 Good evening. Welcome. My name is Tom Derenfall. I'm a member of the Steering Committee. I'll be your host tonight and welcome for sheet one of the room. It looks like we have a pretty full room. This is the most I think we've had here. And welcome to those people online. I can't see you yet, but I'm sure someone's going to show your faces. And as we normally do, we go through and introduce ourselves and make short announcements. The way we're structuring the meeting tonight is that we're going to have introductions followed by a community development block grant advisory board nominations, then speak out. So longer things you want to talk about, we'll do during a speak out. Then we have really three things on the agenda, a conversation about public safety, and then a city council resolution about maintaining open and accessible MPAs. And lastly, no, I take that. Then we'll have city council updates and a school commissioner updates after that. So that is the plan. So again, my name is Tom Derenthal. I live on Nash Place, and I've lived there for a while. It's a really nice street. The dead end street. So please don't drive down and try to drive down the hill. We've had at least one person try to do that in the last 30 years. They did not make it. But we're going to start over here by the door this moment here. Oh yeah, pick up a microphone, please. I'm Cindy Wolken. I live on Brooks. I'm Lacey. I am the community support supervisor for the city of Burlington at the Burlington Police Department, and we'll be talking with you later. My name is Sarah. I am the public information and community engagement officer with the Burlington Police Department. Okay. Hello, I am Jake Schuman. I live on Hildred Drive. Hello, my name is Justin. I live over on Clark O'Court. Susan Lenz. I live on Colonial Square. Benji Oberhaal. I live on Colchester Ave. Kyle Kloss, like Santa. I live on North Prospect Street. Carter Nubizer. I'm on the MPA Steering Committee and I am on Colchester Ave, but I just bought a house, so I'll soon be on Riverside Ave. Hi, I'm Cheryl Green, and I live in Burlington Co. Housing just off of East Avenue. Peter Likowski. I live in the same place. Okay. I'm Carol Livingston. I'm on the Steering Committee as well, and I live on Colerico Court. Breck Bowden. I live on Brooks Avenue. Hi, everyone. I'm Emma Mulvaney-Sannick. I'm visiting from Ward 3. I live on Front Street there, and I'm running for mayor. Just FYI. Yeah. Oh, I... Oh, oh. I mean, I'm a socializer done with Cossack Street. I'm Johnson Schatt, a socializer. I'm Ben Mayhem. I live on Orange Street. Hi, I'm Karen Long. I've lived on Henry Street for 39 years, and I'm really excited about this MPA has really been energized. I appreciate it. Hi. My name is Pat Seeland. I live on Nash Place, that dead-end street. That's actually in the old East End, partly. I'm Dave Colley. I also live on Nash Place. Richard Hilliard. High Grove Court, Ward 1. Hi, folks. Eric Monca. I live down on Grove Street in the old East End. And also, this is not amplified. So, folks, if you all could speak up, so those of us with some background noise could hear, that would be great. Zariah Hightower. He'll do a drive, Ward 1 City Councilor. Oh, I've got some people behind. I'm Rob Gutman. I live on North William Street. Malachi Dordi. I live on Sloan News Square. And I'm Tim Dordi. I also live on Colonial Square. Hi, I'm Steven Chiza. South William Street. Hi, Amy Melnowski. She's also on South Williams. Marcy Gallagher. She's on Nash Place. Joel Collada on 20 Chase Street in the old East End. We've got the planet Earth flag outside, but it broke recently, so we're waiting to get it fixed. Oh, yeah. Samantha Aiot, 20 Chase Street, old East End and member of the Steering Committee. I've got a mic. We're here. Now, we have people online. How many people do we have? We have six and 10. Okay. We'll start with Betsy. Okay, it looks like I'm talking. And Betsy, I also live on Places. And Ethan, is it Ethan? Hello. I'm Ethan Fleming with the University of Vermont Student Government Association. Okay, and Sharon? Hi, Sharon Brescher on East Avenue. And Sophie? Sophie Quest, Chase Street in the old East End. And did I miss somebody? Lisa Dax. Lisa? Hi, I'm Lisa, and I live on Tepo Parkway. Okay, did I miss anyone? Did anyone want to say their names twice? Okay. Oh, Troy. Yeah, we are in a car, so I'm not going to participate much, but I am here listening. Troy Hendricks, ability to court, also one of the two reps from this district to the state Okay, thanks. Sorry to miss you. Next thing on our agenda is community development block grants, advisory board nominations, and, Jonathan, you're going to take us through the nomination process. We're going to go, we're going to speak up after this. I was asking for announcements. Oh, okay, yes. Is that okay? Yes. Are you an announcement? Yes. Are you going to be an announcement? I'm going to go with that. Mike? So our own old gate colleague, David, please stand. I've got an award for his amazing work from the AARP. He got the, let me read it carefully here, the AARP Andrews Award Community Service in Vermont. At some point, David's going to talk more with us about the old East, old East End neighborhood coalition. And he, he has spearheaded an amazing effort by folks living in the neighborhood and beyond to work on livability and safety. He helped launch the interlude celebrations, which we've had a couple of years of, and he's done multiple, multiple things. And I will say, he's a member of the steering committee. And knowing how hard it is to try to, I think what David does really well is that he puts out there and works really hard and creating all the details and doing all the applications. And then he asks, what do people think? Which I think is what people think. And he listens and he includes those suggestions, but it's like herding cats with any neighborhood organization as we all know. And David does it with such grace and such care and such respect. So hallelujah to you, David. Probably should I ask if there's other announcements? Yes. Hi. Again, my name is Sarah. I'm from the Burlington Police Department. And I wanted to extend an invitation to all of you to the Burlington Police Department's Community Academy. The Community Academy is a hands-on opportunity to interact with our officers and staff. And it's open to those 18 years or older who live in or work in Burlington. It will take place every Wednesday, starting on January 3rd through February 7th. And it'll be at the police department in our community room. I've passed out several flyers. I also have some more if you'd like. And we look forward to it. Thanks so much. Thanks. Any other? Yes. I kind of need our guide. You just don't need the mic. Right, one other AARP-related event here in Congratulations Day. Okay. Yeah, right. Those interested in paid leave, paid family leave discussion, there will be a gathering at Pizza 44. This Tuesday, I believe it is coming up Wednesday. If you are interested in that, please let me know and I can give you a URL to register for that. Okay, thanks. Under Dave Announcing. Yeah, I just want to remind folks that next Tuesday, there's going to be a coffee held at the Schmanzka Park Barn. And the topic is going to be the missing middle housing. So this is being sponsored by AARP as well as city planning. So it's an hour event. There'll be free coffee and things to eat and held at the Schmanzka Park. If you want to register for that event, it's on the calendar on Front Porch Forum. So next Tuesday in the details about how to register are there. It starts at nine. In the morning? Yes. Okay, and I went to one. It's very interesting. All right. Other announcements? I don't see anyone on the line. Is there anyone here? Oh, I'm sorry. Hi, everyone. I'm just announcing that I am not running for reelection in the spring. So this will be my last few months on the city council. I'm very grateful to you all for the last four years. And I feel like I really got to be in the right place at the right time and be really have a voice at the table and make a lot of decisions and do my best to represent you all. And I'm excited to spend a little bit more time at home with my new pup and my family. So thank you all for your support over the last few years. It's been great. And obviously I will still be here for until April that I'm not leaving Burlington or anything. So you'll still see me. I'll still become a housing activist forever more. So thank you all so much. Yes. Along with the same vein. Thank you for being so wonderful. I am going to be running for drive deep in the spring. We're going to hold a formal launch of that at Shaman's Park on Sunday at 4 p.m. So you all are invited. I'll pass around a flyer. It's exciting to hear how we can continue to I think we can utilize great work. But I think mainly really focused on how do we make this more affordable. And it's a chance to part of that. I just mentioned this really timely. As a young person trying to put down a route for most all the folks that I came here to go to school with have left probably 90 plus percent. And that's because it's just increasingly not affordable for her here. So that's going to be my main focus. Hope to connect all with all of you. We've got many months to campaign. Please don't leave. I don't want to leave in time. But handle different issues. And look forward to engaging. Thank you everybody. All right. Let's call for an answer. I actually have an answer myself. What are you running for? Yeah. I'm running. I'm running a lot. Yeah. I'm running. If anyone's interested in working on a mayoral candidate forum to take place in January, I'm looking for some help to get a venue and get things rolling. So that once the caucuses have happened that we can get the candidates in a common place not just for one, but the whole city can see what's going on. So if you're interested, my email is on the NPA website and you can just give me a call. So with that, I just saw. Oh, wait. All right. I didn't know if this was going to speak out or announcements, but it's very short. So I can just say it now if folks want. So I'm Amy from Montrose for Palestine has a petition going around to get an advisor question on the ballot for town meeting day. So if anybody's interested in signing that, I can be your witness. I have the paper here. I mean, you can just come find me. I can pass around or whatever people want. But as a reminder, basically they just have to get 5% of billing to voters, which is like 2002 under something people by December. And then city council has to approve what it goes on about and then it would end up on the ballot. So it's not like what is on here is going to happen for sure. It's just saying, is this interesting enough and resident enough as a community that we want to have more conversation about it? So if that's interesting to you, come find me or yeah. So we're going to move on to the community development block grant. Advisory board process for knowledge. Thanks, John. And I like you just for the first time. So I thank you very much for what you've done in the past four years. It's I'm sure I'm going to have a chance to thank you again. But it's been wonderful. We really have appreciated what you've done for the cities, what you've done for the ward. And I think having voted on a lot of people buys the possibilities of what we can expect from our leaders. And then I got to get it organizing over here. Sarah, can we do that community thing on a day other than Wednesday? I know it's going to knock into some somebody's MPA. I will bring that back though. Thanks. I think it can be moved around or something. We'd love to do that. The CDBG advisory board, the community development block grant. I'm going to read a little bit of this, but I'm going to just start by explaining it one more time. What the CDBG is is that they block grant funds that comes from the federal government, the health and urban development. And it's money that comes to Burlington to improve this thing in some way or other. And the CDBG, it's two of the block grants. One goes to Burlington, one goes to everywhere else. So there's a recognition of the needs of our city in terms of supporting housing. A lot of it goes into housing, but it's also supporting a few years ago, there was a grant that went to weatherization, home weatherization. And many of the local agencies get support, staff members, the clowns get money. And so it's federal money that comes. And the unique thing about the city of Burlington is that the way the money is spent is not just decided by administration. There is an advisory board for needs. And it's regular citizens, regular residents. Every MPA appoints a member to this board. And under the handbook of other states, there's a couple of manuals for needs. And the real thing about this is that this advisory board is beyond advisory. What the advisory board recommends has for the past 25 years, every single year, what the advisory board advises becomes the way the city spends the money. So it's an exceptional program. And it's a way that people, just regular folks in the city, can make decisions about how federal money is respected. So just, and I'll make this fast. As you may know, it means important volunteer positions represent their MPA and review applications for funding from local agencies for eligible C&G activities. Beginning of January, a series of four nightly meetings were held for the advisory board. The meetings begin with an orientation, including discussions on public service projects, discussion on development projects. So some of them are bigger in building kind of things and some of them are service kinds of things. Answers by the applicants to each reach from the board, ranking, specific funding of the projects. So there's a formal process that makes this work and it works great. And what we got to do, if you're on board, you got to attend all training sessions and board meetings, and that's about 12 hours, you have to read and rate the grant applications. And then it's usually about 15 applications under nine pages each. And you really got to read them. It's important. So they say that's about eight to 12 hours. They're all a balanced budget, taking the amount of money requested and paring it down. Typically it has to be pared down for the amount of money available. And then work with other board members to develop funding recommendations for the mayor and the city council. And I think, and then report back, of course report back to the MBA. And on the back, it actually also has have fun and meet your close to our community. And I had to say that I did this a couple of terms ago and it was incredibly rewarding for the work, but it was also incredibly rewarding meeting people from all over the city and care about the city. So that is really a part of it. So we have to, we have to run somebody. I know it's interested already and make time to do an animation. I have a question. In there, what's the size of the budget that? That's reported $600. Yeah. That was $600 for our rivals. So that's going into the spot. Yes, I think it starts. Yeah. Okay. One year, $300,000, a loan went to the old north end. So it's a pretty big deal. It's a big, it was a lot of money. Okay. And you, and you, what members of the advisory board will definitely make decisions on $100,000. Okay. So, you're right. You're a nomination. I'd like to nominate Rob Gutman. Okay, Rob, are you going to, and you want to talk a little bit about yourselves? I'm Rob Gutman. I live on North William Street. I ran for city council last time around. I've met many people during that process. I've been in Burlington for about five years. I have a deep, I'm being directed, not used to being directed. I have developed a deep understanding and desire to help in any way I possibly can the city. This is a function that we just talked about. It's a lot of money. I reviewed the applicants and results from last time around. Unfortunately, there were more requests for funding than could be fulfilled. So there is definitely some priority that needs to be assigned. And I would hope that you would trust me to do that and represent the NPA on that board. If you have any questions about myself in addition to that, I'd be glad to answer any. Okay, thank you, Rob. Are there other nominations? I'd like to nominate Jake Schuman. Thank you, Justin. I'm going to try and pivot so that I'm just going to come over here real quick that way. Charlie can see me and everyone else can see me. My name is Jake Schuman. I ran for city council this last cycle. And throughout the 15 years that I've lived in this city, I've filled a lot of different roles. I've worked at a lot of different nonprofits. First, my first big boy job, I had at the Peace and Justice Center as their volunteer coordinator grew their program. And that's where I started working with people who were going through our institutional mechanisms for lifting themselves out of poverty. What I'm talking about is reach up moms, right? I think that our community has a lot of different barriers, dynamics. There are institutional dynamics in our community. In the way that our systems that are meant to help people continue to keep them in a state of economic despair. I've seen this through my work at Resource, where we helped people who were just getting their first house furnished that house. I've seen this as an EMT with people's socioeconomic health and I've seen this working with homeless people during the pandemic. And I think just being in the nonprofit world in so many different parts of the nonprofit world, I've really thought a lot over the years. And this is why I ran for city council is how our systems that are meant to help people actually don't, right? And I think that this is really important when evaluating programs. So often people apply for money to fund a new program at their organization with kind of a half-baked idea because it's just a way to get more money infused into the budget. And I think that I have the skills and the experience and just the connections. I think when I know that I can't actually answer the question like who to talk to to get a solid piece of advice, I think that it really boils down to who's going to ask the right questions, who's going to identify the details that really need flagging. And who knows the people in this community knows the individuals who are actually supposed to benefit from this program. I can tell you that I know a lot of people in this community who are working class. But I know a lot more who are poor. Thanks. Any other nomination? I don't see any online over there. Do you want to do the procedure stuff or something? You can continue. Okay. Do you know other names? Well, I have a, I'm going to ask questions to each of them. So we have until January 18th for this decision to be reached for which representative we send. Okay. Great. I guess this is like a super broad question to each of you if we have this budget of around $700,000. Well, I don't know exactly how this money all gets split up and spent, but I don't know what would you do with, how could you imagine $700,000 being distributed around? Like what would, how would you like to see it used? If you want to go first. That's a very simple answer. Sure. It's not up to me who applies for the grant. So it would be presented to, and then like I said, and when I talked a few minutes ago, we'd have to prioritize the applicants in ways that we think best meet the needs of the city at that given point in time. So it really wouldn't be up to me. I'm not, the board does not solicit as far as I understand the grant applications. Can I ask a quick follow on that? Approximately how many of the applications are granted? But are we talking about tens of applications? A dozen? I don't remember what the number was, but I did review all the ones that were on the 20.8 application. So 15 are not funded at all. Some of them are partly funded. There are certainly oversubscriptions. Okay. There's a lot of repeat applications and it's more, you're more likely to get, but most people who apply get funded. Not like there's, oh, sorry. I'm so sorry, people online. There are a lot of repeat applications and there's also more, there's more people who get funded than don't. So just quickly to add, there's a limitation on public services, 15% of the total, no more than 15% can go to public service. So for instance, if let's say the committee on temporary shelter applies to help their programming for homeless folks, they come under that cap. The rest of it is for a number of other purposes. A lot of it, as I think was mentioned before, is goes to housing, for instance, developments that the Champlain Housing Trust has created, as well as economic development. The majority of the funds, actually 70%, at least 70% of the funds have to benefit low income people at or below 80% of HUD area meeting income. Thanks. Jake, did you want to say something? Yeah, I was basically going to say the same thing as Rob. You know, if I came in with a personal agenda, sure, I'd love to spend $100 million, however I wish to resolve poverty, but that's kind of the whole point, right, is that we're impartial jurors. Thanks, Huss. Okay, so Joel, in respect to first and foremost, is there a general consensus that you can vote tonight on this? You didn't know what to do away? Yeah. I'm going to say nobody shall know that we had this in mind. Okay. So, what was his name? And you must be right at the board on the vote. All those who would like to point Rob down, please raise your hand. No. That's a big hand. Oh, and all of them. All those, oh, okay. All those who would like to go first, please raise your hand. Can they hear Josh? They couldn't hear the question. Can you hear me online? People raise their hands or something. Sophie can hear me. Troy can hear me. Everybody can hear me. I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure where to start. Why don't we just do the vote? Can we redo the vote with people online? The nominees are Rob Gutman and Jake Schuman. We just try again. All those in favor of appointing Rob Gutman, please raise their hands. And if you're online, leave them raised because we can't see them all. Fosca, can you see them all? I think there's more than one because I thought it's not Sandy come up and go down and... There's 10. That's it. Okay. All right. Those in favor of Jake Schuman, please raise your hand online as well. Looks like Jake's got it. Jake, congratulations. Thank you for doing this. It's a fair amount of work, but it's also a lot of fun. Thanks. I'm not running for anything, so I've got time on the schedule. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Good time. Thanks for... I was reading that. I'm sorry. All right. Next, the agenda item is Speak Out, but we're really behind schedule. Yeah. Ask me the only time. So we have thanks for Speak Out that people want to bring up. Thank you. Thank you. That was my favorite one. I'll send that one then. I think that... Sharon? Yes. You're up. Okay. I sent two communications to the City Council for Monday night's meeting, and I'll be very brief. One had to do with the executive session that they held regarding the MOU with the University of Vermont. And my request was that asking for greater transparency, asking for an opportunity for the public to have an opportunity to see what the agreement contains and have that opportunity occur before and not simultaneously at the same night that the City Council would vote on such an agreement. The mayor spoke to this, and I think there's agreement about this, but I wanted to let all of you know that I sent that because I know that we all care deeply about housing, the University, and enrollment. And so it's really a community issue. And although we delegate, we want to be involved as residents. So that's number one. The second communication had to do with the gateway block that the Council signed gave permission to the mayor to sign a letter of intent. And the gateway block is the block that has the library, memorial auditorium, the fire station, the parking lot, the church, that block. And there are two developers who have a vision for some of that block. And what I really had hoped would happen was that I had strong opinions, and I'm not going to share all of my opinions. But what I really, the takeaway that I wanted to share with the NPA was that I was hoping that the vision or the ideas that these developers had would have been presented to the public before this second step of letter of intent was signed. I felt that that was the right process to get buy-in. I imagine maybe a lot of people would like it, but I don't know. And I thought that that would be the correct way. I was disappointed that the Council signed the letter of intent. They felt some urgency because of the state of memorial, but memorial has been falling apart since I was on the Council. And just so everyone knows, I have been the only person that was a part of the Board of Finance that wanted to dedicate funds for memorial in the 90s and in 2000s. And it's very frustrating to see a building deteriorate before your eyes and know that we collectively caused that problem as a community. But anyways, I wanted you to know that I hope that we, there's supposed to be a chance for everyone to get involved. The only reason I'm sharing all of this with everyone is that everyone's so busy and I'm a political junkie and I follow these things. And I just wanted to alert you so that if you had some interest, you'd know that this was going on. It could weigh in. So thank you for the time. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks, Sharon. Sandy, Sandy, you have something for Speaker? Are you immune? Sandy, can you hear me? Sandy, can you hear me? All right. Do we have any other speak out issues from the room? I know. Sandy, if you can hear us, you're more than welcome to speak out right now. Hey, Sandy. Sandy, we cannot hear you. All right. Well, I'm not seeing anything else from the room, so we're going to close speak out and we're going to move forward if we'll circle back to Sandy at a later part of the meeting if we have time. I want to move forward to the public safety discussion and you're going to introduce our speaker. Yes, we have, we've got Lacey Smith here from, and she is the Community Support Supervisor at CAIP, which is the Crisis Advocacy Intervention Program. And she's going to talk to us about what CAIP does, any resources that they have that would be useful to us. And if you just Google CAIP Burlington, that link is the first thing that comes up. So if you have any questions, anything that Lacey may not answer tonight, you can find a lot of information there. And Lacey and I spoke a little bit before and this is going to be a very honest and open conversation. So please feel free to ask some questions. I think this is going to be a really good conversation for the award to have. So Lacey. All right, y'all. Can you hear me online? I'm guessing you can. If you can't say speak up. Okay. So I'm Lacey. I'm the Community Support Supervisor with the City of Burlington. I have worked for the Burlington Police Department and for the city as a public servant for the last nine years. I have, this is my third job title, and I supervise the community support liaisons of the city, which is the social work team of the city. So CAPE, the CAIP that she was mentioning, is short for, or yeah, is Crisis Advocacy Intervention Programs. And so CAPE was born out of basically the tumultuous time of 2020. And we ultimately, part of what CAPE was was really my position, the community support liaison at the time. The CJC position that is the Victim Services Specialist and the Victim Advocate were all over the building. And so like it didn't prevent us from working together, but the thought was like, why don't we all sit in the same space? So that really was kind of just the like, and if we also felt like it made sense that it was very clear that nobody knew that we exist. And that has been like the story of my life for the last nine years, that nobody knows that I exist until they find me. It doesn't matter how many of these meetings I go through, it doesn't matter how like, it just is for some reason, it's like this thing that just never goes away. People just don't know that I exist, which is fine with me, because I'm introverted. So we kind of are all housed in one part of the building. It is not like there's, the building is divided up into wings. So all the social services exists within one side of the building. There are five community support liaisons. We are slated for six. It has been, the rollout of this has been over the course of years. So the only reason why we're not fully staffed is because we were not fully funded. So we were only funded for three positions the first year and three positions the second year. So we have five right now, soon to be six. And luckily we, for that particular position, there really has been a desire to be a part of it, because the whole intention of what we're doing is system change. And I think people mistake like, why, oh, we're just trying to replace the police and that's not the point. The point is, is that this system needs changing. The point is, is that every single one of our systems that we are dealing with on a regular basis, need to change and haven't changed. And why we are experiencing, what we are experiencing all around Burlington right now is because our systems are failing people. And so some of that is the city, a lot of that is the state, even more of it is the feds. And so it is, I think from my experience, a lot of times being able to actually change the systems that we exist in is probably one of the hardest things to do, because we always have to for some reason do it at the expense of something else. And that is what ends up. But when you do that, there's trauma involved for everything, everybody, because you again, you were taking from one to do the other. And that comes with a cost. Even in the social service system, they know it very well. In order for them to be able to do one program successfully, they either got to figure out how to fund it by taking from other programs or finding new funding, which is next to impossible. So we were born out of the pandemic and all the stuff that happened during that time. And with that, so we've grown. So now we're at those three positions myself, the five community support liaisons, the victim service specialists, so the CJC embedded position. We have a therapy dog in training named Rocky. And we are different than the community service officers. So people, because we wanted to make it really easy for you, we decided to call it a CSO and a CSL, even though they have nothing to do with each other, because this community service officer is going to be dealing with low level enforcement issues, municipal tickets, civil ordinances, accidents with no injury, things that officers were doing, and ultimately other people can do. They don't need to do it because you don't have to be a sworn police officer to do it. So part of what the community support liaisons do on a regular basis is they split their time up between doing reactive work by being going out and responding to real time calls. But then they are not just only, they do referrals, we do refer out, but if there is no place to refer you to, because that is the case currently, then we are the ones that are doing the work. We don't, we specialize in reality and all of the things because there are gaps in every single system that we work in. And so we have to be generalists. We have to know who is where and what system and how do we help these people leverage the things that are going on, because everything has a weight, there is no housing. And I am sorry that I sound so pessimistic because there are good things that are happening, but I think people really have to understand like why we're seeing what we're seeing right now and that there are things, especially the city, that there has been many attempts to do and I've sat in those meetings with the state, I've sat in those meetings with the other town managers of Chittenden County and we get a lot of no. And when you're getting no, it makes it really hard to actually try to address the problems that we're seeing downtown and all around our communities where people literally have nowhere to go. They don't have any place to spend their time because the places they would potentially be accessing are honestly really full already and it's limited because every single service, except for things that are considered low barrier, you have to qualify for it. You have to check a box and if you don't check that box, you don't get it and it does not matter how bad you need it. So we're living during a time where our systems are not actively serving us because they haven't changed since 1970. So I think it's really important for people to understand that like the things that are going on with this department is what was requested. I mean CAPE is because we said we wanted system change but we should be essentially demanding the same things of all of the rest of our systems. And in my experience, it feels like, you know, it's a lot of the city yelling at the state about what it is that we need and we need the people of Burlington to be yelling at the state about what it is that we need to because there is, I mean, we are a service rich community and so at the state house, a lot of the questions are, well, why do you need more? You already have a lot. You are, we already give you a lot. Why are we going to give you more when the rest of the state doesn't really have much of anything? And so if it's just the city and the people that are, you know, in these positions that work for the city going there and saying like, no, but we have 250 people county wide that are houseless, that are going to our community resource center to get to the food shelf every day to get food. Like this isn't, yes, this is a county problem, but the people are from the rest of the state end up coming here because of the fact because the services don't exist elsewhere. It's not like this flood of people, but it does happen. And that does affect us in the same way that we have to send our people at a county to get housing. So it is this mutual flow, but it doesn't, I don't think it feels like that for the constituents of the rest of the state when they're like really Burlington. So we need citizens to actually be saying, hey, because we elected a governor who has said we're not raising taxes. And if we're not going to raise taxes, then I don't know how we're going to fill the gaps that we have. I don't know how we're going to get Medicaid to pay for more than two weeks in treatment. I don't know how we're going to have more sober houses. I just don't know how we're going to do the system fixes that we really, really need right now. Okay, so that really has less to do with public safety. But it does have to do with public safety. And that's the point. The point is, is that the reason why we have all these issues in the public safety system to some degree, because put the system aside, is because all of these people are falling into this system because the rest of the systems aren't reacting. And so when you don't have a reactive system from all these other places, they're going to fall into the only one that has historically done nothing but react. But now they're saying, we can't do that. And so now you're experiencing a system that has always been reactive, like the fire department. They're the only ones now that say yes to everything. And they are also like, we can't say yes to everything anymore. How are we going to do this? Because when you say yes to everything, it is really hard to have any, it's really hard to do. Obviously we all can't do everything all the time. And so when you don't have the social service systems are failing and you have more people living in the streets and they are living their private issues out in public, the police are the ones that get called. And for the first time probably in this community's history, the police are saying we're not going to come to that. And part of that is because of the requests of this community. They don't want officers responding to calls that do not have an element of public safety and that do not have an element of law enforcement. And so when that's the thing, when that's really what the system changes about, they're going to start saying, well, then we don't need to come. And so it becomes hard for the community because you all now have to deal with discomfort in a different way. You have to discern between just being uncomfortable with what you're seeing versus being uncomfortable and being unsafe. And they're not the same things, even though they feel like the same things. And so it is a bit of a culture shock, I think for people, I think it is also just a bit of a hard pill that like it is really the police are no longer really right now a preventative service. They cannot, they don't respond to preventative things. So when you call and say, I think someone is looking suspicious and like walking around my cars and checking that that in itself is not going to be enough to get them to go. And that is because we don't have the numbers to send people because when I walk into work right now and I look at the board, there are just like a page full of calls waiting for a response. And there's five, six, maybe eight officers on a double day. There's not, and then they are just trying to react to real time calls and then hoping to get to the things that are just waiting for a response. We are in this time of like, who do we call when we don't feel comfortable? Who do we call them? And what does it mean to be truly unsafe? And I spent a lot of time, a lot of time with the folks that live out on the street. And to me, there's not a bit of it that I don't feel unsafe there. I don't feel unsafe going into encampments. I don't feel unsafe talking to the person falling asleep. I don't feel safe by the agitated man doing all this weird twitchy because he's on some sort of substance. I don't, that stuff doesn't make me feel unsafe. And that's because I'm just around it and I'm around those people. And in my mind, I probably have seen some of those people fall back into these situations. There's new ones that just kind of ended up falling into addiction, ended up falling into homelessness. I think that there's an assumption that these people that are out there want to be there or that there is some sort of unwillingness to take help. And I can say with certainty is there isn't really any help to offer them. So when I go and I talk to them, I talk to them about what they need right now. Do you need food? Do you need something to drink? Do you have gloves? Do you have clothes? They look wet. Where are you staying? Do you have a tent? Do you have a sleeping bag? Because I honestly have nothing to offer them in any other way. We can try to go to economic services. Have you used your 28 days yet? Because if you've used your 28 days, then all you get is adverse weather when it's cold enough. So people are doing this delicate dance of like, I'm saving my 28 days for when it's cold. And so because that's the choice they have to make right now. It's not, it really, it's we're living really kind of an unprecedented time in terms of the desire and really that people want the help and the systems that are there to help cannot meet the need. So I think I'll like time for questions and you guys probably, but I mean, and I don't know that I get like public safety is not really like, I'm not a police officer. I just work in the building with them. And I spend time with them from time to time. So if you have questions in the room. Yes. I just wanted to say, Lacey, Mike. Lacey, oh my goodness, how blessed are we that you are working in this position. I so much appreciate your candid conversation with us. I've learned things I was not aware of. Your boldness is brilliant. And I really want to thank you for that. Let's give her a hand. So curious if there's any talk in your circles or that you hear of things, things, things you could that maybe you'd like to see out of residence in order to help with things. I understand that maybe the simplest thing would be not calling for gut feeling type stuff just to keep, I don't know, keep things free. But like, you know, like one of the things I kind of, I think of as like a value system, like living here is like, is there something I can do? Is there something a group of us can do? You know, like sometimes in this, in our MPA, we talk about graffiti and we're like, well, maybe we can do something. And we talk about like, oh, there's this problem. Like, can we do something? And I'm not sure where the line is with all of these things, but just curious if that's any conversation that goes on. Or, and if there's not, then, you know, keep your, your mind open to that type of a thing, I suppose. No, I mean, I kind of in the same way that I was saying, like advocating for people to talk to their state legislators, talk to our, like not just the city, because honestly, like in my experience, and you got, and many of you probably, I've worked for Burlington for 15 years, but I'm not from Vermont. And so I know that government changes and how helpful or effective it can be is really dependent upon the people that are in the positions. But the people that I spend time with, the, you know, like Sarah Russell and the Urban Park Rangers and, you know, obviously the people that I work with regularly, I mean, we're, we spend more time in the community than we do anywhere else. Like we're in the community. We don't, I don't bring clients back to my, like people don't come back to our building. There's community in our title, so we intend to be in it. We don't intend to like, and it's also meant to be low barrier. And it's meant to be, we are trying to meet you where you are at with whatever you need help with. It doesn't matter what the help looks like or what the issue is. It's the, you have a problem and we're happy to help with whatever it is. So I think the, you know, when you do, one of the biggest things is if you think you see someone, if you see someone like, say like nodding out and you're walking by them, just if you can take a beat and just see if they're breathing. And if they're breathing, they're not overdosing. But if they're not breathing, you'll notice that very quick and then call. It's also, because oftentimes we get a lot of calls from people that are like, hey, I think this person's overdosing. And you're like, okay, where? And they're like, you know, the corner of the street and the street. All right, how do you know that? Well, I left and continued, you know, like just the continued walking. And you're like, okay, so how do you know they're overdosing? Well, they were, you know, they were slumped over. Well, were they breathing? I don't know. So it's like just taking a half a minute. I'd also say like people get really frustrated with houseless people when they offer food and they don't take it. We don't live in a food desert. So food is easy to come by. It is the easiest thing to come by. There are places of Salvation Army, cops, like all these places, even on holidays, there are meals for people. So it's really tangible. It's going to be like during the winter, it's going to be gloves, hats. Like if you're going to try to give someone to engage a houseless person, it's really going to be about more like the, you know, like you got good sneakers that you don't wear regularly, that you could donate to somebody that maybe only, you know, literally only has one pair of shoes and that heels probably lets water in. It's that sort of stuff in terms of humanizing the fact that, like, I don't, in my experience, I've helped plenty of people, many people get housing. I actually met Jake from working out of the motels during COVID. I was the one that helped kind of train and bring up the motel outreach team that COTS has. But before they existed, it was just me and the day is in because I didn't want to go in the building because the building is secure and we were trying to keep COVID out of it. So I was just working remote and I was just like, this isn't the best use of my time. I have people that are in these hotels that I work with. Why don't I just, if I'm working remote, work out of their lobby and then I'm still in the building, I'm helping people get connected to ESD. So back to your question, I think being a part of this is super important. But I also think that the engagement that we have on a local level needs to be kicked up a bit in terms of really pushing our state because if we had a day space that was low barrier because COTS is, you have to be sober, meaning that you can't present as if you're under the influence. And so that's hard for certain people. They have a lower tolerance for behavior. And so the day space where people would go during the day outside of the library, there isn't a space for them to go to because it's not low barrier. And so when you don't have anywhere to go during the day, you're just going to be outside. So I think in the state has been adamant that that's not what they're going to fund. But that is something that we really need and would really improve the quality of life within our community for both the individuals that are houseless and for the community as a whole. And so it's like the safe consumption sites that are legislated to death that are just slowly eking its way through, pushing our state government to really... They haven't built as much housing as they said that they were going to do. When they committed to it, like that's an issue. Champlain Housing Trust has done more than the state has in terms of building new housing. That's an issue. So that to me feels like one of the biggest missing pieces is that like... And again, I go to state meetings, I sit in state meetings and it's just I don't feel like I don't... Because we're so big, because we get a lot of money, they're just kind of... There really is kind of this like... Not Burlington. Really, you need more sort of attitude. And yes, we do need more. Please stop acting like... Just because you give us stuff doesn't mean that we have enough and that we shouldn't be advocating for more because we have a demonstrated need for more. And I think that if there was more public pressure from the citizens of Burlington saying like, you have opportunities to help us and you're not, you're telling like our, you know, Special Assistance and Homelessness, what a name is like, you're not telling her now. You're telling her now about the day-station. You're telling her now around trying to help people with storage because there's all these people that live outside with all of their belongings. That's something else that would really help. And there are plenty of municipalities that do it all over this country. We wouldn't be setting any sort of precedent. They just... It's not being choose to be funded right now. Yeah. I'm sorry. That was like... Well, I got was like a wraparound answer. Appreciate the answer. I can make phone calls and emails. I can... I don't think there's... You'll find anyone in this room that wants to punch down. We all want to punch up. Yeah, for sure. That's great. And I really like, I appreciate... And I also want people to know that like, the point, part of like why we exist is really... Because it is really hard to get a response from the officer side of the building. Whether you have a larceny from a car or some sort of vandalism. It is really hard to get an answer from over there because all they're running around and doing is just trying to deal with the things that are... That only they can deal with. But then those lower priority things that still... You're still a victim of a crime. You still need help. But because you're not... It's a quality... It's considered to be a quality of life crime because it's not blood, death, fire, weapons. So everything besides blood, death, fire, weapons is considered quality of life. But that doesn't mean you don't deserve an answer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get an answer. And part of why we exist is to be able to help be able to build a bridge to the other side because we can get information. We can tell you about what's going on with your... Or if this needs to get investigated. We can go over and say like, hey, can you put this to the top of the very massive pile? And so that's part of why we are here is to also be able to help answer questions about the system, about why you might not have heard from an officer, about our priority response plan, really any of those things outside of social services. We're meant to be, again, these generous that are be able to help with a problem, whatever that problem may look like. Beautiful question. I have a follow-on question right here. You mentioned like gloves or shoes that are better than the shoes they have. If we wanted to do a drive and collect gloves or collect hats or something, who would we coordinate with to have those distributed? I think Safe Harbor has a really good outreach team. They're the homeless healthcare down on South Benewski across from Turning Point. I, CVOEO has the CORA team and they are also an outreach team. They work out of beating Chittenden. There's groups that we can go to if we can collect some stuff and they know how to distribute it. Yeah, we also have the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. So they have a monthly public meeting that people are open to. If you want to learn more about the household system, how we are addressing homelessness or working on addressing homelessness, it gives you all the data around stats around what is going on in real time. And the Homeless Alliance is really, it's an alliance, as it says, and it is the way that federal funding comes into this community is through the continuum of care, which is the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. And then that gets pushed back out to providers. So it's the same sort of gig as the block grant where you are evaluating applications. Like they do that yearly. So part of COTS gets funding through this, the Homeless Alliance as a CDO for coordinated entry, which is the system for homeless information. So they also can take donations because we all work, all of the outreach teams work collectively. We meet monthly and we meet under kind of that umbrella of the Homeless Alliance. Okay, questions. Yeah, I just, so Troy Hedrick is here, who's in the state house. He was riding in a car. Troy, is this something that you can respond to? Oh, sorry. Right, exactly. Emma, thank you. We're in this amazing situation where we have two of our Burlington reps with us. And I would very much like to hear how we can rally together and advocate with the voices that you all are saying that we need to use. And I just need some direction. I mean, Troy, this is your district. So I'm not going to jump ahead of you if you're able to come off mute. Or I'm going to jump ahead of you. Okay. Oh, there you are. Emma, why don't you go ahead? I, everything is really choppy. I'm coming right to the Green Mountains now. So I think probably the best if you take this. Great. Okay. So folks, with my state representative hat, I represent Chittin 17, which is half of the Old North End and then into the New North End. And so a lot of what Lacey is talking about is absolutely true. I mean, one observation I will have for you because we have 11 state representatives to represent Burlington and six senators. We split up Burlington, so there's a Chittin Central and then Chittin in South. So there's three for basically sort of the central to North part of the city and then three who represent basically the South end. That is a significant number of state legislators when you think about it in the body of 30 senators and 150 state representatives. But I have to say we have not been a coordinated force. We're not organized in a coordinated fashion that I think frankly does right by Burlington or frankly even the County of Chittin County. And so I think that's really one where you're, I think you have Troy and Brian up here, right? As your representatives. And so I think making sure it's, you talk to other folks within Burlington and make sure those state reps and those senators know that we all need to push in the same direction in particularly related to this community safety crisis. Not everyone responded the same way when we were faced with a big decision about what to do with the motel housing program and the cliff frankly that was set up at the end of the session. I'm speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for Troy or Brian, although we were working closely together, but I want them to characterize their own positions. A lot of us are deeply concerned, but that was not every Burlington rep standing forward and saying there's going to be a consequence if we set up a cliff. There people need to go somewhere. And this essentially eviction of hundreds of people will have an impact. And while we got a little bit of an extension during the veto session, I think Lacey was mentioning that if they're when you create high criteria for people to stay in a program, it becomes very difficult for people who need actually a low barrier access to something like a basic need of housing. And so we set this up. And but this has been brewing for years too. I just don't want to say it's just housing because it's also substance use disorder. It's a lack of treatment beds. It's a lack of frankly a transparent system. So like folks who are doing Lacey's work, know when a bed is open, if it even exists and how to get people there, if they're ready for help. It's also, I'm actually surprised, not surprised, it's a sad surprise of how quickly people now are on the same page about overdose prevention sites and the reality that we are at that point, we're past that point. We need people to have safe places who are struggling with substance use disorder. So all to say, there's pretty much in my mind, at least a lot of clarity of how state representatives and state senators can be on the same page to represent the needs of Burlington. But let's remember what Lacey was saying. A lot of people who are coming to Burlington are from other communities and not just Burlingtonians, yet though we really need to push in the same direction to bring the state legislature to know that this is a priority in the governor. And I want to, if I could bold and hyper-size that font, the resistance from administration is real and the accountability and the calls and whatever needs to go directly to that office as well. It's more than just slow rolling out the opioid settlement money. There is resistance to really fast-tracking things like wrapping around the state laws we need to make overdose prevention sites realistic and not to study it. We're beyond studying it. And that's basically the governor's position on it so far. So I'm holding the mic way too long. So I'm just going to pause there and say, please reach outside of your district here, make sure that people who are in other parts of the city are speaking to their reps and speak to your senators. And the governor. Thanks. Sorry. We have other questions. Sean. Am I on? Yeah. And I want to, I don't know the answer to this question, but I want to kind of focus back on 108 Cherry too. That recently, I don't know where the negotiations are on that. The city was talking about buying 108 Cherry state. I don't know if that has happened and I don't know what the plans are for that. But as we started talking about where can we place low barrier shelter, I think there's possibilities there. And then I would also, I just, I want to just state clearly that, you know, Emma can speak for me here. I just, everything she just said is accurate. And I do think the reps especially have to do a better job of coming together. It's a little frustrating when even the non progressive, the democratic reps kind of build themselves as your reps and leave us out. So I think we've got solid relationships between the 11 of us. And I think we, and I think Emma did a good job of bringing us all together for the fire truck full. I think we can improve that. And then I really want to encourage folks in the room as well to start working with us to change the narrative. One of the kind of the most major responses I hear from opposition to these sorts of programs is that we're making it easier to be homeless in Burlington. And there is no place where it's easy to be homeless. So I, we have to talk with our neighbors as well in changing that narrative that sites like Emma's mentioning overdose prevention sites, low barrier shelter here in the day. Those are good things. Those are things that need to happen. If you want, if you don't want to remain uncomfortable about kind of what you're seeing as people find themselves outside and on church street, we need to, we need to bring the shelter. And that's not making it more easy for people to be on house in Burlington. That is giving people places to go where compassion can find them. All right, thanks. Um, Richard, come on, you've got the last question. And I'm not sure whether it's of Lacey or whether it's of Tim or Zariah. But it seems to me that in the last dozen years the economic commercial vitality of the city is constantly eroding things that were supposed to happen, haven't happened. And I wonder whether or not there's the two ways of looking at it. And one of them is to generate more money that is not tax increases. And I just like Tim and Zariah perhaps to say is the lack of apparent commercial vitality reflected in the city's, quite frankly, books. We're going to have a, well, okay, maybe that's rhetorical. Yeah, but so I'll just leave that thought anyway, because there's two sides to the equation. One is how you spend money. The other one is how you generate money. And it seems we're absolutely piss poor in doing that. I think that's the councilor on things, if that's okay. We're, well, first, thank you very much. Yes, yeah. I mean, not lastly, I'll just, the bright spots are, is I mean, we are the city right now, the state has announced that they are doing some low barrier shelters throughout the city. I think that there was five, they, I don't know where or who or any details to it that was supposed to be over the winter. The city is doing one, their low barrier shelter that they've done for the last five to six years, where it's just overnight and that's for 35 beds. And I mean, we really do have like Sarah, who was in the position for their own houselessness is just like, we fantastic at what she does. She knows what she's doing and she's a fierce advocate. I think we have really good people in the right positions to be pushing for us. And I, so I think there are things to be hopeful for. I mean, I think we know what we need in terms of solutions. It's just how we get them. And that of course is always the conundrum we find ourselves in. So thank you all. Again, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Let me talk a little bit about this. Next on our full agenda is Ben. Ben. I don't think we've met. This is Ben Travers. You probably all know, I didn't know. That's not true. He's going to talk about maintaining open and accessible NPAs. And I think this has to do with the resolution of city council recently passed with regard to what our bylaw should be. They're right. What they could be, what they could be. Yes. Okay. So should I just introduce myself and or okay, great. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. Ben Travers, city councilor from ward five. It's great to be in your beautiful meeting space here. I drive by it twice a day as I drop my two year old off at preschool at the Javi Zedek. But I've never been in your space here. So this is really great. Thank you for having me. As you just indicated, I'm here to talk about a resolution that was just unanimously passed by the city council a couple of meetings ago. In fact, I think the time I've been on the city council, which this is my first term and so I'm still in my first two years, I believe this is the first resolution I can think of that was co-sponsored by every member of the city council that's titled as a resolution to maintain open and accessible NPAs. A bit of context here. I think as perhaps many people here know, but just in case you don't, the NPAs were established about 40 years ago in the early 1980s by resolution of the city council. And you can look at that resolution if you go to the NPA page on CEDO. It doesn't provide very many parameters though in terms of what the neighborhood planning assemblies should be or could be. Other than that, from my perspective, the NPAs are really Burlington's version of town meeting day. Burlington is too big to have a town meeting day like many other cities and towns, most other cities and towns in the States have, which is why when we have town meeting day, we go to the ballot box and cast our vote. It's our NPAs that once a month across the city really allow us an opportunity to come together to talk about the issues of the day, to hear from city officials, other elected officials, as to their priorities and for the community to provide feedback on that. Outside of that, the original resolution provides that the NPAs are supposed to remain open and accessible. Those are the terms that are used in the initial resolution to all. And it provides that each of the NPAs are supposed to elect officers, as you all have done in your steering committee and as the other NPAs have done in electing their steering committee. The resolution that came up a couple of weeks ago arose from an incident that occurred at one of the NPAs here where there was an individual who had reached out to the city council and reached out to a number of other stakeholders to indicate that they, for very particular reasons, felt very unwelcome that that particular NPA was not open and accessible to them because of their gender identity and gender expression. That complaint, I would say, raised other concerns from other folks who reached out to the city council and spoke to their own concerns about feelings that they had had in going to certain NPAs. And I should say it's not the Ward 1 NPA here, but it raised other concerns from folks in going to the NPAs and not feeling like that NPA was open and accessible to them, perhaps because of some protected characteristic of that individual, whether it be their gender or their gender identity or expression or their race or what have you. This was, I would say, a pretty fast-moving situation. And let me just say at the outset, I have heard from some of you here that there was some concern around the fact that this resolution came to the city council before we had an opportunity to connect with each of the NPAs about it. And I will tell you that as someone who served for five years on the Ward 5 NPA Steering Committee, I probably would have felt that way too. But it was, again, a fast-moving situation that was trying to directly respond to some really serious concerns that came out of a particular NPA. I will tell you in another respect, it was designed to perhaps avoid further harm and further concerns being raised around this situation. Let's try to get ahead of this quickly through a resolution that is going to address it. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions that folks have about it, but that was the intention behind it. I will tell you that I reached out to my own NPA Steering Committee in Ward 5. And while this resolution was cosponsored by everyone else on the council, I was the one who was driving the resolution. And let me just own at the outset that hindsight 2020, I wish we had more time and would have liked to have reached out to folks at all the NPA Steering Committees to receive their feedback on it because I have heard that concern. That said, you mentioned previously that the resolution says something about what your bylaw should be. That's not what the resolution says. So in my mind, the resolution that was passed by the city council is an intention to start a further conversation about how in 2023, 40 years after the NPAs were first started, we can reaffirm our commitment as a community to maintaining open and accessible NPAs. I think for a lot of good reasons, our idea as to what is open and accessible in 2023 is different than it was in the early 1980s. I'm glad that we are there now as a community. And I think it's time really for all of our public bodies, not just the NPAs. I think it applies to the city council as well for us to reconsider and reaffirm our commitment to what maintaining openness and accessibility means. And so the resolution asks the NPAs to have that discussion in a few areas. One of them is by looking at your bylaws and your governing documents to see if there are improvements that can be made to it to further dedicate ourselves to that standard. I will tell you that I think in taking a look at the Ward 1 NPAs bylaws, I think you're already there in terms of things like a non-discrimination statement, in terms of language committing ourselves to open meeting laws, in terms of other pieces that are reflected in the resolution, like ensuring that if an NPA is going to vote on a resolution that those voting would disclose a conflict of interest that they may have, for example. So these are items that are reflected in the resolution that it's asking the NPAs to take a look at either individually or collectively as all wards. The second part of three parts in the resolution asks that the city and we did connect with CEDO, and I know you have great partners in CEDO here, in helping the NPAs. We connected with the city attorney's office and we connected with the Department of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging in the city, in terms of this resolution. And it's asking them to sit down with the NPAs to figure out whether or not there can be some sort of dispute resolution process that you can work out, again, either individually as an NPA or as all wards in coordination with the city, such that if for whatever reason there is someone who feels like something has happened at an NPA, or again, I think this could really apply to any public body in the city where they feel unwelcome for whatever reason, where they feel like perhaps the bylaws or governing documents or values of the NPA have been violated in any way, that they have a process to try to resolve that dispute. Right now, if someone feels that way, we don't really have a clear process as to where that individual should go. And so that's the second part of the resolution is to ask these city agencies and departments to have a discussion with the NPAs. It's not dictating exactly where that should end up, but it's asking them to have a discussion about where we could end up in terms of that complaint resolution process. The third part of this has to do with trainings. I think many folks here will remember when the current administration stood up, the Department of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Soon after the REIB was stood up, there was an effort to establish a training program for city boards and commissions, for city counselors, as well as perhaps for members of the steering committee here who were on the steering committee back then may remember an invitation that NPA steering committee members received to that training. So it's been an effort that's been taken on in the past to stand up an opportunity for folks to receive trainings on openness and accessibility. I think there's clearly been a significant amount of transition in the REIB department, including the fact that we have a new director there. And so the third part of the resolution is really trying to return to that concept. And we stand up trainings, not just for our NPA steering committee members, but also other volunteer board members and commissioners around the city for them to sit down to attend trainings on these issues that we're talking about here. Again, there, whether it's on trainings or standing up a dispute resolution process or taking a look at our bylaws and governing documents at NPAs, the resolution is written in such a way that it's asking for city officials to begin this discussion with you all. I understand from hearing from Director Pine at CEDO here that there's perhaps some effort to get the All Wards group back together to have a meeting to discuss these issues, among others. I think that that would be great. I think it's been some time since the All Wards group used to be a more robust group that met more often. I think there could be a lot of value in that group getting back together. And I hope that happens and we look forward to taking a part in it. So that is an overview of what happened with this resolution. I'm glad to have an opportunity to come to speak to you about it. I'm glad that Jonathan and other folks from the NPA here reached out actually before we voted on it. And we did make some further tweaks to the resolution. Thank you for that feedback to really make it clear that this is the beginning of a conversation on these issues with you all. So thank you for that feedback. And if people have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Otherwise, I look forward to continuing to work with you all on these issues. We have questions in the room. If I could just make a quick comment. Thanks. And thanks so much, Ben. I just wanted to make a few comments from my own perspective on this. I supported the resolution. I still support it and stand by it. I'm glad we voted on it. And I'm proud that we did it and I think it was the right move. In terms of the process, and I've told a few of you this, and I said this at the Ward 8 NPA meeting, which I also attend, I regret my role and sort of the process of this. If I had this to do over again and with the benefit of hindsight, I would have taken the time to reach out to this NPA Steering Committee and the Ward 8 NPA Steering Committee and engage you while we were discussing this so that this didn't appear to come out of the blue from your perspective. With the benefit of hindsight, that seems like an obvious thing I should have done, but I didn't do it and I wanted to sort of own that mistake. But having said that, I have heard some discussion. I don't think it necessarily came out of the Ward 1 NPA scene, but that this was some sort of power grab or that there was some sort of dark ulterior motive to this. And I just want to stay absolutely unequivocally, from my perspective, my discussions with Ben, I feel comfortable for Zariah and Milo's perspective that this wasn't intended to do anything other than make an improvement in the accessibility and openness of this important city institution. So I really appreciate Ben coming here and talking about the history of NPAs and the genesis of this, but I wanted to at least add my perspective and my own reflections on this process and how I could improve upon it the next time. Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to quickly say that, as you all know, I like to visit other NPAs sometimes. And I know sometimes even if people don't necessarily like what I have to say, there is an appreciation of frankness and honesty. And there's a respect. The incident that happened to me at this particular NPA, especially over discussions of equity and policing was really disturbing. And one of the things that this really brought to light was a lack of a process when people saw what happened and CEDO knew what happened and wanted to do something, but it dragged out for months and months, certain people would come and bolden with that behavior and think they can just do anything. And that's what happened and that's where a lot of the urgency came from. So I want to reiterate also as a city counselor, we didn't mean to step over any toes. It was just that we've got to make sure that all the NPAs have some type of grievance process which didn't exist at this particular NPA and also that the NPAs have the proper support from CEDO to help them with issues and to protect people. And we have a city that has diversified in so many ways and there has to be an appreciation of that or at least a respect of that for people who want to work in these bodies and on these steering committees. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I don't know to what degree the language and the bylaws of the various NPAs differ from each other, but is there an opportunity here to create a model language that could be developed collectively by the NPAs and the various municipal offices that would be involved so that it's something that everybody could buy into as being good language to include in the bylaws? Yeah, that's a great question. So as you look across the city, I think there are six different NPAs. If I'm not mistaken, we have Ward 5, Ward 6, Ward 4 and 7, Ward 1, Ward 8, Ward 2 and 3. So I was right, six NPAs. And each one of them has different bylaws. I think, I do believe that all of them do at least have bylaws now, but I don't know that that was necessarily always the case that all of the NPAs had bylaws. And in some respects, I think that's a good thing, because I do think that each NPA is a reflection of its neighborhood's identity. And there are various aspects of the bylaws that I can envision would continue to reflect that identity. On the other hand, I think that there's some minimum elements, like some of the pieces that we're talking about here, that I think could be of value to be incorporated in each of those bylaws. And it's in part why we have connected with the city attorney's office in CEDO. I know that their intention is to try to draft some model language and to assist NPAs in working through this. Again, I will tell you all that are looking at the Ward 1 NPAs. I think yours could be the model, frankly, in terms of what other NPAs could do. Good job, John. I will say, I think that John reviewed the Ward 5 NPA. I did. Oh, I did. I read them all. Ward 5 is excellent. I think one of them could be models here. But yeah, I think there could be some value. And my hope and anticipation here is that the NPAs will have resources available, such that you're not just left to your own devices to model through the suggestions that the city council has offered here. Yes. I just wanted to mention something briefly. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Flosca. I'm the public engagement coordinator for the NPAs. I started about a month ago, so I'm pretty new. But I work for CEDO. And for those of you on the steering committee member list for this NPA, I reached out to you today about an awards meeting, so that is in the works. And we'll be talking about that as that resolution and working to create this model language and have these concrete bylaw language that'll be basically language that hopefully all the NPAs will adopt and then can expand on. So I just want to say that, as you said, Councilor Gervais, we'll be working with you all on that. And also, if you wanted to see the resolution that was being spoken of, you can look on the city website. I will include a link as well in the meeting minutes for this meeting, so you can look on Civic Clerk and find those. Welcome. Yeah, thank you. And I think that answered my first question because I was curious about process at this point, but I think in all awards conversation about what bylaw should look like makes perfect sense. I really appreciate the intention of this. I was disturbed by the prescriptive nature of it. Without consultation, the City Council seemed to be telling the NPAs what they needed to go do, so I was upset about it and I'm over that. But I guess what it made me start to think about was this is a very important thing that the NPA, that the City Council is asking the NPA to think about and work through. I'm wondering whether the City Council might consider a resolution that might look in the other direction, which is what the City Council should be getting from the NPAs because we feel like we're a group with opinions. In this particular case, we weren't asked our opinion, and that's okay, I get it. But there's so many things. And earlier tonight, we heard about, Sharon spoke about it, is the haste with which a letter of intent was signed on the Gateway Block. I'm not sure I have an opinion on that, but it would have been wonderful for a City Council to come to an NPA meeting and talk about it and say, what do you think? And ask us what we thought about it. I'm wondering, and Mila, I'll stop yakking, but I'm wondering whether the City Council would consider a resolution that would talk about the circumstances under which the votes will not be taken at City Council until consultation has been done with the NPAs. I agree with that so strongly. I voted for it. I was angry that night. I'm still a little bit not over it. I felt that over the process, over the years with regards to Memorial, we have talked a lot about Memorial and we've talked a lot about that block and we've had some votes and we've had community input. We've had input, but the last two calls for RFPs were really not fully discussed with the public. People really didn't know RFPs were out there and then we didn't have an appropriate response. I'm not even really clear if there was another RFP out there, but essentially, this is the way the mayor does things. What we voted on, it was the first time we talked about it. It is a leadership thing at the top in the city, but I absolutely agree. I would be happy to work on that if anybody else would like to work on that. I think that we would be happy to take the blame if the City Council said, well, we haven't consulted the NPAs yet. We can't vote on this today. I'm going to defend ourselves. I'm at least going to defend Milo and I'd say that every time we've asked to delay something because we haven't gotten adequate public input on it, we see it on Thursday or Friday when it goes on the agenda. We're asked to vote it on Monday. The City Council has never taken us up on maybe holding it off and the mayor tends to put a lot of pressure on us to move things along. Hence, a resolution would be a wonderful thing. So then you have it in document. And having City Councils who vote for it. I just wanted to say something really quick on that. While I definitely agree that I think that City Council should have input from the public and their NPAs, there's a part of me, and I know that maybe a little part of everybody that also feels like that can potentially delay things from happening, which is what Richard was getting to earlier. Projects or things going on in the city just seem to be taking a long time or things don't happen. If NPA has an input and then something has to change at the City Council, meaning that then has to come back to us and then has to go back to City Council, I think that can hinder things from happening. And I think that there can be trust or there should be trust in the people that we elect in the City Council and mayor and whoever else is within the city to do what their expertise and their knowledge and experience, they will make decisions that are trust in them, that they'll make the decisions that are right for us. So I definitely think that we should have input, but I think that we should have trust in the people that we elect and who are making some decisions for us as well. Does anybody think we should have NPA meetings every Sunday night before the City Council meetings? Well, I don't want to stand any further in the way. As Ryan, Tim, let me just say very briefly again, thank you very much for having me. I will say, I don't think you will want to weigh in on every City Council vote, but I would welcome a resolution along those lines, Jonathan and other folks here. I think when I was on the Ward 5 NPA steering committee, I was an advocate for the NPAs to receive increased budgets in order for them to take on a bigger role in the City and advocate for the NPA to be a larger voice in City decisions. And so, I would welcome a resolution along those lines and would look forward to working with Zariah and her folks. No, please, Hover, get in here. So thank you very much for having me. And thanks very much for coming. Okay. Tell me what's going on. All right. Thanks very much. Are we done? No. All right, I'm just going to meet Tim. I don't see any school board members here. So I think you have got the floor. Great, we have 15 minutes. You're going to talk about public safety? I'm not going to talk about public safety. I think Lacey did a much better job of talking about public safety than I could. I'm going to talk about the two joint ones or the joint. The joint committee and police service. Yes, correct. And first I want to answer the question on economic vitality, which one, we just got a great presentation on Sunday night from it wasn't direct. It was also the Church Street Marketplace, but she has another title as well. But I just thought it was very interesting that the city actually doesn't have fewer visitors. We don't have less rooms and board tax. We don't have less folks walking on Church Street. We just don't have the same revenues. So the folks who are walking on Church Street aren't buying the same amount of things that they were before COVID. So there's lots of reasons for that. What seems like one of the big reasons is that shops just aren't open as much. So that's they're understaffed. They don't have different hours. They're not open in the same extent. But I just thought that was something to celebrate as like we have as many visitors. There's just as many people walking around. It's not necessarily contributing to some of the economic vitality that we want, but we still have a vibrant, well visited, well frequented downtown compared to pre-COVID levels. The other thing around economic vitality that we wanted to talk about is or that I want to talk about, it's just me. Sorry, Ben can stand in for Tim. Tim left because his son was getting tired. Did you already say that? No. Right. Correct. Is I think that's the best thing that we're doing. And I'm very excited because I ran on this four years ago. It got completely obliterated and everything else that happened in 2020 but is the missing middle housing. Like the best way, I think for our city to get some of the economic vitality, that's just really sure fires to increase the grand list, which means having more infill, which is what this middle missing housing is. Because even though we've had more single family homes maybe being turned into dorm style housing or being subdivided, overall a lot of the houses are still just big houses and we haven't really grown our buildings, haven't grown the population of Burlington. And so I think that's going to be one of the exciting things is to have more housing that's more appropriate for family sizes today and everything else. So I highly encourage folks to have like this is, it's so because we did short-term rentals, then we did the south end rezoning, now we're doing middle, missing middle, and it feels like each one we're doing faster and faster even though they're bigger and bigger decisions about what our city is going to look like. So I highly encourage folks to join the AARP coffee talks and I know they've got some other things that are going on as well for feedback or to come to our meetings but I think the coffee talks are probably more interesting than our meetings and Megan's great at bringing public input back into the planning commission meetings. So the thing that I was going to talk to you all about because I think I have a substantive question that you can give feedback on is the oversight conversation that the charter change and the ordinance committee have been having. And I just wanted to go through where we've gotten, where there's been consensus and then where there's some non-consensus. And I'm first going to rank on Ben a little bit and say that we started off slow and I'm going to blame that on the fact that we're chaired by two attorneys who aren't good at facilitating conversations maybe. And eventually, sorry Ben, and eventually Sarah Carpenter and I at least throughout a proposal that I think is kind of in the middle and then Ben through in a proposal which is kind of on one side and Gene Birdman throughout a proposal which is another and then Tim and Joan are also, so those are the full members have been weighing in. So the things we have agreed on so far and Ben will correct me if I get anything wrong is that we should increase the level of oversight that the role of oversight should be assigned to the police commission so that it's one body. That the oversight body should have access to all complaints and that that fairly recent change should be memorialized so that it's ongoing going forward. That when the oversight body disagrees with the police chief, there's another process that happens. So if they agree everything goes forward no problem. If they disagree on policy, it goes to the city council to mediate to decide policies as we do for anything else in the city. If they disagree on discipline, we have not found the who should be the arbiter of that decision. So we've decided they each get to make a decision. We're having some arguments about who makes it first and what that process looks like. But ultimately, we haven't found a good solution for who should be a mediator when they disagree. And if that is the mayor of the city council, which we know can get really political if it should be an oversight other body, which can get really, you know, another layer of bureaucracy. So like what we think we should do with that. So that's what when I finish talking, I'll let folks weigh on what they think on that. Um, the size of the oversight body, I believe we somewhat settled on increasing it to nine instead of seven, which Sarah and I proposed, because we think that could help them divvy up the work, which is already kind of happening naturally in the body of seven, but that could make it more formal, like, if they wanted to that three, you know, just look at complaints, three, just look at policies, three, just look at something else. So um, and then I've been, I don't know that we have, I don't know how much we've talked about the consensus part of this yet, but um, we've deaf, I've been pushing a lot for transparency so that we at least have summary data at the end that says how often the police commission and the oversight body did disagree. I mean, if it's not on the specific decisions that it's some understanding of like where we are, and also then the oversight body doesn't just get complaints, but that they also get summary data at the end of the year that's like, oh, you know, X individual officer maybe is showing bias towards people with disabilities or bias towards people who are black and brown, and that that's something that is also reviewed, not just individual complaints. That was a lot. Yes. Okay, so I know for um, I think I've been following these meetings a bit, and I think something that is uh, hard to maybe hold at once as someone who's just like observing this process is that there's some things that would need to be a charter change, and there's some things that need to be in ordinance. And so they're having these conversations and they're kind of different timelines because it's harder change needs to happen so that we can get to vote on it on the ballot, but then ordinance seems like that will be become a little bit later. So as I'm watching it unfold, I'm like, which parts do I care a lot about that I feel are important? And when do I push on them when? So one question I have is, it seems that there seems to be like, I was hearing decent consensus around increased transparency. I feel like Ben, you've talked a lot about that a lot as well in this meetings. Is that something that would show up in charter change language or is that something that would be more of like ordinance stuff? Um, I guess you're saying about the like, you know, other places they you have to report all of the complaints and anonymized way to the public, that kind of thing, if we wanted to push for something like that, is that something that would be in the charter change or more on the ordinance side? Yeah, how much we put into charter change and how much we put into over into ordinance to some extent as a judgment call. It's not like there's hard and fast rules. However, I would say any like, I would any, I think that anything that is high level, and that you know will be your goal for a long time is worth putting into charter change. So saying something like there, like this type of transparency needs to happen, I think is a good thing to put into the charter change, how it happens and the mechanisms and when and like, that is the stuff that I would put in ordinance. So I feel like that's a balance to walk. I honestly feel like the community control one went too far and like what they put into the charter change versus ordinance. But that also makes sense because they weren't getting what they wanted from the city council who's in charge of ordinances. But now that it's in the city council hands, I do hope that we put the high level goals into charter change, including some of the things like, you know, a sentence or two around transparency without fleshing out all of the details around what that looks like. Karen, you had a question? Yes. Thank you. This is going back to Richard's comment about, you know, like, we need some money in our city. And I have walked around Winniski lately and I have been, I go to Trader Joe's so I know what's happening in South Burlington. Why are they able to build four and five-story apartment buildings that a lot of people can live in? We're waiting, I don't know, has it been nine years since the mall was torn down? I think it was 2014. And because we have, I brought this article, I hope everybody read this about flight sites in Burlington. They're all over the place. I mean, I walked by the Pearl Street Abandoned Gas Station all the time. It drives me nuts. I've reported it. We're not finding these people. It's said in this article that we could be finding land, you know, these abandoned sites. I think there are eight of them. At least, I think it's a 3000 a year. I don't know, I'm forgetting this, but it said that since, I feel like for eight years we have only find a total of $4,400 for sites like this. graffiti is illegal. Letting places look like this, turning them into parking lots. That's all like not allowed in our zoning. And we are just getting dumped on. And South Burlington and Lewinsky can build housing. I don't get it. I mean, why are we not? And one of the things that's said in this article is that like, for instance, that lot on Pearl Street, where the gas station is, that could be developed. But it's been vacant for how long, Richard? 10 years, 15, I mean, a long time. And they are not paying property taxes on what it could be, right? And the same with the mall, when that was destroyed and the parking garage was demolished with no money in sight to rebuild, we lost a huge amount of property taxes and sales taxes for all those stores in the mall. So I mean, we have a time here, we're going to elect a new maker. I really think that, and I have been here like 45 years, what has happened to Burlington now is just totally unacceptable. And we have to look at this administration for leading us in this path and the counselors that were on this, you know, really the mall, it says in here it started with the mall, the demolition of the mall. And so anyway, I hope everybody will read this article in seven days. It's great. And I just think that we need more money in Burlington, like Richard said. And why can't, why can Winnicki build? Why can South Burlington build? We wanted this, I didn't, but this 14 story grand, you know, place, we're not even getting that. So we really have to look at not to mention the 750 jobs that were promised, new jobs that were promised, net new jobs that were promised, not to mention the thousands of jobs that the medical center sent out to tell you drive from downtown. Right. Oh, it was just people were actually spending money generating commerce. Right. So we really need to follow what's happened to the city. And I mean, I can't stand these sites. People talk about the Bove's restaurant, you know, why are they not developing that site? They have the money. They just bought the marina. You know, so it's in Colchester. So I mean, there is a reason I know that. I need to let you, Roy, answer the question if there's a question in there. So I think I can't rebuild. Yeah, I think there's a few questions in there. Some of the, some of the things like the tax thing, I think that's something that's really frustrating at the state level, because I do, I think that there's a disincentive to do anything to like write like some of like the, the old motel, like that lot and everything until like Memorial or something is done, because it's like, oh, once I know what that is and what that's going to look like, I can build something custom suit to like be this and wait for better economic times, all those other things. I do think that that's a problem. I think that's going to be hard to address at a city level from a tax perspective, from a fines perspective. I don't know enough about that. I feel like you were on the email where Bill pushed back and said we can't find these people without the Supreme Court going back and saying you find them too much. Even though I think everything we've ever find anyone has been more than reasonable. And I'm honestly not really sure what the, what the answer to that is and I haven't looked into it to be quite honest. There was something else you said that I was going to talk about. Why can't we build? I do think that some of this middle missing housing is I think that we've had bad zoning, like we've had outdated zoning that we haven't updated in a really long time. And I think that there's much more appetite right now for pushing through some of the zoning that will change. I mean, this will change what the city looks like, especially along like the corridors. And I think that there hasn't been a lot of appetite for that. I think there's been a lot of like, we want Burlington to be what Burlington is. So I think that that's part of the building. And then in the downtown, I think we all know what happened with the pit and why that wasn't. And I do, I do like, I'm not like, I think that I can say this without being because it's not about like Democrats versus progressives. I think that this is something like, I don't, I think we need to do a better job of negotiating when we have leverage over things, whether that's, and I'm still, I'm also frustrated with Ben, sorry, but you're in the room. So I'm going to say for the F 35s, like I think that went through really fast without us like really thinking or talking about it. I've heard similar things about that I'm not I'm not a developer or a lawyer, but I've heard similar things about like the development agreement and like, so I just, I think I'm hoping that the next may or whatever party they're from will do a better job of like pausing, not just saying, don't worry, everything's going to be okay. There's no problems here and pushing stuff through because I think that hasn't served us that well. That's my hot take. And then the one other thing they'll say about the missing middle housing just because I want folks to know where we're going because it is such a big deal is we're talking about removing minimum, minimum lot size and things like units per acre and rather than that regulating all of the housing zoning by height limits and lot coverage limits, which will be different for high density, middle density, low density. And I also think that will mean that we'll have to get better at enforcing things like lot coverage if that's going to be one of our biggest levers for what is happening on lots. Can you speak at all to the MOU? I don't. And this is another problem I have with the mayor. I think that he sits on this stuff for a really long time, gives it to the public really late and then we've got a few days to react once that happens. So all I can say is that I'll push really hard to make sure that you all do have a chance to respond to it and reflect on it before it comes to the city council. I don't have control over when stuff comes to the city council or when it's released to the public. So I can't control that, but I will say that just because the mayor said before open session that we've been making a lot of progress, I don't know that I agree with his statement that we're making a lot of progress. I'll just say. More specifically, question on the airport. What's the question? So just a comment in terms of the city council through your president controls its agenda and just a reminder in terms of the pressure from the mayor to get something on in a hurry, which is a strategy to get things through without a lot of public comment. So very briefly, we've lost 70 percent of our capacity from BTV to LaGuardia and Kennedy. Who was asleep at the switch there? Was it the state? Was it the city? I mean, it sounds from what I understand is that it was really a problem with New York City, not with Burlington. And so that as folks are trying to decide with a busy New York airport, what flights are the most profitable for them, Burlington wasn't up there. So let me just comment on that. Well, I do because the congressional delegation has written a letter to JetBlue about this. You may have read about it. The delegation is very concerned about this. And it is unclear exactly what the motivation is behind this. It does have something to do with the lower number of air traffic controllers in the New York area. And that route goes into JFK. However, there is some thought that potential possibly JetBlue, since they actually increased their number of routes to Europe. At the same time, there is some question as to what their motivation was and whether they were simply hiding behind a lower number or lack of air traffic controllers in the New York area. So the delegation has written a letter to JetBlue asking a number of questions and asking the CEO of JetBlue to provide some answers to those questions about what they're doing and why. And it's also offered to work with them because some of the issues rest with the FAA, the federal aeronautics administration and their regulation of air traffic controllers. So there's a number of questions that have been asked and we're awaiting answers from the CEO of JetBlue. I will say one more thing. This is not as a city council. This is just as me, which is I think like 70% of the time that I look for flights, it's actually cheaper to fly out of Burlington than to train to New York City and fly out that way. So that just doesn't seem sustainable from a financial perspective. Well, Delta also took four flights of those routes. And we also ought to remember that one of the sticks with JetBlue when they first came here was that they were going to land at Kennedy to take advantage of slots that were not being used on transcontinental and transatlantic flights. So there's a lot of disingenuous rhetoric going on from both the airport and the airlines. Great. Good to know. And it looks like the congressional delegate. Is there other things you want to cover? That's all that I had. Do we have time for one more question? Any more questions? Okay. You got it. So just a quick comment on the charter change on the police commission issue and maybe a clarification when you give your opinion. Yeah, nobody gave their opinion. I'm going to give my opinion, which is, well, first of all, in terms of charter change and what to put in a charter change and what to put in an ordinance. A lot of that's also strategic because, you know, the more detail you put in, the more the legislature gets to pick over every word and the legislature has ultimate power to completely rewrite any town's charter that comes before it, whether it's, you know, it can rewrite theoretically sections of the charter that you haven't even brought to the legislature at that time. But strategically, it's, as Jariah was saying, it's really good to keep it pretty high level and then do the detail in a local ordinance or through resolutions. But what I was going to say was I would suggest that the ultimate decision be with the commission on disciplinary issues, even when there's a disagreement between the chief and the commission. I like the idea of increasing the number of folks because, you know, one of the reasons that people had cited for creating a whole separate accountability body and, you know, the original charter change that failed was because there's a lot of work to be done here and sharing it is, you know, among other folks, an additional number of folks is best. I really would think it would be not advisable to elevate disagreements between the chief and the commission to the city council because it will become political. And yeah, I think it should be with the commission. Hey, Tom, wait, wait, I want to, can I just have one more? Because Earhart said, and I just want to, you said nobody answered. So Earhart gave a great answer. I think leaving it with the commission makes sense. You may consider something like a super majority or something like that, you know, like a veto override kind of thing. But that would be a place where it would make sense to do that. So just so you got some opinions. Thank you. Thank you very much. And our meeting is