within that neighborhood great and uh i i do think significant improvements have been made on the city's end since there was a shelter housed at south wanowski avenue including the items that you just discussed there and so again credit due um to the work that's been done there to make uh the elmwood avenue community be such a success um my other comment is uh yeah i mean obviously as burlington's biggest city i think more responsibility falls on us than some of our surrounding communities but i'm curious whether or not outside of um the cca the extent to which uh we have been hearing from or talking to or coordinating with municipalities around burlington and whether or not we're familiar with any steps that they are taking at this point in time to really step up to the plate to address this in the same way that you all have put together here from burlington stance sure so the cca is encompass encompasses all of titanine county um not just in burlington so um we have you know membership from other towns and municipalities outside we have been hosting um weekly meetings at this point um in partnership with the agency of human services um with leadership from each of those municipalities and emergency responders um to understand what what their response might be um to date uh they have not indicated uh that they are um that they're opening any kind of shelter capacity within their towns um we have heard from the city of whenuski that they are exploring some options around um a temporary congregate shelter as well but no nothing nothing concrete to to share on that um i'll also say that um i asked the agency of human services this morning when we were on a call i wanted to know you know what they were seeing in response to the lois and they were hesitant to providing these specific details said they were still reviewing them but statewide they did receive 44 letters of interest from across the state and i would just add to that that sarah and i will be in montpellier wednesday um presenting to the montpellier homelessness task force a kind of a blueprint of setting up elmore than we and would um we know there's folks in that community and several other communities that will be there that are very close um to doing this we're put in touch with us by palette shelters and so we're hopeful that um we're putting together robust presentation and making ourselves available to answer questions will allow other communities to take the step that burlington um took with elmwood and um we know there's a lot of interest in that model as well great um i appreciate that i think as we mentioned in the resolution we passed our last meeting this is not just a burlington issue this is really a regional crisis and so i hope our surrounding uh cities and towns and municipalities will also be stepping up to the plate to respond to this crisis again greatly appreciate your presentation and um it has my full support as you've laid it out here so thank you president paul if i could just quickly respond to councillor travis's point as well i just want to be clear the city has explicitly taken the position and the conversations with a hs that um uh we think more than one congregate shelter we think we don't think these 50 congregate beds are sufficient for the additional um pressure the additional need as a result of the ending of the program while the city is willing to come to the table and be a key partner in the opening with state resources of another shelter we think it's important that the that not be the only congregate shelter and that the second or third facility um happened in other municipalities and we've been consistent on that and i think a hs understands that position and has voiced some um acknowledgement of it and i have been encouraged just to echo what sarah says i've talked directly with mayor of when you ski and know that they are seriously considering a couple options there as well so i your the sentiment you express is one that we share and have been consistently expressing in these conversations thank you and thank you councillor travis will go to councillor high tower to be followed by councillor carpenter um thank you for the presentation i just had one question for a number that i didn't catch that wasn't on this line is what percent did you say we're planning on camping car camping or didn't have a plan other than shelters that was 60 percent um but again that's not that we have we don't have a way of know that um i do know that there were some surveying done of household who were exiting last week by outreach workers and i don't yet because that wasn't complete by the end of friday i don't yet have the data but um that's something that we that we hope to have really great great thank you um i'm definitely glad that we've got more of a plan forming than we had two weeks ago for the last council meeting um i guess the thing is you i'm glad that we have a plan especially for the 165 high need individuals that's not a plan for the other 347 non high need individuals so it sounds like our plan for that right now is the 50 congregate shelter 75 day day shelter um i think i just also want to point out that as much as this is a regional problem like just looking at the population of burlington versus chin county that doesn't even mean we're doing our kind of share yet of um the folks who aren't high need um and i think that that and i think i just have to if folks haven't seen Brenda's like seagulls work on this i think just like bringing home that these are very real people that the motel program has done so much for giving people stability helping them find jobs helping them get healthy and to undo all of that in a few months is just a very painful thing um to watch and again just like looking at the numbers i'm obviously supportive of this i think that that's not it's not i so i guess my long term like my big comment on it is we this isn't solving the majority it's not even taking our kind of share of folks that need to that we need to take care of in burlington which means we're gonna see an increase in camping um right now we know from what we've seen that means a decrease in quality in life for the people who are camping that means a decrease in quality in life for and work life balance for our city staff that means a decrease in quality of life for our other constituents and so maintaining our status quo of how we're treating campers right now just doesn't feel given what we're looking at like a it seems like an awful idea i'm not gonna say doesn't seem like a good idea um and then at the same time if we do make it like recognizing that anybody who is camping we need an exit strategy like that like we say that is a short term answer that is not a long term solution and so it takes a lot of strategy and leadership to support some of those short term answers without making them long term solutions and while i assume my plea is kind of falling on deaf ears with this administration i think that's absolutely what we need to do is make camping more humane in the city because we know it's going to be happening the second thing is i think same thing with the shelter i'm really glad to see this happen even if it is just the 50 folks um and then i think again i think we're gonna quickly have to come up with a strategy to make sure that doesn't become a long term solution um we don't want to just increase shelter capacity and then be like well now now we have this many more beds um and so i think continue to work on what the long term solution is and that kind of brings me to my final point which is a little bit of like financial responsibility and i just i'm really top like we all know that this is a crisis we all know that this is a policy decision we all know that this is something that um collectively we have the money to fix and so i'm just very frustrated by the you know state going oh well the federal government's not paying it anymore so we can't do it and the city is saying well this is really the state responsibility or regional responsibility it's like we all have to pony up the money like we all have to be part of implementing the solution and so i think another ask that i have is that the next budget reflects not just through federal money but also if we need to like through our which we will i guess is we all need to pony up like through our own funding deciding what what are we prioritizing what are we saying morally when we're prioritizing other city spending over solutions on just housing people and doing a housing first model um and i think i'll leave it there but i think if we're only paying for short-term solutions and we're not paying for um folks transitioning out of houselessness then i i and we're just waiting for the motel program to start up again in december we're still failing we're not giving folks the stability that they need thank you thanks councilor hightower we'll go to councilor carpenter and then to councilor mcgee thanks um some of my questions um been asked and councilor travers really talked about the regional impact and i i just want to reiterate and it is disappointing that we're not hearing more were direct responses for some of the communities about setting up shelters they too have lots of public land and so i just encourage cch a to push in the state to whatever degree they can push on that and to whatever degree the state has assets in those communities um i was going to specifically ask how firm we are at 108 cherry street and what the timeline is for that um are we pretty certain about that and then of course the staffing for that um it sounds like you're going to try to contract externally for that but do you have real live bidders or organizations that will actually be able to come to the table for that so in addition to the loi request memo that ahs released um they also released request proposals from uh staffing agencies who would be able to staff shelters because lack of shelter staff is something that we're seeing statewide and not just in chitlin county so that so that is in the process of happening right now and hopefully they'll receive some proposals that are feasible um and then connect uh the bid winners with um with local communities in the meantime um cito staff have met with um an out of state um staffing company that provide staffing um they they provide nursing staff um here in vermont and they also uh will be i believe providing the staffing uh for the new psychiatric facility in northeastern vermont as well um they seem confident that they can fill the positions um so i can't predict you know uh what what uh what what turnout might be for those positions but um we can't we wouldn't be able to open anything unless we were fully staffed um just for safety reasons um and regarding your question around 108 cherry um we don't have any further information than what i've shared we are in um really regular routine uh communication um with the state around um the outcome of their health and safety inspections for that location as the alliance done any kind of and the municipalities survey of kind of other additional options there might be out in the greater berlington area in terms of locations yes um yeah so we met with when i met with the agency of human services um and their emergency management director they have some um locations to consider um none of them are from looking at the list it was there it wasn't it wasn't super impressive um a lot of them were just uh you know the sears building in south berlington or the hanaford you know um old hanaford property um in south berlington or the fairgrounds which is not feasible during the summer to host a shelter so um there weren't a lot of options um for folks um especially because it needs to be in close proximity to services and transportation for people who would utilize the shelter so it really limited the um the options but that was an exercise that we did just one more comment i'll address this really to the um our colleagues in the legislature i was sat in on the meeting with a fellow from um from on emergency management and who did a very good job in presentation but i think he said something like i just got assigned this last week and so we have an emergency management agency and this should be on their docket so i'm not addressing this to anybody personally but so it took me aback that he just got this in his lap a couple of weeks ago thanks very much councilor carpenter we'll now go to council McGee to be followed by councilor jane thank you president paul and thank you sarah and samantha and marcella for all of the work that you all have been putting in and you know i think this is something that we all sort of saw coming uh earlier in the legislative process with the way the budget was um playing out and i think it was something that up until the budget passed we had hoped we wouldn't have to face um and so the fact that we're here having this conversation tonight is uh disheartening um our budgets are moral documents and the fact that a decision has been made to unshelter so many people thousands of people in the state is you know the fact that we're left to cobble together what little resources we can find to support folks and what we all know is not the most ideal way the fact that service organizations are handing out tents and sleeping bags the fact that folks that might receive a tent or a sleeping bag we're gonna struggle with finding a place to put that and face the reality of that might possibly get stolen that their personal belongings might get stolen i just really i think you know this comment is more for any of the public that are watching the precarity that so many folks are facing living outside is really not to be taken lightly um and you know i'm glad to hear that so much has come together that we are pursuing this plan for additional uh shelter beds um i think we all a lot of us are aware that people some people choose to camp rather than attempt to go to a shelter every night because you know there might not be a bed there and at least if you make a plan to camp you know that you will have a tent that night and there is often more stability in that than there is in the shelter lottery so i think a couple of the questions that i have and i fully understand if we haven't made it this far yet in the planning process i assume that this new low barrier shelter will be first come first serve uh we haven't i don't think that we've gotten into operations yet can you clarify what you mean by first come first serve essentially show up and if there's a bed available you'll get a bed if there's not a bed available you're turned away uh i mean i my preference again we haven't established any kind of operations plan my preference would be that people who returned nightly would have a place to stay i do know um the stress that it causes when you have you show up and have no idea if you have a bed or not personally i cannot imagine that being a humane plan so um from it's not a commitment but from my perspective i would work to ensure that we had a management plan that allowed um for permanent beds to be at the shelter great thank you um and i know that you know when we stood up the overnight emergency shelters in the cold weekend that we had over the winter that there were a lot of concerns around uh substance use and overdose prevention so i'm just curious you know is these plans progress that we're coming up with some pretty solid plans for addressing that and making sure that staff are well trained and equipped to to manage that and the most compassionate way possible absolutely yes great that is actually one more question sorry you had mentioned that this part of coordinated entry uh you're working on more of prevention strategies so i wonder if you could expand on that a little bit what does that mean in terms of is that people losing permanent housing and working to prevent that from happening or yeah sure one of the things that um we track is not just the um the outflow so the exits from homelessness but we also need to track the inflows to homelessness if we can't understand root cause and address that then we're constantly working in a cycle um you know housing folks to only have them lose housing again or have other people you know lose housing so prevention is a term that we would use homeless prevention or housing retention um we would use pretty interchangeably and um we are working right now on establishing an intake assessment um that will eventually be incorporated into coordinated entry um so that i mean coordinated entry at its core as i've said really allows equity and access so if you you know in in days past if you showed up to one organization you got all of the resources that organization had and if you showed up somewhere else like well you know i guess you shouldn't have gone there for your case management and so what coordinated entry does is makes all of the resources available to the whole community so that no matter where you go to access those you have the same level of access as anyone so um right now we do that with homelessness services and our goal is to do that with prevention services as well okay thank you that's all i have thank you thank you councillor McGee we'll go to uh councillor Jang to be followed by councillor Bergman um thank you president paul i got it right and thank you for your presentation here today thank you too right for the great work that you all do um i wanted to ask the first question it seemed that we're talking about only of the adverse weather condition and we're saying that we have 165 170 people right so in the first round of exits uh there were 170 households or 194 people those were the the folks who were in the adverse weather conditions program okay so how many people do we have the extended pandemic era so the in the second wave phase two yes two um that's 184 households or 318 people and only in shitton glamin that's only in shitton county okay and how about the maximum day under the ga how many people the the third the third option the third oh what the number that we would see there are the number that we are advocating to stay in the motels is that what you're asking so it seemed there are three phases phase one adverse weather condition phase two end of pandemic right and phase three the maximum day under the ga right well that would be rolling so they would revert back the state from my understanding would revert back to pre pandemic general assistance or ga eligibility guideline and that would allow for a 20 for the purpose of this conversation i would allow for a 28 day motel stay okay yeah and you know just i want to say thank you for all your efforts you know thank thank you for doing this and also thank you so much for bringing new partners into this work because it seems the conversation is leaning toward burlington only but you expanded and brought some people in which is which is great but at the same time um it seemed that this could have come sooner we could have done something a little bit sooner than done right now um because we were all fully aware that this was coming instead of a proactive planning here we are all reacting and this is not your fault this is not our fault right um last thursday i hosted jonathan ferrell executive director of cuts and also krista james which is i believe is the operation director of a a hs and dcf for both burlington and the berry office and um great conversation we hosted them in a shittenden regional council as part of your plan here i did not hear anything about utilizing the the lady beach camp area just like what we did during the pandemic at least for pregnant and children pregnant women and children i think it is a fundamental um aspect of service delivery that we've done as a city that at least we need to do for children and was just wondering why that was not part of the plan so i think that we um there's three there's sort of three parts of the player two well two parts of the plan 2.5 so there is a plan for individuals for adults who are leaving and that is congregate shelter we acknowledge that um non congregate shelter is certainly ideal in this situation of crisis we're able to come up with a semi not a semi-concrete model um i think that to the mayor's point earlier and also is fully endorsed by the homeless alliance is that any kind of congregate setting for children and families or people who are receiving home health or hospice services is not acceptable so we have not brainstormed that we have focused all of our energy on advocating for those vulnerable households to be able to maintain a sense of stability within the motel program while we work to place them in uh permanent housing i want to make sure that point is clear councillor jane so to we see putting women children pregnant women in tents at north beach would be a far inferior outcome to what we're proposing here which is for all of the families with children to stay in place at in the hotel program until they are placed in permanent housing so uh that's why we're not considering camping at north beach for that population okay um thank you and you know being in campers and tenting outside are completely two different things and i'm saying more about the uh the campus renting them and putting in there because we provide some level of security um and also it seemed that there are 30 people that was going to exit that are going to be exited this week and was just wondering if you had a chance to interact with those that are being out that are affected directly have you had that chance yet with the people who have who left motel on friday or what yes i have not been able to connect with folks who left motel on friday okay just based on timing yes yes and i think um you know in order to solve this problem we need to connect with those people directly and it seemed that out of the 30 people two are going to be housed permanently they already found homes two there is also two that are self paying to stay there by themselves there are four made arrangement already with their families uh with their family family members there are seven households who are um who have no plan there are also four that are going to camp in their um in their cars right but i urge you to please consider going reaching out directly to those being affected and just ask them what are their situation i think it we will go a long way so i just want to clarify the data that you're presenting it sounds like you had a conversation with jonathan ferrell at cots um that those 30 households are just the households that cots are working with there is actually 170 households that were exited from motel on friday um the households that cots is working with which comprise of those 30 are single individuals they're not family they're no children involved in those households um and you know i fully agree with you that having communication direct communication with people with lived experience of homelessness and housing instability is critical to our planning that we cannot make policy or design plans or concoct you know any kind of strategy without having their voices at the forefront of our work which is why for the last month um i have attended lunches uh with numerous organizations we've done outreach to the day station to visit with guests there we have had lunch at the community resource center um going to spectrum next week um and we're you know making a very concerted effort to engage people with lived experience to understand what their needs are from their perspective thank you great thank you councillor jang we'll go to councillor bergman thank you and let me echo what everybody said about the thanks that we all have for the work thank you mr mayor for the work that you put in this is a lot of stuff that we have to do in a really short period of time and to expect um miracles is you know i think beyond reason um i am um interested if you know the number of uh i'll say campsites or encampments or tents that are in burlington right now um yeah so according to um the most recent meeting yeah yeah they blocked me they totally blocked me out but life is like that try to try to look at you when i talk um so the most recent meeting that we had with the outreach workers um indicated that there were actually less established camps and and sort of tents um within the city and that folks are actually sleeping like truly unsheltered um you know so wherever they lay um is where they're where they're residing for the evening do we have numbers we do yeah i think and the date for for that like so that you know because i know that these things change yes so on uh wednesday we were seeing approximately 60 um to 70 people outside 60 dash 70 correct thank you yep outside okay um and who is counting we rely on the unsheltered number is a really challenging number to get as i'm sure you can imagine so uh we pulled together um that sido actually pulls together all of the outreach workers for chitinon county that includes um the safe harbor clinic um homeless healthcare outreach workers that includes the howard center um both the street outreach team and their community team that is embedded within police departments and surrounding communities we engage the bpd um csl staff um and the cora outreach team through cvoe so we're pulling together you know a large number of people to get that information this is good and how often are we counting um we are generally meeting with that team in the past um and over the winter about every two to three weeks um now we're meeting with them weekly to understand the impacts and is there anything similar happening outside of burlington in the county so that we would be able to get account uh from south burling you know of south burlington willis and etc and if you have some numbers love to hear them so the 60 to 70 is encompassed in the area that we have services um we rely on the howard community outreach workers that are embedded within the police department in um quilchester sx williston and shellburn um to provide information outside of burlington so i i just am not totally clear as the the 60 to 70 is total outside in chitinon county right in chitinon county so we don't know exactly the number in burlington itself from what the outreach workers are reporting i would say that probably 40 to 50 of those folks are within burlington that's that's really helpful thank you um i'm sure but confirm whether you're seeing the need for us to be um spending more non-human resources but huge but resources on things like dealing with garbage and what have you is that is that true um i think that uh the outreach teams are providing education around um life and safety issues um within camps they're you know providing hygiene products um and just you know providing disposal of you know what what contents um as necessary um i don't know that we have a specific you know budget or idea in mind that hasn't been expressed by the outreach teams as something that um is an investment that needs to be made at this time i would just note that i've got down the the the the old dump road from me where i've lived uh since there was a dump there so some 35 years there's an encampment has been encampments down there and there are piles of garbage that go last time there were a number of bags we have in the past picked those up so i would think that um there are increased um demands on the parks department for that and the reason i sort of asked besides just trying to get that basic information because i'm just wondering whether in addition to state money that we're looking at for big systemic things we're also looking to get some state money to help us with the uh you know the increased costs that are associated with dealing in burlington which with something that is our problem but is also a statewide problem and so we shouldn't be as the word said ponying up the entire thing on there so i'm wondering if we are asking the state for some of those operational monies to help with the with the gas and the the people etc the agencies that provide services um are accessing state funds to support their outreach efforts um to date the city has not applied for state funding to support um the kinds of services that you're um you're talking about so i i would say that as somebody who sees a parks and rec truck go in front of my house like every day to pick up garbage that's left by folks who are hanging out at the little park of it and that go down the hill and pick them up that perhaps we should be asking the state to help us with that that would be great and the last not a question but a point i was happy to see that the current encampment policy is being re-looked at mr mayor i happy that the um city attorney is looking at this again i was struck by the absence of the city council on that list and would ask that you involve the council in the review of that policy it's something that i know that i and others have a keen interest in and uh i think that uh that should be corrected thank you thank you very much councillor bergman we will go to councillor shannon thank you president paul um sorry uh thank you sarah and samantha for this presentation and i have to say the work that you've done in two weeks time is absolutely astounding and outstanding um clearly your problems all living skills and organizational skills and crisis management is uh is really impressive and we're very very lucky to have you and the teams that you work with um picking up all the pieces that were kind of thrown at you um i also am very appreciative of all the legislature legislators who have come to be with us tonight to hear about how the pieces are being picked up here and i want to say i've mentioned this to a few people um both inside the legislature and outside that i don't really understand how we can spend as a state 27 million dollars to feed children who are already being fed while not using that money to house people who are not being housed and i understand that um you know there there are policy choices and philosophies around these things but in the hierarchy of needs this need is great and i can't say i understand how the legislature works well enough to know if it's still on the table as you go into the veto session to look at some of that money to try and get more money um to our communities to address this issue it's not something that can be done on the backs of the property taxpayers it needs to be on the backs of the income taxpayers um that's not the money that we have access to of course unless um it's provided by the state and i appreciate the money that has been provided by the state that's allowing us to get as far as you have gotten um the enormous enormity of this weighs on me and i'm sure it weighs very very heavily on you this was so difficult before we had to deal with this so thank you for giving it everything you have i'm sure in the last two weeks to make all of this happen um i'm really grateful to you and i know i was also consuming some of your time for which i feel a little bit guilty for but i appreciate the information in helping me to understand understand the landscape landscape better thank you thank you so much councilor shannon uh if there are no others other counselors that wish to comment on this during this work session we will we will finish up by bringing it back to the mayor great thank you president paul and thank you counselors for for this discussion and um i'm glad i'm really grateful that so many of you see um how much work that has been happening within the cito team and and with partners to um to respond to this moment i do want to kind of make a few summary remarks and and speak to a few of the themes that came up in the discussion um i i heard some expression that there could have been more done sooner i just would ask the the council to remember how much this city has already done over the last three years more was done sooner we created a special assistant and homelessness we through great effort stood up the elmwood emergency shelter through great effort we worked the state to set up the sampling in we've added six additional five uh social work positions at the police department that give us a much greater ability to engage and and work with the unsheltered community and connect folks to services and to uh better options and and more um what is really happening right now and makes this situation such a frustrating situation is that we are trying to respond to um state decisions that have been made on a very short time frame and that have been shifting even even in the time since we last spoke when we when we sat down with a the department of children families and ahs uh last last week uh i guess actually two weeks ago now the deadline that that it was july 1st for this high deeds population and that has now become july 28th this is um uh this is what i think one of the i hope one of the overarching points of this presentation is is that for the worst outcomes that could come out of the state decisions um they can be avoided through a little bit of time and planning and that is what we are proposing here with this really um significant change instead of pushing this high need group over 300 chitenden county residents into congregate shelters at the end of july this what we have laid out here and which i really um and uh would hope the council would see as the city leading on this issue is a plan where that doesn't have to have happen where we can have a much more humane much uh much better option using the resources that we have created so that that that this 300 individuals 165 households can go directly from their hotel from the hotel living that they're currently having into permanent housing or at least long-term temporary housing if that proves impossible for some of these households and that this is really an avoidable humanitarian tragedy that can be avoided through this addition of some time and we're proposing paying for it within the resources that were in the budget that that was vetoed this is um uh we think a realistic affordable achievable much better outcome and then finally i just want to speak to this make sure it is clear that the we believe we certainly are very much working and have been working for a long time on the long-term solutions to this issue there's really only one long-term solution to homelessness and that is building a lot more homes we have an acute housing shortage what this has been true for a long time the this has been created through decades of problematic land use policy at the city and the state level that we have been working to undo here at the city level for 11 years now and that effort is succeeding we have nearly 800 homes uh very a substantial portion of them permanently affordable and and committed to housing formerly homeless families that are under construction right now and we have before you and at the committee level policy changes that will keep this greatly expanded level of housing production continuing in the in the years ahead and we hope that the ordinance committee will act with urgency this month even on the plan that uh we have put before you to create a south end innovation district that would have the potential to create about a thousand homes over the coming years um we hope the council will work with urgency with us following up on the may presentation that we gave to create citywide housing reform that will create the potential for thousands of new homes citywide by re legalizing older forms of housing that have been made illegal through the actions of our predecessors in the 70s the 80s the 90s um and it is I do appreciate the opportunity um to say to our colleagues at the state level um we uh you know we support I certainly support I think most of us at the state will support the s 100 and what it does to um require land use reforms from municipalities we see it is very consistent with some of the initiatives I was just describing they're happening here in burlington and we very much appreciate that on the house side uh after being rejected on the senate side that on the house side there we got a fair hearing on this idea that municipal delegation of act 250 um would be the single remove the single greatest barrier to new housing that exists in burlington right now for many many projects which is this wasteful redundant permitting municipal delegation is now on a path to happening and when that happens we'll cut the permitting cost and the permitting time in half for many burlington projects and projects and other municipalities with robust zoning I do hope that the legislature just sees that as the very beginning of the really many years of work that is going to need necessary to remove all of the state barriers that exist to the creation of new housing both in land use and some of the way we regulate environmental contaminants and and more and there's been a lot of talk this year that next year is going to be the year for act 250 reform and certainly we will we hope that that you guys will make good on that I think it's critical if we're going to continue if we're going to avoid future crises like the one we're facing right now if we are going to make good on the idea that housing should be a human right we we need to build a lot more homes and part of that is is going to require state action as well as local action so thank you president paul appreciate the chance to wrap this up thank you thank you very much mayor weinberger there's no formal action that's being taken so we'll close this agenda item but before we do certainly want to join my colleagues in saying that thank you thank you so much for the and tremendous amount of work that has gone on over the last couple of weeks and just want to make sure that you know that even though a lot of this is behind the scenes work and clearly not always seen by many that it is incredibly valued and deeply appreciated thank you thank you to all three of you thank you very much uh we are actually right on time for the public forum um which was going to start at seven at 750 uh before we begin public public forum a few pieces of information the table that is in front of us um has three lights a green light um oh and and and as well thank you to all of the legislators that came for the city play site visit for this um conversation on homelessness we're grateful for your presence here this evening uh so with that with the as far as the public forum goes um so the table in front of us um has three lights a green light will shine when you begin speaking a second yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and then the last light is a red light which will shine when you're speaking your time is up we ask that you please try to complete your comments when the sound and the light indicate that your time is up so that we give everyone the same amount of time and can keep the public forum moving we have a hybrid system for public forum so if you wish to speak in person uh there are forms that are to my right in the back of the room um and I see a couple of people that are using them right now um please bring those to the clerk which is who is to my right in front of the room um and they will come to me if you wish to speak via zoom if you are joining us online you can go to brilington vt forward slash city council forward slash public forum and a forum will come up please complete the forum and your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have right in front of me so that I can call on you in the order that you submitted a form um it has been our long-standing practice at city council meetings that brilington residents will have first priority to speak we will then we will the the system is that we will go to brilington residents joining us in con toys um who have submitted a form in person then to brilington residents that are joining us online then back to non-brilington residents in person and then back to our online non-brilington residents uh during public forum we have only one request and that is that you please use respectful language when speaking uh to speaking to us we would like to remind everyone here this evening um and online that there are families who watch our city council meetings as their connection with civic engagement and teaching their children about city government and public discourse please um please respect that um direct your comments to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table and please do not personalize your comments we really want to hear what you have to say and it's a lot easier for us to hear what you're saying and to listen intently if you speak respectfully um with that um we will go to the public forum the there's a a number of people that are joining us in person to speak during public forum the first is romeo von herman to be followed by sharyl buddlier good evening madam president mr mayor good to see you again uh counselors city administrative team i'm here to share my concern today as well as um refer my support for the city's current response to the unhoused uh situation that is going on which the mayor currently described as a humanitarian issue which i do agree with that uh sentiment that is to say that um the council's work is not yet over chin and counseling housing alliance work is not over with respect to this issue but i understand that uh they may be here today some folks who are either unhoused or housed that would like to have their say this way they can connect with their council members and hopefully they can get back their lives back on track and get the help that they need in short i just want to reaffirm my support in giving these folks the life that they deserve i know they're going through a lot um and i hope that they get the help that they need thank you thank you so much our next speaker is sharyl buddlier to be followed by um sharyl green good evening good evening everyone just speak in is it on if the green light is on in front of you then it's on okay i just have a few concerns with the police department for one and all the homelessness it was good to hear you all speak your peace of mind but i think there was a lot of things that could have been done there's a lot of abandoned buildings that could have been turned into shelters i didn't get any like the motel on main street it was torn down i feel that could have been used as a homeless shelter and there's a lot of i don't know what's going to happen to the catholic church that they don't know what they're doing with i don't know maybe they do but why couldn't they use that now as a homeless shelter instead of whatever and there's a few other places in burlington i've been around a long time and i feel that just the situation is just out of hand with everything really the businesses here are upset with the homeless because they sleep in the doorways and entranceways and they have to clean it up before they can go to work they tell me and i don't know it's just ridiculous and there's a lot of garbage on these streets i don't know what they're not doing to clean it up i don't know where the money's going for the public works i see a lot of crap on cherry street garbage everywhere by the terminal and nothing's being done it seems to pick all that up i've noticed a lot of it i take a bus a lot and there's a lot that should be done with that too i don't think that they have the right to shut that terminal down in the winter on sundays or the weekend when it's freezing cold i don't feel it's right to treat people in the community like they do and the police i know they're sure to help but there's a lot that don't want to be police anymore because it's not a lot of discipline in that department anymore just sad what's happened all right thank you thank you so much our next speaker is uh sharyl green to be followed by dav mar good evening yeah just make sure that the green light in front of you is on my name is sharyl green i live in mord one police should always have integrity and always have empathy look in the mirror and know that throughout your day you treated people fairly and respectfully this is a recent quote from braddle bro police chief norma hardy i am always out talking with people she said and my guess is she is very good at de-escalation to me that is a key in terms of safety and security de-escalation we have that skill in our burlington fire department rescue squad with john husbands i have observed it firsthand mikey van gulden has written in his chocolate thunder security website and one of his team is downstairs tonight mikey writes our license guards focus on compassion de-escalation and not judgmental respect for the dignity of others is the key to our success and the safety of our clients end quote that is evident in their work in many places around the city neil and andrew our urban park rangers with the burlington parks department same open communication de-escalation skills and evidence an effective and respected police chief needs to carry that de-escalation capacity themselves personally and professionally governor scott has just signed into law s-36 act 24 with its passage law enforcement officers no longer need a warrant to arrest someone for misdemeanor threatening against a health care worker or for fighting or engaging in other violent behavior that interferes with medically necessary health care services vermont digger we cannot move forward without it without that de-escalation capacity in a police chief i cannot support the appointment of john mirad as police chief of burlington thank you thank you so much our next speaker is davis dav marr our is is dav marr to be followed by david call well thank you and good evening everybody that was a that was a good presentation and some great discussion i was glad to see that included a plan for preventive services as well as a program to transition people into permanent housing however i think there also needs to be greater focus on permanent solutions i've heard said that lack of affordable housing is the root cause of homelessness that certainly contributes but i also think that mental health and substance abuse issues are also root causes and i think those should be addressed at least on an equal basis about more so than affordable housing thank you very much thank you so much our navy david call to be followed by depper clemer hello and my chair council and everyone in the room um i'm a community activist and it's great to be alive and i'm impressed by work and faith and our spiritual communities are all working together as a team to make this problem end someday i'm hoping that the unhoused community have homes love and compassion without faith we have faith in this room we have faith in the human beings that we're trying to help and we can help them if they and they'll help themselves it'll be such a good i just want to thank everybody in this room it's amazing of how far we have come it's just a miracle and i'm going to just say thank you in so many different ways i could write it out but since my stroke my hand's a little bit weird lately so so i'm just going to say so just have compassion with faith and common sense i think we're going to make it by 10 years thank you thank you so much our our next speaker is debra clemer to be followed by toddler kroy hello i'm debra clemer and i live in ward two on clark street i came tonight to urge city counselors to vote no for john moray to be the permanent police chief of the city of burlington from his past actions he is not going to be a leader that unites people after ballot issue seven in the last election was defeated i was curious of what was going on in the police commission i decided and attended two commission police commission meetings in march and april and what i observed was the acting chief being defensive at times when an issue was brought up that he did not agree with i observed some of the police commission members being very careful and hesitant to address the police chief he was not open to their feedback and and in my view presented himself as not really wanting to hear their comments i think a person in leadership should be open to feedback even if they don't agree with the problem that is being stated and that a leader should initiate problem solving strategies with the people that have issues i saw none of this in the two meetings i attended i also think he used poor judgment and handling the trauma surgeon at uvm medical center he did apologize and i appreciate that but i do i do not think a leader should be an engaged in power struggles and turf wars and also the handling of rigid river watch condominium association was disturbing to hear i i totally understand why the police want to make more money extra money what i find troubling is the leader went along with it knowing that the city at the time was desperate for police officers thank you for your time thank you so much so our next speaker is todd lacroix to be followed by uh to be followed by barbie al sub good evening with great power comes great responsibility but there seems to be a disconnect doesn't there lately between our leaders you know here's the thing about us you john and me is that we all kind of grew up in the hollywood era i am famous for having brinn the first person ever put a digital made movie here but you're famous for being on the x files pretending to be a cop but you see the difference between you and me is i stopped pretending and now you're still i guess pretending and we're all very confused as to how you want to be our top cop while you destroy our community stomp on us with your fake hollywood pretending you see if you want to represent the people you can't pretend john if you could address your you can't have people pretending around you you can't use facebook to manipulate all of us and pretend your way into being good you have to be good you have to prove that you're good you know the previous uh chief of police that was working for the nypd before he came here i was against him but you know what i became for him for a moment you know why because on the day that he actually became the chief and i was against him i said you know what now you have the responsibility to prove to us that the elected leaders were correct in choosing you to be our leader and for a moment he actually tried to live up to that but i've never seen you do that i've never even seen you try to live up to that promise you just play politics and manipulate and manipulate and threaten and make up your own rules thank you everybody knows it thank you so much just like you who pointed thank you thank you so much our next speaker is barbie is barbie allsop to be followed by mark washet good evening follow thank you for letting me speak i live in ward three um i want to talk about one thing barbie just just one moment i think we have i think the timer isn't quite reset well it's working now it should be on the it should be on green so let's just give it a second now now please go ahead thank you thanks for your patience i want to talk about de-escalation both the mayor and the acting chief assure us that all of our officers are fully trained in de-escalation then why would we appoint as a chief of police an acting chief who goes into an emergency room and escalates the situation in front of several of his officers when he is told that he is not allowed in the room because of hippolaws federal privacy laws he doesn't de-escalate he escalates he threatens with his handcuffs and the hint that he will arrest the treating doctor moreover out in the hallway his officers are discussing in front of hospital staff charges that they can bring against the treating doctor stunning the staff around them now a week or two ago you guys i'm sorry let's be more formal the council approved a settlement from one of the 2018 cases when officer bella vance threw a melly boy into a um stone wall do you think if officer bella vance had gone to the melly brothers and apologized the next day you wouldn't have had to approve that grant do you think a chief of police who says out of one side of his mouth that de-escalation is the way to go and then escalates when he gets on the scene is who you want to have as your chief of police if so be prepared for more melly brothers thank you barbie uh our next speaker is mark buchette to be followed by ellen cooper good evening good evening uh thank you us for the opportunity to speak this evening my name is mark buchette my family owns homeport which has been on church street for about 35 years i'm also chair of the marketplace do you have the do you have the light is the light in front of you green it is it is okay just wanted to make sure i'll i'll move up is that better yeah that's better thank you i'm here to ask tonight to ask that you vote in favor of the appointing appointment of acting chief john mirad uh the position uh to the position of uh police of the burlington chief of police of the burlington police department i've spoken with john on many occasions and my impression is is that he's dedicated to leading the department into the future with officers committed to the most modern policing tactics meaning using unarmed cso's and specially trained csl's when possible while also having clear use of force directives that minimize aggression for officers when necessary i believe that acting chief mirad is intent on delivering the kind of modern policing we can be proud of and the kind of policing we expect here in burlington thank you thank you so much our next speaker is ellen cooper to be followed by don moskowitz good evening hi do i wait for the green light um i'm ellen cooper i've been in burlington since 1974 um love the city have lived in the south end now live in word four this city has changed um um i think that a lot of it has to do with many factors and i feel that john mirad was put in a situation that was like a bees nest and i think he's done a very good job trying to keep things calm he was great when they were all camping out in the park which i wasn't allowed to do um but he didn't escalate that he was calm he let them stay and since then things have gotten completely out of hand with the number of police officers in our city um i feel that we should all be thankful that john mirad hasn't left for all that you've put him through all the bad mouthing of him he is a very educated very compassionate person i've talked with him many times and i feel that we need a chief of police that is not interim so that more police officers will be willing to apply for jobs in this city and as peter clevelle said i think there was like 120 officers when he was mayor and now we have like 30 that are out walking the streets there's a big problem but it stems from all of us we need to treat with respect and he deserves the respect and he deserves a yes vote thank you so much our next speaker is don moskowitz to be followed by jeff haze thank you um my name is don moskowitz and i'm award five resident and i work with communities nationally on homelessness i appreciate the city's leadership in crisis response to the state ending the motel program without a transition plan and the leadership of the chitin county homeless alliance i heard several counselors request more data and it's true we need more data to actually be able to focus on the right issues and solve the problem there are HUD systems in place to collect data and i urge you to advocate for the state to actually collect and provide that data so that we can get a clearer picture of what people's plans are when they are forced to leave the motels but most importantly i'd like to lift up the research demonstrating that homelessness is a housing issue among communities that have similar rates of mental health health and substance use challenges um we see that it's the communities that face the tightest housing markets in which homelessness is most prevalent um those are the communities that have the highest rates of homelessness and that's clearly what we're experiencing in burlington and across the state of vermont on thursday i spent the morning at motel six in colchester connecting with people who had to leave and number of them had vouchers but could not find a place to rent a number of them had vouchers that they've been working to secure rentals for months but could not find a place to rent um please support the long-term solutions we need to aggressively and rapidly build more housing thank you thank you so much our next speaker is jeff haze to be followed by max tracy thank you counselors um i appreciate the time here um i've been a berlin tonian for 61 years which i think i just gave my age away um and uh also come from a law enforcement family and i'm here to take the interim tag away from john murrad and make him the chief of police uh john reminds me a lot of my dad um who was a police officer for 28 years and uh his calm his demeanor his relationships that he builds in the community um he's right for the job and and i think it's time to uh to make that change thank you thank you so much our next speaker is max tracy to be followed by collin hilliard um max former council president tracy nice to see you thanks it's good to be back good to see you all appreciate it um first want to just address the houselessness uh plan appreciate the council taking this up in a work session and very much appreciate the seriousness with the city's addressing it i'm glad to hear that there is some additional movement around the camping issue um and the idea of creating a centralized or more centralized camping policy um because we know that if we don't um it's just gonna happen wherever it will so i appreciate that um the other but i do hope that the council is directly involved in these ongoing conversations because i think that um that's imperative just for my experience on the council the other issue that i'd like to address um this evening is that of the appointment of acting chief murad as i think about this appointment i think about both what has what hasn't happened and what has happened on the in the column of things that haven't happened i think we have not seen nor have we heard a full-throated and complete acceptance of the fact that systemic racism and white supremacy are huge and continuing factors within our police department we have not heard that this is the chief address this as a systemic issue additionally we have not seen any real progress on oversight or the chief put forward any real vision on on oversight models uh in the time that he's been the acting chief in addition to that we've also seen a number of things that have happened we've seen the chief act aggressively towards people particularly women of color who have disagreed with him we've seen the chief um fail to inform the council of a policy to allow additional um to allow additional uh patrols at river watch and we've also seen uh the the chief threatened to arrest the um a doctor who is providing care to a gunshot wound victim i don't regret many votes on the city council but i do regret my vote on on brandon del pozo because there were so many warning signs and we chose to avoid that we chose to ignore them in this case there are plenty of warning signs but if you choose to ignore them that will be on you thank you so much uh our next speaker is callan hilliard to be followed by sandi baird thank you uh callan hilliard i'm a ward three resident i'm also the deputy director of the berlington business association i'm speaking in support of the appointment of john mirad uh berlington has been without a council confirmed chief since 2019 in that time our cities face serious challenges with police staffing and public safety affecting residents businesses and visitors alike the appointment of the permanent chief is a critical step for our city's future the chief plays a key role officer recruitment and retention the ability to deliver much needed public safety services in berlington and in creating just effective and transparent 21st century police department the city's ability to provide public safety services is of is an issue of concern to everyone including our downtown businesses and their staff appointing a permanent chief of police one who can serve with the support of the community um is critical it's critical rebuilding our police department it's critical to the future direction of that department and it's critical to the future of downtown and the city that we all love uh the bbn it's 300 plus members offer strong support for the appointment of a permanent chief of police please vote yes to confirm john mirad as chief of police thank you thank you so much our next speaker is sandy bear to be followed by pat rivers good evening my name is sandy bear and i live in ward one um uh and i firmly support the uh appointment of john mirad as chief of police but let me say something else because i am very disturbed about an incident that occurred at the police department the other night um as many of you know um i am an attorney and i'm i've been both a prosecuting attorney and also a defense attorney the other night a black woman client of mine was in custody in the police department it was 11 30 on a friday night and so i attempted to call her she was she also is an african new american woman from the sudan her english is not good she has significant problems um i tried to call her to warn her that anything she said could be used against her and that she had the absolute right as a resident of the united states to remain silent i could get no one on the phone no one nobody answered the phone at the police department secondly i got so upset about this that i went to the police department at 11 30 at night with um a colleague of mine tato rotsibe who is the co-director of the association of africans living in vermont we sat in the parking lot unable to get into the police station this is right near battery park as some of you know which has been the scene of crimes for the first time in my life i was nervous about being alone an old woman essentially in the parking lot of the police in the parking lot of the police station no one was there no one could be called no one could be reached this is very concerning to me finally a police officer did come out and i asked can i talk to my client it's her absolute right to talk to her attorney and he said quote lawyers are not permitted in the police station now this is a serious violation i believe of her constitutional rights to talk to a police to talk to a lawyer i appoint john murad because i trust him to do the right thing and to make serious corrections within the police department thank you thank you very much our next speaker is pat rivers to be followed by terry rivers good evening thank you for this chance to speak and i will be very brief first of all i would like to thank all of you for your service every one of you i don't come here often but i follow what you do i may not agree with some of you but i respect you and i appreciate you particularly during these last three years when all the crises have seemed to rain down on this beautiful city that i love so very much i'm here tonight in support of the appointment of john murad as permanent chief i do hope that you vote yes thank you thank you so much our next speaker is terry rivers to be followed by dav hartnett hi good evening my name is terry rivers i'm a resident of ward five and i am also here in support of the appointment of john murad i've heard a lot of people criticize him and certainly those of us who've ever made mistakes in our lives and i guess i would look at everybody um i think the the quality for me that i'm looking at with john murad is that he takes responsibility for what he did i know a lot of people have made terrible mistakes in politics in their lives as professionals and they deny responsibility they avoid responsibility they lie about what's happened but he didn't do that he's taken responsibility for the mistakes he's made in his work here in burlington and i don't in any way doubt his commitment to this department and his commitment to hiring well-trained professional police officers who also make mistakes we need to be held accountable like we all do so um i'd like to see him be given a chance and bring some stability to the city of burlington's police department thank you thank you very much our next speaker is dav hartnett to be followed by karen long uh former councillor hartnett thank you i was downtown this weekend and i noticed the state troopers vehicles parked at church in maine and i thought to myself those should be burlington police officers not state troopers i appreciate what they're doing but it's really getting old right those are burlington police officers that should be their building relationships with our merchants with our residents with our vendors with our homeless people that's how you build relationships that's not going to happen until we have a permanent chief we talk about oversight i think everybody in this room wants oversight certainly not what we have in the ballot in march but true oversight that doesn't happen without a permanent chief you need buy-in from all sides and if you think an acting chief is going to lead the way on oversight with his men it's just not going to happen they want to know people want to know officers aren't going to come here if they don't know if we have a chief they're not coming to an acting chief i don't care how much you pay him you can't buy your way out of this no question about that listen john's made mistakes he's not perfect nobody said that he really doesn't even deserve this job he's earned it for three years he's been on a job interview can you imagine the pressure that must be all your critics just waiting to pounce on every mistake you make can you imagine working under those conditions any of us i just don't see that the only way we're going to turn this department around is to have true leadership and until we have that we're going to be in the same situation over and over again i want to get back to true community policing thank you thank you so much our next speaker and last burlington speaker that i have is karen long karen good evening yeah i feel like they're gonna slip out so um i didn't come to talk about the police i came to ask about this what i read that the administration is i don't know encouraging the council to support an 18 million dollar loan to city place developers and i am concerned that it was buried in the agenda it was a consent agenda i think it was number 29 and this is something like i've followed city place for years and years so this is a really big deal to me um this sounds a lot like burlington telecom the 17 million that we loaned um to build that up and you know which this administration in particular totally was against that so anyway i'm wondering why we would lend millions when year after year this project has failed to secure financing on the open market and we had many years of meetings uh with the developers about this um i'm wondering why we the city would circumvent the rules and deadlines associated with tiff dollars when those rules and deadlines were made to protect the public interest the audit report shows we are at odds with the state because of our handling or mishandling of tiff funds how meaningful and sincere our development agreements when we amend them so readily whenever a developer fails to comply we would not and again i went to every meeting about this but we would not be here we had a pre-development agreement that said the city place construction would not start until they had financing but we we let them out of that we let them tear down are what we had anyway basically please um make the have the developers do what they are supposed to do and not give away to financing thank you thank you so much uh so we will go now to burlington residents that are joining us online um unless there are others do we have any other do you have any other page it okay um the first we'll we'll reset that and just have a timer that'll be up on the screen great thank you very much uh the first speaker is uh robert kiernan and uh robert i found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now thank you i would like to acknowledge the many residents downtown here in ward three and elsewhere in our city who support acting chief muir's appointment as chief of the burlington police department and at the same time recognize those residents and friends who have not been supportive of this from their point of view both positions have been held for some time in our city it's really time now to coalesce on this issue and come together in support of the appointment of john muir who has been and is demonstrating his leadership ability and addressing the proper safety challenges that are quite apparent in burlington that have already been noticeably demonstrated successes here and we we will see continued positive impact in our city's future with john muir as our chief of police living downtown in ward three we are currently experiencing a positive daily re-energized environment that is now emerging on the streets here and in the church street marketplace this is the time to build on this welcome indication of improvement and to me an important time for more collaboration with a movement away from the entrenched positions of rhetoric and ideological resistance which have been held for quite some time regarding the police position and that will put forth once again in public statements made as recently as today repeating it's now time to continue forward side by side and confirm chief muir thanks our next speaker is amy malinowski and amy i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now great can you hear me yes we can go ahead my name is amy malinowski and i'm asking that city council vote no to confirming acting chief murad uh here are five reasons why uh one acting chief murad has data publicly that he does not believe racial bias is an issue for police in burlington and this runs contrary to the data bipoc neighbors are more likely to be stopped by police and more likely to have force used against them during interactions with the police i don't know how myself or my neighbors especially those who are the most police can trust him when he can't acknowledge this data or facts um i feel like this is really a non-starter and uh i don't know if i have to read the rest of this list but i'm going to anyway uh number two there's a repeated pattern where community stakeholders find uh murad to not be collaborative i'm meant to be disrespectful and so much so that the police commission has referred um some of his recent actions to the vermont criminal justice council for investigating this conduct additionally multiple police commissioners have spoken out on their experiences murad commissioners deaf music we know milo grant and susan cumberford all said they've witnessed murad become defensive and unprofessional in commission meetings enduring executive sessions particularly toward female commissioners um and actually i believe i witnessed a peek into this combativeness myself during the most recent joint committee meeting last week uh number three acting chief murad is proponent of the broken windows theory of public safety which has been thoroughly debunked for there's a pattern of fear mongering and misinformation that's been pretty pervasive over the past couple years we're constantly told we can't have both quote like a rebuilding of the police and appropriate public police oversight um and so and furthermore that all this is really emergency because crime is spiking um and in september of 2021 the aclu even called out murad for contributing to these false narratives with his press releases um in public speaking and then the fifth thing lastly i just want to reiterate specific incidents that portrayed our trust uh river watch not staffing downtown during the weekend over eight hours this summer 2021 and the threats to the surgeon thank you thank you so much uh our next speaker is uh and please correct me if i mispronounce your name uh amy wiggling uh amy i found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now hi thank you my name is anna waggling so you were close not really thank you so much all right thank you um my name is anna waggling i'm one of the community support liaisons at the burlington police department and i'm also a ward two resident i wanted to make public comment after reading a front porch forum post by a council member regarding our team the note stated cape is staffed with non-sworn officers that's a misnomer we are social workers we're not non-sworn officers that's a reference to community service officers who enforce certain ordinances in the city cape also includes our domestic violence victim advocate victim support specialist and one sworn officer assigned as a domestic violence prevention officer last week at the pd i helped pack up the apartment of someone i'm working with who has zero support helped another person fill out a no stocking order a relief from abuse order and attended a family update at the hospital of a young refugee client who is critically ill on saturday specifically i helped a mother and young daughter get to the midwest after being dropped off at the airport by border patrol they only spoke spanish and had no resources to navigate where they needed to go someone called the police for help i responded within minutes i got them safe and warm in our soft interview room helped purchase bus tickets and drove them to the bus stop 20 minutes away we work parallel to law enforcement in the aftermath of crises to connect community members to services and we show up we meet people where they're at we collaborate with officers in person to provide these services as there continues to be conversation around where we should be housed and the structure of our program i welcome i urge council members to meet with us in our space see how we serve the community and hear our stories talk to us we work seven days a week thank you bachana our next speaker is uh jonathan ferrell and there is someone here i do have someone named john i don't know if that is you maybe you can just use the hit raise hand function if that is you and i will be happy to call on you um we also are the next speaker is john tracy again there is someone named john um i can enable that microphone and then if you could just simply identify yourself for the record you please go ahead garen it's council president it's john tracy you want me to go yes that would be great thank you so much john no problem thank you and thank you all for your service public service is hard and we do appreciate that as citizens brilliant and uh leadership is challenging and difficult leadership in the public eye is challenging and difficult and leadership in the public eye in law enforcement in this time of change is extremely difficult and i think john you're at an exceptional job in my professional career i had a number of instances where john was engaged with some interactions they were not escalated in fact the demeanor they brought the engagements the way he engaged in the dialogue the respectful manner in which he had conversations with people made it to where you know the results that could have been difficult were not another instance on church tree i was trying to help someone who was being rather disruptive find resolution even though john was off duty he came over and said is everything okay and his dad is and over the course of the day we were able to help him along and so he's never really off duty you know leadership we identify our strengths and our weaknesses the challenge is to make sure that people help us with those strengths and once those weaknesses are identified which have been identified we can make leadership teams better it's a lifelong process while other people law enforcement officers have left burlington john mirad has stayed he knows the lay of the land i think his willingness to engage to listen and to learn and the experience he brings are really important for burlington and as a resident of burlington i will do whatever i can as a citizen to make him successful as chief our police department responsive to our citizens and the city of burlington the better place where they all want it to be so i strongly support john mirad as chief of police thank you thank you very much john our next speaker is jerry prinke and jerry i've not been able to locate you certainly if you want to use the raise hand function i'll try to find you as i move on to the next speaker which is jake shuman and jake i did find you you should i just enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now hi thank you um excuse me i think that this conversation that we're having tonight about the relative merits and demerits the character and conduct of acting chief mirad and whether he's fit to be our permanent chief is the wrong conversation to be having i think that we need to reflect on why we are here and it is not because of anything that he has done it is not because of anything he hasn't done it is because of the choices of our mayor mayor weinberger has chosen to bring this appointment he has chosen to lie to the people of this city saying that he had seven votes to confirm when he was still whipping those votes um i think that we as a city have very much agreed that we want to move forward with our policing to make it safer and more collaborative and we have been working on these efforts we have a joint committee for police oversight uh in december on december 20th 2021 the council voted to allocate seventy five thousand dollars to continue the search for a qualified chief um and morrow chose not to accept that money to not reopen the search he has chosen to take no action to provide options to the people or to the council he has forced your hand and i think that the only option is to table this vote for the next mayor uh to bring a an appointment for consideration i think that there are reasons to support mirab there are more reasons not to but we as a community don't want to be divided we want to be united and we should unite under a new mayor thank you thank you so much our next speaker is kelly holstead and kelly i have found you and enabled your microphone you should be able to speak now hopefully you guys can hear me hello my name is kelly holstead i live in ward four i'd like to speak in support for john mirad as our acting chief um which i'm sad that we're at this point that he has been acting for so long um not only does john come as a vermanter that he was raised in vermont he's one of our own um he's also very well qualified and i know that people have talked about trying to find uh another search i think that we have found someone that is more than capable who has shown um despite his qualifications that his commitment to public service that he's risen above challenges that is that have been put in his in his path frankly in my opinion by the council itself um by defunding the police and and that as a result has um made his job all the more difficult and he has tried to meet um what the people are asking of him in increasing transparency um and for example um you can go on the website and see things and video camera footage um i think that has been wonderful he's also been meeting people out um when they have you know the homeless uh when there was a camping out in battery park um and he continues to um do his job with honor and distinction and i hope that we will finally be able to move his nomination forward so that he is and now our chief of police thank you thank you so much uh our next speaker is claire wall and claire uh i do not see you online um again if you if you are under another name um and can just identify yourself that would be great um the next speaker is jeff holstead and as well i do not see you online either um please use the raise hand function um well i see someone using the raise hand function kelly is is is jeff with you yes okay please go ahead jeff thank you thank you very much i just want to again second what my wife had said i uh i think john's deserve this chance he's done a lot for the community and appreciate everything he's done thank you our last speaker joining us online is peter hartledge and i do not see you online either um again i'll keep this up if you want to use the raise hand function and that would also apply uh to jonathan ferrell who i wasn't able to locate either and am still unable to locate um with that uh we'll keep that uh we will we'll keep we'll take the timer down for those joining us online and go back to those that are in con toys there is one person a non burlington resident who wish to address the council and that's becky cassidy good evening i'm becky cassidy vice president of the queen city police foundation board i also served for 17 years as the marketing director of the church street marketplace i grew up in burlington and i'm a proud graduate of burlington high school the queen city police foundation provides funding for innovative burlington police department projects that better serve the community improve engagement and communications and foster excellence in policing in addition the foundation provides assistance to officers employees and or families facing challenges i have known and worked with and appreciated chief john murad since he was hired as deputy chief in 2020 i have observed and benefited from his calm enlightened educated well organized approach to policing and his expert management of the department as i am in the police department often on foundation business i have frequently seen the the chief interacting both with his officers and the public john is a listener a keen observer and a significant deliverer of the best in policing i watch the encampment in battery park and listen to the chief interact carefully consider and sometimes comfort protesters there his regard and respect for people of every color and origin was impeccably demonstrated this is a man who works weekends and holidays patrols and holiday patrol shifts so that his officers can recharge and have time with their families this is a man whose integrity decency energy and morality guide the burlington police department he has been doing the job every day and providing very significant service to burlington in an unexpectedly challenging time this isn't the burlington i grew up with but it is a burlington immeasurably safer and better protected because of the leadership and courage of john murad the foundation board unanimously supports the approval of john murad as permanent chief of the burlington police department thank you thank you so much and with that i wasn't able to locate the other people who um had wanted to speak online and we've gone through the list of those people who wanted to speak in con toys so with that at um 847 we will close the public forum with our appreciation for all of you who spoke during public forum the next item on our agenda is item number five which is climate emergency reports um is there any counselor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report uh council bergman um i don't know how many of us um are focused on the uh the climate implications of air travel and um i know that it's been exceedingly troublesome for me um as i'm into retirement and have lots of pressures to go visit lots of places that i cannot drive to um and so it has created um some enough tension where i've been starting to pay attention about this conundrum that we as a human species are facing um at a time of climate change which is only getting worse and i just want to say that there is an international movement around lowering uh the airline emissions and emissions from airplanes which is significant and growing and we should be paying attention to that and i just want to note that um last week there was an international set of demonstrations meaning all around the world and that included um and a community action i did not participate but it was something that happened in in berlington where um about 30 people showed up and um it was part of a um like i said this international um effort and there are live questions that we are fielding it in the tuc regarding um cutting airline emissions not only from the big emitters the big planes but also from smaller planes which uh i i read um are fairly inefficient so um i raise this because whether individually we like it or not whether we're challenged by it or not it is out there and we ignore the implications of all of the aspects of our modern industrial life and uh at our peril at our children's peril at our parents peril and dare i say for the umpteenth time for our grandchildren and their children's so i'll continue to to harp on that because of how important uh they all those generations are to me and i hope that we pay attention to this particular aspect of climate change and i'll let uh counselor barlow talk later about the uh the the biomass symposium that we're having next week on uh uh mcneil which we're all looking forward to so thank you thank you so much counselor bergman were there any other counselors who wish to offer a climate emergency report or the administration seeing none we'll close out that item and before we go to our consent and deliberative agendas we do have a local control commission meeting that we need to attend to so with that i'll recess the council meeting at eight eight fifty one and we'll call to order the local control commission at the same hour um and give everyone a chance to get to that agenda as we as we all navigate um our new software we have left board docs behind and welcome to the new age of civic clerk and we're all getting used to it this is our first meeting using the new software so with that um the first item on our agenda is one point one um which is a motion to adopt the agenda and for emotion i'll go to the chair of our license committee uh commissioner shannon thank you commission chair paul i moved to um and i'm really proud to have found this so quickly um i moved to amend adopt the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda item two point one first class liquor license renewals 2023 2024 blue cat cafe and wine bar add to the consent agenda item 2.2 third class liquor license renewals 2023 2024 blue cafe blue cake cafe and wine bar add to the consent agenda item 2.3 outside consumption permit renewals 2023 2024 blue cat cafe and wine bar and pizzeria barita thank you uh commissioner shannon is there a second to that motion um seconded by councillor travers is there any discussion on the motion to adopt our agenda as amended uh seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh we have our agenda uh we have a uh consent agenda um and for that i'll go again to commissioner shannon move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you commissioner shannon seconded by councillor travers any discussion on that motion uh seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously we have six items on our deliberative agenda the first is 3.1 which is a first and third class liquor license application for farmers and foragers uh commissioner shannon move to approve the 2023 2024 first and third class liquor license applications for farmers and foragers 75 penny lane with all standard conditions thank you uh for that motion seconded by councillor travers any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion to approve the 2023 2024 first and third class liquor license application uh for this business um please say aye aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously which brings us to 3.2 and outside consumption permit application for farmers and foragers dock side uh commissioner shannon move to approve the 2023 2024 outside consumption permit application for farmers and foragers 75 penny lane thank you commissioner shannon uh seconded by uh commissioner travers any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye any opposed please say no that motion passes uh unanimously which moves us to item 3.3 and outside consumption permit application for pizzeria ida move to approve the 2023 2024 outside consumption permit application for pizzeria ida thank you uh commissioner shannon seconded by councillor tra- uh commissioner travers uh any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye all right aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously which brings us to uh item 3.4 a first class liquor license application for poppy's market and cafe uh commissioner shannon move to approve the 2023 2024 first class liquor license application for poppy's market and cafe 88 oak street with all standard conditions thank you commissioner shannon seconded by commissioner travers any discussion on that motion uh seeing none all those in all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously we have two more to go the fifth item is 3.5 a first and third class liquor license application for wings uh commissioner shannon move to approve the 2023 2024 first and third class liquor license application for wings 205 st paul street with all standard conditions thank you so much for that motion seconded by commissioner travers any discussion on that motion seeing none all those in favor of the motion to approve this first and third class liquor license application please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously which brings us to the last item on our deliberative agenda which is 3.6 an outside consumption permit application for wings commissioner shannon move to approve the 2023 2024 outside consumption permit application for wings at 205 st paul street thank you so much uh commissioner shannon seconded by commissioner travers any discussion on that motion uh seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously um thank you so much to the members of the uh license committee for your work and as well to the clerk of the council lori olberg uh with no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection we will adjourn the local control commission meeting at 8 58 and return to our uh council meeting and we will continue where we left off with item number six which is our consent agenda is there a motion to move the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated so moved uh thank you so much councilor mcgee seconded by councilor jang um is there any discussion on that motion councilor hightower yeah i just wanted to um if the administration is willing give them the chance to address one of the comments in public forum um specifically relating to the first amendment to the the restated development agreement between the city place and city place developers um and i think specifically the question was why we're loaning 18 million dollars to developers to start the project um so i don't know if the administration feels we'd be happy to address that and he will that item is actually removed from the uh great consent agenda so we'll we'll get to that in just a couple of minutes um no worries no problem um if there are no other questions on the uh or comments on the deliberative on the consent agenda we'll go to a vote um all those in favor of the cons consent agenda and taking the actions as indicated please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously um and that moves us to our deliberative agenda we have 11 items on our deliberative agenda and for those items that are not permits or public hearings there are time limits on the other remaining agenda items we will do our best to keep to those time limits um the first item on our deliberative agenda is item 7.1 which is the item that you were just referring to counselor high tower which is the first amendment to the second amended and restated development agreement this had been consent item 6.29 and was removed at the request of counselors bergman and grant um before we get to comments from the council I will go to counselor travers for a motion thank you president paul I move to approve and authorize the mayor to execute a first amendment to second amended and restated development agreement with city place partners LLC in substantial conformance with the draft uh posted with our agenda online and subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office and upon a second we yield the floor to the mayor great thank you so much uh seconded by um seconded by counselor shannon um we can go to the mayor or would you would you prefer do that and then if there are if there are counselors who have questions we can certainly go um yes would you uh yes first of all I'd like to say a few words to um set the context here and make sure the public is is clear that we had the chance to talk about this item in executive session last week but this is the first public discussion of this matter so um I'm appreciate the chance to speak to why why we're doing this we also have here with us the attorney that we have been working with is sort of leading the city's work on this transaction tim samson and um if counselors do have questions it's likely a little have tim responding as he's very familiar with this document has really been the chief author of the original document and well the the arta 2.0 at least he was uh there was an arto 1.0 many years ago before tim's involvement but tim has been involved for several years now when the council approved the arta 2.0 um which again stands for the amended restated development agreement uh in november I believe of 2022 we did so for one very compelling reason at least it was compelling to me and I think a unanimous decision by the council that um we should find a way for the developers to move forward and end the long hiatus at the project that had seen the project stalled for over four years approximately four years and give them an ability to move forward and start with site work and what uh and foundation work and really what we call the podium the concrete um base of this one block wide project and we did that with full discussion that uh the developers are quite transparent and clear that they were still working on the permanent financing but they were willing to take really all the the risk involved in ensuring that once started the podium would be completed and from and they are in the process of doing that as you saw on your site walk earlier tonight there's a great deal of activity that's taken place since the approval of arta 2.0 and what is only possible because of that approval something that we discussed a lot at the time tim made that point frequently is that the there were likely to be future amendments to the arta over the years that we would be working under it and working towards the completion of this multi-year many tens of millions of dollar project and what and this is the first time that we are back to address some of those refinements and changes that have taken place since uh since last year the um the most significant change um is that we uh are changing the way in which the city is uh protected and insh and guaranteed to um not be taking risks going forward from this point because of some uh changes in circumstances and i think actually at this point i'd let tim maybe kind of outline what those uh what those changes are the the principle um that has guided this project since the start is that the city should not be taking construction risk the city should not be taking development risk really the city is prepared to put public money into the creation of public infrastructure which is what this transaction would do this is not it was suggested during the public forum that this is a loan to the private developers and it is not this is the the city borrowing um and the city intends to do that borrowing later this month uh and holding on to those funds uh as we wait for the public infrastructure to reach future milestones and so this structure uh preserves and in some ways makes stronger the city's protections um and ensuring that we make good on that principle that we not take financial risk here we'll put public money into the effort but we're not going to take the risk and to kind of get into a little bit of the specifics of that i hand it over to tim sure thanks everyone um again as the mayor said this isn't a loan um this is a fundamental part of the project since the beginning it's the it's the city's ability the city's mechanism to fund the public portions of the project so it's not a loan to the developer it's the mechanism to reimburse the developer for building what typically municipality would build um the and importantly as the mayor said the developer doesn't have access to these funds that we're talking about until they build the public infrastructure um i think it's also important to say since we were here before too um the city police partners have done what they told you they were going to do in november of 22 as the mayor said they started construction right away they've been at it ever since and they've importantly entered into what we call the tiff construction contracts for over 50 million dollars of work um in response the city has also performed under the development agreement um the city brought to you and the council approved in february the application for the vepsy approvals for the tiff uh financing um those approvals came um from vepsy in march and the city has has come back to the council in may to approve the the the financing going forward the tiff financing so what are we really doing here it's not as the mayor said there's not a fundamental change it's really a an adjustment to the mechanisms that we're allowing the development agreement to come to fruition um so what am i talking about there is a june 30 deadline as you recall legislative deadline for the issuance of the tiff debt but at this point in the construction process in the development process i should say really the city police partners hasn't put together all of the financing for all of the project and so if you were going to issue permanent debt you would you would be able to issue it on construction contracts that amount to a quarter to a third of what the project will ultimately be and that means that there's less construction to support the ultimate tax increment that is going to pay back that debt so we don't want the city to issue permanent debt before june 30 so what do we do we can't avoid the june 30 deadline the city has an opportunity to implement um the process by issuing interim debt and what that is is a short term 12 month i guess 11 and a half month uh note at a fixed rate the proceeds of that are going to be controlled by the city not released to the developer until they develop the public improvements and that uh the risk of that borrowing right the cost of borrowing that money for that period of time is going to be secured by the developer by the developers posting a cash escrow to cover the the debt service the incremental debt service on on on that borrowing if there is any um so again in as i see it it's really um there's no change in the fundamental approach there's no new 18 million dollars it's certainly not alone it never was and it isn't now it is a a a tool that had we known exactly we would need this in november we would have written it into the deal then um we didn't know it then but that is the nature of these things circumstances play out and we adjust as we go forward um and and i think really you know that that that's the part of the uh the financing piece of this um there are uh several other i think more minor um components of the amendment so since we've got an amendment before you we'd like to be as comprehensive as we can um i think you're aware generally that the developers are back in front of the drb for some um changes to the project that are fairly modest but that do that do um kind of directly uh come not i'm gonna say in conflict but they bump up against some of the way we describe the project previously in the development agreement um the the items are that was formally intended to be a restaurant you may recall in the top floor of the building with the observation deck that was going to be open to the public final design of the project has has removed the um restaurant up there it has found more space in the building for additional residential units um but there will not be a rooftop observation deck in return the developers are providing additional public space by in in the form of public restrooms at the ground level um that would be um in many respects probably more um more usable to the public uh there also as i mentioned before have found the ability to uh reduce some mechanical space in the building provide additional units they'll have up to you know a unit range of 400 to 495 units we had references in the arta 2.0 to 425 or so units we want to make these these documents consistent um we think that's a good thing the more units they can provide is a better thing in these times in particular and then finally they in the in the context of their uh ongoing development um of the program for the project want the option not a not not not a certainty but an option to provide for a small hotel in a portion of the project as well up to 140 room hotel um again it would it would displace some of those residential units but still have a have a minimum of 400 units in the project so those things are being processed through the drb process um the reason we're talking about them now is because again those changes would would um would kind of bump up against some of the way we described the project previously so that's the summary of of what's before you again i i uh i i would not i would not be surprised if in over the next couple years we're not back again talking about circumstances that have changed again and reasons that we may need to adapt with those circumstances fundamentally the principles that place here are not changing fundamentally the protections that we have in the development agreement for the city are not changing and that will continue um throughout the project thank you so much uh was there anything else you wanted to add may or wine burger before i go to the council no i think um i think that's hopefully plenty to kick this off and happy to answer any further questions great thank you so councillor bergman and councillor grant you had both um asked to have this item removed before i go to councillor hightower i'm happy to go to one of you i just want to thank our rules our president for removing it it's absolutely essential that we got this um from my standpoint it makes a lot of sense and i'll be supporting it great thank you so much uh councillor grant did you want to add anything before i go to count um just that it was i felt important to talk about publicly i think this is a very important project i think that people don't want to feel like any information is being hidden from them um thank you rightly so and certainly i was i am the person who does the agenda and i am glad that you both asked to have it removed um councillor hightower did you want to add nothing just agree with my two colleagues okay thanks uh are there any other councillors who wanted to speak to this uh councillor jang um thank you i also want to thank the developers for inviting the council and the other legislators at the visit today the site it was beautiful um and since these questions are coming up i was just also wondering if they can publicly make a statement about where they where things are at i think it would be very beneficial because today what we heard from them is their work with a approximative neighbors of the site they're doing great work in terms of communication and engagement and these type of efforts also i think that the the bigger community need to know about it and we urging the maybe the developers to consider putting a statement about the development of their efforts i think it would be beneficial great councillor jang so we do have uh two of the partners uh city plate local partners here with us and they're making their way downstairs and i'm sure we'd be happy to address that sorry i was upstairs i didn't hear your question yeah um first thank you so much for the visit site visit today it was great and also it was great to hear from you directly about the engagement of the people the building approximative to the site i think it's great so a community member just have some concern about this and i'm glad that team was here to clarify it and was just wondering about you to maybe speak about how do you plan to keep the community at large not only those that are close to the site about what is going on what are your efforts what are your dreams where you are at if there are plans as part of this for you guys to do so sure i mean we we've been as we discussed today when we're doing during demolition and construction and some of the kind of noisy stuff we went and met with all the neighbors on the street on cherry and bank street um uh heavily engaged with the school because of all the the students that are there and uh you know just we sent out weekly notices to the neighbors about when disruptive activities might be happening and so keeping in touch with the the real adjacent neighbors and i'm down there almost every single day and i walk the streets and check in with everybody and um they've got my cell phone number they know where i live they have my email and if they have a problem they they know they can call me and as we get further and further into construction we'll have um you know more stuff to talk about you know we we do um um some not press releases but i've been on the radio a few times talking about what to expect i've been on the channel three news giving a little preview of what the summer's uh looking like and we're going to keep that up and that interaction up and uh there is a 1 800 number posted all the way around the job site um actually rings to my cell phone so if anybody has any questions you call that 1 800 number you got my cell phone and we're happy to meet and review uh review the drawings and as they as they progress like Tim was saying at one point we really don't even know what we're quite putting in the north building yet but as we know we'll let people know we'll let the community know and uh so we're wide open for access um my my partners are all around every day um you see about 100 yellow trucks down there that's Mr. Eileen back here and uh he's very accessible go to his office at four o'clock in the morning or seven o'clock at night and he's there so if anybody's got any questions uh there's a lot of ways to get ahold of us yeah thank you i mean to tell you the truth i think the city council is well um informed right and i'm also very glad to hear about the efforts in engaging the approximative neighbors maybe also it could just be a website where some basic informations are where when the building is is done how it's going to look like how the interior so where people can go and see and touch we do we do have a website uh we update it and we have twitter announcements and uh facebook announcements that kind of stuff you know updated pictures and all right thank you thank you so much and thank you for being here uh are there were there were there were there any were there any um were there any other councils who had any comments or questions before we go to a vote uh seeing none we'll go to well seeing seeing seeing none we'll go to a vote all those all those in favor of the motion regarding the first amendment to the second amended and restated development agreement please say aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously and thank you again for allowing us to have this conversation by encouraging it to be taken off the consent agenda there the next two items on our deliberative agenda are entertainment permits thank you again thanks for being here um is the first it's item 7.2 which is an indoor entertainment permit application for mothership vermont um and for this item i'll go to councillor shannon for a motion move to approve the 2023 2024 indoor entertainment permit application for mothership vermont 19 church street with all standard conditions to include no exemption to the noise ordinance and ask for the floor back very briefly after a second sure thank you um uh seconded by uh councillor travers uh councillor shannon you have the floor thank you um all standard conditions includes um that the noise ordinance is has to be honored and it always has um in the in the license committee i just asked that each licensee be made aware because there seems to be a myth that the noise ordinance doesn't apply when we give entertainment permits but in fact one of the conditions is that the noise ordinance does still apply um so with each of these uh when i make these motions to say it includes no exemption to the noise ordinance that is not a change that's part of standard conditions and it's always been there thank you thank you we we often say standard conditions and uh it's important to know what what what that means um thank you so much um are there any other comments uh on this motion on this motion before we go to a vote seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously which brings us to the second entertainment permit it's 7.3 which is an outdoor entertainment permit application for uh junks teahouse uh councillor shannon move to approve the 2023 2024 outdoor entertainment permit application for junks teahouse 324 north winnewski avenue with all standard conditions including no exemption to the noise ordinance thank you councillor shannon uh seconded by councillor travers uh any discussion on this motion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion uh please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously and again our thanks to the members of the license committee councillors shannon gran and travers um and our clerk lori olberg for this work for your work on this committee that brings us to the next uh the next two items which are regarding appointment of department heads to the uh for the city the first is item 7.04 which is a communication mayor maro wineburger regarding fiscal year 2024 may oral appointments and for this item i'll go to the mayor for some comments and then we will then we will go to a motion mayor wineburger thank you president paul i am really excited to be able to bring forward for your consideration and confirmation the outstanding group of department heads that is seated behind me who are each dedicated the city of berlington and its and its residents the last year has continued to bring exceptionally challenging times for the city for the country for the world um and we have seen this group continue to forge great progress i want to call out just a few examples of that and including multi department projects that are represent major successes of the city this city of berlington team it's certainly not an exhaustive list and i fear we're probably not going to hit quite everyone who should be recognized but i think there are examples that are illustrative of what this team has continued to do construction has begun on the champlain parkway and after a 34-year break and a recent court decision has made clear that that that construction is going to be able to continue to completion we are nearing the construction of the great streets main streets project which has been a massive collaborative effort led by dpw but including including important contributions from cito the business workforce development department and berlington city arts as well the opening in february of the elmwood community shelter is very much on my mind i'm sure yours after the discussion we had earlier today and and there too we had collaborative work between planning cito parks and the berlington police department our enterprises and utilities continue to make progress the bd towards our net zero goals and our water resources towards implementing a new equitable rate structure and our airport with massive new infrastructure investments there and we are about we are just starting to enjoy i don't know if any of you got to be out there this weekend but the first of many great concerts and activities that are going to be taking place this summer amidst a vibrant packed summer of downtown programming at the waterfront and city hall park and on the marketplace um and across the city and that includes of course uh juneteenth which we are less than two weeks from the twilight concert series which began this past weekend splash dance and the uh btv market highlight july third festival of fools and the list goes on and on so day in and day out it is uh my privilege to work alongside this exemplary group of public servants i know the city benefits their talent creativity skill carrying leadership and hard work and it is my distinct honor to submit them for your consideration confirmation this evening evening and i hope they will have your your full support thank you president paul thank you so much mayor weinberger uh with that we will go to a motion councillor shannon hi proudly and gratefully moved to confirm the fy 24 mayoral appointments as listed thank you so much uh seconded by um councillor bergman um is there any discussion on the motion before us seeing seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion is laid out by councillor shannon please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously congratulations to all mayoral appointees uh before we get to before we get to the next agenda item i'd like to just take a five minute break um we'll be back it's now um 926 uh just a just a minute or so after 930 thank you all right so thank you so much and uh for honoring that break um we now will continue with our deliberative agenda item 7.5 which is a communication mayor morrow weinberger regarding the appointment of a police chief um as with our last item and for this item i will go to the mayor for some comments and then we will go to a motion mayor weinberger thank you president paul i have one more appointment to bring before you tonight and that of course is the appointment of john murad as the permanent chief of the broenton police department uh i am honored and proud to be bringing this appointment forward as well for anyone wondering why now and why chief murad the answer is simple our city needs and deserves a strong and reliable leader in our police department and we have been fortunate to have one in john murad for the last three years from the day he stepped into this office he has faced tests with a little precedent in broenton his first summer in this role saw large sustained protests outside the front door of one north avenue the department lost 40 percent of its officers over his first two years in 2020 you 2022 was a year of record high gun violence and two frequent challenges in our treasured downtown chief murad has led from the front through all of this and forage progress in many areas including priorities that the majority of us here at this table agree on and have supported through resolution after resolution the chief proposed in the public safety continuity plan in 2020 the creation of csl's and cso's and has since recruited hired trained and deployed six csl's and five six cso's and five csl's who now respond to close to 25 of all incidents the chief is on track with the officer rebuilding plan that this council approved last summer having just celebrated our third graduating class from the academy since this council voted to restore the officer headcount in october of 2021 and the chief has launched a new racial justice training for officers implemented a new policy on the release of body worn camera footage for use of force incidents made progress towards the creation of berlington cares a new crisis response resource within the department and more under his leadership the bpd has arrested suspects and over 80 percent of the shootings over the last two years and while we continue to face historic drug overdose and challenges and housing pressures downtown berlington is returning to being the welcoming vibrant and safe public space that we have long enjoyed in short chief mirad is delivering progress on the public safety priorities that berlingtonians including this council have demanded by being on scene at far too many shootings filling overnight supervisor shifts and attending countless mpa meetings citywide often while facing frustrations and criticism chief mirad has proven a strong commitment to this great city we have been fortunate that chief mirad has stepped up during these historically challenging times that have caused so many officers to step away you know i remember sitting here on the night of the final debate to restore the officer headcount and i said then on the cusp of that vote when i really wasn't quite sure what the outcome was going to be that a vote for that resolution was a vote for a functional police department and that a vote against it was going to undermine the functionality of the police department that is fundamentally the choice before you again tonight we cannot make the urgent progress the people of berlington are demanding with our police department and with our public safety challenges without the confirmation of chief mirad tonight with the second appointment i'm making clear that chief mirad continues to have my full confidence and support and leading our collective efforts to deliver the level of public safety our constituents expect and deserve i urge you to show the committed team at the brunington police department who put themselves on the line for this community and all berlingtonians that you too believe in the future of our police department with a yes vote for his confirmation tonight thank you president paul thank you so much mayor weinberger uh so we'll go to a motion to get this started and with that i will go to councillor barlow thank you president paul i moved to confirm the appointment of john mirad as chief of the berlington police department i'd ask for the floor back briefly after a second thank you so motion has been made to confirm the appointment of john mirad as our police chief for the coming fiscal year um seconded by uh councillor shannon um before i give the floor back to you just wanted to also note that um uh to please keep in mind that our council rules state that no councillor is to speak for more than five minutes to an agenda item and it is the role of the council president to enforce that rule um please i am requesting that you keep to this time limit i have no desire at all to interrupt anyone as i know that we all give considerable thought to our comments that we uh comments that we give to the public um i'll be monitoring and i will encourage you to wrap up if you encroach on the five minute limit but again i just please be mindful of it and as i would prefer not to do that um with that i will go to councillor barlow and then we'll open it up to other members of the council to speak thank you i promise to be brief i'll go nowhere near five minutes i know that there are a lot of other councillors who want to speak tonight and some who may have questions of the uh acting chief um i first want to say i agree with a couple of speakers tonight they say it's time to move forward with a permanent chief i think we've had an acting chief for far too long um i also agree with another who spoke to tonight who said we're lucky to still have john murat as acting chief i'm i'm glad he stuck around john has led the department for almost three years through some of the most significant public safety challenges our city has ever faced at least in my 50 years of living here and he has done so with a critically understaffed police department john has met these challenges with an unwavering commitment to the department and to the city under his leadership we have made good progress on the multi-year departmental rebuilding process we're retooling and we're retooling and restructuring the department to ensure more effective responses to social and mental health needs and even most recently we're seeing an improved climate in the downtown for shoppers diners and visitors because of an increased increased bpd presence a change that has been made possible in part because of our successes increasing the staff levels at bpd under john's watch more needs to be done but we're moving in the right direction i believe john has earned the trust of the community and of the department he leads and he deserves our support on the council and i'm hoping that my colleagues tonight will join me in voting for his appointment thank you thank you thank you so much counselor barlow so with that we will open the floor to anyone else who wishes to speak um uh mayor weinberger president paul i apologize it's normally my role to invite the uh the the appointee up and and get some brief remarks from the appointee and i apologize i i felt that i was hoping we could do that now at the beginning of the the council discussion okay so chief mirad if you come thank you uh so much mr mayor uh thank you madame president um and and to the entirety of the council uh for this opportunity to to talk and to speak i i'm going to try to keep it very very brief because i i think that the questions uh that all of you may have are probably more important than what i have prepared so frankly i'm going to skip through most of it but i do want to thank you mr mayor for for your leadership and guidance and support and for leading by example uh for compassion for the vulnerable and your desire for collaboration while still getting things done and i want to say congratulations to the entirety of the city team uh on your well-deserved reappointments because without your time and energy and and love uh you put into your work and our city and our home it would be a lesser place and i also want to thank all the people who came tonight neighbors and com colleagues and community members uh and especially all the people at public comment and i mean all of the people at public comment because i hear and appreciate the support but i hear and contemplate the critiques i serve everyone in this city and the idea of safe and fair everywhere for everyone is a creed i want to thank the the people of the burlington police department particularly deputy chiefs labreck and labarge and shannon trample i would be nowhere without them but all of us would be nowhere without them women and the men who do the work in dispatch or in detectives in records or on the road in kuzi and in cape and every day i feel privileged and proud to get to work with all of them and most of all i want to thank my my parents and my kids macarthur and katie elizabeth and bonnie for being here um so i i had other remarks about accomplishments it has been three years a 1089 days and there's plenty of things of which i am very very proud but i don't want to even touch your five minute limit uh madam president and so i actually will hold on them most of them are in the mayor's uh memo to you um and certainly any opportunity i have to discuss them in the context of questions you may ask i'll i'll try to do so but um yes i'll just i'll leave it at that and i'll say thank you very much for this chance thank you uh so the floor is open if there are counselors who have uh questions uh we'll go to uh to counselor carpenter and then counselor dority um counselor carpenter um thank you and thank you uh chief for all of your service i know how hard you work um we didn't mention that as us but it's just incredible to me i told the other some of the other department heads um be careful what you wish for and i'm going to say that to you be careful what you wish for um because it's a tough job um i've spent a lot of years in government um and i retire from government and it's a messy process but what i learned about it is governing in the public sector is is difficult and very messy um and i'm making a couple of comments i do have a i'm coming to a question here um my my comments are and some um to to my colleagues and that in the public it's important to remember that choosing a police chief like choosing our department heads is the prerogative of the mayor to create a cohesive team the city of brillington 20 years ago um moved away from a fairly archaic system of department appointments um under the leadership of former's mayors bernie sanders and peter clavelle and said the mayor we elect is the ceo they need to pick a team and that is what the mayor is doing tonight is is picking a team and i think that's really important for this council to respect but um part of the process and the messiness of um creating a team is all of these departments come attached with citizen um commission citizen oversight which means citizen opinion um and i think that's critical for this body we need that outside opinion we need that outside input um and in your case we need that from our police commission and in fact we're looking to increase their involvement but um we're all kind of aware that there's been some bumpiness with um the commission which which changes because it is a citizen body they're not employed and i guess i'm wanting you to speak and ask about how you see improving relationships and any relationship with the police commission thank you for that opportunity um i i believe in the necessity of of a police commission the necessity of the involvement of our neighbors in the work that we do police legitimacy hinges on on for me there are nine principles that were that came out of england in 1829 and and sir from sir robber peel and one of them is that the police are the public and the public are the police and and a citizen police commission gives body to that uh maxim um i i recently gave uh and during our award ceremony uh an award to a former police commissioner in recognition of the importance of that role and the ways in which uh that is is incredibly uh necessary for a police department to have legitimacy um i'm heartened by i thought that the most recent police commission was meeting was was one in which we had a lot of common ground upon which to build and i'm hopeful that that is going to continue i think that we have done a lot over the past three years to try to make this relationship a stronger one we've taken we codified and that happened early in my tenure as acting chief of police a a set of rules for how we work with the police commission with regard to complaints against employees of the burlington police department um codified that codified much more uh sharing of information uh including body camera footage giving them their own accounts on our axon program which is the platform on which body camera is is downloaded and then viewed uh there is a lot that to speak to uh with regard to the the relationship that exists currently and the system that we exist have currently but clearly there are you know things that need to be worked out with regard to uh certainty about language in the charter with regard to certainty about what our public wants i think our public made it clear that there are forms of oversight that are a bridge too far for our public i think that was made clear in uh town meeting day but there is still a pronounced desire for that kind of involvement and i recognize the need for that involvement i don't think a police department can have true legitimacy without it thanks thank you councillor carpenter we will go to councillor dority thanks president paul i have a question for the acting chief and then if i might have a additional time to make a few comments sure of course um chief murad thank you for being here um my question for you is this uh the burlington police department must be committed to developing and implementing fair and unbiased policing practices in my view uh and i believe in the view of my fellow council members this is absolutely non-negotiable we do not and will not tolerate a police department that treats people differently based on race ethnicity gender or sexuality your critics and you've heard some of them here tonight have suggested that you are insufficiently committed to this principle how do you answer them and more specifically what have you done in the past three years to advanced fair and unbiased policing practices within bpd and what do you intend to do in the next year if you are appointed the existence of bias in every human heart uh is i think something that's indisputable uh we know that these uh things affect all of us unconscious biases uh overt biases uh we also know that there are long term and uh deep seated disparities and inequalities that have beset our country since before it was founded we see it in policing in places we have seen horrible acts in policing and i think my first and foremost goal is to ensure that no such act occurs here uh i was was clear i i helped then interim chief morrison articulate her horror at what happened in minneapolis in in 2020 uh i articulated my own at what happened in memphis uh with regard to what we we have done um we have brought in trainers uh with regard to issues around bias around cultural competency around systemic oppression uh we worked with a woman named trusty loving who did a series of iterative trainings with all of our officers um and that was uh even prior to the the construction of of training out of uh the early form of the reib in the new form of the reib we've since come up with a program that i conceived around uh issues of systemic oppression against people of color against women against people based on their sexual orientation against immigrants uh and then through the possibilities and protections possible through the 14th amendment i conceived that training i went to a group called the center for policing equity uh to help develop that training director carson of reib worked on that training as well and and added to that and helped develop it and then lead it uh and then we delivered that training to every single member of the police department um these are are things that i i hit on in internal messaging i talked to officers about and furthermore i have tried every single part of of the transparency efforts that we have undergone in the past several years uh putting more directives online making certain that uh we are that i give full information to the police commission in a the form of a chief's report every month something that was never done before and i personally prepare those at great length and and and i hope effective effort uh but also in the form of uh every single use of force deputy chief labreck prepares every single use of force as a synopsis and presents it to the public we present an increasing number of those uses of force via body camera footage as well to the public and the purpose of that transparency is to say where are we with regard to the existence of the disparities that we know are there the data that we release is the source of the understanding of those disparities and i would not excuse me not the understanding the source of the the recognition of the existence of those disparities i want the public to be involved in the understanding of them as well and to look at are these to be found in the materials that we put forward are these to be found in the acts that people themselves can examine i examine almost every single one of them certainly every video that goes out to the public i have watched certainly the the use of force synopsis that deputy chief labreck prepares i read i report on every single use of force against the that involves a person of color to the mayor within usually uh it's 12 hours of when it occurs so i look into those as well and what i see is the existence of these disparities in the results and i don't see that disparity is the same as bias i don't believe that they are the same and i believe that if we see examples where officer bias is causing these situations i will absolutely take action on those thank you chief murad um president paul i intend to vote to to confirm uh chief murad's appointment uh to the uh permanent chief position for this one year position for two principal reasons the first is is that i echo and agree with the remarks made by councillor barlow councillor carpenter the mayor and so many members of our community who have expressed their views today and in short that chief murad has led the burlington police department through three years of unprecedented challenges and difficulties um uh that i think are uh totally unprecedented in the history of the city um and by his leadership and by his commitment to the city uh he has earned uh this appointment and earned our trust for this year um my second reason uh is that i don't think this question can be decided without careful consideration of the consequences of a no vote on this appointment if the city council tonight votes against confirming chief murad uh he will not be blocked from being uh the police chief as some have suggested uh in my view uh one of two scenarios will follow one chief murad will continue to serve as bpd's police chief as he has done for the last three years um but with that uh acting designation or two uh chief murad will decide to seek professional opportunities elsewhere uh if the former the council this council will have sent a message of negativity instability and uncertainty to the burlington police department that will further erode the already low morale uh and worsen our ability to hire and retain qualified officers which is already a huge challenge in today's environment if the latter bpd will be without a qualified leader and i am quite certain that finding a replacement in this environment will be very difficult and an extremely time consuming process in my opinion both of these outcomes will cause further grave damage to the burlington police department and the city's ability to address the public safety crisis it will also make it more difficult if not impossible for bpd to continue to implement the essential reforms regarding fair and unbiased policing that the chief has spoken to tonight de-escalation practices the incorporation of cso's and csl's into the department's work and i think these are unacceptable consequences so those are my vote reasons for voting yes but at the same time chief i must also acknowledge the constituents and community members whose opinions i value and respect oppose your confirmation and the responsibility for building bridges and improving relationships with members of our community especially those who have been historically mistreated by the police falls upon the chief's shoulders it falls upon your shoulders this is essential work a just police department a fair police department an effective police department depends upon having the broad support across all segments of our diverse community so i'd ask you to please view my vote as both a confirmation and a challenge a challenge to work harder to decrease defensiveness within the department and to improve relationships particularly with those entities and individuals in the community who continue to be critical and distrustful of our police department thank you thank you very much counselor dority uh are there other counselors who wish to speak to this appointment we'll go to counselor traverse and then to counselor high tower thank you president paul and thank you chief for being here this evening i also have a question and then some brief comments to follow if that's all right so chief you mentioned it briefly in response to counselor carpenter's question here but we've seen in our community over the last few years a number of proposals on community oversight a number of which we're considering now on our joint committee on oversight and accountability and i agree with you that some of the proposals that we've seen are as as you put it a step too far both you and i and the mayor and other folks in this council were expressed in our opposition to question seven this last town meeting day i know that i and others have made clear that our opposition to that question does not mean that we are in opposition to any in all forms of community oversight as you know because you've attended the meetings we've had thus far we we do have our joint committee now on oversight and accountability that is continuing to review this issue i i appreciate um your comments comments on this again in response to counselor carpenter but i'm wondering if you can um perhaps speak a bit more um to to your commitment as the leader of the department to continuing to engage with this council through that joint committee process and oversight and accountability and ultimately before this council on uh any structural reform measures or additional community oversight measures we're able to come up with that have broader community support my commitment to engage i i think should be unquestioned i i come to every single meeting of these kinds i participate um i am uh i i believe that we provide data that we are legally permitted to provide with regard to uh both the council and the commission um and i prioritize that effort as i said for example the the chief's report is something into which i put a tremendous amount of work uh and that kind of engagement is integral to to the way that i want to to be a a public facing uh leader of this department um with regard to commitment to continue to work on on what we are are seeking as a community with regard to uh with regard to oversight with regard to what we have with regard to ideas for what may come next uh i absolutely am committed to being a part of those discussions and and making certain that what's implemented is is fair to the men and women of the police department uh is effective for the people who would come forward in the case of complainants but also in the case of of other kinds of oversight such as policy uh that creates policies that are workable and reasonable and are things that actually can help the police department function better uh i think to withdraw from that kind of process uh risks having one that goes terrifically and terribly awry thank you for that answer chief i know you did not come home to vermont to be the chief of police here in burlington nonetheless after the unanticipated departure of three of your predecessors under incredibly trying circumstances for a public safety personnel around the country you are left standing at the helm of our police department i work downtown anytime i'm otherwise downtown i know there's a good chance i'll find you there you become a familiar presence in our community regularly working long shifts seven days a week personally responding to many calls for emergency assistance i know you sacrifice your treatable time away from your family and with your background and intellect i know as others have said that you no doubt have had countless other professional opportunities available to you you've stuck with burlington though even after uh your previous appointment was turned down and i think you're owed a great deal of credit for your dedication and commitment to our city during your time as acting chief generation of police officers hired in the wake of 9 11 have come of retirement age this transition coincided with global pandemic and a perfect storm of other crises even in the face of these challenges under your leadership we can see that we're beginning to turn the corner on addressing some of our recruitment and retention challenges as you know our current police academy class is one of the largest in recent memory and importantly i see that that class and other hires of the police department better represent the diversity of our community and i credit you for that as well with depleted ranks our police department as well has been able to solve and arrest the perpetrators of our community's most serious crimes and your owed thanks you and and your colleagues that at the police department are owed a great deal of thanks and gratitude for that as this council has expressed by past resolution i'll tell you as some other folks here have said a review of my email inbox the past couple weeks and a related apology to those who i haven't been able to respond to yet reveals that while many many people in our community are supportive of your appointment there are reasonable minds that differ i respect the viewpoints of those who disagree on this appointment the mayor has put forward a more than qualified candidate i generally believe our duly elected mayor and future mayors are deserving of their appointments and that a different conclusion here will set concerning precedent for the future additionally for the reasons outlined by councilor doherty i'm also deeply concerned that a no vote by this council will further demoralize our police department and deal a significant blow to our efforts to address recruitment and retention and even though we use this term a permanent chief i think we all agree that you're not going to be here permanently none of us are here permanently um and there will come a time when burlington needs to look for your successor and how attractive will this job be to a future candidate who sees that uh the four most recent holders of this position were either terminated uh resigned out of frustration with our city council or were rejected twice by that same council i'm very confident in your abilities to serve as our chief of police to my colleagues who disagree i say this we're voting on a one-year appointment just as we consider the appointments of your other fellow department heads here this evening if whoever is mayor at this point next year wants to reappoint you we'll be sitting here again voting again um again just as we did for your colleagues this evening in the interim i will take my role here on the city council uh as as oversight of department heads both of the police department as well as of the city's other department seriously in my position as the co-chair of the uh council's joint committee on police oversight and accountability i'm going to continue to work hard on reasonable reforms based on best practices from other communities that will allow for greater community oversight of our police department as i mentioned at the beginning i greatly appreciate uh you're being part of those meetings to date i'm glad to hear from you tonight that you will continue to be a part of those meetings going forward thank you for your service to our community chief congratulations and your appointment i look forward to our continuing to work together uh thank you councillor travers we'll go to councillor hightower i don't have any questions for you i'm just going to have comments um because i think you already answered my questions um with councillor doherty's question um anyone who follows this council knows that i'm a bit of a sucker for compromise and i also regret that this has become a political issue i don't blame the politicization of this on acting chief mirad or anything that he has done or hasn't done but on the mayor i find no pleasure in 16 months later reiterating the reasons i cannot vote for acting chief john mirad yet i wish that the mayor had found a pathway to compromise as that pathway has been clear and open for 16 months for me a compromise is to say that acting chief mirad can be police chief once he has met the criteria that we set in the job description what i saw in the job descriptions were requirements for commitment to and leadership in transformation 21st century policing this means not using broken windows policing not trying to explain but rather acknowledging and addressing discrepancies and bias in the police department and supporting citizen oversight i really don't understand how we can in 2022 still support any department head who doesn't think their department and clearer discrepancies we see in their day it is is affected by bias not just something in the heart and heart of the individuals of the department but systemically and in the outcomes of the department for me this is not negotiable i'm not opposed to the fact that acting chief mirad hasn't let the way on oversight but that he is someone in this room that seems to be opposed to additional oversight of the police department i asked the mayor over a year ago to work with the chief to first take responsibility for the discrepancies and use of force and other data points and to make a plan to address them i asked that the chief at minimum support the mayor's version of oversight when you include at least a removal in the charter of the chief as the sole disciplinary authority these are my requirements for supporting a chief i found the acting chief on this to be more conservative than even the police union at times this is not the beginning of building trust and it's not in line with the pillars of transformative and 21st century policing tonight we have heard again clear articulated issues on how we respond to questions or criticism or how we respond to other authority figures i am sorry that those are things that i keep getting brought up in public form that is a very difficult way to bring these up but taking accountability is not explaining these away it's not getting defensive and it's not bullying others when they do not comply a lot of people spoke to the fact that we haven't had a council appointed chief since 2019 i feel like that means we have to remind people why we haven't had an appointed chief since then the chief we did have initially had a fake social media account that he used to troll activists the next interim chief did the same the mayor has chosen over and over again to keep these issues away from the public or even the council something we saw most recently with the altercation between acting chief mirad and an attending doctor at ubm we have an ongoing culture problem in the department and we don't have a plan for addressing it i understand why the department is defensive there's been a lot to be defensive about there was a lot of anger some of it deserved some of it reactionary in 2020 and beyond but this council and certainly myself have always been willing to compromise and to extend all of branches it's time to work on building trust but that requires work on both sides i think the only we're going to see change on community safety safety for all community members not just some is to rebuild trust you cannot rebuild trust without first taking accountability another of my ask of the mayor 18 months ago was that we have the acting chief go through training or coaching to reduce or eliminate the complaints and issues we had seen around the response to questions feedback dissent or rightful and willingness to comply that was in january 2021 before we even had the issue with the attending physician we have all had our flaws and wouldn't it be better to make a plan to address them rather than to pretend they don't exist it is not that i do not support acting chief mirad as police chief and i am truly grateful for your service you work harder as hard or harder than any department chief that that any department had that we have however i cannot support you under this mayor who also has a lot of work to do on building trust and transparency i cannot support this without an improvement plan or without robust citizen oversight in place i'm also glad that acting chief mirad has the support of his officers in the business community but that was not the part of the community that felt that trust is broken if we are to rebuild trust we need to have a chief that is interested and capable of increasing transparency transparency de-escalation and trust right now acting chief mirad does not seem to have the tools to make that happen so i'll be voting now and i regret having to make the statement again thank you thank you councillor high tower uh don't have any other councillors who wanted to speak uh councillor king uh thanks president paul i will be voting yes on the confirmation of john mirad's appointment as permanent chief i'd be remiss if i didn't explain how i came to this conclusion it has been my belief that our community deserves public safety systems that are compassionate effective and forward thinking there is no doubt that there has been a division on issues related to policing and public safety generally these issues will take time and effort to be resolved i also recognize that many of my neighbors experience policing in different ways than i have i prioritized meeting with the acting chief after being sworn in during that meeting through conversations with a wide range of constituents and after considering the implications of alternatives i concluded that the responsible leadership decision would be to support this appointment while meeting with the acting chief i asked a number of questions relating to his views on police accountability what he sees as his faults in the future of public safety in burlington i also have been meeting with current and former police commissioners to hear about their experience working with the acting chief and their views on public safety in our neighborhoods the police commission provides invaluable time and work on behalf of the burlington community i appreciate and respect their service and knowledge and have considered that input i received from them in making my decision we have a lot of work to do as a community and city to ensure all neighbors feel comfortable with our public safety model that is work that will take time and i hope we can all remain committed to the process i believe the next step in doing that work is confirming john murad is permanent police chief thank you thank you councilor king are there any other counselors who wish to speak to this appointment confirmation i should say uh councilor mickey thank you president paul i um i find it unfortunate that we're in this position again a little over a year after we had the same conversation and um i don't think anything has changed since we had that conversation last january in fact i think we have seen a number of concerns arise that only add to my apprehension in supporting this appointment i cannot support acting chief murad at this time without what councillor hightower outlined as an improvement plan a clear outline of how we're going to move forward to address the concerns that so many in our community have shared and many probably didn't even show up tonight because it feels like a futile effort because they feel like their voices are not heard in this room and i don't blame them because there have been several times where i have felt like my own voice isn't heard in this room and i don't know how many more times uh we can continue to have these same conversations and have this divisive combative posture between the council and the administration it's certainly not what i wanted when i ran for council it's not what i wanted or expected when i sat at this table for the first time but there have been many nights in this room where we have fought for no reason other than petty political disputes and so i don't feel the need to reiterate the statements that others have made or reiterate the concerns that i shared in january of 2022 and i guess i will just say that this my voting no tonight is not a reflection of the members of the police department or the work that they're doing it is a disagreement with the way in which this appointment was brought forward and a lack of respect for the very real concerns that a lot of people have in our community and members of this council have shared and so i will be voting no tonight and uh i will leave it at that thank you thank you thank you councillor mickey we'll go to councillor bergman uh well first i i think that anybody who's listening and looking can read the tea leaves or look at the votes and see that the parade of horribles will not take place as a result of the action that is going to be taking this is going to be happening tonight i do believe that you will uh be appointed tonight um and i want to thank you for hard work that that you've done people have said that and i acknowledge that um we have heard lots of comments on both sides and to me that's exactly a reason why i am not in favor of going forward with this appointment tonight and i say that as somebody who congenitally agrees that the chief executive officer should be able to appoint their department hits but the advice and consent process sometimes doesn't lead to to that result and over the many years decades that i've seen this happen i've witnessed that um despite claims by um by several uh tonight um we have been making progress on recruitment and and retention others here have acknowledged that um under an acting chief regime and i continue to believe that consensus is what we really need to be striving for and we are actually building on a host of things the cso's are an example of that although i personally believe that we've been moving too slowly in that regard but we are making progress on that um the the problem that i that i see is that the move to bring this appointment now sets us back is divisive in an unnecessary way um you will regardless of what would have happened tonight you will continue to be the chief and i will work with you as the chief regardless of what happens and i believe that i have worked with you in honesty good faith and integrity and i will continue to to act in that regard because the the public safety of my constituents and of this city is is deeply important to me um but my concern that this has been brought forward um as a wedge issue um is um is is real and i think that the progress that we need to make in terms of some personal things and we've heard that i don't need to repeat that and also a commitment to the type of public safety uh system needs to go much further to have gotten my um yes vote tonight so i will not be supporting um the um the elevation of uh chief murad to being the uh appointed chief of police thank you thank you council bergman um are there any other counselors who wish to speak to this confirmation okay well we'll okay we'll go to councilor we'll go to councilor jang and then to councilor shannon um thank you president paul and thank you chief mirad for being here and congratulations to all the department heads um you know i think it was four years ago it was around this time and i made a request to divide the question because the mayor wanted to appoint all the department heads together i had the courage to stand up and ask the chief of police back then to not be appointed and i was only actually there were only two votes so meaning that i i want to do what's best for the city and i also don't want any type of back room dealing i want us to be transparent and do our job the best to the best of our abilities appointing chief mirad acting chief mirad today does not definitely solve the public safety crisis in the city of burlington i choose the word crisis because when we rely on the state police to patrol our streets it's a crisis when we witness people killing each other in broad daylight in city parks it's a crisis and we're not immune to that yet but it's happening to burlington as you all know is similar to what we observe all over vermont and even nationally right we are in a public crisis era no single issue as you all know is more important um um to the member of the community about done public safety the most important issue that we all hear every single day and as leaders it is so important for us to understand the complexity and the nuances of the current situation in the city of burlington so that we can identify the solution collaboratively and that is best suited in addressing the challenges we face mirad has done well in so many different areas mirad has solved crimes in the city inheriting this department mirad is working to rebuild the department to tell you the truth two years ago three years ago i was here and i voted in support of mirad and i still trust that he wants to do better but he needs help he needs support from every single one of us in order for him to be successful on the job but is mirad definitely willing to do better is he willing to improve in critical areas that we desperately need such as rebuilding trust between community members between the community and the police right is mirad ready to rebuild our community has he demonstrated that over the past three years is mirad interested in really diversifying the police workforce i mean from the perspective of the swan police officers the diversity that we talk about is he is mirad really ready to demonstrate respect and collaboration of the people that he worked with even though those disagree with him is mirad ready to demonstrate an adequate service delivery to all people regardless of their race their background or who they love mirad has that responsibility the responsibility to prove to burlington that he can make progress on all of those that i mentioned earlier he he needs to bring it but this is not about mirad i think some of us did talk about that but this is more about the chief executive officer of the city of burlington this is about the mayor the mayor has the sole power to bring whoever he wants to put him on the job and for us to react we reacted before mirad continued to do his job and to improve in some areas but now the question that i have is some of us definitely do want to support mirad but they want to see let's say an improvement plane we heard it all of us right here an improvement plane and i think that is not private anymore and this is public it is it is a public request from us as collaborators to work with the mayor but now will the mayor consider seeking that improvement plane around narrowing the community divide that we've been experiencing since 2020 from the acting chief mirad and this is a question that i have for mr mayor uh president paul uh certainly if they're uh mayor weinberger do you have a response to that council jang the chief and i go out and do our best every day to make the right calls and improve public safety in this community and we firmly believe that part of improving public safety is building trust and accountability that part of public safety is refining improving codifying our oversight system the chief has i think arguably worked more than any uh other chief to improve that system make good on uh the idea that our police commission the police commission today is a far different commission and the way in which the department is engaging in supplying information uh sharing uh ensuring that complaints are reviewed and that use of force interactions are reviewed it's very different than it was in 2019 that has happened with chief mirad's leadership all of us uh we agree that there's more work to be done to codify that system and and get it right um so we um we are committed to doing all that we're committed to making good on the principles of 21st century policing reform which have long guided this department while also facing severe resource constraints and also facing the uh most challenging public safety environment that the city has seen in a long time so we're committed to that improvement that you're speaking about and trying to make good on it every day if there's specific things that you would like to as a counselor work with the the mayor's office and the chief about i'm happy to have further conversations with you about it thank you i mean i think i ask a question and i did not hear an answer and you know it is unfortunate that yes you will be appointed here tonight but with some people voting no right but i will take the commitment of continuing to work with you about that improvement right even just as a one single city councilor who care deeply about this city about how do we rebuild the trust especially between the chief and the commission the chief and people of color in this community i make that commitment you'll have my vote tonight as i voted for you before but um yeah and i know that you can be successful and i hope that everyone whether you vote yes or vote no for him to continue to challenge him to do better for the people of the city that care deeply about the city thank you thank you very much councillor jang we'll go to councillor shannon thank you president paul and thank you chief for sticking with us i honestly do not know where this city and this department would be if you had chosen not to step up or to leave and anybody in your position and i'm sure including you has options and options that probably would have been more lucrative would have been easier for you and easier for your family and you chose to stick with us i really can't thank you enough for that i will vote tonight for you because i believe in you i believe in your integrity i believe in your humility i believe in your commitment and it's all been demonstrated without a doubt um and i don't think that's a surprise to anybody but we need to stabilize our police department and this vote tonight is about stabilizing the police department it's about the message we send to the department it's about whether or not we tell the department that the city council has your backs that the city council is going to support the department and i know that it it took some time for you to win the confidence of your department when you started here coming from new york city that was not the case and you have worked to earn that trust and that loyalty from your department and because you did you were able to get people to stay that is essential without that we don't have a police department you have served for three years as police chief under a microscope many have pointed out i have served 20 years and many have pointed out perhaps too long but nonetheless that gives me more history than anybody at the table except for i think councillor bergman um i you policing has never been under the microscope that it is currently um but the police chief has certainly never been under this kind of microscope and when we put anything under the microscope we will find its flaws oftentimes i always say a person's worst characteristic is also their best characteristic and we marry the person who we can tolerate the bad side of that coin and love the good side of that coin i appreciate that you had the humility to apologize for your actions up at the hospital and i also appreciate that you were there and that in that moment there was a conflict between the interests of the doctor whose interest was solely the patient and your interest which was our public safety and uh and fighting to find out who the shooter was a shooter who in fact went on to shoot two more people after that night and it was your goal to stop that from happening and i appreciate your efforts so when we look under the microscope we see it all i am not looking for a perfect diamond nor would we ever find one and whatever candidate might come forward uh if we were to not appoint you or at some later date we will never know that candidates laws to the extent that we know yours because everybody has them um i think you've stood up well under the pressure uh and i don't think we can hold out for a perfect diamond or a unicorn and i hope that this council will strongly give their support tonight um and i am very grateful to have you here thank you thank you councillor shannon um councillor grant i just want to say it's really inappropriate to to victim shame a complaint it takes a lot of courage um to make a complaint against the police and we know this and there are a lot of people because i've talked to them i talked to them during my campaign who don't have that courage because they feel that they'll be targeted in some way and i think um we just heard an example of that and i would like us to do better this is very difficult for me um it's pretty well known that um acting chief mirad and i haven't had the best relationship um my quick background i started on the committee to review policing policies after i viewed the body cam footage and read the court filing for the milley brothers lawsuit against the city i am very happy that that's been resolved i feel it helps to helps to lift a dark cloud on our department i would like to see the job case um also resolved i don't agree that we should be trying to appeal judge sessions ruling in that um i don't want to go off on a tangent there i will say this uh you know improvement that i have seen let me start with that when we talk about recognizing the community's participation and reimagining community safety i've heard better language um coming from you and i appreciate that so for example uh giving credit to people in the community who uh first brought the cahoots model that we are going to be looking to implement i think there was a period of time that yes you helped with the rfp yes you would you would be helping to implement it but there wasn't credit where credit should have been do and i hear you doing that now um cso's and csl's these these additional positions to improve our community responses you know this is very community driven as well i feel at times that even though now you embrace them it was like dragging you know pulling teeth to get you on the same page in terms of reimagining public safety i appreciate that you did a program with the center for police equity uh racial disparities in the city have been a grave concern to me considering that i am in uh representing a district and live in a district that is the most diverse uh racially and economically and we are a district where we have not been police the same and when you aren't police the same and you don't get the help that you need and this is previous to covid previous to the accelerated um resignations you you have uh feelings right you have that lack of trust you have that lack of of faith in the in the process you know when people are called and they're trying to get help um and they're told well what do you expect because of where you live and i know the mayor has heard this from people as well i go to the mayor's coffees i've tried to advocate for people in my community who have experienced that we were not treated the same and it's a huge issue and the racial disparities are a huge issue but i appreciated that work with the center of police equity i wish though that you had opened yourself to what their normal process would have been there was this need that you had to control that process and i think that the department would have been better served if they would have been able to come in be allowed to look at the data and then say here's what we recommend for you so i appreciate what you did because it's definitely better than nothing and we definitely need to have this issue addressed um but this need to control and and the defensiveness doesn't serve you well it doesn't serve us well it doesn't serve our officers well and i think at times when you've gotten so defensive that's when that's when things get really tough for lack of a better way to put it um a few things i feel despite being advised many times that you were really slow to understand the extent of the drug crisis in burlington and how it was driving specific types of incidents such as larcenies and car thefts not to mention the increase in overdoses which now into 2023 have increased further i personally as a police commissioner based on my interactions with my community was trying to say we need to be advising people that these increase in crimes of opportunity crimes of of poverty were increasing dramatically in wards two and three we have always been the canaries in the coal mine with regards to certain types of crime we've had certain types of crime that occurred in our area more than other areas so we're used to these things we were used to spring up ticks but we were seeing something very very different and i tried multiple times to communicate that and i was told that there was nothing to that would show that that was any indication that that was getting worse and there are recorded meetings in which these conversations happened so that was very frustrating for me because it continued to accelerate it continued to branch out even further into the rest of the city in particular downtown business district simple things like what you now do but could have been doing last spring about letting people know they needed to lock their property letting people know they couldn't be casual about leaving doors unlocked or leaving keys in cars we don't have sophisticated crime rings we literally have these cars being used for shelter and substance abuse i find the house hospital complaint where you threaten to arrest a doctor and interfered with care being provided as as disqualifying i found it to be an abuse of power and i found it to be unnecessary i also felt that it set a very poor example for our officers like what are we showing our officers in terms of how they have to interact with individuals this cost our officers social currency because now you have these people of the hospital and they have been the fact that it took so long to come out was amazing to me because people of the hospital had been talking about this i feel that we can't show our officers that bullying and intimidating people as a way to to get or secure information you know there's hard questions about you know witnesses you weren't hurt why weren't they cooperating with the police that's that's part of the community trust that we still have to be working on in certain parts of our community um i appreciate that you made an apology but it it's it's still not the behavior of a leader uh going back to concerns of racial disparities and a lack of equity in policing this has been for lack of a better description almost an ongoing battle um i feel if there had been the cna recommendation said simply to accept the possibility that bias played a role in the racial disparities the data uh that was presented last year was very clear in the case of violent incidents there are no racial disparities but in the case of nonviolent incidents those disparities have continued in trying to explain and and justify some of the use of force incidents and i was trying to talk to you about your language that you had to be more conscious of how you spoke about certain people in our community um especially about our black and our new new american community so that we would not be seen as as criminals that we were already stigmatizing some of our new american youth and that was um very concerning we had the infamous press release where we had a picture of a new american youth and then that was followed by all the crime statistics uh year to date um it really affected a lot of people in the community a lot of youth were very upset about that and they definitely felt targeted you know and and as i uh try to explain to you last may i mean so year now and also in the last june meetings um that's when things really change for me where i think our relationship became even more fraught because you asked me a black woman if i cared about black on black crime and that was astounding coming from someone who was denying uh racial uh disparities i am almost finished i appreciate it so that to me is still a huge concern because that was really insensitive on so many levels i do feel that um you have not supported the police commission and you do not fully support oversight and accountability and you also said in an open meeting that was recorded that there's a perception that the work of the police commission was discouraging lateral transfers from applying to bpd um you did not say what you were doing or what you could do to fight that perception and it was deeply concerning because then it made uh some people in the community feel like well what type of officers are we looking to hire if they don't care about oversight and accountability and then finally we hear a lot of talk about uh 21st century policing but the average person doesn't know what the pillars are of 21st century policing so they don't really know if if we're living up to that these ideals and i would say in some instances we're not um i don't think our officers have been always served when it comes to these battles on the police commission about oversight and accountability you know when we're asking to confirm extra coaching or extra training it's not issues of punishing people quote-unquote it's counselor grant yeah i have my apologies no no that's okay that's okay um i have to leave it there and i'm obviously a no vote and i don't think we should make decisions based in fear thank you thank thank you counselor grant um we've gone through one round um counselor travers um well just noting the time president ball i would just uh move to suspend our rules and allow for the completion of item seven and eight the deliberative agenda and committee reports uh okay so a motion we have come to well beyond the magic hour of 10 30 um so the motion is to suspend our rules to complete the deliberative agenda um and item number eight committee reports yes okay uh is there a second to that motion seconded by counselor high tower this requires a two-thirds vote um all those in favor of the motion to suspend our rules to commit to complete our deliberative agenda and item number eight which is committee reports please say aye hi all right any opposed please say no uh so that passes and um we will continue with our deliberative agenda and item number eight my apologies for letting us get way beyond um uh the 10 30 hour uh are there any other counselors who wish to speak to this confirmation uh mayor uh mayor weinberger thank you president paul um appreciate all the discussion tonight and and the um perspectives on on both sides of this issue and and certainly not going to try to to respond to uh all the concerns that have been raised or the criticism made but there are there are two points that i i do think um are worthy that that i should give some response to and one is this uh it was suggested that um i'm bringing forward chief murad to introduce a uh a a wedge a political issue or something to that effect um no i brought chief murad forward uh a year ago over a year ago because we had been searching for a chief for a long time i was felt it was critical that we have stability at the top of the police department and chief murad had come through that extensive search process as uh clearly a qualified chief um i was very clear at the time with council that my there were calls for continued searching and i felt that we could no longer do that i feel um looking back on that it that it was one of my better decisions based on what came what was about to come at us in 2022 had we not had stable leadership at the top of the department as we faced the most challenging public safety year that certainly i've experienced i think the city maybe has ever experienced uh we would have been in even greater trouble than we had than we are um that is still my reasoning for why i'm bringing forward uh chief murad i still think we have major public safety challenges and and that that hasn't changed um i have a responsibility out of the charter to bring forward appointments every year i'm a little surprised at the notion that uh i think was suggested that you wish that there just had been that we had continued on the acting capacity uh through another year i think there would have been concerns about that too if i had taken that course i think this is a better course to get to a permanent chief um there was also a statement made that nothing uh so nothing nothing has has changed since early 2022 and um i do think the fact that we need a permanent chief again that is remain consistent that has not changed but a lot else has the chief amidst a historic loss of officers has introduced a rebuilding plan and has real momentum with delivering on it we we experienced in 2022 the worst gun violence this city i believe has ever seen and the the department under the chief's leadership responded to that violence without standing police work again and again and has come a long way towards getting that violence under control we have seen a we saw the most challenging downtown climate that the city has seen a long time putting many of our beloved local businesses to the edge of their ability to continue functioning in this downtown not consistently able to be deliver what downtown barlington has so long been and the chief and we see in this year has responded to that and and has rolled out a plan that is having a real impact on that and another thing that's changed since the beginning of 2022 is that the voters have shown us with increasing urgency that they want us to address all these problems and more they want us making good on the principles of 21st century policing on top of those priorities i just listed and they they are impatient for action and change i believe this is one of the votes that there is strong public support for as well the people of barlington by a large margin want a permanent chief of police they know we need one right now and they know chief mirad has earned this job and i hope the council will be validating that shortly thank you mayor weinberger seeing no others in the queue we will go to a vote and i believe it probably would be best if we did that by role laura if you could call the role please councillor barlow yes yes councillor bergman no councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor dority yes councillor grant councillor hightower no councillor king yes councillor mickey no councillor shannon yes yes councillor travers yes city council president paul yes eight eyes four and eight eight eight in favor and four opposed that motion that's that thank thank you if you could just let us finish um uh so the motion passes i would like uh to just take a a few moments of perhaps privilege here um and just a little bit of indulgence with um with others on the count with with my colleagues on the council to just offer a couple of words um and i think that you know as a body we all recognize that public safety meaning keeping everyone in our community safe is a solemn commitment and it's the highest priority i mean i hear this all the time from constituents that they're important they want their sidewalks and they want their their roads and they want their bike lanes but they want public safety and public safety means keeping everyone safe uh i've had many conversations over the last couple of days with with my colleagues and i truly believe that regardless of our vote tonight that many of us really all of us are eager to work with you in good faith we want to support and we want to partner with you but this must be an open exchange a partnership means that we both commit to this work that we value each other even when we disagree uh i i think that we all want to support you and to see you rise to the challenges that you know exist and that you've and that you've heard this evening challenges that you know must be addressed and i always go back to what i know by profession um as an auditor one of the first things that you learn um uh one of the first tenants in auditing is you always look for the tone at the top and that means the message that you as the chief convey to others the tone that you convey to the people you work with the tone that you convey to department heads to other city employees to this council to our community and like each of us who commits to public service i think that public trust is paramount you can't govern without trust um public trust also has to be earned and it's a precious commodity um you know it's like a person's reputation it takes a long time to build a reputation and it can take seconds to tear it down so it's a valued a valued asset um i think that being held accountable means being held accountable to the highest standards and i hope and i do believe that you will listen to our community to everyone in our community and be positive to collaborate not only to rebuild our force which we all know is is hard work and we all appreciate the work that you have done but also to restore trust so that we're all safe and that remember and to remember that if we can all work together respectfully that we can go far and do as the community expects and deserves um accountability and oversight can be a positive they are not to be feared they are at the heart of restoring trust and in the end that trust can be the embrace that binds us in a common goal of transformational and broadly accepted public safety um with that congratulations chief mirad um congratulations to you to your family and to our community the next four items on our agenda are public hearings and the votes that follow each hearing uh the first item is 7.06 which is a public hearing regarding burlington downtown tax increment financing district substantial change request and we do have our tiff consultant david white joining us online um not only should there be any questions from community members but also uh david i believe that you would like to speak request very briefly if at all possible um we would welcome your comments at this time and then we will go to the public hearing thank you for joining us thank you very much president paul um so i will keep my comments brief i think we're all tired we're ready to make call it an evening so this public hearing is with regard to the downtown tiff district and specifically with regard to a proposed application to the vermont economic progress council also known as vepsy um for what's called substantial change now we'll caution you that's their term in fact i think in this case we're not proposing any substantial changes in fact quite the reverse we aren't proposing any new debt we're not proposing any new projects this is more of a procedural uh application um at under the state statute and rules we are required to each every municipality not just burlington is required to return to vepsy at the end of the period of time during which they uh the municipality is allowed to incur a new debt burlington reached that deadline at the end of march and so by statute we're obligated to go back and have a meeting with them to both give them a view of what the finances look like for the remaining life of the tiff district now that we know what all the debt service will be um and uh to have a discussion with them around the question of whether there should be an adjustment with regard to how much of the what percentage of incremental taxes continue to be retained in the tiff district both education and municipal taxes so that's the core purpose of this return it's something that's statutorily required the second key purpose is that there's been an ambiguity and misunderstanding or disagreement between the city and vepsy with regard to the use of an annual development fee that's being paid by champlain college um as part of an agreement between the city and champlain college for their eagles landing project on st paul street and for the first four years the city used those funds to help rebuild city hall park and vepsy believes it should have gone into the tiff fund i won't delve into a lot of detail that's in the materials that's been provided to you um but we are proposing as a result of this to use funds to make the question moved on that champlain college uh point uh by taking funds the city at the time that it issued the debt for the downtown tiff district um was able to negotiate with the uh for uh with regard to the bond was able to negotiate um some uh bond premium additional monies that are more than enough to cover the amount of debt or the amount of excuse me champlain college fees that are in dispute and we're proposing to simply use those funds to directly pay for some of the costs that in the tiff district uh so that's part of the proposal with regard to the statutory obligation to discuss the question of how much uh what percentage of taxes get retained at this point our proposal to vepsy is that um we do not modify those because we there are still enough things that are uncertain going forward but that we uh check in with them on an annual basis for the remaining life of the tiff district and when and if it becomes clear that there is more funds going into the tiff district than are required to pay debt service and related costs that then we could look at adjusting the retainage and that that would happen on an annual basis the application also provides just a general update in terms of finances provides more details than we had last time we spoke with vepsy with regard to the specifics for design um and um I think and the design for the main street great streets project which is the the remaining major project or only make the remaining project for the downtown tiff district and also the schedule and budget for that so that's the gist of the application and the sum of my overview happy to take any questions thank you thanks david and thanks for being here at this late hour um we will with that we will open the public hearing if there is any member of the public who wishes to speak to the substantial change request um I'll go back to zoom you can just simply use the raise hand function um or for those who are in con toys simply raise your hand and we will we will call on you um I'll just look and see if there's anyone who wishes to speak that's joining us online um and we'll keep the public hearing open uh there doesn't appear to be anyone who wishes to speak um going once going twice uh we will close the public hearing and move on to item 7.7 which is the substantial change request uh to vepsy the downtown tax increment financing district um and I would entertain uh I would enter entertain uh the motion to um to approve the recommended action uh thank you councillor uh councillor carpenter if you could uh please read the recommended action yep I would move to approve the city's substantial change request to vepsy for its downtown tiff district and authorize the city council president karen paul and chief administrative officer kathryn chad to execute the attached formal request letter that thank you councillor carpenter seconded by councillor king um is there any discussion on that motion seeing none uh we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously thank you again david for joining us uh the next thank you all the next item on our agenda is 7.8 which is a public hearing regarding the setting of common area fees for uh the fiscal year 2024 um and for that we actually uh we do have one member of the public that I'm aware of who wishes to speak during public hearing um and with that we will open the public hearing um mark please please come up and join us uh thank you so much for um for your patience and waiting for us to get to this item the floor the floor is yours we'll open the I'm sorry what I appreciate that you all do this as often as you do thank you I also appreciate what jim and his team and what cara does for church street and the block that we reside on is outdoor gear exchange I'm here representing bigger boat we own the building and outdoor gear exchange we rent from ourselves but so essentially representing our business um over the past five years I'm also appreciative of the decisions made to waive church street marketplace fees during the pandemic or for the first four quarters of the pandemic um and that the rates have not gone up in that time and I can understand why there's a desire to raise the rates right now um I'll take this moment to state that I feel the church street marketplace fees while important are a form of double taxation um we pay over $40,000 a quarter in real estate tax which is designed to support everything that the city does including public works yet we also pay another $17,000 a quarter just to cover the public works for our block um I'm sure that there are many residents in Burlington who do not have children yet pay school tax because they believe that well educated children are an important part of our society and important to our city um I think we all agree that church street is one of the crown jewels of our queen city and I'm proud to be an anchor tenant on the block I'm also proud of what church street represents and how I speak fondly of it to many of my colleagues who work in businesses in Boulder which was designed by the same architect and it's obvious to those who have been to both places so first off I don't really think that there should be a church street marketplace fee I think it should be incorporated into the city budget as part of the grand list taxes that would be fair we contribute to the value of the city we contribute to the increased value of everyone's property when business is good and we as one of the retail business contribute to the tax rolls through our local option tax collected on non clothing goods that we sell with regards to the increase if we can't eliminate the tax or the fee I would propose not having an increase until we can resolve this issue of double taxation over the last three years starting or I guess over the last six years starting with the um demolition of the mall which needed to happen and the subsequent discussions over what was happening next and the now progress that I'm seeing we have seen a significant impact to the traffic in our business our traffic this year is down in many cases 20 percent year over year and that doesn't seem to me all that different from what I'm seeing on church street in all but the busiest days the issues that now chief mirad has been dealing with that we've all been seeing downtown have impacted our business traffic and those are impacting all of us so I would just employ this group to reconsider whether there should be fees at all and if they can't come to the conclusion that there aren't that you consider not raising the fees at this time thank you again for your attention your service and for these long meetings that I don't know how you endure thank you so much mark if there are other members of the public who wish to speak during public hearing now would be that time I will look again on again online and see if there are any if there's anyone with their hand raised and does not appear to be the case nor does it in con toys so we will go to close the public hearing once twice and with that we will close the public hearing my apologies to the workforce the marketplace and workforce development director car on this worry who I did not see was sitting behind the CAO so my apologies Cara if there's anything that you wanted to add or if you were just here to answer any questions my apologies for not seeing you I do think it's probably worth just a quick comment since we have not raised the marketplace fees since 2016 or the FY 17 budget cycle this is this increase represents a 5% increase which is less than a percent a year while I I I do understand some of the comments that mr. Sherman made I am operating within the confines of the charter and the structure as I have inherited it and I am losing the battle against inflation at the moment and we need some upgraded maintenance vehicles and a few other items and I am also looking to increase some of our capital reserves so we can address some deferred maintenance on the street as well this increase represents a little over thirty thousand dollars overall for the year here great thank you with that we will close the public hearing and move on to item 7.9 which is a resolution allocation method and standards for common area fee formula and establishment of common area fees for the church street marketplace for fiscal year 2024 I will go to a motion from our the sponsor of the resolution councillor shannon thank you president paul moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution thank you councillor shannon uh seconded by seconded by councillor hightower oh my apologies councillor hightower is there any discussion on this motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution uh councillor barlow councillor hightower was ahead of me I think okay um no I had a question about the the total amount of the increase she said it's a total of 30 000 for the for the entire marketplace yeah it's slightly over 30 000 I think it's 32 okay thank you thanks councillor barlow now we'll go to councillor hightower um yeah just wondering what the general response was from folks on the marketplace um the businesses that would be paying I did not get a response okay um they were notified multiple times as well as um when the commission voted the commission took two months two separate commission meetings to deliberate the increase great thank you thank you councillor hightower uh are there councillor carpenter this is you can probably explain to I'm just curious um does all of this allocation method get sort of reconfigured after our city place gets built I mean is that could be something you're gonna be looking at um well hopefully yes right now these fees are just assessed on the per square foot ground floor which includes a portion of the defunct mall at the moment um that is still being paid by the owners of that part um and yes there are many internal discussions and I believe a desire um to discuss uh looking at the downtown as a larger district um with the thinking that burlington's downtown is larger than four blocks and having this um level of attention spent on it and maybe we could sort of um broaden that scope um to be able to bring more enhanced attention to the rest of the downtown yes thanks thank you councillor carpenter uh councillor hightower I'm so sorry follow a question because I'm not sure that it so the city place is still paying are they paying the same that they would have paid regardless if there's a building or not or correct because that front structure if it abuts the marketplace itself up to a certain depth it is still assessed great well good to know we've got something that has progressive taxation land-based tax in burlington so thank you thank you councillor hightower um before we go to a vote we'll go to councillor councillor travers uh thanks president ball just briefly to note that uh because of a professional conflict of interest councillor dory and I need to recuse ourselves from this vote that is so noted that councillor dory and travers um will not be voting on this item due to a conflict of interest a professional conflict of interest um with that we'll go to a vote um all those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution please say aye all right any opposed please say no uh that motion passes 10 um 10 to 0 with two recusals um thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for staying to this relatively late hour um that moves us to the last item on our deliberative agenda um and uh that item is 7.10 which is a resolution accepting grant funding from the department of mental health for the crisis response team and exploring the creation of a burlington cave department for this resolution I will go to councillor carpenter um thank you um I would um waive the reading of the resolution um and move to adopt the I would move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and would ask for the floor back after a second thank you so much councillor carpenter seconded by councillor McGee uh councillor carpenter the floor is yours thanks um unfortunately this is almost sort of a backwards written um resolution because it's the last resolve where we accept the money um for the CARES project which is really um such an exciting move and is the first in the series of um programs and enhancements that we want to offer and this really is to acknowledge that and suggest that we really need to look at this arm of public safety um and what it's responsible for how it's operated where does it fit in city government um we heard a lot tonight about our work um with the houseless and and interactions with that more of this work is being put directly on the city um and that brings with it oversight that we're not quite clear where it would be best suited we've heard certainly the concerns um the drug addiction problem and we have already um COMSTAT so this is to really ask us let's look at that basket of um activities which really does represent a third arm of public safety and see how it fits best and can be operated best in city government thank you so much council carpenter uh oh just one more comment because Anna Wegling from the police department spoke and um was updating us on on their activities and I just want to note that our first resolve clause um asked that this evaluation be done um including the public safety employees so um we need to take to heart what she had to say and we will yes thank you so much um are there any other counselors that wish to speak to this resolution I know the hour is late um it is it is an important resolution I'm sorry that it went last on the agenda but certainly not let not to let the uh the late hour less than the sincerity and importance of the resolution um if there are no counselors who wish to speak to this resolution we will go to a vote um all those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution please say aye aye any opposed please say no uh that motion passes unanimously that completes our deliberative agenda um but we do still have one item left and that is uh item number eight which is committee reports um are there counselors who wish to offer a committee report? Councillor Traverse and then we'll go to Councillor Jang. Well I added committee reports to the motion largely because Councillor Bergman had given us sort of a sneak peek to maybe Councillor Barlow talking about the symposium there so wanted to make sure you had that moment Councillor Barlow uh but um the uh the the ordinance committee will be meeting on June 12 to um the mayor's point from earlier in the meeting we will be uh this will be our third meeting to consider the proposed rezoning changes for the south end innovation district and the hope um will be to potentially wrap up the discussion on the meeting on on June 12 speaking in my role with Councillor Bergman as co-chair of the committee on police oversight and accountability we have meetings scheduled there on July 6 July 13 August 2nd and August 3rd over the summer uh so we'll look forward to the discussion continuing in those meetings thank you Councillor Traverse we'll go to Councillor Jang and then to Councillor Barlow the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee is meeting tomorrow um at 530 Busharum and the main agenda items are legal services being offered to BIPOC people in the city of Burlington especially women of color um we'll receive a presentation from a local organization we will also hear about the last fine tune of June 10th uh for the city of Burlington the last details will be presented to the committee and um um um also we would delve deeper into the restructuring of the REIB department so those are the main three agenda items and committee members include Grant, Councillor Grant and Councillor Traverse thank you thank you so much so we'll move on to Councillor Barlow and then to Councillor Bergman with the big T's all night about the biomass symposium so um anyways I don't know who's paying attention still but for those who are um the burning of biomass for electricity generation at McNeil station is a topic that has uh recently received the attention of the Vermont climate council and one that has generated significant public interest some have questioned the renewable status of biomass and call for a plan to phase out or close McNeil others argue that McNeil is our best option for reducing fossil fuel use and is a sustainable alternative um this is a relevant topic for us because we're going to be considering a district energy plan um later this summer the TUC is holding a symposium on Tuesday June 13th at 6 30 p.m here in this room to address questions related to the biomass burning at McNeil we'll have a panel of experts to answer questions that the TUC has prepared as well as questions we are soliciting from the public look look for more for this look for more on this it's late here isn't it um over the next two days on front porch forum and on the TUC web page and on social media thank you thanks so much Councillor Barlow uh Councillor Bergman uh we've got a tax abatement organizational meeting happening on Thursday this coming Thursday at 4 30 I don't expect it to be long but the idea is as a quasi-judicial hearing body will take the time to figure out exactly how we do it right so that when it comes here it's done right thanks thank you so much um did want to also mention uh that not that it's a standing committee but we do have a special committee that we form every year for boards and commissions to nominate people to serve on boards and commissions um by uh by our rules um the members of that committee the board and commission's nominating committee are four city councillors and a representative from the administration um I would very much like to thank um councillors Grant Bergman Shannon and King for offering to serve on this committee and not only for offering to serve on this committee but all agreeing to a committee meeting date um which is coming up very soon it's the it will be the 7th of June I believe it's at 5 30 um they have received um information on those applicants um and the four of you and a representative of the administration will meet um select a chair and then the five of you can take it from there as far as how you wish to proceed and um interviews that you wish to conduct and of course the goal is to find um consensus building approach to uh uh hopefully finding agreement on all of the seats that are available for the coming fiscal year so thank you again for your willingness to serve um I greatly appreciate it um with that and hearing no uh councillor Grant I just wanted to remark that it's been freezing in here this evening and if we could do anything to have the temperature adjusted in the future I don't I'm we're right under like blowing cold air and I'm sorry yeah if anyone wants to switch seats but it is freezing I am sorry I am sorry that you waited until 11 30 to let us know we might have been able to do something but we will keep that in mind duly duly duly noted it has been cold it has been cold okay all right I uh I I appreciate and hope that for those for those probably few people that are watching the end of our meeting that they will see that we really are the collaborative body that we say we are um thank you all so much um I should make I should ask for a motion to adjourn so if someone would make a motion to adjourn so moved so moved right count councillor McGee and seconded by councillor hightower all those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye aye any opposed please say no we are adjourned and our next meeting is the 20th of June happy Juneteenth and enjoy the next few weeks good night