 Is he done that? He's not seeing anyone here. A person. We'll close the board of finance. That's a council of persons. He has a request to execute. Picking services with oil and associates for the south. Project. Just a real quick. We talked about the apron many times. Of course. Yeah. So this is, uh, this is not the term. This is from the south end of our airfield. Extending taxiway. What it's called, which is a parallel tax way. It's our main runway. Extending it into a quarry area and expanding it to additional general aviation opportunities. Which is defined as activity for this. It generally is pretty simple. It's. Surface extension. Um, any, any questions or. I'll turn it over to you for a motion. Thank you. Thank you. Second. Okay. Thank you. This guy's been up 3.0 with. Successful vote of vote. All those. First. Namely. Two, which is a request for. To get a contract. Design. Bidding services with. Johnson. So this is adjacent. Right in front of our terminal. Very on the airfield side that. That taxiway is age. In fact, it needs quite a bit of crack filling. Remediation annually. So this is actually to rehab that taxiway. So we're going to. Refinish it with that milling overlay. Spend it slightly so that we can. Add a safer lighting system to the edge of that taxiway. And components without that thing. And three over. As quickly as we can. That's the highly used as well as you can imagine. For large aircraft. So we're. Motion or questions here. Thank you. Motion to take the action here. Okay. I'll take that. Okay. So. Is there a second. Second. Discussion. Three point two. Oh, yeah. One of us. Brings us to three. So this is a new terminal. Jeff bridge. To be added to the new terminal integration project. This is the 15 plus million dollar project that's currently being developed today. When we first applied for that project. We were working with the FAA. Installing this new jet bridge, but they did not feel it was necessary. And the light of new air service coming online with the airport. A new airline coming online. And the largest aircraft. Using this particular. Jeff. Which is frontier airlines. And some country. We are now working towards. This new. Building which we. Right now, people are working outside. It's. It's definitely going to be used for existing capacity at the airport. Like Larry was mentioning right now. Those passengers out of our experience. We are now working towards. This new. Building which we. Right now, people are working outside. It's. It's definitely going to be used for existing capacity at the airport. And so. And I'm not mentioning right now. Those passengers out of our existing gate 12. Which is just a door. Into a shipping. They're. Walkway. It's not a deal because that particular aircraft has. 100. Seats on it. 90 people walking outside of the stairwell. But. To the. And now that that's. Two airlines. It's it's really. An ADA and a safety. And the long-term. Advocatio. I wouldn't say it's. A capacity because of rewrites. Existing. 12. Okay. And that's. Further. Discussion question. I'll make a. current situation. I think it counts for all of us. I think it counts for two. Special both of the favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. All right. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. 2.3.04 which is a request to exterior contract for engineering, driving, property, and bidding services. The Jones painting group with the ongoing noise mitigation process which say it's sorry to shift it forward. There's a roll summary. Absolutely and this one is concurrently happening with our existing plans and what we call our pilot program which is to initiate an acoustical testing plan, an outreach program, and selecting the 10 houses to participate in the first sound insulation program. This is now beyond that pilot program adding additional houses or additional opportunities for more houses as well as starting the design of the next phase of the selection which is what the pilot program and technology proved a couple months ago. This is to actually move forward into design and construction of the additional 10 houses and then design work into the next 50 houses for our grant for next year. In my opinion this is this is truly bringing ourselves one year ahead of time because we were looking at the pilot program extending for about a year as we went into construction and only doing outreach for the next 50 houses. This is definitely above that capacity and heading forward into that program. Remind gas systems continue to be our partner on this and on this program and we're excited to undergo this particular project. We're late to proceed to break no motion here for questions. Let me ask questions. I think that I mean the way that this sort of and sounds like there is instruction of 10 additional homes. You're not going to. No we're not going to. So I think what it I think what to me to anyone who is reading this it sounds like construction of 10 additional homes in addition to the 10 homes already approved well you're not building 10 homes or 20 you are you are absolutely and I would think that that might be a better way of putting it to the to the uninformed reader. It sounds like absolutely. Yeah absolutely great. That's all I was going to say. Sorry if I press the tree seed discussion. I'm going to vote all those people who say aye. They opposed. Thank you. Thank you board. So why not there. Three point five now. Well I always feel bad when we have to just we don't have. I mean, maybe you don't, but I'd be interested in hearing either on the other one or the other two. I mean, you've got two that are in positions of retail. No, I think we're talking about the most. Okay, if we're talking about the recreation manager, we need to kind of, some of the changes that have come about. Sure. Since it was created in 2015, at that time, this position was managing three recommendations, especially with so few employees. Since that time, we've added the champion, a senior center, which is not for adult centers. Now, this position oversees the operations of the senior adult center. And also oversaw the operation of the core, which is the center of preparation education, the older community center. So they're overseeing a senior center and an actual preparation center. Last year we came with more and rearranged that. The organization of facilities versus recreation programming. And so the operation of the recreation center now follows under what's the recreation facilities. But this position has added all of the programs, a full-time employee and all the programming at the ice rink. So this position now supervises four and a half full-time staff. We added a half staff to help with the senior center. And so the other full-time staff was the person who was doing the work at the core adult center, excuse me at the recreation center. But now they're overseeing the person who's doing the programming at the rate. So they went from three full-time staff to four full-time staff overseeing the operations of senior center and all the programming at the ice rink. That's the big switch. That's a lot of season. A lot of things, a lot of our lights are off, there's a lot of various programs. We'll come back to you. The information that you gave us on page nine and 10, the current division term, and then the immortal term. The only thing that's, I think that's changed is simply the yellow. It's a vacant recreation program. You have an intro. That's the job that you're talking about. So you've listed it as vacant. You're going to person who's currently the intro. We'll continue as a recreation specialist. Or was a recreation specialist now. Right. She was a recreation specialist. She's been our interim recreation manager. And then she's chosen to. She got the light of the management. So I'm happy. All right. So the question that I have, and I think it's one that you're sort of grappling with. A lot of. A lot of the, you know, different classifications and things like that is that. The person. We'll take that position. Is one way below the person that's. And. The person who's super. Is responsible. A lot more people. And a lot more. The dynamics that go on. Creation division. The person. Who you are looking to attract. So my question is how. And I apologize because this probably is. I imagine it's probably something that you thought of. And I. I don't want to put anything on the spot, but it seems so. They're going to be a 20. Why aren't we talking about the person. Who's above them at a 21. Something more than a 21. If you, if you need to, if you need to. I'm assuming the reason that person isn't 20. It's not just something that responsibilities, but also. You need to recruit somebody. So. It seems as though. To recruit someone just because someone else is already in the position doesn't mean that they should not be. To me, they feel they are. That's scary. It is a challenge. We haven't changed the job description of the recreation. This didn't change the job description of the recreation. It changed. And so that is, but is it. Is it. Is it an actual piece that is a challenge when you get compression in the city? That's it. It is a real challenge because if you. You then. And I don't know the answers to that because if you. Increase. So then if you bought the recreation superintendent, you need to look at all the. All the superintendent positions. Within the department that some that are. That. You know, so I don't know with what point do you. And I'm not an HR. Oh, expert. So I don't know at what point. Does that, does that work? I don't know. It's my understanding that. You know, it's not the first. This is not the first occasion where this is happening. There's parks managers with similar responsibilities who are one. You know, that's compressed as well. So like this is getting. This position in rep to the level of all their. Parts of vision manager. But that compression. And we see it the other one where we see it too is a little more weight where at what point is we've got. Assistant. You know, water for managers who. How do you then. Change. Compare that to someone who's not coming in. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Go ahead. Speaking as the supervisor over HR. Just to acknowledge that we do know this is an issue. And I can't quite tell from this vantage point. So I can't see if there's anybody. Like Sarah carpenter from our HR committee. But it is something that. We are looking at over the next perhaps fiscal year or two. Looking at our holistic compensation plan and several of the areas that we're looking at. I know your, I know your nature. And it's, and it's wonderful. I just feel as though it should be at least a knowledge. You know, this is a challenging thing. And I'm sure it is. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's probably. I'll make that. Make the. I'll make the. I'll make the. I'll make the. I'll make the. Let's just. What I know that. This will be part of the. An ongoing. I think that you perhaps. Not just for some record. The administration would report back to us. Thank you. Thank you. Second. Thank you. That's a further discussion. Oh, is that there's a motion for Sarah. And it was. Which carries unanimously. Thank you. Appreciate you. New positions and every classification. What. What. What. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For one. Thank you. Here to get started. We're gonna say the start. But obviously. We're behind it to get to this point. So. Aaron Rose, I want to say superintendent. And then allocating who is one of the ones that are there can come manager. So he gets from all this here. And I couldn't be more pleased out of the Waterfront team stepping up to oversee the program. Just the work that we've been doing today, you know, shows their commitment to the program, their attention to the detail from, you know, making sure that they've got public spaces ready for us to be coming into to work in collaboratively with other departments. As we pull together the job description. So, you know, in many of the challenges that we've been having in our first many around the beaches, but then they're also throughout the city. So that's one of the reasons that we have the classification problem. And retitling of Alex position is he's no longer going to be just beaches in North Beach for the also having the urban parking to bring in the city life or is open for questions, discussions. Basically, this position will not be focused. Okay, okay. Do not be focusing on the parks. That's a question. Listen, the operators are focused on our city parks is where they're, so they're not going to, you wouldn't see, oh, necessary in St. Paul Street where there's no park. And that's the focus is in is the park, the city parks. Including city park. And then, you know, it's going to be a great program, you know, building relationships. But then the students, too, it's going to be, you know, the schools and the after school programs and you know, we talk about, you know, North Beach and having, you know, an interpretive program once a week down there, you know, whether they're teaching about the lake or they're teaching about the history of the campgrounds or, you know, whatever that is. So really thinking from that, just not just some who's down there, you know, making sure your dog is on a leash when you're in the city park, but also getting to know our community and interpreting for spaces. And I figured the other part that's somewhat humorous is Aaron's team always has the best gear. And so we figured that they will, they, you're the great spot for park ranger. I just know myself, you know, I go, we often camp and when I go to camp and you have a question, you know that you're, you're looking for somebody when you're there. So we hope that we can, that same thing. If you have a question when you're in the water, first you look around. You know, whatever rangers stand by. I'm from the Tribal Parks Program. That's all two, that's sitting to seven. And our program education option is also allowed to address the management of the parks and address behavior issues, other issues that come up. To dissolve it's a certain sense of that is having to rely on the place to do so. It's a political place. It's the end of the police having a force for responsibilities in our parks. It's not a greatest of our experience. The next question is, okay, we're struggling to write situations based on public spaces. So I just remind the board finance, of course, that this is part of our budget. We approve the creation of these two positions in the budget and part of the we did it in the police department. And that's what we're going to do. So we're going to take that step tonight or sorry, sorry. Motion. That's it. Question. So when looking at these positions, if you don't do any comparison between the CSO positions of these positions, you know, like there's overlap, seem somewhat similar. We didn't, we didn't look at the CSO. We didn't really focus down the parks. So we didn't, you know, we didn't do a look at those and they compare them to these as far as we can show that there's not, I guess, that overlap of duties. I mean, it's, we are focused in our parks and our spaces. And so I mean, but it's the way I got it. And I think the key to this is working together. And that's when we're, you know, then that's that communication and sharing with each other. I'm sure that will be a regular meeting between the CSO's as the. How's our urban park rangers, you know, because it's. And see, and see, though, to figure out how, you know, how do we work together to accomplish all the city. And that's the first one that they won't be working in a vacuum. Sure. And how did you determine the competition rates for the position versus cases? Right. Remember correctly, CSO's are lower grade, is that right? Any question, President Tracy, I'm not sure I can specifically answer this. Catherine, go ahead. Is there a member of HR. I'm Daniel. So while Danielle is coming up and be able to speak to this in more detail, but the way that this is done. It's not Cindy's or Park's discretion. All of these positions, you know, are. The department head and supervisors create the position description that they need. And then it's sent to human resources for grading. And so it is an objective process and Danielle. You can flush that out for us, if you would. I'm actually having to oversee and support the police department as well. So I can see from that currently the CSO position is graded opposite grade less than these kind of positions that happen. But recently we were asked to take another look at those positions because the grading hadn't been looked at. We also have a reclassification, even though the position changed a little bit earlier this year, we obviously had some change in the department and so we are looking at those positions again. And so hopefully they will be part of another reclassification with the next couple weeks to get them lined with the 15 or 16. Because when going through these positions, we did not think it was equitable to have the CSO's rated lower than these parking positions. I don't think the job duties. While they're not the same, the level of what they're doing, you know, even in the community was really, I don't want to say the same, but they're, you know, they're doing different work with the presence within the community. It was the same. So we wanted to make that note within the CSO positions. Hopefully that forward the next couple weeks. Thank you very much. I just wanted to note that one of them is a lead, a lead ranger, and so that they'll be assisting with the hiring. And so one of them has one of the similar duties that we have on the appropriate work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your discussions. Seeing them will go to a vote. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm joined by members of the team who really worked to flesh out these recruitment retention strategies. Ron Jacobs and I was your representative. Director. Director Lee Perry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That would be a cause for concern any time of year, but especially heading into the winter season. Water main breaks are prevalent. Plowing is needed. Frankly, we've struggled to recruit. As you saw in the memo. We've received the fewest applicants per. $2,000 hiring bonus in the town of Calis for the street maintenance workers. So not only do we need to focus on how do we recruit, but how do we retain during the support period? Thanks to working through a great collaboration with ASME, HR, City Attorney, CAO, Mayor's Office in short order after a very successful HR committee meeting on October 29th, we transitioned into four proposed actions that are in the memo, three of which we're seeking your action on tonight. First is relating to recycling. Too often recycling is taken from street maintenance, which is limiting our ability to actually plow and do proactive efforts. Usually it's the other way around where we use recycling to help us plow. So we're seeking to reclassify recycling. So we've had persistent openings and an FT. Second, we're proposing a hiring bonus through the winter season, March 31st, 2022. And I want to note, thanks to a very effective proof reading that the MOU in your packet does not agree with the memo. The MOU in the packet says that the hiring bonus will be offered through March 31st of 2021, not March 31st of 2022. So if you were to pass the motion tonight, rectifying that in the MOU would be appreciated. Number three, we're proposing to expand the on-call payments for our staff. Our staff are amazing at responding to issues of all hours of the day. This will become even more important as we are short staff and we need our remaining team to respond. Sometimes when we have a planned emergency or a storm event, we put people on call. If something goes sideways and we don't have enough on-call staff, we need to call additional staff. We are proposing here that they would receive an on-call payment if a staff member who's not on call picks up the phone and comes in. That kind of responsiveness really enables us to continue our services and minimize disruptions. The last fourth item, which is a concept at this point, but we are very excited about is looking at tiered positions. Right now, if you come in as an equipment maintenance technician, water distribution worker or street maintenance worker, you come in, there's one position there's no opportunity for, if you get additional certifications, every equipment operator, there isn't growth other than that annual staff. We want to create some incentive to encourage our teams to grow with us because our staff is our best access. So we have indicated to the union that we're willing as part of our planning to bring forward the concept of tiered positions in the next negotiations. We do have other strategies that aren't on the agenda, such as helping staff with CDLs, a job fair on December 3rd and many other partnerships with HR. We've got ads going on papers, but these are the three strategies we're looking for your support tonight. Thank you. Ron here could be, if folks have time, we'd like to share a few words too. Yeah, I just wanted to talk about the process. I became president of Astley at large and this was already an ongoing discussion when I stepped in and when I started talking with the folks who actually do the work on the floor and not the streets and everything is it's been an ongoing issue for much longer than that. And so it was nice to watch the process actually work. And after a few bumps in the road and several conversations, none which were overly contentious, we have our positions. All of a sudden when that light bulb went off, right around that time that you talked about in October or some time, it seems like we were able to just pull together the union management and we did outreach and there was a little action on the floor of the workers and street cyber petition explaining their situation and their stress and everything. And so I just wanted to mention that because that emphasizes that it wasn't just something that union leadership did or anything, this was responding to the people who were doing the work and their frustration is echoed in management frustration in that we need to fulfill these positions. And so we're all very hopeful that the short-term the first three steps will relieve the short-term situation. And then the fourth one that provides this tier process that we will discuss when we open up, I'll collect the bargaining next year we'll actually provide them people in these positions or the hope but actually a better paycheck and so on. Thank you very much for that talk. Thanks, I'll get to see what we have. Just see if there's any other questions. My only question was just something that was really a long-lost in part. So I think that tier is just wonderful certainly because people have opportunities. I don't know if there's a ladder that's there. So what it sounds like you're saying is that the hiring goings just for people that are new will be hired and what you're looking at. It sounds like you're saying it's not people who are doing the work now are supportive of that. This is our understanding for the floor. Is there, yeah, that's what came through and all of our thoughts. The additional off-call pay is also a little bit of a nod to the folks who continuously show up. We haven't paid them to be on call. They all have to pick up the phone. But yet time and time they're coming again and for decades, they didn't get anything more than just to pay the overtime. And so why not give them that little recognition that they will pay themselves a little? So I think that was a little ad for the existing folks and then the sort of long-term concept of the tier and having real long-term growth in your wages probably helps folks as well. And in addition to just according, just as a matter of what they do in their daily work, their daily eight-hour shifts or how long their shifts are, the idea of relieving by filling this extra recycling position will really change the fact, change how often streets people have to be called away from their regular jobs to go fill recycling because that was a major point of contention. And that was how I first, when I first stepped into the position, that was the first thing I heard at the first vocal monthly meeting that their stewards spoke of. And basically it's been on the agenda almost every week since then. And I just wanted to be sure I mean, the, you know, the MOU is literally one phase long. You don't usually see union type things that are one-stage long. There's nothing in the MOU. But what it does say is that you did ask me, where is its right to collectively garbage over these issues and will not grieve or litigate the implementation of the measures. So I just wanted to make sure that the people that are doing the work now are, to your knowledge, supportive of this. I think they would be, we can build these positions can be filled with the fact that they won't be doing like $100 an hour worth of work. It's very likely to get paid for, we're doing the kind of work that we're getting paid for and decreasing the stress. And the fact that it's a MOU until we start bargaining next year and let's see where we go from there. Okay, thank you. Thanks again for being here. Okay. Are we ready for action on this one? For the question? Let's go. All right, I'll make a motion to take our action because I think it's going to ox. Okay, thank you both. Discussion? All right, go ahead, Mr. Jean. Oh, I mean, I think this, it seems that Antenna tried to look into this, right, Antenna from the administration. But it's taken because it's a new person, too. But you know, so you look at the data, there are some city departments that are extremely, in terms of how it's protected for you and the DC side. How do you consult them in order to see what is starting with us and what why? Thank you, Mr. Jean. We have through our coordination with HR, I have not spoken directly, but some of the conversations that we've had with HR is that the number of the positions to get more applications are generalist-type positions where more people could be assumed to be qualified for positions where when we start getting into technical work or work with significant physical requirements, we really struggle to call them. I don't know if our HR can answer your line, or are you going to let that happen? Just to add to that, those, that's what we're seeing. We're seeing at Burlington Electric over at the field plan. We're having to repose to repose open positions to have difficulty filling them. Same with the Department of Public Works. Very physical labor positions. They're not positions that you can work from home with. And that's what we're also seeing a lot more of during our interview process with our more administrative positions. That's the number one question, is this position promote? Or hybrid? And so that's something that we're also, looking at with Karen, the chief creates the work from home policy from the city. But we can't do that with a lot of these streets positions. So our distribution field tax, these are very physical labor positions and it's hard to find people to fill them out. Or they require on-call, or recently somebody who resigned, it was their spouse can only have a certain type of job that they have to be on-call a night to weekend. That means their spouse can't work those nights and weekends. And so it reduces their overall earning power. So I mean, there's some real fundamental things about how society has been structured in the past and how it is now. I don't know exactly what to do with that, but I've been really trying to incentivize people onto something really important to raise to all of them. And I think there are two more things about the court. And one of them is, I'll be one of the second president, but also let's take a contact with that public workforce, workforce is a big trouble for all sectors, but when we get to the union negotiation, I think maybe they're aware of the concept of having it at least in the company, it's just that we are on something really important. That's why the second element is also, it might be also the venture, some of your employees may be required some technical work that they don't have to try it. Maybe also some of them are lost. Like I said, the end to that last one. It's most people need to get the training, they go ahead and explain or not include anything that talks about professional development, really what to try. There are all of those elements that you can take a look at one, that you put in the school for it, and hope that the mayor will approach it. That's part of the negotiation. Any further discussion on this? I think we have a motion, second. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries or no, it's like this brings us to 3.9. Other than the water resources, four items left. This is a creation of tiered water. Thank you. Thank you. 3.08 is the budget agenda. Okay. So five. Budget and amendment for street maintenance. Sound. Sure. This is to accommodate for what was an error in the oversight when we were building the budget in 22, we created a line for seasonal workers for street maintenance in the implementation of the budget. If somehow didn't get spot, team for treasure team, you have found a resolution for this by addressing another light to allow us the $87,000 for temporary seasonal health. So this is part of what we'll need to kind of fully staff for the winter. So we appreciate everybody's effort to help us get back. Thank you. Move by the councillor, seconded by President Tracy. Discussion. Move all those figures both should we say aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed? Carries unanimously. That brings it to now. Thank you. Now, to the United States, 3.09. This is a tiered water plan operator position. Would you like to say words about this plan? Sure. I mean, fundamentally, the need to add an additional FTE comes out of the fact that we have this one position very fundamental position in the water plants as the senior plant mechanic. And the schedule that I inherited and the structure that I inherited has that water plant mechanic working on the rotating 24 hour shift, which means that this person only overlaps with the chief for project coordination five times in a given month is working at nights where one doesn't really want to do big water plant projects and also doesn't have access to the other plant mechanics to actually work as a team to complete what can be sometimes challenging, you know, dangerous projects. We did look at various possible scheduling alternatives. You know, there's an existing schedule MOU that we've been talking about for many, many years. And while ultimately I think we will revisit that scheduling MOU and determine whether or not the plant could be operated with a different set of intent of having two people on it all times. Right now, where the plant is, last upgraded in 1984, still has a lot of things that can go wrong having two people on it all times to protect for a length of water supply. We do feel as necessary. It also enhances the safety. Having somebody there by themselves does create a lone worker situation. So at this point, in order to get the senior plant mechanic on days, we would need to add this other ninth person to the operation staff so that we can maintain the eight people who do the rotations. In doing that, we saw an opportunity. We've been talking for a long time about the tiering. Well, we haven't quite crafted the full upper tier level. We wanted to make sure that when we added this position, we started to think about that eventual ladder. And in particular, in the operations field, a lot of our experienced operators are retiring. We're trying to grow the next new problem. And so they don't necessarily have operations experience. They don't have their license, right? We need to provide a doorway for them to get in because they wouldn't be able to be hired under the existing job description because it requires you to have certain things. But we can get them in the door, train them in our facility and grow them up where they can get to the 17th. So that is what we are proposing here. It was in the budget that you already approved for FY282. It just took us a little while to figure out the tiering. It was our DPW's first attempted tiering. But we learned a lot from them and from BED and how they've done it. Thank you, Megan. The floor is open for questions, discussion, motions, that's a problem. Thanks. I'll make the actions for kind of the work out. That's a problem. There's a second question by Councilor Jenning. This is a discussion. Seeing that, we'll go right to the vote. So those are the votes that's here. So the post, we're going to take this one. Thank you, Megan. And this brings us to a final DPW water resources item. This is the proposed final agreement for two historical water billing errors that we had previously. That gives us a little action tonight. Given, would you like to summarize? I'm going to have this director bring the work out as well. Yes, though, we continue to chip away at some of the historical water billing errors that we discovered in 2017. I wish they would come faster, but we just continue to chip away as we work on all the other things that we manage. And so we have two historical water billing error settlements here. One is for 100 million that occurred at Burlington Country Club, in which we are settling with them, paying us $150,000 over five years. It is less than the possible calculated amount. But there were a couple of things about this particular calculation or underbilling, which resulted in us recommending that we come to an agreement on sort of an in-between amount. The other one is a memorandum of understanding agreement for the resolution of the overbilling at ABMC, which is us owing the Medical Center $209,000. And the really cool part I'm excited to share with you is that they've been extremely collaborative and innovative with us in taking this money. And instead of us just writing them a check and then doing whatever we think, we're actually pouring it into some pilot projects around real time smart metering and then really taking this opportunity to work together with the facility staff there and ensure that the hospital does not ever run out of water, which is one of my chief concerns and certainly their chief concerns. So really looking at all of the different types, their internal structure, and making sure we can run various scenarios and understand what the risks are with the different scenarios. And then how does that pour into our capital improvement plans? What means around the hospital that we need to repair or replace? What means on their campus should they be focusing on? So that we build a better system that is more resilient to any of the possible things that we're interested in. So if we take this to court and it doesn't based on your comments, it starts things to be a real opportunity to make a case against it. So if we can get to court, we can we lost what would happen if we would get a thing? Right. So we would potentially spend a lot of money preparing for court and a lot of my staff time and one of my key people staff time preparing and doing all the discovery. And then, yes, there is a possibility when we're working at a consultation with the city attorney that it's not a block solid case. And so when faced with the opportunity to get a significant amount of money in hand without having to do all of that, that is why we are recommending that approach versus fighting it for us. In terms of going forward, are there checks and not like checks in place to make sure that we find ourselves in a similar situation? Yeah, as I say, there's a section in the memo that talks about all the improvements that we've made. I mean, I can't foresee every possible mistake, but with every root cause, we've evaluated why did that happen? And then we put things in place, whether it's SOPs, whether it's reorganizations, whether it's traditional technologies, QAQC processes to really learn and continue to learn from the errors that we uncovered. The memo also details this is a continuous process. And even today, we are finding things as the result of some of the QAQC processes that we're putting in place. It's really a never-ending journey and not just the point in time. So. Presentaries, can I ask you a question? One thing that was clear is upgrading the kind of money in construction. How do you talk about whether the hospital was sick? Yeah, three different areas. So there's our pipes in our public right of way that support and feed the hospital. There's then pipes once you cross the right of way line that are both still part of our distribution system, but specifically the hospital. And then there's another contract in the scope of work that is working with mechanical engineer to understand and map all of the connections within the hospital. If you've ever been in the hospital, clearly, it's been added on to five billion times. And we want to make sure they want to make sure they know what type is linked to what type. So if they have an internal break and they isolate something, they need to know what floor is going to be in trouble. Same thing, if we have a break on East Ave, I want to know, are we going to be able to supply the pressures from the rest of the system? We can do some of that analysis, but we really want to dive deep and just kind of think of all the possible worst things that could happen and then come up with a plan for how we would address those. If it was like the same thing, it seems one day I would have made it clear to try and give it to people's knowledge and try to understand what's going on. Yes. Why this one is so important? Mostly because we owe them money and we want to collaborate with them about what is inside. You're talking about specifically inside. Yeah, we don't own operator control. We're just the scope of work that we are jointly doing, necessarily involves this internal piece. And we could just write them a check and they can go spend whatever, but they are sort of committing to us. They're going to take this money and actually work on their inside piece. Is that? Yeah. I'd like to add one critical other difference, which I think is very important. It's that in a typical residential area, our water veins largely follow the right winds and they're lateral serving each residential customer. On the campus, both for UBMMC as well as UBM, there are historical mains running on and through parcels of things without the level of documentation that we would want. So part of this is really running to ground. Whose main is this? Who's maintaining it? What's the condition? What's the emergency plan? There are, for better or worse, these legacy issues up there that predate our tenure, but we feel called to resolve. Steve, do you have a good point on this? And we'll see you in a bit. What a nice... Yes. Thank you. For the discussion of the questions, we're ready for... Council Chairman, second? Second. For the discussion, we will vote on this for everyone who's with us there. Okay. Any colors? It's now just like the CGU and the State Attorney's Office for... We were selfish for many months and months, for years of work that we've been trying to change. We've got an issue set up. Bob Rustin was a big help many years ago through to the CIOs and the Attorney's Office. And I think that's what... Right now I'm watching... Lisa... She's just a go all the way back to... 2009, at least. And it's a state-of-the-art attack. Way beyond that. And yes, the number of errors that initiated during my tenure, our few and... These are legacy issues. And frankly, we even needed to uncover and work to make it work. Thank you very much. A couple of last items now. 3.11, the B-item, the property, the boiler, the tsunami, the church renewal. Over there. We need to keep track. So let's go ahead. Oh, this is our annual... I'm coming in front of every year. Two reasons. The magnitude of this is our property, well, and future insurance. By far, a lot of this lies. Three years ago, we were in the mid-200,000, now we're in the mid-600,000. So I think that warrants the type of discussions both. And two, because legally, even though it's a single policy year, it ranges over two fiscal years. So there's some legality around that whether we do that or not. So we just get on the surface, we are. Not sure, we're looking for your vote and approval. The same, this line of insurance is so large, this is our third year in a row, we have the same four carriers. You just start that Zurich and AIG that combine to write this policy. We're still right up, this is how it goes, 24,000 right up against waiting for AIGs to give us a final number. But in essence, we are not to exceed a 5% increase. So we currently pay $644,506 for a firm policy that expires from the 20th. And we have a non-machine agreement not to exceed 676,755. That's nothing more than a 5% increase. That's exactly what our budget is. So there's zero dollars, like our fiscal year 2020 budget has a total of 10 years. And yours cross, you might be a little below that, you should know any day now. But that's what we're up against right now. Okay, thank you. Scott. What's up, Paul? Thanks, I just thought, I think to the extent that the public was watching this, it's, you know, you just started, you said how many years ago, it was in the 200s and I feel like I even remember voting one to 644. I feel like I remember that number. And I probably asked you the same question at the time, which is to try to give the income, for the public, given the fact that we're talking about a significantly 200 to 600 is all a lot of money. What in your opinion has led to that significant increase? What are the reasons and are there any things that we can do that could mitigate that going forward? Because at some point the 676 could become 900. And then what do we do? If you could elaborate. Absolutely. So, the Cochran Bourbons, our insurance agent, Paul Funkett, is behind me here, but specifically in his memo that I attached by document, we identified five specific areas that's driving that. In 2018 was 228,000, 2019 by the 579, and then as you mentioned, 2020 was 644. So now it's somewhat the level and I'll ask if you can imagine that 600, but we identified five specific reasons that are driving it. So you can use the term of hard market, hard market has a lot of cases to it. The five are identified and I'm just gonna read them here. Insurers continue to fund for losses due to climate change, increasing material cost due to COVID, related supply chain issues and traditional type of claims experience. Even though our experience has been very good, otherwise it'd be even higher. And additionally, reinsurance costs, which is when the primary insurance tries to seed off some of the business above them. So those are the five main driving forces, sort of a perfect storm. I mentioned Paul, absolutely. We were optimistic that we've kind of reached this flat level for a while. I don't think we'll ever see the 200,000 again in my lifetime, but it's a very limited market. So these four carriers, you know, last year, the platform went up to 25 years. The biomass industry scares a lot of underwriters. They've had significant losses. We're not part of that, but there's no difference in your neighbors paying higher homeowners auto rates. Very limited market, so supply demand is very visible and rough against. What can we do with your second party question and identify that? A lot of you asked some great questions last year. So in addition, from specifically the property pool and machinery, AIG and some of the other carriers to underwrite this kind of list of recommendations, the biggest one on that list, we're in the middle of finishing that this Wednesday. It was a secondary boiler feed pump system in the field station. You put a lot of time and money into that, but had we not done that, or we would have been either not written at all by these carriers or had an even more significant increase. So we checked out the laws of those boxes. There were 23 recommendations two years ago. We're down to six right now. They're still outstanding, good officials. But that's specific to the property. Other things, if you can't save any money or change premium in our existing policy, we've identified here and without my own time crunch, but we've done a lot of things on the other lines, working folks who would pick back the boardman, specifically professional liability insurance policies. We just eliminated it. I started out in 1994. We did have one that's specific to an engineer. We save over $50,000 for my current budget by just eliminating that policy and saying, well, does that mean we're not coverage? No, we joined with the city of Brooklyn because there'd be an advantage that pickback boardman can call a bucket represents the city also as a agent. So we joined with the travel policy with their directors and officers, public officials, and their professional liability. So we've seen we're over $50,000. We're looking at exploring, we are with the city on workers' top and auto and we would never break away unless full parties can save money. So pickback boardman took it back. We're looking at this combined city on on-the-profit policy. That's what called minimum premium for insurance carriers. We're not there yet, we're getting data so close. So if that happens, it may be a beneficial for both the city and BD to combine our property policies. So we're looking into that. Looking in the city with the cyber security, I'm going to tell you how huge it is now. We got it on the ground floor several years ago. We paid not very much money, but as that risk increases, we may combine working in the city on their cyber policy. Joint captains, you know, the Vermont Captains Insurance Association, Vermont is number three in the world. They're new to Cayman Island, Vermont. So there's a lot of unknowns with the captains, but pickback boardman looking at that, that's something you can do in these hard markets is join a captive. That's very common when things get really tough. And finally, I mentioned again, the recommendations that we've used were knocking off, I think great strides That's what we're talking about. More than answers to the question. I know you've done an awful lot of work on this and the captive thing is certainly an intriguing thing. I guess the only thing I would just add is that I do remember having this conversation last year because the increase was so significant. And it would seem as though some of the reasons, and I realize this is a moving target, but it seems as though some of the reasons are very time sensitive reasons. And I just wonder if two years from now, there's no more supply chain issues. Let's assume that COVID is a thing, relatively speaking, a thing that we've asked, that it would seem as though we should be able to maybe even pay the less. But I don't know, insurance companies are probably just like everything else. Once it's gone up, it's hard to get them to go down. But I don't want to take up an awful lot of time. Thank you. Thanks so much for your explanation. Sure. That's my long question. Just a little bit of concern about the time. I think that this is an initiated response. If we do not work on this issue or make a solution. That's a great question. So we wouldn't want to go beyond November 20. I can't believe you haven't seen it, I think. Also, in Texas, it's 159, some KIT. So that may have just closed, it didn't have that information, so I haven't even seen it myself. But we would never let that policy lapse to danger. So we know it's not going to exceed it. So yes, if you would think like three months ago, why can't we get this is how insurance companies work to align the state. It's always the last minute, every day of the week could be a lot of money to pocket. And so we always seem to be right up against the wire. We know that November 20, when we decided we would not let this policy lapse. And so at least for the vote, we know it's not going to exceed it. We buy and cover it. And then we hopefully see a little bit of savings this year. Thank you. You're welcome. Are we ready for a motion? That's fine. I'll make a motion to take the action as recommended in part two. Great, it's our second. I'm going to present Tracy for the discussion. We'll go to the vote. All those here, the motion, please say aye. Opposed? Motion to unanimously and vote. It's called to be in the process to finalize it. 3.12. TZ. That's not a nation. We're not setting creation. Yes, it's a sentence. Summer here is we had an IT position that had been tiered. We just heard about DDW moving in this direction. We already have tiering and had been tiered. The incumbent in the position had been legacyed in a previous position and chosen not to go into the tiered position. That staff person is leaving us in December. We were actually seeing quite a few folks from IT moving forward to other positions right now. So we have somewhat of a transition period with our IT team in looking at the position. We have a need that is far greater for the network engineer position that's been described in the packet. They're very similar in terms of their grade and the tiered levels that they offer. This will help us in terms of when we go to hire for this position that's been taken, hiring for a position that's up the greatest speed for me. Great, that's a call. Quick. Any discussion? All of them. We say aye. Aye. Opposed? She carries. Thank you. But. We are adjourned. We're adjourned. Six, seven. We're adjourned. Why are you guys doing now? We're not doing now. We're just having a quick back down. We're just having a quick back down. Yup. We're doing the same thing. We're just wanting to make sure that the doors are open and now they are. So we're all set to go. I will call to order the meeting. First thing is the pledge. So we'll do that. Brings us to the first motion on the agenda, which is the agenda itself. Councilor Stromberger, are you with us? I am. Thank you. I move to amend, adopt the agenda as follows. Add to the consent agenda. Item 5.20, communication, Mary Danko, library director regarding pilot a branch library in the north end with the action to waive the reading, accept the communication and place it on file. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion on the agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor McGee. Any discussion on the agenda? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote on the agenda itself. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We now have our agenda for this evening. Brings us to item number two, which is a executive session having to do with ongoing negotiations with beta technologies. City Attorney Richardson, is there anything that you'd like to offer in the public session before we get into motions on the finding and the motion to go into executive session? No, I just simply add that this is to discuss a contract that is in the process of being negotiated, which is as you'll make, if you make the proposed findings, would clearly fall under 313 to keep that in executive session and allow council to hear information that might otherwise be detrimental to the city if it was prematurely released into public. Okay. Thank you very much for that explanation. So based off of that explanation, may I please have a motion on a finding? Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. I move that the council find that the premature general public knowledge of legal advice and information concerning the details of pending lease negotiations with beta technologies ink to which the city is a party or has a stated interest would clearly place the city at substantial disadvantage. Thank you, Councillor Mason. We have a motion on a finding. There's a second from Councillor Paul. Any discussion on the motion regarding the finding? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Now based on that finding, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. Based on the finding, I move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential attorney client communications, one VSA section 313A1F and a pending contract and lease agreement matter. One VSA section 313A1A. And note that those present will include Mayor's personal staff and city attorney Richardson. And Director Longo, yes, acting director Longo as well. Thank you. Okay, excellent, okay. And the two, okay, the full airport staff. Okay, thank you. And actually the two outside consultants, I think were contained in the motion. Jeff Greenberg. Glassberg. Glassberg, sorry. And Jeremy Farkas. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so we have a motion to go into executive session. Is there any discussion? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of going into executive session, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. And we are going to go into executive session. Councilors, we'll head downstairs to the Bush or Conference Room. And for folks who are here for the regular city council meeting, we will reconvene up here once we're done with that and we'll try to be back at or before 730 for the public comment. We may be a little sooner, depending on how long our conversation goes. So if you wanna hang out in here, you're totally welcome to do so. If you're here for public forum, you may sign up using the forms in the corner here. If you're participating remotely, you can sign up for public forum by going to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum and you can sign up there. That's only if you're wanting to promote, to participate remotely in the public forum. You have to sign up sheets here for folks interested, otherwise. Thank you so much. Time to get to everybody this evening who signed up. Again, interested in signing up and speaking in the public forum, you may do so if you're in person by just signing up using the sheets that are over here in the corner. Interested in speaking and have joined our meeting remotely, you may comment remotely by going to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum and that will take you to a forum that we then will use in order to identify the remote speakers. If you are participating remotely, just please do your best to sign in as the name that you sign up as, just so that it's easiest to look you up and look at you as we're going through. As has been our practice, we'll be prioritizing Burlington residents, both in terms of the remote and in person comments. So we'll go Burlington residents in person followed by Burlington residents remote, followed by non-Burlington in person, followed by non-Burlington remote. So we kind of switch back and forth a little bit. For the forum itself, folks will have two minutes. You can see there's a timer back here. So you have that. There's also a light system that gives you a green, yellow, and red lights, yellow indicating that your time is coming to an end and then red that your time has ended. I will start asking you to wrap up once your time has ended and please stick to your time limits. It's important to give us time, to make sure that everybody has the same or equivalent amount of time as we go through the meeting itself. In terms of the decorum of the forum, please do not swear in your forum. Please remain respectful in your forum without personal attacks. Please stick to the issues. The other piece is also, if you could just please allow folks to comment, say their piece and then not bother them when they're either while they're speaking and interrupting people while they're speaking or when they go back to their seats. It's just, again, everybody should feel like they're comfortable, that they're able to express themselves here regardless of what the view that they're expressing on the issues that we're dealing with. So with that, being said, I'm gonna start the forum and we'll start with Burlington folks who are in-person. So we have, okay. So the first speaker is Jada Bearden to be followed by Todd LaCroix. Yes, okay. Hi, I'm Jada. I use the he pronouns in solidarity and support of Sears Lane. And before I get into Sears Lane, I want to address the chair and just say that, and this is not an attack, this is just me as a constituent that cares about the community. Y'all some liars and I'm tired and do better. Y'all talk all this talk about how much y'all care and how houses communities, like mirrors, like, oh, person who cares about houses community the most. You have reclaimed my time. You have not been at Sears Lane once and that is the truth. So put your money where your mouth is. Speaking of money, how dare you tear down tiny homes? You are just a person that should not be allowed to have power, should not be allowed to have a position that home was for people, was for people to have a community, to have food, to have shelter. It was gonna be insulated for the winter and you just want to challenge y'all to just do better and come down to Sears Lane and instead of destroying things, how about you lend a hand and build some stuff, clean up some trash. How about that? How about that? Thank you. Thank you. If you could please not, and if folks could please refrain from personal attacks and using profanity. Our next speaker is Todd LeCroy to be followed by Lee Morgan. I almost forgot you existed. That was Elon Musk to Bernie Sanders the other day I hear. I almost forgot you existed. I thought it was ironic. I thought back to the day that Bernie Sanders' chief of staff was throwing me out of their office when I was going there to complain about being beaten and tortured and left for dead and dehumanized and a false police report that ruined my life filed by them to CYA themselves. CYA stands for cover your ass. And for the last 10 years, CYA has destroyed my life every time I tried to get you all to recognize what happened to me. That was 11 years ago. A year after that, I was so irate. And so many others who had been through so many similar experiences were so irate. We started Occupy Wall Street and you paid attention for a minute. You lied to us that you cared just like you did to your children about everything. You lie, you lie, you lie. You never own up. You never take responsibility and you just cover your asses while you throw away our lives. In the last 10 years, I can say that it was worse to survive. You know why? Because of you people, my friends, my family, you all don't care. And this pandemic proved it. It proved that surviving this last 10 years wasn't worth it. You people, all of you, America is morally and spiritually bankrupt. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lee Morgan to be followed by Brooke McKean. My name is Lee Morgan. I use they, them pronouns. I live in Burlington. This isn't gonna be smooth. I'm like just feeling a lot of different emotions. I feel like everybody voting on the resolution tonight should feel a lot of emotions because it's about human life. I stand in solidarity with all residents of Cirrus Lane. I feel, or I stand in solidarity with those who took opportunities to move out of stakes. That was what was best for them. I stand in solidarity with residents who took funds for campers because that's what they felt was best for them. I am in solidarity with campers who have moved in with family because that's what's best for them. I stand in solidarity with campers who will seek to take advantage of the long-term hotel program because that's what's best for them. And I stand in solidarity with residents who remain and will return to Cirrus Lane because that's what's best for them. I stand in solidarity with residents because of their difficulties or choices or a mixture of both will not be able to follow any sort of lease or rental agreement. I stand in solidarity with campers who will not be able to maintain even a 28-day stay in a hotel. I stand in solidarity with campers who are easy to love. I stand in solidarity with campers who are not easy to love. I stand in solidarity with campers who commit crimes. I stand in solidarity with campers who do not. I stand in solidarity with campers who pose a public health risk because we're all humans. And deciding whether or not these humans get to stay at Cirrus Lane is just not convenient. And whatever you think that they deserve or should be grateful for or should be taken advantage of, they're humans and they need some place to go. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, if you could hold the applause. Next speaker is Brooke McKean to be followed by Brian Chena. My name is Brooke McKean, I use she her pronouns. And I'm here in support of the resolution relating to recognizing the rights of houseless community members. And I am here in solidarity with the residents of Cirrus Lane. I want to make it clear that the passing of this resolution, agenda item 6.02 and allowing community members to occupy public land really is the bare minimum of what this city and you all as city council members should be doing to support houseless members of our community and also to address the horrifying housing crisis and the ongoing gentrification that is actively happening in our city and which is causing immense harm to our community as a whole but more specifically to the most marginalized members of our community. Let us also recognize that the city of Burlington is situated on the unceded land and territory of the Abenaki people and the Wabanaki Confederacy and that no city council or city official should have authority over who and how one occupies or utilizes public stolen land. It is nearing December and another harsh Vermont winter and it is critical that you all as the city council act fast. With the 28 day emergency housing assistance ending soon and less than just one short month there is an added sense of urgency to pass this proposal and to allow Cirrus Lane's residents to return to their homes. It is imperative that Cirrus Lane remain self-managed even with an outside group or some sort of facilitator as the proposal reads. It is also important that the RFPs stay open for as long as necessary without the restriction of a time limit. You all have the power and the opportunity to do your part in protecting and supporting your constituents and your community members in the most basic way. If you could just please wrap up. So voting in support of this proposal should not yield any hesitation whatsoever. Yep, and should not even in any like it should not. Your time is up. Even be a question. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Brian Cina to be followed by Fareed M. If folks are interested in signing up the signups are in the corner over there if you are online and would like to sign up remotely you may do so by going to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum. As a state representative I took an oath of office in which I swore to not take action that would be injurious to the people that I would not lessen or abridge their rights and that I would conduct myself as a guardian of the people. So I'm here tonight to say that the city of Burlington's treatment of people at Sears Lane and Cam is a violation of fundamental human rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that disregarding contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind and the advent of a world. And which human beings that enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want have been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people. Article one states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. And article two clarifies that everyone is entitled without distinction of any kind and article five states no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel and human or degrading treatment or punishment. It is cruel and degrading to remove the toilet from Sears Lane during a public health emergency. In fact, it's torture. It is cruel and degrading treatment to deprive people of shelter and warmth by tearing down structures, especially as hotels reject them without us having a plan in place for supported housing. Article 25 says that everyone has a right to a standard of living. And there's a lot of detail that I'm gonna skip. The standard of living for unhoused people has been shaped by our laws and policies which have benefited those who have the most power and resources by causing harm to those who have the least. The humanitarian crisis at Sears Lane is the result of the failure of a carceral state which causes trauma through use of force that reinforces the problems caused by trauma that lead to homelessness. We can respond to this crisis by breaking out of this cycle of abuse instead of perpetuating more harm. In 20 years, how are people gonna look back at us? Are they gonna see us as cruel or are they gonna celebrate how during this difficult time we came together and instead of kicking people while they're down, we reached out our hands and we brought them back into the circle. The forced removal of people from Sears Lane might make the problems disappear for some. But they will only get worse for others. Let us give more now than ever. Let's surround them with a circle of love and let's take care of each other better. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Fareed M. To be followed by Will Keaton. At 4 a.m., four police cruisers sort of at Sears Lane with two bulldozers. And they dismantled the tiny home that volunteers have built. We had UVM students from their UVM club of engineers helped insulate the community kitchen there and started to construct the first like of tiny homes from using our own resources. I've been cooking and serving food at Sears Lane since the fencing went up. And I can say that the communication coming from the mayor's office about how everybody there have mostly gone and have been taken care of. It's contradicted by reality on the ground. The reason that the tiny homes were built is because we are anticipating, because we understand that the housing that some folks have there is only temporary and that people will be returning and it's getting colder. Some of us who were experiencing homelessness previously also know how the hotels treat this guest with a different standard. So sure enough, two or three days into this hotel stay, they were, some of them are forced out and are now back living in Sears Lane because they have no other place to be. I know Burlington is a city with a creative economy. Two blocks down from Sears Lane is an innovation center with a lot of companies there focusing on alternative energy and about half of them has social impact as their mission. So let's put our money where our mouth is. I know the city can do great things and engage the business community to come up with some solution, something new or at least not go back to police and bulldozers and incarceration as the solution. Thank you. Our next speaker is Will Keaton to be followed by Julie Masuga. I'd like to speak briefly on one possible intended plan the city has for Sears Lane and the surrounding land. I believe some guy named Scully said he wants to build, what was it? A working force factory town down there while displacing all the working people who cannot afford homes. He said, you know, Scully said, I know how this looks bad but no pressure in the city should down the camp but we know how money and development works in America. And I'm just like a little confused. Do we forget what like factory company towns were like in America back in the day? Like what's the plan here? Like the city's just gonna build like a little colony down there and maybe a few working people will be allowed to live there. The city is generous because you never build housing down there just like I don't know which are like art studios and funny shops that sell quirky things. And so, you know, we see what's going on. We see the city's policy towards Sears Lane which I would describe as neat and murderous as winter is about to come as the city tears down homes that the people themselves built which was I guess an embarrassment to the city government because people did by themselves something the city seemed capable of doing as it insisted that it was doing as much as possible to help the residents of Sears Lane which is a lie. So yeah, I definitely urge support for the resolution on the table right now to, you know, just let people live on the land. It's really as simple as that. And I'm done. Thank you. Our next speaker is Julie Masuga to be followed by Leif Toronto. My name is Julie Masuga. You see her pronouns. The last time that an encampment was closed in Burlington, I heard horror stories from houseless friends which were really only followed up by a brochure full of unusable resources. So the houseless community finding those resources inadequate created their own. So much of that thoughtfulness and creative energy could go toward managing Sears Lane. I learned by the mayor's chief of staff that the city is open to something similar stating of a qualified organization or partnership would like to propose an arrangement to provide services outlined in the RFP or similar services, we would welcome hearing from those groups. Nothing should be off the table especially considering the winter. The measures the city has taken as such as 28 days of motel vouchers have been helpful but that is only a temporary solution at a time where shelters are consistently full. And in addition, some folks have been getting refused entry to hotels and are now back where they started. Myself, other advocates, nonprofits, elected officials and a number of Sears Lane residents have begun to compile a proposal. In short, it concludes that the site will be staffed with two peer support staff 24-7 to assist in any need from residents, i.e. de-escalation, assistant in finding suitable housing outside of camp, running the safe consumption site, helping residents struggle with addiction, et cetera, et cetera. Some of us envision a partnership between organizations like CVOEO which has been providing many services and residents being able to manage themselves with the support of groups like Food Not Bombs, People's Kitchen and other mutual aid groups. EFS as well as ARPA funding could support a handful of paid positions to manage the site and I know many folks would jump at the chance to do that. We are poised to do that because we've been working with residents of Sears Lane for many years. We're hoping to work in good faith, collaborating with the city, existing nonprofits and residents to make the management of this site possible. Regardless of the outcome of the resolution, we're going to keep working on a plan to submit and carry out. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Leif Taranta to be followed by Jamie Garcia. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hi, my name's Leif and I'm here to speak in support of Councillor McGee's resolution. And I just wanted to say that reopening the request for proposals is a fantastic idea and you should absolutely do it. I know that the city had wanted, had put out a request for proposals in the past and clearly that one was too short. So reopen it. There are so many things that we could do to address the housing crisis and make Sears Lane better. And in fact, many of us, as Julie said, have been working on our own proposal together as a community with residents, with organizations and we really think that it could work. And if that one doesn't work, I'm sure there are many, many proposals out there that could. And so we want to work with you to find one that will. But I will tell you what won't work. What won't work is your current plan of kicking people out on the streets after 28 days in the cold. That is not going to work. People will be without a home, they will be freezing. Over the past month, the housing crisis in Burlington hasn't gotten any better. And sometimes I wonder if many of you think that, oh, if we make a few misleading interviews and demolish a few tiny homes, maybe the housing crisis will just go away. Merit and Bease, Sears Lane will just go away and Sears Lane is not going to go away because Sears Lane is not the problem. The problem is the housing crisis. The problem is that over the past month, while we've been talking about the issues at Sears Lane, I have had numerous friends call me in the middle of the night having nowhere to go. I have had people sleeping on my couch. I have found friends hypothermic in the cold. And that is because the housing crisis isn't getting better because you're not doing anything to fix it. And so I would just ask you to please do something to actually address this. Please work in good faith, which is a term you all have used a lot with the residents and with the community members who are coming forward with solutions, both for the people of Sears Lane and for Burlington as a whole. You're not going to be able to get rid of Sears Lane, but you can help us make it better. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jamie Garcia to be followed by Carol Lagton or Layton. I actually think it's rather unfair to say that you all haven't done anything about the housing crisis in Burlington. When the truth is is that all of you are actively making the housing crisis in Burlington worse. Anything that you do that removes the only place in Burlington that is a no barrier place for people without housing to go, the fact that there is only one of these places to begin with, the fact that there is no social service that is well funded enough to have the capacity to help you make this place a safer place to be. These are all red flags that should let you know you're doing your jobs wrong. And what you need to do is stop being so pathetically misguided in caring about the city's future and all of your plans for quote unquote development when you need to be invested in the city's present state and our current constituents. You need to consider this proposal. You need to look into the work your constituents are doing into forming those proposals for you and how we can implement them to actually make this place safer. And if you take away Sears Lane, it is going to continue this tradition of making the housing crisis worse. It is going to make more people unwell and in unsafe situations that's going to lead more people to crime. It is going to make Burlington a less safe city. It is just going to build the argument that you're doing a good job economically for you and the constituents that vote to make sure you have lives of comfort while it actively makes the rest of our lives worse. I should not have to argue so much to convince you all that you are violating people's human rights. Literally the basic thing you could do is to just leave Sears Lane alone. And if anything, you could listen to the people who are doing work of things that are actually helpful to people. But there is so much direct evidence of where these incentives of what to do with this land are coming from and how the people there are not being given adequate options when you are kicking them out of the only place that there are. And I ask that you have empathy for people who in their lives feel that Sears Lane is the safest place for them to be. And maybe work on giving them more options rather than taking the only one away. Thank you. Our next speaker is Carol Layton to be followed by Miguel Figueroa. I'm sorry. Ligt and I apologize for that. I'm so sorry. You could just speak into the mic, please. I'm from Sears Lane. What, whatever we say to you, you're gonna say no anyway. Doesn't matter what we say. Anybody says whatever they do, you're still gonna be no. If you could just speak right into the mic just so they can hear. Whatever we say, you're still gonna say no to anything. I see the way you act when they're talking to you. We're people. We're not nothing. You've gone from nothing and tried to make, bring ourselves up. And you give, you doesn't matter because to you or nobody. And that's where you want us to be. You don't want people to know we're there. You don't want people to see us because what that does is bring everything down. And that's not right. None of it's right. We're people. We're trying to make a life. And you don't like it because we're not like you guys. We actually have a community that cares about each other that takes care of each other. And all you guys wanna do is smack us back down. Nobody should have that right. Not you, not God is the only person. And you're not God. So why do you have the rights to say we can't build and have a community that takes care of each other? We, there's more caring people down there than there will ever be in this burnt town. Because most people here, all they think about is their selves. And that's not sure we shouldn't be like that. You should help people. If they need something you should go and help them without questioning it. My mom taught me to, if somebody needed my help, help them. And I'm pretty sure your parents taught you to help people and not take people's homes away or people's stuff away from them. That's not a way to compete. And that's the way you're coming out as it does. You're destroying what we've built. Thank you. Our next speaker is, our next speaker is Miguel Figueroa to be followed by Alexis Grundy. Yeah, how's it going? I'm back. So kind of this might go up a little bit tall. So I just want to start by saying that I would encourage anybody on the town council to just kind of look around at what this movement has become. Like we have a wide variety of individuals and organizations that have come together with every reason to support our fellow Berlin residents, even though they are unhoused. Our reasons outweigh the counterarguments. It's just very clear to anyone who's paying attention. It is very cool that some counselors have chosen to support the more vulnerable residents of Burlington with this proposal. About them, I just have to say they need to go further. Yeah, this is the resolution's only beginning. The eviction shouldn't just be delayed. It should be fully stopped. So very cool to see people out there actually at Sears Lane. Very cool to see them talking with residents and with activists. Please continue and go further than you already have. I don't know. It kind of sounds like an ungrateful thing for me to say, but you know how it is. And the second thing I want to say is sort of like a predictive thing. Veron is a diverse and growing immigrant population. And if you haven't thought about this, but one of the really weird and negative, obviously, side effects of climate change is the issue of climate refugees. I don't know if you remember, you could see the smog from the California wildfires from the East Coast last year. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. And a lot of folks who are displaced by climate change, a lot of climate refugees will be coming to Vermont and will be coming to Burlington. So this is not the last time you're gonna need to make an ugly decision like this. And it will get visibly more brutal every time if you make the wrong decision. That's all I gotta say, I guess. Thank you. Our next speaker is Alexis Grundy. And then we'll switch over to Burlington remote folks. I'm from Sears Lane. And honestly, what you guys are doing right now is kind of heartless. Can you speak right in the mic, please? What you guys are doing right now is heartless. I showed up at Sears Lane first when I was 17 years old because DCF failed me. And my parents were terrible people. I've lived there for a year and a half. And last year I got frostbite and I have permanent nerve damage to my hands. And you guys are currently tearing down people's homes. I didn't find a home until I was 17. And my home is the people from Sears Lane. And I've lived in four different states and I've never stayed in the same house longer than three months until I found Sears Lane. Which I don't say places. I found somewhere where I fit and the people there are a lot more of a sound mind than anywhere else I've been. So they actually care. They know how hard it is. A series of unfortunate events happen to people just because it happens, okay? It doesn't make them bad people. It just makes it harder. Please just think about what you're doing. Like honestly, please. Thank you. Next speaker is, we did get a couple more Burlington in-person folks. So I have Gray Bereta to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. This, what we're doing here is what it takes for an entire community living in Burlington to initiate a generative dialogue with the city. For me, the only obstacle to that conversation is that the city has to first be able to recognize their humanity. You could just speak right into the mic, please. For me, the only obstacle to that conversation is that the city has to first be able to recognize our humanity. So, and this has been the case and the reasoning to bring our case before the court. I'd like to just sit for the last few minutes, time that I have in silence and just to listen to the land who is also part of this conversation and has called us to that piece of land and has offered their healing to us and to the city of Burlington. Thank you. Thank you. I have Christopher Aaron Felker. And then we'll transition to the Burlington folks who are participating remotely this evening. I'm here tonight to speak in opposition to 6.02. I am empathetic towards the plight of our homeless residents here in Burlington. However, I believe that this resolution is overly broad. Essentially, when we come to the, especially when we come to the be a resolved line, this essentially opens up and authorizes camping on all public property anywhere. Please don't interrupt him. Please allow him to speak. I believe that we as a city have an obligation to try and ensure that our homeless residents do have a safe place to be housed or to reside, a place that can be managed. I appreciate what the administration has done, the steps you have taken to ensure that these people can get into the system and get into the hotel program, but more needs to be done. And if we are going to authorize camping in the city of Burlington, it should be at one of our designated campsites where it can be maintained and monitored and not just carte blanche to where anybody wants to put up a tent anywhere in the city. If we pass this resolution, we're going to have sovereign citizens putting up tents wherever they want. And that's not good management. That's not looking out for our homeless community. If we want to have a managed site, let's have a managed site. Let's put it back up at North Beach for now. We can have some adaptation on what we did last year to try and ensure that our homeless community was safe, which worked, and I appreciate what you did last year and we can do more this year. But the situation at Sears Lane is untenable and this resolution is, I'm sorry, I can't defend it and I can't support it. So I ask you to please vote against 6.02 tonight. Thank you. Thank you, our next speaker. I'm going to transition to the folks participating remotely. Please, I'm sorry, what is that? Okay, what's the name? I must have missed it. Okay, I see it. It just, it has a P.O. box on it. So that's the only reason I missed that. I'm sorry. If you'd like to join us, please come and speak. We actually like to request that I receive a reasonable accommodation. I have a disability that causes me difficult to a communication. I had to pre-write my statement. It might run over just a slight bit, but I would like to request that you turn off that timer. Okay, that's fine. Please turn it off. Thank you. I'm here today because of my concern for the wellbeing of the residents of Sears Lane. It's been brought to my attention that they are being referred to a local non-profit, a new place, as a solution for the removal of their community. This kind of worries me and I like to explain why. My former neighbor, Tara, who was also participant of the A New Place New Leaf Traditional Housing Program, took a new place to small claims recently over the $2,000 emergency rent fund, and he forced participation in their services that they attempted to coerce her into agreeing with. In response to terrifying a complaint of small claims, a new told Tara that they couldn't meet with her due to pending litigation. This is a violation of her right to equal access to participation in services. And it also made them non-compliant with their contract to provide services on a HUD housing program. When she received the response from the lawyer, it stated that she had forfeited her participation in their program. This was incorrect. And the executive director for a new admitting court that it was actually the opposite that they actually denied her services. The response also stated that her participation program was required for her to continue to reside her residence in an evidence place. This was also incorrect. We were in a project-based voucher program. Title 24 of Code of Federal Regulation Section 983, subsection 251 states that persons with disabilities are not to be required to participate in whatever services that happen to be provided on the site by the third-party service provider. And it states that service as participation cannot be a requirement to acquire housing or to continue to receive housing. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I haven't have common sense to know that HUD stated exact opposite of what a new claim made in a legal document took court. That seems pretty serious to me. Why do I know so much more about the federal HUD coach for my housing voucher than the contract service provider does? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Neither housing program that places people on a subsidized section eight housing program requires their clients to pay them and they hold the money in their possession or requires you to sign a contract saying the client agrees to signing away their fair housing rights. Why don't other housing service providers do this? Because they can't. It's fraud to do that, period. This outcome doesn't help the people at Sears Lane. I'm sure a lot of people at Sears Lane have already gone through the new experience. So why continue to repeatedly commit the same acts as they get still expecting different results? That's insane. Thank you. Thank you. You can hold the applause, please. Our next speaker. We're going to transition to Burlington folks who are participating remotely. So if you signed up as a remote participant, we're coming to have you speak now. So you'll see the two minute timer on the screen there and I'll just read off a couple of names just so that folks are aware of who's coming up and who's on deck. I have William Stevens, Willow, Starkey, Cruder, Sophie, Thea Zalewski, and Beth Rice Bradley. Those are the first couple. So let me go. William Stevens, I can't locate you. But Willow, I do see you. So I'm going to come to you. Willow, I've enabled your microphone. All right, thank you. I'm here again to address the issue concerning the health and safety of houseless folks that are still in search of places to stay, especially beyond the few weeks that only some have access to with the Mattel program. The heartless actions that the city has taken has been sad to see, but for many who this directly affects, it is not just sad but also distressing. Others that have commented before me have really struck me with their words and I hope they will also move you to actions that are commendable rather than regrettable. The city has criminalized houseless folks that have established community and places to live. There have been comments on the lack of dignity of these people while forcibly removing facilities like the Porta Potties, which only further dehumanizes these humans. Please pass this resolution to show a morsel of empathy for the people that are facing the cold winter, unsure of where they will go next. I also want to note that the last part of this resolution is very important where the RFP remains open until a suitable partner is found. Let's not just wait a week and say that no one is willing to use that and no one is willing and use that as an excuse to clear out things. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sophie. Sophie, I've enabled your microphone. Hi, thank you all for the opportunity to talk tonight. I just wanted to speak in support of Councilor McGee's resolution to recognize the rights of the houseless community members in our town. I want to stress that, you know, not only should we delay the eviction of this year's lane encampment, but halt it completely. It's an incredibly inhuman choice to do this in the middle of winter, especially since the Motel program is not accessible to everyone. So I hope that the Council continues to work on providing support for these individuals who are a necessary part of our community who should not be erased or ignored. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Thayyazalouski. Thayyazalouski, may I have enabled your mic? Yes, thank you. Hello, I'm here to stand in solidarity with the peoples at Sears Lane. Day by day, ever since this began, the city has taken inhumane against people at Sears Lane. Taking away porta-potties, tearing down a tiny home in progress, threatening arrest for people who stay there. Sears Lane is a place to go when people have nowhere else to go. It is inhumane to have inadequate services for people, set them up for failure in the system, and then deprive them of the last place they have to go. Please take a moment, consider the actions, consider these people's humanity, and do your due diligence to pass Resolution 6.202. Keep the request for proposals open and not with a time limit that then can be used as a bureaucratic maneuver to relieve yourself of these duties. This is key to keep the RFP open until we have the connection to a community partner that will actually be a sustainable and helpful thing to do to allow people to stay. Winter is coming. I want to echo the words of other speakers before. This is serious business and people are struggling enough as it is. So please do your due diligence and pass the Resolution and recognize people's humanity. Thank you. Thank you. Our next, if you could hold the applause. Our next speaker is Beth Rice. Beth, I'm not able to locate, or let me see, Beth Bradley, maybe. Nope, I'm not able to locate you. Our next speakers, and I'll read a couple off after that, I have John Collow, Deirdre Graham, April, Annie Lawson, Margaret Joyle, and Erica Reddick. So I'll go to John Collow now. John, I've enabled your microphone. Hello. Can you hear me? Go ahead. Hi. I encourage the city council to reject the Resolution related to meeting the basic needs of the houseless from honors. There's, I've got a couple of points I'd like to make. One, we can do better. This Resolution does not appear to me to be a serious or appropriate public policy response to homelessness. Let's face it, we treat our pets and our livestock better than the conditions at 68 series lane. Homelessness is a complex issue which requires collaboration and hard work among our civic leaders, which so far has eluded the council. This Resolution is just simply more of the same response which has not come close to addressing the issue of in a meaningful way. We, meaning adjoining property owners and neighbors, other BTV citizens and the homeless, we expect more from our civic leaders. I've got some suggestions. I think with the immediate crisis averted through the relocation of homeless to winter shelter, the city should, A, clear the site of all the trash and personal property and stone goods as soon as possible as the current state of affairs is untenable for future consideration as a homeless encampment. Two, I think the city should develop an inventory of public sites that may be suitable for a temporary and or permanent homeless shelter. Three, I think the city, the council needs to commit to working collaboratively with partners at the state and federal level as well as with each other to assist in a planning ever to create a supervised homeless shelter or an encampment in a manner that we can all support. Thank you. Thank you. If you could, our next speaker, dear, dear Graham, I'm not able to locate you. So I'm going to go to, oh wait, I think I found you. Okay, I think I found you, dear, dear. Okay, I've enabled your microphone, dear, dear. Thank you. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, thank you. I'm calling in to voice my support and solidarity for the resolution 6.02. And I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to my comrades who have spoken bravely and honestly before me and to the council passing this resolution, the absolute bare minimum you as the city council can do for some of the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our community. Cherry picking the people that you choose to help and stand behind and even to acknowledge in a meaningful way is dangerous and has proved to be dangerous based on some of the very real human rights violations caused by the actions of the city to the residents at Sierra's lane under this administration, the beginnings of a tiny home built by volunteers with their own resources, our own resources was destroyed in the middle of the night. The only usable porta potty on site was removed with no notice. And again, people have been displaced from their homes and put in some categorically worse situations. Human beings are fucking complicated. We're flawed. We all have the capacity to do harm and just as much the same as we have the capacity to hold ourselves in each other accountable to be in community, not to underestimate in any way how complex and how much hard work that is. You all have the opportunity to make a real material change to help some of the most marginalized community members who are literally in front of you asking for your help. There's activists and community members, people who work for nonprofits who are literally in front of you offering up their time and labor and help. All you have to do is vote yes to pass this resolution. Overall, we are just asking that you take actions to let the current residents and future residents of Sierra's lane the opportunity to have self-determination. Great step would be to vote yes and pass resolution 6.02. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is just April. April, I believe I've located you. Okay, perfect. Yep, I found you and I've enabled your microphone. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Go ahead. Thank you. So I'd like to start this calling upon remembering the name of Paul O'Toole, who is a 56-year-old man in Burlington who rose to death on the corners of South Union and College streets in 2012 because he had no home and no access to shelter. This is a life or death issue and the city has blood on their hands if they do not act on this immediately. That's the first thing. Second thing I want to read it where someone said, come to Sierra's lane. Talk to the people there. Stop making decisions that drastically affect the lives of people who you don't know. Come there and talk to people and get to know the people. The victim people does not solve any of the underlying problems. It just compounds them, displaces them, and makes it worse. The underlying problem is lack of affordable housing. And this is not the same thing as a lack, a shortage of housing, period. We built a tiny home in a week. I helped buy some of the wood. We did it in a week. And then DPD tore it down. This is not an issue of housing in general. This is actively choosing to tear down houses that we helped to help try to address this in literally a week. Imagine how much work could be accomplished if we all come together and do more than just a week. So that is all I support the resolution. I agree it's not gonna completely solve the issue, but it's a start. Let's start. Thank you very much. I see the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is, got a couple more on line before we transition back to in-person. So I have Annie Lawson to be followed by Margaret Joyle and Erica Reddick. Annie, I have located you and have enabled your microphone. Hi there. My name is Annie Lawson. I use she, her pronouns, I live in Ward 4. I'm a clinical social worker and I appreciate having the time to speak tonight. I'm most struck by the part of Councilor McGee's proposal that asks the city to just simply keep the request for proposals open until a suitable proposal is found. This seems like the bare minimum that city council and the Rose administration can do, just simply remaining open to people creating solutions for the problem that this council and the Rose administration have paid an active role in creating. Your job as city councilors is to create and pass legislation that supports the residents of this town and meets their needs. And the city council and this administration created the housing crisis by allowing developers to avoid building affordable housing, just by paying a fine. Trying this incentive clearly did not work and here is the result. Nowhere near enough affordable housing and nowhere for people to go other than the homes they build themselves. If you can pass legislation that creates zoning and permitting requirements, you can pass legislation that will only approve developments to provide affordable housing rather than letting builders opt out of this and pay a meager fine instead. You are the ones with this power. You are the ones with the seat at the table. In the short-term, people's emergency housing vouchers are running out in a matter of days and you can show that you are actually invested in the health and wellbeing of all Burlington residents whether they are housed or not by simply reopening the request for proposals to manage Sears Lane. As a social worker, I'm imagining what it would be like if providers and agencies just turned away from a community need because a solution was not found in two weeks. What a laughable way to go about meeting the needs of community members. That's essentially what this administration and this council have done. This is your chance to take responsibility for the crisis you've helped create with your votes. And lastly, please consider being humble enough to recognize that people who are housed likely know more about what would best support them than you do. Please don't dismiss their words tonight and please vote in support of Councilman Guy's proposal. Thank you. If we could hold you a pause. Thanks. Our next person is Margaret Joyle to be followed by Erica Reddick. Margaret, I've enabled your microphone. Margaret Joyle, I've enabled your microphone. It looks like you're muted on your end. Can you hear me now? Yep, come on. Great, thank you. My name's Margaret Joyle. I'm a resident of Ward 5, a mere 10 minute walk from Sears Lane. I have lived in Burlington for over 30 years. I raised my son here. He raises his son here today. I think that's getting us to almost three generations. I know I'm still a flatlander but I've been in Burlington long enough to say, I believe what it is I'm gonna say. I've lived here when we've had administrations and city halls in which the feeling was we actually cared about our city. We cared about each other. We cared about what was happening, creative activities. We cared about each, we cared about having services available. When I first came to town, I ran the little community health center which was in Seabright Pharmacy then and Bernie gave us money, I don't know, he just gave us money. And I said, what's this for? What should I do that is of the contract? Is it a grant? Are there deliverables? He said, no, just take the money. And I made him have a grant. Bernie probably doesn't remember that. When I went to graduate school, he said, we don't need another psychologist. We need people to have safe housing and healthcare. And we still have not gotten there and in fact today we're worse. And I just want to call out our administration, our mayor. I thank you, the city councilor taking this on the chin. We have a giant hole in our downtown. I don't know why anybody from any persuasion politically voted for him again. Please focus on the chair. And I go to Sears Lane, I deliver food. There are solutions to houselessness. There are causes for it. We can do better, we know how to do better. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Erica Reddick. And we'll transition to back into in-person folks. Erica, I've enabled your microphone. Thank you for the time, Mr. Chair, I appreciate it. I do appreciate all of the sentiments of the people who are in support of this resolution. I do appreciate their heart. And I think if they take the time to volunteer with these folks, that would be of real benefit to them because allowing a situation where violent assaults are happening, the people there are shooting arrows at people. There are assaults, drug overdoses. They found thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stolen bikes and properties. And to act as if folks are just victims who are not also terrorizing the neighborhood and committing crimes and harming people. I don't understand how that's not taken into consideration the folks sharing tonight. But I would just especially like to offer for everyone's consideration that the majority of the people, and we know this, are have mental illness situations and drug addiction and things like that. And by allowing people who are sick to just live on the street and call that mercy is a special kind of sickness in a community, in my opinion, to lower the bottom so that instead of helping people get help by either putting them in jail because they're committing crimes or putting them in a mental institution on medication so that they can get themselves together, instead of doing that, we say we're gonna leave you on the street so you can keep hurting people and also keep getting victimized. I am against this resolution. Please wrap up, please wrap up. And please don't call out after people speak. We're gonna transition now back to folks who are in-person. Got a couple of Burlington folks and then we'll go to non-Burlington in-person. So I have Mac to be followed by Kurt Wright. Can you all hear me? Yep, go ahead. An unnamed resident of Sears Lane has been recently charged with 32 felonies of stolen property and he purposely started a raging bonfire a week ago to start more anger and frustration within the city. How come this someone could be released so often? This is a failure of our police force and the most active Sears Lane has been recently. Four out of five times that police were in the camp for tracking people down it was to track down this specific resident. And the rest of the times was to find the stolen property discarded. The system failed at holding this individual accountable for the wrongful activities and the good people there suffer for it at Sears Lane. You're trying to fix this failure with another failure. This has started a fire within the system. Don't make another failing decision to cause chaos. This is a good example of abusive power. You've all failed at doing your jobs. You disappointed every resident of this city and it kind of disgusts me to speak to you. Good night. I'll hold your applause. Our next speaker is Kurt Wright to be followed by Susanna Oogedi. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city councillors, Mr. President. First, just a quick comment. It seems like every meeting that I come to and every meeting I watch on TV there are seats on this side of the table that are constantly vacant. I know you can't compel councillors to be here but I think the public expects councillors to be here unless there's an emergency. I would hope that the council president would request that the policy be that councillors are expected to be here unless they absolutely can't be here and there's an emergency. It doesn't seem to happen on this side of the table but it seems to regularly be on this side. On the police chief search, I think that the mayor is right in the comments that he's made about the police chief search and that it needed to be terminated for the reasons that he has stated. And I would urge my personal opinion and I've heard this from a lot of people is I would urge that the council takes the option of going with the candidates that have been put in front of you so far in the search. The search has gone for a long time. It's yielded what it's yielded. I urge you to end up supporting the current chief who is doing a remarkable job under the circumstances. And the current chief chief mayor ad is certainly not opposed to reform measures. He will certainly be in, I'm sorry. You were being interrupted, I'm sorry. Oh, okay, thank you for, and I just want to also state that the police department, the police union sent a letter to the mayor, unanimously supporting chief mayor ad. It is very rare that you see that kind of support from the department for a chief and all the chiefs that I've seen and roamed it over the years of many of, all of which I've had a lot of respect for. This, the police department has been aligned. It has been demoralized and it is time to begin to rebuild the trust in the police department with the council, with the leadership in this city. This is one small way to do it, which is to provide the consistency, the stability that is needed and start to bring the morale up by hiring the chief back, chief mayor ad, he has been. The police department has been in limbo for a long time. It's time to move forward on this. Thank you. I'm going to vote for President Tracy. Yeah. I just want to ask folks, please keep the outburst to a minimum. I'm passionate about this also. I want us to pass this resolution and be able to have this conversation, but continue outburst from folks in the crowd don't help. So just please consider the impact this has on the larger conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Susanna Oogedi. I'm sorry, I'm having difficulty. Please correct me if I missed it. I apologize. That is correct. Any of you understand how hard it is for some people to come out of homelessness? Like how hard it is? There was someone here who wrote down a zip code or whatever, because they might not have an address and you literally were not going to let them speak because of the lack of address. You need an address to get a bank account. You need an address to get a cell phone. You need an address to apply for a job. Do you realize how difficult it is for some people to get anything with the lack of address? Just to put that out there. I cannot comprehend why the portable bathrooms were taken away. I understand that there are some people who are now in hotels and have access to bathrooms, but understanding that there are people who don't have access to sanitation, who because of the lack of access to sanitation are denied bathrooms in public and private places. And so if you start seeing human feces on the streets, know that you have taken away the only toilets that some people could use. So if you start seeing that, know that that is your fault. You made that call. It's infuriating. I don't understand that's a lack of foresight and taking the dignity away from so many of these people. It's painful. It's like really painful to see the white supremacy that's like in this room so strongly, believing that you know how to best solve these problems without taking a time to actually talk to the people who know what they need. That is why supremacy. And you're ruling this, whatever you call this, you're with it. Talk to them, find out what they need so that you find a solution because the problem you're making it. Thank you. If folks could just please hold that. So our next speaker is Tara Gregg. And folks do not need to be clear, folks don't need an address to sign up. I just separate things out between Burlington and non-Burlington. And so if it's not clear, then that's the only thing. But you do not need an address to sign up for public forum. Our next speaker is Tara Gregg. And I see two sign-ups from you. Sorry, I just wanted to make sure like Brian. You only can speak once, and then I'll go, and then the next person after that is Rick Lashway. Good evening, Councilor Haley. Wow, the reason that Brian has that PO box is because of a fear that he has from one of the housing providers that is in good standing with a lot of members of this council. However, I went through that organization as well. It's an evangelical, conservative-ish organization that helps people in their housing transition. Two of the people that live in Sears Lane, I was living in there with before they were ejected out onto the street for disrespect. One of them was Gina, and the other one was Serena. I became very concerned when I saw what happened to these individuals and to see that they ended up at Sears Lane for my own safety. I had to play a very dangerous game with my life. I paid $2,000 to this organization to get housing as a veteran and a woman that was guaranteed and disabled to me. $2,000 out of his disability, my disability and COVID money. We were told that if we disrespected them the way Serena and Gina did, who ended up at Sears Lane, we would lose it too. They would keep it. This is the organization that you are friends with, that you entrust to care for these individuals. Can they even go back there once you destroy their home or have they burned that bridge? I'm so frightened of that organization. I'm scared for my life. I've reached out to all of you. I had to use HopeWorks. I come from Palm Beach. I'm that third generation Burlington property owner. And I've dealt in seeing monsters, not a city council like this, Bernie Madoff's, Jeffrey Epstein's. Don't be like that. The home of the first city place. Good luck with that. Our next speaker is Rick Lashway to be followed by Sue Getty already spoke. I can't speak twice, so Bruce Alice. Rick Lashway, I'm not from Burlington, but I'm a Chittenden County resident. And unfortunately on here again, to plead on behalf of the residents of Sears Lane, I spoke the last time I was concerned that I looked out across the faces after listening to two hours of other people speaking that you guys had already made up here, just your mind. And I was very sad to find that was the case. As someone that is fortunate enough to have a roof over my head, I'm here to beg, plead that you may have mercy and compassion for the people that live or did live at Sears Lane. And for the people that are not as fortunate as us, that don't have a roof over their head. And don't know when their next meal is coming. After the last time I spoke, I gave one of these people a ride back to Sears Lane. And I heard from, before I did that, I heard from the residents about how noisy and violent and disturbing this place was. And 10 months of visiting there, I never experienced that. But I went there at 10.30, 11 o'clock at night, and I was overcome by the peace and tranquility that was going on at this camp after they would kind of resolve the fact that this was probably gonna go away. There was no violence, it was singing, there was light music, and there was a lot of talking and support of the youth that had joined in solidarity. And I would like to give a shout out because I was there in the pouring rain with these young people, Champlain College, the UBM, wherever they come from, great individuals that also were offering support. And I was very impressed with them on that Tuesday morning when, fortunately, their houses were not closed. People, please wrap up. The last thing I say. Please wrap up. No, you're done. Thanks. Our next speaker is Bruce Alice to be followed by Brian Dickens. I'm a resident in Burlington. If you could speak into the mic, please. And I'd like to speak about homelessness, pride, and laws. Homelessness, is it because they can't work? If it is, why are they not diagnosed by a doctor and put on disability pensions and getting section A housing? I know how this works. I have a very close relative that's an alcoholic and a drugie in my family. And he was put on disability because he can't work and he's only in his 40s. But he's on section A and he has a place to live. If you're not diagnosed by a doctor and you can't get disability, then I guess you better get a job. Pride. Every encampment up there, pride. I have pride in my house to keep everything clean around there. You go up there, there's trash everywhere. Every site has got trash all over the place. What are they doing? They're tearing RVs apart, leaving all the trash there for us to absorb the cost of getting rid of it as a taxpayer. They ignore all the laws up there. The fences are being torn down that you put up. Nobody pays any attention to them. I do anything. I gotta get permits. I have to have zoning permits and I gotta live by the laws of the city of Barompton. It's just not right that they can just have anything they want. And if I didn't obey the laws, then they'd be penalties for me as a taxpayer. That's it. Thank you. Next speaker is Brian Dickens and we'll transition back to folks participating remotely. Oh, okay. Thank you. All right, we will transition back to folks participating remotely. And I have Makayla Olajim to be followed by Dana Key's Gibbons. Makayla, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Go ahead. I'm just calling in support of the resolution for the encampment at Sears Lane and to echo what so many others who have also spoken favor have said and to listen to the residents there and to leave the proposal and the window open for more proposals. And to understand that people can't just go away. You can't, they can't just like, there is no humanity even though it might seem like that's what it is on some surface level of sending them off to some place. It's just people don't want to see the suffering that is all around us all the time and that some people very unfairly have to deal with more. And I don't know what everyone has gone through at Sears Lane and I don't know to what extent people are dealing with mental illness and stuff. But as someone who has been in a mental health facility, I don't think that's the answer to everything. And I think listening to the residents there and making sure that their voices are heard is more important than clearing out all the stuff and saying that as some authority that you can just start over without any regard for their lives and community that they have built. I cede my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Dana Keys Gibbons to be followed by Joshua Reep. Dana, I've enabled your microphone. Hi, this is Dana, I'm calling in right next door from Winooski, I'm a healthcare worker in Burlington and I'm calling in with the majority of people tonight to speak out in solidarity with the residents of Sears Lane and to ask you to pass resolution 6.02 tonight without amendments. Again, this is the bare minimum that you can do with the power that you hold tonight. And I really hope that you can take this action and really consider everyone's humanity. I'm really disappointed to hear so many personal attacks of the residents of Sears Lane tonight. I didn't think that was acceptable in this setting. So please pass the resolution. Thanks, I cede the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Joshua Reep to be followed by E. Joshua, I've enabled your microphone. Great, can you hear me now? Yes. Wonderful, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity tonight. My name's Josh Reep and shifting gears just a little bit from tonight's conversation and albeit as important as it is. I am the president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors, the New Hampshire and Vermont chapter. We represent general contractors and subcontractors in Vermont and the people of the companies that perform private public institutional government construction work right here in our community. We're concerned about proposal changes to a law that we find problematic in several ways. I'm talking about the responsible bitter ordinance that is currently being debated amongst the committee. As written, the pre-proliferation criteria, bitter contractor to subcontract reliability, damages and debarment provisions are all substantially flawed in our opinion. I have submitted a letter which outlines our concerns and for the brevity and sake of tonight's discussion, I encourage you to just simply read the letter for more details. But I will leave you with this and say from a practical perspective, the proposal will certainly deter competition from current potential bidders in Burlington. Our construction economy is very robust and very competitive for the first time in my experience. The contractors are turning away lucrative projects because the demand for the service is at an all-time high. This legislation is crafted with limit the ability of the city of Burlington to secure multiple bidders and perhaps in some cases any at all for any public procurements if the changes proposed do go forward. So in conclusion, I just say thank you for your time and consideration of our viewpoint, which is again detailed in the letter I sent you on Friday. I yield the rest of my time back to the chair and thank you. Thank you. Our next, our final speaker for this evening is E. E, I've enabled your microphone. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay. So one of the speakers against the resolution talked about terror. We can talk about terror, indigenous genocide, a transatlantic slave trade, the things our country was founded on. No one actually wants to talk about those things though, because if we did, we'd have to acknowledge that we were built on a shit ton of genocide, which puts the whole thing into perspective of kicking people out of land that was stolen from indigenous people in cities built by stolen people. It really makes you think. That's it. Thank you. That is our final speaker for this evening. So I will close the public forum and we will move into our agenda for tonight. Brings us to item number four, which are the climate emergency reports. Councilor Stromberg. Thanks, President Tracey. Good evening, everyone. So I feel like there's a lot to unpack here and I don't want to be an alarmist, but there was that assessment that came out last week. UBM, I think the GUND Institute. That's GUND, G-U-N-D, not GUND Institute. And I think Nature Conservancy did kind of a study on the actual climate change rate here in Vermont. And I think that's really important because I feel like in Vermont we're very shielded from a lot of the really extreme climate change effects. So I'm just gonna summarize really quickly what I kind of gathered from that report. We are already seeing that like drastic two degrees difference that around the world everyone's been talking about and how that's gonna have really, really long lasting and irreversible effects on the climate. And so I think it's very notable to say that that two degree difference has taken place in the last 30 years, which is, I mean, it can be a lot of years, but it's also, it's such a blip if you really think about it. And since 1960 our winter temperatures have risen 2.5 times faster than the average annual temperatures and a lot of the bodies of water in our states or our ponds, our lakes streams up in the mountains even and especially Lake Champlain have been thawing a lot sooner each spring in a very notable way. We're becoming a very, very wet state. And apparently, and I didn't know this until literally today Vermont, our like average weather is on par with Portland, Oregon. And I know some folks out there that like can definitely attest to the weather. So it's very interesting to kind of see that parallelism. One thing that was really, really concerning, 92 bird species are expected to disappear from our state in the next 25 years, 92 birds. Like that's, and that's just, that's probably a conservative number because we are all learning about new species all the time too. I mean, we especially like fish, we only know like 2% of the ocean. So I think that that's really scary and the fact that that's gonna happen for a fact in my lifetime and many of yours. So like that's, I just think really, I don't know, that's very concerning. Again, I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but I don't know. I feel like I just wanna bring these things to the forefront and keep us talking about it as a council. And this study in general, it was, you know, its intention was to just make these kind of bigger climate change things more relevant to Vermonters because of what I said before, it's a little bit, sometimes we're not impacted in the same way. And then kind of zooming out on the global level, I read that New Delhi is under lockdown, not because of COVID, but because of the air pollution there is currently four times the amount that is legally healthy for a human body to breathe in. That's literally today. They close down their schools, people are not allowed outside, that's, and that's horrible. They know that the particulates in air in general, we're seeing this in our own country can actually contribute to carrying not just COVID, but like other viral particulates and make it more transmissible. So I mean, everything's like in this bad kind of cycle. And I just wanted to make sure that that's on our minds because people are really being impacted. And it's quite scary. And this is a new document that came out. So I just wanted to bring attention to it at this time. So thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else with a, Mayor, go ahead. Thank you, President Tracy. I appreciate Councillor Stromberg's concern and certainly a share. I think it's also important as we are having these conversations to remember that we actually can solve this problem. We are making progress with respect to the climate emergency that projected warming that the globe faces has been reduced since the world met at the Paris Climate Accords by a full degree from four degrees to three degrees. We're not where we need to be. We need to get to one and a half degrees, but we are making progress. And one of the big ways that we're making progress is through electrification. This, the electrification of our vehicles, of our homes and businesses, and the heating and cooling of our buildings represents a very promising and optimistic solution to the challenges we face. And it is what is at stake again in the special election that is before voters right now with the net zero energy revenue bond. I wanted to just share, and there'll be more details to announce about this in the days to come, but we, because of the work that Burlington is doing in this area, we have been approached by the rewiring of America as an organization that has launched a mayor's for electrification. And the city of Burlington is one of the inaugural cities to join this group. And it puts us in direct touch with numerous other cities that are trying to lead the way at the local level, really lead the country, given that we're far ahead of where the national plans are at this point. Look forward to sharing more details about this rewiring America proposal in the weeks to come. Thank you. Anyone else with a councilor Hanson? Yeah, thanks to Councillor Stromberg and the mayor for speaking on this. And I just want to echo the thought that, A, this does continue to be incredibly urgent, incredibly dire, and we all need to act. And B, that we have an opportunity that everyone in Burlington has an opportunity to act right now by voting yes on this revenue bond, allowing our electric department to invest millions more than they otherwise would. They're already investing a lot in decarbonization and in moving our community away from fossil fuels, but by voting yes on this ballot item that's before voters right now, they can invest millions of additional dollars and that's critical. So it's an opportunity for all of us to take action and actually make a difference. So just want to encourage folks to do so. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else with a climate emergency report? Okay, seeing none, we'll move into the next item, which is the consent agenda. Councillor Stromberg may have a motion on the consent agenda. I move to approve, sorry, I move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Okay. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor McGee. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Before we move into our deliberative agenda, we have another meeting this evening, should be relatively quick. Our Board of Civil Authority, so I will recess the city council meeting at 9.03 and then move us into the Board of Civil Authority and I'll turn that over to Mayor Weindurger. Thank you, President Tracey. I will call the Board of Civil Authority into order at 9.04 p.m. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. I would welcome a motion on it, Councillor Mason. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. Thank you. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Any discussion of the agenda? If not, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Other opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Bringing us to item 2.01, a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions in the kit. So moved. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. This brings us to item 3.01, which is a communication from Eric Covey, the chief of staff from the Vermont Secretary of State's office, again inviting comments, recommendations, materials for the consideration by the legislative apportionment board. No, Mayor, point of order. I think you're undone. Sorry, I apologize. Long meeting. Long meeting. That was last meeting. Yes, good. I was confused how we were doing that again. This makes much more sense. Adjournment, we've accepted the consent agenda. We adjourned at 9.05 p.m. Thank you, Mayor. We'll reconvene our city council meeting at 9.05 p.m. and pick up where we left off on the deliberative agenda. First item is a special indoor entertainment permit by Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I'd like to make a motion to approve the one day only special indoor entertainment permit application for Burlington City Arts Contoys Auditorium Sunday, December 12th, 2021, holiday music concert two to 9 p.m., dancing and amplified music. Okay, we have a seconded by Councilor Shannon. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. It brings us to our next item, which is item 6.02, a resolution. Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Tracy. Excuse me. I move that we waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second. We have a motion from Councilor McGee, seconded by Councilor Hansen. Councilor McGee of the floor. Point of order. What is your point of order, Councilor Shannon? Thank you, President Tracy. The proposed action constitutes a reconsideration of an action taken on October 25th. On October 25th, the Council amended and voted on a motion to allow this year's lane encampment to continue. We are now being asked to vote again on the language we already voted to amend out of a resolution, which would allow an encampment, which has largely been vacated thanks to the good work of city staff to reopen and continue operating despite the fact that it has been identified by the, I won't go into that. Our Council rules do allow for reconsideration when made by someone voting with the majority, but only at the same meeting or next succeeding meeting. The language was put into our Council rules by yourself, President Tracy, and me, to clarify Robert's rules, which seems to only allow for reconsideration before the adjournment of a meeting. And we thought appropriate to allow for reconsideration at the next subsequent meeting in addition to allowing it in the same meeting. Our Council rules now read, a motion to reconsider may only be made at the same or the next succeeding meeting as the original motion. And if the vote on the original motion affirmatively approve some action, only if no action to carry out the original motion has yet to be taken. A motion to take up an item that has already been addressed in a previous meeting is not in order and must be preceded by a motion to reconsider. In this case, the time has passed for a motion to reconsider. And other action endorsed by the City Council has also been taken, therefore reconsideration would not be in order by that standard either. I would ask to be advised by our Parliamentarian, the City Attorney, as to how various rules apply to taking up a matter that has already been debated, amended, voted on and acted upon. City Attorney, I'll grant that request. Go ahead. Thank you, City Council President. So this issue was raised to me and I've formulated an opinion. So Councillor Shannon is correct in her reading of the rules that this Council has adopted in regards to motions to reconsider. The question, however, predicate I would suggest is that whether or not this fits within a motion to reconsider and for that, Robert's rules guides us to looking at whether the question is the same or substantially the same. And Robert's rules has generally said outside of a motion to reconsider a motion that is the same or substantially the same question. Is generally off limits within the same session. And I'll be happy to go into greater detail in depth on each of these. There's a difference between a session and a meeting. Sessions are the larger subset meetings fit within. So you may have multiple meetings within a single session. My understanding in doing the research is that the session has been defined by this Council as really running from year to year, April to April, with the election of the City Council President and new Councillors. So taking that framework then, this would be both of these motions and by the resolutions, I mean the one that Councillor McGee has put before the Council this evening and the resolution that Councillor McGee previously put before the Council on October 25th, both dealing with houselessness, both dealing with the actions of Sears Lane. My analysis was that they are substantially the same question. And my analysis was based in part on the fact that the actions that were called for under the prior October 25th resolution are effectively countermanded in part by this motion. And I've identified what I would consider to be the key port parts of that, which would be the first resolution of the current resolution in the second clause. So not dealing with the rights, but dealing with the actions for Sears Lane and then the third resolution clause in full. The alternative to having this be, if the Council President accepts my interpretation of the matter would be what is known in Robert's rules somewhat awkwardly as a motion to amend, apologize, it's motion to amend something previously adopted. And in that the Council has the ability to within a session effectively revisit. This is a motion under the motions that are made for rescinding or repealing prior motions. And those have to be warned specifically as such. If they're not warned specifically as such, Robert's rules calls for a two thirds majority to vote on that. That's my analysis in sort of a nutshell. I'd be happy to go further if the Council President would wish any further or any Council or at the Council President's discretion would want me to explain any of that analysis further. Thank you, Councillor Shannon, you have the floor. My understanding of what Attorney Richardson just said is that my point of order is correct. And so I don't believe that Councillor Mickey's motion is in order. I find it in order. The reason I find it in order is I find it to be substantially different. I disagree with the notion that this is in fact a continuation of the resolution. I think it is in fact consistent with the resolution that was brought forward in the sense that we made no statement specific to the removal of the encampment within that resolution. Additionally, that resolution stated that we had an ongoing desire to seek additional information regarding the ability of the city to provide housing resources for individuals. This resolution asks for us to continue to receive that information going beyond this. So I see it as being in substantial conformance with that and as an extension of that effort to continue to work with folks in good faith to find additional housing alternatives that are at play. But I do not see that resolution as necessarily having taken a position one way or the other on removal. I think it was pretty general in nature in nature such that I think that there is a means by which you could interpret it in a variety of different ways. But also note that a number, there are a number of key new elements of this resolution namely the desire to hear about what we're gonna do when the motel stays and those programs become, may not be an option for folks. The other piece being the RFP which was not included in the original resolution. And then you also look at a number of the whereas clauses which there are different pieces in those clauses as well. So for that reason, I think that it is substantially different and worthy of debate. And so based off of that, I will allow the debate to continue. Councilor McGee. Point of order. Yeah. I would appeal the decision of the chair and ask for a vote on that decision. Okay. Second. We have an appeal and a second. Appeals of the ruling of the chair require a simple majority of the council. Do you want the floor back counselor Shannon? Point of information. Yes. Councilor Grimman, is the appeal, is that debatable or is it just, do we just vote? I'm just curious. I can't remember. Is it the motion debatable counselor? I mean attorney. Yes. It is debatable. There are limitations on motions to appeal whether it's debatable, but they're not in this particular realm. This is debatable under Robert's rules. Okay. Thank you. I was just curious. Thank you. Councilor Shannon, you have the floor. Thank you. I would note that while you don't know whether or not this is debatable, you trust the attorney's opinion on that, yet you don't trust his opinion on a much more complex matter. I think that the processes of this council are extremely important, regardless of where you fall on an issue. And I will note that I challenged when we had a situation with the BSD resolution that I actually disagreed with Councillor Jang on his motion to rescind the resolution. But in fact, I defended his right to. I didn't think our process was correct because the process is more important than how we feel on any given resolution. So this is not about what you think we should do on Sears Lane. This is about a longstanding council principle as well as principle of Robert's rules that we don't debate the same thing twice. And one reason we don't debate the same thing twice is because when councillors don't get the result that they want, they will want to come back again and again and again. And that is not good governance. It's you cannot run a meeting this way, much less a city. So I would ask for councillors to consider the sanctity of the process. I have not seen anything like this happen in my very long tenure on this council and I hope it doesn't happen tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. While my tenure has not been as long as Councillor Shannon's, I have not seen a chair overrule an opinion of the city attorney in my 10 years on the council and I appreciate the articulation but that wasn't really addressing the opinion that was received. Some different whereas clauses and a different resolve clause doesn't get you over what Attorney Richardson has indicated. The reason this matters, I have people texting me who are listening to our debate and they're saying this is the same debate we just had two weeks ago. The same public commenters all saying the same things. Some of the falsehoods that we addressed in debate. How long the administration left open the RFP, steps that were made, public health concerns, those were all addressed two weeks ago at one o'clock in the morning that we were all here and then voted unanimously to move forward. Based upon that, you can imagine the number of constituents in Ward 5 who have asked what's going on and we've provided responses. I've been at public meetings on public health and safety and given an update in terms of the action this council took as it relates to Sears Lane. Guess what, maybe we're wrong because two weeks later some people on the other side decided let's make another run at it. We've never done that before and I fear it sets us down a dangerous path to open the door to that. So I will not, I mean I will be supporting that motion and not allowing this to open again. Thank you. Thank you, I don't have anyone else in the queue. Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Tracy. I didn't expect when I got elected to this body that I would have to beg people to consider the humanity of our houseless neighbors. I'm bringing this resolution again tonight because we have not seen solutions that protect human life and we have not seen considerable changes made that would make me feel comfortable or should make any of us feel comfortable that we have solved the underlying issues that created the Sears Lane encampment in the first place. People are still living there. We have taken away the bathrooms for the people that are living there. The police department has acted at Sears Lane contrary to what Chief Murat has said. We as a body have a responsibility to advocate for not just the constituents that own homes but the constituents that have no home, folks that are houseless and for us to not have this debate tonight, for us to not get answers for those people that at the end of the 28 day window of emergency assistance will have nowhere to go. For us to not have this conversation, for us to not pursue those solutions will be an application of responsibility by this body and complicity in the worst possible outcomes that face the people that live at Sears Lane. So I strongly urge this body to support this resolution and consider the implications of us not having this debate tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor McGee. I have Councilor Hanson to be followed by Councilor Stromberg. Thank you. I think right now there's an acute crisis situation happening at Sears Lane where there are people living there and people who recently lived there who are still scrambling to find somewhere to live. And the role of the city council, I think is to respond in situations of crisis and especially as those crises are evolving and affecting Burlington residents in ways that are so material to their livelihood, their safety, their fundamental wellbeing, we have to have the flexibility and the ability to react to that and react to those changing circumstances. What point of order do we have? Sorry, okay. We've moved from process to a policy debate very quickly. Okay. No, I'm talking about process and I'm leading up and I'm formulating my argument which is that we have taken up issues multiple times within a session when the conditions are fluid and when they're changing. For example, the police cap we've taken up multiple times within the same session because we gather new information and because the situation evolves. So it's not that we never take up similar issues or deal with the same policy issue as a council when it's an urgent situation and when it's a fluid situation. The point from my interpretation and my understanding of the reopening of a debate is to avoid what Councillor Shannon described of simply part of the body doesn't get their way and wants to rehash an argument. I agree with that and I think that's good process but when you have an evolving crisis that the council needs to respond to, there has to be that ability to respond to a dynamic situation even if it's you're taking up a similar policy and I think we've done that on a number of policy issues where we will look at a policy multiple times when the conditions are changing and when the body needs to step up and take that issue up. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. I have Councillor Stromberg. Thanks. Yeah, what Councillor Hanson said was actually very along the lines of what I was gonna say especially about the cap, but also COVID. That's an ongoing thing and we're responding to this emergency as it evolves. And I think that these are human lives and we're literally putting them in direct danger. I can't imagine having to like figure everything out in 28 days especially in Burlington with you. Sorry, I won't go into policy debate but I do agree with that. I think that that's a really good point because we do, we constantly rehash things because there's new information and I think we should. I mean, we have to, that's like an informed thing and be really responsible if we didn't and yeah, this issue isn't going away and also if it's not Sears Lane on the title or in the resolution or in the language or whatever it's gonna be another street, it's gonna be another area. Like there are houseless folks in many parts of Burlington and beyond. So I don't think it's like I think we do need to have this discussion regardless and like if you don't support it and you don't have that compassion and you just kind of want this to go away from this area and not talk about it in this space then just vote no on the resolution and stick to that but I don't, I think that we should at least be able to talk about it because what you're, I don't wanna say, I don't wanna name names but what it seems like it's like there's pushback against even talking about something that's important. That's just harmful. Like there's no point in that. We don't even have a long agenda tonight. Like we have the time to talk about it and I personally would like to move forward on that. So thanks, that's all I have. Thank you. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Mayor. So I think it's important to respond to several of the points made so far to justify why this decided action should be reopened. The assertion has been made that somehow a crisis has deepened in the three weeks since the initial council action, which is not the case. What you heard the night that the council made this decision, you heard your fire chief come forward and argue that if the city took no action then people were going to die. He was confident. Your fire chief was a very careful man not prone to overstatement and said if the city took no action people were gonna die at Sears Lane this winter. That we did take action. We took the action that this council unanimously voted to urge the administration to undertake. The language was to continue to work one-on-one with all Sears Lane campers to ensure that every camper who wants better housing and is working in good faith with the city to secure it has a time necessary to complete their housing plan. That's exactly what this administration undertook to do working with its partners, CVOEO, in the three weeks since the passage of that resolution and that effort has been carried out as the council requested that it have. We have worked with every single camper there. Every single camper has been offered housing and the great, great majority have accepted and moved into far better circumstances than what would be available to them if they had stayed at Sears Lane and they've been happy with that choice. It is true that there are some number of campers who have not been able to stay in the hotel program. I will give you this further update that we are continuing and we, and when I say we, working with both the city staff and working through CVOEO, are continuing to work to find solutions that work fit for those particular campers. And I appreciate the comment in the public forum that the efforts involve many different solutions for different folks. So we have made good on what the council asked it to do. There has not been an intensifying crisis. In fact, the crisis that was there has been addressed to reopen and re-decide this, actually create risks. It is not a humane. It must be said that this is what is being proposed by the sponsors of this resolution is not a humane solution. It is a solution that puts people at greater risk than they are today. It's not fair to anyone involved in this for this to continue to be brought up and continue to hold out there the possibility that we are gonna reverse this decision. We are not gonna reverse this decision because to do so would put people's lives at risk, would be to put neighbors and first responders at risk. The city is not in position to be able to ensure this winter safety for a re-established encampment at Sears Lane. We are, however, we are, however, working very hard and we'll have, and I'd be happy to, if we get into further debate tonight to share further plans on this, we will be back to this council very soon with comprehensive plans for strengthening our homelessness support system with comprehensive plans for addressing, further addressing Broenten's broader affordable housing crisis. And that is where this conversation needs to go. It needs to be a much broader conversation than simply what happens on this one city-owned piece of land that needs to be a conversation about what everyone in this community can do to address the decades-long in the making housing crisis. And that's what this administration is working on and we'll have updates on for it soon. Thank you. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Can I ask a point of information, actually? Yes, councillor Freeman, go ahead. I'm just curious to ask the attorney about Councillor Hanson's comment about the police cap because I do feel like we've voted and we've debated on it several times, especially I think within session. And so it doesn't seem, I'm wondering why this would be an issue to bring up more items on Sears Lane. I guess it seems like the council and the body has at times has sort of revisited items. And so I understand the point of the Robert's role and I understand why you can't just continue to force the same sort of debate. It's not efficient and it's not particularly useful practice. But I think in this instance, there are new items being brought in the resolution that would, and I think other councillors have mentioned that the situation is evolving and it's evolving in real time at Sears Lane. And so I'm just a little, I guess I'm a little surprised. And I was curious if you could speak more to that attorney Richardson. Sure, attorney Richardson. Sure, I'd be happy to do so. I think there are a couple of points in response. One is points of order in public meetings are a bit like evidentiary objections, which is if you don't make them, they're effectively waived. So if there is a point of order, and I wasn't at some of those earlier police discussions, but if it wasn't raised, it's one of these things and it goes with the point of Robert's rules of order, which is to facilitate meetings. This can feel very technical and you can feel very arch, but ultimately at the end of the day, these meetings are intended to enable order. And so there's a general principle that if you do not object, it's not waived. The second point I would make in this is the question of whether something is the same or substantially the same is a difficult one. And I've given my opinion, the chair has given a different opinion and I would say that reasonable minds can certainly disagree. I took the analysis and I haven't been asked to opine on other issues of this sort. And I will try and be consistent to the best of my ability, but on a case like this, the key for me was, was there specific action in the prior motion that was essentially set into motion by or allowed to continue by the prior motion. And that was the legal process as well as the physical process of ending the Sears Lane encampment. And this second motion seemed to go in a different direction. And that's why I would suggest that if this motion was to be one, it would be to amend something that had been previously adopted because it really did go to those particular issues. But again, this is one parliamentarian's opinion and it's a best effort at that. Unlike the question of whether something is or is not debatable, this is much more closer to a subjective level and an analysis. I still stand by my analysis, but I will very much agree that there is a certain room for debate and that's why this Robert Schwerer's order is set up this way, which is you ask the parliamentarian, if you disagree, the chair makes a ruling. If the body disagrees, they appeal and the decision is borne out of that body. Thank you, attorney. Councillor Freeman. Yeah, that was it for now. I think another Councillor had a question. Okay, I have Councillor Shannon to be followed by Councillor Hanson. Thank you, President Tracey. In your comments, you said that there was no statement regarding the removal of the camp in the previous resolution, but that's because the original resolution did have that language specifically about allowing the encampment to continue and it was amended out of that resolution. That's why it didn't have it in the final resolution. I would say almost all of this discussion has been about the merits of the resolution, which is not relevant to this appeal. This appeal is only about, are we voting on the same thing twice? Because you did not like the outcome of the October 25th vote. A case has been made that it's an evolving crisis. The only way that it has evolved is it has improved dramatically because we have been following the policy that we laid out on October 25th. I do have kind of a just a clarifying question in that when we get to a vote, a yes vote vote would be in support of the appeal and overruling your decision. Is that correct? What a yes vote means? Yes, because you're making, you've made the motion to appeal. So if you support the appeal, you vote yes. Yes, it's in support of my motion. Thank you. Councillor Hanson. Thanks. So I think ultimately, well clearly, because we're debating and we're voting on it, it's up to the body whether, and these rules that we're using and these debates we're having, it's about how can we serve the city and are we just in an effective body repeating arguments and rehashing the same debates or are we actually debating something that has merit that addresses a need in the community? And I would say clearly that is the case. This isn't just rehashing the same debate. This has critical new components to it in ways that we can serve people in need in our community. And so as a body, we have the ability to decide that yes, this is something worth taking up. It's not simply a futile exercise or a waste of time. And the conditions have changed and demand a response from council. There's no porta-potties. The porta-potties have been removed. That's a massive material change for the people that are living there. So the conditions that people are facing are very different than they were the last meeting and it does demand a response from city government in order to address that. Thank you. Thank you. Don't have anyone else in the queue? Are we ready to vote on the appeal? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. Will the city clerk please call the roll on the appeal? Again, if you support Councillor Shannon's motion, you vote yes. If you do not, you vote no. Councillor Barlow. Yes. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Freeman. No. Councillor Hanson. No. Councillor Mason. Yes. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor McGee. No. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Strangberg. No. City Council President Tracy. No. Six ayes, five nays, one absent. Okay, the appeal carries and we will therefore not take up this item. Please stop it. Lee, please stop. Lee, please stop. Lee, please stop. Lee, please stop. You don't have to decency. Lee, please stop. Lee, please stop. What are they supposed to do? Lee, will you please stop? Lee, will you please allow us? Lee, will you please? Lee, will you please? Debate it. Lee, will you please stop? You guys were going to... Lee, will you please stop and let us continue with our meeting? Lee, will you please stop? Point of order, President Tracy. May I? Councillor Mason. Will the mayor be addressing in his general comments an update on what the administration is doing and its plans between now and next meeting to address? Please stop, please stop. To address? Please allow Councillor Mason to continue. Please allow Councillor... Please allow Councillor Mason. Councillor Mason. Is the administration... Councillor Mason. Is the point of order, is there information? Is the administration intending during their general comments to provide an update in terms of, in essence, the second resolve clause, which is, you know, what are the steps that are being taken, what are changes that have happened in state policy and what can we do between now and our next meeting? Yes. All set, Councillor Mason? Yes, thank you. All right, we will move on to our next item, which is the... Which is a... Please allow us to continue with our meeting. Please allow us to... Lee, thank you. Lee, please allow us to continue. Please allow us to... Lee, will you please... Lee, will you please... Lee, will you please allow us to continue with our meeting? Please allow us to... Our next meeting, our next item is item 6.03, which is a communication for Mayor Weinberger regarding the police chief. We're not taking action on this item, but there is a motion to regarding the communication. May I please have a motion on that? Yeah, can I please have a motion? Can you please have a motion on accepting the communication so we can get started with this item? Make the motion to accept the communication and place it on file. Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracey. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with the council tonight about a common challenge that we face and that I believe and hope we have a shared goal in which is to appoint a permanent chief of police for the city of Burlington, something that we have not had for almost two years now. The situation, current status of the police chief search is, as the council knows, as the public knows, is that our efforts to search for a new permanent chief are currently suspended. They, I suspended them in response to a recommendation from the search committee that we created to help advise me and the council during the search process. A recommendation from that committee was that we had an instant determination that the current applicant pool was insufficient for a permanent appointment. This is despite the fact that there are two qualified and strong candidates, there was a feeling of the committee that regardless of that, because the pool of candidates had included only 21 total candidates, none of them women and that only two candidates had made it through the both minimum requirements and then a subsequent screening, preliminary screening that this was an insufficient pool for there to be a strong confidence in the process. And I agree with the committee that my goal since the start of the search process has been to lead a process that is transparent, informed by extensive public engagement and that brings our community closer to consensus. Consensus I think we very much need on issues of public safety and that as a result of a search like that, we result in a permanent chief with broad community support. The early steps towards this effort, I think were significant and lay the groundwork where I hope that such a process would be possible. We talked to many different stakeholder groups. We had a broad public survey that hundreds of Berlin Tonings participated in. We produced a report with an ideal candidate that I think had broad buy-in and support as to what the city's ideal police chief should be. And I am continuing to, I am here and kind of initiating this discussion tonight because I think that is a worthy goal for us to be working towards, to have a chief that has been appointed after a process that meets that description. Unfortunately, what is now clear after months of advertising this position, after several rounds of advertising it is that significant council actions are going to be necessary if we are gonna be able to attract a pool that meets that goal. And I've laid out for you in this memo and I'll review briefly here what I see as those five actions that are important for the council to take. If you share my sense that this is the goal we should be working towards, the goal of the search committee, that we should have a broad, wide pool of candidates to choose from. And if you share my sense that the, we clearly need to take that we are, that if that is the goal, we need to take the actions that we can that we think might generate that in a quick, as quick a possible period of time. It is, should also be a goal of ours to have a permanent chief in place soon. No organization does well with extended uncertainty about leadership. Chief Murad has, from my perspective, we've been very fortunate to have Chief Murad during this extended period to serve as an acting chief. He has served under very challenging circumstances and I think he has proven that he can do this job. And yet, I still think it is important that we move towards having a permanent chief as soon as possible. So here are the five actions that I've laid out in greater detail. In this memo, clearly we are below market in terms of the compensation for the police chief and that has been established by two separate search firms has been stated to me by multiple individuals that have chosen not to apply. And this has been one of the reasons listed as to why they haven't applied. People who otherwise would have been strong candidates. Secondly, I think if we are going to reopen this search, we need to do something that we haven't done over the last decade, which is we need an executive search firm to assist the city and really help lead the search process. This is something that I think it's really important if we're gonna go down this road that it be clear since it is something that is different for the city of Burlington to undertake that is not just the administration acting on this behalf that this is something that has the council support. This is a process the council supports. Three, clearly an important priority for the next chief is going to be rebuilding the department after the dramatic cut and reduction in officers that we have seen take place over the last approximately 17, 18 months. And we need to, we still have eight community service officers that need to be recruited. What I'm suggesting this memo is that instead of putting those recruitment responsibilities on the HR department and on a sworn, entirely on a sworn officer in terms of in department capacities that we give the department the ability to hire a civilian recruiter to really expand our recruitment efforts to pursue innovative recruitment and recruitment in new communities including more racially diverse communities that we've successfully recruited from in the past. And to really work with candidates as they go through the long process of becoming a police officer to ensure that more of the candidates that start the process of becoming a police officer are successful in completing it. Fourth, I think it will matter to the next police chief to have better tools to communicate with the community and to build trust with the community. This was a finding of the CNA report and I think will be material to prospective police chiefs that the council commit now to adding this resource. The lack of this resource is something that has been a concern and a problem for the police department for an extended period of time. Appreciate that this was recognized in the CNA report and I think if we're gonna address it, we should address it now so that prospective candidates can know this resource is gonna be there. And then finally, let me speak to this one for just a minute, because I think it's possible from some of the comments that we've seen in the public that there might be some confusion over this point. I hope that it's a clear to all my colleagues on this department that I believe our current charter is problematic with respect to the fact that it puts near absolute power for disciplinary authority in the hands of the chief. I think there's nothing else like it in terms of a power almost without any checks and balances in the charter. I think it's a vestige of a distant time in which good government reforms were tempting to insulate chiefs from public pressure. And I think as a result, the unintended impact of this has been decades later that it has sort of insulated these decisions in a way that undermines the trust and legitimacy. I believe that I was the first of elected officials to say, this is a problematic part of the charter and we need to change it. And I still stand by that. However, I also believe that it is critical that we, that a chief, and I think we'll be critical moreover for anyone considering this position, that a chief be, have a leadership role in discipline. The, it is, if we, I just continue to be, think it is almost self-evidence that having disciplinary authority is critical in an executive role to being able to lead an organization. Perspective police chiefs need to know they're gonna have a major role in that. This is not to say that, again, this is not defending the exact formulation currently. It's not to say that there should not be checks and balances. What I'm calling for here is a clear commitment by the council that the chief will continue to have a leadership role, which I don't think should be a controversial or concerning statement to make. Virtually every department that in the country that I'm aware of has the chief play such a role and that was noted in the CNA report that customarily a chief does have a major role. So finally, I just, those are the areas where I see action by this council in the near term over the next month as being what's necessary to successfully restart this search process. And that is my preferred path. There is another option and there's an option that I've laid out for you in the memo, which is if the council is unwilling or does not agree that it does not give really the tools to the administration necessary to successfully create the pool that is desired by the committee and I think a significant number of the significant part of the city of Burlington. The other option is to proceed with the two qualified candidates that we do have before us. And I think time is of the essence in making this decision. This cannot go on for an extended period of time. We will be looking at at least six months, I believe, if the council goes with the first option between now and when we will have a new permanent chief place in place. It is important that we make a decision, make these changes and either restart the search with these new tools in place or I will be proceeding with option number two. Thank you, President Tracey, for the opportunity for those extended remarks and I'm happy to answer any additional questions or are about the communication. Thank you, mayor. I have Councillor Stromberg in the queue and I don't have anyone else. So let me know if you'd like to speak. Go ahead, Councillor Stromberg. Thanks. Wow, it's amazing. It's before 10 p.m. Yeah, so I'm not a big surprise here, I'm sure, but I don't agree with this trajectory. Honestly, I've been pretty disappointed many times with the propositions from the administration and outcomes of certain votes. As a counselor, right, that comes with the job, we agree, we disagree, when some lose some, sure. But the fact that we suspended the police chiefs, a search that has been turbulent long enough when we could actively be accepting applications like right now from candidates just seems like a classic case of stalling to me and I don't know if that's stalling out of fear that things won't go the way that some people want them to or what, but that is what it looks like. Honestly, as someone who has offered to step up and be on this search committee and take time out of my day from mid-summer or when we started this until now, basically, and sometimes with very little notice is pretty absurd to me. And the reason why I'm very frustrated is because we are collectively doing the city a disservice, in my opinion, in not progressing with the process of the search. People are eager to have a permanent police chief in the city, I absolutely agree with that. That is something we do agree on. But I really struggle to find a real reason for the pause in this search and why the committee's time and energy was wasted and decisions like this one are made in pausing the search as if the committee truly just didn't exist. And so honestly, it just feels like it's a creation of the illusion of checks and balances when we really desperately need to do a walk on that. And I just wanna go on record and say that I would be saying this to anyone that I feel has like conducted themselves in this way. This is not a politicizing thing. This is just my general disappointment for the process. I didn't run for council and sit in the seat to stay silent while I just watched this like very unilateral decision while perpetuating a false narrative to the public, probably a wild guess for its own political benefit. I just, with that, I really want everyone in this room here tonight, here tonight to know that I came into this process very open-minded and diplomatic. Anyone who works with me knows that I am that way. That is what I try to bring forward in all of my interactions. I try to be very intentional. And I was open to raising the salary for the police chief position, but I also wanted to do more research on that as a responsible elected official and didn't think that a randomly timed alteration to the job description that happened to be the salary warranted an emergency meeting short notice. I personally happened to be out of town at that time dealing with the family matter. So I was not kind of in that headspace but to also hear that the administration painted kind of the, you know, in that press release of progressives, and I remember Max was, I'm sorry, counselor Tracy was mentioned in that as not wanting to budge on the salary is just divisive for the sake of being just that. And honestly, as a fourth term mayor and someone who claims up hold democracy. Councilor Stromberg, if you could just please focus your comments on the. The chair. Yeah, sorry. I just, I'm very surprised at how this process has regressed. I know what I said about the salary. In fact, I have proof of what I said about the salary but a back and forth on that is not going to benefit anybody. I know that we do need to move forward in a way that is full of action and not waiting. I think it would be wise to continue the search and keep accepting applications. Honestly, as with any institution with something this important rushing this process to like create the dynamic of final candidates versus, you know, newer applications coming in. I just think is a bad idea. Like we didn't have to be in two different segmented parts of this process. Like we could have just been open and I just don't know why we're rushing something all of a sudden it does feel like that. So I think going forward, like we're smart people we can figure out solutions and how to fine tune this process better. And I think we should just settle on a number of applications to collect before we close it and go from there. I just, yeah, we simply didn't have enough applicants and every applicant that has met the requirements I think keep them in the pool. That makes sense. That's fair, of course I'm all for that. But when there's room for improvement let's see like who else applies. I mean, again, and I said this during our meetings too where it's like we should be sifting through many many applications. So then when we do land on that final person that person can know, wow, I do deserve to be in this position and I did work for this and I've shown my strength through X, Y and Z and we want that confidence in somebody. So I do think that like, yeah I just I think that we should be really, really clear with our process and not just say that things were transparent and consistent because it was my first time on a police chief search committee, I'll admit that but it certainly wasn't the experience I was expecting and I do wanna see that the people who are ultimately making these appointments and these important decisions are not biased and really uphold the integrity we're really looking for in the process. So yeah, I just, I feel like there's a lot more I could say about that but I'm gonna leave it at that for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Stromberg. I don't have anyone else in the queue, Councilor Hanson to be followed by Councilor Carpenter. Great, thanks President Tracy. I think the real crux of the matter here is that we have different opinions and perspectives on what we wanna see from a new police chief and what I wanna see is a police chief that embraces new and innovative models of public safety transformation. Many of the issues that we've been discussing these past few years about creating a more justice system focused on racial equity, focused on support and resources rather than punishment. So I think that's what we should be doing in a recruitment process, in a search process. I agree with Councilor Stromberg, we should, we need a new chief, we need someone who's gonna set that new direction and we should leave applications open. If we're not getting the applications we want then we should double down on recruitment and outreach. And that's maybe the one area that I agree with from the mayor's list of demands is if we need to hire an external firm that has expertise in recruitment, fair enough. I mean, I think leave the application open, see what comes in, if we're not getting what we want, double down and specifically target, do targeted recruitment, targeted outreach to communities that have successfully implemented these practices and target folks who have that experience and try to get them to apply. I think that should really be the goal and that's very different from what I'm seeing laid out here and I don't understand this ultimatum of these five demands or we just move forward with two from the original when we all agree that we didn't get enough applicants and particularly the inclusion of a demand that is a policy difference that we've debated around this table and we've gone really on the record half of this body opposing that particular demand and so to lay out a demand that it's already known that we disagree with and say, if you don't go against that then we're just gonna move forward with the two. I think it's really pushing it in that direction. So I just don't, it just doesn't seem like we're on the same page in terms of what we want from a new chief because what is being laid out isn't oriented around achieving that outcome. Thank you. Thank you. I have counselor Carpenter to be followed by Mayor Weinberger. Thanks. Maybe just because I've been around a long time, I've been not obviously for the city a number of these churches and I'm actually, I think it's unfortunate we didn't hire a recruiting firm to begin with but we didn't. We haven't had to in the past. Those of you who have been around, we immediately did that for the school superintendent and one of the roles of a recruitment firm should be to interview us and stakeholders see what we want in a police chief and so I think there's huge value. People don't just pop out of the woodwork. We need to, recruitment is going and finding people and we, a volunteer search committee, can't do that. So I think that the time has clearly come that we need to develop and invest in that expertise and it's painful because they're not cheap. Ask the school department what they paid to get their superintendent. It's a necessary process and I think along with it, it's gonna have to be a competitive salary. I mean, you need to look in state government. The former police chief who has a, I'd argue, a hard job and an easier job earns in the salary range we're talking about. The head of the state police earns in that salary range. You know, we've got to look out there. You look at all the small towns around New England. That's the range they're paying and whether that paints or not, we've still got to look at it. So I don't see those as demands. I see those as realistic expectations along with the fact that we absolutely need more recruiting expertise for the department itself for all of those same reasons. We've got to look out laterally and figure out the CSLs, new sworn officers that can be part of our department. So I think those, certainly the first four recommendations are just common sense. There's a price tag, but I think if we want to transform the department, we're gonna need to do all of those things. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter. Mayor Weimerder. Thank you, President Tracy. I think it's really critical to understand that this is what the challenge we're experiencing now is not a disagreement about what we seek in a police chief. We have been very deliberate about articulating our goals for the new police chief. We have articulated an ideal candidate and it is one that this search committee that was created worked hard on and that there's broad buy-in to that ideal candidate and it is one that has been published and I've heard no concerns from this council about how we're defining what we're searching for. This is not about our disagreements, which do exist about policing. This is about the fact that we have been unsuccessful despite many months of work at securing a broad pool. We followed the desires of Councilor Stromberg that was she just reiterated tonight over the course of October and left for a long time. Over the course of October and left the application open while re-advertising a considerable expense and making another round of targeted outreach calls to a progressive chiefs around the country and we got two additional applications neither of which were applications that made it past the initial screening. People, chiefs, and we've talked to search firms and search firms are very clear. We're not gonna be able to hire a search firm without a substantial increase in the salary. They are the biggest advocates for the fact that we are not competitive with the salary that we're paying now. The problem here is not that we disagree over what we're searching for. The problem is not that we haven't been searching long enough the problem is not that we haven't been searching hard enough or in the right ways. The problem is that we at a time when there is enormous competition for progressive chiefs nationally and we are not offering a competitive salary and we have created conditions where prospective candidates are concerned that they will not be able to succeed if they accept the position. Again, the administration is willing to continue to work and believe me, if an application came in tomorrow of a qualified chief, we'd be happy to throw that person into the mix. We have weeks, months now of data making it clear that that is not gonna happen unless this council takes actions to change the conditions around this search. If the council does that, this administration will throw itself back into the search once again. These searches are very time consuming for the administration. They take great effort. They take considerable effort from the committee that we have set up as well. We are prepared to do that but we need to have the tools from this council that we need to succeed. If the council is not gonna give us those tools it is critical that we move forward and appoint a chief because an organization cannot go on indefinitely with an acting chief. We need an appointment of a permanent chief. We need to move forward as an organization. We have tasked this department with enormous responsibilities around changes and implementing new protocols and new strategies. We need permanent leadership to succeed if that decision needs to be made. This administration, if there is interest in working with the administration over the next month to give us the tools that we need to succeed, the administration would be eager to work with counselors to achieve that. We're not, this is not an ultimatum. We are not demanding a decision here tonight. We need to know if we're gonna reopen and put the effort and staff time and resources and administration focus into the search. We need to know that we have the tools to succeed and I hope the council will give them to us. Thank you, Mayor. I have Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. I'll just inject a little bit of reality from my experience in the private sector as well. We, COVID is a different world. I mean, we've never, my own employer, we've employed recruitment firms up and down the East Coast trying to get competent people to come. And I know we all think we're special and we just, if we just post, people will come, but that's not the world we live in anymore. This is a very, this position is highly specialized and very sought after. I think we all acknowledge the need to move forward expeditiously. I appreciate the administration has presented us with two options. I've not heard anyone else offer a third option other than complain about the first two. So if I'm tasked with providing guidance to the administration in terms of which of the two, I would prefer option one. I had thought the council would be supportive of that as well, understanding that the fifth piece on the charter change or disciplinary authority remains a subject of dispute. And I had thought that that might not be one that the council supported, but I don't really see a path forward to get an increase the pool and get someone in in the near term without taking items one through four. So I'm confident my statement is not gonna change anyone but I think we need to start thinking, okay, if we're not gonna offer any solutions, we'll be dealing with the pool that we have. And I'm not sure that's a better solution to some people on this council. So speak up. Thank you. Council Chair. Thank you, President Tracy and thank you, Councilor Mation, speak up. And I believe that I've been speaking up. We are not ready to welcome a new police chief, a permanent police chief as a city, as a council, as a community. Because we have created the space, we have created the hardship for anyone who would wanna come to work for the city of Burlington. What we need first before all of this is a truth and reconciliation between us, the councillors, between the council and the police commission, between the police commission and the community, between us in order to attract someone who would wanna come and stay here permanently to lead our department. That aspect, until we don't put it into action, we will just come back to the drawing board over and over or have someone who will stay one, two years and then leave. Let's be proactive. Let's think in the future. This has already been politicized. The fact that I'm an independent, no one even asked me whether or not you wanna serve, but Mayor Van Gogh made it clear. The progressive to appoint a progressive councillor and the four of the mayor to appoint a democrat city councillor. What about us? This is the city of Burlington. This belongs to all of us and we already politicized the process. Let's take politics out of this, come together and then search for a permanent police chief. You're not ready? And I'm completely in agreement that when the time is right and we are together, yes, why not we increase the salary? We have to stay competitive. Why not also hire a firm that will help us in the process? But the most fundamental step we have to make it happen. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Chang. Anyone else who hasn't spoken yet? Okay, Councillor Shannon, I don't believe you have, you haven't spoken on this. I have not. First round. Okay, go ahead. I heard a lot of criticisms of the process so far and accusation that this was a unilateral decision that it was rushed and that we should just continue doing the same thing we've been doing which I believe that's the definition of insanity. We can continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. But I would note that there was also some openness to increasing the salary. And the mayor has noted that the salary has been an issue for candidates that have actually been recruited and also in discussion with recruiters. Salary is kind of the baseline, whether or not somebody wants to have a discussion with you. But it isn't really the driving force as to whether or not they will choose to come work here. It's really job satisfaction that every worker is looking for. So while salary meets this basic need, people aren't likely to take the job without job satisfaction. Which goes to what Councillor Jang was just saying that we're not in a very good place to provide that job satisfaction at this time. My concern with following what the mayor has outlined as actions that we can take to create a bigger pool is that at the end of the day when we increase that salary and we get maybe more applicants, I'm not sure at the end of the day that people are going to choose to work here because we have not created an environment where somebody is likely to have success and likely to have the job satisfaction that anyone would want. So while I don't disagree with Councillor Jang, there's still, for somebody to call the process rushed is kind of unfathomable to me. We haven't had a chief for years. We've been going through this process for many months. Some of that, most of that is through no one's fault. It couldn't be avoided with COVID. You couldn't hire during COVID. But we need some stability here. We need to steady the ship. And we need to hire a police chief even if the police chief may not stay. The police chief, our next police chief may be overwhelmed with the challenges but still we can't be a rudderless ship as we seek to do better and we seek to heal wounds and move the department forward. It will only continue a downward spiral unless we take some action with regards to hiring a chief. Not only with regards to healing in the community as Councillor Jang mentioned. So from my perspective, there have been three things put on the table, one, two of them by the mayor and one by Councillor Stromberg which is to just keep the application process open and to keep the current applicants in the pool. But I think it should be noted that applicants don't just stay in the pool. They move on to something else. The fact that we even have two qualified candidates and very good candidates from what I hear. I'm actually kind of encouraged by that. I wasn't sure anybody would apply here. So I'm interested if anybody, and I also don't wanna disrespect Councillor Jang's idea but I'm concerned that that's not actually an idea to hire a chief. It's more of a process for reconciliation. And I do think we need a process a process for hiring a chief. So I hope that we can, if people are open to raising the salary, I think that that would be helpful but I'm not sure that any of these measures going to result in something different than what we have now. And I do think we should think about the the merits of hiring from the qualified pool that we have, albeit small. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Hanson. Great, thanks. So I guess what I'm wondering, because I read the memo a certain way, the mayor's saying that it's not an ultimatum. There are options. So I guess my question for the mayor is if the council puts forward a strong plan or a plan that the council at least feels is strong for recruitment that differs from these five exact actions. I mean, would the administration be willing to support that or is it literally we have to do these exact five things or the administration's just going to move forward with the two candidates? Mayor Mary Burger, did you want to answer that? Thank you, Councillor Hanson. I think the actions that we've listed here are important and it is hard for me to see a, the administration is the team that is going to need to carry out this search process. And I think it's my responsibility if we are going to make another run at it to have a viable plan. So I certainly care about what have the council, what action plan the council settles on here and the city, the administration, I think needs to be an active party in resolving that. And I can't see a plan being viable without at least some of the elements that have been described here. That said, if there is a plan that is not a desire on the part of the council to see if we can come to meeting the minds on a different, a plan that differs in some respects from what we've laid out here, I would welcome that conversation. It would certainly put time personally over the next month and with the mayor's office team to seeing if we can come to a consensus plan about the way forward. I would welcome that process. Great. Thanks. And I guess just help from, if the city attorney could help not only us but the public just understand, because I'm having a hard time even understanding the division of power right now between the council and the mayor on this. So like if the council did approve a recruitment plan that the administration wasn't totally on board with, does the administration still have to carry out that recruitment plan or can they disregard it? So certainly the portions of the council controls are the purse strings. And I think that's ultimately one of the issues that the council, I think the way the mayor is coming to council is that when we talk about compensation numbers, that's a council prerogative. If the council put forward a resolution and I'm trying to answer the question directly and I want to make sure I answer it accurately, that the administration would have to follow a series of exact steps for recruitment plan or process. That starts to invade the mayor's prerogative to bring forward a candidate for chief of police. But it's one of these gray areas which is ultimately you have a candidate for chief of police who the mayor has to agree with and has to sponsor essentially as an appointee and you the council has to approve as a council in the same way that you vote to approve all the other department heads. If you come up with a process that doesn't end up with an affirmative on both sides of that vote, there's a problem and I would suggest that a lot of times and this is me sort of riffing off of general municipal law and what I often talk to select boards about in prior private practices that if there can't be some agreement then you're gonna end up with a process that's ultimately doomed to failure. So in that respect, I think you're both in, you both hold certain different levers of power. So if you say mayor, I want you to take six steps in recruiting and finding a candidate to bring forward to us. You know, I think the mayor ignores that it is parallel in that the process may produce a candidate that is unacceptable to council. At the same time, the mayor does have to hold some degree of prerogative as to the process in which he selects and finds these appointees. Okay, well I think clearly it's a bit of a gray area and it's a bit difficult to follow but we're saying that we want the same type of candidates the same type of chief. This action, this memo, it doesn't feel collaborative in that sense I think we need to work over this month to try to set up a process that we feel is gonna get us there and get us to that candidate but ultimately it is going to be the administration that selects a candidate and puts it to the council and if we don't support that candidate then we're gonna be at this impasse and so I would encourage the administration to really try to listen to what the council is looking for in that because otherwise we're headed towards a trajectory of impasse, thank you. Thank you, don't have anyone else in the queue? Councillor Carpenter. Just sort of the repeat, what I hear the mayor asking is we need help to broaden the pool and the two most logical suggestions are that we hire a recruiting firm. I won't tell you if I'm having done this before actually sometimes there's more decision making on the recruiting firm because you want the type of firm that will recruit the kind of candidate you want and that's an area of discussion. I think on the salary I would suggest we do a quick purview of competitive salaries that shouldn't be that complicated to figure out and that can be presented as kind of evidence. The other asks on the internal personnel recruiter and someone to do community engagement and public information officer were recommended by CNA. I don't know that we have to decide that's a money issue. Those are tools that a new chief are gonna wanna have and I think we ought to consider but it's almost sort of a parallel decision while you're recruiting out there. So I don't see that those four asks as being all that complicated, it's just moving it up a level to broaden that pool and I hope we can in the next month just come to some concurrence about what kind of recruitment firm we want and the level of comfort that we would offer competitive salary and a purview and maybe it's public safety committee looks at the addition of those two tools like an internal recruiter which I know the commission has asked for as well and a public information function is outside of a sworn officer. Okay, thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Don't have anyone else in the queue? Y'all set? Yeah, go ahead. I'm kind of feeling like we're leaving this in no man's land or, you know, we have a letter from the mayor that tells us the plan that he would like to proceed with that if we can't proceed with that plan we leave him with no alternative but to work with the pool that we have which personally I don't object to that option but it's unclear to me what the expectations of the council, the motion was to accept the communication and place it on file and I'm wondering Council President Tracey what you see as what happens next here. As I understood it, we would come back and this was an initial presentation of the plan so that we had a chance to just ask questions, discuss it and talk about it and that a future meeting, eventually even one of the meetings in December that the administration would present a plan that we would then discuss and actually take action on. And if there was an attempt to bring, to take action this evening, we didn't, I was given no indication that we were being asked to take action, we don't have proposals, specific language or proposals to these things, we have some ideas but you know, we would need I think some additional work in order to be able to, I think in order to move forward with these strategies. I guess my question isn't so much like specifically what we're going to do but in terms of process, our next meeting I think is December 8th, no. 13th. December 13th, that's a long time between meetings and it's unclear to me if there's a commitment to bring this back December 13th, if you're going to be working with the mayor on coming up with an alternative solution or I just don't think this should be sitting idle without any action for all of that time and potentially more time if we don't even take it up on the 13th. I mean, I understand that Councilor Shannon, I mean, I don't have any. I'm hoping out of this we come up with, I'm hoping we come up with some process to move forward out of this, I guess. I'll let other people speak. Yep, Councilor Hanson to be followed by Stromberg and we're starting to get into second and third round here so please be brief in these comments or keep focus on these. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I mean, just to respond to Councilor Shannon, I don't think it's really up to the chair or the president, Tracy, I think the mayor's administration has laid out a pretty clear stance on this issue and has made specific, you know, asks of the council, I think the council, any councilor or a group of councilors can choose to, you know, bring something forward at the next meeting or not and I think the administration has made clear what's gonna happen, I guess if we don't bring something forward, I definitely, for one, I think we need to try to bring forward a recruitment plan along the lines that I indicated earlier. Thanks. Councilor Stromberg. Yeah, I was just, I was gonna say the same thing. Sorry. I don't, yeah, if it's just placing a communication on file, like there's nothing we can really do at this moment anyway, except for accepting it, like I'll accept the communication, but how we go forward is, yeah, basically laid out. Thanks. Okay, I don't have anyone else in the queue and it is 10, it is after 1030. We need to, I'll come to you after this, mayor. We do need a motion on the rules. We do have, I will just note that there are two executive sessions. That, Councilor Mason. I'd make a motion to suspend the rules and take the actions indicated. I don't want to cut out mayor's comments in light of what happened this morning, I want to get. So you're moving to complete the full agenda? Correct. We have a motion to complete this evening's agenda, to suspend the rules and complete this evening's agenda is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Hanson. Any discussion? Hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of suspending the rules and completing our agenda, please say aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. Let me just attempt to, from my perspective, bring some resolution to tonight's conversation and address a comment from a few moments ago. One thing I think that is very clear that there is no gray area about, with respect to our processes, that is the mayor's responsibility to bring forward appointments of city departments, including the chief of police. And it is my firm intention to make good on that responsibility. Again, it is my preferred route to find a way to meet the goals of the search committee that is made up of a diverse group of Brawantonians and people with important perspectives on this and to expand the pool. To do that, I think we need progress over the next month by the December 13th meeting and the administration stands ready to work as Councilor Hanson mentioned with any group of Councillors that is interested in trying to see if we can come to a meeting of minds about how to pursue that. We will, the administration will put time and effort into working with Councillors to attempt to do that. And if that does not succeed, I do feel I have no choice but to proceed to appointment through another way. I hope we can find a way to make the option number one work. Thank you, President Tracey. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, so ready to go to a vote on just accepting the communication and placing it on file. Everybody clear on that? Okay, so all we're doing is accepting the communication and placing it on file. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we've completed that item. Brings us into committee reports. Are there any committee chairs looking to offer a report this evening? Councillor Hansen. Yep, just that the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee is meeting next Tuesday the 23rd at 1 p.m. It's an unusual time. And normally we try to do it after working hours but that's just how it worked this time. So 1 p.m. next Tuesday the 23rd, thanks. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Thank you. The Public Safety Committee is going to be meeting next Tuesday same day. Later in the afternoon we're going to be meeting at 5.30. And it probably will be a pretty brief meeting. The point of the meeting is to try to come up with a process for how we're going to review the recommendations in the CNA report. And then we will try to find four or five meeting dates that will take us into late January in time for us to then have a report to the council as per the resolution that we would come back with at least an interim report as to the progress that we're making by the end of January. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Councillor Shannon. Sorry, I didn't see your hand, Councillor Jane. The PAC committee will be meeting on Wednesday at 5 p.m. to appoint the dog task force, which we're a bit delayed on, but that will be coming forward to the council. Actually, we get to do that appointment. That doesn't come forward to the council. But that is thanks to a resolution by Councillor Jang. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Yeah, thank you, President Tracey. The racial equity inclusion will be meeting tomorrow in the bushel room. And some parents of the Burlington School District will be showing up to talk about some incidences in relation to hate, racism within the school system. And also the committee will be talking about the peace between Palestine and Israel. What are the next steps? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Any other committee chairs? Seeing none, we'll go to City Council general city affairs. Anyone have anything to share on general city affairs? Councillor Jang, go ahead. Maybe the mayor will be talking about this, but I wanted to definitely express my gratitude to the Fletcher Free Library for their action of opening a branch in the New North End, a pilot branch that will be opening at least three or four days a week. And the fact that they have done it in collaboration with existing city departments, as well as the Burlington Telecom, as well as the owner of the Plaza right there in the New North End. I think this is something great that we need to celebrate as a community to bring amenities very close to those who pay for them in the city of Burlington. And also to thank the mayor as well. And also for the mayor for hosting yesterday a town hall specific to the two ballot items that the voters will be weighing on December 7th. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Anyone else? Okay, so we'll move into City Council President Update, have a couple updates this evening. The first of which is just to note for folks that we don't have a regular City Council meeting until the 13th, we do have a ballot informational meeting on December 1st, to that point about that, the bond and that we will have an informational meeting. It's at 5 p.m., so it's quick. We'll have a description of it. This is a requirement. So we'll just have a description of the items. We're not taking action on anything at that meeting, but it is something that is a requirement. So we do need to have a quorum, I believe, for that item. So the first. So there's that. I'll figure that out, but I think we do need, it's helpful, we don't want to have no councillors present for that, so please try and make it, again, we will be brief in terms of that, but just please join us for that. The other piece is based on the, we did have the application. We did adopt a resolution regarding reappraisals last week. One piece of that is that we do need to appoint, or that I do need to appoint a councillor to that. So if you are a councillor who is interested in serving on that board, please let me know. And the other piece is also that we do the application itself, or well, the vacancy is posted on the city website. So you can, under the vacancy tab of the city position. So if there are folks who are interested, you'll just, you can access it on the vacancy tab of where normal vacancies are posted for boards and commissions. So we do have that up and available. I know several folks did ask me about that. So that is there. If you have questions, please, by all means, let me know on that front as we are trying, and if you could just please let folks know that that's out there, that would be really, really helpful as we will keep applications open until December 15th on that. So we will have a little bit of time here before we do have about a month for folks to apply. So please, if you know, I know several of you have been in touch with folks who are interested, just let me know about that. That's all I have for this evening. So I'll turn it over to Mayor Einberger. Thank you, President Tracy. I would like to speak to three items in my remarks tonight. First, I would like to share here tonight statement that I made earlier in the day with respect to a really momentous event that took place this morning, which was the announced retirement of Senator Patrick Lay, who will, when he completes this term, have served this state for 48 years. Senator Patrick Lay, his contributions to Vermont have been vast and profound. In Burlington, alone, his hard work, wisdom and persistence have rebuilt the post-industrial shores of Lake Champlain into one of the country's best 21st century lakefronts, transformed Church Street into one of America's great pedestrian marketplaces, and strengthened our vital institutions for the future. From the Echo Lakehe Center for Lake Champlain to the Burlington International Airport, and I believe basically every community in Vermont can come up with a comparable list for how the Senator has impacted those other communities. The Senator's also personally impacted a lot of lives, and I did just wanna note that mine has been one of them. I will always be grateful for the eight months in 1991 when I served as an intern and a mail clerk and certainly his DC office and learned their lessons of commitment and the impact of public service and collaboration. And I am committed to collaboration with this council that have stayed with me to this day. Stacy and I congratulate and thank the Senator and Marcel for their incredible service to our state and wish them all the best for the moment this year ahead and their future endeavors. Burlington and Vermont look forward to welcoming them home from their long service in Washington. We also had an event earlier today that I'll just share here with the public and the council. We announced that we will, for the fourth year in the row, the city will be hosting a highlight celebration on New Year's Eve, and this year's version of highlight will be a hybrid event. There will be both in-person events as well as some elements of last year's very successful online celebration. And I would encourage everyone to go to the Burlington City Arts webpage for further information and about how that, further details about that. Finally, I would like to speak further to the situation with the Sears Lane Campers as well as our broader efforts to address the crisis of homelessness and broader housing crisis that we face. There has been a change in policy since the council met just a week ago in part as a result of our advocacy that has extended the emergency supports that the state is providing for homeless individuals under different rules through the end of the winter. And further, it is clear that the great majority of the Sears Lane Campers will be eligible for that expanded state program and will have supports through until the spring. It is accurate and it's something that I've gotten direct briefings on that there have been a small number of campers that are no longer in the hotel placements that they had received. And I can say again that both CBOEO city staff are working to make sure that there is an answer to that question that we heard called out what are these individuals supposed to do? We're working to have an individualized answer to each and every person that was camping at Sears Lane when I had to make the decision to closing a campment for public safety and public health reasons. An additional thing that we are working on and that I hope it will be something that we can work together with the council on is a broader review than simply the Sears Lane situation of our systems for supporting and bringing to an end, for supporting the chronically homeless and really working to bring to an end, functionally end homelessness and our efforts to more broadly address the housing crisis and between the time that now and when we meet again the there are multiple city departments who are working on coming forward with renewed, redoubled efforts to forge progress in both of these separate but related areas. These are efforts to again build on the substantial expansion of supports for the chronically homeless that we have built in this community over the last decade and to build on the record of building more than 1,500 homes in the city of Burlington over the last decade. Specifically, we, I say specifically, the areas that we will be coming forward with and that we will be announcing new initiatives on include strengthening the continuum of care with new resources, the continuum of care for members of the public and counselors who are not entirely familiar with this is a regional coalition of groups that has been tasked and received substantial federal resources to work to keep homelessness brief, to make homelessness brief and rare in this community. This is a coalition that had made some structural improvements to the way that we attempt to support homeless individuals in this community before the pandemic and there were, and we had made some real progress reducing the total numbers of individuals living in chronic homelessness and building a new system of what called the coordinated entry system to bring better real-time supports to people experiencing homelessness in Chittenden County. Clearly, the pandemic has dealt a major setback to that effort and by every measure, the challenge is larger today than it has, than it was going into the pandemic. It is my intent for us to build on those pre-pandemic successes and substantially strengthen that system with new investments and I do think that that straightening likely will include the expansion of low barrier options to fill gaps in the current systems for supporting the homeless. At this point, given having at this point with the administration's prior proposal to create a low barrier option at Sears Lane through a tiny home proposal that was not funded by the state and then the inability this summer for the city to figure out a way to have a managed encampment at Sears Lane and with the Sears Lane campers having been almost all of them, having been housed and safe and secure housing for the coming months, I think the way to reach a decision about how to expand our low barrier options is to walk more broadly and comprehensively at a single site and to work with the professionals and as well as the people with lived experience to find the best options broadly speaking for expanding the system and doing it in the most effective and impactful way possible and that is what we are working towards doing and announcing over the next month. We'll also be coming forward with renewed effort to build on the zoning changes that we have made the barriers to new housing that we have eliminated together in recent years. We need to recommit ourselves to that effort and I think we need to broaden the zoning our attempt to eliminate zoning barriers not just to be focused on the downtown but to be eliminating barriers to the creation of housing in every neighborhood and further to succeed with that, I think we are gonna need an indication from the people of Burlington that there is a shared sense of commitment to that goal that there is a shared sense of commitment to that goal and we are working on bringing forward to put in front of the council and then the public and advisory ballot item that would ask the people of Burlington whether there was broad support for this citywide effort to create new housing opportunities in every neighborhood. Another element of the plan that we'll be working towards an announcement between now and our next meeting is a commitment of ARPA resources to address the new housing pressures graded by the pandemic. We are far enough into the survey process we'll be releasing the full results of this shortly but I'm happy to share here that the survey that closed last week had unprecedented response to it. More than 3,500 people responded to that survey and the overwhelming, overwhelmingly the highest priority from the respondents to that survey are investments that address housing and homelessness and so I think we can be on very confident ground at this point with making specific ARPA proposals that we're doing so consistent with the people with what Berlin-Tonians want and we'll be detailing that further and there will be more. I think that is sufficient. That's what we have to share tonight. Again, we're working towards more detail in each of these areas between now and the next time we meet again and once we lay this out it is my hope that there will be a broad partnership and consensus between the administration and the council in working towards making homelessness in Chittenden County brief and rare and in making real and enduring progress with our broader efforts to address our long and acute housing crisis. Thank you, President Tracey. Thank you. So that concludes the report outs. So we have two executive sessions remaining on our agenda for this evening. We can take the motions on both of those in sequence and then go into them consecutively so we don't have to go in and then back out. Let's do each of the motions now and then we'll go into executive session after both topics. Councillor Mason, are you able to make the motion on the first floor? Yes, I would move that the council find that the premature, this is sorry, this is agenda item 1101. I'll start with the motion would be that the council find that the premature general knowledge of legal advice and information concerning the details of upcoming labor relation agreements and their pending negotiations to which the city as a party would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage. Okay, we have a motion on a finding. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Now, based on that finding, Councillor Mason. Yes, based on that finding, I would move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential attorney client communications pursuant to one VSA. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Any discussion? Hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. And before we go into executive session, let's take care of the motions on the next executive session. Councillor Mason, are you prepared to offer a finding? Yes, but may have a point of information before there's no disclosure at all as the parties is that I'm just even from a conflict of interest perspective wondering who this is before I understood. So these are, this is a general litigation overview. It will involve a discussion of cases pending against the city or cases that the city has brought. So if there is a potential conflict with one of those, you may wish to recuse yourself in general or... Will we learn in executive session who those are and then... Okay, that's what I'm... Thank you. So I will make a motion then. I would make a motion that the council find that the premature general public knowledge of legal advice and information concerning the details of pending litigation to which the city is a party or has a stated interest would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage. Thank you. Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion on the finding? Hey, hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Based on that finding, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. Based on the finding, I would move that the council go into executive session to receive confidential attorney client communications pursuant to one VSA 313A1F and a pending or probable civil litigation matter pursuant to one VSA 313A1E. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. And last point of information for the public's benefit, we will not be coming back for any other agenda items so this meeting will be convened as far as the public's concerns. No, and to my understanding, we do not expect action coming out of executive session. This is for the council to be briefed on these matters. And if there is any action, it would take place at a future meeting. That's correct. There's no action intended by these updates. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. We will, guessing, so Attorney Richardson, are we able to go downstairs for this? Yes, I would recommend that we go downstairs. Okay, yeah, because then that will allow the folks to clear the room of this and we won't have to wait to continue that. So, councillors can go back down to the busher conference room. Those of you who are joining remotely, if you can just rejoin that initial link you were sent, that will allow you to get into the executive session. Peace. Thank you.