 All right, we'll call it seven o'clock. Let's get started. My name is Matt Herlbert. I'll be your moderator for the evening. Welcome towards forum seven NPA for January 2022. Just basic ground rules as we get started. Just a reminder to always listen to other speaking, respect the agenda, respect the process, be kind to your neighbors. We want you to share your opinions politely, treat people respectfully, have your questions prepared when you go to ask them in this digital format. Please remember always to keep your volume in the bottom left of your screen on mute at all times unless you're called on to speak. When you're called to speak because of time constraints, we're not gonna do the round robin where everybody announces their name. So we ask when you speak, if you ask a question to please identify yourself and the word that you're from. Something new, but old. If you're not from words four or seven, we're gonna try to get to everybody's questions, but just be patient. We're gonna try to give priority to words four and seven. Keep in mind that this is being recorded. It is CCTV that's doing the recording and live streaming, which is cool. As far as asking questions, please raise your hand either by waving like me or use your little wave button to raise your hand. And my hand watchers are gonna be helping me by other texts or announcing when there are people that wanna ask questions. So I think that kind of covers our ground rules. Moving forward, let's start with a couple of minutes of announcements. If anybody has an announcement for the community I'm trying to see hands. Sarah, I think I saw your hand, would you like to go? Just in case you don't get to hear enough of us tonight. I just wanna let you know that Martine and I are planning a question and answer Zoom meeting for all the word for residents and we'll post that out on Facebook for February 10th at seven o'clock. So we'll try to get the link out to you soon. Awesome, thank you. Any other announcements? I'm seeing none, so I'm gonna move on. Let's get things kicked off with our elected officials and up first we're gonna talk or hear from legislative updates. So either Emma, Carol, or Bob if one of you would like to start us off. Carol and Bob, can I pull rank with a small one? I have to get to bed in about 15 minutes. Do you mind terribly? Okay, thank you. We've had a rough week all because COVID has come to our house. We're doing okay, but it's tough and I just wish everyone health and well-being because this is a real thing and it's a struggle for folks, especially if young kids. So I know Bob, I trust Bob will tell you a lot about what's happening in Housegov Ops related to redistricting, related to Burlington Charter Change items. I'm certainly not telling him what to cover but I don't wanna duplicate since that is his committee but there has been activity on both of those fronts, great. And so I thought I would hone in a little bit and it's interesting that Representative Kimball is on tonight, I think you'll be hearing from him perhaps another topic, he and I serve on House Commerce and we've been talking for the first three weeks of the session around workforce development and really diving in by industry and different sectors of our economy to examine all the components on what it would really take to essentially modernize how we've approached workforce development and really understand the reasons why workers are slow to return to the economy in terms of open positions that employers have. And we've dove a little bit in with hearing with folks who testify around issues related to people searching for livable jobs meaning wages that they can live on, benefits that the employer provides and if they're not meeting what people need, people are really choosing to vote with their feet and choose to work elsewhere or choose not to return to certain sectors of our economy. So there's a lot of interesting stuff to sort of unpack there, including looking at how our CTE system, so that's the career technical education system in Vermont, so Burlington Tech here locally and Essex Tech, how those pieces intertwine with getting high school students ready for career pathways, be it through the CTEs or going off to college of course, as well as adult education that's sort of interwoven by those programs and looking at how we're funding those programs or different ways to go about that to make sure we're really being responsive to how folks work today and the skills and the training they need. So if you want to, as I always say, dork out at any of these topics, you can always reach out to me on workforce development. To a bill as I'll just mention that I've introduced this session related to things I've talked about before at the MPA would be the first H616, which would be to propose an unemployment advocate office for the state of Vermont. This is actually done by at least about six or seven other states from which I've found so far including Maine, close to us in New York, it would set up an office like the Office of Healthcare Advocate, which would allow to help for monitors, filing unemployment claims, some assistance once they go past the initial claim process if they get stuck, if they get stuck in the appeals process, the adjudication process, it's pretty complicated and pretty much every other state service folks can have access to and have a right to. It's done in pre-plane language and people can follow their way and figure it out and unemployment is just not that. A lot of folks got stuck in that system in the pandemic and we can do better by Vermonters. So I'm really hoping that this office, this bill idea gets some prime time this session and we can figure out how to create a sustainable way for folks to reach unemployment and frankly really clean up the process so folks aren't tripping into fraud or other pieces not due to intentionally doing so, but tripping up because I just don't understand the process. The other one I'll just mention briefly and I'll pass the mic because you all have a lot of other exciting races. Ooh, a lovely number two minute, love that, thank you. Jeff would be age six, 15 which actually dovetails a bit around workforce development. It's a wage discrimination and wage transparency bill. It's in-house general and that bill does a couple of different things. It strengthens our current wage discrimination laws which right now is specifically carved out as sex as a protected class. My bill proposes to add race and gender identity to that protection class, if you will. And this would be for expanding our, I'm blanking on it, sorry. This is like tired mom brain here, but anyway, it would expand. We have two ways. There's discrimination laws that have a longer list of protection categories but this bill would allow folks to have that wage specific discrimination added protections. And the transparency part of that is interesting because it dovetails with workforce development because it would require employers among a couple other things to post wage or salary information in a job posting. So there's transparency for job applicants to know what they're applying for as well as I think making it more competitive among employers to know what folks are offering and why perhaps they're not getting applicants for their jobs. The state of Colorado does this already and I think it would cast a lot of good light on just hiring practices and really empower women and BIPOC folks in particular in making sure that they're moving into careers that are really supporting their economic wellbeing. 30 seconds, all right. So what can I pick from from my list to tell you otherwise? Other than just to say, I'm gonna continue to do written updates through From Porch Forum and the Neighborhood Wards 4 and 7 Facebook group. I'm gonna try virtual meet and greets again. That wasn't so apparently popular last session but maybe you all really love Zoom a lot in 2022. So I'll post them, I'll try that again. And as always, reach out to me. There's a lot moving in the second session of the Dianium. Thanks so much all. Take care. Thank you, mama. Yeah, thank you. So as just a timekeeper note, so if we have surplus time then we can cycle back to other questions or add stuff that you may have left out after your colleagues get wrapped up. I thought what I would do is let Carol and Bob speak and then we can ask a question for any of the three panelists. Carol, would you like to go next? Or I'll talk about two bills of great interest to me first and then I will talk about some other big broad issues. One bill is the use value program which we hear about and know of as current use and we want to include Forest Land to encourage the management of land for old forests which are currently only 1%, less than 1% of Vermont's forest land. This is important because old forests are more complex than young forests and thus harbor greater biodiversity and notably old forests are excellent at storing and sequestering carbon. Another built great interest which I've cosponsored is revenues continue to come in more strongly than anticipated. So we are talking about tax reductions for people and H510 would direct any tax reduction to a new Vermont Child Tax Credit modeled on the federal credit and the bill would provide a $1,200 credit or refund yearly for each child age six and under in Vermont and the bill would invest in families with young children would make our tax system significantly more progressive and would be beacon around the country for people to come to and Vermont to live and to stay in Vermont. Our Budget Adjustment Act is passed. It passed on voice vote unanimously on third reading and the Budget Adjustment Act is where we recalibrate state revenues and expenditures and we try to address pandemic and other systemic needs. We address some housing needs and some key statistics that frame all of our housing discussions are these. For every 100 extremely low income renter households there are only 49 available affordable rental apartment units for a total deficit of 9,613 units. So how can we work on this? Well, we could try to support housing initiatives in the following ways, $50 million to increase the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board from 94 current million to 144 million and that boost would provide additional mixed income and multifamily rentals and increased shelter capacity with priority given to populations who may be displaced from hotel and motel voucher programs or who are currently without housing including by providing permanent homes in mixed income settings. And the goal here is 250 new units. 25 million to the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development to support the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, VHIP which rehabilitates existing housing that is offline because of code violations. Our goal here is 400 new units. $500 million to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development and Vermont Housing Financing Authority to pilot a new construction initiative focused on building housing stock for middle income housing and funds will be used to support home builders access to upfront construction capital through Vermont banks and credit unions. Also related to housing is $5 million to the Department of Children and Families to support a statewide rental risk mitigation pool from the general fund. And we heard that costs for contracted, we know the costs for contracted staff has tripled for skilled nursing facilities as a result of the need for traveling nurses and in the world of developmental disability services staff vacancies are as high as 50% and we've allocated many, many millions of dollars towards staff retention and improvement. One more minute, Carol. Okay, I'll just thank everybody for being here. I'll say thank you to everybody who's organized the meeting and a special welcome to Representative Charlie Kimball here from Woodstock who you already know serves with Representative Mulvaney Stanek on the House Commerce Committee. So thank you everybody. Thank you Carol and Bob, the microphone is yours. Thank you. I was, I'm hoping that somebody from the school board hits on the people waiting stuff. We've all been pretty deeply engrossed in it. It's more their alleyway. I have a tendency to stick to reporting on what we do in my own committee which is government operations. We're deeply involved in town charters of course because it's one of our major purview things. Springfield has something weird going on Exx Junction, Essex Town, they're going through a divorce. Burlington of course we have our charter. One part of it made it to the Senate, the airport part last year. I expect that's gonna come back approved. The thermal and the just cause I'm getting witnesses and committee time together. Now the voting part we're told we might take up after redistricting is done because redistricting has a particular timeframe and it's on an express track. When we talk about redistricting in the house end of things, we solicited to the local boards input again on the map that is being proposed. We'll take a lot of advice on that from the local folks. We'll do the reapportionment of the state house districts in committee pretty much based on mapping that we have a specialist to do. Senate is doing their own thing. So that'll involve a lot of time and a lot of testimony we'll be taking testimony from local committees starting tomorrow. School teachers we just had an interesting bill today where we're currently if you're a retired teacher, if you wanna go back and teach more because of say the pandemic has so many vacancies in our schools, you have to basically give up your retirement check for the period of time that you're working if you make over $36,000 in a particular year, we're looking at a bill that would remove that caveat and allow teachers to go back for a year, continue to receive their benefit, pay into the retirement system also, but it would allow retired teachers to go back as other than substitutes. They could actually sign a contract and perform a classroom duty for the year. We think that it would be a good thing. Everybody else seems to be on board with it, but there are some particular aspects of the retirement system that would need to be adjusted. We do weird stuff too. We just spent two days talking about whether or not cemetery should have fences around them and whether cemetery association should be able to invest cemetery funds in riskier business aspects. The retirement bill that deals with the state employees and the teachers started in the Senate for hearings and action, it'll come over to the house as soon as they're done. Two minutes, okay. I'm short list here. We've already, as you probably heard, passed changes to what's gonna happen voting process wise in town meeting and extended probably to November, which will reflect basically the election that we had two years ago, two years ago, time flies in COVID time. And there will be nobody banging on people's doors looking for petitions to be signed. I'm reasonably sure with a new variant coming from Asia and Europe now that we probably won't be banging on people's doors at all. But who knows what'll happen by the time November gets here. We had a public hearing on proposition two, which is removing the prohibition from slavery out of the constitution, which apparently was inadequate. A lot of people I think are confusing the concept of slavery and indentured servitude a little bit that came out a lot at the hearing. It's one of the things that we're looking at. The constitutional amendment went out for vote last year. This is the second round. If it passes this time, it'll go to the governor and end up on the ballot for the citizens of Vermont to vote on proposition five, which is the reproduction rights amendment we'll be taking up probably within next couple of weeks for public hearing and comment. And I think that's probably all I have to say. So I'll donate my minute back. All right, well done. Thank you. We'll take the 30 seconds. We do have a few minutes if anyone has questions for either Emma, Carol, or Bob. Bring them on. That's what we get paid to bring up this morning. I see a couple, Matt. I'm not seeing... Well, I see Mark Barlow and followed by Erika Redick and Sylvia Knight so far. Well, let me go to the... I'll do it in that order. Mark, Sylvia, last. Erika, so Mark Barlow. Thank you. I just had a question. If revenues are coming in stronger than anticipated at the state level, one topic that is important to... I know, especially Burlington, but to other communities is state aid for school construction and has there been any conversation around using some of that money to pay for the huge costs that are gonna be borne by districts to mitigate PCB problems as we test schools? Thank you. I can start with that. I have begun to have conversations about help for Burlington and its high school and the governor is talking about the importance of CTE education and that is a technical center education and we need to rebuild our technical center at the high school. Our high school has 900 students. Our technical center has 300 students. 150 of those are Burlington high school students and arguably one third of, could be one third of the cost of the entire construction might be allocable to the technical center. I don't know, but if that were the case, perhaps we can get funding. I'm working toward funding for that purpose out of the $100 million extra in the Ed fund. The governor has said he wants to spend $50 million on CTE. Anyway, so we don't have a building and to me that would be a great way to serve the largest county in the state and really move forward with workforce development and other incredibly important things that are happening at technical centers. Thanks Carol. Barbara, Emma, did you wanna add to that? No, I think Carol covered it pretty much and I wanna make sure we have time for other folks, so. Awesome, so I'll move next to Erica for a question. Thank you and counselor Barlow, that was a great question. Thank you for asking that. This is particularly for Representative Hooper. The convention of states resolution has been on the wall in the government ops committee for several years and I know that there has been a lot more activity on that front people reaching out to their representatives and I'm just wondering what it would take to get that resolution off the wall in government ops after this many years. Thank you. Do we still have Bob? Oh, maybe he's not on anymore. Bob Hooper, I don't see his handsome face in front of me. Huh, well that's very disappointing. Well, he may have dodged a bullet but if he comes back, Erica, we'll get him. Thank you, Matt. I don't see him either, Matt. I don't see him. If he comes back, we'll snag him. Thanks for your question. Now, Erica, we'll come back if he does. Sylvia, I'm gonna move to you. My question was for Bob Hooper as well. I can find, it was about PR2, whether it had moved out of his committee and I'll look that up on the web, find out. Thank you. Then Matt, Deb Bouton. Yep, I see Deb Bouton. Deb, go ahead. Hey, well, guess what? My question was for Bob as well. So I'll pass that up. He mentioned very quickly something about the airport and he expects that to pass. And I was like, whoa, what are you talking about? So I don't know if anybody else- I could answer that one, Deb. I can answer a charter change. Thanks, thanks. That's okay, okay. So there's four items that folks might remember that Burlington passed in March of 2021. It all went into one bill last session for various strategic purposes. We started pulling pieces apart to try to make sure things were getting across the finish line. The airport commission, as folks might recall, was to add two seats to the airport commission in Burlington, one for Winooski and one for Burlington that advanced over to the Senate at the end of the last session and it's up for third reading tomorrow in the Senate. So far it's all in one piece. The Senate did add some, not to the charter language but added to the bill itself to study the overall governance of our airport more as a regional approach. But that's just a study. It does not impact the language of the underlying charter issue. The other three items are still in house gov ops at the moment. And Bob could certainly give you more updates on that that's what he was speaking to earlier. That helped, Deb? Yep. Yeah, totally helps. Thank you very much. I had no idea what he was referring to. Thanks. Bye bye. Thank you Deb. I don't see any other hands that I'm gonna move on for time for- My hands up. My hands up. Okay, Lee, it's gonna have to wait. We're gonna rotate to the other two elected officials in this segment and then hopefully we can cycle back to more questions. Thank you. If we're done, Lee, before 7.40, I'll come back to you. I've got you on my list. Is that right? For city council, we're gonna hear from Mark Bellow from the North District. We're not going to hear from both Sarah and Ali tonight. They're both gonna have time at the end of this meeting in the candidates forum. So Mark, I'll pass the mic to you. Okay, thank you. I wanna talk briefly about redistricting and then about the town meeting day ballot items that the council has voted to put on the ballot. So with redistricting, the update is the work of the ad hoc committee was delivered to the council and that included a report, reported dendems offered by some committee members and testimony by three committee members. We've not had a chance to discuss it as a council yet. Counselors Paul, Carpenter and I have discussed a possible course of action that would involve another council public hearing in early February. And then that would be followed by tasking the map maker to draw maps for consideration, followed by a work session of the council to discuss and then a vote. Now the timeline on the resolution is for a decision by the end of March. That timeline's particularly tight, but if we wanna get it done by the last meeting, we're gonna discuss if it's doable or not and we should have more info on this soon. Next thing I wanna talk about is the charter change item on sex work. It's unfortunate that so many supporters and opponents of the charter change think that removing charter language is a move toward decriminalization or legalization of sex work. But this belief is clear from the testimony we've heard during public hearings and during public comment. But to be clear, the strike all language is being recommended with simply removed language whose intent is consistent and current with the essay 13 section 2632 that has the same prohibitions on sex work. Many communities in Vermont do not have municipal charters and rely on the state law only. And if we remove it from our charter, we'll rely on it as well. It's my view that the decriminalization decision will never be made at the city level. It's absolutely inconceivable to me that the state would allow Burlington to have a different set of rules with regard to sex work than the rest of the state. And I'll just point to the common sense gun charter changes we asked to put in place and the perception that received at the state level. So I don't think we would have something that was at odds ever with what's in state statute in a patchwork of different municipal laws on this issue wouldn't be helpful in advancing the necessary protections and supports for those exploited or victimized either. So one of the things we need to do between now and town meeting day is a much better job of communicating what this charter change is and isn't. But everybody's gonna have a chance to weigh in until meeting day. Next thing I wanna talk about is the TIF bond. We're gonna hear from CEDO director Brian Pine in a bit. I'll just say that besides the streetscape, stormwater and utility improvements, getting the ravine sewer upgraded or relocated will be an important step toward deciding the future development of the super block that includes the fatal memorial auditorium. This is also probably our last opportunity to leverage TIF for city capital projects in the district and taking advantage of it will help us move forward on these projects in the most affordable way for city taxpayers. On the capital bond, I don't know if voters will look differently on this smaller request than they did on the December request because some of the same conditions still exist. Uncertainty about the high school costs and the recent reappraisal most significantly, I guess we'll see on that. But I do think that it's important to take advantage of the matching funds for capital projects so we can address some of the capital needs now. They'll be more expensive to address if we defer them. But I'd also like to see better capital planning so we don't need to go to the voters with large requests all the time. I supported putting this bond request on the ballot and I appreciate the Board of Finance's willingness to put language into the resolution to prioritize taxpayer savings and looking to other sources other than general obligation bonding authority for these projects. And so not only do we have it in the resolution but there'll actually be language on the ballot as well. And that's important because if we don't need to spend this money we shouldn't be spending it. And then I wanna talk about the tax increase that the council voted to put a 4 cent or 5.5% municipal tax increase on the ballot because of the projected decreases in the Burlington School District tax rate that'll actually result overall in a net decrease in the property tax rate. Budget development is only beginning the increase because of substantial inflation and then incorporate the investments in structural debt and because the pandemic related revenue shortfalls also I appreciate the work that's been done to minimize the use of budget tightening during budget development so that we don't actually need to draw on all of that authority should the voters give it to us. And so those are my updates. All right. Before I move to questions, Mark do you wanna take 30 seconds and talk about the increase in property taxes we lost you bandwidth or something like that distorted everything. We lost about 30. Oh, you didn't hear what I was saying? We didn't hear what you said about tax increase. I'm sorry. So on the tax increases the council voted to put a 4 cent or 5.5% municipal tax increase on the ballot. And they did this, we did this because the administration has projected because of increased inflation, the need to incorporate the recent equity investments into the structural budget and because of pandemic related revenue shortfalls. The increase would raise about $2.2 million but because the Burlington school district tax rate will be decreased, the net overall effect would be that we would still see a decrease in the overall property tax rate even with a municipal tax increase. My hope is that we'll be able to find some efficiencies and reduce that need even further during budget development that is just getting underway now. Thank you, Mark. And that's what I have on that, Matt. I appreciate that. Sorry to make you repeat yourself. That's okay. We're a little pressed for time but I think I have time for a question. If anybody has one, I'm not seeing hands. I'm seeing Sylvia. Do you wanna ask a question, Sylvia? You're muted. There we go. My question is, do you know what the status of the request for mental health summit is? Has that come to city council? Where is that request now? I don't have an update on that but I can certainly get one for you, Sylvia. Was there action taken to the city council on that? There's been no action taken on that. Thank you. I'm gonna move if it's okay to the school board and we'll hear from Kendra Sowers. Thanks, Matt. It's good to see everybody tonight. So I'm gonna start with COVID. Like everyone else, the Burlington school district is dealing with COVID and specifically the contagious nature of Omicron. So you guys probably all know that our goal is to keep our schools open. We are doing all that we can to have our students and staff stay as safe as possible. We've recently been given new guidance from the agency of education shifting away from contact tracing which was really labor intensive to a system of contact notification and to a program called test at home. And basically this means that BSE is notifying families about which classrooms are impacted by positive cases and then they're asking close contacts to stay to take rapid tests before they come back to school. Many of you who have children may have seen these. So you get the list of all the classrooms that are affected. In response to that, we've given away 10,000 rapid tests to both vaccinated and unvaccinated students and staff in the past two weeks because we know that tests were hard to come by. So this is a way that we were able to do this program and be able to give tests to the staff and students. We've also received 6,000 adult KN95 masks. So that's enough for two masks for every middle and high school student and every staff member. And on February 1st, we're hoping to get kid size KN95 masks so that pre-K through fifth grade students can also have the benefit of KN95 masks. So as you know, COVID keeps changing and we're doing all that we can based on the latest scientific guidance to keep our schools running open and safely. So the next thing I wanna talk about is the school budget. And so last week, the school board voted to advance a budget to the voters that basically has no new spending. So the increase to the budget that you will see is due to growth in wages, benefits and operational costs like utilities. So as a result of that, we're projecting that even though our budget will increase slightly due to those annual increases, the spending at this level could produce a property tax rate decrease of somewhere around six to 7%, which I know Mark was just alluding to. So we have asked actually at the next NPA meeting to have some time to really delve deep into the school budget, because we do this every year before we put it on the ballot to give you an idea of where the numbers come from. There's a lot of complicated formulas that we like to go through so that you can understand how the tax rate, how we came up with it. So we would like to save really specific questions for the budget to next month's meeting. And you can also check our website and we're putting up more detailed information on the budget as we have them. So that's the budget. And let's talk about the VHSBTC project, which has been renamed VHSBTC 2025. So the name suggests and indicates that this is an aggressive goal of having our new high school opened in the tech center by the fall of 2025. So in mid-December, our school board voted to award the contract for the architectural services, AKA the design teams, which is Freeman, French and Freeman, Collin, Lindberg and Associates and Drummy, Roseanne Anderson. So the team of architects got the two minutes. The team of architects held interviews with VHS and VTC faculty and staff to learn about spaces they needed for instructional programs. And it'll also help them determine the size of the building that's gonna be needed. And with all that information, the architects can come up with their conceptual design. And this will all be summarized and presented at our next school board meeting, which is on February 1st. There's also a steering committee that's been formed from stakeholders from all over the community, teachers, students, parents, school board members, city officials, equity and sustainability representatives. And that first meeting was last night. And there will be a public forum in the third week of February that we're really gonna serve as the major public kickoff to this project. And the details will be available soon. And I'll be sure to post that on front porch forum as well to let you all know of the details and how to access that event. The last thing I wanna talk about is the pupil waiting study, which Bob Hooper just mentioned. And our advocacy work continues in regards to getting Burlington our fair share of education funds from Montpelier. We're really pushing legislators hard to adopt the updated waiting system. And as a reminder of these weights such as poverty and ELL are used to provide additional funds for students who require more resources. Burlington, here we have about 50% of our students on free and reduced lunch and 15% are ELL. And so that's a lot of money that we haven't gotten over the past 20 years that we are trying to with the outdated weights get from the education pot. It's gonna take a lot of our voices and I am really super grateful for our Burlington legislators who have worked tirelessly on this as well. And Carol Odie who brought the study in the first place and Bob Hooper, thank you for the letter that you just sent. We all need to be contacting our legislators including members of the community. So please reach out to one of our school board members myself, Martine and Monica. We also have a website that you can go to which is, I don't think I have access to a chat but I can share it if I do. It's CVTSE.org, the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity. We have all the information and contact numbers and names there. So thank you for any help that you can provide in this really important issue. So I think that's it. Exactly, 740. We're right on. I don't know that I have time for questions. I don't see any hands. Can we keep it quick, Bob? Go ahead. You're on mute. I just mentioned that the pushback on getting the weighting study to actually weigh these sort of things is coming from a lot of different quarters. Social Equity Caucus just sent the letter to the committee to really endorse re-looking at this because it is patently unfair for students in our county more than anything else but it's also Rutland and other large places. And I'd like to apologize when I said, bring on the questions, the space heater kicked on and the power kicked off. So I'm back. You dodged a few bullets, Bob. Trust me, if we can come back to you at the very end, if there's time we will. Right now we're running right on the hair. So I'm going to move on to the town meeting date ballot. And Brian Pine, you have the mic for 29 to 30 minutes and keep in mind that includes time for questions. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate that. Great to be with you all tonight. And this is one night where the virtual meeting is appreciated because we don't have to get out and try and navigate, what is it? Minus six, minus seven, something like that. So I hope everybody is warm. I'm Brian Pine. I'm the director of the city's community and economic development office. And tonight I'm talking to you about or with you about the downtown tax increment financing district. And with me is Laura Wheelock and Olivia Durese, both from the department of public works. And without them, we would not have a project. So they are really the subject matter experts on the sort of public improvement side and CEDO with help from a consultant works on the sort of program side and the regulatory side with the state of Vermont on this program. So I ask if we could have privileges or sharing ability given to Laura, she will then start to give us our slides. Great. So into the next slide. Tonight, I hope that we can lay out for you and increase the broad understanding of both the tax increment financing as a tool for economic development and the approved projects that are already have happened within the downtown TIF district. I'm gonna start using TIF, the acronym. So tax increment financing. I'll explain more as we go what that means and you'll see some specific examples of how it's been used to support public infrastructure in Burlington. The downtown TIF project I will explain and hopefully and show you some graphic images which hopefully will help give a clear picture and we'll get into the actual details of what will be voted on on March 1st. We'll then open it up to questions and answers. So next slide. So I want to just make it perfectly clear that there are two separate districts in Burlington. Burlington in 1996, created Vermont's first tax increment financing district and the state statute that followed was largely or should say that allowed that to happen was largely informed by Burlington's experience and it's been modified and fine tuned over the years but we were the first in Vermont to use this tool and I would just say that the, I think I'll explain a little bit more about how it works but I would explain first why we even use this complicated way of coming up with the money to make in public improvements. I think the most important aspect of that conversation is really, it's largely a development or a municipal tool that came about after the federal government no longer supported municipal government in making capital investments. So there was a time period when the federal government funneled money back to cities and counties and other jurisdictions to fund big projects and Burlington got its share of federal revenue sharing and when Bernie Sanders became mayor in 1981, five years before revenue sharing ended, we were getting about a million dollars annually but that was when our general fund budget was 10 million. So it was 10% of the city's general fund budget and if today we'd be looking at somewhere between 8 million and 9 million in federal revenue sharing in which case we wouldn't go through this convoluted complicated thing called TIF. We would probably be way ahead on infrastructure, the deferred maintenance that we've seen across the city with our sidewalks, with our curbs, with our streets, with our bridges, with all the infrastructure costs, largely the failure over the last 40 years at the local level is largely attributable to federal policy that said essentially federal government we're no longer gonna support infrastructure in local communities. So that revenue sharing policy shift meant that places like Burlington were cut off from support from the federal government. So comes around as a tool, the tax increment financing district in Burlington, what we focused on is the areas in downtown. So the Waterfront TIF district, as the name implies, covers most of what you think of as the urban waterfront here on this map. It then goes up into the downtown and includes all of the property that is essentially on Cherry Street, on the Northern boundary, on Church Street on the Eastern boundary and on Bank Street with a little notch down near People's Bank is all within the Waterfront TIF district. So that's the Waterfront District. As you see here, the blue area is the downtown TIF district and the Vermont Economic Progress Council, they're the ones who review the proposals to create these districts. It takes about a year to get through that process and the voters in Burlington, I think I'll go to the next slide, voters in Burlington. Actually, this slide doesn't tell you this part of the story. The district was established by the city requesting approval first to the processes you ask for approval from VEPSI, Vermont Economic Progress Council. Then the voters authorized the creation of the district in March of 2012. Citywide, the vote was about 55%, yes, 45%, no. And it was then followed in 2015 in March by a vote which essentially bonded, authorized issuing a bond for $10 million to begin making these improvements in our downtown. And that one, citywide 72% to 27% no. And in words four and seven, I just checked today, it was 65%, yes, 35% no. So that was on the first phase of the downtown tax increment financing district. We have a deadline coming up, which is a critical date and that is that in March 31st of 2023, the city must incur debt for public improvements in order to qualify for the ability to recapture or I should say to capture the incremental growth in tax value that comes within the district to pay back the bond. So I'm gonna explain a little more in detail how that works in a minute, but just important dates to look at, we have then until 2036 to retain the education increment and use that increment to service the bond, to pay back the bond, and by then the bond will be fully repaid. And at that time, the tax revenue within the district goes back to the education fund and to the city's municipal funds to support city services at the regular level. So let's go to the next slide and hopefully, this is the sort of what is TIF slide and hopefully there's a lot going on here, but basically what TIF does is it essentially sets an original taxable value of a district and a district is defined by the municipality in partnership with the Vermont Economic Progress Council. And I should just mention Vermont has its own approach to TIF that really is different enough that if you Google TIF and look at other states, totally irrelevant to Vermont because the concepts are totally different. How it's used in Vermont has to be used for public infrastructure improvements, cannot be used on private property. So when people say it's just a subsidy for the developer, that's not really accurate. It really is a way to fund infrastructure and it's capturing the tax value, the growth in value that happens within the district. So original taxable value right here that the cursor is pointing to in our district started at 170 million in 2011. Today, 10 years later, the taxable value, it was 285 million. So that growth, that $115 million in growth is the increment that is, the taxes that come from that growth is the increment that is used to repay the bond. So just to be, just to say it once more, the bond is not repaid by raising taxes on taxpayers. The bond is repaid by the growth that the state of Vermont lets the city capture to repay the bond. So it's that difference there that is the key thing to be looking at. It's also worth looking at what is the projected ending taxable value of the district in 2036 because at that point, all the bonds are paid off, all the funds that are now generated by the properties within the district flow to the taxing authorities as if nothing had ever happened. So the state education fund gets its portion and the schools get their portion. I should just note that the original taxable value of a property, the revenue coming from that property continues to go to the education fund and to the city. So that does not change. So the taxes coming out of a property before the TIF district and after the TIF district are set at the same level. However, 25% of the increment of the new growth and value in all the properties in the district goes to the education fund. On the municipal side, all of the new increment goes to repay the debt. And the idea is that the local community that has decided to take on the bond and to make these improvements ought to use all of its increment for the debt because it's a local project and the education fund ought to get some. So that's the thinking that the legislature had when they created that. I hope that helps. The diagram here, which is on my screen, kind of hard to read, it may lose its impact, but essentially starting at the top, I mean, this will bond is issued. The public improvements are financed with the proceeds from the bonds, the private development and then reinvestment that occurs in the district generates new revenue and the increment is over there in the stack of dollar bills. Next slide. So the projects that have already happened within the downtown TIF district are the improvements to St. Paul Street, the Great Streets improvements that have taken place on St. Paul. I believe those are completed in 2019. Some major deferred maintenance within the marketplace garage, those issues were addressed with TIF dollars and the former parking lot, which was a municipal parking lot with surface parking lot with parking meters was the brownfield. The contamination of that site was cleaned up. The pollution was remediated to allow for the transfer of the property to Champlain College to create housing for the students. The stormwater upgrades that were performed as part of the city hall park project were also part of the downtown TIF projects that have been funded so far. Next slide, please. So this is just a map showing you the area that is on the ballot, essentially. So the line that comes down Main Street from Union, all the way down to Battery, is the extent of the project. That's the scope area and the top two blocks. So from Union to church are new, we're adding those to this project. The next two from church down to Pine are already approved by the voters. So those are essentially already authorized. And then the next two blocks to Battery are being added to the Main Street, or I'm sorry, we're seeking approval for that as well. So that's what essentially is before the voters in March. The projects which are listed here, if you could back up to the slide before this, I'll go through that real quickly. The project elements on the previous slide are somehow it doesn't wanna stay there. It looks like it's refusing to go back. All right, is the ravine sewer, which is, I think Councillor Barlow mentioned, runs across the superblock property. It will be dealt with, whether it's relocated or whether it's relined or replaced or the answer we don't exactly have, but we do have an estimate for what it will cost to relocate it, which is, that's in this project scope. So that's an important piece. The section of Main Street from Union Street down to Church Street is, I will describe in a minute what the project entails. And if you have more questions about the project scope, Laura is available to answer those. Jeff, are you the timekeeper or Matt? How are we doing on time? Yeah, you have 15 or 16 minutes remaining. Okay, I'll try and speed it up here, sorry. Let's go to the next slide. So ultimately with this project, in addition to the relocation of the ravine sewer is essentially repurposing and rebalancing the public right away and the uses within that public right away on Main Street all the way from Union Street. So think of Memorial Auditorium all the way down to the foot of Main Street. When we say rebounce the right away, it really means taking what is essentially, I believe about a 90 foot right away, Laura, maybe a little bit more and not having it serve just the vehicles, but also serve other users. And so pedestrians, cyclists, public transit, increasing access for folks with disabilities, kind of tightening up the intersections so that people can get across them more safely and more quickly, really trying to bring some amenities to the street. So you'll see there's a much wider sidewalk here. There's an area for tables if the establishment's adjacent to those locations would like to put tables out and a dedicated and protected bike lane. Two lanes of travel going east and west and then there's parking on both sides as well. So in addition, the tree belt which is I think significant is paired with stormwater improvements that will significantly reduce harmful pollutants that run in our stormwater into Lake Champlain. So that's a significant piece of this project as well. Next slide. Just to give an example of some of the worn out infrastructure, we have worn out green belts, really kind of inactive in some cases, depending on what time of year you're there, sort of inactive streetscapes, dated accessibility standards, trees that really are struggling and often have to get removed and replaced, curbing issues, so accessibility issues in terms of stores and curbs that are just overall have begun to deteriorate and show their wear and tear. It's worth noting that we don't have exact records but it's been many decades since Main Street has had a significant reinvestment and that's the stuff you see. The stuff under the ground is really ancient and is going to require major attention over the next few years if this project, whether or not the TIF bond passes, we're gonna have to deal with the infrastructure under the street because it's old wooden, there's old literally wooden sections of pipe that run through Main Street. So next slide. I actually didn't see the slide yet. So I'm gonna, it's actually hard for me to read. So I'll just say that it's intended to show what we're doing for outreach and community engagement. And so meetings that are coming up are posted here, neighborhood meeting, 6 p.m. And on the first and on the second, a focus with the business owners of the street. We've already actually convened the business owners to discuss the project and to hear their issues and concerns. So that's a really important piece. The last thing you wanna do is make these improvements and significant benefit to the whole community, but put a strain on businesses, especially in the next couple of years when construction will be underway. So the goal here is to be as minimized disruption as much as possible. But we want to lay out for you here is that the concept design and development process over the next two months leading up to, really to the end of March. So, and there's, let's go on to the next slide. So this is that amazing historic resource running through our downtown. It comes all the way from the old North end down to Lake Champlain eventually, but it cuts across our city and it's the sewer ravine or the ravine sewer. And it, in this instance, it cuts across a really critical piece of property. People who've been here a while might remember that there was a jail, county jail, located on the corner of Main Street and South Witness Avenue. It was just a two-story building, but once that building was gone, it's been a surface parking lot ever since. The geotechnical analysis of the site has shown that the basically the ravine sewer is a significant cost in terms of what would be required to either relocate it or to reinforce it so you can build a substantial urban downtown building on that corner. So it's really an important entry to the city. And as a surface parking lot, I think most people would think it's not the highest and best use. So the goal here is to make that a site for future development. There's no proposed development. We don't even, there's certainly interest, but there's no proposal on the table and it's just, it's an investment that we believe would result in significant new economic activity in the downtown. So next slide. So this is a basic description of what would be funded here. So it's essentially everything that you see above the ground, the streetscape, the lighting, transportation facilities, public seating, stuff you don't see as stormwater, utility upgrades, reconstructions, extensions and replacements, relocating the ravine sewer, all for a total cost of 30,500,000. I'm sure that's a shocking price tag. Let's just go back to the basic rule, though, with TIF is the bond that is issued to fund those improvements is repaid with the new tax revenue that comes from within the district and throughout the district, by the way, not just property owners on Main Street, but all the properties within the district. It's that incremental growth in value that covers the repayment of the bond. So the existing bond voter approval is for 10 million. As I mentioned earlier, that was approved in March of 2015. Of that, we've spent 5,420,000, leaving us a balance of 4,580,000 to remaining to be spent toward this project. We also have to mention that there is a related cost element to the project. And when we say related, it's described here as administration, legal, finance, audit, project management. So it's everything, and it's the management of the district for the life of the district. So it's all the reporting and monitoring on an annual basis until 2036. So those costs are all wrapped up in that number. Next slide. So just in summary, what we're proposing is the Main Street Great Streets Project, which includes the public improvements as well as the relocation of the ravine sewer. We are requesting essentially a new debt request of 25,920,000, which includes, or I should say the related costs of 1,470, is also needs to be itemized in that. We're using what's left from the original $10 million of approval to cover the remainder of the project costs. So that's why the request is only at 25,920, and not at the full 30,500,000. It's based on very, very conservative estimates about property growth, growth in property values within the downtown TIF district. There is sufficient increment from new private development that will cover the bond. Of that, we are certain. Taxes do not increase in any ward to repay the TIF debt. Taxes, again, only go up if voters approve them through other questions that are proposed either on this ballot or a future ballot. This does not result in a tax increase. Next question, or next slide, sorry. Here we are on the timeline of the project just to be able to lay it out over the next two years. We are currently obviously in the voter engagement, public engagement process now, bringing it to a vote in March. If the town meeting vote passes, we begin or get into more detail about the concept and design and the outreach continues. And that process goes through May of 22. We continue to have engagement with property owners throughout the summer of 22. And you will see from May of 22 until June of next year of 23 is really when the design work in earnest takes place with hopefully a fall of 23 construction start date. And I think it says two years minimum here. I trust the construction or the engineers to tell us what that number is because they get it from lots of discussions with the professionals in the field. Next slide. I think that's it. So, yeah. We have five or six minutes to spare. Okay. Thank you, Brian. So we have five minutes for questions. I know there's gonna be some questions. I'm looking for hands. Erika, I see yours first, I'm gonna give it to you. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Pine, I appreciate it. I would like to just kind of understand and this isn't technically just a question for you but our other elected officials. I'm really very surprised by the amount of money being asked of the taxpayers by our elected officials. Given that everyone is still really struggling from the reappraisal. I know my property taxes went up 25%. Not to mention many people have lost their jobs. Their families are down to single incomes because somebody has to stay home with the kids. People's businesses have been lost. We've had, I mean, we have record like empty spots on Church Street and commercial spaces. What is the thinking of coming to the taxpayers and asking for so much more money? That's a great question. And I think that's actually a really important point with regard to this particular question. I can't speak to the others and I know it's probably sounds like a cop out but I'll just say my focus is this question and it's consuming every night this week except I think I get Friday night off. So I would say that the important distinction here is we are not asking the taxpayers in Burlington to increase their taxes to fund public infrastructure. What we're saying is you've already approved the creation of this district. We have another year to incur the debt basically to issue a bond and we have a project here. Do you wanna continue with what you've already laid out as your priorities for growth and encouraging new development in our downtown? And if you do, this is the way to finance it. If the voters say no, then we have a clear signal that that is not where the voters want us to go. So I think our obligation is to present to the voters the best proposal we can put together. And if we are not successful, then we will not pursue this project. May I ask a follow up question? If it's quick. Why are these items not included in the general infrastructure budget of the city? Why are they included in a bond rather than just being part of the budget? It's also a great, and I think that's a great point. And what I tried to say at the beginning is when we had support for our infrastructure from federal resources, the city had more capacity. But right now we have a limited amount of capital funds. I think Laura, if you can confirm it's about $2 million of capital that goes into capital projects annually. And that is intended to address really pressing capital needs, but not to overburden the taxpayer. So TIF is a way to actually not overburden the taxpayer, but to make these improvements. So I think that's the idea here is let's capture this economic activity that's happening in our downtown using that revenue to pay back the bond. Thank you. I would just highlight that the capital, the money that the city gets in for the streets and the sidewalks is really about maintaining in place and that there's not enhancement money. And this project would be a significant enhancement on Main Street. Thanks, Laura. I'm gonna go to Monica. You have your hand up and then Deb if we have time. Hi, Brian, thanks for that explanation. I can't say that I totally understand TIF yet, but I'll get there hopefully before my vote is due. I'm wondering, so was it 2017 when we voted on the city place project, the 15 story mall? I believe voters approved TIF money for that. And I'm just wondering what happened to that? The mall hasn't happened. Yeah, that was actually November of 2016. It was basically a special election, but it was during a presidential election. And that the voters did approve a TIF allocation of about $20 million for infrastructure around that project based on what the project would generate. Since the project hasn't gone forward, not a single dollar has been bonded for that project. So that everything is on hold until the project is ready to go forward. So that debt never was incurred. Thank you. And Deb Boondon, we have one minute left if you'd like to ask a question. Yeah, sure, thanks. Hi, Brian. Hi, Deb. I will be very old if I'm still alive when this gets done. So I have a question about the ravine relocation cost. Are you able to single that out? I'm gonna ask Laura to do that if you could. Oh, okay. Yeah. In our estimating that we put together into that 30 and a half million dollars, the ravine relocation was taking up about six million of it. Okay. And is it totally inconceivable to, for a potential developer to take that on or you just feel that getting it ready for a developer would attract developers? Is that where we're going with this? Logistically, it's gonna be a very challenging project. It is a public sewer and it still connects to a lot of properties within that area. And so even if a developer was to come in and help with some of the costs, there's still a lot of city responsibility to a project like that. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. I'm done under a minute. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Jen. We're gonna move on just to stay on track. I'm not known for being on time and... Matt, if I could just say on the CEDO webpage of the city's website, there is a TIF section and we're gonna try and highlight. I think Laura just did. She created a tile which shows how you can get more information. So please visit our website and send any question to me and if I don't know the answer, I'll find it for you. Thanks for your time and your clear explanations, Brian. Yeah. Much appreciated. Thank you. So we're gonna move forward to candidates form and first on our list is candidates for the school board and we're gonna start with words for Martin Guleck and Eric Peretic. And we had a quick little conversation before the meeting, who gets to go first and what was agreed is the list that was put together on front porch form was just alphabetical. So I'm just gonna stick to keep it simple, silly. So we're gonna start with Martin. Martin, you have three minutes. Mike is yours. Hello, everybody. I hope you can hear me. Thank you, Jeff and Matt and everyone else who helped organize this event tonight. Matt, you're doing a great job. I'm so happy to be here and to be running for award for school commissioner. As your representative on the school board, I've worked tirelessly to ensure that we deliver the best educational opportunities to our students while engaging the community and governing with the city's best interest in mind. It's been a challenging few years in the world of education as you all know, and the Burlington school district has had to weather not only a pandemic, but the closure of its high school and its technical center due to PCB contamination. Also, as many of you know, the Burlington school district has been underfunded from the state ed fund for over 20 years. The current funding model is inequitable and does not adequately fund the great needs we have here in Burlington. I've spent hours over the past year testifying before the student waiting task force. I've spoken on the steps of the state house. I've been interviewed on Kurt Wright's radio show and I've communicated frequently with our legislators. I would ask you all to get engaged also and speak on behalf of our community. Tell your legislators to implement the findings in the student waiting study. This year, as Kendra mentioned earlier, we're adding no new programming to our school budget and yet we've had to face the challenge of a decrease in enrollment. The decrease is due to a shift, a natural shift in demographics happening all over the state, the necessary and urgent closing of our high school and tech center and changes in national policy decisions that limited the number of new Americans coming to our city. So no doubt, as you can imagine, we're gonna have some difficult financial decisions to make in the coming years. We're gonna need to be creative and we're gonna need to be thoughtful. In the past, the idea of consolidating or closing a school has been pretty unpopular in our city. It might be time to revisit that option. We'll ask for all hands on deck to help fundraise for a new BHS BTC. We will need productive and healthy negotiations with our unions and if need be, we'll have to make adjustments to staffing. We continue, we the board continue to advocate at the state level to have the moratorium on capital improvement funding lifted. I think we're the only state in the country that does not provide construction aid. This is a problem, as you can imagine. Let's see, none of this is done, none of this is easy and it's gonna take experience leadership. Some quick examples of what I've done for our community recently. I was the co-chair of the superintendent search committee. I am co-chair of the finance and facilities committee. I'm a member of the Vermont coalition for student equity, a member of the youth and family engagement team, a board representative on the strategic planning coalition and the BHS BTC steering committee. At the state level, I'm the Vermont school board association representative for Western Chittenden. And I'm also the BSBA designee for the Vermont advisory council on literacy. And I just ask my time's up. Well, for now, Marti, yeah. So the way we structured this is that each candidate will get three minutes to introduce themselves. And then because this is a contested race, we've allocated five minutes for question and answer after that. Got it. I practiced earlier and I was within three minutes. Sorry about that. That's all right. Well, I've had the same problem in city council myself, can't get it done in two minutes. Eric Eretic, I passed you the mic. Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you all and to get to speak with the new North end of Burlington. I want to first take a moment to thank our current school commissioners. Martine has done a great job. And I'm not running for school board because I think that she's bad or anything like that. Very nice person. And I believe that all of our current school commissioners really do believe that they are making the best possible decisions that they can for our students and for our community. I really do believe that. However, I am in disagreement with some of the decisions being made. And I think that the city could really benefit from a set of fresh eyes and with some fresh eyes that maybe has a little bit different experience. So as a person who has spent the last 20 years helping small businesses and medium-sized businesses grow, be more efficient, take better care of their employees, grow their benefits, and do all those things, I think I'm uniquely positioned to really help the school district get a hold of its finances. I've heard several times tonight that the state, that Burlington does not get its fair share of school funding. But Burlington, we spend almost 20,000 per student, over $19,000 per student. And that's more than the rest of the country, I think, except for New York. So New York is the only state where the municipalities, on average, spend more than Burlington does. And so this idea that we deserve more and that the rest of the state is responsible for paying our bills is very confusing to me. And I think that, I think we can do better. I think that our school board looks for opportunities to make things. And I think, Jeff, cool for the students. I heard that the architects interviewed a bunch of people. I didn't hear that they were given a budget. I didn't hear that they were expected to create something within reason that the taxpayers could actually afford. And so it is clear to me now that this is not a lack of funding issue. It seems like this is a lack of creativity, a lack of lateral thinking, and an unwillingness to make really hard decisions like cutting budgets and making sure that line items like health and human services come out of the school budget and go into the state budget of health and human services where they belong so that we can actually have a real idea of what it takes to educate one of our students. Thank you very much. Thank you, Erica. And we have a five-minute block allocated for questions. Jeff, is it appropriate to go? We're gonna do questions now for Ward 4. So I'm gonna take five minutes, is that correct? Yep, that sounds right. Go for it. I'm looking for hands and I'm scanning. I see the first hand is on TJ. Thank you. So as an educator myself and an ex teacher in school, I would love to if both of you could just talk about I'm being on school board and having experience as a business person, really, there's little connection there. So can you talk a little bit about your past or your involvement with education because we need people in education who know education and can guide education with some knowledge? So I'd love to hear from both of you about that. Erica, can you take the first question? Absolutely. I definitely think people who understand education should be involved in education, but I think it's clear that we do need people who have experience with business. We do need people who can read those budgets, read those audited financial statements and really dig in and understand those ratios and percentages that people talk about having trouble with. I literally have been doing that for the last 20 years. So I appreciate that. I have not worked in education directly, although I do work with at-risk youth. My husband and I both work with an organization called Catalyst Collective and we work directly, especially with at-risk youth to help them find their purpose. So we're really seeing a lot nowadays that people are really struggling emotionally and especially our young people need to have something to grab onto. So we really help them find their gifts and talents and what they're passionate about and help direct them towards using those things for their unique purpose. Thanks, Erica. Thanks for the question. I'm gonna pass to Martina if you'd like to respond. EJ, thanks for the question. Yeah, so I've spent about the last 30 years of my life in education. I have been a French teacher, an English teacher, a librarian, director of library services, among other things, but I think I can say with confidence that I have been a real asset on the school board just because I do understand education, I understand teaching, I understand the education quality standards. So I think I've had an interesting, a unique perspective in that regard. And just to say, Erica, I do appreciate you as well and I appreciate you being here, so thank you. But I do struggle with folks who feel as though they can come in and make an easy fix on lowering the school budget. As many of you know, about 80% of our budget is wages and salaries. We're not the highest paid school district in the county or the state by any means. So we've worked really hard at keeping spending down in that regard. We have a lot of need in our school. Kendra mentioned we have 50% free and reduced lunch. We have some schools as high as 70% free and reduced lunch. We have many, many EL, English language learners, as well as aging infrastructure. As many of you know, our buildings cost a lot to operate. Our HVAC systems are old and they're expensive to maintain, which I'm kind of circling back around to really looking at our buildings as someday potentially saving us some money. But yeah, TJ, I do think my colleagues can speak to that, but I do think I've been an asset in terms of what I bring to the board with an education lens. Thanks, Martine. We have time for one more question and I see a hand from Evan. Thanks, Matt. I'm sorry I'm not on camera. Let me turn my camera on for folks. Hi. So I wanna just ask, Martine, I really appreciated your thoughtful answer there about the budget. So this question is really to try and get at to make sure I understood Erica's comments. Erica, did you say that you thought that we should reduce the school budget and spend less per pupil? And that's part of your platform. And additionally, I'd like to ask both of you who, if you have read the most recent diversity equity and inclusion report for the school district, and if you could share one thing that you think is most compelling and something that should be of focus for the next cycle of the school board, what would that thing be? And I'd like to start with Erica. If I could just interrupt, we have about 30 seconds for each, so I don't think we can get to all of it. But Erica, you've got half a minute to bite in as much as you can. Okay, well, very quickly. Yes, I do think that we need to reduce our pupil spending. And I think that can be done by doing a line-by-line item budget audit to make sure that the money that is going to the school board and to the school commission for spending is really being used as we say that it should be used and in the most efficient way possible. That is literally what I do in my business. I am an efficiency expert. And so I look for ways to make things more efficient and more cost effective. I think that was 30 seconds. That's perfect, Erica. And Martina, I'll give you about the same 30 seconds. So I can say, thank you, Evan, for the question. I've worked in an over-weighted district. Burlington is an under-weighted district. And I can tell you from my experience, it's one of the reasons I quit my job. I could not stand the amount of excess that I saw in this other school district. We are on slim margins here in Burlington. This is not a country club. We are working hard to stretch our dollars. I've seen other districts that are much better staff, have money to spend on resources for their students that we don't have. So I wanna put that out there. Evan, I believe that one of the things that I find to be most compelling in our diversity and equity report would be the restorative practices. And I've been a champion of that for years. Thank you so much. And thank you, Evan, for the question. In the interest of time, we're gonna move to Monica. Monica, you have a little less time for Q&A because you're not running against someone, but I pass you the mic and give you three minutes. Great, thank you, Matt. You're welcome. Hi there, neighbors. My name is Monica Ivancic and I'm running to represent ward seven on the Burlington School Board. I'm currently serving my second term on the school board and I'm seeking your vote to be re-elected to serve a third term on the board. With my family, I live in the village green neighborhood and work at UVM teaching and maintaining an instrument lab for the Department of Chemistry. I'm a mother in the district. My daughter is an eighth grader at Hunt, having spent her elementary years at both SA and IAA. And this fall, she'll be heading to downtown BHS. I've been part of the New North End community since mid-2015 and enjoy being a part of this unique neighborhood and have made many connections here. In the last four years on the Burlington School Board, we have collectively made many positive changes and I believe that we have transformed the district. When I first started serving, many of us were new on the board and the climate in the district was not good. The teachers had just been on strike the previous fall and did not feel respected. We dealt with issue after issue and slowly with time, conditions and climate were significantly improved. In the last two years, we hired a new superintendent who is a skilled leader, keeps us abreast of all issues the district is facing and has a passion for equity, diversity and inclusion. Together with the board, he has been faced with many challenges, including managing a district throughout the different facets of the pandemic and finding a solution to in-person learning for our high school students when the state agencies made a shutdown our high school budget, our house school building due to the PCBs. On the first day of school in fall 2020. The board together with the superintendent and district leaders has also determined that the BHS re-envisioning project needed to be scrapped and now we are in the midst of planning for a new building to be constructed at the Institute Road site here, sort of in the new North End. During my entire four years on the board, I've been the co-chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and plan to continue my role in that capacity. Our committee has supported the implementation and expansion of restorative practices in the district. We have supported the multilingual liaisons and extended their appointments from 10 to 12 months per year and implemented a resolution to examine the role of resource safety officers in our schools. The DNI committee has also sought out and contracted board diversity training such as with outright Vermont and our Native American Judy Dow. And we are currently in a year long anti-racism training with the Equity Institute re-evaluating our principles and goals. The DNI has also supported the hiring and retention of members of the global majority and we continue to work on increasing diversity among our teachers and staff. I hope that I can count on your vote on March 1st in support of my bid for re-election as Burlington's Ward 7 school commissioner. And right on time. Thanks, Chancellor. We're not gonna open for questions for you, Monica, just out of time constraints being uncontested. So I will next move on to city council candidates and we'll start with Ward 4. Sarah Carpenter, we're gonna give you three minutes. You have the microphone. You're muted, Sarah. Sorry about that. It's okay. I'm very happy to see so many people at this meeting. It's hard to follow all your faces and I've been trying to see who's with us. I'm really looking forward to running for re-election. It's been quite a first term for me. I was elected March 3rd of 2020 and March 8th. We shut down due to COVID and certainly was not on my radar screen as a way to start as an elected official. As many of you know, I've had a long history of working with not-for-profit and public programs. I was director of the Cathedral Square housing for over 15 years and for 20 years after that, director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. So I think I bring a lot of experience to my position as counselor and have found it really helpful as I'm trying to manage and understand municipal government. It's confusing and it's confusing perhaps more so than the state. So it's been a real challenge to dig in. I think I've been very engaged. Some people don't find me maybe, I'm not prone to standing up and giving big sermons at council meetings, but I spent a lot of time sort of thoroughly reviewing stuff. I think that's something I can continue to bring to the table. And as a result of that, I've actually been appointed chair of three committees, which is unusual in your first term. I'm chair of the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee. That's the committee that oversees a lot of the housing and community development interests. There's a lot on our plate right now. Probably most first and foremost is dealing with the houseless folks we have in our community. How do we respond? We certainly had a crisis this fall with the Sears and Lane and we've just got a lot of work to do. Tomorrow night, we're gonna having a big meeting focusing on that. So I encourage you to listen in and send me along your ideas. One of the more fun things I did on that committee was help get the aging council started and that's now up and running and I'm very pleased about that. I'm chair of the Human Resources Committee and we've got a lot on our plate. We need people to apply for jobs and I also have been very involved with the tax re-appraisal committee and tax abatement. Are you telling me I'm out of time? Okay, so please let me know if you've got questions. Thank you very much, Sarah. You get kudos, I think you gave us five or 10 seconds to spare, so thanks for your service. I'm gonna move on to Ward 7. We have a three-way contest. So we're going to hear from Ali Deng, Alex Stiff and Olivia Taylor and we're just gonna go in alphabetical order as we discussed at the beginning of the meeting. So Ali, you have the microphone for three minutes. You're muted, Ali. Thank you, Matt. Thank you everyone for having us. My name is Ali Deng. I'm running for real action at your city council for Ward 7. It has been an opportunity of a lifetime to serve you. My neighbors in my capacity as a city council, I would be honored to continue in this role with your continued support and trust. I will serve you to the best of my abilities, trying to balance also all the needs of all of my constituents. Since 2017, as you all know, that I have definitely changed the way in which a leader should conduct business beyond just votes in city hall, but to definitely make real progress in this neighborhood. I have worked tirelessly to strengthen the ties in this neighborhood and city by connecting and engaging with my constituents regularly and frequently about city issues. I'm truly an independent. It's a record that reflects my ability to make decisions based on evidence. I'm also the only new American on the council and also the only counselor is young children is a Burlington school district, build back Burlington school district better. Here's a snapshot of a couple of my achievements are the true independent and leader who's that entrenched in partisan politics. We secured a library right here in the New North End and ambulance. Now, New North Enders will no longer have to wait seven minutes for ambulance response or drive all the way to downtown for library services supporting vulnerable neighbors such as Franklin Square. There is no doubt that all of our neighbors here are different, the neighborhoods are different and the issues are different as well. But I was able to address a long standing issue dated since 1975 that prevented Franklin Square from becoming the city street, right? Action oriented leadership style. As you know, monitoring the issues of my constitution and convening the appropriate stakeholder to take action is my leadership style. For example, when I learned about the summer youth in the New North End, disparaging community members with disability, I connected restorative justice and help those youth and their families to come into a restorative justice circle. And thank you Carol for representing the community on that one. Another example, the dog task force. Due to the state of emergency, there was in the New North End social medias involving dogs but resulting to decrease of quality of life causing tensions between neighbors. I quickly brought everyone together to zoom meetings and then crafted a resolution about the dog task force and the taskful recommendations will be coming on June, 2022. My time up. You're right on the line, Ali. Thank you very much. We'll go next to Alex Stith. Eric Kay, who's that? All right, well, hi everybody and thank you for coming to this and listening to us. My name is Alexander Stith and I am running for election in Ward 7 to be your city councilor and to represent everybody in Ward 7. I'm an independent minded person and I am running as a Democrat and I am endorsed by both the Democrats as well as the Burlington Republican Party. And that shows that I can really bridge those gaps between people and I can represent anybody from a progressive to a Democrat to a Republican because of that independent nature. And I'm an engineer. So my background is an analytical background, a pragmatic decision-making background. And my family and I took that approach when we moved to the New North End. We lived in the Old North End for 10 years saving in a very small apartment in order to be able to afford a home in the New North End. We treated credit cards like debit cards, we budgeted, we lived well within our means and we still do because I have two young children and my wife is a stay-at-home mom. And having that plan and sticking to it is something that I think is a really good thing to do. And as an engineer, I understand data and I can make pragmatic choices. I'm also a manager, so I understand the human side of the equation. And I think I can bring those services to the city council and offer up that view and that change where I can bring stakeholders to the table and actively listen and become a consistent voice for the New North End and for my ward. So if you guys will give me the chance, I would encourage you to check out my website, read more about it, ask me questions. I'm always open to listen to the concerns of the people and engage, so I'm always available. And I'll cede my rest of my time back for Q&A because I'd rather listen to people. So thank you. Thank you, Alec, and we will move to Olivia Taylor. Olivia, you have three minutes and I pass the mic. Hi, everyone, my name's Olivia Taylor and I live on Ethan Allen Parkway. I am running for city councilor in Ward 7. Currently, I am on a variety of community organizations, the Ward's 4 & 7 NPA Steering Committee, the Burlington Housing Board, the Vermont State Tennis League, and the Junior League of Champlain Valley. In addition to these activities, I walk dogs and care for cats, chickens, and ducks all over the New North End. Because of the rising cost of housing in Burlington and my professional experience in business development, I felt compelled to run for city council this year. In my campaign for Ward 7 City Councilor, I am focusing on the issues that unify the residents of Ward 7, including increased access to affordable housing, building community, and supporting local businesses. To increase access to affordable housing, I will advocate for tax credits for landlords who house long-term tenants. This will discourage renting to university students and encourage long-term residency by saving landlords money that can be used to reinvest in their properties. By streamlining the rental application process in Burlington, we can make it easier to apply for homes and find tenants. This would prevent illegal rental applications and make applications easier to translate to any language. To build community, I wanna create more inclusive parks. I want edible gardens and I wanna create a specific off-leash trailed area for dogs. To support local businesses, I would like to see Burlington employ a business development specialist who would provide support to black indigenous people of color and women-owned businesses. Throughout the pandemic, I have been amazed at the mutual aid groups that have popped up all over the city. I really hope Burlington can use the incoming COVID relief money to support these community-led initiatives. I believe the opinions and desires of Ward 7 residents and ultimately improving our community is more important than party politics, which is why I'm running as an independent. As Ward 7 city councilor, you have my commitment that I will focus my candidacy on the issues that unify us, not divide us. Thank you so much for attending and listening tonight and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, Olivia, much appreciate it and thanks for keeping on time. I will allow at least eight minutes, Jeff, is that correct? Eight to 10 minutes for questions. I'm gonna look for some hands. The first hand I see is correct. That's correct, Matt. Okay, perfect. Eric, do you have a question? I have a question for Ward 4 for councilor Carpenter. Go ahead. Oh, you're asking now. Hello, my name is Eric Cradibill and I'm a Ward 4 resident where we live just north of Bloody Park and we are raising our family. I am a detective at the Burlington Police Department. Councilor Carpenter, thank you for running for reelection, I have a question. We've had an interim police chief for over two years. During that time as a board member at community health centers of Burlington, we're able to hire an excellent CEO. In this time, given the defund rather than invest approach, our city has taken in regards to improving our department. We've been watching our coworkers run out the door. Today, I shook a coworkers hand for the last time as he was leaving to serve in another state. His father cried as he told me that he will miss his son but he is happy his son will work at a city that will support him as he serves. I believe we're incredibly lucky to have two excellent finalists for that position of police chief and I imagine you're familiar with them. When the mayor recommends one of these two finalists to the council, will you vote to confirm? At the moment, we also have, I think a well balanced search committee and I need to understand where they're coming from. What is their input? How do they feel about the candidates? And to be blunt, I don't think the process has been handled very well. It's frustrating to me as anybody else that it's taken too long but I think if you look what we set out to do in May of last year, get robust community input and I'm not sure that we've done that yet and so I need that process to maybe complete itself. I think that's only fair to those folks who started and I think we have, if you look on the city website, some pretty ambitious goals and I wanna make sure that we're meeting all of those. Thank you, Sarah and thank you, Eric. And I think it's appropriate with that question since we have three contested folks in ward seven to go round robin to each of those candidates with the same question. Can I start with Ali, 30 to 60 second response? I mean, it has been a lot of things that have changed. Also yesterday I talked to the mayor and there are things, it seems that we only have one candidate but I think what is important is what the council has done. The council did decide to reopen the process and I urge the mayor to respect the council willing by reopening the process, right? But at the same time, I think right now it will be imperative for us to wait until after the elections. If you go to my website or my city council, basically Facebook page, you will see what I have written as to why chief mirad could be the amazing next permanent chief for the city of Burlington. But through due diligence, I have received new information that made me wanna pause and reopen the process as well. So that's my response to that, but there has been some developments since the council voted on that resolution. Thank you Ali and Alec, I'll pose the question to you. Yeah, so barring in new developments that are not transparent and being shared with people now. I don't see a reason why you wouldn't choose a police chief like John Murad. He's been doing the job, he's been doing it well and you should be partnering with your police force. It should not be an adversarial relationship. But if he meets all the criteria and he wants to be here, he wants to raise his family here, he's been doing a good job. He's supported by the police officers underneath him. People in the community have spoke highly of him and he's qualified to do the job. It doesn't seem logical to reopen a search and prolong that. We have a person here who is willing to do the job, especially given that there has been input saying that the salary may not be where it needs to be and that seemingly is ignored. So if there's nothing to reopen it with and there's no data being taken into account, right now you have a person who wants to be or wants to raise their family and they're qualified. So whether you have one applicant or 10 applicants in the real world, I run a manufacturing facility. If the person who's coming to your door and applying is very fit for the job and wants to be there and agrees to all of the conditions around that and is willing to take feedback and listen, then there should be no reason to prolong that anymore. It's divisive to not. So again, it's listening to the stakeholders who are the officers there who support him. And that's a really big message and also listening to the police commission and understanding where they're coming from. But ultimately it's a guiding voice. So if there's nothing barring some unknown non-transparent thing that's coming up right now that nobody knows about, there would be no reason not to partner. Thanks, Alec and Olivia for the past mic to you. I would definitely reiterate that as someone who is not currently on the city council, I can't say I fully understand the process or the search committee's job and role, but I do know that I trust them and I trust our city. And I would really, I heard Sarah mention public input. And as always, I think public input is the most important piece of hiring someone who is working for all of us. So as long as that is included in the process then I trust the process that exists. Thank you, Olivia. Next question, Robert, I see. Matt, I'm gonna say we've got another two minutes. Yep, so we're gonna have to move swiftly, Robert, if you could ask your question. Real quick, this will be applied for all three candidates in ward seven, incumbent or not, city council votes on a lot of issues and some issues are contested or contended. What specific thing comes to mind whether you're incumbent or not that city council voted poorly on that you would do differently whether you are an incumbent or not, what could be done much better or what single thing would you do that different than has been done in the past two years? Just pick an issue. Let me reverse the order and start with Olivia and give you 30 seconds. Well, thank you for starting with me. I think the first thing that came to mind completely was masking. I think not necessarily that it was done incorrectly, but I think that it could have been done sooner reassessing the masking requirement in Burlington. Thanks, Olivia, Alec, I'll move to you. Yeah, so hearing from my neighbors and the first thing that comes to my mind is public safety and the knee-jerk reaction for defunding the police. I ascribe to a plan-do-check-act methodology and I don't believe that there was a plan put in place when they decided to cut the retrition. There should have been a definite plan for where the funds were going to be used. People should have been trained and on the streets ready to go. Systems should have been run concurrently before you started cutting officers and that didn't happen. And then when they went to vote to raise the cap back up they pumped the brakes and did not do that waiting, citing waiting on a report but it really saw the direction that it was already going. So that whole process was done very poorly and was more of a reactionary process than a deliberate planned out methodology, pragmatic process. Thanks, Alec. I'm gonna catch off because of time. Ali, I'll give you 30 seconds. I cannot think of one but I just would wanna have the opportunity to be working with my constituents as we move forward to have more engagement from them and reason why I would like to create a new North End Advisory Council that will be composed of some members of this NPA and some community members who have definitely been serving the city. We should not be just waiting in our homes until it's time to run for office. Olivia, I wanna thank you for your involvement in the NPA and anything else that you do that's what it takes to make the city a much better place for everyone. But no question. Thank you. Thank you, Ali. And in keeping good time, we're gonna move to the Inspector of Elections. And I'm sorry if there's hands up that I didn't get to but we're pressed for time. We will start first with Ward 4, Linda Belial. Linda's uncontested. So we'll give you three minutes, Linda. Are you with us, Linda? Linda was not able to make it today. Oh, she was not. I'm sorry, I was not aware of that. Then we'll move to Ward 7 where we have Mike Gargan and Patricia O'Kane. And we'll start with Mike. Mike, if you're present, you have three minutes. Mike, are you with us? I'm not hearing, we're seeing from Mike. Patricia, are you with us? Patricia O'Kane. Yes, I am. Thank you, Patricia. You have three minutes. Okay, there. Can you see me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Well, first I'd like to thank all the members of the NPA for keeping our community together even during a pandemic. My name is Trish O'Kane. I teach environmental studies at UVM. I also train UVM students to work as nature mentors with kids at Flynn Elementary and Hunt Middle School in afterschool birding clubs. I've lived in Ward 7 for six years and I really love this community. I'm running for inspector of elections for two reasons. First, I have prior experience monitoring elections while working for the United Nations in Central America. And also while I was living in Wisconsin, I worked at the polls. I really admire the work of our local elections team here in Ward 7, in our district. And I would love to learn more about how our local democracy works. The second reason I'm running is because of my parents, Bridget and Felix O'Kane. I am the proud daughter of Irish immigrants who came to this country in 1958 from the war zone of Northern Ireland. My mother was from Belfast, just like in the movie. And my father was from a small village in County Derry. I was born a few years after they immigrated to California. My parents grew up in an occupied police state. It was not a democracy. But after five years in this country, they decided they wanted to become citizens so that they could vote. They took citizenship classes for one year every Tuesday and Thursday night for two hours. They quizzed each other every Sunday and they loved their teacher, Mr. Sean Donnelly, who took them on a field trip to City Hall in Orange County, California. My parents both scored 100% on their exam. They were holding me in their arms during the swearing in ceremony. My mother died not long after this pandemic began. One of the last things she gave to me was this little green book called 25 Lessons in Citizenship, published in 1963. 57 years later, she still had it covered in plastic. This was my parents' citizenship textbook. My mother told me before she died, this wasn't the Bible, but it was to us. Voting was sacred in my family. I would be honored to help with election processes in this community. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, Patricia, and I'll open to any questions if anyone has a question for Patricia. I'm not seeing any questions for Patricia. I'm sorry, Carol Odie, I see your hand. I don't have a question, but I just wanna say that was a beautiful, beautiful testament to your parents becoming citizens and to your heritage. Thank you. That's very cool. I see lots of hands clapping. Yeah, I agree. Thanks for running. That's awesome. Thank you very much. Well, we have six minutes. Robert, did you raise your hand or was that a? Yeah, and my question is, I can't see what happened to my video, but I was just gonna ask Trish if, is she on the ballot or is she a write-in? I'm not sure. I was trying to, yes, I am on the ballot. I just filed the paperwork in time and they sent me the letter and told me I will be on the ballot. Okay, cool. Awesome, thank you. And we have five minutes remaining to our meeting and I missed at least one or two hands for the Ward 7 counselor race. And I see a few hands over the top. So I'm gonna just work through my list. Sal, is that you? Yes, it is me. Go ahead, thank you. In the same vein of Trish speaking, which I appreciate you sharing so much, we need more election workers and I would like you to, you all, to speak to your neighbors. We need all ages. I appreciate the people who have experience, but I encourage people who are younger and who want to learn about the election. And so I encourage all of you to speak to your neighbors and it's an important day. It becomes more important all the time it seems. So I encourage you all to contact the people you know and whatever ward they're in to think about being an election worker. Thank you. Good advice, Sal, thank you very much. Bob Hooper, I see your hand up, followed by Deb Boudin. I just wanted to say if we do have dead airtime, a representative Kimball has graced us with his presence. It might be nice to give him 30 seconds to introduce himself. I'd be happy to do so. Representative Kimball, you have the microphone. Well, thank you very much, Matt. My name is Charlie Kimball. I am a representative from Woodstock and I am a candidate for the Tenant Governor. And I wasn't planning on making a speech tonight. I just wanted to sit in and learn as to what your what your neighborhood discussion is about. And I've heard a lot about the groups in Burlington. I'm a former resident of Burlington as a UVM student, worked in the banking industry for a while, grew up in St. Albans. And so I'm familiar with the area. And it's good to see a few familiar faces on the screen as well. Hi, Sarah, nice to see you again. And I do enjoy serving with your other state representatives with Carol, with Emma and also with Bob. And so it's thank you very much for the opportunity just to say hello. And really, for me, I was just trying to find out what's going on up there. So it's really very useful. Thank you. Thanks for joining us, Charlie. I'm formerly from Woodstock, many, many moons ago. So you're living a beautiful little town. Thank you. I have two more hands up, Deb Bhutan and then Lee. Deb, can you go? Hi, everybody, I'm sorry. I have no idea why I can't get my video to show tonight. But mainly, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone and thanks to you, Matt and Jeff and everybody involved in putting this on. And thanks to all the candidates who are running. I mean, we've got several in Ward 7 and that's exciting. The one thought I just have, I haven't fleshed out in my mind. I'm very, very aware of the money issue in the city. And the whole everybody straps so tightly with money. And yet I just wanna throw out that money's not everything. And I'm very concerned about quality of life issues as well. So I know that a couple of candidates spoke really primarily, if not only about money and financing and just to address some of those other, encourage you to address some of those other issues as well. So thank you, that's all. Thank you, Deb. And we're close to our hour, but Lee, you've been patient. I hand you the mic. It's my question from earlier and it's for Carol and Emma and Bob. And it's that Senator McCormick has introduced a bill to ban leg hold traps. Please, please help it get passed. Leg hold traps that people don't know is a really cruel metal trap that they put out in the woods and it gets all animals. It doesn't just get the bad animal that they think is bad, it can get anything. It can get pets, it can get people. They're terrible, horrible, cruel punishing. It's animal cruelty. And Senator McCormick has introduced a bill and I hope it'll just sail right along. What do you think? I see thumbs up from Bob. I don't know where that bill is and whether they're gonna act on it in his committee, but I do know that in house natural resources, fish and wildlife, wanton waste is being worked on right now. I think anytime you have to chew your own leg off, it's a bad thing. Doesn't sound like any fun. I see no more hands. It's one minute after nine. So I will extend a sincere thank you to everyone for asking great questions, to some awesome, well-rounded candidates and some incumbents that have served and are coming back for more. So thank you all for a great evening. I think this has served the community and we'll see you all next month. I just have one thing before we go. We're looking for new members. We're a team of three tonight for the steering committee. So... Oh, it was a shameless plug, but yes. We need folks. We had a really good meeting to the all wards training on Monday evening with some great ideas and thoughts and a couple of things that we could maybe get feedback from the educators and the school board is translators and how do we incorporate translators. There were some thoughts about having meetings at different times of the day versus always, you know, seven to nine in the evening. So there were a lot of good thoughts and I know Evan, you had a really good one too. Could we get piped into the nursing homes and elderly housing in the area? I thought was a great idea too. So we're working on other thoughts but we need more folks. So please sign up. So what I'm hearing, Jeff, is if nobody volunteers soon, we're gonna move these to Monday morning, 7 a.m. So we'll see you soon. I would like that better, personally. That's just me. Not me, man. Not me. I'm a morning person. Careful what you wish for. Nope, nope, nope. New meaning for fruit loops. Thanks, everybody. We'll end on that great note. Thanks, guys. Thanks, you guys. Stay warm out there. Thank you. I don't even know when the ballots come out. February 7th or 9th? I think they start getting mailed on February 2nd through the 9th. Oh, great. I think that's correct. Yeah, that first week of February. It's the 9th. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Stay warm. Thanks. Bye.