 meeting, but before going to that, we will invite you open the public forum. Sarah, any member of the public who would like to speak to the board, former Councillor Sharon Busher is here with us in person tonight, not just the disembodied voice on Zoom. She's with us. My phone isn't working, so I'm having difficulties moving in. I wanted to come to speak in strong support of the two items that you have on the agenda. Before the meeting, I thank the fire chief for the proposal for the response, the overdose response team pilot, and I think it's a measured response, and I think it's a welcome response. I think that the community also really has confidence in the fire department because you're not the enforcement department, and I think that that issue is still difficult for our community, and so I think that this is a really good pilot, and I hope it's successful, and I'm hoping that actually will continue after you evaluated it, and I understand and I appreciate the evaluation and the concern about redundancy of resources, and I don't want to waste money either, but when I spoke to the fact of the community's confidence, I think that really needs to be evaluated in that equation, so that's my phone, and I apologize. The second thing has to do with the warming shelter, and I'm so thankful that you were able to find a place to house people that are in need of protection from our cold climate, so I support this, but I have some questions. The timeline, December 15th to March 15th, is good, but we realize we know that our climate gets colder before December 15th, and I know it must be resources that are part of the obstacle, but I really wondered if you could move that up and have that open earlier. I know what I'm asking, and I see that the CEDO director is here, Brian Pine is here, but I was hoping maybe November 15th, but maybe if that's unrealistic, maybe December 1st, or whatever you can do to beat that opening of December 15th. I think that's really important. The second piece had to do with the fact that you offer a meal, an evening meal, which is good, and then I read that there was going to be some type of snack before the people, because they can enter at five at night and have to leave by eight in the morning, some kind of morning snack, and I wondered if you could consider with food insecurity the way it is, you could consider offering breakfast. I'm not talking about scrambled eggs and waffles, I'm talking about maybe a big pot of oatmeal with some raisins and brown sugar, and so they would have some warmth before they go out into the day, which is going to be cold also, and I realize there are places that are open during the day for them to seek shelter, but not everyone does that. We know that's a matter of choice, so I'm here to speak and support, but to also bring forward some maybe challenges to see if you can do a little bit more, and I know that's a big ask, but thank you so much for hearing my comments. Sharon, thank you. Thanks for coming and joining us tonight and your comments. Any, I do not see anyone else in the room here, speak to the board, is there anyone else online? If you're online, you can raise your hand. Okay, it does look like there's at least one attendee online, but we do not see a raised hand, so I'm going to close the public forum, and we will move to those two deliberative items. The first is 3.1, Burlington Fire Department Community Response Team, going tonight by Chief LeChance, who has personally put a great deal of effort and thought into this concept, working with the Firefighters Association. We have Kyle Blake here as well. Appreciate your being here and your support of this initiative. You know, Burlington has been on the cutting edge of responding to this drug crisis for years now. We have tried many new initiatives, and we need to keep, as this crisis evolves and changes and deepens, it's clear that we need to keep changing our response, and I really appreciate Chief LeChance responding to that challenge and coming forward with a concept that potentially has a lot of benefits to it, both life-saving benefits for people who are overseeing this community, new supports for the public, the city workers who are being impacted by this burgeoning challenge right now, and I appreciate the thought that's gone into how to make this a maximally effective team and how to get it started quickly. So, with that, Chief LeChance, over to you, Dan. Thank you very much. If you want to kick this off. Thank you. So, yeah, this began as a conversation from the ground up at the Fire Department. I think everybody is looking for solutions, not only to the ever-increasing call volume at the Fire Department, but to our community's needs. We do have employees with a real heart to truly help folks, and like I've said before, if you want to demotivate a firefighter and allow them to feel like what they're doing isn't making a difference, and sometimes this cycle that we're in of overdose or unresponsiveness right to the hospital and back is really a struggle. So, I have folks come to me and say, listen, Chief, put me in the UTV. Of course, it was summertime then. The UTV doesn't have heat, so we're going to use a pickup truck now, and let us just go out there and let us run these unresponsives and run these overdoses, really, and do some outreach in the community. So, we came up with this plan. I sent it to the Mayor maybe three and a half weeks ago, so we haven't been wasting any time to do this, and I really appreciate you guys hearing this tonight at this special meeting. I know Ryan had had a agenda item, so I appreciate you putting this in. This will be a overtime six-month pilot. It will be overtime paid to current staff. We're not going to be hiring any new staff for this pilot. That being said, it is voluntary overtime only. I really, we do have minimum staffing requirements already that we cover with overtime. We're covering overtime in the dispatch center, and now we have this. So, the firefighters are working a lot of hours. So, I do plan to be very thoughtful of them, and I want to use their time, and honestly, the finances that are afforded to us to the maximum capacity. So, this purposefully is a plan with low-guard risk. I want our folks to be out in the community. I want them to be giving feedback on what they're finding. I want them to tell me, hey, Chief, we don't need to be out here this time to this time. This time to this time would be better. Like, it's going to be a real interactive, like, moving and shaking kind of pilot to not be down this narrow road of rules, really. Because I think that's one of the issues is we head down these narrow roads, and we, or we should have gone this way or should have gone that. I want to give the fire department folks that are signing up for this the latitude to make those changes. So, my participant's screen sharing has been disabled. Okay, Chief, we do need, we have a full evening tonight, and we'll be finishing this up by about 5.30. Then we have one item after you. So, if I don't need it, then I'll share this tonight at council, and we don't need to share it now. But if anybody has any questions, what we're looking for is six months. I priced it at 12 hours a day, two people, seven days a week. I think that's going to be best or worst case scenario, and I was looking at it from the financial point, or the service point, but I think that that'll be a realistic cap to the program. President Paul. Thanks, Mayor. I have one small comment, but I will move the recommended action. Action is recommended on civic work. I just wanted to say I've said this I've said this a few times before, but I don't get tired of saying it, so I hope you know my hearing that a lot of the inspiration that is in one of the main clauses for the Drug Crisis Resolution that we're going to be talking about online in a couple of hours, indirectly from Chief LeChance, that is that we need to stop studying everything and stop extensive years of public process and get going on old responses and new and innovative ideas and just grateful to you. Grateful to you, Kyle, as well, for coming forward for this, for all of you coming forward with this. Let's give it a try. Let's give it a try. Thank you, President Paul. Is there any other discussion? Welcome. First, we need a session. Go with the third. This is great. Any further discussions? Seeing none, we'll we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. We'll see you again in a little bit and that brings us to the other item of this special meeting 3.2, which is a city of Burlington seasonal forming shelter project. Again, an example of which I think there are many of our responses to the current crisis being very real time and action oriented. That's always been the ethic, ethic mini stat table in our efforts for the last six years. This represents a expansion of again of the city's involvement with the issue of homelessness. This is we go back a decade. Certainly homelessness is something we cared about and advocated and engaged in some ways, but the city's direct involvement with it was limited. That started to change in 2014 when we supported it and really helped advocates help CBOO start the first winter warming shelter in the city. We've had winter warming shelters every year since in some form. From most of that time we had a winter warming shelter at almost exactly the same place as we're proposing it now right across the street underneath in the bottom floor of the building now owned by the Turing Point Center where Turing Point Center operates. We had to close that location when the pandemic hit and when it was no longer safe to people to house people in congregate settings like that. We kept our commitment to housing the most vulnerable members of our community first with a facility at the North Beach campground and then ultimately through the purchase of the sham plain in and that has operated as our winter warming shelter since the end of the pandemic. That property is going through another transition now and we'll continue to house homeless individuals as a low barrier shelter but will no longer serve as this emergency overnight shelter and so there's a real need for this and I want to thank Brian and Sarah Russell our special system homelessness for responding as soon as it was clear that there was going to be this gap in services. This year starting the conversation with the state of Vermont and others to ensure that we would have this capacity. We just just a few days ago received the commitment from the state for the finances necessary to open this facility and it moved immediately to get this in front of you tonight and start communicating about this with the public with a statewide newsletter at the end of last week and briefing earlier today. I know even so the conversation is moving quickly and is a bit of a surprise to some. It is moving quickly because the issue that was mentioned the public forum that Sharon mentioned. A bunch of work needs to happen at the site for this facility to be opened this winter. It's already going to be a stretch to get it ready at December 15th. Maybe sit or run you can speak to how that date was cited upon to keep that schedule we need action from the council tonight. So thus the special meeting tonight and the concurrent action with the council momentarily and you know I guess just speaking I want to say again before handing over my confidence in this being a good location comes from that experience we had for five years operating a very similar facility at most exactly this location. There were very few public complaints about the facility. Those years was generally supported by downtown stakeholders. There was generally a sense that it not only was life-saving and provided important services but that it also was a enhancement and a support for our successful vibrant downtown and that's what we seek to again big change this time versus then it really speaks to the city's deepening commitment in this area. We cannot go back to the nonprofit community and cajole pressure beg them again to open yet another facility. We've done that twice in the last couple years here. It's now clear that at least for the foreseeable future this challenge of homelessness is one that is with us and that we have to develop some additional city capacity to address. I'm grateful the state is actually funding that additional capacity with the proposal bringing to you tonight so it's not only the payment for the shelter this is also the creation of a new position that will take some of the responsibilities and real work pressure off Sarah in managing these facilities and get an additional staff member to take on some of those responsibilities so that Sarah's role can fulfill more of its intention of being working at the systemic level to really end homelessness not just I hope should help us respond to the most severe symptoms so President Paul. My apologies I just have a point of information that is that it's now 5.20 to 3.00 we really need to start the council meeting at 5.30 to plan on giving an extensive and no time can be wrong I would love to hear it. We do have the obviously we have this coming to the council as well and so I'm just wondering you know just we are playing the full briefing there and I think if you know I know each of you have had some additional engagement outside so why don't you know we still got seven minutes left this time if there are questions but why don't I I felt it was important to put some of that out there to give things off but now the floor's open if there are any questions or when we're ready I'm hoping there will be support for a motion Councilor Barlow. Thank you and thanks for your quick work on this. I do have concerns I express those to you over email just in my work recently and even this afternoon when I sat in on the downtown workers public safety before I had it back this afternoon there's there's real concern that this is going to exacerbate and so I'll lay my fears off this. Are there are there plans to deal with some of the peripheral activity that might happen outside of the shelter? We saw an elderly facility when it first opened. Where are there other locations like that? My last question is is the money that the state granted tied to this location or is it a bunch of long agreements? The funding is really tied to this location because we had to we acted really quickly to identify a site there are we proposed 108 Cherry Street that location to the state and that was to that was denied that was our peripheral so that was not a feasible location. We're really limited in in where we can where where we have space that's being used within the city to to be able to open something like this and the budget was created and presented to AHS with with some level of capital investment specifically around cameras will be installed around the exterior of the property and a few inside as well and some of some adjustments modifications that need to be made inside to make this base usable so the budget is being set up on that location. In terms of security as I was kind of reflecting on this and that has been has been their status that location that's been used for this purpose across the street that has been used for this purpose and one of the things that is different about the shelters that we will have overnight security on site historically the warming shelters that operated out of 179 directly across the road not have any security presence overnight so we will have a security guard that will be on for the duration of operations every day in addition to to two social workers who will be managing the shelter during off hours with on call as well. In terms of the surrounding area like for instance the parking garage where I know they still have a needle problem in the parking garage. I mean I think that there's active spots that are around the city where folks are utilizing for shelter our hope is that by providing a safe warm space for people to be it will it will draw people from some of those places that are less convenient or safe. It's also important to note this is actually operating as a shelter where you come and get admitted on a nightly basis and so there's no expectation that you get to reserve a bed which is an important aspect because it does provide shelter for those who need it depending on their conditions the weather whether they have a place to stay or they don't have a place to stay and it is a built-in sort of sense of you know there's there's a built-in turnover which in some way does alleviate that concern a little bit we think around you know certain behaviors taking place and being kind of firmly set in stone to have people staying close for quite a while. So I think it's important to know there have been three types so again when we operate a winter warming shelter from such this location it did not create community impacts to any great degree. There was a pandemic era community resource center daytime facility very different operation that there were certainly community impacts associated with that and concerns associated with that and that is not what this is and I think it's important to recognize that always not what this is. We have continued to fund with our emergency dollars and state dollars a community resource center that was recently expanded that will continue to operate that does serve breakfast their expectation is that there will be numerous individuals from the overnight shelter who may well go and take part of the 2,000 people that are accessing services at the community resource center and that that I think it's important to know that those operations are continuing and I think that is a investment that is going to reduce the likelihood of there being problems in the daytime hours at the time that people are leaving the shelter in the area. If there are issues we will we will do our best to address them as we have in other shelters. I do think from my perspective we have overwhelming complaints and concerns being expressed about unsheltered individuals sleeping outside in campments in storefronts in parking garages on church properties. It is that those those issues which I think that very visible unsheltered presence which is driving from my perspective a lot of the concern of the downtown being expressed by the public that is not being caused by the shelters that is being caused by a lack of capacity in the shelters lack of capacity in our other social services. I don't see how we can both be again trying to act trying to respond to the public in finding shelter for the more than 200 folks that are we are documented are unsheltered currently sleeping outside. Shelters are really just about our only one of our only tools for addressing that. I think it is important to note that it is this is not the only shelter being discussed in the sense that we do continue to advocate for the state to be running its emergency sheltering operations as well. So that's the continuation of the hotel program that we advocated strongly for and kept 2,200 people statewide. You're part of the coalition that kept 2,200 people including a couple hundred Chittenden County residents housed through to next April. We're going to give an update on that later tonight and we are advocating strongly correct me Sarah if I don't get the terms quite right but the adverse weather conditions program that the state has run in recent years we are they've been noncommittal about exactly what they are going to do with that this upcoming season we are advocating for them to continue the kind of epidemic era periods which would mean housing many people in Chittenden County hotels. So it is not Burlington alone that will be part of this sheltering but we need to be part of it and that's why we brought this forward. So we are short on time I hope that's been a sufficient response to your question. Councilor McGee. I'm happy to make the motion. Thank you. Do we have a second? Thank you President Paul. I don't mean to catch or debate and we will have further discussion of it later. We'll be able to answer questions at that point. There are other counselors who also had questions so I'm sure you and Sarah will go around them. If I certainly would understand that if you were ready to vote until we had that further debated if you wanted to stay in that survey. I have further discussion with the council. Okay great thank you appreciate that. So without I will go if we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and thank you Brian and Sarah for working on this and we'll see you later tonight and with that we have concluded the business of this special board of finance meeting and without objection we are adjourned.