 If someone can't, you know, I have a second look at it as long as we get this. Okay, you need to go now. Good seeing you. Good seeing you. Are you, like, now a little... Well, you know, Mittal's gonna do it tonight. So we almost messed that up. The school board guy didn't mention it. Did you mention it? He said, yeah, okay. Um... The bagels. You cleared out the bagels. And I called as I suggested. I'm gonna ask you out. No, it was such a good idea. All right. She's really good, you know? But she tends to be the one. She's so good. Yeah. She's great. She's really smart. Yeah. I've seen her before. I've seen her before. I've seen her before. Huh? Yeah. We've gone for three years. Five years ago. We've seen her before. You've had yourself that. Yes, yes. I've seen her before. I've seen her before. Okay, you can't find more than one thing. She's so... Really? Yeah. It's actually... It's actually... We all have the story... So, I'm surprised that I can't do it with these. What? The next one over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was all my head gone, right? I don't know what they are. So Is this the same one? Oh, I was really curious. that was all right so we'll go ahead and get started thank you everyone for being here March 21st our March meeting by means of introduction my name is Ben Travers I'm on the Ward 5 NPA steering committee I live here on home Avenue and we're trying to make more of an effort here to get back to a practice that we had in meetings past to sort of we have a small enough crowd that it works for us to sort of go around the room and give everyone here an opportunity to introduce themselves as well that's sort of the benefit of having these types of meetings is it's a little more our free-flowing and open to that type of dialogue and so Scott can we start with you? Sure, I'm Scott, you know what? I live over on St. Paul Street. I'm Marcia Bester-Samanola from Austin Drive. Lauren, you want to introduce yourself? It's great to say you're from CEDO, right? Yeah, and we're Lauren's helping out because for the last I would say almost a year or so we've been live streaming our meetings with the help of Channel 17 so that's what's going on there. Andy? Andy Simon, I live on Logan Street and I'm on this. I'm Samuel Bury, I live on Austin Street. Hi, guys, I'm Alex. Kara Sproen, I live on Scarborough. E. Lisa Nelson, Austin Grove, John Harbour, and I'm on the steering committee. Great, great. So we have a couple other members of the steering committee that couldn't be here tonight, Bill Keough, Alec Bauer, and Muhammad Jafar I suppose. Now might be a good opportunity to mention to you all that our April meeting is when we'll be having our steering committee elections. We have seven seats currently on the steering committee. The terms are for one year so everyone who's on the steering committee currently will be up for re-election and anyone who's interested in going out for it should come to the meeting this coming month in April. Our meetings are always the third Thursday of the month so our April meeting will be on April 18th and the way it goes is if we have more than seven people interested in it then will in effect have a vote of sorts of all the work five residents who are here in attendance. So if you're interested, please put it on your calendars, come on April 18th. If you have any questions about being on the steering committee, feel free to ask me, Andy, Joanna, or Joe, or anyone else who's on there. Our email addresses are online, they're also in the agenda here. And what I'll tell you is that I think we have at least three steering committee members now who will not be running for re-election so there will be quite a bit of turnover so if you are interested in coming out please do come. All right, so before we turn to our main agenda now we've done the introductions we'd also sort of like to open it up for open forum if anyone has any comments. If you could come forward just so we have the microphone and so on. Anyone for open forum? Yeah. Is this just for you or is this for amplification? Oh, okay. It didn't sound much louder. Hi, neighbors. This is my first time here at this NPA. I just moved to Austin Drive last summer. I'm here, I've been presenting, going to a number of city council meetings and city council commission meetings regarding the bike share and scooter share program. Does anyone here know what that is? So there's a proposal to have an electric bike, electric assist bikes and electric assist scooters. The proposal is that there would be 200 of each of those vehicles in the Burlington area. My concern has been about e-scooters. E-scooters to me pose a serious danger because they are the scooters, if you don't know what they are, they're like a skateboard with handlebars. They push a button and they go up 15 miles an hour. So you're on a skateboard with handlebars and you go in 15 miles an hour and they're really zippy and they're really fun. If you're riding them, if you're walking a dog or if you're walking on the sidewalk or if you are driving a vehicle or many other things that people are doing, they are not as much fun and they're actually dangerous. They're dangerous for the people who ride them as well because they go 15 miles an hour, and they're really zippy and really fun. They've actually been declared a public health emergency by the American Society of Trauma Surgeons. So they're really a problem. I've been speaking about them because I think there would be a problem in Burlington and really have an impact in our communities that we don't know about. So I've been going to some city council meetings. There's a small group of people who have been attending different NPAs and I also was just at the Department of Public Works which is involved in this launch around this. And what would happen is the plan is it's a collaboration between the city of Burlington and this company called Gotcha Bikes. The bikes that currently we have in the bike share program have sort of been a failure because people don't, they don't ride, there are seven gears and they're hard to get up Burlington Hills. So they haven't really been very successful. So the proposal is to replace them. The idea is that these are commuter vehicles. But I just wanted to alert people to it. Let your city council member know about it. I've been to a couple of these meetings with the Department of Public Works as I said and that's been Sharon Bouchard and Max Tracy and Dave Hartnett. Those are the three city council members who are involved in that committee. Dave Hartnett is rolling off but Sharon Bouchard and Max Tracy are really open to listening to concerns about this. My voice is saying that until people see them and are exposed to them and actually witness how intrusive they can be because what happens with these scooters is they just park on the sidewalk, they live on the sidewalk. This company proposes to address that problem through having what they're calling geofencing. So rather than just be dropped anywhere and picked up anywhere, there is going to be sort of like corrals that they're supposed to go to. But there's not really a requirement that they go to those corrals. Those corrals are still going to be on the sidewalks and they still feel like litter on the sidewalk. So when the battery runs out, people just drop them in a pile and you've got a big pile of these metal things with blinking lights that basically look, feel and are litter. Some people are really excited about them because they're a fun way to get around. But without having a sense of our community understanding them, introducing them more slowly and introducing them more safely, I'm really concerned about it. The other thing is that there's no liability laws right now. So if you got hit by someone on one of those scooters, tough luck, who knows who hit you, they drive off, that's that. In Santa Monica there was a seven hour long city council meeting of person after person coming up and talking about getting hit by someone on those scooters and harmed by someone on those scooters. And that there was no response from the scooter company who could actually probably identify, because this is all electronic now and who's on it at what time. So anyway, I want you to pay attention to it. It's something that when it was first proposed by the city just a few weeks ago, they wanted to have these on the streets by Memorial Day of this year. Even though there is no laws, regulations, ordinances that kind of define what these vehicles are, where they need to be, where they need to go, where they're not allowed to be. If there is going to be laws about that, who's going to enforce them, police are going to run around on the sidewalks giving people tickets that kind of a lot of other things to do. We're going to hear about some other things that they have to do tonight. So pay attention to it. I'm sorry that our city council member from our ward is not able to make it tonight, but let people, you know, think about it, talk about it. There was an article in seven days I was quoted in it that was about the e-scooters and that's how you can find a little more local information about it. So that's, I personally, so I'm personally not as opposed to the bikes because e-assist bikes do allow people who don't have the physical fitness or capacity to get places and I just rode one. People know what a bike is. And there are rules for bikes. So it's still an issue in terms of having helmets and things and they do go fast. I just rode one. There were just these demos and it was like, wow, this really is going down a hill to see what it was like to come back up the hill and it was really great to have that e-assist coming up a hill. So I personally don't have the same issue, although some of the people who have been speaking about it are concerned about them being on the bike path because they do go faster. They go up 20 miles an hour. I think maybe even a little faster than that. That's really fast. If you're a cyclist and you're going 15, 20 miles an hour, that's really fast. So part of the issue is our multi-use on the paths. The bike path isn't that wide that there's so many different lanes for different vehicles going different rates of speed and those are some of the things that need to be considered as people who are doing transportation planning. They think about the different lanes for different speeds and right now we don't have any of that. So I think that the scooters are coming too fast. So I'm saying let's slow it down. If it's inevitable, let's at least slow it down and do it right. The mayor was like, we're going to be different than all of these other cities, but we're doing it the exact same way as all of these other cities. So we need to, it's not like Burlington is magically going to be different if we're going to do it the same way that other cities are doing it. Thank you. Any questions? All right. Yeah, you can take that. Thanks. I do have a couple of handouts if anybody want ones that kind of these statements that I sent to the city council if you want one. Okay. Thank you. We also have some representatives from DPW coming later on the agenda tonight. They're here specifically to talk about their plan for bike infrastructure along Flint Avenue, but I know they're also always open to other questions. So I suspect that they'd be more than open to talking about the information you just discussed as well. Anyone else for open forum? Eric? Yeah, no problem. I just wanted to say that we're having a fundraiser dinner gathering at our house on Monday, April 1st at 6.30 and what this is for is there's this fantastic project going on of sending hospital supplies that are going to be discarded basically, and there's a woman in Maine, I can't remember her name, but she organizes containers, puts them on ships and sends them to places that need them. So there is one now, as I speak, going to Sudan to a hospital there that my wife has been working with someone on. And that's great. So they really need an X-ray machine. So they're trying to raise money for that. It's a 400-bed hospital and they have nothing. You said there's beds, but there's not even bedding. It's that kind of situation. So it's a really great project. So you're all invited. April 1st, 6.30 at 46 SCARF, have corner of SCARF and Wells. Can I get in touch with you and sort of best email? Yes. Harris at Rowan.net h-a-r-r-i-s at r-o-e-n.net I saw something about it it was in front porch form today. Great. You'll see Harris again because Harris is one of our planning commissioners and they're also on the agenda tonight. So we'll see Harris back up here. Anyone else for open forum? Joe? If you wanted to bring up the budget resolution. Yeah. I was going to bring that up because anyone else has anything for open forum? I just want to mention that next month in April we're hoping to organize a birthday somebody from the city and I'm hoping somebody from 250 for long. It's going to be the end of the day. I will update everyone once we put the agenda together on from porch form, other avenues as well. Okay. Anything else? All right. So what Joe was mentioning is whereas we try to operate things relatively informally here there is some formal structure around the NPAs and we have some bylaws and such and that's one of the other things by the way which we want to try to address in April is to dust off the bylaws and to make a couple changes in ways that make more sense now in 2019 when last time Alisa worked on them which was a little while ago now. But the bylaws allow for us to even if something's not on the agenda there's various mechanisms by which we can add something to the agenda and it requires a majority vote of the ward 5 residents who are here and the reason why I sort of give you that context is for all the NPAs there's this organization which is known as the Wards Organization and it's basically an entity that all the steering committee members from all the wards are invited to to get together from time to time to talk about city-wide issues and at the last meeting we went to that Joanna and I were at we continued a discussion which started to come up last fall and has continued through now about NPA funding. I won't go into a big long history course about it but NPA has been more vibrant funding a lot of it was tied to the community development block grant program which allowed for more micro-grants than it currently allows for and the NPA had a bit more control over where that money went to but as time has gone on that money has been less available for micro-grants and the city has otherwise rolled back the budget for the NPA such that each ward at the moment has a budget of only $400 a year and it doesn't from the perspective of the steering committee members now and there's sort of a general consensus among all the NPAs it doesn't allow us an opportunity to be all that creative yes we can bring in some snacks from time to time but if we ever really wanted to talk about something more ambitious like you know having a block party or Lisa mentioned they did a pancake breakfast back in the day or if we wanted to try to make these meetings more accessible by being able to bring in the paid sitters to offer childcare services to individuals or these are the old sort of NPA signs that we would put around the neighborhood to advertise the meetings but a lot of them advertise the meetings has taken place over at DPW and obviously we're no longer there it'd be nice to have from our perspective a little additional funding for us to be able to afford those things and so at the all wards meeting that we were at each of the NPAs agreed to go back to their respective assemblies to ask the assembly to vote in favor of a resolution which would be forwarded to the city council asking that each wards budget be increased to $2,500 every year you know perhaps it's a sort of ask for more than that shall receive type analysis but that was the resolution that each group agreed to bring back to their respective assemblies some of the other wards have already some of the other NPAs have already endorsed it but the reason why I'm hoping to get it on the agenda tonight and we have about we've already chipped into it a little bit but we had about 15 minutes baked into the end of our agenda and I was hoping to come back to this resolution it's a pretty cut and dry type thing and I'd be willing to circulate it all to you when we get to that point but effectively it simply asks for an increase in the FY20 budget to $2,500 the question I would present right now and I'll present it in a more formal way than we normally do but it's just to ask you all whether or not you'd be okay with our spending a few minutes at the very end of our agenda to come back to this item and the way that we have to get that on the agenda is I think the right way to do this is to ask you all for a motion of sorts for someone to move to add that to the end of the agenda if there's a second then we can have a vote if we have a majority of hands in the room then we can move it to the end of the agenda so at this point in time I'd entertain if anyone has a motion to add that item to the end of the agenda okay, motion by Joe, anyone second? next ball alright so I'll take a vote now and again this is just on the question of whether or not we can come back to this for a few minutes at the end of the meeting and I have some papers here to circulate when we get there but if you're in favor of discussing this at the end of the agenda all in favor if you could raise your hand okay so I think we have a majority so I won't ask for those against so we'll double back to that at the end of the agenda so thank you all alright so now to the main agenda as Andy mentioned one of the things that the steering committee discussed doing is trying to oftentimes our meetings are sort of a hodgepodge like tonight but we've also talked about having more theme type meetings like in April we've been talking about having a climate change meeting and last fall we had a meeting that was dedicated to opioids and the overdose crisis and we had a really great conversation discussion with Jackie Corvall the citywide opioid manager with folks from the Howard Center and other individuals who are involved with this issue of vital importance to our community we also had one of our neighbors here but unfortunately he was at the end of our agenda and the discussion went on so long that Scott got bounced and he was kind enough to allow for us to continue the discussion with some of the other folks who were there while also agreeing to come back in and to make sure it didn't happen again tonight we put Scott right in the front of the agenda this time around but we thought it was timely to bring him back in now because I don't know if folks went to it the other night but the city hosted its opioid town hall Scott has a very personal story that I'll let him tell with respect to his experience with the issue and he's been able to leverage that issue into being a real community leader on this issue and it's how I've gotten to know him and really glad and proud to have him here in Ward 5 and wanted to give him an opportunity to come in and talk to you all so thanks Scott back everybody I appreciate it never complained that a discussion about that topic ever goes over and the fact that it spilled over into a second session I really appreciate it so thanks for having me here I have a crazy amount of notes despite talking about this it feels like every day and most hours of my life so bear with me as I look right here but Ben wanted to have me back to share a little bit about my story and as well as about my role as a representative on ComSTAT I represent our community in the monthly opioid policy meetings held by the city and for that reason it made sense to me to start a dialogue to figure out how I can really represent well you all it's not just my own priorities but to that end I certainly have priorities of my own and I think it would be helpful when thinking about my work or in that role just an understanding of where I'm coming from and where I've been so to that ends I'm a person in recovery that's not exactly a surprise based on the context of the meeting but I began using opioids when I was 16 I found recovery at the age of 22 and my journey to recovery was a hard one I did the stereotypical things or the things that you would expect when you hear about the story of someone in recovery I hurt myself and others I was arrested multiple times I lost jobs and educational opportunities and nearly my life I was blessed by good fortune and a lot of probably dumb luck to receive treatment in 2013 that I wouldn't have been able to access otherwise it was my third attempt at inpatient it took me about seven months and it brought me into recovery that I'm enjoying today and since entering recovery since this new lease on life I've tried my best to leverage my my experiences and and to use this in a meaningful way the things that have happened to me and the things that I've done so to that ends I came back to Vermont I went to UVM and graduated I'm currently employed there now and working towards my master's in public administration and my first few years in recovery were mostly spent in silence the treatment regimen I had participated in really encouraged a lot of quiet reflection and introspection keeping oneself on the right path and while doing that I was also having to live in reality and the thing about reality and this overdose crisis is the deaths haven't stopped in the past few years or at least since beginning my own recovery and I think what's been the hardest part about this second chapter of my of my substance use disorder story hasn't been abstaining from use but has really been the fact that the the fantastic connections and friendships I made throughout treatment and recovery many of the first meaningful relationships I've had in my life I've had to watch people not enjoy the same success I've had while I haven't had a recurrence of my substance use disorder and while I've got to enjoy the many things I thought would never have been possible while on active addiction I've watched my friends struggle to find help and ultimately die and so eventually I think it was about October 2017 another friend passed and that was the moments that I decided to start bringing my recovery my advocacy out publicly and so I've started to really leverage my personal experience to inform policymakers about the things that I think could improve the lives of people in our own community and people with substance use disorder and for community safety generally and so to that end things like overdose prevention sites and I was asked to participate or help in the process of drafting a resolution that was passed by the City Council last summer that ultimately allowed us to consider in some way the option of overdose prevention sites here in Burlington and that resolution also put a new community member, someone with lived experience on ComStat so I've been attending ComStat for about six months now since September of last year and part of the thing I'd like to do tonight is really report out on some of the discussions I've been part of and some of the things that we've been doing here in Burlington because if you haven't heard the news we have for the first time in my lifetime good news to discuss the fact is that there was a press release last month that overdose opioid related overdoses fatalities dropped by 50% this past year in Chittenden County alone unfortunately they rose throughout the rest of the state the reason we saw such a precipitous drop relative to the drop in the state is because of three interventions that were really championed by the partners in ComStat one the decriminalization of buprenorphine were no longer arresting or charging people who possess a medication for opioid use disorder despite not having a prescription we've also lowered barriers to getting those prescriptions by having somewhat available in our syringe exchange to provide prescriptions as soon as people are ready for treatment and we're also providing fentanyl test strips so people who are choosing to still use drugs can do so a bit more safely understand their risk and those interventions have been fantastic and while it's hard to point to any causal relationship there it's pretty clear that we're doing things right in Chittenden County and that's exciting and I think the challenge in the next year or so will really be looking at how that progress continues or doesn't and then where that leads us to consider our next set of policy interventions maybe it's time to think about overdose prevention sites in the future but for now I think it's fine to take heart in the fact that we're doing a lot of great things here in Chittenden Burlington and things that certainly have helped me while in active addiction and would have helped my friends so that's a little bit about who I am and what I've been doing and while I'm certainly prepared to pitch to you all my great ideas for solving this crisis and I've got a few one thing that occurred to me far too late in this process is the idea of yes community representative which is not a role I've filled in the past six months because as far as I know you weren't aware I was representing you or the community so hello I'm Scott by the way nice to meet you but to that ends I'd like to sort of turn the tables now I'll continue to sit here you can remain in your seats but I would like to hear any questions concerns you may have about this broad issue generally as well as any ideas for solutions anything I can answer or relay up the chain yeah sure so an overdose prevention site and this might speed everyone along if I just call it a safe injection site instead and I see a few nods so an overdose prevention site that idea would be laws in the books be damned federal disagreement be damned that if you have a substance use disorder that leads you to stick a needle in your body multiple times a day to get well you can do so under the protection of medical professionals the idea of replicating these treatment facilities that are pretty widespread throughout Canada some places in Europe Australia where just allowing people with substance use disorder the ability to use and test their substances in a safe environment and ultimately reverse overdoses that do occur in those environments and that's something about something that is killing 70,000 Americans a year it strikes me as a common sense idea wasn't planning on going down this road tonight but that's something that I've definitely pushed for in my advocacy especially when you lose as many loved ones and friends and neighbors as we have you start to think about radical ideas and that's something that's really grown on me over the years they have to argue both sides the kids that I have talked to have come down on the side of I think that if nothing else is kind of destigmatized the way they approach it and look at it so that's a great thing but they say because this problem is so much of a rural problem in Vermont it's really a problem here in Burlington it's an even bigger problem in rural areas but just dealing with Burlington the safe injection sites once you can't drive to them or from them and they question how much people would actually use them and access them and for the money that you would spend doing something like that is there not a better use of funds given the small just a very small route that could make it work or it might not even be a route it might be a very few people and they wouldn't even use it all the time that's yeah so we're going down that road tonight I guess everybody so certainly a lot to unpack there first thing to start with right away driving to and from sites we let people drive away from bars this would be staffed by medical professionals I think we can get people to a level of functioning that we can be confident in their ability to drive away but thinking about the rural problem here in Burlington Burlington would definitely be a different beast when talking about establishing one of those sites and it's certainly easier to see the argument for one on the conventional models that we're usually referencing in places like Canada thinking about a stable brick and mortar location with set hours certainly when we think about the clientele who are already using safe recovery from multiple areas across the state and the reputation and relationships that safe recovery has throughout the community I think it's easy to see plenty of scenarios where it would be a viable option for many of that population talking about throughout the state elsewhere dropping safe injection sites in some places might be helpful places like Barrie, I could see it being helpful and certainly sorry, something exploding in my pocket okay, that was hot but certainly places elsewhere, rural Vermont I could see where it wouldn't make a difference at all where it might not be as a brick and mortar site, particularly accessible or really addressing a whole lot of people's needs and in those scenarios you say what about mobile sites what about if we're going to dream broadly and bigly what about meeting people where they're at geographically not just where they are in the recovery process so there's certainly many arguments against these sites and that's partly why I'm so hardened by the fact that our interventions here in Burlington and Shinnon County have been making so much making so much progress but yeah there are questions and certainly that's why I was so enthusiastic that the city council was going to be exploring overdose prevention sites I hope that happens soon so I think the worst comparison right now might be based on where overdose where opioid related fatalities are occurring relative to the state so we're seeing increases in southern counties and drops in Shinnon County and that's why I think it's safe to say worse. Why that's happening there's a lot of speculation I don't have a clear good answer there's speculations as to differences in the interventions here in terms of the accessibility of uprenorphine and whether or not there's stigma among first responders in or among law enforcement in addressing any unsanctioned or unprescribed possession of buprenorphine but certainly it's hard to say and that's one of the reasons why we're hoping to replicate the success we've had here elsewhere so please bring our messages to the country you said that you had a whole laundry list could you give a list either give a list of things that are key words to look up on our own or potentially give your email out so we just like get an extended list of those ideas yeah I think the email is the way to go there yeah that's right I'll give you guys my email my email is scott with two t's dot povic pav ek at gmail.com yeah people in their middle-aged and older people get started on these opioids because of pain or surgery or some other physical problems but why choose that as opposed to alcohol whatever why do young people get to go for this it's in the culture people talk about it as a great thing they get it cheaply they even threw that so you didn't know I should I wish I did why we have a substance use disorder crisis certainly I think before getting into that it's quick to take a step back and really appreciate the framing that we have a substance use disorder crisis here in America and we're talking about the public effects of alcohol use disorder are through the roof especially relative to opioid use disorder and you're also talking to fortunately someone lucky enough to have both so when we're talking about why people seek out substances I think I'm not entirely alone in the fact that we talk about an opioid crisis or an overdose or opioid epidemic but really at least for my generation the people that I grew up with and the people who continue to be in active addiction here in Vermont it really wasn't necessarily about opioids opioids was the product of the time when talking about the at then when I started my experimentation with drugs it was a matter of over prescription and there were too many opioids on the market and that was then that was about 10-12 years ago now had it been something else when you're that bored, anxious, lonely and poor you would have found something else so certainly we were taking whatever we could get at the time and I think it's just that combination of the moment and the generation so that's this is based in the COMP STAT model that I think was born out of the New York City Police Department in the 80's or 90's and the theory here it's run through the Burlington Police Community STAT statistics I believe I might have the STAT part wrong which would be super embarrassing but COMP STAT so community statistics and what we're really doing is bringing department heads and agency representatives from a whole swath of organizations across Chinn County to meet on a regular basis and share metrics that are really being used to direct policies so on a pretty regular basis bringing a lay of the landscape and asking how does this directs where we go next and just in my six months I was brought in under the age of one particular issue and seen a whole lot of progress elsewhere things like promoting access to treatment in prisons and jails was absolutely done by the champions that are in that room at COMP STAT and that's been a fantastic change six months or so that's really making a difference here in Vermont so you have my contact information please ask me anything tell me anything if you have stories or experiences that you didn't have a chance to share tonight please relay those I would love to if at all possible share them with policy makers who might not be hearing them on a regular basis but happy to be a resource as I can be thanks for your time tonight thanks so much so next up on the agenda is broken school district we wanted to dedicate a good chunk of this conversation to the pre-k task force but we also have our school commissioner here Mike Fisher who was nice enough to sneak over from my school board meeting that's happening right now so I thought we could give him just a few minutes up front and then switch over to pre-k task force so thanks Mike so I do want to come over because I know that there's a lot going on in the district and I know that especially and I've been getting a lot of email about the principal and so I want to just talk briefly about it and then I'll open it up for questions so this is my first year on the board we've done very little there hasn't been a lot of hiring decisions but as we look at the policy it is the superintendent who recommends the hire the board is responsible actually doing the hiring of all licensed professionals including the building administrators the principals so the board does have final signatory but the superintendent is responsible for the process to pick and to recommend and the board has been debating, deliberating of how much we get into the hiring process I know that some community members want the board to have more say and to have more information when given the decision to sign off and there is no right answer it is a dilemma but the policies and the law says that the superintendent gives the information to the board we've listed out just last year said okay here's some information that we want but I know that there's a lot of discussion that we should get more information to date the decisions that have been made so far is we got a recommendation for the Flynn principle for the Shawn Whitmore sales who is currently the principal of SA the board last week declined to the recommendation of the superintendent to hire her as the Flynn principal the BHS principal search had a number of candidates most of those candidates dropped out due to signing with other school districts part of that is timing we are late in the season and part of that is because we wanted to do additional vetting with staff and community members so that puts a we didn't start early enough to do that in timing with to compete with other districts so we did have the principal the BHS forum last night two nights ago something like that where interim principal Noel Breen spoke and he's the only candidate and he's being put forward tonight probably as we speak as the as the candidate to have the full time job so I don't know what's going to happen so I wanted to that's enough talking for me I'll open it up for questions why did the process get started so early I don't know so some of the principal hiring sorry elementary school principals that are the physicians some of that movement people wanted to request to transfer that just happened recently in terms of the BHS principal hiring the district knew that we wanted to hire a permanent principal in July so why did it start when it did or I don't have an answer so the group grab bag is really effective in attracting so the rationale for that is efficiency right so that if we have if we can get a pool of candidates that we can say do a group vetting that is more efficient than doing maybe the same candidate at two different schools or three different elementary schools so because we're again late in the season there is a need to move expeditiously and the proposal to do the group bunching them up was approved by the board as a way to make the process efficient and not miss potentially a good candidate well I understand the concern but there's the other way I mean there's no right or wrong it's a dilemma right so we decided that we needed to move and that bundling was the best solution it's not perfect there are no perfect solutions a teacher a principal who gets an offer to a school that they don't like doesn't have to accept it so I do understand that maybe the optics weren't great but we didn't want to delay the potential of hiring a good candidate and lose them to another district so Champlain and IAA and SA are the ones that are being bundled so a bundled candidate pool there's sessions set up at Hunt for later this month the Champlain principal is there's a search advisory team of district staff and leaders who are in charge of the detailed vetting of that candidate and there's community forums to gather that input there are no I know the question came up why is there not a parent on the search advisory team Superintendent Obang has chosen not to have parents on any search advisory team some of this rationale is that you need to take anti-bias training to make sure that you know the anti-bias training and that's just decision he has made to include administrators, other principals and staff and not just from that school so that Doug Woods from Champlain participated in the Champlain and Flynn search advisory team so the process to go back to your question the process for IAA and Champlain are all going to be bundled and vet those candidates as a group yeah I understand that there's been requests but there's as far as I know the forum is still at hunt so if I could just ask one question it seems like a very high level turnover among leaders among our district so when you talk about recruitment and retention recruitment is one part of it but retention is another and so maybe it's a big question if you don't have time to answer but from your position on the school board even if we're able to recruit good candidates do you have any concerns about our ability to then retain them given the level of turnover that we're seeing right now so some of the openings are a very good question some of the openings are not I don't think are due to the district or the Flynn principle for time or principal at IAA wanting to do a transfer and do something new after 8 years I think that's natural part I do think that the district has had some rough times lately we have reputation for various reasons we've had a teacher strike superintendents I mean principals to see what's going on so I do we do worry about retention and so I agree with you hiring is one thing retaining is another and if we look at all of the principals across the district only Shelly Matthias at EES has any long tenure and that's to me a negative indicator of what's going on in this district I'm going to get my phone up thank you for talking about the early end thanks a lot so it's Tracy Tracy here from Pre-K and so we're going to talk about right now so thanks for having me I think somebody on the steering committee requested an update on Pre-K program I'm a parent in the district and I don't know how much history you all have you probably have quite a bit because Champlain was a potential site for a new building a lot happened last spring to move this early education changes forward and there wasn't much storytelling or engagement happening along the way I was a parent in that phase that kind of threw my hands up and said hold on a second nobody knows about this you know it's going to ground it's going to be broken in July and so luckily the school board agreed to put a halt on it the school board did in October was to pass a plan to form a task force and so the task force has been meeting since November and I joined it as a parent I have a fifth grader and a preschooler and I feel strongly that equity and access need to be a part of the future of that program and so my concerns were closing down the neighborhood schools and having to bus more kids more neighborhoods and access for parents to those programs so that's where I came from into this process what the task force has been doing is having a lot of meetings around what's been done investigating why some of the decisions were made and the thinking behind it this kind of a story that wasn't told we're working on some documents to present that information and more of a concise way we've also been drafting a survey which is out as of the end of February and the survey was opened up to the entire community and so the goal of the survey is to find out what we value in the early education program as citizens of the city because our early learners affect everybody this is the foundation that we're starting with what do we value and what do we need as a community for these kids we have a lot of working families does what we offer in the Burlington public school system serve those families or are there other needs that are preventing people from accessing the services what does the waitlist look like and who's on it and why is there a waitlist and can we fix that and if we built new buildings for example because their needs aren't being met by what we're offering so basically the survey is trying to gather a lot of information help us spread the word about filling it out it's open to every Burlington resident every community member teachers, parent, citizens everybody and so hopefully we're going to get voices and input and that is going to be something that the task force takes and kind of lays over the top of the information gathering what's available in the area like what are the restraints on resources what are some alternatives and then we are going to come out to the NPAs and the PTO meetings and other gatherings that are already scheduled and have discussions and ask for feedback about those potential plans but we're not really prepared to offer ideas out to discuss until we gather the information from the public so fill out the survey I think the schedule the timeline is still sort of not fully approved by the rest of the task force but I think it will be open until the first Friday in April I think we're thinking like April 3rd or something maybe that's a Wednesday and then we'll spend as a task force we'll spend quite a few weeks all together and figure out what do we value what can we do with the resources we have and put out a presentation so the goal is to get out here in May in full force and hit all the meetings that we can gather the feedback tweak the plans and hopefully by the June Board have something to recommend to Yao and the Board for what the community wants to see happen and what the community would support it might look like a hybrid it might look completely different from what the district has done already it might be that we have to take baby steps I think the task force is recognizing that there's a lot of restraint in resources but hearing from residents and not just parents about the building sites for example is important and that needs to be that so trying to make the space for the engagement so that's where we're at and so hopefully we have something to recommend to the Board in June I think it's June 11th is the June Board meeting so that's kind of our trajectory right now does anybody have any questions they're trying to double back and say okay what does the community need what do you guys want and so for the survey all parents should be filling it out and what do we need and this task force is doing the survey and studying it's just awesome so please tell a lot of people about it and I think the task force I'm like we ought to and so it's really important for everyone to know not just like people we need to hear from everybody and there's a you know there's we recognize that the task force is to push this out through their avenues but we recognize that there's a it's really difficult to reach parents of zero to five because they're really exhausted by having little ones right and they're not necessarily coming to NPA and they're not necessarily checked into district information they're not necessarily reading from porch forum you know they're just starting to connect to the community in different ways as parents and so if you know in the city who have children that are that little like tell them about the survey tell them to go to the district website and there's an early education survey it takes less than 15 minutes and yeah there's some flyers on the back table and and right that would be wonderful to take that there yeah if you go to the district home page it's bsdvt.org and down a little bit in the news feed there's a link to it as well so help us spread the word two more minutes any more questions do you have a question? yeah okay great yeah as a parent of a one year old and a three year old I took the survey and it didn't take all that long it was about 10 minutes or so and it's very comprehensive and I thought it was really well put together so thanks for doing that thanks for filling it out more please I heard it was about a week maybe a week ago from the district PR staff I think there were like 150 that had been filled out so we really need a representative sample and that's not it so more thank you any other questions? okay thanks so much alright so as folks here know both here at the NPA as well as obviously in community discussions there's been some discussions about the Burton proposal with respect to one of the facilities there along industrial parkway he was nice enough to join us a couple months ago but for this meeting we wanted to get one of the other voices here and we wanted to bring back in some folks from planning and zoning so we have as I mentioned Harris our work five planning commissioner as well as we have city planner Megan Tuttle and one of our planning commissioners as well so if they could come up and just wanted to get some feedback on what's going on here in the neighborhood as well as with respect to the proposal we've been discussing thanks so much for being here thanks Ben when I introduce yeah so Harris and the Fearn Ward five and I was glad when I got invited to talk about this from the planning commission perspective Megan Tuttle's planning commission staff and Alex friend is on the planning commission and is also chair of the ordinance committee on the planning commission so deals with these ordinance changes a lot as do we so I'll hand it off to Megan who's talked about this and in a whole bunch of other forms as well so it was pretty prepared to kind of say you know what the you know kind of how we came to the decision or you know why we went into this decision basically and then maybe at the end I'll get into how the commission specifically got to it and Alex can chime into about the deer rear or whatever else yeah thank you for having us we have talked about this amendment you may have heard of it referred to as an amendment with a number or with a name called commercial uses in the elm the enterprise district that's the zoning district that represents a lot of the south end along pine street essentially the part of the neighborhood that's not in a residential neighborhood this is a part of the city where we've had a lot of study in recent years with the plan BTV south end but also from the planning commission's perspective is a place where we've heard a lot of questions and we've had a lot of issues raised for us about the evolving nature of this neighborhood and how the regulations that govern the enterprise district today don't imagine and don't represent a lot of the business models that have emerged in the south end over the past 10 years or more particularly as the nature of industry industry and manufacturing has changed we've seen a lot of new and kind of evolving businesses so over the past several years we've received quite a few requests for the planning commission and ultimately the city council to consider some amendments to that zoning that would enable certain businesses that have either been long standing businesses in the neighborhood or emerging businesses in the neighborhood to evolve along pine street or within the south end as a whole in the recent months we've received a number of these requests which are the subject of this current agreement that the planning commission has been considering those include the request to allow banks within the enterprise district we presently do not allow banks in the district and then we'd also received a couple of requests related to performing arts venues both arts riot in their present location with an interest in adapting their current facility to better meet their needs for more space that currently would not be allowed under the ordinance as well as the proposal that you heard about a couple of months ago with Burton and looking at the next generation of their business model and seeing some synergies with that kind of use in their facility so when we received these requests the planning commission felt that it was really appropriate for us to consider the entire context of what plan BTV our plan for the south end talks about in terms of the evolving nature of the enterprise district and especially when we think about that part of the district that south of home avenue really being a place that has been long characterized as still a remaining truly industrial neighborhood we were interested in trying to find a solution that considered the requests of those businesses that were being brought forward to us but also looked at the kind of long-term viability of that part of the neighborhood as an industrial neighborhood how do we provide some flexibility for the evolution of those businesses without unintentionally creating zoning for that part of the neighborhood that makes it such a exciting place to have almost a second downtown that we don't see industry anymore within that part of the district and that was really the challenge that the planning commission and the staff are working on as part of this amendment and so the amendment that has been proposed and forwarded by the planning commission to the city council tries to balance those issues we recognize that in order for industry to thrive in the south end especially traditional kind of manufacturing and industrial uses we need to be more flexible in terms of allowing them to do the kind of maker activities their industries are asking them for as well as allow them to kind of partner up with other more traditional types of commercial uses that can quite frankly help them pay the bills and help them afford to stay in their spaces where they want to work and be producing in the south end so that's the first part of the amendment is that we consider a number of what we call more traditional commercial uses things like a performing arts venue or a bank or some office spaces that maybe had some limitations before in the south end to be allowed in a more broad way within the neighborhood to support those industrial and manufacturing uses but then we also recognize that like I said before we don't want these uses to kind of just run away with us and really transform the nature of the south end into something that it hasn't been in the past so when we think about the part of the district south of home avenue one of the things that we really wanted to prioritize was how we can try to preserve some of that industrial flavor and those industrial type businesses so the amendment proposes that when we want to see something like an office or a cafe or a performing arts venue or some other kind of traditional commercial use needs to really be in support of industry that it needs to happen on the same lot as industry and so the amendment says that no more than half of the uses on a particular property can be these sort of traditional uses that we really have to maintain at least half of them as some kind of industrial or manufacturing use ultimately that is kind of the amendment in a nutshell I know that through the planning commission's process we did have some questions about you know how do we consider certain types of uses and where they're allowed in the south end and I think that one of the big things for the planning commission's consideration was how these uses kind of relate to one another are they happening is a performing arts venue kind of happening freestanding on its own anywhere within the district or is it happening as a part of something else kind of in conjunction with something else and that's really how we set this amendment up to be structured I think you can probably speak a little bit more to some of the things that the planning commission thought about yeah we had a question did you have a question just to be clear we're really only talking about the industrial district south of Home Ave so that would be Burden and Edland and you know those companies are right now yeah yeah so that's the area we should be clear that's the area that we're talking about this kind of relationship where if you wanted to if a property owner wanted to bring in some sort of traditional commercial space or a performing arts venue they would have to do it in conjunction with some kind of an industrial use that same limitation doesn't apply in the entire district so this is something that through plan BTV's analysis of the south end and some of the identities of the south end this was a place where we felt we really needed to focus on the preservation of industry which is why that relationship would apply in that place what do you consider an industrial use of just trying to think of using the therapist well yeah there's actually a whole table of allowed industrial uses which I don't know if the top of my head but I can provide some examples so you know anything from the traditional kind of making refining materials and products producing products like we would think of traditionally as an industrial kind of use but also things like like we know prototyping or laboratories to test products we also know that there are industrial uses and that we would allow through this amendment that are things like taking a raw material and making it into a product so producing beer or cider or some other kind of food product could even be an industrial type use there are also quite a few industrial uses that really blend the line between art and industry so you think about things like photography or sculpture making or woodworking those are examples of things that are kind of on the edge between industry and art yeah and that the challenge at the plan commission was to look at this and you know kind of unique area of Burlington where you know industry does happen and should happen and balance that with the fact that it's hard to get industrial uses to come there you know most places are going to set up outside of Burlington it's extremely hard so how do we move forward considering that it's kind of the balance we struck well you can't have just a restaurant for example but if that's part of complimenting the industrial use that's already there in the same building then yeah it's okay we don't want to turn into another church street but we have to face the economic reality too yeah you're talking about it and you're making it sound very interesting and I've got bringing in a small cafe or something like that that would go along with the business sometimes small side things the proposal that's coming forward is higher ground funding with eventually 1200 people coming into a performance there's a bit of a disconnect between a small little venue and maybe say a photography studio or an art studio maybe on a small show or something like that to three nights a week having the cars show up and be there until quite late or early in the morning there's a big disconnect in my mind about those and I think the other thing is yes there's an industrial parking but it is 100% surrounded directly adjacent neighborhoods houses right of butters for example in our case we're in the waterfront residential if I want to change the color of my front door I have to get a permit Rhino foods just did a major expansion they could cut down half the trees on their side and that's no problem and they did there's a huge disconnect in the use of property and they are right adjacent to it and that's not your fault that's a fault that was made 40 some years ago when zoning first came in that zoning uses were allowed next to each other it was a very poor decision back then but we need to live with that and make good decisions based on conditions that exist right now and the thought of I have no problem with the skateboard part coming in in the Burton building I think the Burton museum is great I think having their store move over into that building is a fantastic idea consolidating their offices as technical offices ban all along there's no change in use it's a change in definition but not a change in use those are all good things those are no problems the concept of a change in use time street an arts riot that's a street that is constantly traveled there are people on that road 24-7 it's got high use if I look at my back window and I look at industrial parkway on a Saturday night at 8 o'clock at night I can stand up for 10 minutes it's a huge change and I think that's what's considered I apologize for missing that point that is what we're talking about is a much bigger use than just a coffee shop or restaurant and we considered that with eyes wide open the planning commission what that means so thanks for correcting me on that and bring up the challenge of having an industrial zone right next to residential zone it's a problem all along industrial zone how do you deal with that I think it is important to have a manufacturing district in Burlington and to preserve that deal with the adjacency questions as best we can I think the thing that I wanted to speak to too about what you're mentioning about the impact of certain uses and what it means in the context in which they're located so in our zoning ordinance there are some uses in Burlington where we say yes you can do this here there's no caveats to that yes you can do that here there are other places where we say we're going to conditionally allow this and what that means is that when that use is conditionally allowed it goes to the development review board automatically and the development review board reviews any proposal for a project of that use against a number of criteria they look at things like what are the traffic impacts going to be what are the impacts on infrastructure whether that's roads or sewers or any other kind of utilities they look at things like the character and compatibility of the area in some cases that might be a question of is this use in character if it's this size versus this size or is that use in character at all those are the kinds of questions that the DRB then through that through their review process would actually ask an answer when they would consider a specific proposal for something having gone unless it is specifically prohibited unless it comes to a very high bar that there is a conflict then it's allowed and I've seen it over and over and over again so that idea of conditional use that bar is really really high for a conflict that 99% of the time is going to get approved conditional use doesn't slow things down and it may not necessarily say no not at all this can't happen but what it does allow for our modifications or conditions looking at a traffic study and maybe setting hours of operation or setting other limitations that can help mitigate potential impacts as a result of certain uses is to your point is more of a likely scenario for that process not about conditional use additional use sounds like temporary to me it's not a very clear it just means that before we say that it can be permitted it goes through an extra level of review to evaluate against all those criteria we talked about what is the impact that this use might have on the area in which it's located by concern with the tailway and the dog send that up to the city so it handles like things like a garage it's not a garage it's not a garage we're used to it it's not a garage all this kind of stuff and yet this way a company who's having problems and understands the difficult situation which I feel is already pretty much conditional use that is basically optional I don't feel bad that sort of thing used to be a manufacturer but now it's basically an office building so I already figured it's conditional or something like that to get them to survive and we wanted them to move portion but to offer them let them bring in this thing that's radically different in this zone there's every agenda to be you don't allow a bank there you don't allow yeah, a bicycle there, a garage things like this would seem like at least in bicycle cars but then to allow a venue or all night and stuff like that why is this suddenly fit if the tailway can adopt here that yes they want to stay understand perfectly yes they're having monetary problems we're doing that and this is an option somebody came here and said what better change that I don't think my name is Alex Frenem, planning commissioner I live in Henry Street in Ward 1 we're not appointed by Ward or anything I wanted to come tonight because we talked about this at two different planning commission meetings a lot of you were there we heard from a range of people in the neighborhood some people were in favor of it so we're here to talk about the zoning and not about the project specifically and I appreciate what you said I don't think we change this quickly or without much thought the idea is to accommodate the changing nature of manufacturing while we're still retaining a manufacturing zone an industrial zone in Burlington recognizing that yes that's one particular landowners mix of manufacturing has changed such that it's more office space it's a difficult issue to weigh and for instance with Arts Riot they were permitted years ago I think before I was on the planning commission before Megan was there to have a performing arts space and that's sort of a funny change to allow one property to have a performing arts feature this change would apply to would it be in the entire district or at least south of Holy Avenue in the entire district so the idea is to somehow the way Megan is drafted the ordinance change is to attach essentially we would make these other permitted uses like performing arts subordinate to the larger one so it's still have to be 51% office space for instance that's one example 51% industrial excuse me 49% office space so I appreciate that I live in a college neighborhood I got a lot of street noise too and I just wanted to mention that among the permitted uses now one of them is warehouse and distribution operation and so that would be probably the most logical thing that would go in there you'd have a lot more trucks driving down home avenue and that would be permitted now without any change in zoning Megan I appreciate your comments to kind of speak to a couple of the things that you had mentioned about not being allowed in this part of the neighborhood in the case of this amendment we have not we haven't proposed to change anything that is currently allowed to not being allowed the only thing that happens as a result of this change is to say that there are what we call kind of a bucket of uses that are you know your typical cafe your just plain old generic office space performing arts venues, things like that that really could be anywhere in the city they don't have to be specific to industrial parkway and said that you know if we want to put those on industrial parkway they have to be in support of those industrial uses so we haven't taken away the ability for a property on industrial parkway to just do warehousing or just do manufacturing or bicycle repair or any of those things those are all still things that are allowed very intentionally but yes I mean we do receive dozens of requests every year for us to consider provisions of the zoning ordinance and that's for a variety of reasons in some cases we receive them you know from a business owner or a property owner who you know has an idea or has a specific challenge and they want to present a solution for us to consider in other cases it's because of a study or a policy has been working on and we need to make changes in order to advance some of the goals of that study we also know that there are things that happen over time that our community is constantly evolving and not everything that happens today in Burlington or might happen in the next few years or many years is anticipated today in our zoning ordinance and so this is a process for us to consider what changes are happening in our community are being asked to happen in our community and whether or not they're appropriate so that's why we use this planning commission to help us weigh these issues just to talk about the process a little bit shouldn't be fast it's supposed to go slow but it does allow for change because you know the situation does change I hope you know Burlington doesn't get locked into the same zoning forever so the process is slow and deliberative or at least should be and first review in the planning commission often first at the ordinance committee level and then the full commission level then it goes to the city council usually to the ordinance committee which you're not on Joan are you I wish Chip was here but okay so it'll go to the city council ordinance committee and then to the full city council if there are any changes in those processes it comes back to the planning commission again so there's a lot of touch points still to come and there have been already but it is supposed to be slow and deliberative so I hope that it is yeah we'll let the moderator pick you up share a couple thoughts that Megan is now will push over on this issue so we actually originally approached the city on this concept almost a year ago a few weeks of the year when we had a full commission with Dave White and the mayor sorry I'm just more from Burlington they're working nice sorry of course and they initially said no way that area we really want industry in there that's what plan BPD South End said and they said we should be willing if we can find a surface of industrial tenant to go into that space and we were open to delay so we spent about three or four months with when Neil Lunderville was still in the CEDO job where he was seeking other partners and really the only viable option that surfaced was a brewery which we weren't necessarily opposed to but it didn't really fit with what we were also trying to do with the facility and there's a lot of breweries in Burlington already there's a big wastewater thing sort of growing around that so we weren't sure about it and we really the south of home app piece is sort of a big deal we were really it's really actually hard for us to accept that piece because it does create essentially a whole new set of rules for four addresses on industrial parkway that don't exist anywhere else in the enterprise zone the enterprise zone has been treated as one zone from the zoning rule standpoint there's never been a zoning issue there before so it does restrict what we can do when all these other properties north of home app and enterprise districts sort of have more flexibility so we have to maintain at least a couple of buildings for that industrial use as we described and it is changing it's sort of ironic we're sitting in this building right now in this conversation because I went back and looked at Plan BTD South Bend which is how old? 2012? 2014 you're all correct there's three sections Plan BTD South Bend outlines three portions of the enterprise districts and what we're describing as this industrial manufacturing zone has a big circle including this piece of property that we're sitting in right now and everything south of it which is now turned into a grocery store it's going to be a climbing gym and so it's like it's evolving as we speak and I guess I don't know you think about the history of Burlington that's evolved as well it's not going to stay the same so I know these are challenges for you guys to contend how fast or how slow the pressure that you respond to and I just want to say there's been a very deliberative approach and Megan did a tremendous amount of research in other communities and pushed back hard now we really want to take the stand here on this industrial portion of the city and we argue hard there's been hundreds of thousands of square feet of manufacturing space that's now office all north of us manufacturers have acted it's not cost effective to manufacture products in Burlington anymore I don't think that's great I'm not saying it's a good thing it just is three huge facilities over 100,000 square feet that are now office space so to draw a line at home out it's hard but compromise we and our business neighbors were able to understand and I think work with especially with the adding a technical office component just simple so we've been writing about 10 minutes and I hope that's okay we've had time for one other question could you give a question I was just going to ask I know part of the conditional uses one of the things you mentioned is restricting hours of operation do many of those exist currently in the areas of Comeran? I don't think so I think there might be some like individual agreements that have been worked out about certain hours of like deliveries or things like that but I don't know that there's anything that came out of the DRV process that I know about it just seems like it's also operating late and it's going to be in the area after anyway it's kind of going to be in the nature of the latter and to that end there's a lot of effect that hours of operation once just quick suggestion I know you've put things out for public hearing and you've made announcements if it hasn't been for seven days picking up the article about what was going on I don't think the neighbors would know anything about it and it's not your fault it's very difficult to get people to get interested in public hearing but the one suggestion I would make can you use plain English in your announcements? when you're announcing we're going to have a discussion of RLM and conditional use or whatever most people will hear their eyes are going to blaze over if you can spell it out in plain English about what you're talking about you can actually get people interested in it and that's part of what this NPA is all about it's a great place to find out what's happening and have a conversation we're actually having a conversation which usually won't occur in your meetings and it can't based on your rules but trying to get people involved in plain English should be a wonderful thing I appreciate that absolutely there's a number of the work by the steering committee I'll also sort of own that to a certain extent one of the reasons why we're dusting off our bylaws as I mentioned at the very beginning of the meeting is because one of the roles that the steering committee has is to notify neighbors with respect to these types of meetings on the fence that are potentially impacting the community and so I think we're going to try to make a more concerted effort going forward to also assistance and translation into the monitoring these things more often and getting notifications for example folks are continuing to follow this the next sort of formal stuff would be that the ordinance committee would hear it before the city council last I've seen that meeting has not been scheduled yet is that your understanding as well John? that's correct I don't think it'll be scheduled until the next council the next council is seated April 1st and then the committee will be formed from the new council there will be changes on the committee so that still has to happen that was my assumption as well that wouldn't happen until April 1st but we as the LBA will also continue to monitor it and let people know about the meetings I appreciate your all continuing to come in Justin I appreciate your being here as well and I anticipate we'll continue to start with them so thanks very much thank you alright so as mentioned in the beginning now we have folks from TVW here namely to talk about bicycle and protection on that one so thank you for being here you think you're correct Joe is the best at plugging in on this well we get that set up I just want to thank everybody for allowing us to be on your agenda and have a little bit of time to talk about a timely proposal that we wanted to bring air out with you gather some feedback what's time available at the end you know after presenting the proposal doing some Q&A we do have some other projects the south end is going to be a really active area with infrastructure renewal which brings a lot of benefits it also brings some short term impacts so as time and if time allows we'll discuss that now this doesn't have to be the end of that conversation we're always willing to answer calls come back and we'll be doing some front porch forum outreach on those other projects as well but due to the timely nature we'll focus first on that thanks again for having us we'll be getting that plugged in I will pass around a sign up sheet in case anybody wants to stay informed based on what we hear tonight and any decisions we may make before taking this to our public works commission next month feel free to sign up here and we will follow up well we come prepared so as that happens we're going to hand out a hard copy of the presentation everything you were going to talk about today so I'll share a few of these on this side a few of these on this side I don't think we'll run out if you need another copy of the same copy my name is Rob I'm the public information manager I'm going to turn over the discussion to my colleagues, Nicola and Elizabeth hi thanks for having us tonight I'm Nicola, a senior planner at Public Works hi I'm Elizabeth Goringer I'm the planner at Public Works in the essence of time I'll walk us through this while we get this loaded we can always advance through some of those initial slides we're here tonight to talk about a proposal for reconfiguring a bit of Flynn Avenue between Shelburne Street and Briggs Street we're bringing this forward now because we're trying to coordinate this project with some other construction activity last year the water rehabilitation started on Flynn Avenue that's going to continue this year when that's complete then Flynn Avenue will be repaved in that section and with the repaving we're proposing to change some of the parking configuration and the bikeway configuration on the streets this idea really gained momentum in our walk bike plan is the city's first master plan for walking and biking improvements that was approved in 2017 and one of the things we really heard in that effort was a need to improve the east west connections for people biking and in the south end what we really heard is that this is important to connect Oakledge Park with Pine Street and Shelburne Street to connect the waterfront and city markets and to help make biking and routes to school a little bit easier for children getting to Champlain Elementary so we've drafted a proposal that we brought to the Walk Bike Council last month to get their input and so they've informed a bit of this design we're doing some direct outreach to the businesses that are directly impacted we met with Redstone last week we're meeting with City Market next week we're trying to coordinate a meeting our conversation with the Howard Center we mailed letters to everyone along Flynn Avenue who own property and who live there or have a business there and we sent out an advisory front porch form notice to invite people to come tonight as well so no luck on the presentation we'll walk you through the options here so what we're proposing is between Shelburne Street and Pine Street to retain parking on the north side remove parking on the south side and with that add an eastbound bike lane so that would be going from Pine Street to Shelburne Street and then just have shared lane markings next to the parking lane we're evaluating a potential crosswalk at Richardson Street as well to make it easier to get from the south side of the street the parking will be on the north side and then moving east so between Pine Street and Foster we're proposing to basically build a parking lane in place of the greenbelt where cars are currently parking near the Howard Center so they park kind of adjacent to the sidewalk we're proposing to reconstruct the sidewalk add curbing and just formalize the parking that's already happening there we'd continue to sort of notch in that parking as far as we can to the west and with that we can add bike lanes in both directions so there would be no parking on the south side in that block either and then the next block kind of where we are very close to here between Foster and Briggs thank you very much between Foster and Briggs we would restrict parking on both sides through there and continue the bike lanes in each direction the reason we opted for that configuration in the block is the Champlain Parkway is still planned to start construction this fall when it's starting in the north and moving south and by the time the parkway is constructed basically an intersection is going to be where that block is and so the parking is going to be removed it's going to be just east of where we are now so there's sort of the undeveloped parcel across Briggs Street next to City Market and that's where the Champlain Parkway is going to come through so we have a graphic of kind of what we're proposing here to make this a little bit easier and visual so let's see so this is from Pine Street to Shelburne Street we'd have parking on just the north side no parking on the south side bike lane headed in that direction and just shared lane markings headed in this direction this is the area we're looking at adding a crosswalk and then through this stretch we would have bike lanes in both directions continuing from Pine to City Market or the intersection at Briggs Street just at City Market and we'd build the parking into the north side of the street we have more detailed plans on the following slides if you want to get into that much detail I guess the one thing I'll point out is it does have the bike lane and parking dimensions in there we are retaining the trees that are in the green belt so we're not going to impact the trees that are there and we're working around utility poles so there will be a couple of little notched in areas rather than one large swath of notched in parking we're here tonight because we wanted to hear the neighborhood's thoughts on this proposal we are planning to bring any potential parking changes to the Public Works Commission at their April meeting which is on April 17th and this gives us the next several weeks to make any changes to the plans based on what we're hearing we are looking forward to your input tonight if anybody watching this or anybody who received the letter that you know of or any of your neighbors would like to get us feedback after our contact information is on here as well feel free to email us or call us and we'll follow up with anybody who has reached out to share what our plan is for the April meeting in case we do make changes we can walk through the plans in more detail if you'd like but otherwise we're just happy to take any comments or questions as a biker it basically just seems like I'm sharing the lane with cars which is not a very fair sharing so I'm wondering what it would take to have bike lanes on both sides and which seems like a more equitable recognition of the fact that there's a new balance between cars and bikes and it's not really safe I know we have a share on on pine trees and it's not safe as a biker and since all of the residential properties that are on that pine street to Shelburne street have presumably off street parking why is it necessary to have parking on that excellent question it's not necessary the walk bike plan actually recommended bike lanes in both directions in that stretch from pine street to Shelburne street on the plan yep and so this is the stretch to retain the parking on the north side um and we so that is still an option and if there's a lot of interest in that concept we can consider that we were trying to take a more balanced approach to leave some on street parking available for both residents and for the new business that is at the corner of Pine and Flynn Redstone has been trying to get a commercial property in there parking is always a challenge so I'm interested in retaining some parking options nearby um straight lane markings themselves really help bicyclists get in a better position next to parked cars especially try to get them out of the door zone a little bit so that no one opens a car door into them and brings more awareness to drivers who are on the street that this is a common route for biking so it's really just for guidance and again this was trying to take just a more balanced approach to these changes but again if there's a lot of interest in removing all the parking in that stretch and adding the bike lanes in both directions that's definitely an option okay yeah I'll agree with Andy you know it's good to have some on street parking if you don't you know there is a need for but you know when I was never fully parked so I do think there's it's not on both sides of the street even just on one side seems like a wide street there should be a way to accommodate that and then other questions yeah it's a very good question um so that stretch isn't being repaved just yet we wanted to let the parkway come in and rebuild some of the curb line we can come back in make changes to the blocks between Briggs and the railroad tracks afterwards and then the water department still needs to do some additional work near Oakledge parks should make exiting your driveway a little bit easier um the parking there will be it'll basically be adjacent to the sidewalk so it'll be much easier to see around any of the parked cars there where the trees exist that's actually where the parking would end so the trees start I think near the co-op property yeah our intent is not to remove any of the trees with that option but um we can get to a different one that has a little more detail so it's going to go faster okay so this is the stretch just adjacent to the Howard center which is right here so um here's Pine Streets and so we're we're extending the parking lane that's currently there now so the intersection as we can leaving this utility pole just for reference yep so then there's another utility pole here which is why there's a little notch in the parking and then we're getting closer to the co-op property um so here's another utility pole just past the Howard center and then as we get closer to Foster this is where the parking would then just be restricted on both sides um when we went out we mentioned we were still evaluating what the recommendation would be between Briggs and Foster and so this plan doesn't show the updated version where we recently opted to just remove the parking on both sides um as our proposal and continue the bike lanes in both directions and so there would be no parking on either side through here and the parking would not be notched in so there wouldn't be parking in front of the co-op right um it is definitely more costly um I don't know that we could do it why we build the notched parking on the other block this year um the challenge that we had in that other block as well since we just built a new sidewalk on that section it's very close to the curb line right now we don't have the room to build the same type of parking that we have here without having bigger impacts on that stretch we do yeah we're very upset we move forward with that because that really impacted those neighbors and having appreciation for our need for better bike infrastructure but also having experienced a period of time had a lot of mobility issues if you're going to visit somebody who lives in those parks it's a real difficulty and to have to cross a busy street there um I think that's a pretty significant hardship in the walk bike plan in certain places it specifically spells out that we are planning to remove parking in these areas and we've done that and the neighbors didn't like it but we went ahead and we did that because we committed to that infrastructure on Flynn Avenue it doesn't actually say that it does say we're going to have to we're going to have bike lanes in both directions but it doesn't say we're going to remove parking to do it and with these kind of documents it's kind of a vision in documents and then you have to work out the details so I appreciate that you have kind of made some concessions here if you're going if you're headed west on Flynn Avenue there actually is kind of a nice downhill when the speed you travel can be similar to the speed of the cars so I do agree with Andy I really don't quite get sharers I always read them as run over the bicycles because they're just bicycle icons with the cars but I really like Harris's idea of having both directions of biking on one side of the road which does have an efficiency we did it on south of Newsy Avenue it seems that for whatever reason that has fallen out of favor but it seems like a pretty nice compromise in order to get everything that we need into the street without really negatively impacting something so we'll take another look at all of the dimensions I don't know that we can fit two-way bike traffic on the same side of the street but we'll at least check to see if there is a way that we could do it yeah south of Newsy is a little bit different since it is a one-way street and there's still two separate bike lanes but right and the neighborhood did request that we maintain that old configuration at the time but because it was kind of sub-standard it really fit we opted with the design that we have now but we'll take a look at the stretch yes it's true it's a good point we're running up against 830 and we were hoping to take a few minutes for one last agenda item but I know that you wanted to get to a couple other updates it looks like in your presentation with respect to spring plans yeah we can take the temperature and ruin whatever it does on the biking movement just quickly another option have a sidewalk on one side of the plan and a bike path on the other side you can just walk there if you want to but you won't walk without bikes you can go on this I do know just to follow up there has been some discussion about rather than having sidewalks just having sort of asphalt bike paths like that has there been any thought with respect to that I mean just replacing the sidewalks altogether with a bike path yeah generally they are less safe than on-road facilities the number of driveway crossings are usually the biggest challenge the more driveways you have the less predictable it is that you're going to have someone on a bike traveling at that speed on what would where drivers would normally think of as a sidewalk right but someone who has lived in the right path of Denmark the whole cities they found a way to make them path they just said basically priorities, bicycles they have to give up some space they do but the main thing is this is the thing about two ways on one side there that seems almost scary the United is going against the bicycle traffic and against car traffic they do a good job of separating with actual curves it's interesting yeah it's very true thank you how about I run through one or two slides a very brief just share some resources we have available the south end as I mentioned at the beginning is going to have quite a bit of infrastructure with kind of renewal activity I already mentioned you know that brings real long-term benefits to the community it also does bring short-term impacts as I'm sure you're aware from some other projects that we've kind of led recently so what I want to do very briefly is I'm going to speed through some of these things that may be less directly relevant and I just want to share with you one resource we do maintain which is the Burlington construction portal available at BurlingtonBT.gov backslash construction we'll have a map and a list view as you can see highlighted there all the projects planned for 2019 and we break them out in other ways active projects all the completed projects since the passage of the infrastructure bonds in 2016 as well as all projects kind of that we've completed all that are underway and all that maybe are planned for the near term so it's just one resource we're trying to make everybody aware of for kind of some upfront you know check in on our projects and always feel free to call us for specifics and information on the sustainable infrastructure plan itself which could give you some context as to why some assets are chosen why we're choosing to reinvest in the ways that we are it's just some background reading as you're interested we also maintain a little bit of an outreach section the letter that you may or may not have received for paving or the Flynn app bike work things like that are going to be hosted here so you always have a quick reference as needed for projects you may be interested in we want to make you aware of some really important projects that will be going on this year and we pulled a screenshot of our construction portal we do want to make you aware the Flynn app water relining project will take place pretty early on in the season that did get delayed from the end of last season some delays and then weather kind of crept up on us the timing is going to be mid-April that will go until July Flynn app paving will come in hopefully shortly after that there will be some pine street water main relining from Flynn to home this year there will be paving from Flynn to home there will be a smaller project of an overlay between lakeside and Flynn there will be some work at the pine and Flynn intersection to rebuild the water main rebuilding reconstructing the water main is a bit more of an invasive project than the relining projects we've already mentioned so be aware of that traffic patterns will be set up with a high degree of certainty to kind of moderate during peak peak travel times to allow two-way traffic there's a couple other relining and paving projects set to take place nearby this is all available online we're certainly developing after questions if you want to call us or if there's opportunities in the future where you would like us back we certainly welcome that opportunity thank you very much I think this is a much larger discussion and I promise to the folks here that will have you back for just regular sort of check-in for folks in the community here is the parkway still on track for this fall and do you have any thoughts with respect to is it starting at the southern part is it starting in the northern part I think in terms of how the project is phased it's going to be a conversation with the contractor as that goes out for bid and as those plans get developed I think the overall scope of risks are and have continually been reduced to the point that we are very close to being able to go out for bid fall 2019 probably is a very optimistic date at this point I think spring is a very highly likely scenario I don't think we can close the window on fall but I also wouldn't want to sit here and over promise that that is going to start this fall but in terms of phasing I think it's a conversation with the contractor and how that work gets developed question about brakes I mean brakes is terrible and why aren't they fixing it you know it hasn't been paid for probably 20 years the contractor wants to jump in I'm glad you asked a question because a lot of people are wondering how they keep trying to spread the word but when when city market went in the first thing Chip and I said to them is we don't know how the traffic is going to work here and so they originally designed it the way they would have entrances and exits city market yeah with the parkway there and the neighbors in all those adjacent streets were very concerned about the traffic impacts because people are going to be cutting through all those neighborhood streets so there were a couple and what they wanted to do was dead end like Berguson it will be dead ended when the parkway goes through but we weren't allowed to do that because the project had been federalized so we couldn't do that for them so the concessions that we made city market redesigned this building and the entryway so that it comes in off of Flynn and there's a gate on brakes so that people won't come through on brakes but we also agreed not to pave it to discourage people from using brakes so that they wouldn't be cutting through all those neighborhood streets now we could have not done that we could have not negotiated with the late neighbors but had we not done that we probably wouldn't be sitting in this room today because there's always a very lengthy appeals process just to pave brakes that doesn't have anything to do with people who are living here we agreed not to pave brakes in order to so you do use home orders yes yes in order to kind of mitigate the negative impacts on the people who live closest to them for folks who are interested in sort of the burden higher ground issue I actually I point to it as an example of an area where for better or worse there are concessions that can be ganged out of being involved in this process as we go forward I think Briggs is an example of it when you look at the back entrance of the parking lot being closed that was another example of it and as Jones mentioned they're really figuring the entrance way here so people power does have some power in these types of projects and I think the evidence is found out here for better or worse we're obviously trying to travel Briggs but but they have no place to go to right people will always travel Briggs it's just gotten worse and worse connected to the whole way we do we have regraded it in the past and that's something that would happen when the ground thaws in a few weeks so that is certainly on the table I think I checked my records I think it was April or May last year any other short-term repairs right now in the winter would be arguably ineffective because of the condition of the road and the material we've got it's one way that Briggs would be emphasized with the rest of Vermont is well thanks to the folks from DPW folks were entertained just a couple more minutes I don't want to necessarily rush it but I also want to stay just a couple more minutes thank you thanks so very briefly for folks who came in after the beginning of the meeting a few months ago there was an effort at the city council level not from our councillors but from some other wards to discuss NPA funding and there was a resolution that was put on the table at that time that would increase funding for the NPAs for a specific purpose which would be for a micro grant program as well as for a community award program and members of the steering committee pushed back on it a little bit this was really the first time we had heard about it we didn't have time to really digest it when we thought about it further we thought that perhaps we don't necessarily have the same bandwidth as some other wards may have to really manage a micro grant program and accept applications and review them for a couple hundred dollars here a few hundred dollars there and so on so among our steering committee we had a discussion of yes we could benefit from some increased funding as an NPA maybe another award would want to use it for a micro grant program maybe this award would want to use it for for that or perhaps for a community engagement what I mentioned in the beginning of the meeting was we've had discussions amongst ourselves and steering committee about having a larger event I'll use the example again when she was previously in the steering committee doing a pancake breakfast being able to afford child care services to come in such that we could make these meetings more accessible to families with young children or maybe even doing some more advertising these signs right over here to advertise meetings in the neighborhood where folks put them out there but some of them are out of date now because they advertise our meetings being at DPW and so there's this again for folks who weren't here earlier there's this all wards organization where they invite in the steering committee members of every NPA around the city we had a meeting recently that Joanna Grossman and I were at and we came to a consensus among the different wards that we would go back to our individual assemblies and see if you all were interested in passing a resolution which again it wouldn't increase our budget all the resolution would do is it would be forwarded to the city council for consideration on increasing each NPA's or each wards budget to a higher level to from our perspective to be able to better our community engagement activities. Our budget at the moment is currently as I mentioned before $400 the number that all wards came up to with that each ward would bring back to their individual assemblies was $2,500 it's a relatively big jump percentage wise maybe it's a sort of ask for more when that shall receive but it's the number that we came up with as a group and that we committed to the all wards organization that we would bring to you all here so I know we've run over and it's not an issue that I necessarily want to rush so if we need more time then perhaps we can delay it to another date but the agenda item the resolution here again it starts with some general language about the NPA's being established 30 years ago that the NPA's play a real role in allowing residents the opportunity to engage with their neighbors so on and so forth if you can keep scrolling down it talks about how a $400 budget it allows for us to purchase max and things like that but doesn't necessarily allow us to consider and be creative and think outside the box with respect to things like child care services or larger events so it doesn't sufficiently allow us to really maximize those efforts and that with a larger annual budget that we may be able to increase community engagement by better publicizing our activities, increasing meeting accessibility to a more diverse group of neighbors and including by providing meals, child care services at certain meetings throughout the year awards two and three if they're lucky enough to have sort of a frontier workforce that's available to do this but they do a community meal before their NPA meeting and it's great it brings in a much more diverse group families come in, it's a free meal and then the NPA meeting immediately follows the meal there and it brings in a larger group, a more diverse group and that's what we're looking to do here so having to answer any questions folks may have but again each NPA is bringing this back to their assemblies, this request that the city increase the annual budget of each NPA to $2,500 for fiscal year 2020 to confirm again just a request we don't have the power to increase the budget that would fall to Councilor Shannon and Chip and their colleagues on the city council as well as the mayor and CEDOS office and so on in fact we had a discussion with CEDOS but we don't really necessarily know where this money would come from maybe it would come from CEDOS budget maybe it would come from some other bucket that the intent here is to really relate to the city that the awards have come to a consensus that the NPAs could benefit from some increased funding so happy to answer any questions folks would have but the ask here is to turn to the question at this resolution and it's not something I want to rush if people want to take a pause with respect to it but if people feel comfortable with it then this is one of the more formal areas where we could take a vote on it and if it votes then we would basically pass it along to the mayor and the city council yeah Alisa two questions, first of all Joan what kind of finding in city council would be if this didn't get voted on I don't think there's a rush tonight so this is going to come before our new council that hasn't we all get sworn in on April 1st so our budget is getting adopted in the next few months so it's in order to be included in the budgeting I think it could be done at the next meeting but that's probably as long as you could wait so much point on that is also I believe more than five bylaws are written is that if we're going to vote on something we need to warn it in advance just like a regular election so that it's great bring it up now decide whether we want to bring it forward at the next meeting and then warn it in the minutes and in the agenda item and have it ready to be voted on at the next meeting for the proper legal and warning and then that way we'll have more people in the room and more people involved but we know today is actually World Water Day and it was a huge event down in Echo I believe and a lot of people were down there so maybe we had some competition and the school board but that would be my suggestion is that if we go through our standard standard bylaws that we would warn it and have it voted on at the next meeting I'm comfortable with that I think the bylaws are a little bit fuzzy which is why we wanted to dust them off for the next month anyways I think there's you can read them a bunch of different ways one is maybe it does need to be worn ten ways the other is as well as long as we have a critical mass that's in support of it maybe we don't have to do that but if there's any question marks about it I'm a lawyer after all so I don't know I know that we adopted this meeting we put it on the agenda for our next meeting which is April 18th since it's less than a month away I see second, okay so I just started by show of hands folks who are ready to now it's time for discussions the number of specificities says 25 water I'm wondering if that offers them the chance to say no to money as opposed to awarding something more flexible like a substantial increase maybe as much as 25 hundred or something like that I don't know if it just makes it too easy to shut it down and it's because it's going to all of the awards in this exact same morning well now I would say H Ward is doing something a little bit different the dollar figure is the same number that each NPA is bringing back to their folks John did you have a comment on that or well I think one of the things that's important to us because our funds are tight even small amounts can be critical in our budgeting process is to know how the money is going to be spent and so you could come up with some ideas that should be an important part the discussion is what you first for would it be micro grant grants would it be more food would it be outreach so having a little bit more of a gelled idea of how the money is going to be the 25 hundred dollar number was the number that the groups that had talked about that micro grant program that translated into resolution that was somewhat news to us when it came forward to the city council but in any event that 25 hundred dollar number was the number that they had discussed then and so when we came back together as this all wards group that was the number that came up again it was the number that we were able to come to some sort of consensus about everyone feeling comfortable about going back to their individual assemblies there are other assemblies that are out there that would want that number to be significantly higher than even 25 hundred and I think that that was a more flag word understood the inclination to put the brakes on that a little bit so so there are eight wards but there are so each ward the proposals of each ward would have 25 hundred there are only so the number is 20 thousand dollars correct so it sounds like we're heading in the direction of the agenda for next month which actually makes sense because as I mentioned before we were hoping to bring the bylaws up again then as well and we're having steering committee elections next month as well so perhaps we can have a much broader discussion about the NPA and its future and its role in our community and this could be a part of it as well so we have a question on the table to put this item on the agenda next month the resolution if you're in favor of that raise your hand anyone opposed okay so we'll put this on the agenda for next month we'll report back to the all wards group that we'll be discussing on April 18th I think that'll be fine so thanks all for your patience thanks again to City Market obviously for hosting us, thanks to Councillor Sharon for coming and joining us, thanks to CEDO for live streaming on channel 17 and hopefully we'll see you all next month as well thanks